#alive again

bored at work

:3

Ooohhhhhh fuuuuuuuuuuuck

The ribs

The gaping chest

The ooze

The TEARS

The way he looks like he's kinda glitched into reality

It had been another long long day for Red Hood; the last few nights had blurred together in a haze of blood and bullets and self hatred. Now he trudged home ready to collapse in the empty safe house he still hadn’t left in the futile hope that Danny might come back to it.

He dreaded tomorrow morning when he would inevitably wake up alone and bruised and bloodied. Fuck, what he wouldn’t give to have Danny back. To make coffee for him with too many shots. To hear the shitty jokes he’d fill silences with. To tumble on the mats together at the gym. To marvel at the dark humour that matched so perfectly to his own. To feel... Just to feel again really. Since the moment he’d left Danny, closed the door and turned away, there’d been nothing but the anger churning in his gut and a green tint to his vision.

But that was it wasn’t it. He’d left. He’d left Danny and now Danny was gone, and he wasn't coming back, and Jason was going to be alone again forever, just like he was meant to be.

The lock clicked gently in his door and the absence of alarms told him his safe house was still secure, yet his gun was up and levelled before the door had even fully swung open. Someone, something, was here. Something that hadn’t tripped any alarms. Jason’s mind raced, Danny? Dick? Maybe Bruce had come to put an end to the Red Hood’s tirade across Gotham. Then the door opened enough for him to see in and

Oh shit, oh fuck that’s not human. That’s a fucking monster and it’s Fucking Huge. Like take up his entire living space huge. Holy shit. It had claws the size of Jason’s hands, and a barbed scaly tail that slithered across his floor like a fucking basilisk. He took in and catalogued risks in an instant, anticipating how this monster would fight, how it would move, and calculating how he could counter it. His fingers twitched at the trigger, his first instinct was to fire, put it down, kill the monster, get to safety. But.... But there was something about the way it was staring at him, something in the dripping green that oozed from wounds all over it. Something in the way this thing felt to him.

And then, in a voice like thunder that he felt deep in his chest, it spoke “Mmmmmyyyyy Jaaaaasonnnnn”

It was!

“Danny?”

The thing lifted its head higher in response, and holy shit are those his ribs??? What. The. Fuck.

Jason’s heart was racing in his chest and he thought that maybe he was hallucinating but... He did recognise this creature, gory as it was in this form. He stepped fully into the room, holstering his gun and pulled the door shut behind him.

“Hey Danny”

“Jaaaaaasssssssoooooonnnnnnn” Danny answered in a low drawn out rumbling growl that echoed strangely in ways that just should not be possible in this tiny room. Jason shuddered and tried to ignore the things that growling voice did to his hind brain. Fucking hell now is not the time to be feeling like that.

Jason cleared his throat and tried “Glad to have you back”, ignoring the way his voice caught on the words.

Danny just rumbled in response and continued to reach out towards Jason.

Jesus Fucking Christ those hands are as big as his whole chest, and they have, yep, yeah he had been right those claws were definitely the size of his hands at least. And they looked viciously sharp. He tried desperately to push the thought of what it would be like to have that hand wrapped all the way round his chest, and for those fangs to rest at his shoulder scraping at the soft skin. Nope no. No. Not the time or place for that.

He took a deep steadying breath before stepping up to Danny’s outstretched hand. As he did the monstrous form shuddered and began to shift. Jason watched fascinated as the gaping ribcage began to close back up, along with some of the other wounds, and Danny shrank somewhat. Not exactly to normal size, but enough to move from the crouched and cramped position he had been in.

Jason pulled Danny into a crushing hug, the relief finally breaking through. His Danny had come back to him. It lasted almost a second before an ice cold trickle of shame settled in his stomach at having doubted and at what he had done when he’d thought he’d pushed Danny away. He buried that feeling down and with effort deliberately concentrated on the relief instead “I’m so glad you’re back”. He didn’t bother to bite back the emotion in his words, he knew Danny could likely feel it anyway. Oh... damn. Jason rested his forehead on Danny’s chest trying to ignore his burning cheeks as he realised Danny had probably also felt his reaction earlier. He cleared his throat again and tried “Where’d you go off to?”.

Danny’s response had slightly less echo in it this time but was still mostly just a growled out word “piiiitttss”.

Oh shit. “The pits? The Lazarus Pits??” Jason shoved back gripping Danny by the shoulders and searching his face “The pits caused this?”. Fuck, now he really felt like an ass for those thoughts.

Danny gave the vocal equivalent of a shrug, his gaze going distant again. Jason looked back over Danny with a new perspective; it looked like he hadn’t rested in all the time he had been gone. As he watched he saw that Danny’s form was shifting slightly between more and less monstrous, and he realised Danny must be putting a lot of effort in to try and control it. What was concerning about that was that Danny was clearly too exhausted to regain his form. Jason understood that when he was in his less human form Danny was more malleable, but he was pretty sure he should be able to control it. The thought that Danny didn’t want to be in this form worried him, and the shame of his infatuation with it twisted in his gut, mixing with the already overwhelming concoction of emotions he was trying to bury.

“C’mon” Jason pulled Danny over to the shoebox of a bedroom he’d been staying in and was grateful that Danny was able to just phase straight through the doorway instead of having to try and squeeze him through. “you should rest”.

This time all he got in response was a hum of agreement as he guided them both towards the bed.

Grimacing at the grot and blood from himself and the dripping green ooze from Danny that he would have to deal with later, Jason kicked off his shoes, set down his mask and pulled them both onto the bed. As Jason wrapped Danny in his arms he was reassured to notice that Danny’s form shifted again to something closer to what he thought of as normal.

They drifted off to exhausted sleep together, both just happy to be home.

Prev | Start

Danny felt his claws scrape idly through the bricks as he passed buildings by. His usual wispy tail now scaled and slithering heavy through the air a few metres above the streets.

Not much further now and he’ll be home.

His chest rose and fell though no lungs could be seen within the gaping cavity of his torso, his ribs bent strangely like a bear trap waiting to be sprung.

Nearly home, nearly home to his Anchor.

A trail of ectoplasm sizzled gently behind him evaporating a few seconds after he’d passed by, dripping from his tired eyes, and gaping chest, and oozing wounds along his form.

He tried again in vain to pull himself together. Almost home to his Jason.

Fangs and claws and gahstly wounds refused to leave his invisible form as Phantom slowly wound his way up up up the floors of the apartment of His Jason’s safe house. He finally let himself collapse in a heap of green on the floor of the tiny apartment. He absently noted how much smaller it was now, even hunched over as he was his back scraped against the ceiling, and he thought that if he reached out he could probably touch both of the walls at the opposite ends of the room. Why was it so small.

Why did everything ache.

Why was it so hard to keep his form.

Oh. Right. The pits.

Unfocused eyes blearily watched as the front door swung open. A gun already bloody and smelling of gunpowder levelled at him before the door was fully open. Danny smiled wide and feral as the feeling of the man that held that gun washed over him. He carefully reached out a trembling hand towards them. “Mmmmmmyyyyy Jaaaaasonnnnn” it came out as a possessive snarl, the sound reverberating through the too small room like thunder.

“Danny?”

Prev | Start | Next