Wip wednesday Mystery Slot: Superman Spoilers! Please and thank you much!
Everybody leaves weird–early and all at once and all in a big hurry–and the next shift doesn’t come in, and the big guy and the shiny stabby chick and the sparkly babe with the phone don’t come back. Which, like–also means the fucking asshole doesn’t come back, which is, like–better, definitely, because fuck the asshole, and it’s not like the shiny stabby chick is ever really a fun time to have around either, so like–whatever, yeah.
But without Sparkles there’s nobody to talk to or watch TV or play phone games with, and without the big guy . . .
Without the big guy, Experiment 13 is all alone on the containment block.
WIP game: there are so many I could ask about. But this is me, so.... 🥺 Please share some Not!Writing?
I'm turning this back around onto you! Check means the whole scene has (basically) been shared. Circle part of it has been shared but needs the start or the end written. Give me a scene/between scenes/etc that you're interested in!
Original Work: When the War Starts in My Heart by @chromatographic [Chromatographic (Lia) on ao3]
Danny Phantom x Batman: Danny & Damian, Bruce & Damian
Rating: Teen & Up Audiences
Summary:
Damian Wayne has received a plea for help from his past. A past he thought was dead.
Batman and Robin answer the call.
Inspired by The Crane Wives song, Curses.
(don't feel pressured i might write it myself but also might not but i had to throw the idea to you)
Fam.
You got it.
[Read on AO3]
------
Jason never actually cared about his soulmark. Really. Why bother? He was poor, his parents' relationship was shitty (he later learned they weren't soulmates and Catherine sold him a pretty lie), and his life was complicated enough to add romance.
Once he became a vigilante at the tender age of thirteen, he understood that love was a luxury, and that having a soulmate at this point was a liability more than a blessing. A curse, even. He envied Dick, who didn't have a soulmate mark, and who loved freely and without hesitation; he envied Bruce, who loved intensely and burned just as bright.
He just. He couldn't do it.
So he chose to ignore it. Sometimes he hated it, sometimes it felt like a shackle to a complete stranger, someone he was supposed to tie himself to-
(Someone that didn't belong in his world. Crimefighters and civilians were not a good idea.)
- so he just scrubbed at the damn ink on his skin when he got pissed at it, and covered with long sleeved clothes when he wanted to ignore it.
And then he died.
He was surprised to discover his mark was still there after coming back to himself post-bathing in the Lazarus Pits. He lowkey had hoped his soulmate was free from the connection the moment his heart stopped beating. But it was still there.
It was a bird. Ironic.
A freaking bluejay.
It was still colorful, it has all the details, no matter what he did about the mark. His soulmate was still there on the other side, waiting, biding their time. He wondered if their mark became a black silhouette like it did when partners died. He wondered if that stranger was holding hope or gave up on him already.
(He hoped they did. Giving up on him was the best option.)
When years passed and he didn't find anybody with a matching tattoo, blacked out or not, he tried to forget about it again. Holding hope was useless, and he had more important things to do. Dick eventually stopped asking about it, when they were back on speaking terms. Bruce still gave it pained looks when he visited the Cave.
That's why when a woman sat down on his table and hid her face behind a binder, he didn't notice the picture on it at first glance.
"Hello?" He put down the cup of coffee and sat straighter. It was never a bad idea to be wary.
"Um." The woman lowered the binder enough to look around the quaint café. She turned and checked the window, but if there was someone there she wouldn't be seen. That's why Jason liked this table, it was the best strategic point. "Sorry, I..."
"Hiding from an ex?"
The woman rolled her eyes, setting the binder back on the table. "Try a creepy coworker."
She tried to downplay it, but by her body language she was more affected than what she let on. He was interested in her story immediately. No woman was going to be stalked on his watch.
"Did you try the police?"
She looked at him like he was crazy. "Police doesn't do shit in Gotham."
Her sharp tone and eyes made him smile immediately. "Have you tried kicking him in the nuts?"
The unknown woman arched an eyebrow and untied her tight bun, massaging her scalp for a second, revealing long natural red hair. Jason noticed her white shirt, so she may be coming back from work. An office? He wondered where she worked. He could try and find out and then identify this creepy coworker-
"Hard to do that when she doesn't have a pair of those." The woman snorted. "My stalker is a woman."
"My mistake. Have you tried kicking her anyway?"
She made a face as if she didn't know what to do with him, but laughed at his comment. He smiled back, glad to see her relax after the scare.
"Thanks. I really needed the laugh, stranger." She made a move to stand up. "I'll leave you alone now."
He nodded, making a note to follow her and find as much information as he could about this stalker.
His eyes wandered to the picture taped to the front of her binder.
A bluejay.
"Wait." He extended a hand, catching her-
It was like an electric current coursed through him, from the palm of the hand that touched her forearms to the tip of his toes. He knew she felt it too, because she froze where she stood, her eyes glued to his hand on her person.
He had to let her go, he knew, but he couldn't. He really couldn't. He knew what this meant, and yet he didn't want to believe.
"Where did you get that?"
It took a moment to come back to reality and process her words. She was looking at his arm, her free hand hovering over the hem of the jacket her had rolled up to be comfortable. The shape of the tail of the bird was in plain sight.
He could lie and say it was a tattoo. That he thought bluejays were cool. He could say so many things.
He didn't need to say any of those lies.
The woman put the binder back on the table and rolled up the sleeve of her sensible white shirt, on the same arm he had his mark. He knew what he would see, what he could see, but it didn't prepare him to the sight of the same bluejay shape blacked out.
"I cried for you. I felt you die."
Her eyes were haunted with memories. What could he say? What could he explain?
"I should have looked harder for you." She narrowed her eyes. "I knew I could still sense you, but I didn't want to hope..." She trailed off, biting her lip.
"It's okay. People shouldn't be running around chasing ghosts." He understood her. Really. Holding hope for the impossible could be dangerous.
The woman smiled at his words, truly smiled, amusement morphing her expression like the turning of a page. She sat back down and extended her hand.
"Jasmine Fenton. Professional ghost hunter. Or was." She rolled her eyes. "I was taking a break now, actually."
Jason tried to gauge if she was joking. But she was completely serious.
Huh.
"Jason Todd." He shook her hand anyway, barely stopping when the electric current made an appearance again.
"Like the dead socialite?"
She did her homework.
"Yeah." It was his time to be amused. "Just like him."
He smiled back at her, and it felt right. Like coming back for air after being underwater for too long. Like feeling the sun warming your skin for the first time after a long winter.
He always found the soulmate talk boring, and in his darkest hours, pathetic. He would never experience that, and romance was for those that could afford it, so why care?
But now, touching her, seeing her smile and her teal eyes that hid many secrets, Jason decided that those people were very off about their descriptions - and very right at the same time.
So he just ignored everything he thought he knew about soulmates and tried to remember if he had the rest of his day free, since he apparently had a soulmate to get to know.
---
Hate the ending, might rewrite it.
Bone apple teeth.
Also I hc Jason as aspec if it wasn't obvious here.
Sam, you like chips that are different! Have you heard of Popcorners? Someone made a popcorn based chip basically and it's weirdly satisfying and good.
Yes! They've been in Chicago for a while and I've had them before. I'm not a huge fan -- the texture bugs me a bit -- but they're certainly edible and I know plenty of people who find them delicious!
Okay but, like, now I need Wedding!Fic for Good Omens, Joy. Joy, why did you do this to me. White and black color themed (of course), the Them arguing over who's the ring bearer, Anathema as a Best Man because someone couldn't think of anyone else (Look, I'm imagining her in a white tux and trying not to drool). They can't figure out who to preform the ceremony, it's not like they have legal identities, and just the DRAMA of it, it'd be so good. Crowley smashes cake into Zira's face. Please.
Hmmm see the way I see it in my head, they don’t actually get married in the legal sense. For one thing neither of them much wants to see the inside of a church again any time soon (and Crowely’s not sure he’d be able to find thick enough shoes, never mind flame proof underwear) but also they don’t have legal names, there’s no official paperwork they can walk into a courtroom with that doesn’t immediately draw attention to all their human personas and even though they’re no longer covert ops like they were before, it’s still not a good idea to create more of a paper trail than is necessary.
But they do have cake, possibly at the Ritz—or somewhere else Aziraphale has always wanted to try the food at.
“There was always that delightful little patisserie in—”
“Paris, yes Angel, unfortunately I think that was about 3 or 4 revolutions ago…”
(they might still wind up spending some time there, call it a honeymoon if you will. Eating crepes for breakfast on a rooftop garden overlooking the city as they reminisces about what it used to be like before the Eiffel Tower invaded the skyline and modern traffic took over the streets below and it became absolutely mental. The Them even get a post card in Uncle Zira’s florid handwriting, though there’s no stamp attached.)
But mostly the biggest thing they stop doing it pretending not to know each other, they let people catch glimpses of them sitting together, in fact they stop hiding from people all together. The words “my husband and I” leave Aziraphale’s mouth first, and Crowley honestly didn’t think it would affect him as much as it does, but the words go right to the place in the cavern of his chest where his soul ought to be and something he’d always feared long since dead flutters faint wings of giddy joy in the darkness.
Husband. Hussssband. He can’t stop rolling the word over on his tongue, drawing out the sibilant hiss and saying it with near malevolent glee at every given opportunity. Gone are the days where he has to say “my associate and I” not when he can say “my hussssssband and I” while the angel smiles indulgently across the table at him, openly smitten.
He’s always been smitten, he’s willing to admit that now. Even if he hadn’t realized it at the time, standing in the Garden.
“I always thought you were all right,” Crowley admits one night, sitting out under the stars sharing swigs from a bottle of wine as the summer night cools into twilight, a pleasant autumn breeze beginning to make itself known in the faint chill of the air. “For an Angel.”
And Aziraphale chuckles, plucking faintly at the grass on the green and letting the strands drift away in the wind. “Damning me with faint praise indeed, my dear.”
“No I mean that,” Crowley insists, passing the bottle back, “that first day in the garden, when you gave them your sword. I thought now there’s an Angel with his heart in the right place.”
“If not his head,” he jokes, and Crowley merely shrugs.
“Sometimes that’s more important.”
“Well, you’d know all about that,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley turns his head at the prim little quirk in his angel’s voice. “I always thought that for being a demon you have a remarkable capacity compassion.”
“Nah,” Crowley dismisses, taking the bottle back and taking a long swig from it before flopping down onto his back in the tall grass. “That’s all just common sense that stuff. You don’t need to feel love to know when something is wrong. You just…” he gestured vaguely, “know.”
“Do you indeed?” he asks lightly, “and what about when it’s right?”
“Oh, you know that too,” Crowley says, turning onto his side to look at the angel, the distant starlight twinkling around his blonde curls like a fractured halo. “Some things you just always know.”
The rings take a while longer to procure, and honestly it’s not something they’d really thought about until one day they’re sitting in St James’s park watching the world go by and two young people (they’re all young, they’re all so young and fragile and so wonderfully human) get engaged, the young lady kneeling down in front of her companion and radiating such love that Aziraphale feels it like a beacon and turns toward it like a hound, gripping Crowley’s arm and compelling him to look as well, thinking at first they must be in danger, only to see the two young women crying and embracing, holding onto each other for all they’re worth, and Aziraphale watching them with all the love he has for humanity welling up in his kind, blue eyes.
“How would you feel about rings?” he asks one night, after the idea has had time to turn over in his head.
“I think they’re expensive worldly things with no more meaning than what we ascribe them,“ Aziraphale answers, steadfastly working through his taxes.
“So no diamonds then,” Crowley nods along from his spot on the couch, his long legs hanging over the side of the armrest as he reclines at a languid sprawl. “Gotcha. What if we made our own? Something…unique.”
“Unique how?” the angel asks, intrigued despite himself.
“I dunno…there’s iron in stars. Silver too…”
“You seem to have a thing for stars,” the angel says, twisting round to look at his demonic husband, and Crowley shrugs, his eyes fixed on some distant horizon only he can see.
“I suppose that’s what happens when you spend all your time looking up.”
And suddenly this just isn’t about something immaterial and shiny, it’s something else entirely and Aziraphale doesn’t quite know if he has the words or even the emotions to describe it but he suddenly knows what kind of ring he wants.
“Wow an ouroboros,“ Pepper exclaims excitedly, peering at the new ring on Uncle Zira’s hand.
“What’s an ouro…oreo…what’s that?” Brian asks, leaning in to get a closer look at the carved head of the snake biting its own tail, the yellow citrine eyes winking in the light. “Looks like a snake to me.”
“That’s what an ouroborosis” Adam replies. “It’s a serpent that eats its own tail to signify the end of the world.”
“And the rebirth of a new one,” Zira adds, claiming his hand back and reaching over the table to claim a piece of lemon cake before it’s all gone. “It’s an omen of sorts. A good one.”
“Sort of,” Crowley waves his hand ambiguously, absently twisting his own ring around on his finger until the engraved design of an eight pointed star was the right side up, a minuscule diamond twinkling at the center. Only Aziraphale knew it was really a shard of starlight captured on the tip of an angel’s feather.
“Well I do wish you had invited us,” Mrs. Young says as she bustles around the kitchen, shooing Dog out from under her feet at she puts a plate of biscuits down on the table. “Honestly, sneaking off and eloping like that.”
“Oh, it was a spur of the moment kind of thing,” Aziraphale answers, giving Crowley a secret little smile over the table, reaching around the cake in between them to take his hand in his own. “Sometimes you just know.”
But…….y’know, if you want me to go full wedding!crack, I can absolutely go Full Wedding!Crack. Just load me up full of maple syrup and crank Queen up to an 11 and we’ll be good to go!
