grey writes stuff

Bruce is more of a wallflower (literally) than Clark was expecting from a man of his status, pressed nearly flush against the far wall. He's lmost hunched in shadows in the corner, gripping a delicate glass of champagne with the air of a man who wished he had something much stouter and stronger in his glass instead. The man is less than receptive when Clark approaches him, bright and blustery, feeling for all the world like a summer breeze meeting a thunderstorm the moment he steps into Bruce’s presence. Bruce’s gaze darts up from his glass long enough to meet Clark’s eyes for the barest fraction of a second, reminding Clark violently of the time he found a wounded stray dog huddled up in the corner of the barn back home. The only difference here is that Bruce isn’t trembling, although he’s only just shy of cowering. Clark instantly realizes that this man is in fact a wounded stray, and Clark isn’t one to be turned away by people’s attempts to brush him off.

Whumpuary 2025!

these prompts came together through community submissions and then a voting form where people voted for their favorites, here are the top 53 prompts

i want to try a slightly new format where there are still only 15 days for creation prompts but with additional community prompts/questions. those are entirely voluntary but are here to possibly inspire some community interaction and trying new things

i'm excited to see some awesome creations in january!

go here for info/rules/tagging go here for faqs

text version of the prompts and rules is under the cut

Not realizing that what he liked about those movies all these years was the promise of being loved and the possibility of closeness and the idea that one day everything was going to make sense.

Not realizing until long after the divorce ink dries that part of why he tried so hard to hold onto Michelle was that he knew deep down that something about the way he loved was different, but he never knew why or how, so he just kept trying to fix it and make it work.

Ted not realizing anything until he's about to leave Richmond, when he tries to have a parting conversation with Jamie and Jamie is the one who puts the idea into his mind. Because Jamie, who's been working on himself, has finally realized what he wants, and it's like a nuclear bomb has been dropped on Ted's whole world.

Ted panics. Ted goes through all the stages of grief. Ted cancels his flight back home - temporarily - because he is too afraid to look at his ex-wife with this knowledge rattling around in his head. Because despite the fact that it's got nothing to do with how much he loves his son, in some ways it feels like it has everything to do with how much he loves his son because it's about how Ted loves.

(And then while Ted remains in Richmond he ends up officially in three separate qpr with Beard, Rebecca, and Trent. It does not fix all his problems, and he still has to figure out how to be closer to Henry, but it helps and he is loved The End)

BOY WILL I EVER HEAR YOU OUT ON THIS ONE

you say aro character and im already criss cross applesauce on the floor listening intently and boy this is SO GREAT im completely in love with this concept. what a story you’ve painted here, what a trajectory of ‘I didn’t know that was possible and now im re-evaluating everything in my life and that i thought i understood about myself

im literally giggling with delight walking home from the bubble tea shop thinking about this oh my gd. your mind.

Hurt/Comfort Dialogue Prompts

"I know you're hurt."

"You're burning up."

"Just breathe."

"I don't feel good."

"Eyes on me! C'mon keep those eyes on me."

"That's a lot of blood."

"Come on, breathe, breathe, don't you dare--"

"How long were you planning on hiding this?"

"Easy, easy. You're okay, I've got you."

"I can't find a pulse!"

"Don't you dare die on me."

"Everything's okay, go back to sleep."

"can't--breathe--"

"I won't hurt you."

"Talk to me."

"Stay still."

“You don’t look so good.”

“I think I’m gonna – ”

“Tell me where you are, I’ll come get you.”

“Please stop.”

“How much sleep did you get last night?”

“It’s over now.”

“I’m okay. You don't need to worry about me.”

"You're not supposed to be up and about."

The shout dissipated but its outline still rang in the air. Jason’s chest heaved and he blinked, trying to grasp at the words that had filled the void. He couldn’t remember them, too overwhelmed by the acid that had spattered as they burst. His throat ached. The roaring rage had ripped through the muscle on its way out, and he felt rawstung into the meat.

He had forgotten. How had he forgotten how it felt to stumble out of the comedown. To be invincible, powerful, unstoppable, gone, the world smeared brilliant green, and then to collapse back into the dingy world of his body to pick up the pieces of whatever had been broken in his absence. How it made him feel sick and turned inside out and confused. He still had the power, that twitchy, unstoppable might, but it was fading fast. What had he done while away?

Every breath hurt as it sucked through his teeth and past those raw muscles. He swallowed, convulsively, with no spit to wet his dry mouth. His hands spasmed, full. Jason blinked again.

Wide blue eyes stared back.

“It’s okay.” The words were whisper-thin, wheezed past the grip Jason had on Tim’s neck. He could feel Tim’s Adam’s apple move as he struggled to swallow, to breathe. “He won’t hurt me.”

It felt like Tim had said those words before, flung out like his arm at the rest of the family surrounding them, all frozen in tableau like hostages in an armed standoff. Or maybe they were innocent onlookers; Tim the hostage; Jason the gun, the bomb.

The air felt too full, still reverberating with the vestiges of Tim's final shout. The ringing made his ears hurt, the sound already fading but the heat behind it remained.

Yelling had been less of a choice and more of a need, a way to vent off the pressure into a little explosion instead of one that would level city blocks. It was too much of everything—the case, the squabble over the comms with Dick, the knocked-over Coke can, the gritty sensation behind his eyelids. Bruce had just been the tipping point. Tim knew he probably hadn't meant to sound so... so Bruce about asking for an update. But Tim got prickly over perceived disapproval in the best of times, and this was not that.

Tim sucked in ragged, heaving breaths, not sure if he wanted to yell again, or cry, or turn his back on Bruce entirely and pretend this had never happened. Please, he just wanted Bruce to forget this had ever happened.

You yelled at Bruce. For asking a question. For checking in on a case he's working on. He's going to bench you, and you'll deserve it. You should have figured this out by now, you stupid—

Tim's shoulders had scrunched up to his ears of their own accord, a habit he thought he'd left behind in middle school. He was an adult now, practically, but he felt like a squabbling kid, mouthing off for no reason.

Bruce was staring at him, but not in horror or confusion. Anger? It had to be anger. Tim had snapped at him for asking a question. Bruce had to be angry. Dick had been angry. Maybe Bruce hated him.

"Tim," Bruce said slowly, and made Tim want to wince. This was it. He was going to get fired. Kicked out. Sent away forever and ever. "When did you sleep last?"

Tim blinked. That was irrelevant. But Bruce not yelling back was such a relief that he choked down the sob building in the back of his throat and tried to think.

"Uh," he said as he dug the heel of his hand into one scratchy eye. "Dunno. It's Thursday?"

Bruce's face had a way of changing without changing at all. Like, if Tim snapped a photo of a second ago and now, they would look exactly the same, with grooves scored into Bruce's forehead and around a mouth set into a flat line. But they were different, the one sort of settling somehow into the other, the rise and fall of a determination made.

"You're done for tonight," Bruce said, not an order so much as a statement of fact.

"No!" Tim protested even as Bruce reached out and flipped off the computer monitor. "Bruce, I have to, the case, I told Dick—"

He had told Dick he'd solve it, had all but bit Nightwing's head off for questioning how long it was taking him. Dick would hate him forever if he failed. Or maybe he already hated him forever, the snot-nosed idiot Robin wannabe who couldn't even crack the string of murders before the killer struck again, and this was Tim's one chance to make it right, and—

Tim whup!ed in surprise as Bruce lifted him off his feet with a grunt, too startled but to hold rigid like a fainting goat as he was hefted bridal style. The slight huff out Bruce's nose was his only concession to the slipped disc from last month but Tim remembered and it made the panic rise again in his chest.

"Bruce," Tim tried protesting again, but it was like trying to beg with one of Gotham's famed gargoyles. They really were eerily similar.

"Dick signed off hours ago, and you should have, too," Bruce said, and the even-toned rebuke made the corners of Tim's eyes prick with tears. "Jason and Damian are taking over for now."

Great, great, so he WAS the weak link, then, and everybody knew it.

Bruce carried him up through the house, not slowing or faltering. Tim was too concerned with pushing his luck or tweaking Bruce's back to struggle too much. Besides, just the act of being still, without his focus held captive by case files and police reports, had let exhaustion seep into his bones like acid, eroding the marrow into brittle, bitter strips. He hurt, he realized, in every joint from his cricked neck to clenched fingers to aching ankles. How long had he sat hunched in that chair?

Tim expected Bruce to put him down at every step, or, failing the sensible release, to set Tim down in his own room and leave. Instead, Bruce bypassed Tim's bed entirely and went to the hammock suspended in the corner. He sat crossways, the wide, interwoven body of the hammock stretched to support Bruce from his head to the back of his knees, and Tim still held against his chest.

Bruce breathed, a low and soft pushed between his lips, and closed his eyes.

"Bruce?" Tim whispered, unsure of what exactly was happening. Or, more pressingly, "I don't know what the weight limit on this thing is."

Bruce just grunted, appearing already halfway to sleep himself.

Tim's chest still felt full of hot, prickly static, but maybe the tears running down the back of his throat would drown it out soon enough.

"No one hates you," Bruce said, seemingly psychic until Tim remembered it was one of the fears he had shouted out in the echoing pit of the Cave. "You'll feel better after you sleep."

He wouldn't. He wouldn't feel better until the case was closed, until people stopped dying, until he was sure Dick didn't hate him, Bruce didn't hate him—

Bruce didn't seem like he hated him. Tim sniffed as Bruce's chest rose and fell beneath him in deep, steady breaths.

The calloused base of Bruce's thumb rubbed slow circles into Tim's temple. "Sleep," Bruce said.

The mutations wreck havok on the senses. Sure, they make his hearing range incredible, but they don’t help with the processing, and he’s constantly hearing everything at once. It’s worse for Geralt than the other witchers because he’s had the Grasses twice. (Or because he’s autistic, duh.)

It’s half the reason he communicates so much with grunts, because most of the time he’s only got half of what the other person said and he just lets them interpret his grunts however they want.

And sure, he’s heard Jaskier sing so many times in taverns and courts and his songs are catchy enough, but he’s never actually managed to catch the lyrics. It’s just all gibberish to him. As soon as there’s the lute, and noise, and they’re in a city or a town so there’s people around, he just doesn’t understand any of it. It doesn’t make his “fillingless pie” comment any less insensitive, but it does give it some context.

Every winter the other witchers will make comments about the songs they’ve heard on the Path, about this or that adventure, and Geralt is just like. That. That’s what the song was about. Oh. Eskel isn’t great at auditory processing either but he’ll ask the bards to play over and over until he’s got most of it, and since they’re songs about witchers, the bards usually comply. It’s nice to hear good news of his brother. Then he’ll tease Geralt mercilessly all winter about it. That’s the only reason Geralt even knows so much of what Jaskier sings.

However, he likes hearing snatches of song while Jaskier’s composing, when they’re camping out in the open or in a forest and there isn’t too much noise around. Then he can actually understand the words, sometimes.

He’s very, very good at pretending he can hear just fine, and he’s been doing for so long, but he does feel a little guilty about making Jaskier think he doesn’t like his music. He just doesn’t know how to explain, doesn’t think Jaskier could get it, because no one ever has. Then while they’re all in Kaer Morhen after the mess with Voleth Meir, the other witchers start asking Jaskier to sing, even though he doesn’t have a lute. They’re all completely quiet during his performances, and every time Ciri or Yen or anyone makes a noise and they miss a line, Eskel will ask Jaskier to start over. (Eskel isn’t dead, obviously.)

And one day Geralt finds Jaskier hunched over a desk, with a pile of parchment beside him and his notebook open in front of him, frantically copying something.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“I’m making copies of my songs,” Jaskier answers. “I’ve actually published the whole songbook in Oxenfurt, you know, but we can’t get it here, and Eskel said that having the lyrics would help, so I’m trying to make enough for everyone.”

Geralt’s mind is boggled because yes, having the lyrics written down would help immensely but he would never have thought to ask, let alone that Jaskier might actually be willing to write them down for him, and what’s that about a songbook? He almost just grunts and leaves him to it, but he remembers that he promised himself to at least try to communicate better with Jaskier after the mountain, so he asks in a very small voice, “Can I have one?”

And Jaskier’s jaw hangs slack for a moment before he coughs and hands him a stack of parchment. “I wasn’t sure you’d want it,” he mutters almost to himself.

“I always want to know what you’re singing,” Geralt says.

Jaskier’s eyes are wide and shining when he hugs Geralt, and his voice cracks a little. “I wish I’d realized sooner that you couldn’t hear it.”

That night he sings his entire song cycle a capella in front of the fire, his eyes boring into Geralt the entire time, as Geralt follows the lyrics along for the first time.

And Jaskier’s songs are really fucking good, actually. Geralt is hardly an expert, but he can see the way he bends and stretches language to make it flow and how he weaves the stories together and he can feel the love in how Jaskier sings about him, about them, and—

Is that what he’s been missing this whole time?

For @appalachianapologies who wanted some whump Matt 😏