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Everything was all set. The furniture had been pushed against the walls in one corner of the living room and a massive sheet thrown across the tops. All the cushions, pillows, and blankets they could find were thrown inside. The TV was unmounted from the wall and stuck directly into the entrance of the fort. Bowls of snacks lined all the edges. It was glorious. It was…
“This plan was stupid,” chimed Tim as all seven of them looked at just how cramped the space was going to be inside. They all groaned, either thinking about being squished or how hard it would be to rebuild the thing. “Oh well,” Tim shrugged. Continue in, everyone. Time to be a bunch of sardines just to suffer through a movie.”
“All those late-night calls to organize this event, and it’s already in shambles,” Damian complained under his breath.
One at a time, with varying levels of regret, they all shuffled themselves in.
“Jason, scoot to the back, you’re too tall,” Dick instructed.
“What? No! I can’t reach the snacks from back there! Ugh-!”
Cass shoved him easily aside and he tumbled further in. “RIP. Sorry Jason,” she said with amusement and very little remorse.
“Whatever, you’re the only people I would do this for
While Jason grumbled and begrudgingly made himself comfortable, Dick followed after him and also sat at the back of the fort. Damian shuffled in and glared at Cass who had claimed the center of the fort. She grinned.
“Jealous much?”
He ignored her teasing and sat to the side next to Dick.
Tim pushed the two awkwardly standing Adrien and Marinette into the fort, and Cass grabbed them and situated them on either side of herself. Then Tim situated himself right next to the snacks like he owned them. Jason looked affronted, realizing Tim was blocking him from reaching for the snacks.
It felt like sparks were flying from all the glares being shot over the heads of the three in the center. Cass, calm as ever, distracted Adrien and Marinette from being too nervous from the tension in the blanket fort. She grabbed a couple snack bowls and shoved one into each of their laps.
Seeing this, the others stopped pushing and shoving each other and settled down enough to start asking for specific bowls to be handed to them. Tim designated himself as the person in charge of the food, and would pretend not to know which items Damian and Jason were pointing at and kept trying to hand them all the wrong things. Eventually, the right foods got to the right people, and everyone turned their attention to the TV.
“So…” Adrian softly spoke up, “What are we watching?”
In that moment, they realized their second fatal mistake apart from not planning out the fort better: they didn’t plan out the movie, either.
Over half an hour passed as they scrolled through all the available categories and options on the platform. Marinette, Dick, and Tim had all pulled out their phones just to go through more options and suggest them. However, no one could come to a consensus.
At some point while arguing how to spell the title of a movie so they could see if it was available, Jason snatched the remote away with impatience. “That’s it, give it here, I’m gonna show you how it's done.” He pressed a button, lifted it to his mouth like a microphone, and said the name of the movie. Seconds later, the screen buffered and it appeared on the screen. Jason looked proud of himself while everyone else reacted with shock.
Then, his proud little bubble popped when Cass pointed at the screen and read aloud, “No longer available.”
They kept searching, and Jason notably didn’t try to make himself look good again by knowing what he was doing.
Tim chimed in as he pointed to one of the movie listings on the TV screen with a long green licorice candy stick. “As someone who was in Damian’s head once, I think this one is kinda up his alley, but kinda dirty for his tastes.”
Damian glared and smacked the candy away from the screen. “How does that incident have anything to do with knowing what my tastes are?”
“Oh, well, we never talk about it, but we both know you have an entire section of your mind dedicated to your favorite pieces of media. For example, that one kids TV series-”
Damian hissed and swiped at Tim with a pillow. “I swear, if I could take us back, if I could just do that, I would’ve burned the world just for you to go into someone else’s head instead of mine!”
“Yeah, sometimes I still can’t believe that you actually chose me to go into your head back then, too,” Tim nodded. “I was the right person for the job, obviously, but I would have preferred anyone else besides you, too.”
“Even Jason?” Cass piped up, and the argument ended with defeated groans.
“Goodness,” Adrien whispered quietly to Marinette, “I wish I knew back when that Memory-Trapping Akuma showed up that it would cause this much fighting between the Bats just because we let them get involved.”
“We aren’t fighting,” Jason, Tim, and Damian all retorted, then glared at each other for a moment before backing off when Cass turned and stared them all down.
“I’m scared for Cass,” Marinette whispered back a moment later, “I feel like she’s going to be stuck calming down all their fights for the rest of her life.”
Cass giggled, and Dick slammed a hand over Damian and Jason’s mouth just to stop them from yelling that they weren’t fighting again.
“I just can’t believe a group of heroes can fight amongst themselves all day like this,” Adrien chuckled.
This time, Dick couldn't stop anyone as they all, including himself, instinctively shot back, “We’re not heroes.”
Adrien and Marinette both laughed. Enclosed spaces really made whispering in private quite hard, didn’t it?
After a few more attempts to pick a movie, Marinette made a new suggestion. “How about we go refill our snacks real quick, and we can try again with another platform. This one is a little bit of a dud,” she admitted.
“Fine.”
“I can agree to this.”
“Aright, whatever, everyone move, I’m cramped and I’m all out of scones.”
“Speaking of, Marinette,” Dick called over as she crawled out of the fort behind everyone else, “Next time to call your mom to tell her how you’re doing here, can you tell her that I love her? I swear fireworks go off in my mouth every time I get to eat her cooking when you bring some over.”
Marinette laughed, “You’ll have to get in line, Dick, you’re not the only one who loves her food.”
“Plus, Marinette’s dad has permanent dibs,” Adrien added with a laugh.
“Darn, worth a shot,” Dick snapped and shook his head, but his smile gave away his amusement. “Maybe she’ll agree to come visit and teach Alfred some of her recipes for my birthday?”
“Family secret, sorry,” Marinette laughed as she walked off with her near-empty snack bowl.
“Damn,” he sighed, and held up the last of his snacks. “Oh, my sweet and delicious scones, I can’t tell, are you flirting with me or threatening me with your unhealthy amount of sugar and chocolate drizzle, which combine so wonderfully, and make me want to court death by hitting on the married woman that made you?” He shrugged and smiled, “Well, it's too late ‘cause you’re mine now. After all, you kissed me first with your pure sweetness,” he said and promptly popped the whole scone into his mouth.
Jason looked at Dick like he had gone crazy. “You are so weird sometimes.”
“What? They're good!” He tried to defend himself, but the mouthful of baked goods garbled his words and made them useless. Dick kept trying to explain that he was just being dramatic about their quality as he followed Jason out of the room.
Tim leisurely followed after, but there was a glint in his as though he just heard some juicy gossip. Probably because their conversation would make great teasing and blackmail material.
“Woah, that's pretty cool,” Adrien said from where he stood by one of the ceiling high windows. “Cass, come look at the moon!” He pointed it out as she strolled over, clearly excited to show her. “We're right at the golden hour of the sunset, and the moon is coming out behind it. Isn't it beautiful?”
Cass noticed that, after a moment, a sadness started to settle deeply inside his eyes. Perhaps not settled, but rather, it came to the surface, coaxed as the hidden darkness meets the light of the faint rising moon and setting sun.
“You okay?” Cass asked gently as she set a hand on his shoulder.
He sighed, then shook his head with a gentle smile. “That Akuma, the one that affected memories. I had to help Ladybug, going into her memories just like Tim had with Damian. I saw some of her memories with the moon in them. It was broken. The memory itself…it wasn't very pleasant.”
He paused for a moment, then continued. “We never dated, you know. We tried, but it didn't really work enough to really call it dating, more like awkward hang-outs that felt like they should have been with a bigger group instead of just us two. That day, in her memories, I learned why it didn't work. I felt wronged, and I know she did, too. In a way, remembering that broken moon that happened yet didn't, it felt like we listened to the demons, the Akuma, and we let them get between us and what we dreamed of for the future. But…”
He glanced at Cass, still smiling through that inner darkness. She smiled back.
“It's okay. You got a dark side. Guess you're not the only one.”
Adrien laughed, and the weight on his shoulders seemed to lighten. “Yeah, we do. All of us, it seems. Things broke, but that won't stop us. Ever. Even if we can't have what we used to.”
Cass nodded and patted his back proudly. “Good. Be like the wildflowers. Grow, no matter how harsh or bare the land.”
“You sound like a Tsurugi,” came Marinette's voice along with her laugh. The two at the window turned around to see her walking back in with a hot pot of tteokbokki held between oven mitts. A pair of sunglasses were pushed up on top of her head.
She held out the pot and grinned. “Hungry?”
“For that? Always!” Adrien laughed and went over to help her set it up in front of the TV.
After setting the pot down on a heat pad, she shucked off her Chat Noir-themed hoodie and tossed it to Cass. Catching it, her eyes lit up and she pulled it on over her head without a word.
Adrien, knowing full well that Cass was a huge hoodie thief and would not give it back, took off his own Ladybug hoodie and tied it around Marinette’s waist so that she could put it on as soon as she inevitably got cold again.
Not one to be left out despite being fully at fault, dug an oversized Black Bat sweater and smacked it onto Adrien’s, then laughed when he pulled it down and revealed that his hair had been ruffled beyond control.
Dick walked back in at that moment, arms full with a stack of several filled snack bowls, and his eyes lit up at the sight of the steaming pot. “Hey, that gives me an idea! I think I know what movie to watch!”
After Tim and Jason also returned, Dick grabbed the remote and went on the hunt for the movie he had in mind.
As soon as the feature popped up, Damian immediately frowned. “It is full of pastel colors. I do not agree with this choice- Ah. Nevermind.” He changed his mind, looking thoughtfully at the blue tiger and six-eyes magpie previewing on the screen.
Jason snorted, and Dick beamed. Adrien and Marinette looked almost as equally excited as Damian was, that is, if he were to show his excitement more openly. Cass nodded her approval and Tim took the liberty to start dishing out the snacks again.
Barely a few minutes into the movie, talking had already started back up.
“So like, from what I can tell, they are able to make the shiny magic barrier because everyone really likes them?” Adrien awkwardly tried to explain it to himself, still not entirely sure about what was going on.
“You mean everyone other than by all the dead boys?” Tim joked.
Marinette gasped, “Spoilers, Tim!”
He shrugged and leaned back, “What? It’s not like we haven't all been spoiled about it just from being on social media. Plus, pretty sure you can't become a demon without dying first, so…”
“Well, yeah, but…” Marinette pouted, knowing he was right. “Well, still! Shush!”
Cass patted her on the back in comfort.
“We’ve been getting teased since we got here,” she continued to quietly pout, “and I mostly get it because everyone is always teasing almost everyone here, but they won’t mess with Tim for some reason.” Tim was, indeed, the leased teased person in the room, and she didn’t know why. “It’s like he has immunity from being teased but won’t stop anyone else from- Ack!”
A pretzel stick had poked her in the nose, held by a calm looking Tim.
“We were never on the same side, Mars. I have all the deets, all the power of information. I am a one man army surrounded by-”
Jason snatched the pretzel stick and shoved it into Tim’s mouth. “It's fine, we only tease him less because we have other unfinished business. As soon as that’s taken care of, you’ll see, he’ll be the most teased out of all of us.”
“Do you guys ever stop picking on each other?” Adrien furrowed his bow in concern.
“Old habits die hard, after all,” Jason snickered.
Then he leaned in, eyeing the movie.
Jason whispered conspiratorily. “Hey, wanna know something funny about that demon fire guy that I just realized?”
Cass, Adrien, and Marinette all leaned toward him to listen. Jason grinned.
“If his entire body is made of fire, then that means his dick is on fire, too.”
Adrien and Marinette looked grossed out and offended, while Cass just chuckled and went back to watching the movie like nothing happened.
“This is why no one hugs you,” Tim commented.
“Well, you wished I liked you even a little bit!” Jason, offended, lamely shot back. He was flat out ignored.
“Hey,” Adrien again whispered toward Marinette with a confused voice, “Why don’t they use any instruments?”
“Instruments?”
“Yeah, like- It’s clear they’re part of a group, but, do any of them actually play any of the music themselves? I don’t get it. I thought every music band actually had, y’know, band members.”
Dick leaned in to join the whispering. “It’s a Korean thing. All the K-Pop groups are music performers, but they’re mainly focused on vocals and choreography. It’s too hard to play an instrument at the same time as all of that.”
Adrian nodded, understanding. “So different groups have different dynamics. Some have individual skills, while others share the same skills. I see…It’s like chemistry, everything makes different stuff in different combinations.”
Damian scoffed and, not bothering to whisper, chimed in. “It is more than chemistry, it is art. Not every performer can be as skilled in multitasking on the stage as Lindsey Stirling. If someone could build an entire industry based on difficult such skills, they would have taken over the world by now.”
“So the Saja Boys could win against the Demon Hunters if they just all played instruments, I see,” Adrien muttered thoughtfully, and didn’t notice how Damian was nodding sagely or that Dick and Cass were giggling.
“Quiet down, pipsqueak, talking in the middle of a movie isn’t going to get you any attention,” Jason chimed up, not entirely keeping to a whisper himself.
“I don’t even want your attention that much,” Damian huffed, but still settled back quietly.
“I wonder what positions we all would take if we were a K-pop group,” Adrien mumbled, entirely distracted from the movie.
Marinette decided it was time to take the initiative to keep everyone from interrupting the movie and grab a bunch of sticky-notes from her bag and enough pencils for each of them, then quietly passed them out. “Here, so we don’t have to pause the movie every time we want to ask a question or something.”
Cass giggled, noticing how vaguely irritated Marinette was feeling underneath her thoughtful and polite gesture. However, she did refrain from warning Marinette about the war of sticky-notes she had just incited. Poor girl was going to regret it before the next movie scene even started. Tim had already written ‘zombie guy’s demon mark’ on one and stuck it to Jason’s forehead just under the white streak and patch of white skin on his hairline. Dick was already restraining him from smacking Tim upside the head in retaliation.
All in all, it took about three hours to watch the movie.
As they were cleaning up after themselves and trying to get rid of the evidence of their mid-movie food-fight tomfoolery, the door opened to a calm looking Alfred.
“Children. Master Bruce asks that you introduce him to your new friends before they leave. I am saddened that none of you thought to do so sooner.” His straight face and raised brow didn't look all that sad, just slightly judgmental with hints of grandfatherly disapproval.
“Oh crap, how did he find out about us?” Jason scrambled to stand from where he was pushing the couch around, only for his head to get caught by the overhead sheet and his feet to trip over the blankets. He fell sideways into the couch, pulling the sheet free, unable to stop it from falling on everyone else’s heads as well.
In the chaos of them trying to untangle themselves and not spill anything they wouldn't be able to clean out of the u
pholstery, Alfred barely sighed and closed the door on them.
“Goodness, however shall Bruce handle them without me?”