Spead some love

if you've made replies on posts there is now a tab on your blog showing every post youve replied to and your reply.

if this is not what you want, either go to your blog and click comments and disable it from there or just go to your individual blogs setting pages. just change it from blue to grey if you dont want everyone to see your replies AND the post you're replying to

PLEASE BE ADVISED that it is set to disabled for blogs that have not made any replies but it will turn ON if you reply with that blog in the future.! i just tested it with my main, which was greyed out but it turned on the moment i left a test reply

so couple of clarifications. comments are disabled as default for primary blogs that have their likes disabled. they are seemingly enabled for all other blogs that have replied to posts

.

It started with Dick pondering about the whole "secret identity" thing as a young Robin. The news are partially about Brucie Wayne, young dad extraordinaire setting an example for all reformed rakes turned fathers.

Then half of it is about speculations on Batman's true form — because while they all could've sworn that Batman was, well, a man... most investigators are hesitant to consider him human now because suddenly there's a toddling colorful child creature bobbing along after the living legend, with the same moves and capabilities as the Bat

Dick gets the brilliant idea to make Bruce into it

"Think about it!" Dick said on that first patrol, "People won't think too harsh on Batman if they figured that I'm just your little cub who is also made to fight crime, instead of a human kid out on the streets at night."

Bruce narrowed his eyes, but there's no harshness in his gaze. He's looking at this little boy, with messy curls of black and the sweetest shade of blue in his eyes. A reflection of him. How cruel it is of this boy to play with his feelings.

"You want people to think that the Batman is a creature that can give birth?" Bruce repeated carefully.

"More than that! I want them to think you're my mother!"

"...same thing."

"Bleh!"

.

It works as Dick proposed. Lesser ties made to Bruce Wayne, a cisgender man who can definitely not give birth, to Batman, a creature that allegedly birthed Robin. Bruce thinks it's the stupidest solution to a common problem, and he made Brucie.

But it works so they let the story run wild. Bruce doesn't mind so much as the weird, hungry, curious gazes that some villains and thugs give him.

Dick seemed to find it hilarious when ladies stopped Batman in the streets to tell him to rest because "you just gave birth!!"... only until said people also tell him to "respect your mother!"

Overall, it was just another one of those weird things a vigilante resorts to for the sake of operational efficiency...

...

Until one time, Robin had gotten captured in a ship rigged to blow, and villains left and right were hitting him everywhere.

Batman had priorities on the other side of the docks. Robin just had to distract everyone else, and this was a distraction technically. But everything hurt and some of the older men were looking at him funny and he can't move and he wants to go home.

"MAMA!" Robin shrieked into the night.

And descended from the shadows was the Batman, in all his apparently motherly glory — towering above 6 feet, maybe more, because animals grow their appearance when preparing to pounce. A culmination of darkness and rage. Armed to the teeth with weapons and artful precision.

His white eyes turn to a bloodied, shaking young Robin, then to the rest of the fools who dared breathe his boy's air. The sound of rage he made was not human.

Every move is calculated and efficient; not with the aim to kill, but to make an example of the bastards who dared hurt his little bird.

.

This story will be passed along the underworld of Gotham for years to come as more and more of the Bat's brood grew

And this secret will be inherited from Robin to Robin, Batgirl to Batgirl

Bruce is a father — providing, stern, careful

But Batman? They each came from his symbol, his cloth, his rearing. And Batman is a much more violent creature when it comes to protecting those who have his mark.

cw: nightmares. soap with a poor appetite and/or bad mission recovery habits. dry heaving. Hurt/comfort. soapgaz (platonic or romantic)

Thinking about Soap who comes back from six weeks in the field without an appetite.

Six weeks on whatever they could find plus a rotation of MREs, bodies running on fumes and adrenaline and not much else. They all deal with it when they get back. Price eats everything in front of him for three days straight. Gaz sleeps a lot between three step meals. Ghost disappears somewhere and doesn't come out until he's ready.

Johnny doesn't eat. Johnny works, reviews, trains, and distracts himself throughout the day.

A week passes and he's still pushing food around his plate and drinking coffee like that's a meal. His face gets a new sharpness to it that Kyle doesn't like.

The first few times, Kyle stays quiet. They're still new together. Still figuring this out. It's not Kyle's place to tell a man how to handle his trauma.

The nightmares start, or Kyle starts hearing them, maybe not the same thing. The first one comes through the wall as a sound that gets choked on, swallowed down. Kyle lies in the dark and doesn't sleep for an hour. Then the third sound is of Soap's door closing and Kyle's sitting up and following him down the hall.

He finds Johnny on the bathroom floor, arm hooked over the rim of the tub, shaking like a cold dog. He's dry heaving into the air, body wrung out and insisting, that awful sound going on too long in the small tiled room. Kyle opens a cabinet in the low runner lights along the floor, runs a cloth under the cold tap and crouches behind Johnny and presses it to the back of his neck.

Johnny flinches. Then goes still. Then starts shaking again. Kyle keeps the cloth there.

It takes a while to stop.

"Sorry," Johnny says eventually, voice scraped raw.

"Don't," Kyle says.

He gets him up off the floor, a hand under his arm, and Johnny lets himself be moved. He walks him down the hall and sits him on the edge of his bed. Then reaches past him to the shelf and sets a small stuffed bear in his hands.

Johnny looks down at it.

Kyle leaves him for 12 minutes to to make rice.

He keeps it plain, keeps it soft, almost overcooked. Just a bit placed in a small bowl. He brings it back and Johnny is sitting exactly where he left him, bear held loose in both hands, staring at nothing. Kyle sits beside him and holds the bowl out.

Johnny takes it from him, letting the warmth seep through the ceramic and into his palms. Then he eats. Just slow, small bites, like his body has just enough left in it to do this one thing. At some point he just sets the spoon down and Kyle takes the bowl from him without comment and puts it on the nightstand.

Kyle eases him back against the pillows, one hand between his shoulder blades, and Johnny goes, a bit boneless now, the bear tucked against his chest between his arms. Kyle pulls the blanket up and then pulls him in. Johnny's back against his chest, arm over him. Johnny doesn't say anything. Doesn't make a joke of it or laugh at Kyle's sudden gentle manner.

Kyle lies there in the dark and listens to his breathing slow down and even out, feels the last of the tremors work their way out of him. The room is quiet. Neither of them are asleep yet but neither of them speak.

Kyle feels Johnny tuck in closer to his chest, curling in around the bear, burrowing under the blankets.

“Poppies · 2025”

Where the air trembles with colour and everything is quietly blooming.

until 2020 when i was living on a boat completely alone in quarantine during the heat of lockdown. i woke up at 1 am from a dream in which i was whistling. i sat up in bed and i thought, "oh my god, i get it now,"

and i whistled. i whistled a tune, even. i took a video of myself whistling just to prove it to everyone.