They hadn’t even brought all of their gear, only basic necessities and light armor. It was supposed to be a stealth mission. Get in, rescue hostages, get out. There wasn’t supposed to be a fight.
The worst part was Bruce hadn’t even /noticed/ when his son wasn’t behind him. He’d been leading the hostages out, and Jason was distracting one of the captors that had caught them by surprise. Bruce didn’t know Jason wasn’t behind him until he got outside, turned around, and his son was nowhere to be found.
All Bats are familiar with kidnapping, with villainous obsession and with Ra's al Ghul but Tim Drake may be a little more familiar than Bruce anticipated.
Tim's silence was deafening and Bruce watched in mounting horror as Tim's confident spine and challenging shoulders folded into themselves. Arms that had hung casually twisted together around his waist in a mockery of affection and Bruce wanted nothing more than to gather Tim into a hug himself. As his shoulders began to shake Bruce held back a sob of his own but he was trapped in place, three sons relying on him to protect them and victory shining as bright as the sun in Ra's Al Ghul's eyes.
A whisper of a sound spilled into the room and their heads whipped to Tim's hunched figure. Then another and another like a waterfall of noise, clear and mirthful laughter flooded the cell as Tim threw his head back, wiping the tears from his face. The grin on Tim's face, however, was far from the childish giggling spilling from it, wide and toothy like a beast and eyes like a tiger with prey in its paws, eyes and teeth sparkling as victory turned to ash on Ra's face.
“Hood checked in 2 minutes ago, ordered a pick up, then went dark. I can’t access his commlink. I think he smashed it.”
Bruce felt something in his stomach clench. No. He could think of a dozen reasons for just such a scenario and not a single one of them was good.
“Did he say anything before?” He demanded, carefully keeping the alpha command out of his tone but only just.
“Only that he would ‘off the grid’ for a few days.” Barbra’s tone conveyed exactly how she felt about that.
Carefully unclenching his jaw, Bruce requested the coordinates and got them. He needed to know what was going on with his son. Needed to make sure he wasn’t about to lose him… again.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever crossed the city so quickly.
When boots hit the concrete of the rooftop, the first thing Batman did was walk the area, making sure there were no hidden traps or people. Checking the exit routes. He caught a scent. It… lingered.
Bruce frowned and tasted the air. Faint but spicy — and almost too sweet — an undercurrent of omega. Heat.
A heating omega had been on this rooftop. Recently.
Why?
Jason wouldn’t have run after a heating omega. He was a beta. Barely even had a scent of his own, though he did have a better sense of smell than most of his designation. Jason wouldn’t have felt the pull and he had better self-control than to run after an omega anyway.
So there was something else.
Finding the smashed commlink was easy. Oracle had been correct. Judging by the way it shattered, the way the pieces were broken, it had been intentional.
Why?
Bruce silently begged his absent pup, Jason, what did you get into?
There was nothing else on the rooftop. Nothing pertinent to Jason’s sudden departure, anyway. Batman pursed his lips. There was… little to go on.
He headed to Jason’s apartment. It was possible, though not likely, that he might find more information there. A lead. Something.
Slipping down from the fire escape, he blinked. Scentguard tape lined the edges of all the windows, blocking incoming and outgoing smells. A product made for omegas for use during heats.
Odd, considering he was a beta. Bruce hadn’t realized Jason was quite that paranoid. Breaking the seal, Bruce ducked through the window and into the kitchen.
It caught him off guard.
Heat. Pack. Jason.
He slammed the window shut.
Oh.
Oh no.
Bruce ghosted through the apartment, wary about what he would find. Jason wouldn’t… He wouldn’t hide something so important, something so critical, from them, would he? Something that could — oh, who was he kidding. Of course he would. If he felt there was reason.
The scent of heat — of distress — got thicker the closer he got to the bedroom.
Bruce’s instincts were screaming at him. His pup needed him. Find the omega. Find the pup. Comfort. Protect.
Pushing open the door, his eyes were immediately drawn to the bed — the nest — and his son curled up in it. Armor pieces were scattered around the room, haphazardly, like he hadn’t had the energy to put them away properly.
Oh, Jason.
It must be bad. Suppressed for so long, it wasn’t a surprise that heat was hitting him hard.
Three steps and he was next to his boy. His slipped his gantlet off and ran a hand through sweat-dampened hair. Jason barely twitched, a thin reedy whine escaping his throat. It told Bruce more than anything else about the state of his pup.
He carefully stripped his gear and shot a text message to Dick. What Jason needed was to be surrounded by family — by pack. Gotham could handle herself for a night.
Message sent, he slid into Jason’s nest. Faint scents surrounded him, stirred up by the action. Jason’s was overwhelming. (God, how had they missed this?) But underneath that… scents of fatigue and loneliness, distress and sadness. Scent of pup — Damian.
Well, that answered one question, at least. Damian had been scenting Jason’s nest. Helping keep his heats at bay. Until he’d been grounded. Bruce sighed and pulled the omega — that was going to take some getting used to: his pup was an omega — close, tucking his head under Bruce’s chin.
Another whine. A word almost too faint to hear.
“Dad?”
Bruce swallowed hard.
“Yeah, Jaylad. I’m here.”
He always would be. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
I spent longer than I should have wondering how to threaten a mute kid into divulging information. Breaking his fingers wouldn’t work, since then he couldn’t communicate at all. Removing fingernails was an option, though I had no idea how to do that. Helsing Inc. taught many things; torture methods was not one of them.
Despite how deeply he sleeps, part of him feels impervious to rest, like there’s a fire alarm constructed within himself. It’s not intrusive, it’s just there—a side effect of how much he’s conditioned and trained his own physiology—ready to intercept any green flare-ups or nightmares Natasha may have. That’s what alerts him on nights like this, when he awakens to find Nat upright, shuddering and slick from a cold sweat.
“Hey,” he whispers, pushing himself out of the covers, orienting himself right beside her. He doesn’t need the light, nor does he want it, to know what she looks like right now, to know the distance in her eyes. “I’m here. I’m right here with you, Nat.”
But she’s not here. The terror has her in tangles; it’s revoked her voice and the ground beneath her feet. It’s flung her from their home into every place and time she doesn’t want to be.
Touching her could bring her home or push her further away. That’s the fickle beast of trauma. They both know it well. It doesn’t make it any less painful or any easier to see her like this—and that’s the cruelty of it. He tries to beat it with careful thought. He wards off his own anxiety with an adamant reminder of what she needs, and that’s not the both of them freaking out.
It’s like he’s staring at an integral with a complexity of components when a notion strikes him, vague but sure like distant thunder. He acts on it, shifting to grab something from the bedside table and assuring her, “I’m not going anywhere.”
In a matter of moments, he returns with his headphones and cell in hand. When the device awakens, light blasts forth from the screen, the hour 3 AM glares at him and he silences it by dimming the brightness and opening his music app. In the meantime, he fumbles with his headphones, switching them on and waiting for it to find the bluetooth signal to anchor it. Patience is usually one of his strong suits, but that goes out the window when the person he loves is trapped within an internal hellscape. He curses technology for not being instantaneous.
The headphones connect as he queues up his post-transformation playlist. Though a pang cracks his chest apart as he angles himself toward her and her blatant suffering, gentle hope effervesces in his stomach.
He prefaces his intentions before acting upon them. “I’m gonna put some headphones on you—is that okay?”
The dim, digitized luminescence outlines her enough to show the silhouette of her head, how it slightly nods.
He does what he told her he would. Without grazing any unnecessary part of her, he eases the padded muffs over her ears, settles the band on her skull.
Before proceeding, he provides every opportunity for her input, be that denial or encouragement. “I’m gonna play some music. Some, uh—” He refers to the playlist, “Puccini. Okay?”
When no response comes, his thumb hesitates above the screen. He hovers above an aria from an opera he’s never seen, suspended in the fear of making some terrible mistake. The horrors within her own mind revoke everything except basic somatic functions. They don’t even give her the option to respond. He has to depend on how he knows her.
He presses on the song. The noise and its effects are invisible to him. Seconds creep by across the play bar that tracks the song’s progress. He tries not to fixate on that, but her. If there’s any sign of discomfort, of any kind of pain, he’ll abort this whole endeavor. Whatever it takes to return her peace of mind, he’ll do.
At one minute and 57 seconds, her shaking stops. He peeks at the queue of songs to come, on the lookout for nasty surprises even where there will be none. When he clicks back, it’s two minutes and seventeen seconds, and Natasha breathes. She seizes control of the inhale, holds onto it for three seconds, then releases. This process repeats until the song ends and flips over to Bellini.
They sit there. She recovers. He refuses to nod off even for a second. He counts the beats of her breaths and tries to be as here for her as possible.
Near the end of this aria, before the Mozart slated next, she reaches for his hand. He stretches that arm around her shoulders and doesn’t pull or nudge. She leans into him on her own. Their now becomes her shelter. He welcomes her home with a kiss on the crown of her head. The music plays on.
Honestly, after posting some of my thoughts about Endgame, I expected a bunch of people to unfollow (I wouldn’t blame you). But the opposite as happened, actually? So hello to the newcomers! Welcome to this little corner of the internet, where the walls are covered with Brucenat fanfiction, headcanons, and pictures of the Marvel ladies being badasses. My inbox is always open! Thank you for following ❤
This vignette is for day two: travel!
Run With It
He watches as Natasha packs, quickly approaching the last second of pre-departure. There have been so many opportunities—much better opportunities—for him to ask this, but they’ve come and gone. In the wake of his persistent self-guessing and hesitation, he’d squandered those chances and left himself with this. This, which is now the single chance he has left.
The fact that he feels ridiculous even before speaking doesn’t help with his phrasing or tone, “How would you feel about...um...”
She’s paused what’s she’s doing to look at him in wait. There’s no going back.
“What do you think about driving to Clint and Laura’s?”
This is the epitome of last minute—the worst time to ask. They’d already arranged a flight. Driving would be inefficient, excessive, a time sink. He’s thought of those responses and more, and he won’t be upset if she brings up any one of them. The thing is, it’s her he’s asking, not anyone else, and she reminds him of what a magnificent enigma she can be, how she can and will always be able to surprise him.
Arms crossed over her chest, she responds with a purposeful nonchalance, “Sounds like a road trip.”
Unsure of what else to say, he offers dumbly, “Yeah.”
“Like the kind of thing you see in movies—music, fast food…”
He fills in the rest with what he’s imagined, “Sightseeing, open roads—maybe a bed and breakfast or something.” He catches himself before he gets too entangled in the daydream of it. “I don’t know.”
“I do.” She grins. It’s a variation of a dreamcatcher, where she snags the doubts that could make a moment like this less luminous. She absolutely beams, even through the softest of her expressions. “Let’s do it.”
The gears in his brain jolt to a halt. The shock renders him speechless, capable only of making faces that display his malfunctioning mind.
Completely aware of what’s unfolding in his head, she takes the reins and outlines the path forward and out. “You call Clint, I’ll call Pepper, we’ll pack some more stuff and head out.”
“Um…” He sputters, refreshes his mind. “We’re gonna need a road map.”
She smirks as she turns back to her bag. “That’s your job.”
He recovers enough to tease her, “Aren’t you supposed to be the expert navigator?”
A sock bundle smacks him square between the shoulders as he walks away. He looks back to tell her, “Nice shot.”
Though she no longer faces him, he can see how bright she glows.
Prompt: Bruce takes care of a drunk Natasha. Hilarity, and maybe even some sadness, ensues.
Hopefully (1) this is decent and (2) this cheers some of you up after the absolute catastrophe that was Endgame. This prompt was just delightful.
AO3
Fanfiction
Some Nights
It’s Natasha who finds him first. More accurately, it’s her hand that finds—and pinches—his ass.
An audience consisting of Wanda and Okoye stares at him when he pivots. Each woman holds a black concoction that resembles witches’ brew, and it’s his partner who’s provided the mixture. Among several others at the gathering, Natasha has also fallen victim to her own tincture. Intoxication stares at him through her expanded pupils. Other than that, though, she’s steady on her feet.
His eyebrows elevate toward the ceiling in an act of surprise and jest. He shifts his gaze from Nat to their friends.
“Not my idea,” Wanda defends, sipping black brew to prevent further questioning on the issue of his buttocks.
Okoye, on the other hand, shoots her brows up right back at him.
Any potential duel with her is not one he cares to enter, or inevitably lose. He turns to Natasha. “Having a—”
“Where is your drink?” Okoye cuts in.
“Uh…” Emptiness burns in his palms. “I had a drink.”
“Was it one of these?” Okoye brandished her half empty glass like a piece of damning evidence.
Though caught off guard by this whole exchange, he grins through his sputtering, “N-no, but Nat made me something else.”
“She makes very good drinks.” Wanda says, slipping into a hint of a slur.
The intoxication of others inspires confidence in some. Not him. His uncertainty is a fog, thickened by a whirlwind of factors including, but certainly not limited to, the spectrum of drunkenness before him. For that reason, he flings out the first thing his mouth can manage, “She’s very multitalented.”
Wanda snorts and tries to hide it behind a sip. Okoye, on the other hand, makes no attempt to mask the widening of her eyes, the judgmental drop of her face, the downward tilt of her chin. It’s so apparent he almost doesn’t notice Natasha snickering into the scant space between them. Honestly, he’s not sure what he said to get that reaction or whether he should reply—he’ll probably make it worse.
Maybe detecting this—and probably in search of something more worth her time—Okoye walks away, drink clutched like a gavel. Natasha emerges from his shoulder to lock eyes with Wanda, who gestures vaguely with her glass and says, “I’m gonna go…over there. You two have fun.”
It’s not until after she and Nat exchange smirks and he’s left with his partner that he can piece together a coherent sentence—or, rather, a simple question, “What just happened?”
