#dc#dc comics#batman#bruce wayne#dc universe#batfam#batfamily#dc fanart#dick grayson#tim drake
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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Hers ain't the only heart he's broken recently.
[Also on ff!]
💍🖊️🎶 for vicky and lisa!
our favorite girls...
💍 RING — does your oc have any piercings? do they want any (more) piercings?
both of them have their ears pierced! vicky i think probably has double earlobes; piercings historically got more popular in the US in the 60s/70s, i know, but culturally mexican(-american)s tend to pierce girls' ears pretty young (in my very subjective experience) LOL and i can see her getting a second set after she heads back to mexico
🖊️ BALLPOINT PEN — does your oc have any tattoos? do they want any (more) tattoos?
neither of them do but vicky sometimes thinks about it! again i think this is a time period thing... trust that if they were in contemporary times they'd probably both have some (lisa would be sentimental and get her loved ones' names; vicky would have a tramp stamp.)
🎶 MUSICAL NOTES — what type of music does your oc like? do they listen to music very often?
vicky will listen to anything, but she likes rock best! she has a soft spot for country and gets really into psychodelic genres in the 70s (this is probably not surprising). lisa likes classic rock too but she also listens to chicano soul and more spanish language things, like norteñas :)
thank you!!
from october prompts … 29 and 30 (yes those are both from the half of the list i wrote)
thank u friend!! here's some vicky <3
two-lane road
ritual
Vicky learns how to drive on a two-lane road less than a mile from the Shepard’s place the summer after she turns fifteen. Curly steals his big brother’s keys and drives them off, whooping, when she shows up in the early afternoon heat on a random day in June to complain that Lisa’s too busy with Steve Randle to bother teaching her.
It doesn’t go great.
“Stop stalling,” Curly says, when she tries to switch gears and nearly immediately comes to a stop. “You ain’t switching fast enough.”
“Shut up,” she says, and scowls. There’s sweat beading at her nape, and she can feel her hair frizz with every minute they’re out there, windows rolled down and the air tasting like electricity. There’ll be a storm tonight, Vicky knows it.
When she was real little, she used to be afraid of the lightning. Not the thunder, but those flashes that threw the dark into monstrous shapes. Her imagination would always run wild, at least until Lisa would sweep into her room with candles for them, an excuse to sit together and tell stories. It felt like church, sometimes, or some other ritual that they could call their own. Vicky can’t remember when the last time they did that was.
“Try again,” he orders. His arm is slung over her shoulder. The extra body heat makes her sweat even worse, but she’s not going to tell him to knock it off, and he probably knows it too.
“Someone’s driving this way,” Vicky says, when she notices a car driving down their way while the car stutters and jerks across their lane. If Curly accuses her of being scared, she’ll call him a liar.
“Switch gears,” he reminds her, and again they go, until finally she manages a half mile, smooth as anything.
They switch spots for Curly to drive back, no matter that it ain’t but a mile. Vicky tells him she can handle the busier streets of the neighborhood, but he laughs right in her face, no matter that he lets his hand rest on her knee the whole ride back.
“Same time tomorrow?” he asks her, like it could be a habit, the way her and Lisa together used to be.
She smiles, knowing it’s the same killer smile that gets men falling over themselves for her big sister, and says yes.
hey! i am literally obsessed with the bernal sisters omg they have just captured my heart, esp vic and pony :'))) I would love to hear more about them during like highschool and idk if you're still taking requests but I'd love to see the two of them getting all dressed up and going to prom or smth idk
hello!! i am not taking requests rn but i miss the bernal girls too, so here they are with my two-bit sister OFC, izzy <3
“That’s a lotta leg,” Lisa hears Izzy say. Five words is all it takes to have her turning back out into the hallway towards Vic’s room.
“Don’t be a prude,” she hears Vic drawl, “you’ve seen me in way worse.”
“I’ve seen you naked, had to wash my eyes out after.”
Vic’s laugh is so bright, Lisa thinks, but that doesn’t stop her from barging in.
She sees Izzy first—doing her makeup at the fancy vanity that Vic got for her fifteenth birthday, red hair vibrant in the afternoon light. From what Lisa can tell, the girl’s gone to town on a blue eyeshadow. It looks nice. She turns to Vicky, ready to tell her off for whatever teeny tiny get-up she’s no doubt sporting, but stops short.
It feels like it’s the first time she’s ever seen Vicky: standing tall, eyes lined with dark liner, lashes long and curled. Her hair falls like a mane over her shoulders, a thin pendant around her neck glinting in the sun that spills through the half-open blinds. She smiles and her teeth look so white against the deep burgundy of her lipstick. She's wearing a long black dress with matching gloves past her elbows.
She doesn’t look anything like the twelve year old Lisa used to haul around town in that old Pontiac. She looks all grown up.
“D'you like it?” Vic says, bright. “I feel like Audrey Hepburn.”
“Pretty sure she don't have the dress slit to her hip in Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Izzy teases, but Vicky just shakes her head, still smiling.
She says, “Whadaya think, Lis?”
And Lisa could say something about that damned slit—up past her knee, mid-thigh—but all that comes out is, “Don’t forget I’m takin' pictures of y’all,” a smile on her face, too.
23, 24
digging into my old bernal lore <3 thank u
poetry asks: 12 :)
u know exactly what u did here… also this is completely original fiction so <3 content warning for very light implied / referenced sa (first referenced in “if only”) in the first paragraph!
SNAKE BRIDE
you turn thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and things start to change. you notice boys first, and then lisa leaves, and then boys notice you right back. some of them do things you won’t be able to think about for a long time; none of them love you the way you want them to.
in letters to your sister, you tell her stories. they never seem to end, and you fill page after page as if writing a diary, desperate for her to recognize what you’re not telling her. if she ever figures it out, she doesn’t say, and instead, the year you turn eighteen, lisa comes home and says she’s leaving again all in the same breath. she asks you to come with her but only after the announcement, and it feels like an afterthought, so you run off once she’s distracted by her man again.
instead you find yourself in matamoros, where your aunts linger after your own father left. when he lived at the border it was as a petty criminal, smuggling illicit goods northward. when lisa was born, he named his boss her godfather; that you run into this godfather’s employee soon after you arrive in this same city is the worst kind of fate.
his name is nico, he says. in a few years you’ll want to laugh at how easily you fell for it: the flirtatious attitude, the slicked back hair like the white boys used to wear, thinking they were the ones who made it up. his eyes aren’t green but they’re close, a hazel that the sun transforms into whatever color you miss. sometimes you think he’s a shape-shifter, sneaky, blending in perfectly no matter where he takes you on dates, whether they’re in nice restaurants in the city you were named after or to a party on someone’s ranch.
when he smiles you feel like the only thing he’s thinking about, and the worst part is it’s true, but that’s only in the moment.
“tell me a story,” he says every time he comes by to see you, and you do until he loses interest in your words and reinvests it in your mouth instead. dozens of stories half-started, unfinished, and it feels almost like you’re living life on repeat.
september leads to october leads to nearly three seasons together. the week after you turn nineteen he takes you shopping and tells you to pick out the biggest ring you want.
“you wanna get married, chula?” he asks you, and you don’t know where to look: his eyes flashing in the afternoon light or the massive rings you never thought to even fantasize about. you try not to think about how he seems to want to eat you alive.
you think there’s a story about that somewhere—a bride telling stories to her snake husband for a thousand nights. you wonder if you should have taken notes, but instead of thinking too hard about it, you tell yourself you deserve this (even if you don’t quite know what this is).
ok posting only bc @spectatorials and @blossominribcage both wanted to see vic n pony being cute 🤧 maybe i’ll write them getting a dog next
“Baby,” Vicky says, and I look up just in time for her to crawl into my lap. I put the book I was reading aside, some cheap romance that’ll take me a few days at most to get through (and that’s being generous), to put my hands on her hips.
“Yeah?” I say, but she just smiles before leaning in to kiss the corner of my mouth. I try to catch her in a real kiss, and she’s half-grinning when I finally manage it. I pull away and her eyelids flutter open; I couldn’t look away even if I wanted to, not that I would.
We’ve been married nine years and together for three more than that, but every time I look at her it feels like the first time I’m really seeing her. The guys at work joke about the ball and chain but I’ve never found the comments funny—I got a wife and kids at home I’d take over anything, even all the riches in the world. Vicky’s as crazy about me as I am about her; that she’s easy on the eyes is an extra treat, but maybe I’m just biased (though I don’t think I am).
She curls her arms around my neck, about as close to me as she can manage at the moment, and I press a kiss over her cheekbone.
“What’s going on,” I say, but then I kiss that spot just under her ear that she likes, distracted by the smell of her perfume and how she feels in my arms.
“I just wanna say hi,” she says, tilting her head so I can keep kissing her neck, which I do gladly, her breath catching. Soon enough we’re necking on the couch like we’re teenagers, which is bad behavior considering that one of the kids might get up for a glass of water only to find Mom and Dad being gross. I can’t even kiss my own wife goodbye in the mornings without one of them making a disgusted face at us; I’m not sure how that managed to be the worst thing about their life, but I think we’re doing pretty well if it is.
It’s late enough that the three of them—Chris just turned eight, Ali’s five in November, and Marty’s two—should all be asleep. They like crawling into bed with us on weekend mornings, digging their elbows and knees into all me and Vic’s soft parts, but they’re good sleepers unless one of them is feeling sick.
All that means is that me and Vicky are having a good time entertaining ourselves, one of her hands slipping down to rub over my chest. Me, I’ll admit my grip is slipping up her thigh, and I’m just about to get her pinned to the couch when she tilts her head away and says my name, her voice breathless.
I pause, still holding her close to me, and say, “This alright?”
“Yeah,” she says, and rubs our noses together. Affection unfurls in my chest; I love this woman like I’ve loved no one else, overwhelming sometimes in its ferocity. She smiles at me again and I feel love drunk on it. “I wanna ask you somethin’.”
“Okay,” I say, curious, and she adjusts herself a little bit in my lap so that it’s not as obvious she was trying to climb me just now. She keeps her arms around my neck and shoulders, though, and when she sets those dark eyes on me I realize she’s trying to trick me into something. Last time it was a family trip down to Matamoros for New Years that had us making a pitstop in Waco because Ali decided to rub saliva-soaked cheerios into Marty’s hair. We got to Austin late, which is where we were meant to catch up with the Randles, and Lisa was annoyed; this was made worse when we all finally got to Mexico and their aunts started asking why both the girls didn’t have more kids.
I always thought three was the perfect number, and I stand by that opinion, even if the only one of our kids who was planned is Ali, who’s also the only one who inherited my eyes. Chris and Marty look like their mama when they’re trying to get their way, and it takes everything in me not to give in like I tend to when Vicky tries it. I’m nervous about what she’s fixing to ask me.
She says, “You ever thought about havin’ another baby?”
It takes me a second to comprehend what she asked. I say, “What,” and then when she makes her eyes go bigger, “You been talking to your aunts again, haven’t you.”
She scowls, says, “No, I haven’t,” and I’m even more confused. She presses herself closer to me, which I’d never complain about, and says, “I’ve just been thinkin’.”
“About babies? We got three.”
“Pony,” she says, half-scolding, “Marty’s two already.”
“She’s a baby,” I say, even if privately I think all the kids are still babies. I remember how small Chris was when I first held him, after weeks of being stuck abroad. Ali I was able to watch come into the world, which was a little traumatizing if I’m being honest, and Marty still likes to be carried everywhere despite her perfect little steps. I squeeze Vic’s hips, say, “We’re barely potty training.”
“She’s doin’ her best,” Vicky says, like I’ve insulted our own kid, and then pouts a little. “You don’t think about babies?”
“I think about ours,” I say, “and how fast they go through clothes. I think Chris needs new shoes.”
“Don’t buy an expensive pair, he’ll need another one for school in a couple’a months,” she says, automatic, and then shakes her head, “but that ain’t what I mean. I’m talkin’ havin’ another one.”
“You want another baby?” I find it hard to believe. Vic was forty-one weeks, five days when Marty finally decided she was ready to show up, and that was after we tried speeding up the process with some adult-time. Something about making love to trigger birth made it harder, go figure.
“Don’t you?” She fixes those pretty eyes on me again, and I can’t help but melt a little. “We’re so good at it.”
“At making babies?”
“Now you’re just tryna be an asshole,” she says, and she’s right, but when I lean in to kiss her cheek she lets me. “You know I mean bein’ parents.”
“Yeah,” I say, “but that don’t mean we gotta keep having kids.”
She pouts. “You don’t wanna have more babies with me?”
“Aw, Vic, don’t say it like that,” I tell her, wrapping my arms more securely, “I just mean, what do we need more for? We got the perfect family already.”
“Brown-nose,” she says, and cups my face, gaze soft. “You don’t think about it?”
“Not really,” I say, which is a stretch. I’ve got a pleasantly full plate with the three we’ve got, after all, besides the whole journalist gig and being good to Vicky. I got everything I need already. “Life’s real nice the way it is.”
“I think about it,” she admits, rubbing her thumb over my cheekbone. Her expression is sweet, faraway like she’s imagining a newborn in her arms, “I think we could do it.”
“’Course we could,” I say, “but that don’t mean we should. We got just enough space for the five of us here. Four bedrooms, a nice yard. We’d need a bigger house.”
“The kids could share,” she tries, but grimaces at whatever face I make. “You and Soda used to.”
“Vic,” I say, because we both know that was different. She sighs. I say, soothing, “Three’s a good number. We get to spend time with them and with each other. You wanna start all over, with the not-sleeping and the crying and everything else? We’d still have three other kids to take care of, too. That don’t sound too fun.”
“I guess not,” she says, but she’s still frowning. She tries, cajoling now, “I just think it’d be nice…”
“You want me to send a fourth kid to college?” I try, and she rolls her eyes.
She smiles a little, though. “Why’re you actin’ like I don’t got a job, too?”
“I’m just saying,” I start, but she shakes her head, still looking amused.
“I guess you’re the boss here, payin’ all the bills, huh,” she says, “I just cook and clean and take care of the house—”
“Vic, we have a chore chart—”
“And here you are, tellin’ me you don’t want me to have another of your babies, I guess you ain’t that into me no more—”
“Vicky, for the love of—” I can’t help but laugh, tilting us over so that I can pin her to the couch like I wanted to earlier. She’s giggling while I lace our fingers together, pressing my nose to her jaw and breathing in more of her perfume. “That’s not what I said.”
“I know,” she says, and when I pull back to look at her, her expression is soft. “I just. I think about it. I want it.”
“Yeah,” I say, rubbing our noses together like she did, “but…”
She sighs. “We shouldn’t,” she says, “I know. Life is real good how it is. We got time together and the kids are happy and all the bills are paid. I just want you to think about it a little, ‘s all.”
“Sure,” I say, and let go of one of her hands so I can tuck her hair behind her ear. “We can talk about it more, later, but. That’s what I’m thinking, alright?”
“Mhm,” she says, “yeah. That’s fair.”
“Anything else you wanna ask?”
“Nah,” she says. She smiles, a little sad, before it tilts up at the corner of her mouth. “I wasn’t just tryna trick you earlier, though. With the kissin’.”
This woman. “So you were being sneaky.”
She shifts underneath me, hooks her leg over my hip with a grin. “Wanna head to bed, baby? Promise it ain’t that time of the month.”
“Vicky,” I say, scolding, but lean in to kiss her anyway. I’m a simple man when it comes down to it, and my pretty wife laughing at me won’t stop that, giggling like we haven’t been together as long as we have with the responsibilities to match. In the morning we’ll talk about it more, or maybe shelve it for a weekend discussion, but for now I’ve got my girl to focus all my attention on, and life is as good as my wildest dreams.
i wish you would write a fic about the time pony breaks vic's heart 🥺 not bc i want her to be sad but bc the little dramas are the dramas i live for
i feel like i did not articulate his reasoning well but :( think of specters!
The drive back to the Bernal place is quiet. Awkward. Pony doesn’t dare glance at Vicky, though he can see her from his peripheral. Back straight, hands folded in her lap. She needed to pick up her graduation gown and he offered to drive her. He doesn’t have much going on these days—he’s a stock boy at the grocery store right now. He’s hoping to get back to school in the fall, but he’s still waiting to hear back from OU. He thinks he’d do better there.
It’s in the car afterwards, in the parking lot of Rogers, that Vicky turns to him and says what he’s known to be true for awhile: that she misses him, that she cares for him, that she wants to be with him. She was so earnest—same hypnotizing dark eyes as always, and for a second he let himself do what he, too, had wanted to do for so long: kiss her back when she leaned in.
But then he remembered. He remembered another stolen kiss, the summer he turned eighteen; he remembered the secret ones he’s shared with all sorts of people since leaving home; he remembered what it was like bump knees and shoulders while they drove around alone and with friends alike. He could see her at thirteen and fifteen and seventeen all over again, the way her smile has changed but her eyes and hair and laugh are all the same. All the things that ever happened can turn from memory to unwelcome reminder in seconds, and as he kissed her he thought, I’m not ready for this, and had to pull away and tell her, I can’t.
She hasn’t said anything since. Instead she sits, too quiet, so unlike herself that Pony’s not sure he didn’t imagine all of it. When he pulls to a stop in front of her house she rushes to get out of the car, but he says, Vicky, and she pauses. Her eyes are hurt and angry and beautiful as ever. He could take it back. He could finally have this, if he really wanted.
Instead he says, I’m sorry, and she flounces up the steps to her house without a word. It will take him an embarrassingly long time to realize it’s the last time he’ll see her for awhile.
