Here are my latest fics! All are Jason Todd, and I've finally done a crossover with The Mechanisms.
Tasting Metal, Seeing Red
Fandom: DC Comics, The Mechanisms
Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Mechanized Jason Todd, Angst With A Happy (or at least bittersweet) Ending
Instead of being found by Talia and the Lazarus Pit, a wandering and brain damaged Jason Todd is found by someone else... Drumbot Brian takes an interest. This is not a good thing per se.
It is for good ends that Brian severs the boy’s head from his body. They say that a head thinks for seven seconds after its severing. If that is true, the boy is terrified for all of them. He would scream if his head were connected to anything that could.
Killing the boy is such a small price to pay for his renewed life, is it not? Brian thinks so.
Drumbot Brian is not a good person. His help is not kind. It is kinder than some. It is less than others. It is a help that disregards means – cutting and slicing and bone saws and a ship of Theseus to rival his own brass body and mind – for the ends – the boy lives again, and his mind is intact.
Holmes? Yeah, I've Met Him.
Fandom: DC Comics
Harvey Bullock & Jason Todd
Jason met the real Sherlock Holmes. Bullock doesn't believe him.
After The Crisis (When I’m A New Version Of Myself)
Fandom: DC Comics
Jason Todd
Crisis on Infinite Earths Aftermath, The Flying Todds
Jason finds the photo tucked into a book on his shelf that he hasn’t read. Hidden between the pages of Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson is a polaroid. He looks at it. It’s in clear focus, not over-exposed, nor grainy, yet he can’t make it out. It’s him. Him but with strawberry blond hair he’s never dyed his to be, and he’s squished between two people he doesn’t recognize. A man and a woman with matching strawberry blond hair and beaming smiles. All three are wearing costumes, and a banner behind them announces the Flying Todds!
Red Soaked Yellow
Fandom: DC Comics
Harvey Bullock & Jason Todd
hurt/comfort, tough cases
The figure jumped and bolted. They were a streak of red running down the alley, a loose jacket billowing behind them. Harvey followed, footfalls making iron clangs against the fire escape. The alley was a dead end. The running figure looked like they were contemplating scaling the wall when Harvey came up behind them.
“Listen! You’re not in any trouble yet, just—”
The figure jumped and turned around. And – Oh shit. Harvey knew who it was. Not a culprit of anything then. But that didn’t mean no problems. Robin held himself in a fighting stance that looked off even to Harvey’s eyes. He was shaking badly and absolutely covered in blood.
Luring Sailors To Their Graves
Fandom: DC Comics
Dick Grayson & Jason Todd
Selkie! Jason. Fanfiction of Fanfiction inspired by Our Dead Drink The Sea by @ghost-bxrd
The thing about sea monsters: they were famous for drowning people. Selkies less so maybe, that wasn’t a problem. Jason could learn.
Hi would y'all like a 10k violinspector fluff fic one shot where they just go on a date? Here I made one!! Based on this old post of mine, the idea that Lyf is set up on a blind date so Marius decides to show up in the date's place (pretending to not be himself, hence blind date- also Lyf is well aware its him lmao). Cue silly date time!!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
This is my silly birthday gift to myself and I spent so so so long on it lol :) them <3
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Summary: Raphaella discovers a stowaway in her ship after leaving a war torn planet. She'll use him as a test subject later, she figures, and obviously totally won't get attached. Then they trust her enough hack off their own limb, and that throws a wrench in things.
Important tags: graphic depictions of violence, angst, hurt/comfort
I’m sosososo fucking proud of this you don’t even know. Credits to @svenka-the-meme-lord for the fiftieth time for inspiring it
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Chapter 4 of my "the Mechs (the characters) were Jon's uni band" fic is up! Jon finishes rehearsal with the Mechs, and Nastya finally talks to him (after a fashion).
Pro tip for writing Mechs fanfiction: if you’re wondering, “Is this concept realistic, believable, and/or remotely possible?” Just remember: Weirder things have happened in canon.
Any sane being would call a gun fight barbaric, cruel, and lethal. Jonny and Tim preferred to call it date night. After all, what better way to tell your partner that you loved them than filling them with a countless amount of lead? Was it true romance unless you couldn’t tell where your blood stopped and your partner’s blood began? And one of the many joys of immortality was learning things such as how to delay how long it took for them to bleed out. That was how the two of them found themselves slummed on the ground with their backs pressed against one of Aurora’s walls.
Tim let his head come to rest on Jonny’s shoulder. “I don’t know if I’d call it romantic but I think you got me in the heart.”
To his discredit, the Captain first mate just snorted. “Pity. I was aiming for your head.”
The Great Flesh-Eating Cake Incident of Year [REDACTED] (Not to be Confused With the Bifrost Incident)
Chapters: 1/2
Words: 3502
Relationships: Drumbot Brian - Raphaella la Cognizi (queerplatonic), Gunpowder Tim/Lyfrassir Edda/Marius von Raum, The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina (although most don’t show up until the second chapter)
Other Things: genderfluid tim, she/her tim, he/fae marius :)
Summary: Brian and Raph bake a cake. Or, they try to. It doesn't exactly go well. (aka, Why Raphaella la Cognizi Should Never Be Allowed in the Kitchen)
read on ao3 here or read below the cut for people who don't like ao3 (i will post the second chapter. at some point. hopefully soon)
Chapter 1
“Try it now.”
“Is it safe?”
“Does that matter?”
Brian gives her what she calls his teacher look, a combination of calm exasperation and gentle chiding. “I would prefer to not fry myself from the inside out, if I can help it.”
“Boring,” Raphaella accuses, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “And you know I’d fix you if you did.” Well actually, she would get Nastya to fix him, as Raph herself has absolutely no self control when it comes to the prospect of tinkering with a complex mechanism and Brian hates being tinkered on without his permission.
“Yes, of course, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt like hell,” Brian points out. “Not to mention how horrendously it would fuck up my systems.”
Raphaella pouts. “So I installed the flamethrower for nothing?”
Brian hesitates. “...I didn’t say that.”
Raphaella perks up immediately, turning her full attention from the clattered worktable to her partner. Brian straightens up and faces away from her, focusing at the blank wall at one end of the lab. He pokes his tongue around the inside of his mouth a little, probing at the new addition in the back. He tests out flipping its settings, making sure everything flows smoothly, then steels himself and opens his mouth, turning it on. Nothing happens.
Raphaella throws up her hands in exasperation. “I don’t understand! That should have worked! It-”
Brian yelps suddenly, clapping his hands to his throat as the back of it heats up rapidly, too rapidly, the heat growing from gently uncomfortable to unbearable in a matter of seconds. Luckily, his systems react before he can, shutting off the new attachment the second it could cause potential harm. The heat fades almost as quickly as it had swelled.
“Ow,” Brian says mildly.
“That was about to work,” Raphaella huffs, hands on her hips, eyes fixed somewhat accusingly on Brian. “If you had just waited a moment longer.”
“It was about to melt my vocal cords,” Brian points out in retort. Raphaella throws up her hands again.
“My husband is a coward,” she declares to no one in particular, with no actual insult behind it. Brian can’t help but smile softly at the endearment. They’re not married, technically, but for all intents and purposes they might as well be.
“I’ve started to become convinced that you’re simply trying to kill me,” Brian remarks to her as she turns back to the notes on her lab table. She shoots him a brightly malicious look, one backed heavily with fondness. “Maybe I am.”
He sits down on the stool beside the lab table and reaches for her, catching her waist from behind and pulling her onto his lap. She leans back into him as he wraps his arms around her, and he rests his chin on her shoulder so he can peer down at the pages of notes in her hands.
“Here, tell me what I’m doing wrong,” Raphaella holds up the notes so Brian can get a better look at them. He hums thoughtfully as he scans her delicate sketch of his body, each part individually labelled with possible enhancements to be added in Raph’s lacy handwriting. Brian’s own handwriting, cramped and blocky, annotates the science officer’s notes with his own observations of measurements and possible difficulties.
In his mind, Brian overlays the sketch on top of the official schematics the doc left in there, focusing on his throat and the new addition, checking for anywhere where it isn’t wired properly or messing with any of his other systems. Nothing. He bites his lip, a very natural bad habit that he’s never been able to shake, despite it splitting the rubber badly. Raphaella hits him lightly in the side of the head when she notices him doing it.
“I don’t think it’s anything you’ve done,” Brian says finally, leaning back slightly on the stool. “I think it’s simply a matter of too much heat.”
Raphaella ‘hmphs’, taking her notes back from him and setting them back on the table. She turns her head to study Brian’s face, placing her hands atop his where they rest over her stomach. He quirks an eyebrow at her, and she regards him silently. He can tell that she’s thinking through what next to work on, now that their flamethrower experiment is a bust.
He gives her stomach a light pat. “If you don’t mind, I was going to go bake something. Tim’s been complaining that there aren’t enough ‘munchies’ onboard. And yes, that is the word xe used.”
Raphaella slaps a hand to her heart melodramatically, the gesture accompanied by a theatrical gasp. “Leaving me for Tim, are we? Scandal.”
Brian chuckles gently as he rises to his feet, dislodging Raph in the process. “Yes, I’ve decided you’re much too cruel and brutal for me, and I’d be much happier feeding Tim for the rest of eternity.”
Raphaella tosses her hair and turns away from him, crossing her arms over her chest and tilting her chin up imperiously. “Good riddance.”
“Good riddance indeed,” Brian agrees drily, with no heat behind it. Raph glaces over her shoulder at him and grins, and he smiles back as he slips out the lab door, tipping his hat as he goes.
Ivy’s reading at the kitchen counter when he enters. She doesn’t look up as he makes his way into the kitchen proper, wrangling his hair into a wiry ponytail and tossing his hat on the counter. He peeks at the cover of her book and makes an intrigued little noise when he notices it’s about prophets and oracles throughout space and time.
“I was going to give it you when I was finished,” Ivy says without looking up. “I thought it might interest you.”
“It does,” Brian tells her, and she smirks, proud of herself. She still doesn’t take her eyes off the pages. Brian leans over, resting his elbows on the counter, and knocks his forehead briefly against hers, a somewhat awkward sign of affection that’s he’s developed with some members of the crew. She responds by patting his head absentmindedly, still not looking up from her book. He smiles, and turns back to the kitchen.
After a couple minutes of rummaging around in cabinets, Brian becomes aware of Raphaella’s presence leaning against the counter to his left.
“Missed me?” he asks teasingly. She rolls her eyes and pokes him in the arm. “You promised you’d teach me to bake.”
Brian pauses, replaying the last ten minutes in his mind to confirm that he has not, in fact, promised her this. And then he realizes that she’s referring to a time quite a few decades ago, when the two of them had been left back on the ship while the others had been out pillaging a nigh-extinct planet. They’d been sharing some pastries that Brian had been experimenting with, and Raphaella had asked him how he’d made them. He had launched straight into a detailed explanation of exactly which ingredients he had used and what amounts of each, and how he had played with the measurements and tweaked the recipe to see how he could improve it. Raph had listened with utter fascination, and after he had finished she had mentioned that it seemed a bit like her experiments, only with slightly different materials. He had offered to teach her a little, if she’d like, and she had said she would love to learn. And now here they are.
“I did do that, didn’t I,” Brian muses. He studies Raph, leaning against the counter, a sparkle in her eyes that both makes him excited to see what she has in store and fear for his life.
“So?” Raphaella raises an eyebrow. Brian considers.
“We are making a cake,” he tells her, keeping his voice slow, steady, and serious. “A basic cake. We are not going to put anything in it that is not on the ingredients list. We are going to follow the recipe. To the letter. And we are not, I repeat, we are not going to burn down my kitchen.”
My kitchen, Aurora corrects him gently.
“Our kitchen,” he concedes.
Raphaella steps forward and takes Brian’s hands, looking him solemnly in the eyes. “I won’t let you down,” she promises. “Trust me.”
“Phee, I love you to death, and I always will” Brian tells her, lifting her hand to his mouth and kissing the back of it. “But I draw the line at trusting you.”
“Rude,” Raph sniffs, while Ivy tries to cover up a snort.
“Practical,” Brian shoots back, letting go of her hands and reaching past her to pluck the recipe from the counter. With a flourish, he deposits it in her hands. “Find me these ingredients.”
Raphaella mutters something about ‘bossybitch Brian’ as she turns away from him and marches purposefully toward the cupboards. He watches her fondly for a moment, before busying himself gathering pans and setting up his beloved electric mixer, something he’d found being sold for scraps on a junkyard planet and had lovingly repaired and repainted with his own two hands. Its name is Small Brian, and it remains one of his most prized possessions.
“Bri, which eggs are we using?” Raphaella calls to him, her head buried deep in the disorganized fridge. Brian abandons Small Brian for just a moment and pokes his head in beside hers.
“Ah, not those,” he says, indicating a half dozen of jet-black eggs glowing faintly from within. “Those are Ashes’. They will supposedly hatch into a rare breed of fire-breathing corvid.”
“And those?” Raphaella points to the other carton of eggs.
“We’re using those,” Brian confirms, pulling the carton out. “Ah. Wait. Not this one.” Carefully, he removes a small, round, green orb from the carton and places it gently on the counter. “An octokitten laid this. We think.”
Raphaella leans over and picks it up, holding it in the palm of her hand and bringing it up close to her eyes. She looks suspiciously like she’s about to slip it into her pocket, so Brian plucks it from her hands before she gets a chance to. She sticks her tongue out at him. He waves her off to go collect the rest of the ingredients, reminding her that the lovely ceramic pot labeled ‘sugar’ is in fact actually filled with gunpowder, and the sugar is in the cabinet to its right. Meanwhile he goes back to fussing over Small Brian.
The mixer isn’t starting up properly, it keeps stuttering and stopping whenever he tries to turn it on. Brian frowns, tapping the top of it with a metal finger. “Come on, love,” he says softly to Small Brian. “Don’t give up on me now. Not after all we’ve been through.”
“Raph,” Ivy speaks up from her place at the counter, her tone amused. “Brian’s talking to the appliances again.”
“If either of you make a joke comparing me to an appliance, I will kill you,” Brian warns both of them placidly, fiddling with Small Brian’s mechanisms until the machine whines and starts up properly. “Good lad,” Brian says, patting the appliance lovingly.
“I saw that,” he adds when he catches the look Ivy and Raphaella share over the counter. Raphaella rolls her eyes and gestures to him to come approve the ingredients she’s gathered. She hooks her arm through his and tips her head onto his shoulder while he checks each one off against the recipe.
“Excellent, that’s everything. Thank you.” he says, kissing her on the top of the head. “ Now we can begin.”
Raphaella, as always, is a very attentive student, listening well and asking questions when necessary. He suspects that she asks some of the questions just to listen to him talk about something he loves, and he adores her for it. They work very well together, the two of them, bantering back and forth as they do. Ivy chimes in on occasion, never taking her eyes off of her book.
Jonny strolls into the kitchen at one point, zeroing in on the chocolate chips scattered across the counter with a predator’s precision. As soon as he spots the first mate, Brian sweeps a knife into his hand and points it at him. “Out.”
Jonny backs away, throwing his hands up in surrender. He’s been killed enough times over messing around in the kitchen that he knows by now that the best thing to do is back off.
All in all, it’s a shockingly peaceful time. Brian hums to himself as he stirs ingredients together, and Raphaella goes through the cupboards, looking for something to play with. She reaches to open one in the back, and Brian notices too late which one it is. Raphaella stops, tilting her head in curiosity as she stares at the contents of the cupboard.
“Oh, Briiiiiiiiaaan?” she calls in a singsong voice, which is usually a sign that Brian is about to either be taken apart or assist in taking apart someone else. “What is this?”
Brian sighs and sets down the bowl, making his way slowly over to her. She raises an eyebrow at him as he gazes silently for a moment at the dismantled skeleton shoved into the back of the cupboard. “Those… are my bones.”
“Your… bones.”
“My bones.”
“Why…?”
Brian shrugs. “It’s not like I’m using them.”
“Right.” Raphaella studies the skeleton for a moment longer, before declaring, “I’m going to make soup out of them.”
Brian starts. “I’m sorry?”
“Your bones. I’m going to make soup out of them.”
“You are not.”
“Bone broth is a thing, isn’t it? Ivy?”
“It is,” Ivy confirms, casually turning a page.
Raphaella grins, gathering the bones into her arms. “Brian soup.”
“Brian s- no!”
“Brian soup Brian soup Brian soup Brian soup-”
“NO.”
“I thought the doc took your bones,” Ivy mentions, as Brian attempts to gently cajole his partner into giving him back said bones.
“I asked her to let me keep some of them,” Brian explains, tugging a rib out of Raph’s arms and dislodging about three more, which clatter to the floor unceremoniously. “They are mine, after all.”
“It’s unusually sentimental of me, I know,” he adds as Raphaella ducks under his arm, executing a perfect twirl to get the bones out of his reach, “I’m not quite sure why I wanted them.”
“For soup,” Raphaella quips, and Ivy snorts as Brian throws himself at the science officer. Raph yelps and scrambles away from him, and so begins an epic chase around the kitchen, Raph struggling to run away while clutching an armful of bones, the owner of said bones following a step behind her, playfully angry.
Brian doesn’t realize he’s started humming to himself until Raphaella turns to face him, jogging backwards, and asks what song it is.
“It’s a new one I’m working on,” he says, using her moment of distraction as an opportunity to trap her in the kitchen, the wraparound counter devoid of exits besides the one that he is currently standing in front of. “It’s called ‘Raphaella Please Don’t Make Soup Out of My Bones.’”
“I hate it,” Raphaella decides, still backing away. She’s almost hit the counter, and Brian smirks at his inevitable victory.
“You’ve barely heard it,” he argues, and begins humming louder. Raphaella’s back hits the counter, and Brian stops. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, he begins tapping his foot along to the tune.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Raphaella starts, but the other foot has already begun to move as well. Just tapping at first, tap tap tapping to a beat in Brian’s head, but the footwork quickly becomes more and more complicated as he eases into the song. Ivy picks it up quickly and starts tapping her fingers on the counter, taking charge of the beat while Brian continues humming the melody.
Raphaella shakes her head, refusing to let his shenanigans charm her, but Brian refuses to give up. He dances his way smoothly across the floor to her, finishing with an elegant twirl and an extended hand. Raphaella regards him with reluctant defeat, then rolls her eyes and takes Brian’s hand.
He waltzes her out into the middle of the floor, two steps forward, one step back. He spins her out, then spins her back in so they’re swaying with her back pressed to his chest. “You’re a master manipulator, you know,” she says to him. He smiles. She twirls him out, then twirls him back in and dips him, effortlessly holding up his mass of metal.
“I don’t remember this step of the cake recipe,” Ivy comments drily. She’s finally looking up from her book and is watching the two of them with an expression that is equal parts exasperated and amused.
“Which step, the bone soup or the dancing?” Brian returns, just as dry. Ivy is saved from having to respond by the arrival of Marius, who comes striding through the door like an invading general, arms spread wide in greeting.
“Well, if it isn’t my three favorite delinquents,” fae says, grinning like a maniac. “Dancing in the kitchen like- wait. Why is Raph in the kitchen?”
“I’m helping,” Raph says proudly, tossing her hair over her shoulder in a decidedly smug fashion as Brian collects his bones and returns them to their cupboard. “How can we help you?”
Marius pulls up a stool and takes a seat next to Ivy, scanning the pages of her book idly. “Tim stole my partner.”
“To be fair, Tim is also dating your partner,” Brian points out, handing the bowl of cake batter to Raph to finish stirring and put in the oven.
“Sure, but she’s being smug about it. So I’m pouting,” Marius replies, metal fingers tapping on the counter. “Oh, also: Tim wanted me to tell you. She/her for the time being.”
Brian nods, taking note of the pronouns. “Well, when you feel like speaking to Tim again, you can tell her that a cake is on its way.”
Marius raises an eyebrow. “You mean that cake that Raph just slipped something into behind your back?”
Honestly, Brian is surprised that this didn’t happen earlier. Slowly, he turns to Raphaella, who meets his eyes with a mischievous smirk as she slips an empty vial back into her pocket.
“What was in that?” he asks gently, not mad, just curious.
“Just a little something I whipped up,” Raphaella says, giving the batter an experimental stir. An odd squelching noise escapes from the bowl, and she quickly lets go of the wooden spoon as a dark tendril of… something curls up around it, possessive and hungry. “Oh. That’s interesting.”
“What the fuck was that?” Marius leans forward over the counter, curiosity evident on faer features.
Raphaella sets the bowl carefully on the floor and steps away from it, circling around it to Brian’s side. He gives her a questioning look, and she shrugs cheerfully, indicating that she has no idea whatsoever the effect of whatever she put in may be. With somewhat tired resignation, Brian steps forward to investigate what has become of his simple chocolate cake.
It’s… alive. The dark, viscous substance in the bowl has begun to writhe and bubble in a distinctively sentient manner, tendrils forming reaching out, looking to grab hold of something. The tendrils feel their way around tentatively, like a newborn animal learning to walk for the first time. The substance itself has an oddly familiar shimmer to it, the nearly oil-black surface revealing colors of every hue and nature when the light hits it.
“That looks like…” Marius frowns, clambering over the counter and dropping next to Brian as what was meant to be a cake slowly drags itself out of the bowl and onto the floor. “Oh, Raph, you didn’t!”
“Don’t touch it,” Brian advises as Marius crouches near the thing to get a better look.
Marius gives the Drumbot a scathing look. “I’m not a moron, Brian, I’m not going to-”
“Mare, get back,” Brian snaps, but it’s too late. The crawling blob has already reached the violinists foot and has clamped on tightly, wrapping its tentacles up and around his leg. He stares down at it in mild concern for a moment, then says: “Fuck.”
What happens next is hard to describe. The viscous thing sort of… stretches itself, until it covers Marius’ entire body, undulating and pulsing, then collapses in on itself, returning to its smaller form, leaving nothing but a slightly steaming metal arm left where the ship’s doctor once stood.
“What the hell did you do?” Brian demands, staring at the (now slightly larger) creation as it drags its way across the floor.
Raphaella doesn’t respond. “I think it ate faer,” she says instead. Then, “where is it going?”
Brian glances at the floor just in time to see the thing disappear into the vents. He lets out a cry, but it is much to late. It’s gone.
“Well,” Ivy says, staring with vague concern at the open vent. “Fuck.”
my official checklist of things that must be/are going to happen in my violinspector/lyf joins the mechs fic (Violins & Violent Things, the first chapter is up on ao3 now!)
aka: How Many Soft And/Or Cursed Headcanons Can I Fit Into One Piece of Writing?
