I can understand how "modern person thrown into the past gets by pretending to be a healer/doctor" is as surprisingly common of a trope as it is. I mean I'm fluent enough at bullshitting to be pretty sure I could pull it off to impersonate a doctor in any time pre-1800s. If I have no idea what something is or how to treat it, I could just get the opinion of the other whatever-passes-as-medical-professionals around, but if their suggestions sound like bullshit I'm not doing it. And I'll beat the shit out of anyone suggesting bloodletting or mercury. With my healing stick. I've tied little bells on it, that jingle comically with every smack.
The awesome curative powers of my healing stick come from two separate sources: Placebo, and me using it to beat anyone trying to give my patients mercury.
Ooooh you reminded me of that protocol I wrote about how to reinvent penicilin with only alchemical tools. You know. Just in case I did end up dumped in the past and needed a stable income.
I am so glad you asked! I unfortunately lost the protocol because it was probably on my laptop, but I remember the broad strokes. So! In case anyone does end up stuck in the middle ages and can find a kindly old alchemist willing to lend you his gear, here's the revamped Penicilin (Re)Discovery Protocol!
0. WASH YOUR GODDAMN HANDS.
We're not working in a lab here, cross-conatamination WILL happen. Your job is to minimize it as much as possible. If you end up in a place where soap hasn't been invented yet, wash your hands in distilled alcohol. Your skin won't thank you, but you can afford all the nice hand creams after you cure the plague and get rich.
Find some Penicillium mushrooms!
Yes, penicilin is produced by mushrooms, though Ascomycotes are usually called moulds, it's a fungus, and it makes me laugh to call it a mushroom. Plus, in the middle ages, mushrooms were known to have medicinal properties, so you'll get a lot farther by calling them mushrooms rather than molds.
First thing you need: mouldy fruit. Oranges, or cantaloupes are preferred.
Here's the thing: mold is everywhere, so getting it will be the easiest part. The tricky part start with identifying the correct mold. You don't want to feed your patients black mold, do you?
So. Leave some fruit out. The more the better, because you want to up your chances. Then let it rot in warm and humid places. After a while, pick any fruit that looks white on the outside and green in the middle:
Not the best picture, but that's what it should look like.
2. Transplanting your (potential) Penicillium mushrooms
Until you get it on a plate it's damn near impossible to tell which mold you got. Get ready for some trial and error because you will have to sift through a lot of unwanted mold. You might want to wear a mask.
First you need something to transplant it onto. Making modern agar plates is probably impossible but thankfully not needed. You just need:
Glass plates (the kind that can be closed, you want to minimize cross contamination)
1-2 cup of Hot water (preferably distilled, ask your alchemist if he can do that)
1 cup whole milk (should be 13g of lactose per cup, if your Penicillium won't grow adjust the water-milk ration in favor of milk)
If available: Instead of milk use corn steep liquor. Unfortunately only available after America was discovered, so YMMW, but Penicillium LOVES this stuff. It will make your life SO much easier if it's available.
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon Yeast extract (get it from a baker)
3-6 teaspoons Gelatin (get it from a butcher)
Disclaimer: The ratio of each of the ingredients will have to be adjusted depending on the purity of the ingredients and on the conventional measuring sizes of the place you end up.
Gently mix it all in and pour out into the plates, let it solidify. If you end up dumped far enough that such refinement isn't possible, make bone broth and strain it through cheesecloth several times to make it as clear as possible, then mix it 5/6 broth and 1/6 milk. Again, if available, use corn steep liquor, but if not milk is fine. Add gelatin (should still be able to get it from the butcher) as needed to solidify it. I'm afraid experimentation will be needed depending on the resources you will be working with.
When you're done, you should have something like this:
Now that you have your plates, run an inoculation loop through a flame to sterilize it.
Something like this. Wave it through the air to cool it so you don't kill your mold, grab it from your fruit and geeeeeently spread it on top of your improvised agar without breaking the surface of the gelatin!
You can see the motions on this one pretty well. Close your plates, stack them about a meter/3ft from the fireplace. Judge for yourself, but ideally somewhere you would consider comfortably warm (20-24°C).
3. Identifying your Penicillium Mushrooms
If all went well, you are going to have something that looks like this:
Well, realistically, it will look something like this:
We're not actually doing it in a lab, after all. But IDEALLY, it will look like the above. It doesn't have to be perfect, you just need to be able to identify Penicillium molds for now.
IDEALLY, on the plate that matches the description of the penicillium mold you'll see an exclusion zone of bacteria around the mold, like the fourth plate in the second row, so you know you have a potential winner, but if you managed to avoid bacterial growth you need to take a few extra steps.
Penicillium molds have characteristic rings of growth, grey-green-white rings. They're easy to differentiate from bacteria because the molds are fuzzy and the bacteria as smooth and slimy. In the above picture, there are four plates that potentially have what we want, and two are less certain than others. Wash out the unwanted ones, make new agar plates, sterilize your inoculation loop and transplant your best candidates. You might need to do this several times.
Two types are confirmed to produce penicilin: P. chrysogenum and P. rubens.
The former is far more widely used today, but since we're sourcing them from literally thin air, we're more likely to get P. rubens, but unless you're a mycologist you probably won't be able to tell the difference. Thankfully you won't need to, because they both produce penicillin. Which brings me to the next step.
4. Confirming it's the penicillin producing mushroom
We're gonna need more agar plates for this one, and believe it or not, you're gonna need to mix blood into your agar. Wash your hands THROUGHLY.
(Theoretically you can get away with just milk, but identifying the correct bacterial colony on white agar is going to be a nightmare, so just add some sheep blood to your agar, conventionally it's about 5% by volume but you might need more to make it)
You need some gram-positive bacteria, preferably of the Bacillota type. Please don't go out and find a patient with fucking botulism or tetanus, you need to live long enough to make the cure. Instead, if you have a vagina, scrape some of the white, mucousy stuff from there and plant it on your plate. If you don't have your own vagina, a borrowed one is fine. Penicilin also works on Treponema pallidum, so if you get a syphilis-affected prostitute that should also work. Just wear gloves.
Ideally you get something like this.
This is actually Lactobacillus brevis, but Lactobacillus colonies all look relatively the same. The important thing is that it's all gram-positive, and will therefore be affected by penicillin.
Take new plates again, plant your Penicillium mold in the middle, and the bacteria all around it, getting as close to the center as possible. You can put down a paper marker for the mold. Wait for about 20 days.
Ideally, on at least one plate, you will get something like this:
This is literally a textbook example of testing antibiotics, but the Zone of Inhibition is what you're looking for. It means the mold is releasing a compound to kill the competing bacteria for resources, in this case, Beta-lactam antibiotic, or penicillin. Make sure to pick the one with the WIDEST ZoI, because that's the one that produces most penicillin.
So now we have the root stock, but our problems have just begun. This is the part where you're absolutely going to need an alchemist's help.
The problem is that a human body is not a petri dish. It's quite a bit larger. And you want the good bacteria destroying stuff without all the nasty contaminants, so you need a SHITLOAD of mold producing a LOT of penicillin, and then you need a way to filter it. You are going to need actual lab equipment for that, or near as they had it.
Since I lost the original protocol I'm going to need to do research all over again how to do that with alchemy equipment (or at least a microbrewery), so that will be in the next installment.
Concept: generic fantasy adventure where the wizard has a crackpot assistant and he explains sadly that while Hreithbert is an excellent person for keeping the wizard tower tidy and the homonculi fed they're obsessed with cooking like ten million plates of inedible goop but it makes them happy so he permits it
And at the end of the story the big reveal is Hreithbert is a time displaced biochemist who has finally fucking refined their process for penicillin.
If Your Scene Feels Lifeless, Someone Is Being Too Polite
Stories stall when everyone behaves. Real tension appears when someone:
• asks the wrong question
• says something they shouldn’t
• notices something uncomfortable
• refuses to drop the topic
• misunderstands something important
• interrupts at the worst moment
They want something REALLY REALLY REALLY bad, but for some reason they can't ask for it -- or can't have it even if they did ask.
They don't notice something that the audience HAS noticed (like in a horror movie when the monster is sneaking up behind the protagonist, or if someone drinks a glass of unboiled water during a cholera outbreak because they don't know about germ theory)
Takes a risk (or otherwise does something they "shouldn't" do) which the audience has to sit through for a prolongued period of time (e.g. slips away from the party to go into the host's private office and rifle through their papers before the guards catch them)
It’s funny how science fiction universes so often treat humans as a boring, default everyman species or even the weakest and dumbest.
I want to see a sci fi universe where we’re actually considered one of the more hideous and terrifying species.
How do we know our saliva and skin oils wouldn’t be ultra-corrosive to most other sapient races? What if we actually have the strongest vocal chords and can paralyze or kill the inhabitants of other worlds just by screaming at them? What if most sentient life in the universe turns out to be vegetable-like and lives in fear of us rare “animal” races who can move so quickly and chew shit up with our teeth?
Like that old story “they’re made of meat,” only we’re scarier.
More seriously, humans do have a number of advantages even among Terrestrial life. Our endurance, shock resistance, and ability to recover from injury is absurdly high compared to almost any other animal. We often use the phrase “healthy as a horse” to connote heartiness - but compared to a human, a horse is as fragile as spun glass. There’s mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it’s called pursuit predation. Basically, we’re the Terminator.
(The only other animal that can sort of keep up with us? Dogs. That’s why we use them for hunting. And even then, it’s only “sort of”.)
Now extrapolate that to a galaxy in which most sapient life did not evolve from hyper-specialised pursuit predators:
Our strength and speed is nothing to write home about, but we don’t need to overpower or outrun you. We just need to outlast you - and by any other species’ standards, we just plain don’t get tired.
Where a simple broken leg will cause most species to go into shock and die, we can recover from virtually any injury that’s not immediately fatal. Even traumatic dismemberment isn’t necessarily a career-ending injury for a human.
We heal from injuries with extreme rapidity, recovering in weeks from wounds that would take others months or years to heal. The results aren’t pretty - humans have hyperactive scar tissue, among our other survival-oriented traits - but they’re highly functional.
Speaking of scarring, look at our medical science. We developed surgery centuries before developing even the most rudimentary anesthetics or life support. In extermis, humans have been known to perform surgery on themselves - and survive. Thanks to our extreme heartiness, we regard as routine medical procedures what most other species would regard as inventive forms of murder. We even perform radical surgery on ourselves for purely cosmetic reasons.
Our jaws have too many TEETH in them, so we developed a way to WELD METAL TO OUR TEETH and FORCE THE BONES IN OUR JAW to restructure over the course of years to fit them back into shape, and then we continue to wear metal in out mouths to keep them in place.
We formed cohabitative relationships with tiny mammals and insects we keep at bay from bothering us by death, often using little analouge traps.
We drink ethanol (in concentrations high enough to be used as an effective as microbicide or a solvent!) for the express purpose of achieving blood toxicity and disrupting normal brain function… AS A RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY!
On the same subject, we also deliberately incinerate assorted substances and then inhale the particulate-heavy smoke and vapor resulting for the same effect. EVEN IN THE FACE OF SAID SUBSTANCES BEING CARCINOGENIC, BECAUSE WE JUST DON’T GIVE A FUCK.
Humans do not have biological castes. Kill their commander and another will take its place. Soldiers left alone on a planet will start farming and manufacturing to survive. Farmers and manufacturers will take up arms and kill you if pressed. Just because two humans look different doesn’t mean they cannot do each other’s jobs.
Breeding does not kill them. A single human can mate dozens or hundreds of times in a lifetime. They often do so as recreation. Xenobiology team six believes they do not have a mating season but this is too strange to be true.
Their appendages are not designed for hitting, so they developed special training to make them very good at hitting anyhow.
The proteins making up their bodies are toxic and cause prion disease. Do not touch anything humans have touched. Do not consume earth foods. Fire does not adequately remove this contamination.
Humans perceive sixteen times the colors we do. Do not hide in bushes or vines from humans. They can distinguish your pelt from the foliage with ease.
We tried venting waste gas into the tunnels to kill the humans when they attacked. Turns out they breathe it.
Everything on their planet came from a single biological strain. They developed comprehensive genetics BEFORE they developed space travel.
They lack radio receptors and cannot be brought into compliance with right-thought simply by broadcasting to them. Even after we learned how to translate it into sound-waves one of their hatchlings drove the Great Authority mad by responding to every demand with a single question: “Why?”
#an individual human being is actually a microbiome in its own right—you are dealing with a legion each time you approach them #they carry pathological agents inside their deep tissues and this is advantageous to their health #one of the most widespread and resilient viruses on their planet is treated as mildly hazardous—even though it causes #massive disruption to the body’s homeostasis #(their young offspring endure multiple rhinovirus infections EACH YEAR yet they seem unperturbed by this) #they have developed such long lifespans that now their primary threat is their own body’s degeneration #humanity has literally figured out how to survive so long that their body gives out under them #and they are not satisfied with that #stupid willful vengeful survivalists who treat mortality like a challenge
much appreciation for people who create ocs that are clearly derivative of The Character because even if the inspiration is clear, they had the self awareness that their headcanons had snowballed so far past character analysis into pure self indulgence that there was very little of source material left. and that’s beautiful. sometimes when you’re preoccupied playing touys it’s hard to take a step back and realize you’ve actually created something wonderful and new
Brim hat design for Tetia based on her desire to have a hat with two cones! The brim is made of clouds like her special spell, and a Brush Buddy plus Brush Bully because I love them ❤️ I also painted her hair using the same brush as the Starry Night Coco dress. Her curly waves gave off that flowy Van Gogh vibe✨
The hours long painting videos, HD images and PSD Files will be DMed on the 5th of each month on Patreon.com.Yuumei
from @kokodrawings role reversal au: naruto as ambassador of the shinobi nations. please read the tags on the original post 🧡
the idea just took root in my mind and i really think this would be such a beautiful life for naruto post-war. discovering the world, making it his home, and everyone welcoming him like family.
he would share stories, help people, spreading love, hope and peace. and even write about his travels ! the book would probably read like a wackjob wrote it but it would be so heartfelt :')
i've always loved the idea that a post-war naruto would feel such peace and happiness that he often (accidentally) goes into sage mode simply by breathing. like someone's talking to him and then maybe a moment of silence would pass and when they look back at him the markings of sage mode are on him. also, i imagine in this au he also lets kurama's chakra leak freely (kind of like he's letting him stretch) so he would sometimes have sharper features because of it too.
the necklace he wears are trinkets from the five great nations, each an official seal from the kage of each village, a sign of their acknowledgement and also works like a pass to wander through the countries freely.
#i took a very tiny creative liberty with his design 🙏 #konan alive and leader of ame yes please. like her gesture with the flowers was so symbollic she should have lived #and one comment in the original post about naruto having a BRIDGE named after him like HELLO ???? bridging nations. CMON. #i also hc that the uzumaki were kinda nomadic so hes also connecting with his roots #the free spirit that he is#my sunshine #also probably that scroll stores camping gear and equipment and shit like that #sasuke is hokage in this au too and honestly #this is just canon to me at this point #this would have really been a beautiful conclusion #thank you for your sharing your au and ideas !!! #ill be thinking about it for the rest of my days
What I’d give for one of the Cinderella remakes to go into how when you’re in an isolated and abusive situation, sometimes you need to be saved and you’re not weak if you can’t escape by yourself
I’ve never been a fan of bad faith reinterpretations of fairy tales, especially ones which flatten the originals into “princesses is saved by a prince and nothing else”, to then go #girlboss. The princess can save herself because she’s a strong female character! (Implying if you’re in a bad situation, it’s because you’re not strong enough to get out)
Also the concept of the Prince over the course of like… a couple hours hanging out with Cinderella going from ‘Haha nice I really like you’ to ‘oh fuck i can tell from context clues alone that your home situation is FUCKED UP’ it’s good shit ‘I have just met you but ON GOD I’m gonna get you out of there beautiful mystery woman’ cinderella makes desperately yelling into the night ‘how can I find you again!??!’ when she’s taking off that much more poignant really
#okay this is genius#I love this#love at first sight is a tough sell#but ‘I just met you but you are so clearly in desperate need of help that I am already planning where to hide the bodies’#is a trope I absolutely love#going from hello to ride or die in a matter of hours#isn’t a ‘you’re hot’ thing#it’s a ‘my fellow human is trapped and suffering and every instinct I have is screaming its need to help’ thing
pov: grace tries to explore outside the biodome, only to find himself in a first person horror game in a foggy pitch dark hellscape with many alien rock spiders, scuttling in and out of the darkness. at least they're all friendly!
The Eridians notice that Grace seems nervous and correctly assume that this is related to him not being able to see them unless they are within the range of his light.
Clearly the best solution to this is to, when you hear Grace coming, LEAP in front of his xenosuit as quickly as possible so as to make sure that you are definitely within range of his light sense.
That loud noise he makes each time is probably some kind of human greeting. Hi Grace!
I mean Danny keeps meeting the bats but what if it’s the bats meeting Danny’s family we’re talking about jazz who will take a look at them and go “yeah I see what’s wrong with you” or Ellie who will just go ham on them
Danny was nervous.
Okay, maybe the word was underplaying the feeling of absolute dread of the upcoming train wreck, threatening to leak nauseating bile from the pits of his soul. But it was tough to explain why he was feeling this way without sounding like he resented his family.
He didn't! He just felt an underlying sense of exhaustion whenever they came up in conversation or when he had to go back home. It's not that Danny didn't love his parents or his sister, but dealing with them left him feeling both frustrated and relatively empty.
It only took them uttering a sentence for him to be back to being the family's disappointment, despite having moved out years ago. The letdown in the household of geniuses. Like he hadn't escaped Amity Park, or that tension-filled house, to Gotham City, where his averageness wasn't a constant measuring stick held against his parents or his sister, and somehow always found it too short.
Danny felt like he was breathing for the first time despite the city's pollution. In a city as large and as crime-infested as Gotham, Danny Fenton was just another face in a crowd, nothing outstanding but not outcast like before. He liked it this way.
Even when he gave in to the urge of protecting the city against itself as Phantom, he was not charged overly much for it. He still got up, went to work, bought the same lunch at the same cafe, and kept an eye on trash day as he normally did before he took up the mantel again.
He didn't have to justify his decisions, didn't have to prepare himself for the eye roll or the condescending "Oh, Danny, what are you doing with your life?" whenever he spoke about his interests. Sure, he wasn't in school like Jazz, Tucker, or Sam. Sure, he had a dead-end job working in a local sub store, and okay, maybe moving so far away put a limit on the support he could fall back on, but his mental health was never this well off.
Danny hadn't realized that before, when he was surrounded by people, he had felt so lonely. It wasn't until he was utterly alone in a new city that he actually started to feel more at peace. Now it wasn't like his parents were actively trying to make him feel bad, far from it, as they always went out of their way to praise him right after Jazz, but it only made it more evident that he wasn't like her.
That every piece of advice born of worry only indicated how much they thought he was a failure.
Or maybe that was his own mind, hissing insecurities and doubts that kept him up at night, comparing himself to others.
Whatever it was, Danny was worried about his family's reaction to the Waynes.
He had an odd relationship with them. Danny had met the Wayne children through his work, having found most of them were creatures of habit, always coming in at the same time and ordering the same food. Once the Wyane children became official regulars, he found himself chatting with them casually as he prepared their sandwiches.
It was around Christmas two years ago that he let it slip he wouldn't be able to go home, as he was scheduled to work the holidays (secretly, he was grateful). He found himself invited to their house for Christmas dinner by an overly friendly Dick Grayson.
He had laughed it off as a joke or something said but not meant until Dick Grayson showed up at his house, ready to give him a ride to the Manor. He scrambled to change, following the friendly man who didn't seem to think it was odd that he knew where Danny lived, and before he could blink, he found himself sitting down to a feast next to a group of people so welcoming that Christmas wasn't that bad for the first time.
After that, the Waynes basically adopted him. They dragged him out for family dinners and family outings, and even showed up at his apartment unannounced to spend the evenings with him. It took months for him to realize what they had done. Danny was an unofficial brother to them, and oddly, he didn't mind it in the slightest.
Bruce treated him like a son, Alfred like a grandson, and the Wayne children were his siblings, which didn't make him feel inferior in any way. In his pantries, he kept snacks he knew the Waynes liked. Danny made sure to have Sunday nights open for dinner at the Manor. Bruce called almost every day to talk, and Danny started prepping their lunches, picking them up throughout the day.
That wasn't to say he stopped talking to his family...he just got busy. So busy, in fact, he double-booked a night with his family and the Waynes. His parents and Jazz were coming for a week to spend it with him, then flying over to a hotel in Mexico. Danny couldn't go to the other country, but he could at least host them.
The Waynes were so excited to finally meet them that they strong-armed Danny into inviting the Fentons to Sunday Dinner- the very same night they would arrive at the airport. Then, depending on how they reacted to the Fentons, Danny would have to deal with them for a whole week, co-existing.
He knows, at a level, the Waynes are odd, but that might have something to do with being so rich it was ridiculous. The Fentons, on the other hand? They were the town freaks just as much as they were the town geniuses. Danny was double the failure for that, too, since his parents and Jazz made up for their freakness by being super intelligent.
Danny was just...there.
The idea that the Fentons would scare off or steal the Waynes from him felt like a noose around his neck. It was inevitable, somehow, that he would lose one or the other tonight.
So he was nervous. He was bile-inducing, ready to claw his own skin off nervous.
"Dude." Jason sighs, slapping one large hand on his shoulder. "Relax."
Now Jason? That was the first Wayne to befriend him, even before Dick knocked on his door wearing the ugliest Christmas sweater that had ever burned Danny's eyes. Jason had taken one look at Danny, saw someone as broken and as directionless as him, and went, "That one. I want that one."
"I'm sure your parents will like us," Jason told him, bringing Danny into a side hug. He was always doing that. Jason was the most physically affectionate of all the Waynes. Especially when he spent the night at Danny's place, Jason had a habit of cuddling things to his chest when he slept. More times than Danny could count, he found himself waking up, pressed against Jason's chest with the larger man muttering into his hair. "And if they don't? Fuck them. Cut them off."
"It's not that simple," Danny fretted, leaning into Jason seeking comfort despite his words. "My relationship with them is....complicated."
"What, really? Jeez, I couldn't tell by the way your face turns to stone whenever your mother calls."
Danny rubs one hand over the other, lowering his head. "I don't mean to do that when I talk to her. I just...I haven't exactly told her about..."
"Us?" Jason finishes for him gently. "Do you want to? Are you ready to?"
There is no judgment in Jason's voice, which is why Danny finds the courage to be honest. He shrugs his shoulders, lowering his eyes to his shoes. "I don't know if I'm ready for that."
"Okay." Jason squeezes his shoulder. "I've taken it slow so far I can keep it hidden a little longer if you need me to."
Danny opens his mouth to respond when a loud voice screams. "Danno!"
Removing himself from Jason like he's been burned, Danny turns to find his Dad barreling towards him like a madman. He seems unaware or not caring of the annoyed glances his loudness is earning him, and more dread pools in Danny's stomach.
Embarrassment at being seen with his loud father leaks in, and then shame for being embarrassed follows. His smile wobbles as he greets his father, spreading his arms awkwardly at his sides as his face turns red.
"Hi, Dad." Danny's voice strains with awkwardness that Jack doesn't seem to mind. "How was your trip?"
"Lousy." His father complains, running right up to Danny and hugging so hard his feet leave the ground. A soft oof is squeezed out of the smaller man, suddenly so aware that he didn't inherit his father's large stature and the sting of another shortcoming burns at him as his old man continues to speak. "Kept telling your mother it would be easier if we flew our blimp, but apparently that's illegal. I swear, every year the airline seats get smaller and smaller, probably cutting corners to squeeze more money out of you. Don't know why. That plane was as cheap as they come. I could build a better nest with the things around the house in one week alone."
Danny's arms are starting to go numb, so he pats his Father's chest as best he can, trying to signal that the hug needs to end for his own health. "I bet you could, Dad."
"See, Maddie!"
"Jack, if you try taking apart our bathroom to build another airplane, I am going to lose my mind." His mother's smooth voice huffs from around his Father. Danny sucks in a large breath, the second his dad lets go, but he is once again squeezed to near death by his mom a second later. She might not look it, but Maddie Fenton was just as strong as her husband.
"Danny! Sweetie, it's so good to see." She gushes. "You really need to come visit more."
"I-"
"Oh, you should come home in June. Jazz is going to have a big event at her hospital —she just got promoted to head of her department, you know. Youngest one too." His mom beams, and Danny's throat tightens up.
"Sure, Mom. I'll see if I can make it." He replies half-heartedly, already drafting excuses for why he missed the ceremony in his mind.
Her eyes grow worried, and she quickly tacks on. Her voice is sticky-sweet with forced cheer, and that makes him cringe. "I'm sure you'll have a big event soon, too, dearie."
"I-"
"Who's this?" Jazz interrupts, throwing a smile at Jason. She's well put together today, with her hair in an attractive half bun, her outfit both professional and comfortable, and just as beautiful as their mother. That was Jazz for you. Golden child, perfect in every way, with never a hair out of place.
Danny had heard it all his life. Everyone wanted to either be his sister or be with her.
Based on the way her eyes went up and down on Jason, she'll likely have his number by the end of the night.
"Hi, I'm Jason Todd. Danny's roommate." Jason smiles back at her, politely holding out his hand for a shake. Jazz's eyes light up as she returns it, and his parents' attention shifts to him, so no one notices the confusion on Danny's face.
His roommate?
Why did he say they were roommates? Jason only spent a ridiculous number of nights at his place, but he didn't live there.
"I didn't know you had a roommate. Danny, you need to work better at talking to us," His mom chides lightly, without any heat. "It's lovely to meet you, Jason. I'm Danny's mom."
"It's nice to meet you as well, Mrs. Fenton."
"Oh, none of that, it's Maddie. Mrs. Fenton feels so cold."
Jason gives his mother another warm, boyish smile that Danny is 50% sure is fake. What the hell was happening? Jason was never this pleasant from the get-go....was he trying to impress his mom?
Why?
Jason helps his parents take their luggage to the car and easily starts a conversation about weaponry with his Dad, which instantly earns Jack's approval. It's like Jason became a parent charmer, so if quickly Danny weren't be surprised if he claimed he could make snakes dance just as easily.
"I like him." Jazz whispered in Danny's ear when his sister fell back to walk with him. The trio in front of them didn't notice as they debated the delay in recoils between energy and regular guns. "You did well for yourself. Are you going to tell mom and dad?"
"Tell them what?" Danny asks, mystified by how easily Jason was taking over. The dread in his chest was easing just a bit.
Jazz studied Danny for a minute before sighing. "It's not my secret to tell. I figured it out, but I want you to let me know when you're ready to talk about it. I love you no matter what, okay?"
"Okay?"
Jazz smiles at him before her eyes turn mischievous. "How long do you think it will take Dad to convince Jason to let him mess with his car?"
Danny's head snapped back to his parents, and much to his horror, he found Maddie and Jack already popped the hood of Jason's car, babbling about ghost protection they can install and Jason's bemused smile as he let them ramble.
"Oh no."Danny whispered, "They're going to scare him away."
"Nah." Jazz laughs. "If he didn't run from you, then I think Jason is tougher than you give him credit for."
"From me? What?"
Jazz grins. "You aren't as unaffected by their oddballness as you think you are."
She's teasing, he knows she is, but Danny suddenly feels sick. "Right. I'm a Fenton."
Jason looks over at them, does a double-take, then strides to Danny's side. He leans down to whisper in Danny's ear. "Need a minute?"
"I-" Danny swallows. "Yeah. Can we-?"
"Of course. Excuse me, Jack, Maddie. Danny needs some water. Why don't you work on the car while we go grab him a bottle?"
Jack beams, diving into the hood with newfound energy, but Maddie goes still, stares at the pair a minute without blinking, before her face breaks into a relieved smile. "OH, it's like that....Of course! Have fun, boys!"
Danny doesn't have to ask what she meant by that because Jason is turning him around by the shoulders and marching him back into the airport. Over Jason's shoulder, Danny watches his mom and sister squeal together while his Dad raises his head, looking as confused as Danny feels.
"See?" Jasson whispers, "I told you they wouldn't mind."
Danny is too chicken to ask what he means, so he nods and lets the man manhandle him into finding a corner and calming down. It's fine. Everything is fine. It's only one week.
Oh. My. Goodness. I just realized the odds of Jason finding his car altered to include rocket launchers or something later on is pretty high since they just left Jack messing with his car unsupervised! 😂 You just *know* this is going to devolve from "my boyfriend is scared his parents are homophobic" to "Oh. No. My boyfriend's parents are mad scientists verging on potential supervillians and he's been stressing about them ending up full supervillian after visiting Gotham."
And, you know, if Danny had ever connected the dots that his parents *could* be considered supervillians in the making that probably *would* have been one of his concerns, but Danny's got impressive blinders on concerning his loved ones. (Like, is Sam *very* similar to Poison Ivy complete with nearly identical acts of ecoterrorism now that they are adults? Yes. Is she a supervillian??? Huh??? How could anyone think that??? Levels of blinders on this boy. 😂)
Not to mention, there's no way the Fenton's are censoring themselves. Like, Jazz and Danny *do* sort of try to censor then during dinner with the Waynes but they don't have a good idea of 'normal' either so it's not very successful as far as the Batfamily is concerned. And some of the things they're saying like funny little off-hand anecdotes? Highly concerning. A casual mention of Danny's teenaged escapades breaking into a maximum security weapons development company called Axion, destroying government property, the fact that there is technically still a warrant out for his arrest in Illinois as a result, etc. All offhand little anecdotes that are very normal in Amity Park (who hasn't got at least one warrant out on them for destroying GIW property at this point) but very, very concerning for the Bats. And his parent's response to one of the Waynes trying to gently point that out? "Oh that's just kids being kids! You should see how many warrants and citations we've racked up in the past 2 years alone! Danny's not even added any new ones to his list since high school! Don't know what we did to raise such a square with this one. Even Jazz has got a few extra warnings since then! 😄" Meanwhile Danny is sinking down into his chair, red faced with embarrassment thinking the Waynes are going to find him even lamer now that they know how dull he's been since high school compared to the rest of his family.
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