DCxDP Idea #3:

I fully support Tim being a caffeine addict, just not a coffee one. This is because I’ve been someone who self medicated with sugar and energy drinks, fizzy drinks and fatty food, and that is like Tim Drake.

Cheap and easy ways to get through a day like having take out instead of cooking a meal so he has more time to work on cases or instead of having a shower to wake him up in the morning he has a Redbull or snacks on a bag of candies.

It’s the small, almost unnoticeable high you get from eating sweets that I think he likes. He’s not the type to acknowledge his flaws or problems, even without being a Bat it’s just not how he’s written very often unless it’s something big, so I think using sugar as a means of anti-depressant is more in lined with who he is. I’m pretty its dopamine you get but don’t quote me on that one.

Also people use treats and Zesti’s as bribes when they piss him off and that’s just a a fact.

Plus, he canonically hates the taste of coffee so it just makes sense.

I’m trying to read more of the comics buts it’s so hard to find things in the right order and timeline, but this is something that seems pretty typical of Tim Drake as well as just a teenager/young adult.

Plus I’ve been doing that a lot lately and I like projecting onto him lol

Cover; Raison d’être

Illust by Alkallier & Story Prompt by @fandomfuntimem

Synopsis: Jason goes to investigate a new gang that’s been going rampant, what he found out was not anything he had initially expected. [Prompt Link]

I like to write what I think, it doesn't matter if it's in this account that probably no one will ever see, and then again, each time I surprise myself even more, not long ago, yesterday in fact, I slept for about fourteen hours, I think it's a new record for me, but what surprises me is that I usually only sleep about eight hours, well, that was before the holidays, but whatever, I'm just babbling nonsense, and I've discovered new things about myself these days, so for example, people make me uncomfortable, the person who comes to clean my house some days in the morning, I have known her since childhood, but it makes me uncomfortable to be in the same place as her, with my mom and dad I can stand it more, but I don't feel really comfortable, I really don't like being in the presence of others, except the dogs of my house, one grabbed me as a bed today, I had to move him because I urgently needed to go to the bathroom, poor him, if I didn't need to go that urgently, I would happily let him be.

Danny doesn't know he's the Ghost King, or that he's scaring the shit out of other people.

So, Danny and Jazz moved to Gotham for a new start in their life and un-life ( ignore that he and Jazz are rather young to be moving across the country, ignore that his parents died saving them from the GIW ). They've got an "ok" apartment, and a job at this cute little flower shop run by an eccentric "possibly former supervillains" lesbian couple.

He's even making friends with the ghosts. Like Richard and Mary Grayson (trapeze incident) who are teaching him to fight like a human, if Danny didn't know better he'd think they were stalking those vigilantes. or Dr. Hamish (killer clown?) who's helping Jazz with her studies.

Apparently some time before they met Danny they were just shades who couldn't even manifest, weird. There's also the weirdly active shades telling him where all the good spots to watch the city are and how to find the cheapest prices at stores.

Nobody knows what's wrong with this creepy kid. Every time some mugger even looks in the scrawny boy's direction their loved ones show up and yell at them until the kid's down the street.

Batman tried to investigate the potential meta until he saw his parents waving in a nearby window. Danny's neighbor swares his grandma is haunting him and Danny for some reason, and any time the Joker goes within a city block of ivy and Harley's flower shop/home he becomes blind and deaf by the sheer number of his "volunteers" telling him to die.

I made myself sad thinking about Tim being alone at his home when growing up and only having someone to talk to when he went to school and so I decided to make him a cat but because it’s Tim it’s not going to be that simple:

Instead:

Imagine Tim who accidently gets a witches familiar.

It starts when he’s six and his parents flight was delayed so he decides to use the extra time to go find some wild flowers in the backyard forest to bring them. He doesn’t know the space very well but he knows enough to make sure he can always see the manner he lives in and keeps a torch and a few snacks with him just in case.

When he first sees the shadow like figure in the corner of his eye the little boy freaks out but manages to calm down enough to take the dozen flowers he had and start heading back. He feels something watching him all the way home and that night when he looks out his window Dow he swears he see more movement.

He swears to leave it be because lords knows he’s too young to be dealing with ghost and monsters.

But there’s one problem that will never change in regards to Tim Drake: he’s too curious.

Once his parents leave again Tim is back on the border of the forest and calls out a cautious ‘hello?’ Into the small kingdom of trees.

Nothing happens and so the next time he brings an offering in the form of a pile of nuts, a pair of his mums earrings she had thrown in the bin because they were apparently unsightly after the turn of the century, as well as a marshmallow from his very secret and special stash.

The next day he found a four holed button the colour of one of the Aster flowers he had given his parents when he first felt the presence.

He made it into a bracelet and wore it proudly for the next few days before his dad made him take it off before a gala.

Luckily the thing in the forest didn’t seem to take offence and instead he found the charm he had left on his desk safely hanging from his window sill without his input.

Tim brought several gifts for his new mysterious friend, mainly marshmallows and bits of his mums jewlery she was didn’t wear anymore.

Whenever he left nuts or any other kind of food it was never moved, even other sweets and treats stayed where he left them.

It’s a year after this little tradition starts that Tim actually sees the presence that he had been calling ‘Curious’.

It’s from a distance as he’s going through photos of Batman on his window sill, legs tucked up and back pressed against the wooden frame that brackets the window. He looks up periodically to the small pile of marshmallows he’s left on a plate just where the woods start, waiting for them to suddenly vanish before he goes to bed, when he looks up and sees it.

It’s tall, as tall as the trees and cloaked in shadows and darkness, so much so it’d be impossible to miss even if the light of his room wasn’t shining out towards it.

Tim gasps silently but doesn’t look away or feel fear, because something in him just knows that this is his friend. This is Curious.

Instead he finds himself smiling, possibly beaming at the animated dark before him.

Curious doesn’t smile back or wave or anything and yet Tim can feel a relief and happiness that’s second to his own and yet feels like it’s his.

When Tim blinks the shadows have reached out to lift the marshmallows into its veil like form, long fingers that seem twice the amount of a humans curl like spider legs around the surgery sweets and then they are lost in the dark of its form.

Tim goes to sleep that night with excitement and hope in his heart, a burning curiosity in his heart as hundreds of questions and theories rattle his brain, but it’s all unimportant compared to the fact that he has a friend at home.

He has someone to, in a way, live with.

The next morning he wakes to his alarm and a heavy weight on his chest.

Tim opens his eyes to see a fluffy monstrosity of a cat, big golden eyes hidden in light brown and grey fur staring at him with so much knowing and understanding. It’s more than even Ives shows him when Tim brushes off questions about his parents.

He knows just as he did the night before that this is Curious.

His Curious.

He cautiously reached a hand to pat the fur and watches his hand disappear into the soft fur like its quicksand. When a loud purr, slightly echoing like its not quite real, rumbles through the little body Tim beams again and squeezes the feline shape as close as he can.

Curious doesn’t leave Tim’s side very often, only when Tim goes bathroom does he give him space. When Tim starts training to be Robin Curious shifts his body into Tim’s shadow so he can follow without having to deal with Batman’s security rules.

Curious follows Tim when he goes to train with Shiva, when he goes to space with his team, when he goes on his trip around the world to save Bruce, but it’s painful for the little familiar because Tim isn’t actually a witch.

Which means there is no power for Curious to draw from and so it’s unable to help at all.

It can change its form but the only physical contact it can make is with its master, it can’t fight with Tim or defend him when he needs it.

And yet Tim doesn’t mind.

While Curious feels like a failure for being unable to do anything for his master, Tim rewards it all the time. Constantly is he giving it new necklaces for its cat shape and marshmallows when they stay guard all night while he sleeps.

In the face of such powerlessness, Curious vows to find ways to help its Tim.

So, it’s a sentry of a sort. No one can sneak up on Tim Drake or Red Robin, because he will always just know that someone is there. No one ever suspects that it’s his weirdly attached cat or his own shadow alerting him with a soul like connection.

Everyone in the family knows that Tim has a cat, because one time Damian got all mopey at dinner and complained that the stray cat he found around the manner lawns wasn’t being his friend no matter what he did.

He ranted about how he brought it food and water and toys but the unnaturally fluffy cat would just stare at him before running off.

When Tim realises that he means Curious he snorts, making Damian glare at him and demand to know what he finds so funny.

Tim simply makes a ‘sst’ like sound twice and suddenly the big cat his waltzing out from under the table and into Tim’s lap.

Damian is furious but mostly embarrassed, acting like he’s upset that Tim didn’t tell him he had a cat when instead he’s upset that he befriended a cat Damian couldn’t.

Tim explains that Curious has been his cat for years and doesn’t like anyone else, so not to take it personally, and when they ask what the gender is Tim reply’s cryptically, “it doesn’t like gender.”

No one knows what to say to that as Tim leaves the room with the cat in his arms, but they all witness the cat lean over his shoulder and lick a long black tendril over his own face.

Bruce nearly sprains something with how quickly he stands up.

Tim doesn't know how he got here.

Sitting in Aquarium's office, holding a sniffling 4 year old little girl named ellen Nightingale on his lap with her head snuggling against his chest, nibbling on a Whale shaped cookie after all they both got lost.

He only looked away for a moment, and Bruce and the batfam dissappear on him while he was anazyling the heavier coffee choices at one of the Aquarium's coffee places.

Only to come out with a combination coffee that cost him 18 dollars more and nearly instinctly kick a teary eyed 4 year old Ellen that lost her mommy and mistook him as him, clinging to his leg out of the blue.

Apparently, Ellen got distracted by a cart vendor holding cute whale cookies while her mommy was talking to her big brother danta about not biting the birthday girl's older sister even if she being rude and now she lost, and she thought he was mummy and she doesn't know what do than the tears came.

Apparently, mommy looked like Tim only mommy had a bunch of pretty white fluffy in her hair and a lighting dancing on her face, but she extremely pretty and single to was Ellen's babbling about.

8 minutes in, a frantic pretty boy with mainly pepper flowing down salt like short hair came in, a 6 year old boy that look like him but white hair coated mainly piggybacking him that spotted him and Ellen, pointing at her.

"I found her first, i get to have The Death Pepper ice cream now!" Shriek out the 6 year old danta.

"Mommy!"

"Oh, thank ancients! Thank you for bringing her to the office here, mister..?" The supposedly Mummy glance his greenish blue baby-doll eyes at Tim, a strain of Lichtenberg figure spread upward from his neck to the forehead of his face as Ellen leaped into the arms of her mummy.

"Um- Tim Drake, and you are..?" Tim felt his face flush a bit as he stood up to shake hands with him.

"He is mummy, you dumb low-life bottom feeder!" Tiny fist waving as Danta imploded at him.

"Oh, biological speaking, yes. It's hard enough to get them to switch to Daddy, but it stuck onto me. My name is Danny Nightingale, and I appreciate that you found my little girl before I ranshake the entire aquarium like a pirate for buried treasure for her." Danny spoke softly, joking at the end, carefully holding Ellen, who snuggled her face against his chest like she did earlier with Tim.

"Yeah, she cling onto me harder than the octopus from Finding Dory when she thought I was you after I lost my own group." Tim said back, softly joking back while he sipped and choked his coffee as Ellen beamed about how Mister Tim got her two whale cookies with the blue eyes she wanted earlier and quietly failed at mumbling on can they keep him?

"Interesting.. well, she seemed attached to you, and you seem to be reliable enough to distract her from causing mayham. If you ever wanted to babysit for me, you can have my number?" Danny said, pulling out clownfish theme napkin and taking a pen from the office free pen jar.

'Wait, what?' Is what Tim thought to himself after Danny said his goodbyes, Danta sticking his tongue out, and Ellen cutely waving bye-bye as they left.

The napkin he was holding in his hand had an apartment address and a number contact along with a winking face and clumsily childish doodle of snowflakes, fire, and Dory fish next to it.

Bruce and the batfam came in the office seconds later after Tim pocket the contact info.

Might end up with a part 2. Idk yet

Used to it

Danny was quite desensitized to death by the time he finished High school. And he didn’t mean just ghosts. Despite his stellar record of preventing any deaths during his vigilante career, he still managed to see quite a few dead bodies. Though those usually weren’t in Amity but nearby towns.

Ghosts did need help sometimes to get peace and that often meant that he found their remains and anonymously sent in tips to the police. It’s this reason why when he planned to move to Gotham for College, and after checking out rent prices, he decided to do something that would only aid him in saving money.

He took a week during the summer between semesters and traveled to Gotham. After a few days of scouting (and staying in shitty hotels) he found the perfect place. An unused Mausoleum. It just needed a minor bit of renovation (like adding a bathroom) and it would be perfect.

He went to the library and searched to make sure he knew the information of whose building it was and if there were plans to use it soon. His luck was good and it was considered abandoned. He checked the price and winced. It would take a good chuck from his savings but overall it would save him quite a bit.

Deciding to save money after he bought it, he used ghosts with the right obsessions to reconstruct it. When he started living there he was somewhat surprised at how settled he felt. Turns out he somewhat accidentally made himself his own grave, which was good for his ghost half.

He didn’t realize that his coming and going from the graveyard would be noticed by the bats though. He doesn’t really want to have them digging into his life. He knows it will be hard but somehow he knows they will find something.

SNITCHES THE CAT SEQUEL pt1 and masterpost

Part Two/Part Three/ Part Four/ Part Five/ Part Six/ Part Seven/ Part Eight Part Nine Part Ten Part Eleven

Part One

“This you?”

Danny pushed the newspaper down without looking at it, revealing Sam’s shitty grin. “That lost cat is not me, no.” He rolled his eyes. They had been showing him lost pet ads ever since he got back from Gotham. “Isn’t that joke getting old, guys?” He kicked his way further into a slouch in the booth as Tucker came back with refilled drinks.

Tucker laughed, and then there was a silence. “Danny? Are you sure this isn’t you, man?” He sounded uncertain.

He felt his jaw twitch and he had to tell his friend off. “Is it that funny that there’s a sad kid out there? Honestly, guys-” Danny opened his eyes fully to roll them and then saw the lost pet ad being brandished in his face. He blinked at it. His brain did a full reboot and he reached out to take the paper. 

It looked like him, sleeping on the cushion in the batcave. Had they gotten that photo from the security footage? “It’s me.” His voice came out way too high.

Danny pulled the paper over in disbelief and realized that it was a two page ad. “Oh wow,” he said faintly. There he was, leaping across the kitchen. And there, that must have been taken by Damian when he fell asleep on the bed. There was a cat toy partially in the frame.

Sam’s snorting laughter cut off. “Uh.” She kicked him lightly under the table. “Is.. Is that little kid going to be okay?” She asked in a small voice. She sounded like she felt bad for poking fun. 

Danny felt guilty. He stared at the evidence that Robin was missing his cat terribly and felt like the biggest jackass possible. “Should I go back?” he wondered. He squirmed, pulling a foot up onto the bench to perch on. “I mean… How long does a cat live? A few years?”

“Try about twenty,” Tucker said flatly. “I feel bad too, man, but you can’t defer admission that long.”

“Though Snitches was clearly not a little kitten, so you could really just give it a couple years,” Sam mused. Both boys stared at her. She blinked. “Not that I’m suggesting you do that!” She waved her hands at them. “The longer you stay with him, the harder he’s going to take it when his pet ‘dies’,” she said with finger quotes. “You did the right thing by leaving as soon as you could.”

“Maybe we could answer it, do a photoshoot, tell him that Danny was your cat or something and he’s come home,” Tucker mused. “He’d be sad that he couldn’t have the cat, but surely it would be better than worrying the cat died, right?”

“What are you losers talking about?” Star said, giving their booth a wide berth. “You’re not hurting cats now, are you, weirdos?” She eyed them like they were gross. “It would figure.”

“Fuck off,” Sam said pleasantly. All three of them gave Star a rude gesture in unison, just like they had practiced. “That shit’s uncalled for.”

Star sniffled and turned away on her heel, cheer skirt flouncing behind her. A few moments later she clearly reached her table because the sounds of popular kid conversation got a lot louder.

“She should be a reporter,” Sam said darkly. “I would love for her to get sued for slander.” She snapped open her clutch and began applying even more black eyeliner, as if that would differentiate her from the other girls in the restaurant.

Tucker groaned and pulled his hat down over his eyes in despair. “That’s gonna be a bad rumor,” he complained. 

Danny couldn’t find it in him to care as much as he usually would. He was still stuck on the fact that Damian had put an ad in the Illinois Times. “Do you think he realized that Snitches got on a highway bus to Illinois?” he hissed, now aware that other people might be listening in. “How would he know that?”

Sam frowned. Tucker lifted his head and pulled out his phone to search. “That’s a good question,” he said to himself. He hit buttons rapidly. “Uh, same ad is in…” He trailed off. “Hold up, hold up, lemme search this backwards…” Whatever he saw had him raise his eyebrows high, look at Danny in disbelief, and then shake his head slightly. “You must be a really good cat. I'm kind of jealous.”

“What?” Danny hissed. “Just tell me.”

“Hey, hey, paws off.” Tucker moved his device further away. “Uh, this poor kid- well.” He paused. “Poor is the wrong word. He’s put ads in newspapers all the way up to Ontario and down to… Well, in Mexico at least.”

Danny and Sam stared at him in disbelief. “You’re fucking with us,” Sam said after a long moment.

Tucker silently shook his head. “There’s a nationwide Greg’s list ad,” he said grimly. “20 dollars an hour to print and staple missing cat photos to telephone poles. And a private detective’s agency on the case, asking for witnesses to come forward.”

Danny put his head in his hands. “I have to go back,” he said, haunted by the responsibility. “I can’t let him be this sad.”

“Danny, no.” Tucker said. Sam nodded her agreement. 

“…Yeah, that’s crazy,” he said unconvincingly. He gave a fake laugh. “He’ll get over it.” Danny stared into his drink, watching bubbles. Robin was not going to get over it. That kid loved hard.

“I could use 20 dollars an hour,” Tucker said in a thoughtful tone.

“No,” Sam said flatly.

Tucker shrugged, smiling slightly. “I wonder how much I’d get for bringing you back.” He shrugged theatrically. “You could send me to college, man! Don’t you want me to go to college?”

“No…” Danny said weakly. “I… Is that fraud?” Still. Money would be nice.

“Guys, no.” Sam knocked them both in the head with the pile of napkins. “You can’t do that to this little kid. He’s clearly not well.”

“Exactly,” Tucker argued passionately. “Imagine how happy he would be to get his cat back! We could reunite him with his pet!”

It was tempting. He felt, like, so bad about how sad Robin was. The little guy had been so proud of his pet. Danny could spare a few years to make a little kid happy, right? It was kind of greedy otherwise.

Danny stared at the bubbles in his drink again, really thinking it over. “I think I would have to fight crime with him,” he said dully. “That’s a minus.”

“Danny?” Sam rapped the table with her fingers. He looked up to see her pointed eyebrow raise. “What are you talking about?”

He hunched his shoulders up. “Nothing, nothing,” he lied hastily. He forgot they didn’t know. He couldn’t dox someone’s crime fighting identity, though, it would be really unfair. 

“You could buy me a house,” Tucker wheedled. Sam hit him.

Danny had no idea what a meta was, but appearently he had something called a meta-gene. One would think a mutation that can cause people to manifest superpowers from lab accidents would explain his disastrous career as a superhero, but they would be wrong. Dannys meta gene was never activated and the whole ghost fiasco was just eldrich shenanigans at its finest.

No, Danny's meta gene activated just two weeks ago on his fifteenth birthday where he was celebrating at Sam's place with Tucker. They had gotten into one of thier usual fights about food and Danny just did not want to deal with it and went into another room.

Sams cat didn't love him per say but it usually didn't hate him either. Today was not his lucky day. The kitty scratched him and wouldn't you know? His meta gene wasn't activated by an interdimentional portal opening up on top of him, it wasn't activated by the numerous energy blasts he had been hit with nor the various electric shocks.

No, it was activated by a freaking cat scratch.

He stared at himself in the mirror, glowing green eyes with slit pupils stared back at him. His kitty ears were folded back to show his shock and displeasure over the situation but it was still rather obvious what they were. The tail wagging slowly behind him was the same snowy white as his hair and ears.

He looked like Phantom. He looked like Phanton as Fenton. Ancients. There was no way he was going to be able to hide this. Transforming brought about no change other than the hazmat suit. He was so screwed. He couldn't go home like this.

Breathing heavily and on the verge of a panic attack he called Jazz once, twice, three times, but she didn't pick up. Danny knew he couldn't stay in the human world, it was too dangerous.

But if he wasn't there to protect the ghosts than it would be too dangerous for them to stay too. He knew for a fact Dani was staying with Dora while she taught her how to read and write so he had pretty much no qualms about destroying the portals and outing Vlad through a pre-made video of him transforming and boasting about his crimes to Phantom, courtesy of Tucker and him filming it all.

He felt bad about ditching his friends one last time, and at his own birthday party no less! But he knew if he tried to say goodbye they would guilt him into staying and it would end horribly so he left a note explaining what happened and bounced.

Destroying the portals hadn't taken much time or effort nor did destroying over 20 years of research between the three. It was exploring the Ghost Zone that was giving him problems. He was always warned by Wulf not to open portals in the Ghost Zone unless you were very experienced cause if you screw up theres no telling when or where you will land. He thought back to Wulfs lessons and tried to conjure the image of lush wildlife and abundant food.

The place he ended up portaling to had neither of those things. In fact if felt like the opposite when he landed in a grimey alleyway in the dark of night.

A spotlight was pointed toward the sky, painting the clouds above in a yellow light holding a stylized image of a bat in the center. Danny wondered what that was about for only a minute before he heard the tell tale whoosh sound of someone landing in the alley behind him.

Dannys new instincts reacted before the logical part of his brain took hold causing him to whirl around with his ears flattened to his head and he hissed so furiously that the man with the red helmet (mask?) back up several paces while cursing furiously. The man also mentioned something about a "Pit" but Danny wasn't paying attention, he was scared out of his mind and bolted down the alleyways and out of sight before phasing into a dilapidated building and hiding under some rubble.

Later, Red Hood told Nightwing about the Lazarus Pit catboy demon and described it as nightmarish as possible before adding that it was kinda twinkish. He also added "for the love of God dickwing, don't let demon brat adopt that thing"

In Damians defence, he found Danny asleep next to Alfred the cat in Batcows barn and just decided he was thier new cat. In other news hes far more concerned with hiding Danny From Catwoman than from father.

I guess this isn't a new discovery about me but writing helps me think, my mind goes from one side to the other and for some reason I end up seeing myself crying, maybe it's because I want to cry about something but I don't know what, I'm not missing something, I haven't felt angry, sad, no one has died, maybe stressed but I don't think that makes sense, I haven't been stressed that I can remember. Why do I want to cry? I don't understand, I really don't understand.

Maybe it's just the hormones, maybe something else that I'm not realizing, I refuse to think that it's depression, it shouldn't and can't be, maybe it's that lately I feel very numb, many times I don't realize what I'm feeling, but for some reason I want to cry right now, it's weird.