Imagine how, he goes very, very still for you. It’s unnatural, honestly.
A creature built for motion—constant shifting, ears twitching, tail swaying—reduced to a statue as you carefully separate sections of his thick, impossibly soft fur.
“…Don’t move,” you mumble, fingers working slowly.
“I’m not,” he insists, voice tight with effort.
He is moving. Barely. A twitch here, a small shiver there—but compared to his usual restless energy, it’s a miracle. His ears flick every time your fingers brush too close, and you can feel the rumble in his chest, like he’s holding himself together purely on willpower.
“Almost done,” you say.
The second you tie off the last braid, leaning back to admire your work, his tail starts wagging. Slow at first… then faster. Thump, thump, thump against the floor.
“…Can I move now?”
You grin. “Yeah.” That’s all the permission he needs.
He shakes, not a small shake. A full-body, fur-rippling, ears-flapping, entirely unnecessary shake that sends every braid bouncing wildly in different directions.
You laugh, startled, hands flying up as he leans down toward you, practically beaming.
“Did you see?” he asks, delighted. “You did that.”
The braids are uneven. Slightly messy. One is already loosening, but he looks so proud.
Before you can say anything, he dips his head closer, nudging your shoulder. “…Can you do more?”
the photos and messages you kept texting through were driving him insane.
like imreadytofuckyouupawall insane.
as soon as his mission is complete, he doesn't even wait to get back to base for safety.
immediately picking up the phone and waiting for you to answer.
"hello." your voice is sultry, dripping with mischief.
"do we have a fuckin' problem? huh?" his voice was harsh, he wasn't playing around with you.
"that depends, are you willing to come fix it?" you were teasing him. and that was something he fucking hated.
"now why would I do that when I know that's what you want from me?" he taunted back, tone still in superhero mode.
"because I know how much you hate it when it's me making myself feel good and not you."
you had him there.
"get your fuckin' fingers out of my pussy now. you know the rules. don't you dare fuckin' touch that cunt until I'm home." his grip so tight on his device it snapped in his palm right after he hung up.
I’m a sucker for sugar baby AUs. As I tend to horde any and all fics of tropes I’m especially fond of, I’ve read quite a few for Dispatch by now, and of course I love them all. The idea of sugar baby Robert actually makes a lot of sense. (The idea of him doing random odd jobs in general makes sense, but I’ve only come across sugar baby AUs and one Vtuber AU. All of which are great. I think I saw fanart of it, but I crave a camboy Robert AU to complete the holy trinity. But I’m getting sidetracked.) All the sugar baby AUs have been Sonbert/EchoMech/MechaBat/insert-shipname-here, which makes sense as Sonar is probably fucking loaded.
But then I got a crazy idea… What about a sugar baby AU with Flambae? I think I’ve read more than one fic where he’s perhaps equally as loaded as Sonar (set after he’s outta prison and in the Phoenix Program). Maybe Prism makes the profile on an app for him as a joke or a prank, or maybe Flambae is feeling lonely and makes it himself. Regardless, Robert ends up catching his interest, and they start talking on the app.
Robert doesnt know what the fuck he’s doing, but he’s getting desperate at this point. It started out as a way to pay rent and keep up with repairs on the suit while trying to find Shroud, but he ends up starting to like Flambae. They still snark and ragebait each other, but Flambae genuinely worries about Robert taking care of himself, and Robert doesn’t know what to do with that but is slowly letting his guard down.
They go from messaging in the app to texting and calling, and Robert finally agrees to meeting up in person (he’s honestly equally as excited to see Flambae—who’s obvs not going by his superhero name). Unfortunately, it all comes crashing down when he actually sees Flambae. It doesn’t connect right away, but Robert pretty quickly realizes his sugar daddy is that one villain he fought and ended up maiming in a last ditch effort not to get roasted. So he bails.
He deletes the app, blocks Flambae’s number, and disappears like he did with Chase. Soon after, he ends up getting blown up and put into a four month coma. He doesn’t think about Flambae (or maybe just tries to convince himself he isn’t thinking about him) until that horrible encounter at Crypto Night.
Luckily Flambae didn’t recognize him (too clouded with anger at seeing Mecha Man to see Robert underneath the mask). Not so luckily, Robert ends up the next dispatcher for the Z-Team. Flambae recognizes Robert’s voice immediately. No idea what happens after, but I just had to put that brainworm into words so it’d leave me alone.
AU where Danny never tells Sam and Tucker about the portal accident but they eventually put together the pieces after Danny starts acting hella weird. Especially around his parents.
They eventually figure it out but can't seem to decide whether their friend is actually dead or if there's something else going on. They inadvertently become ghost experts while playing detective, while also simultaneously trying their best to help Danny from the shadows without him finding out that they found out.
Bonus points if they have to fend off Jazz with a stick cause she knows something's up and she knows that Sam and Tucker know but Sam and Tucker keep covering their tracks and doing their best to throw her off the scent.
Bonus, bonus points if Jazz knows that there's something very messed up going on and desperately wants to know what happened to her brother but Sam and Tucker think she's on her parent's side and are convinced that she'll just report back to them if she ever finds out.
Bonus, bonus, bonus points! if Jazz just has this deep, gut-wrenching feeling that she can't tell her parents about her suspicions and that there's something increasingly disturbing about both her parents and Danny's behaviour as well as how the three of them interact after the portal got turned on. She does her best to keep her parent's attention off of Danny, which kinda helps but also inadvertently gets in the way of Sam and Tucker's helping.
Bonus, bonus, bonus, bonus points!!!!! if Maddie and Jack have acquired some very mild ecto contamination from being in such close proximity with the portal on a daily basis and their continued exposure is making them slowly exhibit Obsession-like behaviours about their work and research, which consequentially results in their attitudes/behaviours becoming increasingly more disturbing and concerning from an outside perspective.
Steve walks into his house—HIS house, he would emphasize—to find his two favorite people wrestling on his couch.
For a second, the bottom drops out of his stomach. It's knee-jerk, even though he knows better. But they are very wrapped around each other, twisting and writhing, and it's pretty easy to get the wrong idea. Until he looks closer and realizes the wrestling is a lot more... violent, than sexy.
He watches, shocked into silence and stillness, as Eddie chomps down on Robin's upper arm. Robin screeches and yanks Eddie's hair. Steve feels un-easy in a different way now, like maybe this is devolving into an actual physical altercation instead of some friendly tussling. He winces when Robin gives Eddie a rather vicious purple nurple.
"FUCK, I give, I give," Eddie screams, limbs releasing her to curl protectively around himself.
Robin bounces up cackling, rumpled and sweaty. Her victory grin is vicious when she turns to Steve.
"Hear that Harrington? Your ass is mine tonight!"
Steve stares at her in fear. "What?"
"I get cuddle privileges tonight," she declares, still a little breathless. "And Eddie gets to sleep on the couch."
Behind her, Eddie looms before he jumps on her back, dragging her back down with a war cry. Steve watches them for a moment as the curse at each other for cheating, before going upstairs and locking himself in his room.
He stands in front of her, blood trickling from a scratch on his arm, his breath uneven, his face flushed. He is hurt. But he is here. Alive.
She used to have to fight it—the overwhelming urge to run to him, to throw herself into his arms, to press her ear to his chest just to hear the steady proof that he was still breathing, still with her.
It had always been agony to hold back. Every time he had died—actually died—and somehow come back, the restraint nearly shattered her. She knows the trauma has settled deep, twisting into her bones.
But this time is different.
This time, she doesn’t have to hesitate. Doesn’t have to bite her tongue or clench her fists to keep herself in place. Because not long ago, he had asked her—soft, uncertain—if she loved him too. And now, she is allowed. Allowed to close the distance, to touch, to hold, to feel.
So she runs.
She crashes into him, arms locking around his waist, ear pressed against his chest. And finally, finally, she listens.
Wilhelm opens his eyes and looks at Simon across the pillow they're sharing. His eyes are wide and unfocused, staring vaguely at the top of Wilhelm's head. Simon lifts a hand and brushes his fingers carefully over the fringe that barely brushes Wilhelm's eyebrow.
"I miss your hair," Simon repeats, his voice soft. He drops his hand between them on the pillow and finds Wilhelm's gaze. "Your long hair."
Wilhelm scrunches his eyebrows together. He didn't know Simon had any opinion on his hair, to be honest, much less that he missed Wilhelm's old haircut.
"Before I cut it?" Wilhelm asks, even though he knows. Even though he understands what Simon's trying to say.
"Yeah," Simon murmurs. He breathes deeply and closes his eyes, burrowing back into the hazy doze they'd been suspended in.
Wilhelm, however, keeps his eyes open. He blinks at Simon several times. He supposes he finally has his answer on what Simon thought of his haircut, all those months ago.
Randomly thought of a "what if Regina is actually good at math but wasn't showy" and then I remembered Leighton. like, what if Regina took the same AP math class but just a year earlier for god knows why. Regina and Mrs. Norbury actually got along pretty well, not close, but is civil with each other especially that Regina actually pays attention in her class and gets decent to high marks. The mathletes have wanted to invite her to join, but they're all scared shitless of her. and so when Cady was purposefully failing the class to get Aaron's attention, what if she accepted Mrs. Norbury's tutor offer, the teacher telling the red head "I know someone who'd be right to be your tutor." and Cady begrudgingly accepts.
After school, Cady was asked to meet her tutor in the library and the girl complied, thinking she had nothing to lose since the plastics didn't have anything planned that day. to her surprise, no one was at the library yet. Cady settled in one of the tables, her bag and books sat on the chair beside her. She waited for five minutes, cutting this "tutor" some slack, while she browsed her phone. Cady was about to get up when she heard the door open, and to her surprise, she sees Regina striding in while looking around the library, trying to find who's the unlucky student she'll have to terrorize to not fail this damn math class.
When the two of them finally locked eyes, Regina stopped in her tracks, eyes wide in shock as she processed the information that Cady was the one she would be tutoring. Cady on the other hand, suddenly felt like a cat caught in the act. the young red-head felt like she was sweating rivers of cold sweats as she stared at the blonde. Regina knew she wasn't bad at the subject. In fact, she had been Regina's personal calculator for quite a number of occasions since joining the plastics.
"Cady?" the blonde questioned, eyebrow raised. Slowly, she walked towards the younger girl, setting down her bag on the table then asked, "what the fuck are you doing here?"
"I.. uh," the shorter girl started, her hand settled at the back of her neck while looking anywhere but the person in front of her. "Mrs. Norbury told me I needed tutoring because I was failing math."
Regina didn't even bother to comment on Cady's reasoning. "Huh." was all that she replied, not wanting to push for more and moved to sit down. Cady wanted this session to be over as soon as possible and she guessed that the blonde also felt the same. Regina took a seat on the vacant chair and Cady took that signal to take a seat as well. The two of them took their books out and dived into their work.
An hour into their session, Cady couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was something off about Regina. She couldn't help but stare at the blonde from time to time, trying to figure out how she got put in this situation with Regina teaching her about calculus. The blonde had noticed, of course, especially when Cady took too long to answer a simple question. The blonde in front of her sighed, and then dropped the pen she was holding, the act snapped Cady out of her trance. Cady feared Regina was going to yell at her or storm out of the library when she suddenly spoke.
"Okay,” Regina spoke before she turned to Cady, eyes boring into the red-head’s own. Cady suddenly felt the need to gulp and prepared herself for whatever Regina's about to do. "Since it seems like you can't focus on this stupid question, tell me, what's wrong now?"
Her question caught Cady off guard. Instead of spewing shit, Regina actually, genuinely, seemed like she wanted to know what's gotten the red-head distracted when she was doing fine a few questions ago.
"Uh.." Cady didn't know what to answer. Her mind was going through hundreds of different scenarios how this conversation would lead to and none of them was good.
Regina sighed.
"Use your words, Heron. Spit it out." the blonde said sternly and her head tilted, waiting for an answer from the girl in front of her.
“I- I didn’t know you were good at math.”
Regina’s perfectly manicured eyebrow raised. Her signature ‘are you fucking kidding me?’ look present the moment Cady finished speaking.
Shit, Cady thought.
A beat of silence fell between them and Cady couldn’t focus on the task at hand. The red-head was about to mutter her apologies when the blonde spoke.
Without looking up at the book in front of her, Regina says with a nonchalant voice, “Just because I don’t tell people, doesn’t mean I’m not good at something.”
She turned to face Cady and continued, “I can’t let people know everything about me. I need to maintain an air of mystery afterall.” and winked.
Regina winked. Honest to God winked and smirked.
If Cady’s brain was already mush five minutes ago, after witnessing that her brain is puréed. She felt her cheeks heat up and as if on cue, Regina tried and failed to hold back a laugh.
Regina looked back at the red-head. “If you’re done overanalyzing my whole being, sweetheart, let’s go back and focus on this part here so we can pack up early.”
And with that said, Cady had to take a mental note to ask questions later before she turned her attention back to their lesson. She tried her best to steady her beating heart, making sure that the blonde beside her didn’t hear how her heart was practically drumming through her chest at the sight of the blonde flirting with her.
