I Love Headlock So Incredibly Much And It Reminds Me Of Gangle So I Just HAD To Animate This

i’m only on chapter 17 but i love this book sm.

spoilers under the cut

i love the way Lancali uses personification throughout the book. Not only does it add some awesome imagery, but also because it TIES SO WELL WHEN YOU REALIZE WHO SAM IS AS A CHARACTER!

Sam, who holds no gender or name, comes to people in the form others need them to be. watching in the background as people suffered, people being hit with that feeling that they met before. Sam is a personification of hope.

time, death, and disease are things intangible, but are personified by the characters who defy these notions, taking back a life that was stolen from them.

and i absolutely love how the original Sam, boy Sam, also played around with this personification. in one of the chapters, we see him greeting every inanimate object as if it was alive, greeting the wall, greeting a door, playing pretend. it’s only when he gives narrator Sam a name that brings them to life

so far, this book has been really cool! i love the character interactions, the author’s writing is absolutely beautiful, you can tell there is genuine emotion behind every page and that just makes me more sad

every time i end a chapter my mind is like “oh yeah, that’s a good place to end off.” only to remember THERES STILL MORE😭

this book has me in a chokehold to the point i’m scared to see how it goes, because apparently the characters DIE? (is this what i get for spoiling myself by watching the author’s tiktok’s?)

anyways, thank you for coming to my messy book rant

“just be normal” i think your normal is very different from my normal !

this actually makes me so happy

THERES TOO MANY CUTIES IN THIS WORLD OMG

OHSHITOHSHITOHSIT

but fr why is bentley’s powers actually so terrifying?? why am i just realizing that NOW??

Project: Killcode

batfamily + oc insert

tw: gore?

wanna read more? here’s the table of contents!

want to read the first fic in the hundred days series so you understand what’s going on here? here it is!

its kinda short but THIS SCENE IS SO INTENSE

part thirty-six

❝ DEFENSELESS ❞

MONDAY — AUGUST 6 — 6:44AM

BENTLEY DIDN’T HEAR OR SEE THE SECRET KEEPER AGAIN.

He stayed in Bellamy’s room for almost the entirety of Saturday and Sunday, and when Monday came around, he begrudgingly got himself ready for class in the wee hours of the morning. Asten didn’t talk to him. He didn’t talk to Asten.

He just… didn’t think about anything. Ignoring his problems usually worked…

When the seven of them went to breakfast, the cafeteria was oddly emptier than usual. But they also went a little earlier than they typically did, so Bentley didn’t think much about it. Varian bounced around like the social butterfly he was, everyone talked, (except Bentley and Asten) and it was normal.

And then, when they went to first period, it suddenly became kinda not normal. Because his and Koa’s English classroom only had about half the students it was supposed to, leaving lots of desks completely empty and the room much quieter than normal.

The two of them took their seats in the back of the class, eyes bouncing across the empty chairs.

“Where is everybody?” Bentley questioned. Tyler was still there, (because of course he’d be.) and probably about a dozen other kids, if his estimating skills were accurate. It was so few they could probably put one student at each table and still not have one at them all.

“I think a lot of kids are sick,” Koa shrugged, sitting down next to him and dropping his bag on the floor. “From what I’ve heard, whatever’s going around is super contagious.”

Bentley cringed. “I hope we don’t get it. I’ve heard it’s rough.”

“Same,” Koa replied. “Some of mine and Var’s friends have been sick as dogs for, like, an entire week. They said one of the nurses comes to their room to check on them everyday. Awkward.”

“Why don’t they just send them home?” Bentley questioned.

“Most of these kids don’t have homes to be sent back to,” Koa replied, and Bentley didn’t say anything. “We’re some of the lucky ones.”

A moment of quiet passed, before Bentley muttered: “Oh.”

“Yeah. You’d be shocked how many parents decide they don’t want their kids once they start to show their powers,” Koa mumbled, plopping his binder on the desk with a whack.

Bentley wondered if that was what happened to Koa — he’d said he lived with Artimi; He never spoke about his parents in the slightest. In fact, the only one of their roommates that ever talked about their parents was Varian. (And Bentley guessed himself, too… but did it even count if Bruce wasn’t actually his dad?)

Bentley flinched when a piece of crumpled up paper whapped him in the side of the head, falling onto their worktop with a quiet sound. When he glanced up, Tyler was smirking at him.

With a brief inhale, Bentley grabbed the paper and un-crumbled it to the best of his ability, glancing down at the words scrawled across it.

How long should I wait until I tell the whole school about your overnight hangout sesh with Chloe Singh, Redwood’s biggest whore? I bet everyone will wonder what happened when you two disappeared together…

Bentley stared at the words, dragging his eyes across the letters one last time before he looked back up. Tyler had this smug look on his face like he’d done something really cool, and he wiggled his eyebrows in Bentley’s direction.

How had he figured that out? Bentley had only told Asten, and Asten didn’t know what girl it was. Chloe said she hadn’t told anyone and forced her roommates into silence. Did she lie to him, too? Or did her roommates talk anyways?

Of all the people who could’ve found out…

Bentley crumpled the paper back up and shoved it in his blazer pocket. He felt Koa’s eyes lingering on him, but he didn’t look over — he just looked at Tyler and then down at his desk.

That was all he could think about until the end of the class period, when the bell rang and he and Koa went out in the hallway to head to their next class. Maybe if he straight up sprinted, he could-

“Hey, Wayne!”

Bentley groaned dramatically, turning with a patented eyeroll to look behind him. Tyler was catching up with them, a dorky grin on his face like he had some good news to share. Bentley was not in the mood for him. He was so not in the mood for him that he almost thought about literally killing Tyler on his approach, but he assumed that wouldn’t be moral.

“I am not dealing with you today, Abbott,” Koa called over his shoulder, barely sparing a glance at him.

Bentley saw Tyler’s eyes narrow, and he spat: “Then it’s a good thing I wasn’t talking to you, asshole.”

Bentley turned back around and kept walking — so Tyler grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around, forcing their gazes to lock. Bentley jerked his shoulder out of his grip and huffed loudly, the familiar sound of water in pipes gracing his eardrums.

Tyler looked down at him like he was ready to give him hell, but suddenly, his face changed a little. “Don’t lose your shit, test tube meta. Put those eyes away.”

Bentley scowled at him. “What are you talking about?”

Tyler lifted his pointer finger to the center of Bentley’s forehead and shoved him back a step, and he suddenly had to refrain from drowning him in his own blood. “When you get all pissed, your eyes start glowing.”

Bentley just glared at him.

“That’s how I knew you made my drink explode. Those stupid blue light-bulbs on your face,” Tyler snickered. “It’s a dead giveaway if I’ve ever seen one.”

Was that how everyone always knew when he was listening? His eyes started glowing? He’d always wondered how everyone knew when to ask what he was hearing…

“I have no interest in talking to you right now,” Bentley muttered, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Good for you; I don’t care. But your little bodyguard can go ahead and get lost,” Tyler replied, glancing over Bentley’s shoulder at what he assumed was Koa.

Bentley glanced backwards at him; He was giving Tyler another death glare. “Just go ahead, I’ll be right behind you.”

Koa’s seafoam green eyes flicked between him and Tyler a few times, before finally, he turned and made his way out of the building behind the final straggling students.

Tyler sighed. “Now that we have the hall to ourselves…”

“How did you find out about me and Chloe?” Bentley grumbled, tightening his crossed arms over his chest. Tyler laughed; literally laughed.

“You know all my favorite subjects, Wayne,” He shook his head with a smile. “Let’s just say a little birdy told me.”

The word birdy only worked to piss Bentley off more. “Well, if you know that much, then you know exactly what happened. Or, should I say, exactly what didn’t happen.”

Tyler shrugged. “I do. But that doesn’t mean everyone else will once the rumor spreads like wildfire. Soon everyone will be talking about your little rendezvous with Chloe. And rumors typically get more drastic as they go on… I’d sure hate for it to get passed onto administration; Maybe even down the grapevine to your dear friends in Gotham? Wouldn’t that be something?”

“What do you want, Tyler? Other than to inflate your ego until you can’t fit it on campus anymore?”

Tyler snickered, his eyes bouncing across Bentley’s face, glowing with sheer arrogance. “Who said I want anything other than to watch you squirm?”

Something… moved, in the back of Bentley’s mind. Like something had clicked into place without him having to think about it, like a thought, a fact had just been dropped directly into his brain from somewhere else. A manageably dull pang of pain came with it, throbbing momentarily on the base of his skull.

He blinked. “You’re jealous of me.”

How did he know that? He wasn’t sure, but somehow he knew it was correct. 

Tyler’s expression changed very quickly from amused to cold, and angry. “Why the hell would I be jealous of you? You’re a little shrimp.”

Bentley shrugged. “Maybe because I managed to befriend all the girls you can only pull when you’re dreaming,” He replied, eyes traveling over Tyler’s frame -- his fists were clenched by his sides, and Bentley suspected that he was about to be punched or something. “Just by being a decent human being. Something you’re obviously incapable of doing.”

Tyler made a sound akin to a groan of frustration, and in an instance, vines came shooting down the hallway mid-air from one of the exit doors. The green, slither-y things latched onto Bentley’s ankles and wrists in a death grip, and he gasped lightly when they jerked him off the floor and up into the air, tugging all of his appendages in different directions like they were about to rip him apart -- just enough to cause a little pain at each joint.

“Test me, you little bitch,” Tyler growled, and the vines tightened enough to probably make Bentley bruise. He could hear the water in the pipes, Tyler’s blood pulsing through his veins, the liquid inside the vines keeping them alive.

Tyler was glaring at Bentley like his eyes would sprout lasers that would kill him on the spot.

Bentley glanced up at the vines, tugging against them to no avail -- all it did was claw at his skin and make it hurt worse. The vines were so strong they hardly moved when he wiggled against them. “Let me go.”

“No, I don’t think I will. It’s time you learn to respect your elders,” Tyler replied. A vine sprouted out of virtually nowhere and slithered around Bentley’s head, looping over his mouth and making it impossible to speak. His head was forced perfectly forward, and he tried to squirm again, but the vines didn’t budge at all -- not a part of him moved an inch.

He focused hard on the water in the pipes, and he felt it come pouring out of all the faucets in the nearest bathroom a few halls away, accompanied by a loud gushing sound.

“Ah-ah-ah,” Tyler tutted. Bentley tried to make the water move through the bathroom door, he couldn’t -- there was a wall of vines in the way. He couldn’t bring it up through the ceiling or down through the floor or through the walls without damaging the school building. “You can’t swim your way out of this one, Wayne.”

The vines around Bentley’s wrists started to tighten purposefully, and spin, rubbing his skin raw in a matter of seconds -- he might’ve cried out if the vines weren’t over his mouth, but he couldn’t, so he just grimaced and made a muted noise at the unquenchable burning it caused. 

“I’m going to make you wish you were never born,” Tyler grumbled, a dark smile twisting up his lips. The vines that were around Bentley’s head began to sprout smaller ones, and a few of them forced his mouth open and crawled into his throat, making it almost impossible to breathe. He choked on them but he couldn’t cough, couldn’t do anything other than try really hard to breathe through his nose. His eyes watered from the silent choking until the reflex tears fell down his face.

“Aw, don’t cry, Wayne,” Tyler mocked in a high-pitched voice, cocking a brow at him. “It’s only your airway. You can survive without it for… well, eight minutes, maybe?”

Bentley could hear his own heart pounding, almost double the pace of Tyler’s, and the vines in his throat made him gag. He tried to force the water between the vines that were in the bathroom doorway, but he couldn’t -- they were wound too tightly.

He couldn't breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He could hear the water in the pipes and the dew on the grass and the blood in Tyler’s veins pounding, pounding, pounding-

Tyler’s face suddenly lost every arrogant, amused expression, and Bentley heard his heart keep pounding and pounding and pounding until it was beating way too fast. Tyler staggered backwards slightly and brought a hand up to his nose -- when he pulled it away, it was bloody. 

“What the hell are you doing to me?” He grumbled, panting like he’d been running a marathon. Bentley only watched as blood surfaced in his ears and started to pour down the sides of his face, and he grabbed at his shirt where his heart was. “Stop it! I can’t- can’t breathe.”

Bentley felt the vines inside of him double in size, completely closing off his airway. 

Tyler was trying to knock him out.

At the complete absence of breathing, Bentley panicked -- Tyler started blinking rapidly, and tears of blood started to run down his cheeks. 

“Stop it! You’re going to kill me!”

You’re going to kill me!

He remembered the last time someone said that to him -- it was her. The Secret Keeper, when she had him hanging by a noose off the edge of a building, when she had crimson running from her ears and her eyes and her nose. Her. A criminal. A supervillain. A murderer.

Tyler wasn’t any of those things. He was just a kid.

Bentley focused on him again just in time to see him hack up a mouthful of blood all over the floor.

So he stopped.

He forced the sound of the water to fade from his mind, he slowed Tyler’s blood back to its normal pace, and the water in the bathroom climbed back up into the sinks. He focused and focused and focused until everything went quiet again -- until he was the same defenseless Bentley he had been before he'd gotten superpowers at all.

Tyler continued to cough for a few moments before he regained his breath, spitting on the floor a pink-ish, bloody saliva. He used the sleeve of his blazer to wipe the red away from his eyes.

He looked up at Bentley, shocked, then down at the blood all over himself and the floor. “You just tried to kill me!” He shouted. Bentley tried to focus on him, but he couldn’t -- the lack of air was starting to make his lungs feel like they were on fire, and everything around him was swimming in and out of focus.

Another shout from Tyler: “You just tried to kill me!” Was the last thing Bentley heard before the world faded to black.

Should he have continued to defend himself?

--

tag list that never works lmao

@fleur-alise @sarcopterygiian @gayboss-too-close-to-the-sun

@xiaonothere

@skylathescholarly @flyrobinflyy

MY BREAD WAS BURNT INTO A CRISP!! | Ft: Kitchen Wizard And Player

Hi 👋 my 🍉 dear ⚘supporters ❤

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This photo was taken to the remains and ruins of our house. Nothing has been left for my family to live in nor a source to live on. Now we are living in small tents ⛺ in streets lacking all means of a house.

We re leading unbelievably difficult circumstances due to this injust war on Gaza. Also, We are painfully suffering from the bad living conditions because we lack all necessities and essentials of our daily life. Food, clean drink water, medicine 💊, health care , and other necessities have become scarce and unattainable and this adds to our sufferings and hardship.

a photo taken to show how harsh and tough our life is. hours of waiting in queue to get some gallons of water for the daily use. This is driving us crazy and insane .

What adds to our tragedy is that we wait long hours just to get a little water that can't meet our daily use.

It is also sad to have a sister suffering from chronic diseases such as bone atrophy , yet no health care exists.

so I am asking you my dear donors to help us get out of this painful tragedy and hardship. You can help my family by donating whatever you can or by sharing 🙏 my messages so that my goal can be reached sooner. Your help is essential for people in dire needs and awkward situations.

yours

i wish they sold moon cakes in my area

why am i crying at 6 in the morning

Project: Killcode Drabbles

tw: mentions of major character death, angst, cursing, maccreadysbaby’s first f bomb im so sorry

wanna read the extended fic? here’s the table of contents!

⚠️ THIS IS NOT PART OF BENTLEY’S MAIN STORYLINE, THIS IS THE NEXT SEGMENT OF BENTLEY’S ROBIN AU CREATED HERE

I’m so excited about this andnksndnxjxjd

JASON WAS GETTING REALLY SICK OF THE ANGRY BROODING FAMILY BULLSHIT.

Yeah, that was rich coming from him, the king of all bullshit angry and brooding. But it was different this time, somehow. Different because it wasn’t just him who was off the rails; because now he — Jason Todd: appointed-psycho, murderer, and actual crime lord — was the only one who gave a single shit about maintaining at least a semblance of togetherness within their bad excuse for a family. 

His job was to be the black sheep — it always had been; that was who he was. That was Jason. That was what he was and what he would always be.

And now, living in a time when it was backwards, like they were all black sheep or something, was only working to piss him off all the way to hell and back.

Life had been good. Hell, life had been the best it had ever been for any of them. So good Jason often wondered if he’d wake up in the cave dressed as robin with a mortal wound only to be told he was hopped up on the good drugs. Like a nasty routine of disbelief and pinching himself to prove he was real, life was… life had been… amazing.

And then Dickwing went and got himself killed.

(Yes, Jason would always be passive aggressive about it to keep everything else that came with those thoughts at bay.) 

After that, the world fell off of whatever pinpoint it balanced on, the celestial energies of the stars or whatever that kept life going the way it was supposed to vanished out of thin air, and all the remaining Waynes collectively became a not-so-merry band of living, breathing disasters. 

Bruce had turned back into the man he was a long time ago. This cold, distant presence that lurked in the shadows of his own home and carried an aura around menacing enough that it could probably scare off a pack of rabid wolves. It was strange — the change between the man Bruce was and the man he had reverted to. He gave up the cowl and handed it off to Tim with nothing more than an exasperated sound and a look of distaste. He handed off everything he was in a moment's notice with no remorse, without a single thought toward the people that needed him, or the empire he built, or the morals he put in place. It was almost frightening, in a way. Jason would rather him be a ball of absolute hellfire and rage as opposed to the cold, absent, shadowy figure he’d become, because at least hellfire and rage was something he could work with.

Alas, Red Hood found it in his own best interest to stay the hell away from him. 

Tim was also changing, though into something both new and old. With the name of Batman now looming over his head, he became nothing more than an archive for casefies and a living, breathing machine. He drowned himself in work, nightlife work and WE work, just to ignore everything else. And yeah, the kid was good at being Batman — he was good at getting the jobs done, at hammering out plans and calculating routes and taking down rings and disarming threats and all the things Gotham would always need. Scarily good at it. He always had been, but now, he did it, not out of passion, but necessity. He did it as a routine, a ritual, to keep himself distracted. Yeah, Jason saw something new in him, but he also saw that kid from Bristol who told all the adults to screw off because he could take care of himself, of that teenager who worked himself sick at Wayne Enterprises just because he knew he could. A volatile kind of self-hatred-fueled independence they’d worked so hard to train out of him. 

He didn’t rest. He didn’t eat. He didn’t talk to anyone. If he ever crashed, it was in the cave where he got a few measly hours of sleep, and all the worrying signs of the habits Tim had long since overcome were all back in full force. Isolation, dissociation, anorexia, depression, and a slew of new ones, too.

And why the hell was Jason the only one that could work himself up enough to give a damn?

Cass vanished. Stephanie went off on her own to think. Duke went to be with his uncle, because his uncle had common sense, not a popular trait among Wayne’s. Barbara retreated to her own family. Alfred was still around, and still doing what he always did, perhaps the one taking Dick’s death in the most normal, typical way. He didn’t dare leave the manor, though the change and grief and age and stress of everyone else was starting to catch up to him, and nobody but Jason cared to talk to him or ask him anything anymore. He was getting less lively, less determined.

Of all the family, though, Damian’s reaction to Dick's death was the one that surprised him the most. The kid was close to him — everyone knew it. They’d Batmanned and Robinned together and everything. Jason had mostly expected him to go into a fit of homicidal rage — y’know, fall back to his roots, like they all had, but he didn’t. He did the complete opposite. 

He was only seventeen, and the day Dick died was the only time Jason had ever seen him act his age. Instead of murdering everyone in his immediate vicinity, or maiming his family to expel his grief, Damian had…

Cried.

Which was kind of scary, if Jason were being honest, because it was Damian. Damian didn’t just do that kind of thing. But while everyone else was busy reliving old habits and turning into nineties emo boys, Damian just… cried. And cried. And grieved. And cried. And the world was falling apart and Bruce stopped being Batman and Tim took on the cowl and Damian just cried and of course Jason was the only one who gave a damn then, too. And maybe he was in the wrong for not doing anything, or trying to help. But nobody else had done anything, either, and Jason wasn't exactly in a stable enough headspace at that time to play Dickiebird.

Then, Damian passed the mantle of Robin down to the youngest Wayne in circulation.

Bentley.

Who also had a reaction adverse to what Jason had expected. He’d expected Bentley to be the one to cry and seek comfort and fall into pieces on the floor in front of everybody, because that's how Bentley was. Bentley always broke and fell apart and spilled the truth and cried in people's arms because that's what was healthiest for him, because that's what the kid needed. (Jason was starting to think maybe thats what they all needed, really.) But Bentley didn’t do that. Bentley hadn’t shed a single tear for Dick Grayson since he got the news -- not in front of anyone, anyway. Bentley didn’t break in the way Jason was prepared for him to.

Instead of shattering, Bentley became the most insufferable little shit of the whole damn century.

If Jason thought Damian or Tim were bad, a sixteen-year-old Dick Grayson-less Bentley was a whole new level of bad. He’d sort of become a mix of them all, like he’d adopted the worst of their traits and turned himself into some kind of nightmarish Wayne family chimera.

He took on Tim’s reliance on work to keep himself busy. He took on the disassociating. He took on the constant rage that had always boiled under Jason’s skin. He took on the coldness Bruce carried around with him. He took on Damian’s newfound hopelessness, this sort of empty feeling that was almost tangible anytime Jason got within a thirty foot radius of either of them. He slid back into the Puppeteer way of being cryptic and detached. And on the worst days, the days where he was notably thinking of Dick, or the days he was having it rough working with Tim, he…

He took on the way Dick used to fall silent and just stay that way for a while. Which irked Jason to the moon and back at the same time it dredged up feelings he didn’t want to feel ever again. Feelings so strong it reminded him very unpleasantly of the phone call he’d gotten from Bruce telling him that Dick had…

Anyways, what else would Bentley do, right? He couldn’t blame the kid. They were his first family and now one of them was dead. Jason was surprised he was upright enough to do anything at all.

He thought that Dick’s happy-go-lucky, loving memory would help them heal. Hell, the only thing Dick would want them to do was keep going. He could nearly hear him saying it -- for them to move on, to keep going for him, to live their lives to the fullest and have families and have futures because that's what he would want. Jason knew that's what he would want. Dick had told him that on a few occasions when Jason found himself too close to the edge of a roof, and of course, Jason’s fatal flaw was clinging to the words of Dick Grayson at the vitalest of times.

And now, nine months after the death of their oldest brother, the Waynes were still a skeleton of a family, everyone mere shadows of who they used to be, and Jason was effing pissed about it. Sort of because he wanted his family back. Sort of because they were shitting all over the memory of Dick Grayson by being all stupid and emo on his behalf. Sort of because he was really freaking tired of being his own support system and the only one who’d ever really known how to do it properly had died in a fiery explosion. Jason wasn’t weak, and Jason was stubborn as a mule. But Jason also knew when the pit was getting to be too much, and the fact that he’d been having night terrors again, that he’d started having to chain himself to his bed every night again to avoid waking up drenched in blood was a bad sign. And Dickwing wasn’t here to be his typical annoying self and do things like check on him. Maybe, if he could talk some sense into somebody, they’d care a little in return. Which would be, well… good. For him. He guessed.

So, to honor his big brother’s memory and whatever, Jason was going to have to try and do all that big-brother Dick-Grayson shit himself.

And who better to start with than his own narrative foil and the bane of his entire existence, Timothy Jackson Drake?

It wasn’t hard to get into the cave. Even though Batman and Robin (Tim and Bentley, which was still taking some getting used to even after nine months.) mostly patrolled alone, with everything planned down to the number of breaths they’d take and their uncanny, frightening ability to execute it near flawlessly, Jason still managed to weasel his way onto their route from time to time. Only for Wayne family recon, of course, and maybe a little mayhem, too. They hated when he showed up. They’d told him that. But he was able to make himself useful enough that, now and then, Tim would call him back to the cave for a debrief.

He was lucky that September twenty-fourth ended up being one of those nights.

Red Hood, Batman, and Robin squealed into the cave on their motorcycles at almost four in the morning that night. They’d just busted a weapons smuggling ring based out of a freighter in Gotham Harbor, and Jason had made himself just useful enough (by manhandling the owner of the ring and doing slight damage) that Tim declared his information just important enough for the logs of the batcomputer.

He couldn’t deny that the cave felt different now, with different bird and a different bat, with a new glass case holding an all too-familiar black and blue suit that not a soul in the house had looked at since Alfred put it up. It felt more like a real cave, in a way. Empty. Expansive. Cold. Lonely.

The engines died and the three of them climbed off of the vehicles in tandem, sharing exasperated sighs, each for different reasons.

“That bust was shit,” Was the first thing any of them said, and it had come from the red-haired-black-dominoed-menace-to-society that had parked to Jason’s left, the Bentley Whittaker who decided he wanted to burn the planet and everyone on it. His Robin suit was almost solid black, with only small splashes of yellow here and there, but even that seemed too bright for his current demeanor. “Do neither of you know how to follow a simple string of codes? Codes that we came up with because they were easy to understand and act quickly on?”

“I don’t care about your seven-step-patrol-authentication-cypher, asshole,” Jason muttered in response, pulling his helmet off with a thunk and hanging it on the handle of his bike. “I’m not waiting for a bunch of numbers to tell me where to move.”

“If you did, maybe we’d have gotten the buyer’s name before you went and shot the guy in the head, asshole,” Bentley mocked, ripping his domino off with a shwip noise, uncaring that his face would probably still be red from that in the morning. He looked normal enough; older than when Dick had found him, sure, but normal. Everything but his eyes, which had turned into something so cold and mean and not-Bentley-like that Jason had a hard time looking in them for long anymore. (Sometimes he really thought the boy that used to sleep next to him on the couch during thunderstorms, that used to come to him for comfort with big brown eyes full of fear but also so full of love and kindness and an eagerness to have a family, was nothing more than a fleeting memory that Jason would just have to keep safe in his mind.)

“Maybe if you two would shut up and follow Batman’s orders, it wouldn’t have been such a trainwreck. Bruce picked me for a reason,” Tim added, jerking the cowl off of his head and moving across the room toward the computer, where he spent the majority of his days. And nights. And life. Jason, a long time ago, may have laughed at the way taking off the suit made his hair stand up. Now it was just another thing he sort of despised. “Robin, I need you to debrief.”

Bentley was already moving for the lockerroom. “I told you, the whole thing was shit because you’re both stupid. Debrief over.”

Tim blinked, huffing out a dramatic breath. “Robin.”

“Piss off,” Was what Bentley said, before he disappeared out of their sight.

Jason sighed lightly, rubbing his forehead with his pointer finger and thumb. The Jason Todd part of himself wanted to deck them both and then laugh at them for getting a nosebleed, but the part that knew Dick would hound him for it kept him quiet. He just stood sort of off to the side, a few good yards away from Tim, who was settling at the Batcomputer, mumbling incoherent but definitely ill-intended things to himself. (He was only twenty-four, but the way he sat in the chair and hunched at the computer made him look like Bruce.)

“Hood?”

Jason sighed again, just for good measure. “He said his buyers were a high profile family from Bristol using the weapons to expedite their greed. Taking them and selling them on for more. Didn’t give a name. Manufacturer was some kind of undercover factory in south Austrailia under the guise of a paper company.”

“And I’ll put the ring leader in the report here as dead, because someone can’t take his finger off the trigger to save his own life,” Tim mumbled in response, a few files opening up on the computer before he started typing up a debrief that sounded all professional, using far more detail than Jason even remembered.

“Obviously I got useful info, or I wouldn’t be here,” Jason replied, crossing his arms and leaning back against one of the pillars that stood in the midst of the cavern. “I know you’d rather swallow a cheese grater than exist within a mile radius of me, but you brought me here. So you can get over yourself and go to hell with your degrading bullshit.”

“We could’ve finished the bust much more efficiently and completely if you hadn’t shown at all,” Tim shot back, not even sparing a glance in his counterpart's direction, just typing at lightning speed. “You’re the reason everything got so screwed up in the first place. We didn’t need you.”

Jason shifted, propping one of his legs up on the pillar. Somewhere he wasn’t quite sure of, deep inside, that statement sort of stung -- but it mostly just worked to irritate him more and make him rethink trying to talk to any of these insufferable people.

“I didn't-”

The locker-room door closed with a wham, and Bentley came out in a t-shirt and sweats, his red hair floppy and wet from the fastest shower on planet earth. He had a full duffel bag thrown over his shoulder.

“Robin, debrief, now,” Tim shot in his direction, more stern this time, as if testing the waters, gauging the reaction he’d get.

“Go to hell,” Was Bentley’s response, and he disappeared upstairs before anyone could say anything else.

Tim huffed, long, and dramatically. “He makes me want to throw myself out of a moving vehicle."

Jason hummed. If he was going to attempt a serious conversation, he guessed now would be an okay time, since Bentley had gone upstairs. There weren’t many other times he was alone with Tim anymore anyways.

“Well, we’re not exactly being great examples,” Was what he decided on saying. Not exactly the hey-get-over-yourself-and-shut-up-so-we-can-be-a-real-family-again rant he had planned, but it’d work, for now.

Tim glanced back at him, a sort of confused look crossing his face. Then he turned back to the computer with a sigh. “That’s not a new development, Hood.”

Jason said nothing for a minute, because, well... Tim was right.

“No, it isn’t,” He replied, glancing at the stairs up which Bentley had vanished. “Everyones… separating, again. Like what happened when Bruce disappeared. It took a long time for the family to recover from that.”

“Yeah, well at least one of us knew we could get him back,” Tim spat sharply, and Jason could imagine the cold glare that went with it even if Tim didn’t turn around. “Why are you talking about this, Hood?”

Jason glanced down at his boots that were crossed over each other, rocking the toe of one back and forth. “I dunno. Maybe we-“

“Look,” Tim sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with a soft sigh. “If you want to have a therapy session, go find someone who cares to listen. I have too much work to sit here and listen to you ramble on about nothing.”

Jason had an urge that made him want to punch Tim in the face again, and he clenched his jaw to try and stave it away. 

“Okay, well next time a goon is about to snipe you in the head from a rooftop half a mile away from the bust, remind me not to get involved,” Jason muttered, pushing himself off of the pillar and strolling back through the cave.

Tim made a snort sound. “There were no snipers.”

Jason dipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a .308 bullet he’d swiped from the magazine of a sniper earlier that night, flicking it so it dinged on the desk next to Tim’s keyboard. “You’ll see him if you check surveillance cams north of the Whitehouse Library. You’re welcome.”

Tim glowered at him from his seat, but pretended not to be doing anything as he started typing in codes to pull up the Gotham surveillance cams.

Jason moved for the locker room (he thought he still had some sweatpants in there, and they sounded heavenly right about then.) but when he stepped inside, it was clean.

He scrunched his face up. Typically, as of late, Bentley had taken to tossing pieces of his Robin suit around the room as he changed just to, like, claim territory or something. (Maybe it was a depressed teenager thing? He wasn't sure.) But now, there wasn’t an arm-guard or cape in sight.

The duffle bag on Bentley’s shoulder was starting to seem more and more suspicious.

Jason sighed again. "Bird-brat went to patrol by himself," He called over his shoulder, through the door.

"Again, Hood, not a new development. He hasn't been coming in from patrol until eight or nine in the morning since he started doing school online," Tim replied with a nonchalant, sort of bored tone. The sound of computer keys clacking floated around them for a moment.

Jason, without checking for the sweatpants he desperately wanted to change into, walked back out to the main cave and eyed the too-small-Batman. "And you let him? Last time I saw him on a patrol alone he got fear toxined and tried to murder me."

Tim shrugged. "And he got benched after. He hasn't shown up injured or drugged since. He isn't stupid."

"He's sixteen, of course he's stupid," Jason shot back, crossing his arms over his chest. "I thought you kept a tighter leash on your bird."

"You try restraining him. Last time I tried to enforce anything on the kid he cracked two of my ribs in training. I'm not going to do all the casework, CEO W.E., and try to fix his shitshow attitude," Tim shook his head. "If he wants to live like hell, I don't care, as long as he shows up for patrol and graduates on time."

Jason inhaled and exhaled, and this feeling passed over him that made him want to throw Tim out of an airplane, because everything he just said would've been unacceptable the day before Dick's building went down in flames.

He clenched his fists, and then he released them, and he did that a few more times until he felt he could open his mouth without verbally murdering the current Bat.

"Next time you plan on getting sniped, don't bother calling," Jason said, with just enough nonchalance and just enough venom that it sounded like him. (Tim didn't have to know he turned his comms on every night during patrol and laid in bed with his helmet next to him so he could listen to it. Just in case they should ever need a third party who wasn't afraid of killing. After all, if they died, Dick would never forgive him.)

With that, Jason grabbed his helmet and left the cave without another word.

He didn't look at the black and blue suit on his way out.

-----

Jason found Robin with his legs dangling over the edge of Wayne Enterprises' rooftop, with his bow on his back, something glowing between his lips, and a large bottle of something wrapped in a brown paper bag sitting next to him. The Gotham lights were shining ahead of him, and the stars above, making what would've been a pretty nice picture if there wasn't a buzzed Robin in it.

Jason watched him sit in silence for about twenty minutes. It didn't take a genius to realize the thing glowing between his lips was a cigarette -- Jason watched him grab another one out of a seven-eleven bag after the initial one was gone. He kept taking long drinks from the massive bottle and wincing afterwards, like whatever was inside burned on the way down.

He let that go on for a while, before, finally, Jason landed on the rooftop behind the red-haired nightmare, careful to make his footfalls audible so his brother wasn't startled.

There was a long sigh. "A damn tornado is stealthier than you, Hood," Bentley grumbled from where he sat, not even glancing back at his counterpart. He picked up the bottle and took a long swig of it, suddenly not wincing at all now that Jason was there. It didn't take many steps forward for the telltale smell of booze and cigarettes to whack him in the nostrils.

Jason huffed, settling a good ten feet behind the teenager and crossing his arms. "You're going to give yourself cancer."

"That's what I'm going for," He replied smoothly. Jason saw him flick the ashes off of the cigarette that sat between his fingers, then take another long drawl. “Th’ hell are you doin’ here?”

Jason shrugged even though Bentley wasn’t looking. “Saw a sad little bird on the edge of a roof. Thought I’d drop by.”

“I’m not gonna kill myself, Hood. That’s what the booze is for," Bentley mumbled, smoke falling from between his lips and dancing away in the breeze.

Jason watched the smoke fade away. He sort of hated that he understood what Bentley was saying -- it'd happened to him several times before, where he was too much of a wuss to jump or pull the trigger, so he'd kill himself a little every day by drinking or doing drugs or smoking instead.

Jason huffed out maybe what was supposed to be a laugh, but it fell flat, his eyes drifting to the bottle. “Where did you get that, anyways?”

“I’m Robin. I could ask for someone’s liver and they’d probably give it to me,” Bentley replied with a nonchalant shrug, taking another drink of whatever he had, then a drag of the cigarette. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t,” Jason lied, blinking at the back of Bentley's head. “Just thought I deserved a little info, since I’ll be the one carrying your scrawny hungover ass back to the manor after you drink all that.”

(And maybe so he could break a few bones over cigarettes and brown-bag worthy alcohol being sold to a vigilante everyone knew couldn’t be over eighteen, let alone twenty-one.)

“My legs’ll still work. So will the grapple,” Bentley replied, but Jason could hear in the way his words were starting to run together that that most likely wouldn’t be the case. 

Jason shifted his weight, watching Bentley take another drink of the stuff. “You’d kill yourself with a grapple if you tried to use it drunk.”

“Done it before,” Was the unsettling statement that came next.

Jason sighed and brought his hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, but upon realizing he still had his helmet on, let it drift back down. If he had known Bentley went on patrol just to get drunk...

“So this is what Robin does when he goes to patrol on his own, huh?” He questioned with a faint, empty snicker. Just to make the sentence sound right.

“No,” Bentley replied. At least Jason could tell that much was honest. “You just caught me on one of the good nights.”

Jason didn’t say anything to that, just watched as Bentley lifted the too-big bottle to his lips and took another long drink. The thing had to have been past half empty now. Unless it was just a really huge bottle of really cheap beer, Jason pretty much knew that the kid was going to be utterly done for in a few minutes time. (Bentley wasn’t good at holding liquor. Jason knew because he ended up being the very first hangover police Bentley’d ever had.)

(If he didn’t want to deal with Jason, maybe he should’ve drunkenly mistaken some other safehouse for the manor. Not to mention that the kid was one of those sad drunks, so Jason had felt almost contractually obligated to stay with him. Hence why he decided not to let him hangout on the roof alone.)

“Y’know, being all broody and pessimistic is kind of my thing,” Jason started, glancing off the rooftop at the few cars that were passing in the dark below them. “Not gonna lie — it doesn’t look great on you, kid.”

Bentley breathed in, and then out. “Charming, Hood. As usual. I thought you were debriefing,”

Jason breathed in and out, too. Then he tapped his fingers against his own arms. “I was. Then I wasn't."

"Very detailed analysis," The teenager mumbled, and Jason rolled his eyes. "You should teach me how to do that."

"Could you stop being an asshole for, like, two seconds?"

"Nope,"

Jason watched Bentley stare off the roof, taking a sip or drag every now and then. He didn't want to punch him -- he didn't.

“Y'know..." Bentley mumbled with a sudden shift in tone, taking a long drawl of his cigarette followed by a swig of alcohol. "When I first moved in, you made a joke that I was the Waynes’ to destroy. Nowadays that joke checks out. I'm Bentley, the asshole."

Something inside of Jason seemed to tighten. “Kid-“

“Don’t get all weird. It’s not like you could control it. And… it’s not like I wouldn’t let you do it again,” He muttered with a shrug, his words starting to meld with each other at a suspiciously quickening rate. “At least destroying me again would mean you guys still cared enough to do that.”

Quietly, Jason concluded that the sixteen year old was drunk enough to have a hard time holding his tongue. Because murder-death-rage Bentley hadn’t said anything so close to a please care about me since Dick died.

Jason took that and decided to go with it.

“You snap at everyone who gets close to you like some kind of rabid little creature that lives in a hole and comes out only to bite ankles,” Jason replied, crouching down on the rooftop with an exhale, somewhat behind him. “It was your choice to shut everyone out.”

“Tell me what the hell I was supposed to do, then, Jason!” Bentley was suddenly on his feet, so Jason was, too. One, because he knew the kid was drunk and could pull his bow on him if he really wanted, and two, because his balance wasn’t exactly trustworthy at the moment. He realized it was mostly the latter when he found himself inching forward as Bentley’s balance wavered.

“What the hell was I supposed to do, huh?” Bentley shoved him, and Jason stepped back. “The very second Dick Grayson died, every human being in the entire damn manor built walls up to the ceiling. Five people outright vanished, including you-“ He narrowed his eyes incredulously. “-Bruce became some kind of storytime bogeyman, Tim turned off his feelings like a Netflix psycho murderer and you all just left me there. So sure, you can accuse me of whatever you want, but I ended up the way I am because no one was there to help me. So I had to help myself.”

A moment of silence filtered between them. That fine sentiment seemed to dredge up a well of feelings that Jason hadn’t really let himself feel in a long while. He just sort of watched as Bentley shuffled back over to the edge and grabbed the bottle, only to turn it up and completely drain its contents, and for the first time, it sort of made Jason feel sick. Bentley was sixteen, and his big brother died, and instead of being a damn family, the Wayne’s did what the Wayne’s did best. Everyone scattered, and…

Well, just like he’d said. They’d left him there. 

It was the same vicious cycle that Jason was living in — the resentment toward the rest of the family for shutting up, closing them out, pretending they didn’t know each other. Closing up, too, because he knew he’d get no help from anybody else, even if this was considered too big to handle alone.

Bentley puffed on the cigarette again, flicking the red ashes off the rooftop. “Sometimes I hate it here.”

Jason hated it when his siblings started to sound like him.

With no words, he lifted his helmet up and off of his head, the September breeze biting at his newly exposed skin. At the sound, Bentley turned to glance at him and scanned his face with brown eyes weary enough Jason could see it through the domino.

“I’m sorry,” Was what he said. He wasn’t sure why.

Bentley snorted at him. “Sorry that I hate it here? You didn’t make this hellhole.”

“Sorry that we left you,”

To that, Bentley’s mouth closed, and every trace of feigned amusement left his features. He just turned back to the city and… stood.

Jason didn’t say anything. He just sort of stood there, too, in silence. Bentley dropped his cigarette on the rooftop and stamped it out with his toe. And a few minutes after that, he pulled his domino off and dropped it on the roof, too.

Jason heard him whisper: “Shit,” Then he brought a hand up to his forehead and just let it rest there. “Breaking things that’re barely together in the first place is a specialty of yours, Hood.”

Jason didn’t say anything. Because there was a certain thickness in Bentley’s voice that he hadn’t heard in a long time, and he wasn’t sure if it was the booze or not.

Bentley sighed heavily and crouched down on the edge of the rooftop. “What? Did you just come here to torture me?”

“I came here because I’m sick of this godforsaken family pretending they don’t know each other every time something bad happens. They did it when I died. We did it when Bruce went missing. Tim’s gonna work himself to death, you’re gonna drink yourself to death, Damian’s gonna cry himself to death and I’m gonna pit myself to death. If Dick could see us right now, he’d be pissed,” Jason rambled, running an annoyed hand through his black and white hair. He noticed his fingers trembling with some kind of underlying adrenaline. “I came here because you might be the only one who’ll listen when I say I don’t want us to live in this hell anymore. All it does is make shit worse for everyone. And you know it’s bad when I’m the one having to bring it up.”

The only response Bentley had to that was another soft, breathy: “Shit.”

Jason huffed, glaring at the back of his head. “Shit? Is that all you know how to say?”

“I could say go to hell, if you prefer,”

“Already here, kid,”

Bentley breathed in and out deeply, rubbing his eyes with a fist. “A world without Dick Grayson is just a living hell, isn’t it?”

Bentley’s words hung in the air like smoke, so heavy even the breeze wasn’t able to carry them away. Jason just stood.

Yeah, it was.

The pair just existed in silence for a long while, and neither of them moved. Bentley stayed precariously perched on the edge of the building until he didn’t anymore — until he sat back on the rooftop and groaned: “Shit,” And then wiped at his eyes, because he was-

Oh. 

Jason took a step forward. “Kid?”

“Piss off, Hood. Don’t you have someone to go shoot? Or something?” Bentley hissed, his tone lacking its usual bite despite the sharp words. “Surely coming here to make me feel like complete shit isn’t the only thing on your schedule.”

“I’m not trying to make you feel like shit. I came here because I don’t want us to feel like shit anymore,”

Bentley didn’t say anything. And while the teenager was utterly silent, Jason picked up on the telltale little hitch of his shoulders and wipe of his eyes. And it reminded him of the little kid that cried when it thundered, that woke him up in the middle of the night with tear-streaks on his face just to ask if it was okay if he slept on the end of his bed, and it all made his heart clench.

And then Bentley spoke. It was quiet, and broken, and sounded more like the ten year old Bruce had taken in than the Robin Jason had grown accustomed to.

He whispered: “I miss him so much I think it could kill me.”

With an inhale, Jason was suddenly moving, and he didn’t stop moving until his gloved hand came to rest on Bentley’s shoulder. But as soon as it did, the teenager shot to his feet and whirled on Jason in a split second, with streaks of wetness glimmering on his cheeks in the Gotham lights and a strange emptiness in his eyes. “Get the hell off of me, Hood.”

For a split second, he almost thought a flash of fear passed through Bentley’s brown eyes. He seemed to be struggling through conflicting emotions — because one second he looked pissed, and the next like he might throw up, and the next like he was about to break down crying, and next, like a kid who’d been shut somewhere alone for way too long. He was drunk, Jason remembered. Did it matter?

“Jason,” Was what he said next. His eyes were welling up again without his consent, but he kind of looked like he wanted to stab Jason in the face with a knife instead, and he was looking down at the rooftop instead of at his brother. He brought his arms up and around himself and gripped his own sleeves until his knuckles turned white.

(Just like he used to when he was little.)

“Bentley,” Was Jason’s reply. He inched forward and raised a hand toward him again.

Bentley flinched away.

“Don’t touch me,” He muttered. Jason disobeyed and rested a hand on his shoulder again, and as soon as he did touch him, Bentley sobbed and brought a hand up to hide it.

“Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me!" He shouted, slapping Jason's arm away with a thwack.

"Kid,"

Bentley sniffed. "I’m so fucking cold.”

I’m so fucking cold.

Jason didn’t waste a second disobeying the kid’s previous orders by grabbing him by the head and and jerking him forward into his chest. He may not have been Dick, but Bentley hugged him back twice as hard anyways, and Jesus, had the kid even touched anybody since Dick died?

Jason didn’t think about it for long, because he only had approximately a millisecond before Robin was losing his absolute shit, drunk breakdown style. It was that kind of crying that made you try and cough your lungs up, and the kid kept saying stuff but he couldn’t tell what it was. Bentley was squeezing around Jason’s back so hard it actually kind of hurt, and that’s when he realized that Bentley ever actually cried when Dick died. That he’d stifled whatever reaction he would’ve had and shut it away for self preservation.

Bentley was reacting to Dick’s death right now.

Jason just did what big brothering he had learned over the years — he held his baby brother and kept his own feelings closely bridled, for both of their sakes. And they had to stay like that for a while. At one point Bentley’s knees buckled, and Jason had taken on most of his weight, but he didn’t care.

Then, almost an hour later, Jason took on all of his weight very suddenly. And that’s when he realized he'd blacked out.

Jason sent a withering glare to the bottle wrapped in the brown bag and picked Bentley up. 

“You’d better remember this shit when you wake up,” He mumbled. He tried to glare at the unconscious boy in his arms, but he couldn’t, really — Bentley looked less sixteen and more twelve, with a faint expression of discomfort splayed across his reddened features. His face was wet from crying and glistening in the city lights. 

Jason managed to pick up his helmet and Bentley’s domino with one hand, then he made for the nearest safe house.

(Maybe, if he was lucky, Bentley would remember their conversation when he woke up.)

--

tag list that never works lmao

@fleur-alise @sarcopterygiian @gayboss-too-close-to-the-sun

@xiaonothere

@skylathescholarly @flyrobinflyy

I’ve not been well over the holidays so decided to mock up how i’d illustrate PJO instead lol - all in lorem ipsum so I don’t get in trouble with the big mouse!