Bitter & Jaded

More of the same

runic_binary — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 04:39:20 GMT

Title: I Can Tell Just What You Want
Fandom: Secret Six
Characters/Pairing: Catman/Deadshot, Jeannette
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2,364
Summary: Blake. Lawton. Sparring. Sex. Pretty straightforward.
A/N: As a disclaimer, I do not ship this. However, Gail Simone does and that's good enough for me. Also, I was in a smut mood and there are no good words for girl parts and these two are tied for second favorite male character and as for my first, Ragdoll has neither functional genitalia nor anyone I'd feel comfortable seeing him sleep with (the first person who says Parademon or Black Alice gets punched in the solar plexus), so this was it. Enjoy.

In the aftermath of one of those really good, satisfying knock-down drag-outs masquerading as a spar that's really just an excuse to get their hands on one another, they lay panting in a bloodied sprawl on the lawn and Blake thinks, fuck it, and rolls over and kisses Lawton on the mouth.

He tastes like cigarette ash and leftover Chinese, and it's not exactly pleasant, but Lawton kisses back, firm and deliberate, with a hand tangled in Blake's hair, and that's good. It's better than he thought it would be, all the times he's let himself wonder; sweet and hot and alive and more intense when Lawton pushes at him until he rolls over and Lawton's on top, kissing him and kissing him and pinning his wrists to the ground.

When they part, panting anew, they look into each other's eyes, fearless, because they are men without fear. They're far too stupid for it. Blake licks his lips and Lawton's gaze falls immediately to them and Blake says, "Surprised you didn't punch me."

Lawton shrugs, like it's easy, like this is meaningless. Like 4am omelettes and saving each other's lives are meaningless. "Guess I'm all punched out," he replies, like it's just another morning, and leans in to kiss him again, but Blake puts a hand to his chest to stop him and nods toward the house. Someone could see, the gesture says, and A bed would be more comfortable and I want to lay you out and taste every scarred, ashy inch of you and we can't do that here.

Deadshot nods once, looking a little dazed, like he can't believe this is happening, and doesn't move until Blake pushes at him and sits up and drags them both to standing. They're both limping and they haven't even started yet, which Blake finds a little hilarious. He almost laughs. He wonders if Lawton's going to fuck him, or if he's going to top, and he doesn't know which he wants more. Maybe they'll just throw down again and writhe against each other like animals until they get off in a twisted imitation of their fight on the lawn, and Blake's struck a little dumb by how appealing that sounds.

Once inside, they stagger like drunks into Lawton's room, because it's closest. Jeannette watches them pass through the kitchen without comment, but Blake's certain she knows. Can see it in her eyes. She must smell it on them, like death. Like the blood and sweat that clings to their skins. She turns away from them and Blake feels the place where a pang of guilt doesn't happen because all he can think of is how much he wants this.

Not just the sex, but Lawton. He wants Deadshot to fuck him and mark him and claim him and own him and for him to leave bruises where everyone can see and it would scare him if he weren't too damn stupid to fear anymore.

As soon as they get the door shut Lawton throws him against it and presses them together, so tight Blake thinks they'd melt into one body if they didn't have all these damn clothes in the way, and immediately attacks his neck, licking at the place where his starting shot barely grazed Blake's throat. He bites there, bringing more blood to the surface and lapping it away and it hurts so sweet and hot that it makes him hard. He knew it'd be rough and violent and so good the way he always wants it when he's with another man and he grabs at Lawton's hair and kisses him again, tastes his own blood and some of Lawton's and a lot of wet, slick heat that he wants on his cock now.

He tries to push Lawton to his knees and gets pushed instead, shoved at until he falls on his ass in the middle of the room and then pushed until he's lying flat, and then Lawton attacks the fastenings of his jeans and pushes his t-shirt up to his neck and Blake's promptly done pining for that mouth because he's in it and god, it's good. So hot, so wet and moving, sucking hard, tongue tracing every inch of him and head bobbing up and down the shaft until Lawton's drooling over his own fist. Blake threads his fingers into Lawton's hair and pushes him, pulls when he gets too close to giving it up, but Lawton hunches his shoulders and refuses to be moved even when Blake can feel hair coming away in his fingers.

Then it's too much, too fast and he's coming, arching and shouting into a fist he's biting down on to muffle his sounds and seeing stars behind his eyelids. When he comes back to himself, heaving in air and blinking away the swimming at the corners of his vision, Deadshot's already finished spitting into the garbage can next to his bed. He turns and stares at Blake, expressionless, and then his eyes drop to Catman's dick, which is still mostly hard, because it's been way too long.

They both manage to get on their feet, and while Blake tugs his pants back up, Lawton works on getting his off. He unzips and sighs at the loss of pressure, and then pulls his shirt off. Slow. He's making a show of it and Blake appreciates it, drinks in every dip and line of that hard body as it's revealed inch by inch. God, but the man's attractive. He wonders how many times he's been caught just staring, not even bothering to hide it because there's no use. Stared at Bane, too; guy's too hairy for his taste but he's huge and Blake likes getting held down. Not many people can do it. But he never wanted any of the others like this. Not even close.

When Lawton's finally naked, he comes to Blake and starts undressing him too. It feels a little too much like getting cared for, not having his clothes ripped off in a lustful flurry but being slowly undressed. And Lawton won't look at him. He has a feeling it doesn't have to do entirely with Lawton admiring his chest and the cut of his hips, although that seems to be some of it. Blake knows he's good-looking, isn't afraid to show it off, but it's flattering all the same. He lets the other man look, lets himself be undressed, and when they're both naked Lawton pulls him in and kisses him again, rubbing himself a little against Blake's abs.

There's a shocking lack of urgency to this. They kiss slow but hard, tasting and learning each other's mouths, and Lawton digs his fingers into the muscle of Blake's back, his arms, the backs of his thighs. Blake does his own exploring, which ends when Lawton grabs his ass and grinds against him, causing him to rip away from the kiss with a gasp.

Blake didn't expect any kissing for this. He initiated one, the universal I-want-you signal, but he thought it’d be the opener to a transaction, not a…not whatever this is. But Lawton kisses him again and again as they fall into bed, biting at his lips and jaw and ear, and then down his throat and chest to suck and bite at his nipples, which really aren't that sensitive, but Blake enjoys watching Deadshot take obvious pleasure from mouthing at his skin.

He pulls the man back up after Lawton dips a ticklish tongue into his navel, and they share another unhurried kiss. When they pull away, Lawton licks blood from the corner of his mouth and says, "Can I fuck you?"

Catman doesn't answer. Instead, he pulls his knees up and arches, showing off, asking for it. Lawton makes a low noise in the back of his throat like a growl and reaches into the bedside table drawer, fumbling blindly until he comes out with a tube of lube. He hesitates. "You clean?" Blake nods. "You sure?" Another nod. "Good. Fuckin' hate condoms." He slams the drawer shut decisively and pours some lube over his fingers, grinning at Blake and pressing one immediately into him.

Blake hisses at the cold and the pain of going too long without this and turns his face away, and Lawton rolls his eyes. Blake suspects the other man was testing him, seeing if he could shock a curse out of him. It'll be a game, then. Lawton trying to get him to talk and Blake not doing it.

Lawton's surprisingly thorough in preparing him, teasing and pressing and finding all of his sensitive spots, identifying them by Blake's little gasps and hitches of breath. After awhile he realizes Deadshot's trying to make him beg for it. He smirks, because he'd be perfectly happy to get a hand on himself and come just like this and leave Lawton hard and wanting (although maybe he'd like to jerk him and not give him anything he asked for just to be a bastard and still get to see him come).

"What's so funny, Tomcat?" Lawton asks, part annoyed, part amused at Blake's groan when thick fingers shove their way deep into him. But Blake won't answer, and at this point Lawton has to know that. So he does the talking for them. "I'm gonna fuck you 'til you scream, Kitty. I'm gonna pound you into the mattress 'til you beg me to stop. 'Til
everyone knows what I'm doing to you. And I'm gonna make you love it."

Blake moans and Lawton chuckles, and then he pulls out, suddenly serious. He wipes his fingers on the sheets and grips Blake's hip with one hand, guiding himself in with the other. He looks Blake dead in the eye and Blake closes his because this is suddenly too intimate, that they're doing it like this and that there's this huge unspoken Thing between them and there always has been, that he half suspects Lawton didn't want to use a condom so they could both feel each other like this, that he can feel Lawton watching him while he presses in, thick hot brand of him touching places in him that not many people have touched and that no one's ever done in a way that made him feel like this.

This was supposed to be just a fuck. How could he be so stupid? How could he think it wouldn't be more than that?

Lawton goes still inside him, buried to the hilt, and when Blake opens his eyes he knows it's not about getting used to the heat and pressure but about feeling…together. That's a big word, 'together', a huge word and maybe he's not too stupid to feel fear after all. But it's so, so good, too, he feels so stretched and filled and the burn of it is as sweet as the throbbing of the bitten gunshot graze at his throat.

And when Lawton lets out a shaky breath and starts to move it's heaven, the sensation of being fucked and taken and used. He wraps his legs around Deadshot's waist, digs his heels into his ass and pulls him in hard, and when Lawton groans open-mouthed and desperate the fear eases and he realizes he can do this, that it's not the end of the world, and he can pretend until the afterglow fades that they won't kill each other someday.

He can also grunt and drag his hands down Lawton's back and thrash because it's just that good, Deadshot's fucking him exactly how he wants it and he didn't even have to ask. Like this was fated, and that's terrifying, but it also melts his body into liquid heat and the clench of his muscles around Lawton's dick and Lawton's mouth on his skin wherever it can reach, biting and sucking kisses that are sure to leave marks. Good. He wants the marks. He wants everyone to know, to see.

He wants to go limp and just be fucked, just feel it. But he arches into it instead, runs his fingers through Lawton's hair and rubs his thumbs over his nipples, making him grunt and fuck harder. He wishes Lawton would bite him hard in a visible place, but he doesn't want to ask; he gets his wish anyway when Lawton fastens his mouth onto the place where jaw meets neck and thinks, I wish I knew how to say what this means to me so I could tell you.

"Fuck, Tomcat," Lawton says, and that used to be a mockery but now it's a term of endearment; he can hear it in the way it's half-gasped, "You're so fucking tight. You got any idea what you're doing to me? Fuckin' killing me, Blake. Christ, do that again."

He'd been biting at Lawton's shoulder. He does it again, harder, and Deadshot growls and gets a hand in Blake's hair and drags his face away from his shoulder to kiss him, hard, moaning into it and pounding him so hard the bed creaks and the headboard slams against the wall.

When Blake comes, it's with Lawton's mouth on his, not kissing but sharing air, like they can't bear to tear away from each other, and Lawton's hands all over him, and Lawton's skin pressed so tight to his he could easily hallucinate they were the same person. And he comes shouting and bucking and clinging to Lawton like the man can save him from drowning in it.

When he comes down, Deadshot's watching him with a look on his face like he's sad about something. "Jesus, Blake," he groans, and doubles over and comes with his forehead pressed to Blake's collarbone.

It's a long time before Lawton pulls out and rolls over, staring dazed at the ceiling. "That was fuckin' incredible."

"Yeah," Blake agrees, unable to express exactly how incredible it was. He has a feeling Lawton can't either.

"Oh, now he says something," Lawton grumbles, and Blake laughs for the first time in what feels like years before Lawton punches his shoulder and rolls over to kiss him, and regardless of how beaten up he is, nothing hurts at all.

Porn time. I have cut to the chase.

runic_binary — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 22:56:26 GMT

Title: You and Your Friend
Fandom: X-Factor
Characters/Pairing: Rahne/Rictor/Shatterstar, Jamie, Guido, Layla
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2,882
Summary: The boys invite Rahne over to play.
A/N: I love PAD, but let's face it, he will never make this canon. It's up to me.

While 'Star nibbled gently on the join of Rahne's neck and shoulder, she took the opportunity to bury her nose in his hair and sniff. "Mmm," she hummed, threading her fingers into the soft locks and digging the fingers of her other hand into 'Star's bicep when he bit into a particularly sensitive bit of neck. "If I could bottle the scent of your hair, I'd be rich."

"Julio likes it too," 'Star replied, softly.

Julio stood behind 'Star, pressed against his back. Kissed the spot behind his ear ('Star made a soft, breathy sound of pleasure) and then went for Rahne's lips. When they parted, Julio rested his head against 'Star's shoulder, hands stroking over his chest and
abdomen. "It was even better when it was long," he told her. "You could just take handfuls of it and bury your face in it and inhale."

"And he did," Shatterstar added, smiling. He kissed Rahne.

Julio went on as they kissed, reaching between them to caress Rahne's breast. "It tickled, too, but in a nice way. Felt good against my skin. And when he was over me, it fell around his shoulders in this red curtain that blocked everything else out, so it was just the two of us. I miss that."

Lips free now, Rahne smiled at his words. "You should grow it out again."

'Star shook his head, working on the button on Rahne's jeans. "It was a hindrance in battle. I kept it on Mojoworld because my fans liked it, and I kept it on Earth because it was familiar--"

"And because you're vain as hell," Julio added, smirking.

Shatterstar ignored him. "And because Julio liked it. But eventually those factors were outweighed by the fact that it got in my eyes and my opponents always tried to grab it to have a hold on me."

"Damn shame," said Julio, and went back to sucking on 'Star's neck. Rahne saw the moment when Julio bit down hard, and 'Star threw his head back and moaned.

Rahne caught her breath and stepped back, sliding out of her jeans. 'Star made a questioning face, but Rahne shook her head, naked now except for her panties, and sat
down in the chair in the corner of the room. "I think I'll just…watch. For a bit. If that's all right."

"Of course it's all right," said Julio, taking 'Star's chin to turn him for a proper kiss. 'Star sighed; it turned into a moan when Julio's hand slid down to palm him through his trousers.

'Star looked good on display. Rahne supposed that only made sense; it was what he was made for. Still, she liked it better when he turned in Julio's arms, turning them both to give Rahne the best angle to watch from, and kissed him, deep and slow and achingly gorgeous. Julio half-moaned, half-sighed and pressed in close, digging his fingers into the hard muscle of 'Star's back and, apparently, holding on for dear life. 'Star, for his part, was making passionate love to Julio with his lips and tongue and teeth and hands, stroking his back and sides and neck and face, cupping his ass through his jeans and squeezing, caressing the backs of his thighs and holding him still to grind against him, making 'Star moan and Julio stifle something like a whimper. He broke away - both of them were panting - and frantically opened Julio's jeans, drawing them down and off along with his boxers. Julio stepped out of them, working on 'Star's pants; his eyes flicked to Rahne, shifting uncomfortably in her chair, and blushed. But he was soon consumed by the taste of 'Star's skin and the touch of 'Star's hand on his erection.

Once Shatterstar's pants were gone, Julio pushed 'Star away from nibbling on his ear. 'Star's questioning expression was replaced by one of raw lust when Julio dropped to his knees. Rahne took a breath and held it. 'Star stroked the skin beneath Julio's left eye with his thumb and caressed his hair; Julio closed his eyes, leaned into it, and darted out his tongue to taste the head of 'Star's steadily leaking cock.

'Star gasped and Julio went down, one fist around the base of 'Star's erection and the rest of it enclosed in his mouth, licking and sucking and bobbing his head and 'Star threw his head back and groaned in open need. "Oh, Julio…te amo, te quiero -- ah, bueno, mas bueno…"

Rahne wasn't surprised to learn that they spoke Spanish in the bedroom. It was their secret language, carrying over from a time when they hadn't been intimate and yet really, somehow, had. It was meant for secret things like I love you and I love what you do to me.

'Star was watching, rapt, as Julio stroked the vulnerable skin of his balls and pulled back to lave the length of him with his tongue and leave wet, hot kisses on the head and shaft. Julio was watching back. He moved one of 'Star's hands from his shoulder to the back of his head, and 'Star moaned and pulled him in and thrust into wet heat, and Rahne wondered how it felt. Imagined velvety enclosure and a tongue moving and alive, liquid heat and the thrilling threat of teeth. It made her breath hitch; it made her throb with need. She crept out of her seat, as though she might startle them, and shuffled closer on her knees for a better look. Julio spotted her and his not-a-smile reached his eyes. She smiled back.

This close, she could see it when Julio pressed his knuckles up behind 'Stars balls, hard. He cried out, clutching Julio's hair. "J-Julio, I -- I can't--"

Julio immediately pulled off and gripped 'Star by the hips. "Ay, 'Star, chingame -- f-fuck me, por favor, I need--"

'Star pulled him off his knees and crushed their mouths together, growling at the taste of himself and Julio's desperate words. "Yes," he said into Julio's mouth, feeling him shiver and moan in response.

He let Julio go and turned to Rahne, pulling her close and crushing her to him for a kiss that she had a feeling wouldn't look out of place on the cover of a romance novel.

"Would you care to join us now, Miss Sinclair?" he asked, roguish smile at full tilt.

"Yes," she gasped. Shatterstar picked her up in a smooth motion, causing Julio to laugh, and carried her to the edge of the bed.

He turned to Julio. "I'll do it," Julio said, reaching into the bedside table drawer. "Why don't you put on a show for me, now?"

'Star grinned. He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled Rahne, on her feet, to him so that he could pull her down for a scorching kiss. When she felt his fingers slipping through her curls to touch her she jumped and moaned, and 'Star let her go to focus on kissing and licking her breasts while he slid two big fingers into her and thumbed her clit, caressing her back and sides and gripping her ass with his free hand. She moaned, helpless, one hand buried in his bright, hot hair and the other gathering sweat at the back of his neck.

Julio moaned, and when she turned to see him he was sprawled on the bed, knees up and working two fingers into himself with one lip caught between his teeth. It wasn't the sort of thing she'd ever have expected to find erotic, but it knocked the breath out of her and ratcheted her arousal up another notch. Or maybe that was 'Star biting her nipple while he twisted his fingers inside her.

"Oh, fuck," Julio moaned, arching. "Bello, mas bello, bonita--" and he continued by choking out a few words in a guttural, Eastern European-sounding language Rahne recognized vaguely as Cadre Alliance. Whatever he said made 'Star hum and smile against her skin.

She was so close, and she felt as if she could explode or pass out or float away, but Shatterstar's hands, Julio's soft Spanish words -- they grounded her. Then Julio stuttered "Mi corazon, te amo--" and 'Star bit her nipple and thrust in hard and Rahne was gone, coming so hard she couldn't see and she knew she was making an incoherent and mortifying noise and she didn't know or care what it is because she could hear 'Star and Julio both groaning in response and she was happy and so were they and it made her feel nothing but fuzzy-headed and content.

'Star caught her easily when her knees buckled and carefully withdrew his fingers, mindful of her oversensitized whimper, and sucked his middle finger clean, humming in pleasure. It made Rahne blush and she didn't know why. Julio was sitting up now, crouched on his knees, and 'Star fed him his index finger, watching raptly as Julio licked her juices away. When Julio was finished, he drew 'Star into a bruising kiss, and they shared her taste and sighed into each other's mouths. They were beautiful, Rahne realized; honestly beautiful.

'Star drew Rahne down and kissed her, slow and tender, gently massaging her shoulders as a seduction, or possibly a comfort. "Aqui," he said, confusingly, but directed her to lie down on the mattress. "Can you go again?"

"Yes," she said immediately, and he smiled.

"Good. I'd like for Julio to be inside you while I am inside him, if that sounds okay."

"Yes," she said again, while Julio gave a tortured moan.

"I don't think I can," he said softly, flushed, but 'Star kissed his jaw and murmured softly in Cadre. Julio's eyes fluttered shut and he sighed in pleasure, and nodded, hesitantly. 'Star kissed his ear, his cheek, his mouth, and embraced him for a long moment. When they parted, he reached for the discarded lube and slicked himself, biting visibly at the inside of his mouth and making a tiny noise of tortured pleasure.

He handed Rahne a condom and she unwrapped it and reached for Julio, who moved in place for her to roll it onto him. He made a noise, and in a rush of breath he confessed "I don't think I can do thi-- oh."

'Star had produced a small circle of what looked like rubber that Julio apparently recognized but Rahne couldn't identify…until Shatterstar fitted around Julio's cock and balls, eliciting a strangled groan.

Rahne considered herself a 'good girl' in the way she knew many modern feminists found problematic - aside from the premarital threesomes, of course - but she'd seen things. It had been impossible not to. She knew what this was. And, impossibly, it made her whimper with need. Julio grinned at her, a little crooked and a little embarrassed.

Still, she couldn't help but wonder. "'Star doesn't need…?"

Julio rolled his eyes. "He's got the stamina of an ox." 'Star shrugged helplessly, stroking Julio's thighs.

Together they maneuvered Julio between their bodies, Rahne beneath them both and Julio in between. She grasped Julio's erection and placed it at her entrance and 'Star's insistent hand at his lower back pushed him in, inexorably, while he moaned helplessly against Rahne's throat. She stroked his back and planted kisses on his shoulder, soothingly, while Shatterstar murmured soft words in Spanish and Cadre against his lover's skin.

"Shh," he soothed as he pushed himself into Julio's body; they both drank in his anxious groan, both stroking at his skin and holding him, grounding him. Rahne felt stretched full but could only imagine how Julio felt, trapped between them -- it must be so hot, so close and sweat-slick and overwhelming, and the lost noises pouring from Julio's throat didn't indicate otherwise.

"Calmate, mi corazon," 'Star whispered into Julio's ear. "Te amo. Estás a salvo."

Rahne didn't know much of what they were saying, and in the corner of her brain not consumed by lust and pleasure and fullness and weight and heat, she formed a plan to learn Spanish. This was before 'Star started to thrust into Julio, and thrust Julio into her. She gasped, Julio groaned, 'Star sighed, and then he did it again and got serious.

His pace was fast and hard and brutal but still somehow oddly tender, oddly watchful of them both. Spanish and Cadre, occasional English; he was the only one speaking, and brokenly, in stutters and fragments interspersed with deep moans against their sweaty skin. Rahne threaded her fingers into his hair and stroked Julio's face and neck with her other hand; Julio was essentially incapacitated, crying out on every other stroke and hanging his head against her clavicle, but 'Star reached between them to caress her breasts.

Rahne forced a hand between her body and Julio's to trace the place where he entered her and then to stroke and twist at her clit, making her arch and move against the weight above her as best she could. She was aware that she was gasping and whining, but couldn't hear past the blood rushing in her ears.

"Can't…I can't 'Star, I -- por favor, mi campadre, I can't--"

"Shh. You can. You're doing well. Breathe and trust yourself to us."

Julio cried out hoarse and broken and squeezed his eyes shut, grinding his head against Rahne's shoulder. He was letting out regular breaths as sobs now. Rahne almost wanted to stop and make sure he was okay, but 'Star seemed so sure, and she was almost -- there--

'Star bit gently into the flesh of Julio's shoulder, expression beatific, and Julio sobbed loud and broken and thrust impossibly hard into Rahne and shook his head in something like protest and Rahne came helplessly and hard again, bucking as much as she could and keening with abandon.

Julio shouted at the sensation of her muscles clenching around him, at 'Star's increased pace, and thrashed and cried out and punched the bed as hard as he could and came, eyes wide open and staring hard at nothing, voice raw and abused and loud in her ear and she felt 'Star curse and whine and shudder above him, going still with his teeth in Julio's shoulder.

Two things happened next. First, the room began to rumble ominously, growing in intensity until, second, Julio blacked out and landed heavily on Rhane's chest.

The rumbling subsided. Rahne breathed a sigh of relief and Shatterstar laughed.

A moment later, Julio opened groggy eyes to see the span of Rahne's collarbone and blinked stupidly. "Wha' happened?"

"You came so hard you lost consciousness," 'Star explained, pulling out with a wince.

"Dios, I believe it," he muttered, getting up and gripping the base of his dick with an oversensitized wince to pull out of Rahne. "That was incredible."

"Yes," Rahne and 'Star said in unison. They all chuckled.

Julio disposed of the condom and leaned over to kiss Rahne, and then 'Star. He fell limp between their bodies, spent and sated and grinning stupidly, and blew a strand of hair out of his eyes. He reached over to brush another strand out of Shatterstar's, tenderly. Rahne felt a sudden wash of something unpleasant and sat up.

"I should go," she said, reaching to the floor for her panties.

But she was stopped by 'Star's hand on her wrist. "Why?"

"Because…" She gestured between Julio and his boyfriend. "Because."

Julio looked amazed. "Rahne…when we asked you to join us, we weren't asking for a one night stand," he explained. "We were hoping you'd be with us on a, you know…a more permanent basis." Shatterstar nodded to punctuate this. "We both care about you a lot and we want to see if this can work. If we can all love each other. That's what this was about; not meaningless sex."

Rahne's eyes threatened to tear up. Because she wanted, oh God, she wanted, but what if it was wrong?"

"I…I wish I…" She swallowed a lump in her throat and tried again. "I…want to. But I need time to think."

"Okay," 'Star said, softly.

"…But I'd like it if I could stay here for the night."

"Absolutely," said Julio, grinning, reaching for her.

And they all piled into the too-small bed and draped their too-hot bodies over each other and 'Star covered them in a sheet and at least for one night, it was perfect.

*

Downstairs, the room finished its violent shaking and Jamie Madrox stared at the spilled soda and popcorn on the kitchen floor, slowly congealing, and asked, eloquently, "What the hell was that?"

Guido, picking up poker night cards, shrugged his massive shoulders. "Earthquake?" He seemed unconcerned, possibly because he lacked a soul, but possibly because, if they were being honest, this sort of thing happened all the time.

Layla sat unharmed on a countertop, drinking a soda, and said, "Nope. It was an earth-shattering orgasm."

Guido and Jamie stared.

"Great. Ric and 'Star's sex life has puns now," Jamie moaned.

Layla shook her head. "Rahne's in there too. They sandwiched him. That's why he lost control."

Jamie let his head thunk down hard on the tabletop. "Nothing in that sentence was a thing I needed to hear," he moaned.

Beside him, his dupe regarded him, unimpressed, and said "Ow."

Are you surprised

runic_binary — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 08:08:53 GMT

Title: Gemini, Virgo
Fandom: X-Factor
Characters/Pairing: Jamie/Layla, Shatterstar/Rictor, callback to Jamie/Terry
Rating: PG-13 (sexual situations)
Word Count: 675
Summary: Jamie encounters a problem.
A/N: Canon has probably overruled this, but I fudged it in my neverending, futile attempt to be funny.

"I'm a virgin!?"

"Not really, no," Monet said calmly.

Jamie was not calm. He was not in the same neighborhood as calm. He wasn't in an adjacent state to calm. "I'm a virgin!"

Monet sighed. "Madrox--"

But Jamie was walking away, tearing at his hair and staring wide-eyed at nothing. Monet rolled her eyes and followed in case Jamie hyperventilated or did something funny.

Jamie came upon most of the team piled on and around the sofa, watching something in black and white that Longshot was finding hilarious. "I'm a virgin!" he informed them all, loudly.

"No, you're not," Theresa and Layla said in unison.

"I am! I'm a freaking virgin!"

"We found out that Jamie Prime has never had sex," Monet clarified in response to Rictor's raised eyebrow. "Only his dupes."

"Wow, really?" said Guido. "Seems unlikely."

"No, it makes perfect sense!" Jamie replied. He was nearly hysterical, pacing around the room and wringing his hands. "If I decide to go out, nine times out of ten, I send a dupe! One night stands: all dupes! And I can't make a decision to save my life; I don't just decide to seduce someone! The dupes do!" He stopped dead, as though being struck with realization anew. "Oh, god. I'm a virgin!"

"Madrox, you're not a virgin," said Monet. "You remember the experience of the act and that's what matters."

"Is it?" Jamie snapped. "Is it!?"

Shatterstar raised a hand. "I'd be more than happy to help you rectify the-- ow," he finished, as Rictor cuffed him in the back of the head.

"Do you have any idea how old I am!?" Jamie asked the sofa.

"Strangely, no," said Theresa, looking, troubled, into the middle distance.

"Way too old to be a freaking virgin!" said Jamie. "Oh, god," he moaned. "How is this happening?"

"Madrox," Monet sighed, "you are making me regret agreeing to help you sort out your memories in order to make your dupes less unpredictable, and when I am made to regret things I take actions that other people regret."

Jamie grabbed Monet by the shoulders, ignoring to her scowl of disapproval. "You don't understand! I am untouched! I am pure in the eyes of god! I. Am a freaking. Virgin!"

"You have ten seconds to remove your hands before I do it for you."

Wisely, Jamie let her go and bit his knuckle in a panic. Longshot spoke up from the floor. "I could help you pick up a girl. Guido tells me I am a superb wingman."

"Look, Jamie, ah think if ye remember having had an experience it counts as having happened," Terry pointed out, reasonably. "Aren't you the one who always says 'I spent four years in Tibet,' not 'one of my dupes spent four years in Tibet'?"

"Not for this," Jamie said, grave now. "This is different. This is a question of my manhood."

"What, the question of whether anyone's seen it?" Rictor asked, snickering.

"It's not funny," Jamie moped. "I'm a virgin and I'm in my 30's and people are laughing at me for it."

"We're laughin' at you for freakin' out about it," Guido clarified.

It was at this point that Layla stood up.

"Why are you leaving?" asked Shatterstar, curious.

"Because this is when," she announced.

"When what?"

Layla crossed the room and seized Jamie's arm, dragging him out of the room. "When I take Madrox to his bedroom and give him the wildest ride of his life," she said calmly.

"But wait," Jamie protested, allowing himself to be dragged, "shouldn't my first time be special?"

"I'll light some candles and promise to be gentle."

"Okay, good enough."

"A note: I will not actually be gentle. I'll just promise to."

"I'm comfortable with that," Jamie said happily, and they were gone.

Rahne came into the room with popcorn. "Where's Layla dragging Jamie?"

"They're gonna go have sweaty hot monkey sex," said Guido.

"With candles," Rictor added.

There was a strained pause, and then Rahne schooled her face. "Oh," she said diplomatically, and sat down.

More comic books!

runic_binary — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 22:02:49 GMT

Title: My Little Superteam: Friendship Exists Occasionally
Fandom: X-Factor
Characters/Pairing: Rictor/Shatterstar, Jamie/Layla, Guido/Monet sorta, a callback to Jamie/Monet, everyone else
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,288
Summary: Shatterstar discovers My Little Pony, and then so does everyone else.
A/N: You're probably wondering why. The answer is "because it didn't exist yet."

Julio was not even remotely surprised to find Shatterstar perched knees-up and hands clasped on the sofa in front of a very pink-looking cartoon playing girly music to accompany the flight of a pastel hot air balloon. He was not surprised because he had encountered 'Star in many a similar pose in front of musicals, westerns, dramas, comedies, horror films, art films, short films, three-hour epics, action/adventure masterworks, silent films, documentaries, every variety of television program, and an infomercial for a device designed for straightening African American hair in the home.

So, not surprised. He was, however, exasperated.

"Dude, we talked about this," he sighed, flopping down on the sofa beside 'Star because, well, he had literally nothing else to do.

'Star, of course, knew exactly which conversation to which Julio referred. "While I disagree with your opinion that enjoying productions or activities commonly enjoyed by gay men is unmasculine and therefore undesirable, I do not believe this program is designed for the enjoyment of gay men. I believe it was designed for young girls."

Julio considered pointing out that that didn't make it any better and decided not to in case 'Star decided to flip over to RuPaul's Drag Race in retaliation again. "Fine," he said instead, grumpily. "So what's this about?"

"It is called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and it chronicles the adventures of six female, anthropomorphized horses as they learn lessons about friendship. Occasionally there are musical interludes," he added, and Julio groaned, "which are quite entertaining. I enjoy the animation style and the lack of cynicism which I feel pervades much of modern media."

Julio blinked. He supposed Shatterstar had a good point with that last one. "Okay, so…which episode is this?"

"'Applebuck Season'," said Star. He hadn't looked away from the screen once. "The pony Applejack learns about the importance of accepting help from her friends."

"Awesome," Julio said, voice over-bright with sarcasm. 'Star didn't appear to notice.

"Applejack is my favorite pony after Rainbow Dash," said 'Star. "They have the spirits of warriors."

Julio stared at the screen, weirdly transfixed. "That the rainbow one?" he asked, pointing at the rainbow one.

"Yes."

Julio snorted. "Yeah. A warrior's spirit and ADHD. No wonder you like her."

"Pinkie Pie is far more symptomatic of the disorder you call ADHD," 'Star said matter-of-factly.

It was at that point that Guido entered the room and stared, blank-faced, at the television. Julio jumped up and glanced around for exits in a panic, but Guido adopted an annoyed expression and glowered down at 'Star, who still hadn't torn his gaze away from the screen. "Damn it, Shatty," he said, "Why didn't you tell me ponies was on?"

"I assumed you were aware of its timeslot."

"Well, I ain't always thinkin' of the time! I got stuff to do!"

"Would you like me to rewind the TiVo?"

Guido sighed and flopped down in the spot Julio had vacated. "Nah."

There was a long, strained silence that Guido stoically ignored until Julio violently cleared his throat.

"It's funny, okay!?"

"Right, sorry, okay," said Julio, making calming gestures and wondering how hard he could shake the building until Madrox had a fit and threw him out.

"'Sides, I still like beer and baseball, so it ain't like I suddenly turned gay or nothin'," he said, paused as though recalling something that had been beaten into his skull, and added, "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

Julio sighed, resigned, and sat down on the floor in front of 'Star's seat. 'Star dropped a hand to scratch at the base of his skull on that spot he liked, which made Julio smile and more or less forget he was watching a show for little girls with two other grown men.

"Do you have a favorite pony, Guido?" 'Star asked.

"Oh, sure. Rarity."

Julio, who now felt he had a limited grasp of Rarity's character, blinked. "I…wouldn't have expected that."

"Eh, I just think she'd be hot if she were a person."

Julio twisted around to look up at him. "Dude, that's gotta be the third or fourth creepiest thing I've ever heard you say."

Guido shrugged.

Rahne came in a moment later and brightened instantly upon seeing the screen, which was a fantastic thing to see given how depressed she'd been lately. Julio found himself taking a liking to this show. "Ah, ye should've told me this was on!" she exclaimed, coming over to squeeze in next to 'Star. "Ah watched the first version back when Ah was just a wee thing. It was muh favorite show. Ah like Twilight Sparkle."

"I will make sure everyone knows next time," said 'Star, who always knew when everything was on. Without looking away from the screen or even seeming to really think about it, he dropped an arm around Rahne's shoulders. She squirmed a bit to get comfortable and fell still, smiling a little. Julio…huh. Julio didn't mind. Especially not when Rahne gave him another placating head-scratch.

Just then, Longshot wandered through and into the kitchen. He was gone a moment, and then, perhaps upon recognizing a snatch of dialogue he knew, his head popped back around the corner. "My Little Pony?" he asked, excited.

"My Little Pony," Shatterstar confirmed. Longshot took several enthusiastic bounds across the room and jumped clean over the sofa, scaring the living daylights out of Julio in the process. Guido made a disgruntled noise of protest and Rahne giggled as he sat cross-legged on the floor beside Julio, expression rapt. After a moment of silent viewing, he turned to look up at 'Star and exclaimed "Pinkie Pie!"

"Pinkie Pie," 'Star agreed, unusually magnanimous.

Julio rolled his eyes.

Terry was next to join them. "Oh, this show is so cute!" she exclaimed, coming over to sit on the arm of the sofa next to Guido. "If I'd known everyone liked it I'd have suggested we get together to watch it ages ago."

"Who's yuir favorite pony, Teresa?"

"Fluttershy. She's adorable."

"Oh, aye."

The show was almost over - Julio was finding himself oddly entranced - when Monet and Jamie both walked in. Julio hoped they hadn't been doing anything that involved nudity, because lord knew they didn't need any more intra-team hanky panky controversy around here. Neither of them look mussed. That was a good sign.

Monet, much to Julio's surprise, flew up to sit on the back of the sofa, one leg hooked over Guido's shoulder. "A big manly man like you watching My Little Pony?" she commented, smiling catlike. "I never would have guessed."

"I never woulda guessed you was a fan, neither," he tossed back, unbothered.

Monet rolled her eyes. "Well, I happen to be a Rarity fan, so yes, I do watch it."

"How coincidental," said Shatterstar. "Rarity is Guido's favorite."

He didn't add why. Monet's smile at Guido turned more fond than mocking.

Madrox was leaning against the back of the sofa, arms crossed, shaking his head slowly back and forth. "I can't believe you all watch this drivel," was his only comment.

He didn't leave the room.

Layla wandered in shortly after and hooked an arm around Jamie's waist. He returned the gesture, and Julio breathed a sign of relief regarding his earlier speculations. The credits were rolling. He found himself oddly disappointed.

"Good show," Layla commented. "I like Fluttershy."

"Figures," Jamie snorted. She smacked him on the back of the head. "Ow," he said mildly.

"If it's a good show, why weren't you here for it?" Monet asked.

"I'm here for the marathon, aren't I?"

"There's going to be a marathon?" Julio asked, not as woefully as he could have.

"There is now," 'Star said brightly, and reached for the remote.

Comic books!

runic_binary — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 20:16:13 GMT

Title: Heal Thyself
Fandom: X-Factor
Characters: Jamie Madrox
Rating: PG (swearing)
Word Count: 1,041
Summary: Jamie's dupes can be unpredictable, and they're often the opposite of what he wants. Sometimes, though, they're exactly what he needs.
A/N: I think I just wrote hurt/comfort where the comfort is...himself. Jamie's life sucks, so I wanted him to feel better, which basically meant him manifesting the aspect of himself that's somebody's mom. Also, first X-Factor fic. Whee.

They were out of beer.

Jamie didn't even want to get drunk. He didn't even really want a buzz; not a substantial one, anyway. He just wants one measly beer, because he liked the taste of the pretentiously fancy microbrew Monet imported (but doesn't even drink) and because one measly beer would help him unwind just enough to stop rattling around in his own skull like a caged raccoon.

But they're out of beer, because the universe hates him, and he was beaten severely by Doombots the day before yesterday and Terry wasn't speaking to him for reasons he couldn't begin to guess and he hadn't been laid in months and he was running a team of dysfunctional maniacs and at this particular moment in time he just really, really couldn't deal, so he was glad he had the place to himself for the day because if anyone had seen him punch the refrigerator as hard as he could, they probably would have rolled their eyes.

"Ow," he said, with feeling, because motherfuck, and reached out to reabsorb the dupe that had resulted from the impact. But he paused when the dupe sucked in air through his teeth, resulting in that sympathetic, wincing hiss one makes upon witnessing a nasty injury. Seemingly unconcerned by the fact that Jamie could suck him up like a dustbuster on spilled Cheerios, the dupe reached out to take Jamie's injured hand and turned it over to examine his battered knuckles.

"Now why would you do that?" the dupe asked, sounding distracted, as though he didn't really expect a reply.

"You know why," Jamie answered anyway, bitterly.

Other Jamie raised an eyebrow at him. "Because we're out of beer?"

Jamie Prime sighed. "Because decisions are hard, happiness is fleeting, fate wouldn't throw me a bone if I had a gun to its head, and I'm standing in the kitchen visibly judging myself."

"I'm not judging you," his dupe said matter-of-factly, "although, in the future, resorting to harming yourself as a method of stress relief should probably be our last course of action."

Jamie sighed again. "I know. I just..."

"I know. You're having a rough time and lashing out was the only way you could find to ease your suffering. I just don't want you to hurt any more than you already are," said the dupe, looking him dead in the eye with sincerity Jamie honestly didn't know he possessed. "Now let's get you patched up. There's a first-aid kit in the bathroom."

I know, Jamie wanted to say, but he kept silent as his dupe led him through the building by the hand as though he were a child.

Moments later, his dupe was kneeling beside him as he sat on the lid of the toilet, swabbing his bloodied knuckles with surgical disinfectant. "You know," said the dupe, "I know you've never thought about it, but we have good hands. There's a lot of strength in them."

Jamie snorted. "I wouldn't say that. The right one was just thwarted by a kitchen appliance."

Other Jamie clucked his tongue. "Because you hit it as hard as you could. Pretty hard, for someone without superstrength. Ah-ah, stop twitching."

"It stings," Jamie whined.

"It's over now," said the dupe, in the exact reassuring tone his mother had used when he'd cried over skinned knees as a child and she'd patched him up in the kitchen. Clinically, the dupe set about wrapping his knuckles in gauze.

"I hate my life," Jamie continued to whine, because he'd found someone who would listen while professing not to judge him.

"No, you don't," said Other Jamie. "You hate some parts of your life, sure, but there are parts you love. The team. Stupidly fancy beer. Layla."

"That's not--"

"No, no, you're right," the dupe soothed, quickly but without contrition. "Let's not get into that now. But you have good friends who love you, a good job, and a future. That's more than a lot of people have - not to devalue your angst." The dupe smirked, and Jamie was abruptly amused into laughter for reasons he couldn't explain. Other Jamie smirked harder and began to wrap Jamie Prime's gauzed hand with medical tape.

"I don't know why I'm even running this team, though. I couldn't make a decision to save my life," Jamie pointed out.

The dupe shook his head. "You're running this team because your people trust you and believe in you. You get the job done. That's all that matters."

"Is it?"

"Yes," his dupe said firmly, making eye contact again. "You get the job done."

"You already said that."

"And I'll keep doing it until you believe it. You deserve better than doubting yourself. There are people who love you. I love you."

Jamie chuckled. He wasn't sure if it was nervous. "Little weird."

Other Jamie smiled tiredly. "Yes, but you needed it. I think it's important that you realize you don't actually hate yourself."

"Maybe," Jamie conceded. There was a comfortable silence as the dupe finished his work and stood up, offering a hand to Jamie Prime to help him stand too. Jamie took it, and when he was up, Other Jamie hugged him hard enough that he could feel it deep in his bones. It was…nice.

But. "Little weird," he commented, when the dupe pulled back.

The dupe smiled, unconcerned. "Yes. But you needed it."

"Maybe. Look, I…" He ran a hand through his hair. "Thanks. For fixing me up."

"No problem."

"And for reminding me that there's someone like you in me."

The dupe grinned blindingly, an expression that looked out of place on a Jamie's face. "Absolutely no problem. And remember this, narcissistic as it may be: you're a hero, Jamie Madrox. You could make an army of me."

And with that, the dupe held out a hand, palm up, and waited to be reabsorbed. When Jamie pulled him in, he was filled with an odd sense of contentment.

He flexed his taped-up hand, smiled for no reason at all, and went out to the living room. He texted Guido to have him pick up beer. Then he kicked his feet up on the coffee table, stretched, grabbed the remote, and thought...

Life's pretty good.

Eventually I'll commit to something longer than a couple thousand words

runic_binary — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:16:11 GMT

Title: Under Construction
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,092
Summary: Like most buildings, Sherlock's mind palace has a floor plan. It's a work in progress. John wants to see it anyway.
A/N: It may be contrary to the spirit of the show, but I'm only human and sometimes I have to write unmitigated fluff. Sorry.

Sherlock was in a black mood, alternating between pacing and making a racket, flinging things about the flat like a toddler in a tantrum, and languishing on the sofa while a nearly palpable storm of tortured thoughts swarmed overhead. John tried his best to ignore it, knowing there wasn't much he could do, but by day three, he suspected neither of them could take much more.

He dedicated the entire morning paper, seen but unread, to brainstorming a way to keep Sherlock occupied for at least an hour so that they both could have some peace.

"Do you feel like going for a walk?"

"No."

"Fancy a game of Cluedo, then? I'll even promise not to complain if you don't follow the rules."

"No."

"I picked up this book on the origins of forensic pathology if you'd be interested in--"

"No."

John gave up and went to make them some lunch, hoping to at least persuade Sherlock to eat something. While he was in the kitchen he heard a thud and a flutter that indicated Sherlock's new book was in a heap against the living room wall. With a sigh, John presented Sherlock with a cup of tea, half a sandwich, and a look that said doctor's-orders-don't-make-me-force-feed-you before going to collect the abused book.

While in the process of straightening pages (and forcing himself to disregard the sound of Sherlock's teacup shattering against the fridge), John's eye caught an illustration, and he paused for a closer look. It was the floorplan of a building, with clues to a murder marked off with circles.

John had an idea.

"Sherlock, can you draw at all?"

Sherlock raised his head from where it lolled lifelessly on the back of his chair and narrowed his eyes, presumably wondering what John was up to. "Stupid question," he declared after a moment's scrutiny, and dropped his head again. "Everyone can draw as long as they've got hands and functional motor skills. Ask me if I'm any good at it."

"All right," said John, who, in spite of Sherlock's imperious attitude, couldn't help but crack a tiny smile to hear his flatmate being himself again, "are you any good at drawing?"

"Yes," Sherlock said. He stood up and circled around to pluck the book from John's hands, which he pretended to examine closely (upside down) for a moment before blithely tossing it over his shoulder. "I took several art and art history classes at university in order to learn how to detect a forgery, among other things. I picked up some technique along the way, though I haven't had much cause to use any of it since, so I imagine I've gotten a bit rusty." He shot John a significant look before dropping back into his chair. "But we both know I never really forget anything."

John picked up the book, which had gone from looking brand new to "well-loved" in under ten minutes. "About that, actually," he said, slotting the poor volume into the bookcase before Sherlock could do it any more damage, "I was wondering. If I asked you to draw out what your mind palace looks like, would that be an invasion of privacy?"

The look on Sherlock's face indicated that, under normal circumstances, it would be. He met John's eyes for a moment and then stood, his dressing gown swirling like a cape. "I'll have to find something big enough to draw on," he announced, stalking off to his bedroom.

John wondered what made this an abnormal circumstance, and waited.

**

Half an hour's rummaging later, Sherlock moved the dinner table aside so that he could spread an enormous roll of what appeared to be photograph paper out on the floor, upside down, to present a surface rough enough to draw on. John did not ask where Sherlock had acquired the paper, but he did suggest that Sherlock simply lay the paper out on the table. Sherlock dismissed this suggestion out of hand. It was, John admitted to himself, rather amusing to watch a grown man sketching industriously away on the floor like a child in school, though it was hardly the silliest thing he'd witnessed during his stint as Sherlock's colleague.

The outline of the mind palace took up the entire length and breadth of the paper, which was easily the size of a card table. John didn't find this surprising.

Once Sherlock had drawn the palace and marked off all the rooms, he began to label them: there were wings for broad subjects like science and history, containing rooms for subsets thereof, such as taxonomy, chemistry, the Renaissance. Some of the rooms had closets or bureaus that held very specialized information. John was particularly interested in the rooms for human behavior; it was instructive to see which aspects mattered to Sherlock. Tells for lying, where a person looked when remembering versus fabricating, and response to trauma were all important. How to offer comfort or prioritize someone else's needs over one's own were apparently not.

John noticed that Sherlock was hesitant to label some of the rooms. There was a small wing to the left of "climate patterns" that was called "family" in a hasty scrawl. This contained rooms for Mycroft, Sherlock's mother and father (John noticed that the room for his father was much smaller than the others, but didn't comment), someone called Grandmère, and, endearingly, Mrs. Hudson. There was no room for John. He wasn't quite sure what to make of that, but he couldn't come up with an interpretation that didn't make him feel wounded, nor could he conjure a way to casually ask about it.

He recovered somewhat, however, when he noticed that Sherlock had just - quite matter-of-factly, without timidity nor fanfare - labeled a room "sex" and moved on to sketch a closet into the adjoining chamber.

"You actually think about sex?" John asked, unable to keep the incredulity out of his tone.

Sherlock shot him a dry look and went back to his work. "Easily 37% of the crimes I solve are sexually motivated," he pointed out. "And furthermore, I need to know the difference between autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong and a murderer's idea of a clever red herring."

"Ah," John agreed, though he found Sherlock's answer unsatisfactory for reasons he chose not to dwell on.

There was a wing at the end of the building, quite a large one, that had no individual rooms. "Is that all one room?" John asked, pointing.

"No," said Sherlock, sounding somehow distant, almost as though he were embarrassed, which John couldn't quite wrap his head around. "It's under construction."

As if to illustrate this, Sherlock's hand hovered over the wing for a moment before he began to draw in a set of rooms. Then, for the first time since he'd started, Sherlock huffed in annoyance and furiously erased the whole lot of them. He started over and got four rooms into a different arrangement before snarling, scribbling them out, and tossing the pencil across the room, where it struck the mantelpiece and snapped in two.

"Hey, no need for that," said John. He reached out to Sherlock, who was glaring daggers at his drawing, but thought better of it and drew back. "It's fine; you can just try again once you have it sorted."

"But it's important," Sherlock snapped. He got to his feet and began to pace. "It's been there for months and months and everything is still constantly shifting around no matter how often I sit down to organize it. It's all just a jumble of information strewn about like garbage and I can't have that because this," he pointed at the drawing, "is where I put everything useful, everything I need, and the entire point is for me to be able to find things quickly when I have to, like a birthday or a school graduation or whose turn it is to do the washing up and every time I go there I get lost just looking through box after box trying to find what I need but sometimes I never find it at all because I get distracted by something better and spend all afternoon just thinking about it, and this bloody--"

Sherlock cut himself off with a growl, repeatedly scrubbed his hands through his hair, and kicked his desk.

For a long moment, John watched Sherlock seethe. He decided he'd better say something or Sherlock's mood would be even worse than before, and the rest of the afternoon would be nothing but discordant violin and broken glassware.

He was tired of watching his best friend suffer.

"Sherlock," he said, keeping his voice low in an attempt to be somewhat soothing. "What is this wing actually for? Maybe I can help."

Sherlock glanced down at him and froze, knuckles pressed to his lips. John had only seen Sherlock afraid once, but, impossibly, he thought he was seeing it again.

"Listen, if you don't want to say…" John trailed off and watched as Sherlock went to the fireplace and stooped to pick up the writing end of the broken pencil that lay there. He came back and sat down beside the drawing of his mind palace, and there he faltered, hand poised unmoving in the air. "Sherlock?"

Sherlock tilted his head up so that he could make eye contact with John if he so chose, but didn't, and opened his mouth to speak. After a few long seconds, he closed it and looked back down. John heard him swallow.

Then, Sherlock scrawled one word over the whole of the empty wing.

John.

John's heart thumped violently where it was trapped in his throat. He felt hot, suddenly, every inch of his skin prickling. He looked up to find that Sherlock had turned away.

"I spend so much time trying to organize it," he said quietly, twisting the hem of his dressing gown. "It's a disaster area. Stray information everywhere. I've tried setting up rooms, closets, anything, but every time I go there I end up picking through all the things I know about you and getting distracted, and in the end I'm in the middle of piles and piles of your favorite places to eat and where you buy your socks and the story you told me about your sister's eighteenth birthday, just looking at all of it, and I think that even if I spent all my time there I'd never get it sorted, because it feels as if I spend all my time there already." Sherlock swallowed audibly. "And I hope you don't think ill of me for it, because I act as though your opinion doesn't matter, but I think it must if I spend so much time thinking about you--"

John had put his hand on the side of Sherlock's neck. He rested his thumb on the fluttering pulse there, feeling it elevated, the skin hot and faintly flushed. Sherlock's eyes were wide, unblinking, and John met them and said "Shut it, you bloody moron," and pulled Sherlock in to kiss him.

Sherlock's hands were indecisive, roaming John's arms and shoulders and gripping at his back, and his mouth was clumsy against John's own, hot and frenzied and with little idea what it was doing. John didn't think his heart had ever beat harder; didn't think he'd ever been so turned on by so little, his blood on fire and his brain a mess of white noise. He tugged on Sherlock's lower lip with his teeth and was met with a groan like he'd punched the man in the gut.

Sherlock wrenched away from him and scrabbled blindly at the floor until his fingers found the broken pencil where he'd dropped it. Breathing hard, he scribbled at the paper, his body blocking John's view. "What--" John asked, still reeling, but Sherlock moved away and sat-half-fell on the floor beside him.

He'd scribbled out the entire room labeled "sex" and redrawn it in the corner of John's wing.

When John tackled Sherlock to the ground, they were both laughing.

**

Hours later, John drifted back to consciousness on the sofa and turned to see Sherlock sat on the floor beside him, dark head bent over a book. As if sensing his wakefulness, Sherlock turned to prop a bare arm next to John's shoulder and shot him a disapproving look.

"John, if you were going to get me a book as a gift, you could have at least chosen a copy without so many torn pages," he scolded.

Sleepily, and without malice, John hit him.

So this is a show I watch now

runic_binary — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:04:12 GMT

Title: Vinegar Valentine
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Pairing: Possibly one-sided Sherlock/Moriarty...ish
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,027
Warnings: Body parts. Nothing you won't see in the show
Summary: Jim sends Sherlock a gift in the spirit of the holiday. Moriarty-style.
A/N: This is the first fic I've written for this fandom, so. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

February the 14th. Hateful. Sherlock cared little for matters of the heart, but he cared even less for shameless commercial falsity that brought forced smiles to the faces of adulterers in loveless marriages and hideous shop front displays of red hearts, red flowers, red red red, he was sick to death of red.

John was on a weekend holiday with what's-her-name, and Mrs. Hudson was spending the day with some man she met in the downstairs café, and Sherlock had nothing on. So it would be him and the skull, ignoring repeats of cloying romantic comedies and glowering out the window at young lovers who'd taken society's permission to get as close as possible to having sex in public.

Wrapped up in a dark cloud of loathing, Sherlock almost - almost - failed to notice what was right in front of his face as he trudged up to the front door of the flat. In his absence, someone had affixed a post-it to the front door. It was attached to the end of the label 221B, and read simply: Mine.

Sherlock treated himself to an eye roll of epic proportions. Fan type B. There was also a package, roughly the size of a shoebox, sitting on the doorstep. It was wrapped luxuriously in bright velvet and a white lace bow and the thing was as red as arterial spray and phenolsulfonphthalein and roses and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates and Sherlock was just about to kick the bloody thing out into the street before something - doubt prickling at the back of his neck - gave him pause.

Instead, he stooped and opened the small card attached to the lace ribbon.

Hello, sexy. Will you be my Valentine? - JM

Sherlock's blood ran cold. He was tempted to chuck the thing into the nearest skip and put it out of his mind, but it could be a bomb or some sort of terrible spore or bacterium. It had to be handled with care and removed from the path of unwitting civilians. Right. He lifted the package and transported it as cautiously as possible up the stairs.

After running every rigorous scientific test on the package that he knew, including weighing, measuring, listening with a stethoscope, gently shifting the box to determine the contents' size and shape, and finally throwing a paperweight at it from behind a riot shield he'd liberated from police headquarters, Sherlock determined the box safe to open. With careful, steady hands, he untied the lace bow, undid the velvet wrapping, and, with a deep breath, lifted the lid.

It was a heart.

A real, human heart, so fresh Sherlock was surprised it wasn't still beating.

There was an arrow through it.

Sherlock sat down at the table and stared at the spectacle, feeling numb. He hadn't been sure what to expect, but…

It was, Sherlock couldn't help but note, a beautiful specimen of an organ. It appeared strong and healthy according to cursory examination, and it had been carefully cleaned to ensure that pale silk on which it rested - he glimpsed the corners of a few icepacks underneath - was not stained with blood. It probably would have been marvelous for a transplant before someone had shot it with an arrow. Entry and exit determined that it had in fact been shot, rather than skewered, likely from some distance. The arrow itself was finely crafted as well; silver head glinting in the light, actual white and red feathers for fletching. Sherlock resisted the urge to reach out and touch it.

No. No, he would not touch it; he would not look at it, think about it, or plot out fascinating experiments to perform on it because it wasn't every day that one found a flawless specimen of a human heart whether it had a hole in it or otherwise--

No. Absolutely not. On no account would he think about the heart at all until he could transport it safely to Bart's mortuary where it could be properly disposed of.

Resolute, Sherlock replaced the lid and moved the box to the fridge so that it wouldn't go bad before his next trip out. With that settled, he binned the package's wrapping, went out to the sitting room, opened the window, and picked up his violin to serenade the streets below with the most grim and shrieking pieces he knew.

Halfway through his second rendition of Stravinsky's Elegie and his fourth grin at a glaring passerby, Sherlock caught his thoughts wandering back to the fridge. He switched to Ysaye's Sonata no. 2, which required more concentration.

It didn't entirely work.

**

Four days later, Sherlock heard "Oh, for - Jesus Christ!" and immediately concealed himself behind the morning paper.

It wasn't long before John's footsteps came to a stop a few feet in front of his chair. "Sherlock."

"John."

"Care to explain what a human heart is doing hidden under the spinach?"

"The crisper drawer stays at the ideal temperature for preservation," Sherlock explained, not-reading an advertisement for peppermint foot cream.

"Sherlock."

"It was a Valentine's Day gift," he began, and then paused to run the situation through his nascent not good filter. "…To myself."

"Ha," said John, mirthlessly. "A heart for Valentine's Day. Of course. And why exactly is there a bloody arrow through it?"

Because I didn't want to ruin the craftsmanship, Sherlock didn't say. He cleared his throat. "Experiment."

Very deliberately, John sighed. "Right." Sherlock could practically hear John's hand covering his own face. "Right. Just keep your experiments away from the actual food in the future, yeah?"

"Of course," Sherlock lied, and John went back to the kitchen.

Tea-making sounds ensued, but after a moment, John inquired: "And what is this Valentine's gift business, anyway? I thought you hated Valentine's Day."

Hello, sexy, Sherlock thought, and smirked a little. "Oh, I don't know," he called back. "Many authors think the church converted the holiday from the Roman festival of Lupercalia." He snapped his paper. "It involved lashings and sacrificial goats. Much more interesting."

John didn't respond, but Sherlock knew he was rolling his eyes.

It didn't bother him in the slightest.

So I guess I haven't posted in three months

runic_binary — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:44:44 GMT

1. Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper at their LiveJournal.
2. Explain why you're using that wallpaper.
3. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this. The point is to see what you had on.

Uh, I love Stephanie Brown, especially as Batgirl (damn you, DC), and I thought the kind of minimalist watercolor effect was really pretty. ...Yeah.

Spoilers for Terrors oh god why can I only write for Young Justice now

runic_binary — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 22:20:35 GMT

Title: Frigid
Fandom: Young Justice
Characters: Superboy, Icicle Jr. (aka Conner Kent and Cameron Mahkent, hey their names are weirdly thematic, derp)
Rating: PG (language)
Word Count: 1,009
Summary: Conner tries to help. Cam screws up the one thing he wanted to get right.
A/N: Written for a prompt on yj_anon_meme. "Even after manipulating and betraying him, Superboy still sometimes visits Icicle Junior in prison."

"You have a visitor."

Cameron sat up in his bunk and blinked. "I do? Who is it?"

The guard tapped a foot in impatient silence, blank-faced. Cam curled a lip in distaste, but slid down from his bunk, ignoring his (replacement, he doesn't think) cellmate. It wasn't like Cam had any friends on the outside; not really. Some of the boys he used to run with might not turn him away when he got out, but he almost had to laugh at the idea of them visiting him in prison.

The walk down to the visitor's area was long and punctuated by occasional guard-trippings. Cam had never actually been; it was farther down than he'd assumed, and when they arrived, he was shoved into a small, gray room with a single bolted-down chair in front of a plexiglass window.

And behind the glass--

It actually took Cam a moment to recognize him. Different hair, one of those stupid superhero shirts everyone was wearing these days, but…

Shock welled up fast, but was eclipsed just as quickly by blind, red fury.

Cam threw himself up against the window and slammed his fists into the glass once, twice - Tommy didn't even fucking move, didn't even twitch, and Cam remembered that wasn't even the bastard's real name and heard himself growling. "Why are you here!?" he demanded at the top of his voice.

Tommy - Superboy looked up at Cam from his seat with solemn eyes. "I wanted to talk to you."

"Fuck you!" Cam spat, slamming a palm against the glass again. "I'm not even supposed to be here! I'd be on the outside right now if it weren't for you!"

"I know."

"And you had to come back to rub it in my face!?"

Something that looked a lot like remorse passed over Superboy's face. "Cameron--"

"Don't call me that!" Cam snarled.

There was a moment of pained silence, and Cam realized he couldn't even fucking breathe, just pull in ragged gasps of air that burned his lungs and drove his rage higher by the second, and…and Superboy was waiting. Waiting for him to calm down. That should have pissed Cam off even more, but instead he slumped, let his head hit the glass and squeezed his eyes shut.

After a long moment, Superboy asked, "What do you want me to call you?"

Cam straightened up and turned away. "I don't want you to call me anything," he snapped. "I want you to get out."

"I'm sorry."

Just like that, Cam was furious again. "You don't get to be sorry!" He punched the glass again, wishing for his ice. "You know what goes on in here? This isn't fucking juvie, you prick! My dad won't protect me anymore because of what you did! I'm stuck in here until kingdom-fucking-come because of what you did!"

"I know."

The fact that Superboy wouldn't be angry was making Cam want to murder him outright. He dug his fingers so hard into the glass that one of his nails bent and cracked. "I liked you!" he hissed, and immediately regretted it. But he'd said it, and the son of a bitch was here, so Cam kept going, voice rising as he did until he was shouting: "I liked you. You were the only idiot who never treated me like shit and you were lying! You acted like I meant something; like I had potential and wasn't a total fuck-up and you were lying! You--" Cam's voice broke, and he slammed his fists into the glass again. "You manipulated me and made my dad hate me and got me trapped in this hellhole and got your fucking girl and you left - you acted like you--"

"Saw the psycho that you were and liked you anyway," said Superboy, very quietly.

Cam almost choked on indignant rage. "Yes!"

"I did. I still do."

It took Cam a second to process that, and then he sat down so hard it jarred all the way up his spine. He tried to start a sentence about seven times before giving up and settling on, "What?"

"I like you anyway," said Superboy, "but I don't think you're really a psycho in the first place. You just want to impress your dad. I wasn't making it up when I said I understood."

"You--" said Cam, and stopped. Gears turned in his head and he felt the expression on his own face growing incredulous, but couldn't stop it. "…Superman?"

Superboy actually looked away, adopting that kicked-puppy expression that Cam had found kind of funny on a big guy like him. "Yeah. He…" Superboy shook his head and looked back up. "Look, I think you could do a lot of good when you get out of here. Dr. Strange says he'll talk to you more often and put you in a work program if you want, and with good behavior you could be out in two years, a year and a half. I talked to Batman and he agreed to put you on a team or something when you're rehabilitated. And…" Superboy looked away again. "I want to come back to see you. If you're okay with it. Once a week, or something?"

He wasn't making eye contact. Cam felt like a chunk had been ripped right out of his chest. Cold, freezing cold, in a way he'd always liked before, but now…

Cam closed his eyes. "Get out."

"What?" Superboy's voice was shocked, the hurt in his eyes printed clear as day on the backs of Cam's eyelids. He swallowed thickly.

"I said, get out. And don't come back."

"But--"

"GET OUT!" Cam threw his whole weight, shoulder-first, against the glass, and walked away. He hammered at the door until the guard walked in and threw him into the hall.

Cam never looked back. He wouldn't let himself.

Superboy was a good person. The best he'd ever met.

If there was one damn thing in Cam's entire life he was determined not to ruin by associating himself with, it was that.

O-H! N-O!

runic_binary — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 23:58:17 GMT

Jesus H. almighty Christ on a Vespa was this evening ever ludicrous.

It is football season on OSU campus! This means that attempting to navigate my way home after work was like traveling against traffic on the pilgrimage to the fucking Mecca!

Which is exactly how they view it, mind you. It is a religious obsession. I was shouted at from a car window for not wearing scarlet and gray. I understand that it is their hobby and they get invested, but perhaps they would like to visit www.giveafuck.com and register their names to win a voucher for one free rat's ass, because I don't seem to have any on hand!

*deep breaths*

Okay, sorry. God. I need a sandwich, a beer, a shower, and a reason not to open my mouth under it and inhale until I mercifully drown.

A recent conversation

runic_binary — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 00:20:20 GMT

Me: So, my day at work was weird and carrying vague yet perturbing sexual overtones.

Friend: Oh?

Me: Well, first, I found out that the company stocks the monthly issue of Maxim magazine in the break room (and let me tell you, that's one publication that's gone downhill from a sea level start), and then when I was working register, some guy spent his entire transaction staring openly at my chest.

Friend: Wow.

Me: Which was a little awkward, but mostly perplexing. It was like, dude, I have no cleavage to speak of and I'm wearing a shirt that looks like it's made out of a grandmother's handbag. What are you getting out of this?

Friend: You underestimate your breasts.

Me: You overestimate the shirt. I'm hoping it comes apart in the wash so I don't have to look at it anymore.

Friend: Well, he was probably picturing you without it.

Me: Most likely. I think everyone who looked at me today was picturing me without it. I know I was.

Friend: Mm.

Me: Then again, the guy was wearing a Cleveland Browns shirt, so he's probably used to taking what he can get.

On my way to the Crusades

runic_binary — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:20:48 GMT

The other day I walked past a bar with a sign out front advertizing what, at a glance, I believed to say "30's Night". I thought to myself, what could that possibly be like? Do they only play ham radio broadcasts about the war? Everyone gets in a line and they dole you out a ladle of soup? Jews have to sit in the back and if you try to order a drink a cop slaps it out of your hand? That seems like the worst theme night ever.

Then I realized it said "80's Night" and I felt dumb.

Sometimes my life is amazing

runic_binary — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 06:52:43 GMT

The Secular Student Alliance Conference was in town this weekend, and while I didn't have the time or money to attend, sadly, I was made aware of an afterparty of sorts at the local Buffalo Wild Wings. So my roommate and I went to that.

Long story short, I got to talk to Jennifer McCreight and Greta Christina.

Best night ever.

For the curious, both of them are even more amazing in person than you'd think. I didn't get to talk with Jen much (she was in high demand all night; my roommate and I only got to talk to Greta out of pure luck), but due to our insistent twitter-tailing, Jen recognized my roommate and I as "the stalkers", haha. I'm still not sure whether to be flattered or embarrassed about that.

Anyway, it was really cool, and I met some awesome attendees from the conference. Wooo~ \o/

Eggs fry on sidewalks, mannequins attack

runic_binary — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 01:46:28 GMT

You know you're tired when, in an effort to look up a trope, the first search term that pops to mind - and strikes you as a viable option - is "can't draw for shit".

Of course, I also spent my entire shift at work being startled by mannequins, so it's been that kind of day.

(I'm still trying to feel out whether Tyler aka Judgmental Manager aka Your Name Is Tyler Where Do You Get Off Condescending To Me responds better to polite subservience or to alpha dog snark-defiance, and I'm just really, really glad I didn't take a hands-on approach to finding out under the influence of exactly no sleep whatsoever.)

On a separate note, I've been rewatching Avatar: The Last Airbender (those of you who follow me on twitter are likely aware of this) and I've decided it's pretty much the best show. Isn't it the best show? It's totally the best show.

...See: Exactly no sleep whatsoever. I don't know; I think I'm going through a spate of increased blog activity. Ignore me as you see fit. Unless you want to talk about Avatar. I'm down for that.

P.S: Somebody threw away a device that beeps incessantly in a continual loop in the dumpster in our back yard. It's loud enough that I can hear it across the street, so keeping me awake at night wasn't even a question. The fact that it's 95 degrees in my room all the time isn't helping. Grumble grumble mutter.

The heat is destroying my creativity and every other part of my brain

runic_binary — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 05:22:57 GMT

I haven't written anything decent enough to post in too long for my taste, so...what do you people think I should write? I can't guarantee a fill on anything, but I'd really appreciate any ideas that might jog something, because I'm seriously dead in the water, here. Check my interests for fandoms? Yes, uh. Thanks.

I know what time it is, shut up

runic_binary — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 08:27:50 GMT

So. Young Justice episode #10 - Target.

I HAVE THOUGHTS.

- That ball thing is totally the Super-Cycle, I just know it. I bet what happens is it gets jealous of Conner paying too much attention to the bike and like, does some insane New Genesis merging thing with it all like LOVE ME DAMNIT and becomes the Super-Cycle. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

- Am now 100% certain that Superboy is contractually obligated to remove or take damage to his shirt a minimum of once per episode. We are all very impressed with your pecs, sweetie. Please put some clothes on. Also you have the worst disguise in the history of ever and I can't believe anyone is falling for it because at least Superman has the "hey, that dweeb in the tweed suit looks a lot like Superman if he were a dweeb who wore tweed suits” excuse going for him. You are not even trying. Maybe everyone just assumes he can't really be Superboy because that level of laziness shouldn't be physically possible.

- Roy and Kaldur being bros: flawless. I love how Kaldur just knows how to deal with Roy's stubbornness and attitude and Roy trusts Kaldur enough to ask him for help and they tease each other over the metric system and leadership skills and do they not make the best little two-man team ever. Although Wally is going to be so jealous when he finds out Kaldur has been hanging with Red Arrow behind his back.

- Speaking of Kaldur? I don't even care that he's my brother's age anymore; sixteen is legal in Rhode Island and that fine motherfucker can get it.

- LOOK AT LEX LUTHOR. LOOK AT HIM. Then look at Superboy. Then look at Superman. Then run a comparison. This is all the confirmation I require. Conner has two daddies.

- Speaking of Conner, I can't decide whether I'm ~~under~~whelmed at the casualness with which his name came into being or if it was kind of perfect. I knew all along in my heart of hearts that M'gann was going to name him, and "Shouldn't I be Conner Nelson?" - Conner you are adorable.

- M'gann and Conner go to school with Vox, Bumblebee, Marvin and Wendy of the Super Friends, and Snapper Carr. This is ludicrous and there is nothing about it I am not in love with.

- M'gann and Superboy are also the cutest couple, even if they fail at figuring out human dating on every single possible level. (Notice how M'gann didn't answer Karen's is-he-your-boyfriend question? Hmm.) I loved the overprotectiveness, telepathic helper mode (PASSING NOTES IN CLASS, HMM?), oblivious coat-draping and book-carrying and M'gann being so happy regardless of Conner's total inability to be smooth, and just basically everything.

- All of that aside, they were in the same room with Kaldur and I kind of just wanted him to go to school with them and pass mind notes and be their boyfriend I don't have to explain my OT3 to you.

- I like prpl_pen's theory that Cheshire and Artemis are sisters, Sportsmaster being their dad, so I'm pretty much operating under that assumption, but I hate the implication that Artemis is really the mole (or that anyone is, afklhgs) but did I ever point out here that Artemis's costume is the only one without red in it and it matches Cheshire's and what if Sportmaster and Cheshire have something on her, what if they know where her mother lives or something oh god I'm making myself sad

- Roy's eyes are pretty, but while I know tumblr is going nuts over his suit all I can think is "Don't worry, Speedy, I won't tell anyone that you are the goofiest-looking ginger secret service kid ever." And I still want to know where the hell he lives.

- Roy I swear to god if you knock Cheshire up I will discipline you

- I might be the tiniest bit obsessed.

Actually posting about my life sort of, gasp shock horror etc.

runic_binary — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 00:38:49 GMT

So I've pretty much stopped using my journal as an actual journal and rather as a fanworks dumping ground. The reasons for this are A) not enough happens to me that would make for a witty/insightful/entertaining update, and B) I prefer writing about superheroes to writing about myself. I do not fight crime. Even if I did, I wouldn't be very good at it.

However, none of this means that I don't love you guys (even though I am, admittedly, awful at commenting on...anything). I have a twitter account (runicbinary) and a tumblr that I don't really use (also runicbinary) and I encourage anyone who feels like it to add me, because that's where I do most of my chatting and life-updates and so forth.

Um...yeah, oh, I got a job! It's at Old Navy. I start Monday. Other recent developments involve panicking about this DCU reboot bullshit and trying not to die of heatstroke. That's pretty much it. Although I did get hugged by a drag queen last Friday...

I can't explain why I want these two to make out but it is what it is

runic_binary — Tue, 31 May 2011 09:33:45 GMT

Title: The Strange Thing
Fandom: Young Justice
Characters/Pairing: Kaldur/Artemis (kinda), Tula, Garth, the team
Rating: PG
Word Count: 852
Summary: Kaldur's friends visit from Atlantis. There is a Strange Thing. Artemis makes it better.
A/N: Written for a prompt on yj_anon_meme. Weird Atlantean PDA and how non-Atlanteans react. Also, this is probably cheesy and I apologize for that.

Artemis was the one who crouched at Kaldur's side in the desert, doing her best to soothe his restlessness and shush the broken snatches of Atlantean he moaned in his delirium; she was the one who heard a few mentions of Garth and a lot more of Tula, and if she's the only one who turns suspicious and alert when Kaldur tells the team a few of his friends are visiting from Atlantis, she lets everyone put it down to natural paranoia.

It's the way he talks about them that gives her pause. The contrast between the clear affection with which he speaks of Tula and the faltering hesitance to direct the same at Garth, and the guilt that comes with it. Artemis makes a habit of listening too hard; looking too closely. Stories tend to unfold before her eyes.

The pair of them are, in person, much like Kaldur; formal, reserved, but friendly all the same and radiating a sort of inner tranquility that a human teenager would have to sell their soul for. The open air is a clear shock to them, one they struggle with throughout the weekend of their stay. They sleep in the pool, and Kaldur joins them. Artemis wonders if this hardship has grown easier for Kaldur with experience, or if he has only learned to better conceal it.

She also wonders if all Atlanteans are as strikingly beautiful as the three of them.

They remind her, with a poetic flourish that Artemis resents to the bone, of the ocean, especially in their eyes. Tula's are the aquamarine of a Pacific reef; Garth's, the last light of sunset over the bay; Kaldur's, the gray-green shallows of a lagoon. She can picture them swimming deep under the waves in their native home and questions the part of herself that wants to feel a little jealous.

Artemis watches the three of them interact, becomes familiar, and when the Strange Thing happens, she may be the only one who doesn't find it quite so strange.

Tula hugs Kaldur goodbye, tight and lingering, the two of them cheek to cheek and entwined in each other's arms, swaying faintly on their feet as though rocked by an invisible current. When Tula pulls away, she gives Kaldur a brief peck on the lips and follows it with a warm smile. The gesture is intimate for friends, but not necessarily for two people with their history, and Garth doesn't seem to mind.

When it's Garth's turn, he braces both hands on Kaldur's shoulders, and visibly falters - there are unspoken words caught behind his lips; Artemis can see it, but Kaldur smiles, a reassuring gesture everyone on the team has had directed their way.

But Garth remains uncertain, and then the Strange Thing happens.

Kaldur covers Garth's shoulders with his own hands and walks forward until the two of them are pressed forehead to forehead. There's a moment of silent communication between the two of them, the kind Artemis has only witnessed between two people who have known each other their entire lives, and then Garth smiles back, bright and sure.

And when they separate, Kaldur gives Garth the same quick, chaste kiss Tula had given him.

It takes Artemis a moment to catch up to why, after their guests are gone, Kaldur seems nervous and everyone else seems dumbfounded.

Predictably, Wally and Robin ruin it by laughing.

Megan and Superboy are only confused, but the others are mocking him, and Kaldur is beginning to look hurt and defensive at once, withdrawing almost imperceptibly bit by bit as he tries to explain that it's normal where he comes from; it's customary, and Artemis finally intervenes by slapping the cackling pair of them upside their heads and giving them a righteous chewing out for, among other things, intolerance, poor team-building skills, and being idiots.

If Kaldur appreciates it, he only shows it by going quiet.

--

The incident is mostly forgotten by the time Kaldur is slated to make his next trip home. But Artemis has been doing some talking-tos and some corrections, and she is armed and ready with the Plan.

She catches him on his way out and stops him physically, both hands around the back of his neck before she leans all the way up on her toes to kiss him soft and fleeting on the mouth.

He blinks, and asks her why, and she tells him that she speaks for everyone on the team when she says that they accept him for who he is, no matter what, end of story.

Artemis likes the shift of his expression from confused to surprised to a small and just-maybe embarrassed smile. Kaldur thanks her, and she knows he means it.

So she kisses him again, and this time it's slower, longer, deeper. When they part, Artemis decides she likes his face this way even more - stunned and slightly unfocused, his breath a little unsteady and the sound a little louder when he swallows.

This time, when he asks why, Artemis tells him that that time she was only speaking for herself.

No seriously where the hell does Roy live now

runic_binary — Sat, 28 May 2011 23:18:56 GMT

Title: You Know What They Say About Assuming
Fandom: Young Justice
Characters/Pairing: Green Arrow/Black Canary, Red Arrow
Rating: PG-13 for mentioned nudity, mentioned infidelity, and, uh, taking the lord's name in vain a lot I guess
Word Count: 1,500
Summary: Ollie thinks wrong, Dinah thinks fast, and Roy thinks he's had enough.
A/N: This started out as musings on the complications involved in one possible "where the hell does Roy live now" scenario and ended up as fluff. These things just happen; don't ask me to explain.

Armed with a smile and a veritable bucket load of lo mein, Ollie jogged up the stairs to Dinah's apartment and knocked on her door. No answer, but he'd seen her bike on the way in, so she must be home; probably in the shower. He tried the knob. She had a tendency to forget to lock the door at times, and he was in luck, because this was one of them.

"Dinah?" he called, closing (and locking) the door behind him.

At the end of the hall, she stuck her head out the bathroom door. "Ollie?"

He gave her a little wave. "It was unlocked. I let myself in."

For an odd second, Dinah looked stricken, running to panicked. Then she smiled. "Oh! Sorry; I was running the hair dryer. Um, let me just throw my clothes on and I'll be right out.”

Ollie nodded as Dinah ducked back into the bathroom. "I picked up some Chinese on my way here," he said, dropping the bags on the kitchen counter. "I know you hate to cook after a big day, and what with the brainwashed cult incident this afternoon, I figured we could stay in, watch a movie…"

"That sounds great!" said Dinah, pulling her hair up into a ponytail as she came down the hall. She leaned up to kiss him and then rifled through a bag of rice and soy sauce packets. Then she paused, frowned, and slapped a decisive palm on the counter. "You know what we need? Drinks."

"Do you have anything here?" Ollie asked, reaching for the fridge.

Dinah slid up to block his way. "Uh, no, sorry - why don't we run up to the corner store and pick something up?"

"Do you have water in your ears?"

Dinah blinked. "No; why?"

"You're…talking pretty loud," Ollie observed. "Hey, didn't you take home that case of Heineken yesterday?"

"Uh, nope, I don't think so," said Dinah, a little too brightly. Something in Ollie's suspicious superhero nature kicked into gear, and Dinah sealed it with a brief but telling glance over his shoulder. He turned around and scanned the room. "Ollie--"

He held up a finger. Draped over the back of the sofa, there were a pair of unfamiliar jeans. Men's jeans. "Dinah," he began, perplexed, "whose pants are those?"

"I can explain," said Dinah. "Actually, I can't explain; it's…it's a secret. Listen, baby, why don't we go for a walk?"

"…Dinah, is there someone else here?"

"No! Of course not! Why would there be someone else here?"

"I don't know." He turned back and narrowed his eyes at her. "Why would there be someone else here? Someone who leaves his pants lying around, who you don't want me to meet? While you were in the shower?"

Dinah opened her mouth, closed it, and swallowed. There was a faint color rising to her face. "Look," she said gently, "this was sort of a bad time…"

"A bad time?" said Ollie. "A bad time?" He was aware that his voice was reaching un-neighborly levels and couldn't bring himself to care. “I walk in to find that there's another man hiding in my girlfriend's apartment and all you can tell me is it's a bad time!?"

"Ollie, please," she said, making placating gestures that were doing absolutely nothing to calm him down. In fact, if anything, they were only making Ollie miserable. He had to swallow down a lump in his throat to continue.

"Why?" he asked. "What did I do wrong? Is it because we haven't had as much time together since the new team started?”

"It's not what it looks like!" said Dinah, and now she seemed exasperated, and that…that was just too much.

"You're getting upset with me?" he said, indignant. "Damn it, Dinah, I love you! I thought you cared about me!"

"I do!"

"Then how could you do this to me!?"

"Ollie--"

"Oh, and it's all starting to make sense," he groaned, running his hands through his hair. "You haven't invited me over to your place in months. We always go to mine; you've been acting secretive - is he living here? You've been living with someone?"

"Yes," said another voice. Dinah's eyes went wide. Ollie whipped around.

There was a long, strained moment of silence.

"…Roy?"

"So you haven't forgotten what I look like." Roy stared him down, in civvies and barefoot and standing in his girlfriend's living room.

Slowly, Ollie turned back around. Dinah looked roughly as shocked as he felt. "With Roy?" he managed. "With Roy!?"

"What?" said Dinah, incredulous.

"Dinah, for the love of - he's a teenager! Is that what this is? I'm too old for you!?"

"Oh my god," Roy groaned, behind them.

"Oliver, for Christ's sake, I am not sleeping with Roy," Dinah snapped.

Ollie had a comeback just about lined up when his brain caught up to that statement and floored on the brakes. "…You're not?"

"Of course not," Dinah sighed; she sounded half relieved to have gotten through to him and half disgruntled that it had taken so long.

"She's like my mom," said Roy, as Dinah shoved past Ollie to stand at his side. "Granted, my hot, usually scantily-clad mom, but even so, not in a million years."

Ollie stood in the kitchen and felt like an incredibly confused idiot. "Then what--"

"He needed a place to live," said Dinah, crossing her arms over her chest. "He wasn't able to afford his own apartment, so I asked--"

"Forced," Roy interjected.

"--persuaded him to stay with me. He's been living here since August."

Ollie opened and closed his mouth a few times. "August? And I didn't know?"

"You're not part of my life anymore," Roy said gravely, and Ollie felt wounded all over again.

"Not for lack of trying," he said. "What did I do to you, Roy? What did I do to deserve you cutting me out?"

"You didn't--" he started to snap, and then looked away and started over, almost under his breath. "You didn't come after me. You replaced me."

Dinah put a hand on Roy's shoulder; he shrugged it off. Ollie swallowed hard and looked down. "I guess that wasn't too smart of me," he admitted. "I didn't think it would matter to you. I should have known better."

"Yeah, you should have," Roy muttered, but he let Dinah touch his arm.

"He made me promise not to tell as a condition for agreeing to live here," said Dinah, apologetic. "I wanted to tell you - every day, I wanted to tell you, Ollie, but I didn't want him out on the streets. He's so stubborn; you know he would have gone."

"I'm right here."

"Yeah, he is pretty stubborn," Ollie agreed. "Half the time he refuses to see what's right in front of him."

"I'm right here."

"I wonder where he got that from," Dinah said fondly, and Ollie smiled.

"I wonder." He crossed the room and put his hand on Roy's other shoulder. "Roy. I'm sorry. I'll do whatever I can to make things right, and I want you to come back to live with me, if it's okay with you. And with Dinah, of course; I bet she appreciates having somebody around to get things off of high shelves."

Dinah punched him lightly in the shoulder and gave Roy's arm an encouraging squeeze. Roy hesitated for a long moment, glanced at Dinah, and then looked up at Ollie with an expression of deep, grudging suspicion. Finally, he sighed.

"Only until I can afford my own place - don't even think about offering to help me out - and we don't work together anymore. That's not about you; it's about me. And you have to promise not to try to convince me that Asian kid is your niece. I'm not an idiot."

Ollie hugged him. "Deal."

Roy went stiff. "Ollie--"

"No."

"What?"

"Not letting go."

"Oh, kill me now," he groaned. Dinah laughed and wrapped her arms around both of them.

"Aww, that's better, isn't it?" she chuckled, giving them a squeeze. "My boys are back together. Now, how hard was that?"

"We men are an obstinate breed," Ollie said conversationally.

"Touching," said Roy. "Can we stop now?"

"Not until you hug back."

"I can stand here all night."

"So can I, partner."

"Okay, okay," said Dinah, backing off. "Stubborn is right." She ruffled Roy's hair and waited until he rolled his eyes, sighed, and treated Ollie to a brief and awkward return hug before tugging Ollie off of him. "Now, let's eat that Chinese before it goes cold."

Dinah cheerfully resumed rummaging through various bags. Roy went to take some paper plates down from a cupboard and, mid-reach, shot Ollie a sideways glance. "I accidentally caught her naked on her way to the shower right before you showed up," he said.

"Roy!"

"You know I'm going to have to make a pincushion out of you for that," Ollie threatened, but he couldn't hold back a laugh.

Look it had to happen eventually

runic_binary — Thu, 19 May 2011 21:26:50 GMT

Title: Comic Books and Other Artifacts of Maddening Power
Fandom: Young Justice
Characters/Pairing: The team (with epilogue featuring comic book counterparts)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 734
Summary: Young Justice discovers a 90's comic book of the same name. Hijinks and the like, etc.
A/N: Written for a prompt on yj_anon_meme. Anonymity is not my strong point. Warnings for crack and pointlessness.

"Okay, this is not on," Artemis snapped as she strode into the common room. Everyone looked up in time to see her slap a comic book down on the coffee table.

M'gann floated over for a look. "Young Justice…?" she read, perplexed. "Isn't that us?"

"Like hell," Artemis spat. She jabbed an accusatory finger at the cover. "Since when am I some white girl who wears a freaking pleated skirt into battle?"

"That's not what my costume looks like," said Robin, with some consternation, from where he'd materialized over M'gann's left shoulder.

"Forget your costume," Wally interjected, "what the heck is this?" He gestured to the boy surrounded by cartoon speed lines.

Artemis tilted her head. "It's an improvement."

"Hey!"

Robin snatched the book and flipped through the first few pages. "No way," he said. "This is totally not us. I'm the only one with the same name, and - dude, that's not even me. I don't talk like that."

"What, with grammar?"

"Shut it, pleat girl."

While they were distracted, Superboy took the book from Robin's hands and skimmed a few pages. Suddenly, he looked stricken. "Is that supposed to be me?" he asked to no one.

Everyone crowded up around his shoulders to look. There was a tense pause, and Robin and Wally immediately broke down into hysterics.

"That's you!?"

"Dude, what are you wearing--"

"The hair! The hair!"

"Since when do you smile?" Artemis interjected, perturbed. "It's a little creepy."

"I don't know," said M'gann. She took the book and tilted it this way and that, examining the image with a critical squint. "He's kinda cute. I mean, not as cute as - not that, um - erm, what about me and Kaldur?"

"What about us?" Kaldur asked, poking his head around the corner.

Wally immediately dashed over, grabbed him by the elbow, and dragged him over to the table. "Dude, you have got to see this."

Robin snatched the book and held it up eagerly for Kaldur's appraisal. Kaldur leveled a suspicious look at the group, as though he suspected foul play, and gingerly accepted the comic book. He turned several pages, his expression growing more perplexed with each one.

Eventually, he cleared his throat. "I do not think that even Wally is quite as…" He paused. "Energetic as this 'Impulse'."

"That's what I thought," said Wally, and then, indignant, "what do you mean, even me?"

"Red Tornado has a personality," Superboy pointed out. He sounded as if the ground had dropped out from under him.

"Personality!?" Artemis stole the book back and flipped pages until she found the one she was looking for. "He has a girlfriend!"

Everyone stared. Kaldur opened and closed his mouth a few times, exactly like a fish would, and at any other time, he probably would have been mocked for it.

M'gann recovered first. "This 'Super-Cycle'…it seems familiar." She looked at Superboy. "Doesn't it seem familiar?"

Superboy tilted his head at the picture. "I don't know where I've seen it before, but…yeah."

"This is nuts," said Wally, both hands in his hair.

"It's like somebody's been spying on us to write some warped story about our lives and just totally butchered everything about it," said Robin.

There was a moment of silence.

"Did anyone else just feel a chill?" Artemis asked.

Kaldur took the comic book from her hands. "Perhaps it would be wise for us not to contemplate this story further."

"I agree," said M'gann, worried. "Something about this is making my aura itch."

Wally pulled at his hair a little more. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting an agent and a lawyer so I can complain about this to both of them."

"Whatever anyone does," said Robin, "do not tell Batman."

"Oh, I'm keeping my mouth shut," Artemis announced, throwing her hands in the air.

"Let us speak of this no more," Kaldur said gravely, and shut the book.

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE:

"Hey, Rob, remember that interdimensional warp fiasco last week? I just found this tape in the back of the Super-Cycle that just says 'Young Justice 1-9', and I think it must have come from then. I'm gonna put it on the main scree--"

"No, Kon."

"What? Why not?"

"Do you want to cause a rift in space-time?"

"Come on, just the first five minutes?"

"No, Kon."

"Fine, Mom, jeez. …Hey, Bart! Wanna cause a rift in space-time?"

Say what you will, but I can keep a deadline

runic_binary — Mon, 09 May 2011 03:42:08 GMT

Title: Before My Soul Would Rest
Fandom: Young Justice
Characters/Pairing: Superboy, the team, Black Canary
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,877
Summary: It's Mother's Day, and clones don't have mothers. The team unwittingly helps Superboy come to a decision.
A/N: "And it came to me, and I knew what I had to have before my soul would rest. I wanted to belong - to belong to my mother. And in return - I wanted my mother to belong to me." - Gloria Vanderbilt

Superboy stood at attention in the briefing room alongside the rest of the team, awaiting instructions. When Batman did show up, he hardly paused for effect, and didn't even bother putting anything up on the view screens.

"As you all may know, today is an Earth holiday," he began. "As a consequence, you will all have the day off, barring emergency. I will be in contact in that event. Dismissed."

With that, he turned and walked away. The rest of the team filed out of the room, chatting amongst themselves; Superboy trailed behind them, confused. An Earth holiday? He mentally flicked through all the holidays he knew, but today wasn't on the list.

Out in the living area, they ran into Red Tornado. Robin and Wally barely had to share a look before they pounced and wrapped their arms around their supervisor's broad, metal torso. "Happy Mother's Day!" they shouted in unison.

Everyone else laughed. There was a long pause, and finally, "Thank you," Red Tornado said in apparent defeat. Wally and Robin ran off, snickering.

M'gann lingered at Superboy's side while the others made their separate ways. "What's Mother's Day?" he asked. At least M'gann wouldn't laugh at him for not knowing.

She smiled up at him. "It's a day for humans to honor their mothers! I learned about it from a movie. You're supposed to spend time with your mom, give her gifts, and--" she looked briefly puzzled, "I think it's supposed to involve breakfast in bed, but it's a little late in the morning for that. We don't celebrate it on Mars, but I'm going home to introduce the holiday to my family!"

"Oh," said Superboy. He didn't have much else to say to that. He didn't have a mother. Was there something… "Are you…supposed to do anything if you don't have a mother?"

M'gann's face fell. She placed a hand on his arm. "Oh, Superboy, I forgot. I didn't mean--"

"It's okay," he said quickly. He didn't like it when M'gann was upset.

She smiled tentatively. "If you're sure. No, I don't think there's anything you're supposed to do." She looked down. "You could…come to Mars with me. I think we'd have to get you a special suit, but…"

"I should stay here and do some training," Superboy said, because he had the sudden intuition that he couldn't stomach watching M'gann be happy with her family and celebrate a mother who loved her. But M'gann looked troubled again, so he forced a smile. "Thanks. You should - you should tell them I said hi."

M'gann beamed. "I will." She squeezed his arm once and floated away.

At a loss, Superboy wandered down the hallway with no particular destination in mind.

---

Robin's door was ajar, and for whatever reason, Superboy felt compelled to hesitate as he passed by. "Hey, Supey," said Robin, without looking up from tying his shoe.

"Hi," said Superboy. He found himself standing there in silence, feeling dumb, because he wanted to ask, but…

"What's up?" Robin was looking at him now with an easy smile and eyes he couldn't see.

"Nothing," said Superboy, and then, before he could think about it, "What are you doing today?"

If Robin was surprised by the question, he didn't show it but to shrug. "Going to see my mom. I'm gonna bring her some flowers."

Gifts. M'gann had mentioned gifts. "What's she like?"

Now Robin looked a little surprised. He got up and went to his desk, turning so that Superboy couldn't see his face, and opened a few compartments in his belt. "Pretty. Blue eyes. Really graceful, too; you should've seen--" He cut himself off and shrugged again. "She's a really good mom."

This was beginning to feel like one of those conversations that Superboy couldn't get around in without feeling clumsy and tactless. He cleared his throat. "Well…have fun."

Robin made a funny little sound that could have been a laugh, if Superboy had never heard him laugh before. "I'll try." He finished with his belt and turned back around, smiling in a strangely awkward way that was nothing like his usual smirk. "Thanks, Superboy," he said, and sounded like he meant it.

"You're welcome," said Superboy, for what, he wasn't sure, and paused for a moment before moving on.

---

Wally was in the kitchen when Superboy found him, loading up on snacks for the road. He had a mouthful of one of M'gann's cupcakes and an armful of leftovers when he turned to see Superboy standing there. "Hey, man," he greeted, masterfully managing not to spew crumbs everywhere.

"What are you doing for Mother's Day?" Superboy asked. Best to get straight to the point, right?

Wally swallowed the rest of his cupcake. "I was gonna - well, first I'm going to Belgium, and then I was gonna go out to lunch with my mom and Aunt Iris."

"Belgium?" asked Superboy.

"For chocolate! Man, have you never had Belgian chocolate?" Wally grinned; Superboy was starting to recognize it as the Wally-has-an-idea-he-thinks-is-excellent grin. "I'll pick some up for you! It's like, the best in the world or something. Belgium is good for that. And waffles. Man, maybe I should just take Mom and Aunt Iris to Belgium--"

Superboy decided to cut Wally off before the babbling got out of hand. "You're taking your aunt, too?"

"Of course, man," said Wally; his face was open with surprise, as though he would never have considered otherwise. "Aunt Iris is like my second mom."

"You can have more than one mom?" Superboy was confused.

Wally shrugged, freeing up an arm to tilt a flattened palm from side to side. "Kind of? I mean, not literally. Except in the Heather Has Two Mommies sense. But you can have somebody who's like a mother, or just as close as one, or something. And…that's Aunt Iris for me." He shrugged and tore off half a slice of cold pizza in one bite. "Anyway, I should get going. I'll totally have that chocolate for you tomorrow, dude; you'll love it." He grinned again, and took off in a flash, leaving behind a splash of leftover curry that hit the floor only after he was long gone.

Superboy wiped up the curry and turned the conversation over in his mind.

---

Artemis was in the control room, tapping intermittently at a keyboard as she read through what appeared to be a news article. "Hi, Superboy," she said, without looking up.

"Hi," he responded, and waited until Artemis's gaze flicked questioningly to his face. "Are you doing anything with your mom today?"

She shrugged, and paused to type some more. "The same thing we do every year. I got her a card and we'll hang out at home for awhile, and this evening I'm taking her to this fancy traditional restaurant she wanted to try."

Superboy felt awkward just standing there, so he moved to a console and pretended to read Javelin schematics. "Do you…spend time with your mom a lot?"

Artemis looked up at him, and he looked back with the uncomfortable suspicion that she knew exactly what he was doing. He wished that she would tell him what it was. "Sure," she said, and looked back down. "She's kind of a pain sometimes, but I guess everybody's mom is. We usually get along."

"What do you like about her?" Superboy asked, and immediately regretted it, because Wally would answer any given personal question with blithe disregard for the crassness of it, but Artemis was…different.

Still, the girl only continued typing without pause. The corner of her mouth twitched up, just once. "She's strong," said Artemis, sincerely. "And she always wants what's best for me, even if I don't always want the same thing."

Superboy nodded to himself. It…made sense. Superboy liked strong people too, and…

Did anyone want what was best for him?

"Why," said Artemis, shaking Superboy from his thoughts, "what are you doing today?"

"I don't know yet," Superboy answered. "I just…wanted to know."

Artemis looked up at him and nodded once, expressionless. Superboy watched until she looked away and then left the room as silently as he could.

---

Kaldur was in the pool, as he tended to be whenever he had time off. Superboy sat at the water's edge and watched him swim; it was interesting, like watching M'gann fly or Robin do acrobatic flips, but it made him feel…heavy.

After a moment, Kaldur broke the surface and crossed his arms over the ledge of the pool a few feet away. "Hello, Superboy," he said with a smile. "Would you like to come in?"

"Maybe later," said Superboy. It might help him take his mind off some things - or, conversely, it might help him think. "Are you going to see your mom today?"

Kaldur nodded. "There is a bit of a time difference between here and Atlantis, and my mother likes to sleep in." He smiled. "I will go to see her in an hour or two."

"Do Atlanteans celebrate Mother's Day too?" It hadn't occurred to Superboy to think about it before he asked, but now it struck him as odd.

"Not typically," said Kaldur, "but since I have the day off, I thought this would be a good opportunity to share a surface custom with my people."

Like M'gann, Superboy thought. "Are you going to give her a present?"

Kaldur nodded again. "On some other Atlantean holidays, we would give each other small gifts such as decorated shells; I thought something like that would be appropriate for the occasion."

"Do you…get along with her? Your mom?" It felt like a stupid question to ask - why else would Kaldur want to celebrate a day for her? But Artemis had said that sometimes mothers were annoying.

"Yes, for the most part," said Kaldur, smiling. "She is a good mother."

Superboy mulled that over for a moment. "What makes her a good mother?"

Kaldur tilted his head and regarded Superboy searchingly. It wasn't a judgmental look - maybe a little curious, but it made Superboy uncomfortable. Sometimes he felt like his teammates knew more about him than he did. "Well," Kaldur began, slowly, "she cares about me a great deal, and instilled in me good values and principles. She has taught me many important things."

Superboy nodded. Kaldur smiled.

"I should go," said Superboy. He felt…exposed, somehow. "I wanted to do some training."

Kaldur smiled again, gave him a small wave, and slipped back under the water.

---

Maybe it was being in the training room that did it.

Pretty. Graceful. Strong. Sometimes annoying. Teacher. Always wanted what was best for him. Didn't have to be a real mother…

Did it have to be chocolate from Belgium, specifically?

"Red Tornado?"

The robot turned to look at him, head tilting to regard the water Superboy was still dripping on the carpet from his post-training shower. "Yes?"

"Can you…" He paused, unsure how to phrase the question. "I need to talk to Black Canary. In person. Is she…can you tell me how to find her?"

"Is there a problem?" asked Red Tornado. "I would be glad to give her a message for you, so that you may talk tomorrow."

"It has to be today," Superboy said firmly. When Red Tornado didn't relent under his very best Superman stare, he wilted. "Please? It's…it's really important."

Red Tornado took a moment to consider this. "I will contact her and ask if she is available to come to the base."

"Thank you," said Superboy. "Um, happy Mother's Day."

Red Tornado paused, nodded, and turned to head for the control room.

Seashells were probably right out, Superboy concluded as he went to finish drying his hair.

---

Black Canary met him in the living area and propped a hand on her hip, regarding Superboy with an expression that fell somewhere between amused and puzzled. "All right, what's so important that I had to come out here on a day off?" she asked, and Superboy almost flinched, but she didn't really seem upset.

"Um," said Superboy, intelligently. He didn't know where to look, or how to stand; he was used to feeling insecure and out of place, but not like this. Never like this. "I just…I wanted to give you something. And it had to be today." He pulled his hands from behind his back and presented the flowers; the lady at the store had told him carnations were traditional. He'd gone through two dozen bouquets looking for the right one.

Black Canary's eyebrows shot up to her hairline. She took her hand off her hip and let it hover as though there were something she wanted to do with it but had forgotten, and after a few seconds, she smiled tightly and coughed to conceal a laugh. "Oh, Superboy…" She shook her head. "You're a very sweet boy, and I want you to know that I do care about you, but…not that way. You're a little young for me." Her smile was apologetic.

Superboy lowered the flowers, and his gaze to his own feet. He was speechless. She didn't…didn't care about him like…but he'd been so sure-- "I am?" he asked, helpless.

"Superboy," Black Canary said gently. "Please try to understand. I'm sure this is very confusing for you, and Wally's probably been putting ideas in your head…"

"He didn't," said Superboy, daring to look up to the vicinity of Black Canary's waist. "I mean, everyone did. The flowers were Robin's idea."

Black Canary's laugh was startled. "Everyone?" She seemed confused.

"I…" Superboy wanted to crush the flowers in his hands; how could he be so stupid? Just because everyone else had a mother didn't mean he just hadn't found his. He didn't have a mother - he didn't deserve a mother. He was just a stupid clone, and if Superman didn't want him, why would anyone? Superboy could feel himself frowning hard and couldn't stop. "I'm…sorry. I was wrong. I just thought--"

"Superboy," Black Canary said again, more gently than before.

Superboy exhaled raggedly and tried to control himself. "I thought - I asked everyone about their mom, and it made sense; you're just like they said! You're pretty and strong and you teach me things and you make me do things for my own good even when I don't want to, and I - I thought…" He realized dimly that he was bruising the stems of the bouquet in his fist. "There's a whole day just for mothers, and I just…thought it was you. I wanted it to be you. I'm such an idiot."

He flung the bouquet at the floor and ran out of the room, not even hesitating when Black Canary called his name urgently after him.

Superboy had only just slammed his door shut when someone knocked on it. "Superboy?" said Black Canary. He hesitated in front of the door, almost considered opening it, and dropped his hand. "Superboy, please, let me in. I want to talk."

"Just leave me alone," he mumbled, and locked the door.

There was a long pause, and Black Canary said, "Security override: Black Canary, B19."

The door came unlocked, and it was open before Superboy could stop her. "I don't--" was all Superboy could say before Black Canary hugged him.

Stunned, Superboy froze up. His blood ran cold, then hot, and he couldn't tell if it was his own heartbeat loud in his ears or Black Canary's. He tried to say something, but the words wouldn't come. All he could do was wrap his arms around Black Canary's back and try to be gentle.

After a long moment, Black Canary pulled back and smiled at him remorsefully. "Superboy, I am so sorry," she told him, her hands on his shoulders. She was holding the bouquet in one hand. "I completely misinterpreted what you were saying. If I'd known you were talking about Mother's Day, I would have been - flattered. Honored."

Superboy blinked. He couldn't respond for a long moment, because he didn't trust his voice. "You…would have?"

"Of course," she said softly. "I'm proud to have you think of me as a mother to you, Superboy. Don't ever call yourself an idiot again, do you hear me?"

He nodded shakily. Black Canary smiled. "My name is Dinah. I'd like it if you would call me that when we're not working, okay?"

"Okay," Superboy said. He felt…he felt how he always imagined it when M'gann flew, or Robin did his gymnastics, or Kaldur swam.

Weightless.

"Good," said Black Canary - Dinah. "And thank you for the flowers; they're lovely."

"The florist told me the pink ones are for gratitude and the red ones are for admiration," he said automatically, still feeling somewhat blown away.

"Really?" She smiled. "Tell me all about them during lunch. There's a diner around here I like."

"Okay," said Superboy. "I don't really know a lot about flowers."

Dinah patted Superboy's shoulder and led him down the hall. "Well, what's something you do know about?"

"Assassin's Creed," said Superboy. "And…some stuff about Belgium."

Dinah laughed. "Well, we'll definitely find something to talk about. Now, you like pancakes, right?"

Christmas had been pretty good, but Superboy decided that Mother's Day was his new favorite holiday.

Because June is too goddamn far away, that's why

runic_binary — Sat, 07 May 2011 08:45:07 GMT

Title: Thumbtacks and Colored Yarn
Fandom: Young Justice
Characters/Pairing: Team OT6, Red Tornado, Batman
Rating: PG-13/R
Word Count: 3,325
Summary: Five times Red Tornado bore witness to his charges having discovered polyamory, and one time he did something about it.
A/N: For the purposes of this fic, assume that the team has been together for a few years (such that Robin is legal in Rhode Island). Also, I wrote this because this fandom needs more of two things immediately: one, team orgy, and two, Red Tornado being great. I sought to rectify these issues. ...Oh, and you know how people sometimes diagram complex connections via the use of thumbtacks and corkboard and string? That's the title. Yes.

It was exactly four past midnight when Red Tornado heard noises coming from the kitchen. Distinctly humanoid noises, at that; ones that involved opening and closing freezer doors and rummaging about in silverware drawers. Red Tornado was certain Mount Justice's weekday curfew was 10pm. He was equally certain that he had, on more than one occasion, informed his charges of this fact, and that he had enforced it himself just two hours and some minutes ago.

The facts, as he understood them, were thus: It was past curfew, and at least one person under his direction was in violation.

By the time he made his way to the hallway leading into the kitchen, the perpetrator was already on their way back to meet him.

He waited. Shortly, Artemis came around the corner, eyes fixed on what appeared to be a bowl of ice cream as she scooped up a spoonful and lifted it to her mouth. Her line of sight rose to meet him just before the spoon reached her lips, and she stopped with a jolt. "Oh! Oh my god," she blurted.

Red Tornado could not help but notice that Artemis was wearing nothing but panties and a usefully Godiva-like cascade of unbound hair. Given the human propensity to remain fully clothed in public at all times, it would have been difficult not to notice.

"I didn't, um," Artemis stammered, staring up at him with wide eyes. "I forgot you were still…"

There was an awkward pause. Red Tornado noted that Artemis's underwear were pink, with a bow. He wouldn't have thought her the type. Eventually, Artemis closed her mouth, tucked her ice cream up to her chest, and power-walked past him and into a nearby bedroom.

Aqualad's bedroom, Red Tornado realized.

He waited until the door slammed, until a voice - Kid Flash - protested, "Aww, you didn't bring any for us?" and until he heard Artemis's hissed response of "Shut up!" before dutifully moving along.

Red Tornado elected, for the sake of propriety, to wait until morning for the reprimand regarding curfew violation.

---

Red Tornado flipped on the control room's monitor for a nightly inspection of the base. He allowed the cameras in each area of Mount Justice to display their views across the screen in circulation twice before switching to manual and searching for life signs. He wouldn't ordinarily bother, but Batman had asked him to monitor the team for "suspicious activity".

The problem, of course, was that Batman had neglected to define his idea of 'suspicious'.

Everyone seemed to be functioning within normal parameters as far as Red Tornado could tell, but he paused the monitor's cycle on the view of the living area - the only area, according to inspection, that contained more than one member of the team.

Aqualad was lying on the sofa with one leg pulled up to prop his book against his knee; the other leg was stretched out so that his foot was in Miss Martian's lap. Robin was sprawled all over the other sofa, remote control in hand.

"Your toes are funny," Miss Martian remarked, after a moment. She had one hand on Aqualad's ankle and was inspecting his foot with obvious interest.

Robin snickered, the sound tinny yet distinctive over the speakers. Aqualad looked up briefly, mouth and eyebrows quirking in an expression Red Tornado would characterize as bemusement. "The webbing helps me swim," he explained.

"Hm?" said Miss Martian. "Oh, no - they're like Conner's; all the same length. See?" She ran a finger over the top of Aqualad's foot. He twitched, then curled and uncurled his toes once. Robin leaned up on one arm to look. "Is it only humans who have curved toes?" She traced a finger through the air in an arc that described the way a human's toes would ascend and descend in length.

"I do not know," Aqualad admitted, examining his own foot with evident curiosity.

Robin had returned to his former, disorderly position on the sofa, eyes fixed once more on the television. "It's because of shoes," he said. "Shoes aren't made to fit feet; it's the other way around. Humans are born with straight toes too. They wear shoes shaped to cram their toes together from the time they're little, and their feet grow to match. Kaldur didn't grow up wearing shoes, and - heh, I guess Conner didn't either. Besides, he has indestructible toes." He snickered again.

"Oh," said Aqualad and Miss Martian in unison, both of them staring at Aqualad's foot in fascination. There was a thoughtful pause, and Miss Martian visibly brightened. "Like the other thing you and Conner have that some human males don't!"

The reference escaped Red Tornado, but Aqualad looked suddenly, deeply embarrassed, and Robin nearly fell off the couch in hysterics. Aqualad mumbled something into his book that Red Tornado couldn't quite catch over the speakers, and Miss Martian grinned.

"You guys are dorks," Robin declared, as his fit of laughter came to its end. He hit a button on the remote and tossed it onto the sofa before standing and pulling his arms above his head. "I'm headed back to my room." He walked away, pausing only minutely to squeeze Aqualad's calf, and it wasn't until he had disappeared from the camera's range that his voice drifted back with an addendum: "If anyone wants to join me…"

Miss Martian smiled at him over her shoulder. "Kaldur?" she asked, turning back.

"Perhaps later," he told her, returning the smile, and lifted his book, presumably to indicate that he was occupied.

"Okay," said Miss Martian. She crawled up the length of Aqualad's body to kiss him on the lips and lingered a moment before standing to follow Robin from the room. Aqualad smiled briefly after them before returning to his book.

Red Tornado switched to the outside cameras to inspect the grounds and wondered if any of that counted as suspicious.

---

The pool wasn't going to clean itself. In point of fact, the pool was designed to clean itself, but the mechanism was in a severe state of disrepair after last weekend's attempt at the temporary containment of a rampaging aquatic beast, so for the foreseeable future, it wasn't going to.

Red Tornado was going to. Because someone had to, and Aqualad would be home in Atlantis for the next few days, and everyone else, when confronted with the pool's condition, had made hasty excuses or claimed higher responsibilities or "forgotten".

Being both an artificial life form and intrinsically motivated toward the health and wellbeing of the planet gave one a sense of unflappable inner peace, Red Tornado had found; a rational calm that evoked comparisons to someone called Mr. Spock from his younger charges. Nonetheless, he found himself trapped in a particular line of thinking as he skimmed the pool: He was a longstanding member of the Justice League. He was a champion of ecology and humanity alike. He was respected by his peers, feared by his enemies, and loved by civilians everywhere. He had participated in countless successful endeavors to save the world. And he was dredging bacterial buildup from the surface of a swimming pool so as not to interfere on today's airing of Grey's Anatomy.

He really did have a heart. Robin had run the diagnostic himself, and was currently playing Fallout. Red Tornado idly considered installing a subroutine that would allow him to sigh expressively.

Red Tornado's reverie was interrupted by the sounds of approaching feet; one pair heavy, measured, somewhat cautious; the other jogging - seemingly back and forth, frantic, as though the other person weren't keeping adequate pace. "Come on," said one voice; that was Kid Flash, and he sounded urgent and more hushed than his usually brazen volumes. "Nobody's back here this time of day. I promise."

"I still don't get why we couldn't go to your room," responded the other; Superboy. He sounded sullen and cautious, which could mean that the pair were up to something, or not. Either was likely.

"It's better this way," Kid Flash responded, a wicked grin in his voice that was starkly audible even though the pair had come to a halt around the corner, just far enough that if Red Tornado turned, he wouldn't be able to see them. "More exciting."

"It is?" Superboy sounded doubtful.

There was a rustling of cloth, and Superboy exhaled, the pitch of his breath changing. Kid Flash snickered. "You know; it’s dangerous. We could get caught."

"Then we shouldn't--"

"I told you, we won't get caught. But we could." A creak like rubber soles flexing and then a wet sound, lingering and punctuated by a loud smack. "You gotta learn to appreciate a thrill, Conner."

Red Tornado emptied his net as Superboy hesitated. "But…all I'll be able to think about is…someone walking in on us."

"Come on," Kid Flash laughed, "what would they even say? Batman and Black Canary went home for the day. Besides," and his voice dropped in pitch, "I'll make you forget."

There was an even longer hesitation as Red Tornado made another sweep of the surface; more sounds of cloth shifting and several deep, careful breaths. "Okay," Superboy said at last, grudgingly.

Another wet sound, and this time one of them - that sounded like Superboy, but Red Tornado wasn't positive - made a soft noise, and Kid Flash murmured, "Great. Don't worry about it, big guy; I'll take good care of you."

There was the repetitive click of a zipper being eased down, slowly, and Red Tornado could hear the exact moment when Kid Flash dropped to his knees.

Red Tornado mused over the time that he'd single-handedly evacuated a small island nation and sealed off the worst of the volcanic eruption before it could spread to destroy major towns. He didn't think that any of the tearfully happy islanders would have asked him to clean a pool and listen to adolescents perform oral sex.

The pool was clean by the time Red Tornado heard the zipper go back up. He put up the net and wondered why it was that everything humans did for fun seemed so wet, and decided that he should make his presence known now lest the two of them move on to other activities right there in the hallway.

When he rounded the corner, Kid Flash was still on his knees, hands framing Superboy's hips as the larger boy recovered. Kid Flash was looking up at him, halfway through an inquiry, when he stopped dead and whirled so fast that he toppled and landed on his backside. Superboy likewise shuffled back along the wall at top speeds; the pair stared at him, eyes impractically wide, mouths agape.

Red Tornado surveyed them momentarily. Superboy's face was roughly the color of his own, and Kid Flash was working his mouth in apparent shock. A mouth that was, Red Tornado noted, flushed, swollen, and sticky-wet in appearance; Red Tornado turned and walked away, pondering the oddities of human biology.

"Wh-why didn't you tell me he was back there!?" Kid Flash erupted, as soon as the pair were out of sight. "You have super hearing!"

"I was distracted!" Superboy shot back. "And I thought you wanted to get caught!"

"Oh my god," Kid Flash moaned. "Why didn't we get you into porn before we started banging you…"

Yet more data for a growing collection of peculiarities, Red Tornado supposed.

---

The most puzzling thing was when the hiding stopped.

After the initial round of discoveries, the team spent weeks in secrecy. Red Tornado knew from the cameras that the - incidents, he'd taken to thinking of them, hadn't ceased, but things were…different. The team took to avoiding him, cutting all contact that wasn't mandatory. They were careful to keep a safe distance from each other when he was in the room. They became suspiciously adept at keeping curfew.

It lasted for some time, and then…stopped.

Everything returned to normal. The team resumed speaking with him normally (something that Red Tornado was almost but not quite surprised to find out that he had missed) and could be caught sneaking about the base at all hours of the night, and their contact with each other was…increased. Quite a bit, in fact. Not only were they no longer making a concerted effort to avoid being caught, they weren't even keeping their…relationship behind closed doors.

After they stopped hiding, Red Tornado began to see things. He saw Miss Martian feed Superboy a taste of cake icing from the end of her finger; he saw Robin scrape bare fingers through Kid Flash's hair after a particularly difficult mission, scratching over his scalp before his palm came to rest at the back of the other boy's neck; he saw Artemis on Aqualad's lap during a movie marathon, her thumb stroking the inside of his wrist. He saw Miss Martian giggling as Artemis taught her to waltz in the training room after hours, all smiles and whispered direction, and everything seemed to come full circle in a way Red Tornado didn't fully understand.

It perplexed him. Perhaps they'd determined that if Red Tornado hadn't yet informed Batman or the League about their - their relationship, he must not be planning to ever do so. Perhaps they'd become defiant, in typical teenage fashion; perhaps they'd decided that they didn't care what Red Tornado, or possibly anyone else, thought.

Perhaps they trusted him, now.

---

Red Tornado was running a full systems diagnostic when he heard the news, and promptly decided that it could wait.

Miss Martian seemed oddly small in a way Red Tornado had never noticed before, lying still and silent in her infirmary bed. Small enough that her lifeless hand was engulfed by the mass of Superboy's palm as he sat watchful at her bedside; small enough that Artemis could tuck herself up to the other girl's side and wrap a protective arm around her waist. At the other side of the bed sat Robin, dozing fitfully in a chair he had dragged up close so that he could rest one arm on Miss Martian's bed. Kid Flash, for the most part, paced the hall at lightning speed, zipping in on every other pass to hover over the Martian girl and twitch his hands as though he wanted to touch her but didn't dare. Aqualad simply stood over her, arms crossed, face set in grim and sorrowful lines.

Red Tornado felt as though he were intruding simply by entering the room. No one looked up when he came in.

No one looked up when Batman came in, either, although Robin shook himself from slumber at a deeply ingrained attunement and turned slightly further toward the infirmary bed. On his next pass, Kid Flash stopped at Robin's side and squeezed the other boy's shoulder.

Batman watched. They all made quite a picture, Red Tornado thought, but not necessarily an incriminating one; he knew that it was natural for humans to seek closeness and physical comfort in times of stress, often from friends. It didn't have to mean anything complex. Still, Batman was - well, the Batman, and Red Tornado examined the man's face as he examined the scene before them, waiting.

Batman's eyes narrowed, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. He knew. He knew, and was gone with a soundless swirl of his cape.

Red Tornado stopped for a brief talk with the doctor - they'd stabilized Miss Martian's condition and could only wait, now - and traded posts with Black Canary, who seemed uncharacteristically aged.

He was passing the briefing room when Batman appeared. "How long has this been going on?" he greeted, and Red Tornado had a brief moment to consider the absurdity of his life - not in any grand existential sense, or even in any sense regarding teenagers, for the first time in a long time, but rather the fundamental silliness that came of standing in front of a man on whom he had half an inch and several lifetimes and feeling as though he'd been dragged for judgment before a stern father he'd never had.

"Data is inconclusive," Red Tornado responded, honestly, "but I found out four months ago."

The muscle in Batman's jaw clenched again. "I was never informed."

"No," said Red Tornado. He didn't suppose he had been.

"I asked you," Batman said slowly, in a tone that betrayed no emotion, "to notify me of any suspicious behavior."

Red Tornado had seldom been interrogated via so few actual questions. "You neglected to define what you would consider suspicious," said Red Tornado, and concluded that he was going to be seeing a lot of aggravated jaw muscle this evening. "Had I known that the team's recent behavior qualified, I would have informed you immediately. Nothing they have done indicates that the situation is out of the ordinary."

Batman looked as though he badly wanted to repeat the last half of that sentence in an incredulously startled tone of voice, as humans sometimes did, but he restrained himself. "What exactly is the situation, Tornado?"

Red Tornado thought about that. He had been thinking about it for months, but when framed in simple terms that demanded a concise answer… "My observations imply that all six members of the team are involved in a romantic relationship with each other."

"Imply," Batman repeated, deadpan.

"Strongly imply," said Red Tornado.

Batman took a breath, held it, and let it out. "For future reference, I would consider such observations suspicious."

"You suspected," said Red Tornado. It wasn't a question.

"There were hints."

"And now?"

Batman exhaled audibly. "Obviously, this can't be allowed to continue."

Red Tornado…hadn't quite been expecting that. He wasn't sure why he hadn't been expecting it, exactly. "They are happy," he pointed out, because he'd been led to believe that was why humans did these things. He thought it was the entire idea.

He thought Batman may have blinked under the cowl. "The object isn't to make them unhappy. My concern is with the health of the team."

"Their relationship would impair team dynamics?"

"It's possible. Relationships with teammates often lead to trouble, particularly…unconventional ones such as this. It indicates an unhealthy codependence, and possibly a distorted worldview due to the young age at which their working arrangement was developed."

Red Tornado realized that it would be uncharitable and far out of line to point out the irony in Batman psychoanalyzing anyone, so he didn't. "Nothing I have observed indicates any problems," he said instead. "Black Canary has not reported any concerns to me, either. Has their mission performance been sub-par?"

Batman watched him for a long time in silence. "No," he eventually admitted.

"Have you observed any deterioration in their focus, commitment, or efficiency? Has Robin exhibited any symptoms of psychological harm?"

The pause this time was even longer. "No."

"My observations have led me to believe that the team's relationship has been helpful in establishing increased communication and improved cooperation," Red Tornado pointed out, truthfully. "In my opinion, forcing them apart would reverse those effects, potentially driving a wedge between them, and almost certainly between them and us. I also believe that it would make all of them thoroughly, and unnecessarily, unhappy."

Batman looked at him for a long time; the muscle in his jaw worked, and Red Tornado almost thought he saw the man's hands move underneath his cape. "I'll take your opinion under advisement," he said shortly, and was gone.

Red Tornado was relatively certain that there would be no more talk of forcibly separating the team.

---

Miss Martian made a slow but steady recovery, and Red Tornado didn't question any of the team's doting, careful supervision, waiting hand and foot, and constant attention that continued until Miss Martian became embarrassed and insisted that everyone ease off a bit on the condition that she promise not to die while they weren't looking.

Batman didn't question it, either.

Well that only took three years

runic_binary — Wed, 04 May 2011 22:05:02 GMT

Blush | The Raveonettes

I can't keep you
I can't hold you tight
I can't love you
See, despite my hurtful ways
I can still make you blush

Momentum | The Hush Sound

You are the dark ocean bottom
And I am the fast sinking anchor
Should I fall for you?
Should I fall for you?
You are the scar on my tissue
That I show all of my new friends
Should I show you me?
Should I show you me?

I Will Possess Your Heart | Death Cab for Cutie

How I wish you could see the potential,
The potential of you and me
It's like a book elegantly bound
But in a language that you can't read just yet

You gotta spend some time, love
You gotta spend some time with me
And I know that you'll find love
I will possess your heart

Breathe Me | Sia

Yeah I think that I might break
I've lost myself again and I feel unsafe

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I'm needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

Brainy | The National

I've been dragging around from the end of your coat for two weeks
Everywhere you go is swirling, everything you say has water under it
You know I keep your fingerprints in a pink folder in the middle of my table
You're the tall kingdom I surround; think I better follow you around

You might need me more than you think you will

Wrists | Tegan & Sara

Oh my ego's weak
So thought if I could lift your body
And wake up out of air
The night's too short; you're onto me
Why am I always acting timid and too careful?
Please, before I tell you I'm not worth the worry
Hurry

Tear You Apart | She Wants Revenge

I want to hold you close
Skin pressed against me tight
Lie still, and close your eyes girl
So lovely, it feels so right

I want to hold you close
Soft breath, beating heart
As I whisper in your ear
I want to fucking tear you apart

Ever Fallen In Love | Nouvelle Vague

You spurn my natural emotions
You make me feel like dirt
And I'm hurt
And if I start a commotion
I run the risk of losing you
And that's worse

I can't see much of a future
Unless we find out what's to blame
What a shame (oh what a shame)
And we can't be together
Until we realize that we are the same

Young Folks | Peter Bjorn And John

If I told you things I did before
Told you how I used to be
Would you go along with someone like me?
If you knew my story word for word
Had all of my history
Would you go along with someone like me?

I did before and had my share
It didn't lead nowhere
I would go along with someone like you
It doesn't matter what you did
Who you were hanging with
We could stick around and see this night through

My Favourite Book | Stars

How I know your face, all the ways you move, you come in, I can read you
You're my favourite book
All the things you say, the way you shift your eyes
I never knew there was someone, to make me come alive

Don't Slow Down | Copeland

With a heart so pure
You could fall so quickly
But don't you dare slow down for me
Were it not for hearts like mine
Calloused thickly
You could fall so easily
(Don't you dare slow down for me)

You could take everything I have
Just don't leave my side now, don't leave my side

Blush (Only You) | Plumb

When you look at me I start to blush
And all that I can see is you and us
Well baby I'm so free to be in love
with you, with you

I wanna be in love with only you
I wanna watch the sky turn gray then blue
I wanna know the kiss that's always new
I wanna be in love with only you
Just you

ZIP

I bet some of you thought I was over this

runic_binary — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 00:50:59 GMT

Title: Fish And Houseguests
Fandom: Young Justice
Characters/Pairing: The team (and a goldfish)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,691
Summary: Wally keeps a pet goldfish at Mount Justice. Kaldur and the goldfish do not get along.
A/N: Written for a prompt on yj_anon_meme (it's an addiction; I know). Involves me wishing I could speak Atlantean and my contribution to the ubiquitous theory that the team watches Disney movies together, for some reason.

"Uh, Wally?" Robin asked, idly tracking the speedster's burdened, wobbly trail through the meeting area. "You…need any help with that?"

"Nope, got it. Thanks!" said Wally's voice from somewhere behind the - Robin would estimate roughly 15 gallon - fish tank in his arms. It was full to the brim with water, lined with gravel and an assortment of fake plants, complete with a little plastic castle that fish could presumably hide in if they so desired.

"How did you even get that here?" Robin inquired. Curiosity getting the better of him, he followed as Wally cautiously ambled his way toward the living area.

Wally paused, hiked the tank higher into his arms with a grunt, and continued onward. "You don't wanna know," he said matter-of-factly, and Robin decided that no, he probably didn't.

He watched as Wally carefully shifted the tank onto a small table set up against the living room wall - so that's why he'd put that there. Wally took several steps back and propped his hands on his hips, surveying his work with noticeable pride.

Robin moved forward and leaned in to inspect the tank.

It contained a single goldfish.

"Gonna start an aquarium?" Robin asked.

"Nah, one's good enough for me," said Wally. Then he snapped his fingers. "I should ask Kaldur if Ringo wants a friend!" he announced, and was gone.

Robin watched in silence as the goldfish circled insouciantly through the water.

"Ringo?" he asked the empty room.

*

"Goldfish do not typically require companionship from other fish," said Kaldur, on the way to the living room. "Given a large enough living space, they do well in groups, but they are not a necessarily social breed."

"Cool," said Wally. "Maybe you can ask him if he wants the tank to himself or not?"

"Certainly."

By the time they made their way to the living room, the entire team was crowded around the tank.

"He's cute," said M'gann, fingertips pressed to the glass; the fish appeared to be inspecting them.

"Why keep a fish in a glass box?" asked Superboy, puzzled.

"They don't do too well on dry carpeting," Robin pointed out.

"Some people keep fish as pets," Artemis explained.

"I thought pets were for playing with. Companionship."

"Usually, but fish are more for show," said Artemis, with a shrug. "They're pretty and low-maintenance. I give this one about a week before Wally kills it, though."

"Hey!"

"Oh, he's back. You named your fish Ringo?"

Kaldur sidestepped the squabbling pair and moved into the space M'gann politely vacated, brushing his hand against the glass. M'gann was busy trying to prevent an encroaching slap fight, but Robin and Superboy watched with interest as the fish darted up to Kaldur's hand and then away, making a few rapid circuits around the tank before ducking into the plastic castle. There was a long pause; Kaldur's face grew dark, and when the fish finally peeked out of its hiding place, Kaldur whipped his hand back from the tank as though burned.

He took a step back, glared mightily into the tank, and turned on his heel to leave the room. "I do not think that your fish will require any company," he spat on his way out the door.

Wally paused in his struggle to extricate himself from the telekinetic grip that had him at a safe distance from the floor. "What was that all about?"

"What was what all about?" said Superboy, in unison with Artemis, whom he had barricaded behind an arm.

Wally glanced down at Robin, who shrugged.

*

Kaldur began to avoid the living room altogether. He got into the habit of, when he stayed at Mount Justice overnight, taking his breakfast back to his room before eating it, and glaring hotly at the fish tank all the way.

At one point, he walked through the room while Wally was in the process of tipping a pinch of fish food into the tank, huffed, muttered something dark and unfriendly in Atlantean, and left, shaking his head.

Wally watched him go as he twisted the cap back onto the food container. He leaned over to tap a finger gently on the surface of the glass. “What did you say to him?" he asked, amazed.

Ringo stared at him with unblinking, saucer eyes, and burbled.

*

One Friday evening, Batman informed the team that they had a mission starting at 5am the following morning, and that it would be most efficient for everyone to spend the night at Mount Justice. With this in mind, M'gann suggested that they watch a movie or two to unwind before bed in the interest of actually being able to sleep.

Artemis was sent to collect Kaldur from his hiding place and drag him, by force if necessary, to the living room.

She rapped on his bedroom door, paused, and tested the knob. It was unlocked, and Artemis decided that if he wanted to be left alone as badly as he was pretending, he would know better, and opened it.

Kaldur sat in a chair, reading. Artemis stuck her head into the room. "Hey, fearless leader, get your aquatic butt out here and watch a movie with us," she demanded.

A pause, and Kaldur marked his page with a thumb. "Actually, I thought I would stay here and finish my book--"

"Yeah, well, you thought wrong," Artemis told him. She nodded in the general direction of the living room. "Everyone's waiting; come on."

An even longer pause, and Kaldur sighed. He put the book down, stood, and followed Artemis from the room in the style of a man being led to his execution.

"Lighten up," Artemis said over her shoulder, "it's just The Lion King."

"What is The Lion King?" Kaldur asked, weary.

Artemis shrugged. "It's a kiddie cartoon movie, but it's not bad. The original plan was Terminator, but everyone figured we're gonna see enough explosions tomorrow, so we let Megan pick."

Kaldur nodded as though he saw the sense in this and remained silent as Artemis led him to the living room and gestured him into a seat.

Everyone watched him from the corners of their eyes. It was about twenty minutes into the movie, about the point when everyone was beginning to let their guards down, when simmering irritation finally boiled over.

"I am sorry," said Kaldur, standing suddenly, "but I am afraid I will have to leave you." He shot a the fish tank a dirty look. "I do not feel particularly welcome here," he snapped, and abruptly left the room.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.

"What is his problem?" said Artemis, eventually.

Wally put his head in his hands. "He and Ringo kind of don't get along."

"Dude?" said Robin. "Understatement of the year."

"Maybe we should stage an intervention," M'gann suggested nervously.

"Maybe we should get rid of the fish," said Superboy.

"I'm not going to get rid of him!" said Wally, horrified. "So two of my friends don't like each other. I'm sorry, but they're gonna have to work things out! I love that fish, man!"

Artemis gave him an incredulous look. "It's a goldfish."

M'gann and Robin intervened on the ensuing round of kicking. It was fully fifteen minutes before they got back to the movie.

*

Wally could sense things winding up to a breaking point. It was only a matter of time, he knew, before someone snapped.

He had a feeling it wasn't going to be Ringo.

It was breakfast time, and everyone was milling around; Wally was idly flipping channels on the sofa while Kaldur sat at the island and ate his cereal. Wally had just found something good on TV when he heard Kaldur's spoon clatter to the floor. He looked around to see the Atlantean's shoulders hunched and tense, a vein in his neck bulging with obvious stress, and he was about to say something when Kaldur slammed his palms down on the counter and stood up.

He turned around and pointed an accusatory finger at the fish tank. "That is it," he snarled. Everyone in the room went still, staring with a mix of interest and apprehension. "You do not have to like me; you do not even have to tolerate me. You can say whatever you want about me, my taste in music, my fashion sense, anything you can think of, but leave my mother out of this, you slimy, orange, fluke-ridden imbecile!"

There was a long, fuming silence, wherein Ringo circled twice around the tank and darted up to the surface of the glass.

Kaldur lunged. "I will flush you to your death, you little--" But Superboy had him by the arms and M'gann put up a shield between him and the tank. Robin was laughing hysterically and Artemis was complaining loudly to Kaldur about his behavior, but all Wally could think to do was sigh.

He got a good grip on the rolling table atop which Ringo's tank sat and began to pull it out of the room. "I'll just take this to my bedroom," he announced, unheard, into the ruckus.

*

Things calmed down considerably over the next few weeks. There were more missions, the typical run of squabbles and nitpicks, and someone managed to set half the gym on fire, but everything was back to normal.

Eventually, Wally decided that if Ringo was going to be confined to quarters, it would behoove him to have some company. He bought a few tetras, some danios, and another goldfish, and brought them to Kaldur for inspection.

Kaldur seemed to get along a lot better with this bunch. He held the plastic bags full of aquarium water and fish, and smiled at them. It wasn't until he got to a particular zebra danio that the smile turned disconcertingly sharp.

"This one," he said slowly, in a smugly vengeful tone of voice that made Wally more than a little nervous. "You should definitely introduce this one to Ringo. As soon as possible."

Wally set about acclimating the rest of the fish to Ringo's tank and quietly took the zebra danio back to the store.

*

Taking a break from writing about superheroes to write about different superheroes

runic_binary — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 01:04:10 GMT

Title: This Is Your Brain On Gotham
Fandom: Batman Beyond
Characters/Pairing: Terry/Dana, Bruce, Max
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 8,132
Summary: The latest thorn in Batman's side makes the ill-advised decision to crash Bruce Wayne's annual charity ball, Terry's life is complicated further by the fact that homecoming is scheduled for the same evening (and so help her, if he doesn't invite Dana to the ball, she's dumping him for Nelson Nash), and Bruce Wayne has Still Got It. Mass hypnosis, sarcasm, and too-perceptive women: all in a day's work.
A/N: My first attempt at Batman Beyond fic, as well as my first attempt at writing in an episodic format. I said to myself, "I like this show and want to write for it, but my areas of writing expertise lie mainly in the 'sex and bickering' arena, and I don't ship seriously in this canon. What to do?" So I elected to try for 'punching and snark' instead. I think it turned out okay.

Terry had only just finished slinging his backpack over his shoulder to head home for the day (before patrol, at least) when Dana came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his bicep. "Hey, handsome," she said, looking up at him with glittering eyes. "What are you wearing for homecoming?"

Oh. Oh, no. It was that time already? "Uh…"

The smile immediately dropped from Dana's face. "Terry. Don't tell me you forgot."

"No," Terry said desperately. "I just…didn't realize it was, uh. When is that, again?"

Dana rolled her eyes and let him go. "It's on Friday, Terr. I can't believe you forgot! I have my dress picked out and everything!”

"Okay, don't worry, we can--" Wait. Friday? Terry slapped himself in the forehead. "Oh, no. Dana, I'm so sorry; Mr. Wayne is holding a benefit that night to raise money for a new hospital wing. There’s no way he'll let me get out of it."

Dana's face fell. Then her eyes went cold, and Terry knew he wasn't getting any action for a month. "Terry McGinnis, if you can't even commit to taking me to homecoming, what can you commit to? I've been patient - a lot more patient than any other girl would be, I bet - but I'm getting really tired of this. What's more important to you: me, or your job?"

Ultimatum time. Oh boy. Terry opened his mouth to reply - of course you're important to me, it's just that the fate of the entire city is at stake like every other night and my predecessor is constantly on the verge of a heart attack would probably do it, but he didn't exactly have that luxury, did he? But something occurred to him, and he reached out to take Dana by the shoulders.

"Dana," he said intently. "Dana, you should come to the benefit. If Mr. Wayne won’t let me go to homecoming, the least he can do is let me bring a date."

Dana looked surprised, then hesitant. She pouted. "Terry, it's homecoming."

"Oh, forget homecoming, it's two hours of teenagers gyrating to lame music in a sweaty gym," said Terry. He took Dana's hands. "Come to the benefit. You've never even seen one of these things; they're totally schway. They're full of famous people, they have hors d'oeuvres that didn't come out of a bag - oh, and you'll finally get to meet Mr. Wayne; you're always telling me you want to see the guy who compromises 80% of my free time face to face." He squeezed her hands and put on his best begging face. "Please?"

Dana looked reluctant, but he recognized that calculating look in her eye. Finally, she sighed. "Fine. But this better be good, Terry."

Terry grinned and leaned in to kiss her. When he pulled back, Dana was smiling, but trying not to. "You won't regret it, babe, I promise."

"I'd better not," she warned him, and ran her nails lightly over the back of his neck before turning to sashay off.

Ooh. Was there a cold breeze in here?

--

Terry parked the car - not his best job of it, but between the dislocated shoulder and whatever very sharp object was jammed into his thigh, he thought he deserved to be forgiven for the miscalculation - and stumbled out into the cave, slumping back against the door under the pretense of closing it.

"McGinnis?" Terry ignored Bruce's voice, keeping his eyes screwed shut against the pain. "McGinnis!"

"I'm alive," he announced, tacked a muttered "barely," onto the end, and staggered down to the lower level where Bruce stood, wearing an expression that might qualify under some jurisdictions as concern.

"What happened? You lost radio contact half an hour ago." Bruce helped Terry up onto the exam table and inspected his shoulder.

Terry yanked off his mask. “That'd be about the time I got cracked over the back of the head with a blunt object. Listen, Bruce--"

"Are you concussed?"

"No, I'm pretty sure the suit took all the damage. Bruce--"

"Did you finish off the T's?" Bruce took hold of Terry's arm and braced against the edge of the table.

"Yeah. One of them - agh! Jesus, Wayne - one of them got away, but I tracked her and she ran into a couple of cops. I left the rest tied up and radioed in their position. Listen, can we talk about some--"

"Did you run into any other trouble?" Bruce was busy pulling the suit away from Terry's bruised and sweaty skin. "This is a lot of damage to take from a couple of street punks."

"It wasn't a couple, Bruce, there were dozens, and they had heavy artillery. You know, the reason you sent me to bust them up in the first place? Watchtheknife--"

Bruce casually yanked said knife out of Terry's thigh and pulled the suit out of the way to compress the wound with a bandage. "But you're sure none of them escaped?"

"Ow. Yes. I was watching them like a hawk; I even tagged the doors with motion sensor alarms - the only thing that got out of that room was me and the girl who hit the police. Will you watch that, I'm made of fragile meat and lots of nerve endings."

"This will need stitches," said Bruce, directly before injecting Terry with a local anesthetic.

"Oh, you do that now," Terry grumbled. "Hey, I had something I wanted to--"

"Did you remember to disarm all the phaser cannons before you--"

"Bruce," Terry snapped.

Bruce paused in the act of stitching Terry's wound and looked up, one eyebrow raised to a dangerous height.

"Yes," said Terry. "Listen, I need to talk to you about something." The eyebrow crawled a fraction higher. Terry took a deep breath. "I invited Dana to the benefit this Friday. As my date."

Terry wasn't sure he'd even seen Bruce's eyebrow get that high. Worried, he pressed on: "Look, homecoming is on Friday, and I'm on unsteady ground with Dana as it is. Either I go to homecoming or she comes to the benefit, or…this might be where it ends. I've left her hanging too many times, and if I skip out on this…she deserves better, Mr. Wayne."

Bruce returned to stitching. After a moment, he said, in a certain grave tone of voice that Terry had only heard a few times now: "She probably does deserve better. The best thing you can do for both of you is let her go so she can find it."

This again. "Yeah, I know. You've said. Batman is solitary, Batman can't afford to have commitments, Batman has no time for a relationship - well, you might be Batman 24/7, but I'm not. Sometimes I'm Terry McGinnis, and Terry has a girl he really likes and doesn't want to screw things up with." He sighed. "Dana asked me which was more important to me: her, or my job. Well, this work is damn important to me - it's more than just important to me, it's for the good of everyone. It's necessary. I respect that, and when I'm out there fighting the good fight I feel like a decent human being - like I matter. But when I look at Dana…she makes me feel the same way, but not as a mask; not as some mysterious protector. Just…as me. I'm good enough for her just as some guy, and I don't want to lose that. I'm not like you, Bruce. I can't do this alone."

Bruce finished up his stitching and sat back. He looked at Terry, stern and disquietingly thoughtful, for a long time. At long last, he said, "You rehearsed that."

"Six times," said Terry. "In front of a mirror. And I meant every single word of it."

They stared at each other in silence for what felt like hours. Finally, Bruce pushed himself up from his seat and collected the discarded suit, carrying it over to a different work table. "The benefit starts at 8pm. You are not to be a minute late. If there's trouble, make an excuse to the girl and do your job, no exceptions. I still expect you to patrol as soon as the event ends at midnight. Is that clear?"

Terry closed his eyes and resisted the urge to punch the air in triumph. "Crystal."

Bruce finished spreading out the suit and reached for his tools. "Go home and take a shower. You smell like an underground gang hideout."

Terry climbed down from the table and hobbled toward the car for his clothes. "Thanks, Mr. Wayne," he said, his voice an odd mix of sarcasm and sincerity that he was becoming uncomfortably accustomed to.

He was pretty sure Bruce made a noise of acknowledgement, but that could have been the dog.

--

"I'm telling you," said Max, artfully dodging a distracted passerby without looking up for her notepad, "three pages of trig homework, two AP history essays, playing part-time mission control for your sorry butt, and getting ready for homecoming? I need a vacation."

"You're going to homecoming?" Terry asked, trying to sort through the disorganized mess of papers and school supplies and fast food wrappers littering the bottom of his bag.

Max shrugged. "Han Su Jin asked me. I didn't want to be a spoilsport."

"Since when have you ever minded being a spoilsport?"

Casually, Max whapped him upside the head. "So maybe I wanted the excuse. Su Jin's cute. I'm guessing Dana's dragging you along too?"

Terry rubbed the back of his neck and stared into a storefront as though the two-for-one sale at Ken's Used Auto Parts was of utmost importance. "Actually, Bruce wouldn't let me get out of the benefit this Friday."

He could practically hear Max's eyebrows shooting up to her hairline. "I bet Dana's happy about that."

"Well, the thing is…I kind of invited her along."

He glanced back just in time to see Max make a face. "How come you never invite me to those things?"

Terry winced. "I thought you hated them. You said they're just stuffy self-aggrandizement parades."

Max made a thoughtful noise. "Huh. I guess I did say that."

"But if you really wanna go, I still have a couple days to twist the old man's arm about getting you an invite…"

"Psh," said Max. She tucked her notepad back into her bag and shot him a look. "Are you kidding me? I hate those stuffy self-aggrandizement parades. Besides, I've got a date." She winked. "Catch you later? Your mom's probably starting to forget she has a first son."

"Uh-huh," said Terry, with a smirk. "Seeya, Max."

--

He picked Dana up in the town car, because as far as Bruce letting him borrow his vehicles for civilian purposes went, the Batmobile was right out. Still, this baby was the next best thing, and Dana looked decidedly impressed when he parked in front of her place and got out.

Terry was pretty impressed, too. The dress she'd chosen was deep red, long-sleeved and floor length - she turned in a circle to show it off - it was completely backless and the skirt was slit up to the thigh. Her hair was done up in ribbon with a few wisps falling to frame her face. Overall, the effect was…

"Wow," said Terry.

Dana giggled. "I thought you'd like it." She came to him and straightened his lapels before resting her hands on his chest. "You clean up nice, Mr. McGinnis."

"What, the monkey suit?" He shrugged. "Just a little something I threw on. You, on the other hand, look stunning. Maybe even more so than usual." The material of the dress was soft, Dana's bare skin was warm under his palm, and when she smiled up at him, all was right with the world for just a second. Terry liked that. It didn't happen nearly often enough.

Then Terry noticed Dana's father standing on the front porch, harboring one of the most disapproving looks Terry had ever witnessed outside of Bruce Wayne's face, and carefully retracted his hands to his sides. "Well, we should get going," he muttered, and then raised his voice: "Don't worry, Mr. Tan, I'll bring her back safe!"

Mr. Tan raised an eyebrow and went back into the house. Dana tried to hide a smile as Terry opened her door.

--

Dana took Terry's arm as he led her up the front steps, and for the first time, Terry felt like he actually belonged at one of these things - felt like he blended in to the crowd of successful men and women who frequented upscale social gatherings and cut enormous checks in the name of the latest Wayne-Powers fundraising event. He felt like how he imagined most of the guys in tuxedos here with beautiful women hanging off their arms must feel, rather than just Bruce Wayne's assistant-implication-personal-bodyguard.

And Dana was beaming. He hadn't previously realized that a person could look giddy and classy at the same time, but she was pulling it off admirably. It was a good look for her.

Bruce was shaking hands with someone who looked important when Terry brought Dana up by his side. "Terry," said Bruce, in a genial tone that Terry wasn't unused to, but would never cease to be unnerved by. "This is Amelia Gardener; she heads the construction wing of Gotham Visionary Futures."

"It's nice to meet you, Ms. Gardener." He took the woman's hand and shook it. "I'm Terry McGinnis; Mr. Wayne's assistant. This is Dana Tan."

Dana took Ms. Gardener's hand after Terry let her go. "Terry's date," she said, almost shy, and the woman smiled.

"Lovely to meet you both," she said. "Thank you for inviting me, Mr. Wayne; if you'll excuse me, I'd like to make sure my husband isn't getting into the punch too early." Her eyes crinkled when she grinned - Bruce smiled benevolently and nodded her on.

Bruce turned to survey the two of them, his face was a cross between the analytical expression Terry was used to and the placid, bourgeois look he tended to adopt during public functions. Terry wasn't sure how he'd managed to integrate the two, but the effect was frighteningly efficient.

"Dana," said Bruce, in that slick, false voice that was only now raising Terry's hackles. "I've been looking forward to meeting you."

Dana extended a hand and smiled. "I could say the same about you, Mr. Wayne. Terry's never invited me to see you before." She shot him a sidelong look, and Terry considered that it was unusually early in the evening for him to be hating his life this much.

Especially when Bruce took hold of Dana's hand and, rather than shaking it, turned it over and brought it up to his mouth for a kiss. Oh, that smooth son of a bitch. And Dana blushed. Terry was going to punch the guy one of these days.

But not now; not when Bruce was busy ushering them both into the foyer. After all, Batman was prone to biding his time when necessary.

--

It was kind of fun, in a sick, twisted way. Twisted, because the job wasn't supposed to be fun; no part of it was. Not patrolling nor thwarting supervillain plots nor breaking up gang meetings nor standing around in a tux that cost more than his motorcycle and making nice to people too eminent to look him in the eye.

But yeah, in a way, it was fun, because this time he had Dana to show around and introduce to all those high-ranking socialites. She just kind of fit in here; Terry didn't question it, because she would, all grace and charm and style. He'd learned how to conduct himself in these situations by wrote, but Dana just knew, seemingly by instinct alone. If Terry looked close enough, Bruce almost seemed impressed.

At one point, he left Dana chatting with the district attorney and his wife and went to get her a drink. He found Bruce lingering near the buffet, having just extricated himself from a conversation with the single loudest and most inelegant man Terry had ever seen at one of these soirees.

"Who was that?"

"Christian Black, chairman of the board, Gotham Medical Association," said Bruce. He still looked uncharacteristically mild, but the obdurate tone of his voice made Terry feel less as though he'd stepped into the Twilight Zone an hour back.

"Did he have one of those gag hand buzzers?" asked Terry, before remembering who he was talking to and deflecting the stern look leveled his way with a swift, "Sorry."

Bruce let it slide. "She conducts herself with more sophistication than I might have expected."

It took Terry a second to realize who Bruce was talking about - looking at. "Yeah," he agreed. "She's really something, don't you think?"

Bruce looked at him, eyebrow raised in a not entirely unkind fashion, and he seemed about to say something when the roof caved in.

Every time, thought Terry, hitting the deck as some goon in stripes jettisoned through the fissure he'd created amid a chorus of screams. Every damn time, without fail…

The goon was dressed head to toe in black and white, a nauseating pattern of stripes crisscrossing and intersecting with concentric rings all down the suit. Whatever had caused the blast in the roof, it looked like a one-off shot; the guy wasn't armed, at least not visibly. What he did have was some kind of hoverboard contraption and - was that - yeah, that was a depressingly familiar-looking eyeball embedded in his glove.

"Terry," said Bruce.

"On it," said Terry. But first…

Dana was frozen, shock and confusion and horror written all over her face as Spellbinder made right for her. Terry was on her in an instant; he grabbed her, one arm around her waist and the other around the back of her neck, and ducked, rolling out of the way. "Dana," he said frantically, once they were halfway under a table.

She wouldn't let him go. "Terry! He came right at me, I didn't--"

"I saw; it's okay. Come with me."

"Are you crazy!? I'm not going back out there!"

"I have to make sure Mr. Wayne is okay." Terry lifted Dana out from under the table and ran, half-dragging her along as he shielded her from the crumbling roof as best he could. "He has a safe room; you can hide out with him while I call for help."

"No," said Dana. They'd reached Bruce and Terry busily ignored the disapproving glare directed at the side of his head as he ushered them both along. "Terry, don't. Don't leave me." She whirled around and grabbed him by the lapels, eyes shining with desperation. "Listen to me. Don't go back out there, Terry. Come with me. Please."

God, but Terry hated this sometimes. He took Dana's face in his hands and kissed her. "Baby, I can't." He moved his hands to her shoulders and delivered her into Bruce's waiting arm. "Take her to the safe room," he implored, and ran the other direction without looking back.

--

"Come with me," said Mr. Wayne, and Dana couldn't tell if it was the implacable tone of his voice or the surprisingly strong hand at her shoulder that kept her from resisting.

"What about the other guests?" she asked as they hurried down a hallway - too many things to think about, now; Terry, she wanted to look back but they were too far down, and she felt as though she should be the one helping Mr. Wayne along and not the other way around, and why did every room in this place seem like a fortress, every corridor impossible to navigate?

"They'll be fine," said Mr. Wayne, with a relentless authority that quailed Dana into silence.

It wasn't long before Mr. Wayne directed them both around a corner, entered some information into what Dana had assumed was his watch, and led them down a brief flight of stairs that appeared before them.

But no sooner than he'd deposited Dana into the small, poorly-lit room did Mr. Wayne turn to head right back up the way he'd come. "Stay here," he told her.

"Wait," said Dana. He wasn't just going to leave her here, was he? "Don't go."

Halfway up the stairs, Mr. Wayne turned to glance at her over his shoulder. "Are you afraid of the dark?" he asked, and at any other time in her life Dana would had gotten mad, but this wasn't any other time.

"No," she replied, at least faintly irritable in spite of everything. "But - you can't leave me here by myself. What if I end up trapped?" And she didn't want to have to say it, but if he couldn't see the obvious… "Besides, I don't think Terry would forgive me if I just let you go back out there by yourself."

Mr. Wayne turned a little further back and gave her the strangest look Dana had ever seen. After a moment, he turned back to look up the flight of stairs, adopting the manner of someone working very hard to collect himself. Finally, he let out a long, put upon sigh, turned, and walked down to join her at the base of the stairs.

"Dana," said Mr. Wayne. His voice was stony and his eyes were fixed at the top of the stairs as his watch remotely sealed the door. "Having finally met you, I can say with some certainty that many things about Terry's life have become clear to me."

They were silent for a long time as Dana tried to work out what, exactly, he meant by that, and whether it could possibly mean anything good. "I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say to that, Mr. Wayne."

He turned and made his way toward a chair with a sense of finality. "Call me Bruce."

Okay. She was stuck in a cramped, musty cellar that probably hadn't been dusted in decades, Terry was out there somewhere risking his neck for god knew what reason, chaos rang overhead, some of the other guests might end up dead, and she was sharing a room with Gotham's richest and most powerful man. To whom, as it happened, there was obviously much more than met the eye. And who wanted her to call him Bruce.

This was Dana's life, now. And suddenly, in this room, things were beginning to make sense.

Or rather, were rapidly becoming impossible to ignore.

Dana turned from the stairs and folded her hands in front of her, feeling like a little girl in school again as Bruce Wayne, still standing, watched her with an unwavering gaze.

"Mr. Wayne? Bruce?" She cleared her throat and tried to school her face; by the look Bruce was giving her, it wasn't working. "What does Terry really do for you?"

Bruce looked at her for a long time, his face unchanging. Finally, he sighed. "Dana," he said quietly, "I think you'd better come and sit down."

--

By the time Terry made it back into the ballroom, Spellbinder had half the guests out of commission already. "Damn it," he snarled, and then shouted, "Don't look into the eye! Everyone get out, keep your heads down, and don't look into the eye!"

This advice was met with varying degrees of obedience. "I don't have time for this," Terry muttered, and practically leaped into the spare room where he'd hidden the suit. Luckily, he had putting the thing on down to a science, and it felt like seconds before he was back out into the main room.

Seconds seemed a lot longer these days than they used to. Whatever the guests were seeing, it was making them ransack the place - most were trying to make off with the goods, but some were just breaking things.

"So much for charity," Terry sighed. "Hey, put that down!" He swooped in to snatch a decorative vase out of the hands of some trophy girlfriend preparing to pitch it through a closed window. "That's Ming; what's wrong with you?" He put the vase down and picked the girl up; it turned out stilettos packed a hell of a kick, but he grit his teeth, hefted her over his shoulder, and grabbed the director of Century Tech's development team around the waist as he passed by with the silverware drawer. "Sir, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

It took what seemed like ages just to clear everyone out of the building and lock the doors. He'd probably missed a few stragglers in the upper rooms, and the ones he'd locked outside were scratching at the walls like dogs left out in the cold. Luckily, it didn't seem like Spellbinder had thought to program a 'break windows for reentry' clause into their collective hallucination.

Speaking of Spellbinder, where the hell had he gone?

Right on cue, what felt like a pair of feet connected to the back of Terry's neck at high velocity and with exacting precision. He hit the floor, skull ringing, and elected to play dead until everything stopped spinning long enough for him to stand up.

Rookie mistake, Terry thought blearily. Always look up.

As soon as he regained control of his motor capabilities, Terry vaulted to his feet and got his back to a wall. The bastard had been waiting for him; just floating there on his stupid hoverboard. Spellbinder…

Wait. That wasn't right. The disorienting pattern of his suit made his general shape hard to define, but this guy was definitely heavier, thicker-set and probably shorter than Ira Billings. So somebody, probably someone affiliated with the GCPD, had stolen the magic eye for his own purposes…

"Damn it, Commissioner," Terry muttered, "I told you this is what happens when you insist on taking stuff like this into police evidence instead of just letting us have it for the Cave. But does anyone listen to me? Oh, no…"

New Boy was still hovering, lying in wait or taunting or whatever he thought he was doing. Testing, Terry took a step forward. There: the guy raised his pilfered eyeball and turned it on Terry's face…

--

"Your bodyguard," Dana repeated.

"I'm a high-profile personality in Gotham," said Bruce. "There were three attempts on my life in the last fiscal quarter alone."

Dana was not going to lose her temper to one of the most important men in the city; she just wasn't. But she did close her hands into fists on the tabletop. "So you hired an eighteen-year-old high school student to protect you? From assassins?"

Mr. Wayne's face didn't give away much, but Dana liked to think she was pretty good at reading people, and if she looked closely, he seemed…pained. "Yes," he said simply.

She would not lose her temper. "Not a professional? Someone with training and, and skills, and free time? Someone who doesn't have to do homework and take care of his single mom?"

Bruce was silent. Dana tried to meet his steady gaze for several seconds before giving up and resting her forehead in her hand. Bruce sighed. "Dana…"

"I always knew something was up," she said. "I'm not stupid, Mr. Wayne, I'm really not. I was so worried after Terry lost his dad; I figured he'd throw himself back into street fights and experimenting with drugs, but then he started working for you, and I - I was so happy that he was finally cleaning up his act, you know? I was just so tired of watching him get hurt, and he started getting better grades and keeping out of trouble…" She put her hand down and looked away, toward the stairs. "And then it got worse. The bruises, the cuts, they were worse than they'd ever been. At first I thought he was causing trouble with the gangs again, but it didn't add up."

Dana looked back at Mr. Wayne and just stared, waiting to see if he had anything to say, but the silence lingered until she spoke again. "I knew it was something to do with him working for you - the injuries, falling asleep in class, how hollow he seems sometimes. I even tried asking him about it, but he always made excuses. I figured maybe he was your bodyguard, but you're rich, and I know for sure now that you aren't stupid. You wouldn't hire a teenager to do that kind of work." She waited some more, and Bruce just looked at her with a sort of solemn remorse. Dana knew she was treading on thin ice, but she pressed on. "I know Terry, Mr. Wayne. You wouldn't hire him unless he found some way to force you. And he would. What does he know about you, Bruce?"

Bruce almost looked as though he were about to say something, but he only sighed and turned to look over Dana's shoulder. "He found something out about you, didn't he, Bruce? And he asked for something in return for keeping your secret." But Bruce was silent. Dana reached across the table to take his hand. "Please. I just want to know that this isn't all for nothing. I need to know that he has a good reason."

Another moment passed, and Bruce turned to look into her eyes. "He has all the best reasons, Dana. And you're one of them."

Dana swallowed. She looked down. "Thank you," she said, and pressed the button on Bruce's watch.

She was halfway up the stairs before Mr. Wayne was out of his chair and halfway down the hall before she heard him snarl, faintly, "Thought I'd learned to avoid that decades ago--"

--

Terry waited for the eye to power down before he smirked and tapped two fingers against the temple of his mask. "Built-in wave filtration system," he explained, and flipped onto his hands, launching feet-first into the stupid hoverboard and sending it out from under the new guy to wheel wildly across the room. It came to a stop embedded two feet into the drywall, and Spellbinder Jr. toppled to the floor with a thunk. Terry placed a foot over the guy's windpipe, in case he got any funny ideas. "Copycats. Didn't anyone ever teach you that originality is what gives you an edge?"

Evidently, what gave this guy his edge was the foresight to play dead until the tail end of a quip, whereupon he grabbed Terry by the ankle and flipped him into the grand piano.

Terry groaned and rubbed at his stiff shoulder to the discordant tune of overburdened piano strings. "Was that the Steinway?" said a voice in his ear.

"Bruce?" said Terry, alarmed. "Where's Dana?"

"She escaped. I tried to catch her, but--" But Bruce wasn't as young as he used to be and living in Gotham taught a woman how to run really fast in heels, Terry automatically filled in, extricating himself from the mess of the broken grand.

"Where's she headed?"

"I'm using the computer to track her now. I lost her in the hall, but it looks like she's headed in your direction. Try to take care of our uninvited guest as quickly as possible. If you see Dana, get her out of there immediately."

"You don't have to tell me twice," said Terry. He intercepted an end table just as the new guy was about to bring it down over his head and jammed the legs back up into his gut.

"What have you got?" Bruce asked.

"It's not Spellbinder, or at least not Ira Billings; wrong size." He roundhouse kicked not-Billings in the back of the neck. "See how you like it."

"I'm not finding anything on a breakout, which supports your claim," said Bruce. "Specs?"

Spellbinder 2 staggered, nearly went down, and immediately righted himself and leapt up to yank one of Terry's arms around his back. Terry flipped them both and pinned the guy by the arms. "Well, he likes to feint." New Boy struggled, managed to break an arm free, and punched Terry in the side of the head. Terry half-rolled, half stumbled away, clutching his ear, and his attacker made a run for the hoverboard embedded in the wall. "He definitely has some kind of power suit, and he fights dirty. He's going mostly for the head and neck."

"That's not good," said Bruce.

"Gosh, really? Because personally, I'm having a ball."

"McGinnis," said Bruce, and then, "I didn't have the tools to repair the damaged radio and visual equipment in the suit. I did the best I could with what I had, but they're still fragile; if you take too many blows to the head, they'll go offline again."

"Great," Terry muttered. "That's the least of what concerns me about having my skull beaten in, but I'll keep it in mind."

"What about the guests?"

"Some of them ran; he brainwashed about half of them." Terry walked up, rather casually, behind Spellbinder the second, who was busily dislodging the hoverboard from the wall, and kicked his legs out from under him. "The second group are locked outside, trying to claw their way back in like it's Night of the Living Dead. Why does it always come down to zombies with you guys?" Terry got the new guy's arms behind his back and unreeled a length of cord from his belt. "I think I'm about done here."

Just then, the new guy's head snapped up - he appeared to be staring intently across the room, but Terry wasn't about to fall for it until he heard Dana's voice: "Terry!"

He shouldn't have turned around. It was a mistake, and Bruce was going to kill him for it, but he did. He felt something connect solidly with the back of his skull, felt himself falling, and could only watch in a daze as the party crasher stood, raised his open palm in Dana's direction, and took aim…

"Don't look!" Terry shouted, but it was too late. Terry fell the new guy with a kick to the knees and ran to Dana. As he approached, she pointed at him in horror and shrieked.

Well, that was promising.

"I'm taking Dana back to the safe room," Terry said. No response. If he listened closely, he could hear a faint crackle of static interspersed with spots of dead air. Great. That last blow must have knocked the comm offline.

Dana turned and ran, but Terry caught her around the waist. "Listen, it's going to be okay - ow!" The unfortunate thing about the mask was that there wasn't too much it could do to defend him against getting punched right in the mouth. "Calm down; I'm not gonna hurt you!"

"Liar!" Dana screamed. He knew she could put up a fight when she needed to, but it was more difficult to rescue a flailing, kicking, screaming bundle of fists and sharp heels than Terry might have thought. “Get off! Let go! What did you do to Terry!?" She came perilously close to kneeing him in the groin and reached out over his shoulder, staring at something on the other side of the room. "Terry!"

Oh. Oh, that was a cheap shot. Mock-Spellbinder must have been spying on the party all night; must have seen them come in together - that was just low.

"That’s not Terry. You're under the influence of mind-altering technology," he explained, as calmly as possible, but Dana wasn't listening. She was terrified and screaming and probably thought he was going to kill her, and Terry wasn't, but he was going to kill that rotten sack of garbage for doing this to her.

But right now, Terry didn't have time for this. He scooped Dana up over his shoulder, which didn't do anything to improve her mood, unclipped a batarang from his belt, and flung it. It sailed across the room and embedded itself in the hoverboard New Boy was still trying to unstick - the guy turned to run, but the explosion took out half the wall and knocked him flat on his front. Terry silently congratulated himself on his ability to fish a dart gun and a corresponding tracking microchip out of his belt, fit them together, and aim clearly enough to shoot his fallen attacker in the shoulder, all while trying to avoid getting kicked in the mouth. Then he took Dana in his arms and rocket propelled them both through the hole in the ceiling.

He set her down on the roof as gently as he could given that she was doing everything in her power to make it hard for him. "Dana, listen to me."

"How do you know my name?" Her eyes were wide and glittering with fear.

"What are you seeing?" he tried. He let her go; she immediately stumbled back and ran to the edge of the roof, looking around wildly for an escape. "Dana, please, look at me. Tell me what you see. Who am I?"

She stared at him, wild-eyed and confused. "What?"

"Who am I?" he repeated, trying to make himself sound as soothing and unthreatening as possible, which, for Batman, wasn't an easy feat.

"I…I don't know," said Dana. "What is this? What do you want?"

"Please, tell me what you see. What do I look like?"

Dana paused for a long moment. She was still tense, still afraid, but seemed to be calming down at least a little. "You're…you're wearing a costume. Black and white, with…lots of stripes and circles…"

"Okay," said Terry. "Dana, listen to me. What you're seeing isn't real. Your perception has been altered to reflect something different than what's actually there. I'm not…that guy; I'm Batman."

Dana looked like she was tentatively considering the truth of this. "Batman?"

"Yes. Black and red suit, pointy ears, cool car. Batman."

Dana hesitated. "How am I supposed to believe you?"

Terry hadn't gotten that far. "I don't know," he said. A blow to the head had worked for him, but he wasn't about to hit her or ask her to hit herself. Something occurred to him. "Just…trust me here, just for a second," he said, and held out his hand.

Dana stared at the offered hand for a long time, biting her lip. He could practically hear her heart thumping from here. Finally, cautiously, she extended her hand and rested it atop his, lightly, as though prepared to snatch it back at any second.

Terry took her hand - leading it more than holding it - and guided it up to the point of the mask's left ear.

Dana jumped, and then made a face that looked like she couldn't decide whether to smile or cower. "Pointy ears," she said, half breathless laughter.

Terry smirked. "Believe me now?"

Dana's eyes narrowed, then went wide. "I - I can see you now. For real."

"Good," said Terry. Reflexively, he curled his gloved hand around hers and held it between them.

Dana's eyes went wide all over again. "It is you," she whispered.

"What?" Terry felt trapped. What had he - how had she - her free hand was feeling along his jaw, down to his neck, and she found the edge of the mask and started to lift it--

He caught her hand. "Dana…"

"Terry," Dana said. She looked serious now, and her voice was half assurance and half admonishment. They looked at each other in silence for what felt like an hour.

Terry let go of her hand.

Carefully, so slowly, she pulled up the edge of the mask, revealing his face inch by inch until he was looking at her eye-to-eye rather than through the lenses of his mask. Dana let it flutter forgotten to the roof and smiled.

"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you," was all Terry could think to say.

"God, all this time I spent worrying about you," said Dana. "You idiot." It sounded fond.

"Yeah," Terry agreed. He couldn't exactly refute it.

Dana's face fell. "I guess I'm gonna worry about you even more after this."

"Dana--"

"But at least now I know why." She smiled again; he'd never seen someone look so sad and smile at the same time. "I'd stop you from doing this if I could, but I know I can't. And…I probably shouldn't. Gotham needs you. Just…just remember that I need you too, okay?"

Terry stepped in and wrapped his arms around her. For a moment, he just listened to her breathe and felt her heartbeat against his chest. "I won't. I promise."

"Good." Dana leaned up and kissed him.

When she let him go, Terry looked at her for a moment more, squeezed her hand, and stooped to pick up his mask.

"I guess you have to go be a hero now, huh?" she said, every bit as resigned and exhausted and purposeful as he felt every day of his life.

"Yeah." He pulled the mask back on and readjusted it. "Best case scenario, he stayed down and I get to go home." He smirked. "The first thing you learn in this line of work is that it's never the best case scenario." He cupped Dana's face with a gloved palm and turned to jump back down into the ballroom. "I'd take you back down with me, but honestly, it's probably safer up here. I'll go take care of this, and then…" He looked at her over his shoulder.

Dana smiled. "You can get us into my place through the upstairs window, right?"

Terry grinned. "Yeah," he said, extending the suit's wings, "I can do that."

--

The newsfeeds were calling him Brainwave, which, to Terry, smacked of the guy whose job it was to name things having stayed home sick. The Batmobile's tracking system reported that he was heading through the industrial district at top land speeds of something like four miles per hour. No wonder he'd wanted the hoverboard back so bad.

Terry didn't even bother with a quip, let alone a flashy move. He pulled the car in right next to Brainwave as he ran and opened the door into the back of his head before he could think to veer off into less navigable territory. Brainwave went down; Terry let the car idle midair and hopped out the driver's side onto the party crasher's back.

Brainwave struggled feebly as Terry unwound cord from his belt. "Not a lot of fight left in you now, huh? Guy your size, you must be a little winded after running all that way, power suit or no." He pulled Brainwave's hands behind his back and tied them together before straddling him to work on securing his legs. "You know, this has been kind of a big night for me. You should be proud of yourself; rookies don't usually make the Batman memoir collection. Part of me almost wants to thank you." He decided to hogtie Brainwave for good measure. "But you're a criminal, and that's wrong. Besides, Spellbinder did it first and did it better, and he had a cool bike."

Terry unstuck the magic eye from Brainwave's glove and tossed it back and forth between his hands a few times. Then he reached down to hook two fingers under the edge of Brainwave's mask. "I spy with my little eye…"

…Christian Black, the obnoxious guy from the charity ball.

"Huh," said Terry. He hefted the glaring chairman into the back of the Batmobile and slammed the door. "Didn't see that coming."

--

Terry radioed Bruce over the Batmobile's comm on the way back to the Cave. "I don't get it. What was his motive?"

"I looked it up; apparently, he was asked to step down on Wednesday. It would seem that our friend the chairman was out for a little good old-fashioned petty revenge."

"Yeah, but busting up the manor during a benefit? Seems like a weird place to start."

"My guess is that his plan was to disrupt or subvert every fundraising, planning, and construction effort from now until the city was forced to shelve the project."

"Ouch." Terry glanced in the rearview mirror at the bound, decidedly less jocular chairman behind the car's soundproof separation glass. "I guess I'm a little impressed that he managed to throw that whole ensemble together in two days. How'd he get a hold of the eye?"

"A contact in the GCPD," said Bruce. "I took samples from the wreckage. The hoverboard he was using is a new model designed specifically for the police force; of course, a man in his position would have friends in high places - friends who might be interested in a cut of his under-the-table profits."

"That explains why he was working so hard to get the board back," said Terry. "He didn't want us to discover a link to the cops. If nothing else, the guy looks out for his friends."

"Touching," Bruce said flatly.

"Still, screwing over a hospital? For the head of a medical association, it doesn't seem like he has the best interests of our citizens' health at heart."

"There was a reason he was asked to resign," said Bruce. "Drop him off at the station and be back in twenty minutes."

"Actually," said Terry, finger poised to cut the comm link, "there's something I need to take care of first."

--

The steady hum and buzz of machinery echoed throughout the cave along with Terry's footsteps, civilian shoes clicking loudly on the stairs. Bruce came into view, seated in front of the computer; he waited until Terry came to a stop six or eight feet from his chair to look up, one eyebrow raised.

"You're late."

"About that," Terry began, hands in his pockets. "Tonight was…eventful."

Bruce watched him levelly.

"Not to mention educational."

The expectant gaze lingered. If you're waiting for me to express interest, it seemed to say, you'll be waiting a long time.

"Four points of interest," said Terry, unabated. "One: I just got back from having the best sex of my young but storied life. Don't give me that look; it's relevant. Two: Dana and I are now 100% official. Three, and this one probably could have come first: Dana knows I'm Batman." Here, he paused, waiting for a reaction. None came. He pressed on. "Four, in which number one becomes significant, because you learn the most fascinating things during pillow talk: My girlfriend thinks you're distinguished."

At that, Bruce's eyebrow crept a centimeter higher.

"That's girl code for 'I kind of want to hook up with your boss, but I don't want you to feel threatened'," Terry clarified.

Bruce turned back to the console in silence. If Terry squinted and turned his head to one side, he was almost positive there was a smirk lurking somewhere underneath that stony exterior.

"I am going to point out that one of us has a hot girlfriend and one of us doesn't," Terry said, because if nothing else, he had that. Bruce shifted his gaze briefly to Terry's face, as if to tell him that if Terry thought he was coming out on top here he had another think coming. There was a pause. "Nothing to say about Dana knowing my secret identity?"

Bruce raised an eyebrow, gaze fixed unwaveringly on the screen. "Should I?"

Terry narrowed his eyes. "So, what, I can shout it from the rooftops now and you'll have nothing to say about it?"

"Oh, I'll have plenty to say about that," said Bruce, "but you didn't tell her."

Terry blinked. "How would you know?"

That? That was a definite smirk. "I was the one who spent half an hour locked in a room with her, remember?"

Well, there was that. Terry fished desperately for a comeback, but no amount of understudy in the clever Batman wit department could prepare Terry to stand up to the master himself. Instead, he sighed. "Can I go home now?"

"The sun is about to come up," said Bruce, scratching Ace behind the ears. "I think that means it's time for bed."

Terry nodded, turned, and headed back up the stairs. He waited until he got to the top before driving his point home: "For you, maybe. Personally, I think I'll go get laid again."

"Oh, to be young again," Bruce said dryly. Terry almost had the door shut behind him when the final word drifted up the stairs: "Although, it seems like some of us don't necessarily need to rely on our youth."

Terry leaned briefly on the door and pulled a hand over his face. "Note to self: never involve Bruce Wayne in my personal life ever again."

With that important lesson in mind, Terry walked to his bike, whistling.