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Title: Priestly's Pesto
Author: amazinmango
Artist: punkascas
Fandom/Genre: Supernatural/Ten Inch Hero AU
Pairing(s): Dean(Priestly)/Castiel
Rating: Explicit
Word Count: 65K
Warnings: No major warnings (recreational drug use)
Summary: A man with a mohawk, a tax accountant adrift, a brother not so lost and the sandwich that brings them together. (Or at least it's tasty.)

Fic link: hither
Art link: yon

So, as I suddenly find myself with all the time in the world on my hands, I done made something in PS3--a 'book cover' of sorts for Subject Untitled, aka The Robot AU. The "binary" in the background is just me keymashing, but the red bidness says E0F5M3 because I am so clever. Thank you, internet stock images, for le DNA.

( Image under le cut... )

From yet another awesome prompt on the TDKR meme.

consummation
"You're mine now," Robin said, astride him still. He breathed, Bane's seed held warm inside his form. "This belongs to me." His chest was sweaty. He was beautiful in Bane's eyes, all of him shining in the firelight. The base, tight hold of his body on Bane's softening member was a part of it, physical and real, but it was his eyes that arrested Bane. The heat there made Bane feel possessed, and, perhaps for the first time in his life, protected. It was an unusual feeling, and in that moment it was utterly necessary.

Bane put his hand on Robin's torso, watching his fingers span his skin and muscle. He felt the heat of him, the vitality of his heart, beating strong.

His Robin, so alive.

Bane was not a man of words, not for this. Bane was in awe, but he knew not how to tell his lover, his husband, how the simple touch of Bane's hand and its crooked finger against Robin's body could fell him from a height. Bane wasn't sure he'd stopped falling, with his Robin looking at him with his dark eyes from above, his lithe form so young and strong, and Bane's own large, scarred, the signs of the life he'd lived there for Robin to see.

Yet his Robin loved him, Bane knew not how, but he could see it. He only had to look, and be humbled.

"My Robin," he said, breath short and raspy in his chest, a tightness there. "Robin," he said again, quieter, on a breath. Bane drew his hand down, didn't have to go far, and he took Robin in hand, held him, the crook of his broken finger hidden as the rest curled around his perfect lover. "Make me yours."

kohl
On the day before their wedding night--secret, as anything could have been, concealed and hidden from even those closest to them, something for the two alone--Robin had laughed when Barsad had asked which of them should wear kohl, putting his hands on his lover’s face, feeling the pleasant scratch of Barsad’s ever-present beard.

The light caught on it in the night, with the torchieres of Robin’s innermost chamber burning hot and bright. He’d touched Barsad like this thousands of times before, and yet, here with them kneeling on his bed and facing each other, his dark-rimmed eyes more hauntingly beautiful than anything Robin had ever seen...

He wanted to say so many things, small things but deep things at once, like I love you and you’re my everything, things Barsad knew, things that Barsad would say like it came so easily to him, like loving Robin was as breathing. Robin knew this, and Barsad knew this--their connection lay within their souls, and words weren’t needed, but on this night, Robin didn’t have words and he wanted to say them.

Barsad had put his hands on Robin’s shoulders, stared into the darker colors of his lover’s eyes, shining with the fires in them. His pale Robin was beautiful, strong as ever, the kohl emphasizing the vitality and passion that never ceased to humble and amaze Barsad in turn, that he should be graced with love from one such as this.

Barsad had felt the child, smuggling the pale silk robes from areas of the estate to which he was allowed but had no reason to be, his Robin giggling like a boy when Barsad had shown him his spoils. Robin did not laugh when Barsad, shy for perhaps the first time in his adult life, had met him in his bedchamber wearing the robes in traditional folds. Barsad had not worn clothing in the customs of his home country since he’d been a boy, and had been carried on the winds that had taken him to Gotham’s kingdom and into Robin’s orbit.

Now his Robin gazed at him like he was meeting him at the first, and welcoming him home, to where he belonged, all at once. In an instant Barsad’s self-consciousness faded, not only because of Robin’s own appearance--Robin’s eyes held everything for him, and it wrapped about his heart like something soft and secure, as his Robin would say, something right.

The prince’s consort had no business marrying said prince, and the memory was one of Barsad’s most cherished as it represented a truth between the two of them that would never be broken. Even now, with his Robin in the arms of another, belonging to another and, Barsad trusted in time, loving another, Barsad ached. He accepted, and he went about his pain quietly as was his wont.

It did not hurt any less, knowing that his Robin and the Lord Regent Bane were joined in body and in custom, in the law of both Bane’s land and Robin’s. Gotham had not truly been home to Barsad--home was where his Robin was, and if that was now this darker place, with its severe beauty, at his Robin’s side but no longer in his heart, so be it.

Barsad knew Robin could come to love the Lord Regent, because love was Robin’s way. If another was worthy of it, they would receive that love and understand the gift they had been given without reserve. Bane was an honest man to a fault, and Barsad had looked into his eyes and felt him worthy, had felt something he’d not thought he’d need to hide--pain, even resentment, pushed down to the farthest reaches. Barsad was skilled at simply being. What was necessary was something he could be.

It still pained him, and always would, somewhere much lower than the place where he still held his Robin, tightly held in the inmost chambers of his heart, as he would ever be.

thalaathah
[forthcoming]

aya_no_hako is amazing as all should know, but FishieFish has been immortalized in amazing as of now.

This piece of amazing has been made! :D Check out all of aya's stuff, because you need it in your life. Especially the latest kitten!Arthur and Eames on tumblr!

Tossing up the first part of 'the Robot AU' on AO3, with ginormous beta thanks to

ey_up for Britpicking, fast reading, and general awesomeness. Moar beta acknowledgements to

mikahaeli8 for further Britpickage and extensive comma-wrangling. And big thanks for an off-the-cuff yet-to-be-incorporated Welshpick from the inimitable

whiskyrunner.

Subject Untitled
Rating: R
Words: 80Kish
Notes: From a prompt at the Inception kink meme and the vid that accompanies it. WIP, full text @ prompt.
Summary: Arthur's a former QA specialist for Fischer-Morrow. Eames is the android he steals.

Tracing paper is the shit, man. But I need to learn how to draw hooves. And equine torsos with acutal mass. Or, yanno, horses in general.

Kindly ignore the fact that his head is...I'm not sure what the hell is going on here.

Improving by the tiniest of increments, but one day, I'll draw a bloody centaur. Not today, but one day.

In response to http://tdkr-kink.livejournal.com/2798.html?thread=1554670&#t1554670

Twenty fucking vouchers. It's not a lot to ask.

Except it would be, but Blake's got kids to worry about. He's got that many kids and twenty'll barely cover them for three days, never mind the week. A voucher's good for two squares a day for two days unless you stretch 'em out, like Blake does, like the kids do. Blake takes the vouchers to the right places, where it gets him a full ration apiece. His kids don't know they're getting half-meals, less than.They know all about rationing, and for them, food's food and they're happy to get it. Blake just wishes they didn't have to know hunger like he did.

Hell, like he does. He doesn't get a fucking voucher half the time, but he works for his food when he can.

He's already prepping himself for the same argument he has with the lady at the dispensary when he pushes through the gate, chain-link rattling. It looks like the entrance to a goddamn internment camp, and Blake thinks the place started out as a pawn shop, fenced-in, makeshift slats and tarp everywhere. It's a sight better than the front door at the boys' home, even though the roof is more tarp than anything and there's trash on the concrete floor and the slushy snow comes in when winter really hits.

The lady sits behind the counter. Blake doesn't know her name, and he doesn't bother with charm. She's never budged, never given him more than twenty vouchers (and sometimes not even that, no matter how much Blake tells her--she fucking knows--he needs them and they're not for fucking him anyway) but today her eyes get huge before he's even up to the fence that separates them, and she's already fumbling her lockbox.

"This--this is all I've got," she says, and she shoves a handful of cards at him.

It's more than a handful. It's like fifty.

Blake blinks at her. "I just need twenty," he says, surprised, at his own voice, at the way her hands are shaking.

"Please," she says, a word he’s pretty sure has never come out of her mouth, her eyes flicking over his shoulder and immediately back down to the paper cards she tries to shove under the gap in the barrier. She doesn't even sound sullen.

"Just give me twenty," Blake says, blinking, and then he follows her glance.

"Oh for fuck's sake," he says. The cyborg is hulking there, this ‘Bane,’ staring impassively forward, its eyeless mask focused somewhere over the lady's head.

"He's not my fucking enforcer," Blake snarls, which doesn't do much to reassure the lady. He spins on Bane, puts a finger an inch from the thing's unmoving chin. "You're supposed to be watching the kids," he hisses. The cyborg--the machine doesn't move, but a quiet, broken sounds comes from inside the mask--Bane taking a breath.

"You require protection," it said. Its voice is inhuman. Blake thinks it's fucking fitting. Be nice if it had a goddamn brain.

"Goddammit," he mutters, and turns back to the woman. He angrily takes a fistful of cards and counts out twenty exactly, and shoves the others back at her--fifty, she was gonna give him fifty. He believes that's all she has, and he has to wonder if he's gonna catch shit from her supplier now that he's 'threatened' her, but he can’t worry too much because he’s gotta get back to the home. It’s not too bad, in the daytime, when the older boys know to keep the door shut tight and the little ones stay away from the one window, but Bane is supposed to be watching the fucking kids.

Blake’s about to take a step back, but his eyes won't leave the pile that she's not taking. Fifty vouchers. If he even took twenty-five, total, that'd stretch. That'd be okay, they're growing boys, but they're growing up in this world and they know hunger. If Blake took more than he did, the other dealers and pushers'd know, and his kids would catch hell. That can't happen.

But still. Just five more.

He shakes himself, sees the faces of his boys behind his eyes, and turns to leave without thanking her. He has to shove at Bane, and the cyborg's body smoothly moves aside for him. "Get back to the home," he growls.

"I require five."

Blake shuffles to a stop at the dispensary gate, right before the street. His breath puffs in front of him. "What?"

Bane's not talking to him. Blake turns around to see him looming over the lady, standing really close to her gates and slats and fencing that suddenly doesn't seem much of a barrier anymore.

She seems to shake herself into motion, like a frightened rabbit that realizes it's got to bolt because standing still is certain death.

It's fucking ridiculous, is what it is, but with Bane right there she shoves the vouchers at him, and the cyborg is utterly calm as it reaches down and measures five cards into its paws. Without so much as a nod (why would Blake expect any different, it's a machine, never mind that he stopped thanking the lady ages ago when it was clear his boyish face wouldn't work on her) the cyborg turns on its heel and clomps up behind him.

Funny, that. When the fucker moves, he's usually silent as a jungle cat, no matter his size. He's gotta be doing that shit on purpose, and it pisses Blake off. He's already intimidated the fuck out of the lady, hasn't he?

Blake huffs and shoves through the gate. He doesn't wait for Bane, though he can feel it following him. He didn’t know he’d have to feed it. This is going to complicate things.

It's cold. Winter's not here yet, but it will be. The first dirty snows'll replace the nasty rain that's been coming at night, and soon the mornings'll be sleety, slushy, fucking colder, the kind that seeps through whatever you've got on and finds your bones.

Blake wonders if Bane will need a jacket, or something. It's a machine, but maybe. Maybe he needs fucking kerosene. Blake should look into that.

Behind him, Bane is silent, a big shadow that says not a word as it follows him back to the boys' home.

- -

The door’s secure, at the home, and Blake taps out their code of the day. Jason lets him in, one of the oldest boys there, he’s gonna be fourteen soon. Blake wanted to do something for his birthday, but even Jason says he doesn’t know when it is.

It’s like that, more often than not, the kids picking arbitrary dates and celebrating with a slap on the back, a smile. Sometimes they make these little cakes, when Blake goes and gets flatbread special--he’ll get cheese, too, and that is a thing to have. Cheesy bread and a candle, greasy smiles and fingerprints on everything. They don’t make big deal out of it, but it’s nice.

Blake secures the door behind him and nods at the older kids, greets the smaller ones with a smile. Out there, outside, it’s really hard to smile, but in here it’s easy as breathing, most days. Blake’s got another few days’ worth of food, and he doesn’t have to see young cheeks too gaunt. He doesn’t bullshit his boys, they know the score, but they know what he does and they know he loves them with all he’s got, because he couldn’t do any less. It’s a small thing, but Blake’s been there, and he knows what it’s like when everything is shit, but somebody smiles at you and means it.

And besides, little Potro, when he smiles his gap-toothed smile, he makes Blake remember what it’s all for, and at the same time Blake can keep a tiny bit of the warmth from that smile, help himself stay human.

The kids get quiet when Bane comes inside. Most of the time, the cyborg is silent, doesn’t say much of anything. Its voice is deceptively soft through the mask, made mechanical with enough of something to it that Blake suspects it’s not entirely lacking flesh and bone. The thought disgusts him more than a little, and whether or not that makes him a bad person, he wasn’t the one who decided to go play soldier. Bane, whoever it was before it became what it is now, it made its choice.

It was available, it was affordable (fucking barely--until Blake thought of Potro and Jason and Jimmy and Winston and then any price he could pay, he did) and Blake has to admit it’s necessary. It’ll do the job--except when it fucking follows Blake, they’re gonna have a little talk about that--and it stays out of the way otherwise. That’s really all Blake can ask for.

When Blake is done checking the window and poking in on all his kids, he jerks his head at Bane. The cyborg follows him, docile, into one of the rooms they use as a storage area. It’s down the hall a ways. For a bombed-out building, the intact rooms are okay, and because this one doesn’t have heat (not like the the other ones do, even if they have to heat the water in the radiators by boiling it first over fires on one of the upper floors that isn’t gonna fall down) they use it to store the extra blankets and wood. When winter really comes, they’ll be able to put perishable food in here.

Blake shuts the door tight behind him. “What part of ‘watch the kids and keep them safe at all costs’ was hard to understand?”

Bane seems to regard him impassively. It’s not like Blake can fucking tell, what with the leather and straps that cover the thing literally head to boots. The leather looks worn, and it only creaks a little when Bane moves. It does breathe, before it talks, and Blake doesn’t know if it needs to normally or if it just needs the air to be able to speak through whatever it’s got left as vocal cords. Now, Bane’s chest moves, just slightly, and it makes that broken noise. Maybe it’s got lungs in there, somewhere.

“The children are relatively secure in the daylight. You are vulnerable carrying your food.”

“It’s paper, Bane,” Blake says, spitting the name with more than a little mockery, “and nobody knows--”

“Anyone seeing you emerge from the dealer’s as regularly as you do knows what you’re about,” Bane says simply. Blake can’t get over the way it speaks--it’s this weird mix of articulate condescension and this flat, mechanical rasp.

“Bane,” Blake says. “Let’s make this real clear. You’re here to protect the kids. You’re here to help me protect the kids, especially when I go out on errands so someone can stay here to look after them.”

“The current situation as you define it is not feasible,” Bane says. “You hired me to assist you in protecting your flock, did you not? I am merely assisting.”

It’s all in the tone--Blake almost can see Bane, for all that he’s not moving, as it--as he might have been before. Walking with those silent, measured steps, or maybe letting his boots thud, tilting his head as he speaks. Blake can’t imagine the face, though, not with that leather-metal mask that covers his whole head.

When Bane doesn’t continue, Blake says, “Okay, so let’s lay down some ground rules.” He thought he already did, but clearly they’re gonna need to get a little specific. “First, your priority here isn’t me. It’s them.” He jerks his thumb back at the rest of the floor. “You’re more than welcome to help around when you’re not on duty. I need you most at night, when--” Blake pauses. “Can you handle the nighttime temperatures outside, when it gets cold?”

Bane takes in a rasping breath, and there’s a little pause, enough for Blake to listen a bit harder. “I would appreciate an appropriate coat,” he says.

Maybe it’s something in his voice, which really isn’t all that human anymore, or the way he stands, too-straight in a way that suggests he’d be--had been different, before. A hint of something, and again Blake can almost see it. It’s weird.

“Okay,” Blake says. “We’ll have to find one. I dunno if we can buy one right now, but I’ve gotta go back out and get some leather and some blankets anyway, winter’s coming.” He pauses. “I didn’t think to ask. What do you need for food?” Five vouchers is a bit much for one guy, especially as Bane already knows he hits the dealer every few days.

“You take enough to provide for your boys,” Bane says, “yet you too must keep up your strength if you are to protect them.”

“I wasn’t asking about me,” Blake says, ignoring the way his stomach clenches. He’s used to it.

“You cannot provide if you are of no use to them,” Bane says, and Blake’s eyes narrow. Before he can come back at that, Bane’s head does tilt, just a little. It’s unnerving, staring at the sightless place his eyes should be. “This is part of my price. I cannot effectively assist you if you are yourself incapacitated.”

Blake wonders how he can see through that thing. Maybe he’s wired up all the way, sensors in place of--Blake gives himself a mental shake. “We’ll work that out. I can’t take more than my share, if I do, the pushers’ll come down on me, and they already know I take care of the kids.”

“That is unfortunate,” Bane says, “but it is a reality. It would be best if you relocated. It would also behoove you to offer your boys something to keep themselves occupied. They too readily lead others here, with their own recreation.”

Blake is gritting his teeth so hard his jaw hurts. “I didn’t fucking hire you to spit reality at me,” he says. He hasn’t been this angry in a long time, hasn’t been quite so ready to bite. The past few weeks have been hard, but that’s life, and he’s doing all he fucking can to make it better for just a few kids.

“Then why did you hire me, John Blake?” Bane says, and now, that is a definite tone in his voice, for all that it’s mechanical Blake can hear it. It’s a bald challenge.

For a moment, Blake thinks he might be pushed over the edge. Instead, he makes himself stop, makes himself think. He looks at Bane, this cyborg thing in front of him, just standing there, waiting. He’d thought to hire on some experienced muscle, Blake did, that’s all. But what Bane’s saying is just shit Blake already knows--he knows Timofey goes out on his own. Kid’s maybe seventeen, though he shows too much ribs and cheekbones to be ready to go running around out there. He knows that he’s not getting enough food, like he knows he can’t go and try to find another dealer who’ll let him pay in installments because he’s good for ‘em, no other way to get hold of the vouchers for the food.

Otherwise, he’d be stealing food, and that’s a death sentence right there. Bad enough that if he’s ever caught jacking blankets and the like when it gets real cold that it’ll be the same, the kids don’t need that kind of heat coming down on them.

And heat. They haven’t done a winter yet, not here. They moved in springtime, and were lucky to find these rooms with uncracked radiators, but the thing is, it’s becoming clear as the air gets more of a snap that the walls aren’t gonna hold the heat.

Bane stands there, and lets Blake think.

Blake looks up at him, at all six-some, and says, “Okay. Talk to me.”

A raven circled him once, then lit on the ground with grace that belied the weight borne on its great black wings. Tiny ice crystals formed under its clawed feet as it took one hopping step to come to rest near his arm. A faint chill colored the air as it leaned forward, cocking its head.

Blake whispered to it, and it inhaled, the lightest of hisses through its beak, hearing him. Its round black eyes took in his own flightless state, moving down his body and back to his face. It did not pity him, a characteristic of the clan for which Blake was ever grateful, especially in this moment.

The raven knelt, opening its wings. Ravens did not engage in idle conversation, for all that they participated in the affairs of those earthbound. Yet this one, slow waves of frosted air barely visible rolling down from its body, it released a single, quiet caw. You are watched, it said, and then with a beat that flushed a chill towards Blake it took to the air once more, leaving him far below on the ground.

This is just further proof I can't draw centaurs. Or horses, for that matter. That's kind of a given.

Men.

Men are such small creatures, in many ways. It isn't just their modest stature, not even in comparison to his own people--and that in itself is another contrast. His people are unknown even to he, and those he has taken under his rule are but relations in name only.

These men, they gather in such numbers, so that the heaving bulk of them creates a pustulent mass on the free land. They transform it, but not to the betterment of any. They feed of it like parasites, like ticks and flies suckling at a corpse already withered. These men slither upon one another, so thick are they, so secure in their city-states that they build walls to contain themselves, a seething, stinking mass of humanity that no longer bears any relation to the meaning of the term.

Men busy themselves with naught but their own short lives, and clamber upon one another for the smallest advantage. He has heard them likened to ants, or even the great architects the termites, but he feels this is unfair and inaccurate. Men do not work as one. Men do not come together for the greater good at the cost of their own personal comfort. Even the termite is not mindless, like a man can be. Men see not but ways to make their path to the top of a teetering pyramid, where the air is no less foul for their misdeeds.

Men in their cities, in their towns, in their settlements, they seek endless propagation. Even weeds have their uses, but these men are a blight.

He looks down, down to where a man now dead lies upon his cobblestoned road, silent in the midst of his creation. The man's chest is caved inward, and his eyes are unseeing. The man was once a creature who knew not his own beauty, nor his potential. The man's eyes were once light, perhaps blue. They are now grey, and the man has concerns of his own no longer.

He is not unfamiliar with humility. He embodies it, and for these men, in their city, his people teach them its value.

Bane lifts his hoof, and gently scrapes it against the stones near the man's torso.

Men are so small, in so many ways.

In response to this prompt on the TDKR kink meme, two versions of a silly doodle, one with extra...sparkles. Yeah.

The NSFW version:

Special hell, here I come.

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