Fic: Nightbird and the Fashion Designer: The Dangers of Dating
Title: Nightbird and the Fashion Designer: The Dangers of Dating
Author: nicnac918
Fandom: Glee, DCU
Pairing: Klaine, Brittana, Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel, Pamela Isley/Santana Lopez
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None
Word count: 3714
Summary: Poison Ivy does not take kindly to being dumped (though Santana would like to register her opinion that they were never actually dating.) Also Rachel and Roy are both incorrigible and Blaine would really like this day to go like he planned, please.
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit
AN: Third in the Nightbird and the Fashion Designer seriesAN2: Seven months ago someone requested Roy flirting with Blaine. They've probably forgotten, but I haven't! So that part's for you Loki Firefox.
AN3: The Sweet Tooth referenced in this is the one from Team Starkid's Holy Musical B@man! Because that just felt too appropriate.
AN4: And finally, fair warning, this fic gets a little silly at the end. And in the beginning. And in the middle. And... well the whole thing is just made of silly really.
AN5: Covers by the lovely ctbn60
*~*~*~*~*~*
“What the hell kind of name is Sweet Tooth, anyway?” Santana asks.
“He’s a candy themed villain,” Blaine explains, not for the first time since he had stopped by Kurt’s place that afternoon only to find Santana was the only one home. “He hatches candy themed plots while making candy themed puns and literally pulling the appropriate candy out of the jacket.” Blaine was pretty sure that the jacket was some kind of magic because there was no other possible explanation for how Sweet Tooth always managed to pull out exactly the right candy bar to match his pun. They didn’t even sell Bar Nones in the US anymore, Blaine had checked.
“And you want an overgrown Oompa Loompa” - actually, come to think of it, that wasn’t an entirely inaccurate description of how Sweet Tooth looked - “to be your arch nemesis?” Santana says, skeptically. Well, more like judgmentally, but Blaine had learned that translating Santana speak generally required toning down the cattiness by about three levels.
“I don’t know if I want him to be my arch nemesis, or if he’s going to be; I just thought he might because he’s the first real supervillain I’ve come across, plus he kind of reminds me of the Joker, but with candy instead of clowns.”
“So you’re sticking with the ‘being a total rip-off’ thing?” Santana says.
Blaine goes to disagree, but then stops himself when he realizes that that probably isn’t an entirely inaccurate description either. He really hasn’t been doing the full-fledged independent superhero thing for very long yet and hasn’t really done anything to separate himself from the rest of the ‘Bat family’ - which Blaine had totally geeked out to learn he was technically a part of, in a slightly distant cousin sort of way, since Nightwing had been his teacher/mentor. So instead he just sighs and asks, “When’s Kurt supposed to get back?” It can’t take that long to go grocery shopping, can it?
Santana glances at the clock on her cell phone and says, “Half an hour ago. But Hummel’s favorite boutique is right on the way, so it’s possible that they went it for a ‘quick look.’”
Blaine suppresses to urge to groan. One thing he has learned about Kurt is that a ‘quick look’ when it involved clothing or interior decorating, could take anywhere from one hour to, apparently on one occasion, five. It isn’t that Blaine doesn’t like Santana or enjoy her company, though he is a little worried that they will run out of things to say to each other if they hang out just the two of them for too much longer, but he had come here today with a specific purpose. And with each minute that passes, Blaine becomes more and more nervous, and it becomes less and less likely that when Kurt did get back, Blaine will have the courage to do what he had intended to in coming here.
He’s about to suggest they put in a movie to pass the time while they wait, when someone knocks on the door. Santana looks at Blaine contemplatively, and for a moment he’s sure she’s going to make him go get it, but then she rolls her eyes - at what he isn’t sure - and goes to answer the door herself. She comes back a minute later carrying a potted plant, which Blaine supposes is a unique way to give someone flowers. And to be fair, they are gorgeous flowers - a little rosebush with flowers to match in size, but each one of them seems perfectly formed, and are such a deep red hue they almost look purple, a color Blaine was almost sure he’s never seen before, despite the little niggling sensation of familiarity in the back of his mind.
“Who are those for?” Blaine asks, trying to maintain his cool while he’s panicking on the inside. Because oh, God, what if those flowers are for Kurt, from Kurt’s boyfriend who’s totally more funny and interesting than Blaine and tall and has hair that isn’t a crazy curled mess that has to be gelled into submission every day, and the only reason no one has mentioned this amazing, fabulous guy that Kurt’s dating is they all can tell how Blaine feels about Kurt and they’re just trying to find a way to let him down easily because he’s so pathetic and -
“Me,” Santana replies, cutting out about half of Blaine’s anxiety, though now that that thought is in his head, it doesn’t want to go away.
“And who are they from?” he asks, hoping for some Santana gossip, which is often disturbing or scary or both, but always very distracting. Which would be perfect right now.
“Don’t know, there wasn’t a card with them,” says Santana
“Then how do you know they’re for you?”
“You’re here, so they’re not for Hummel,” Santana says, sending a confusing mixture of relief - Kurt doesn’t have a boyfriend! (Which would be why Kara was trying to set the two of them up on a blind date when they first met. Clearly panic makes Blaine stupid.) - and embarrassment - maybe three bouquets was a bit excessive, no matter how nice the uniform Kurt finally put together for him is. “And there’s no way I wouldn’t have heard about it if Hudson had done something stupid enough to warrant apology flowers. So they must be for me, from one of my old flings trying to convince me to give them another chance.”
For the most part, Blaine can’t argue with the logic of that - he especially like the part where Kurt doesn’t have a boyfriend - except, “How are they supposed to win you back if there’s no card saying who it’s from?”
“Not everyone I hook up with can be geniuses,” Santana retorts. “Besides, it’s not going to work anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Apparently there’s a project in Tokyo that lost its funding,” Santana answers smugly, which seems to be a complete non sequitur at first, until Blaine made the connection.
“Brittany’s coming back to New York?” Blaine says, happy for his friend. He’s never met Brittany - aside from one truely bizarre phone conversation where Brittany had insisted on talking to him in order to assure him that a fish and a bird could love each other, and she’d be happy to help him make a dolphin-slash-songbird house - but he had heard the whole story about how they had fallen in love, gotten separated when Santana had graduated high school, found each other again when Brittany got hired for her amazing savant-like math ability at an R&D company in the city, then got split up again when said company transfered Brittany to Japan indefinitely to work on a project there. The whole story struck Blaine as having a classic movie romanticism to it, and he really hoped it worked out for them this time.
“Yeah, she is.” Santana smiles, looking so happy, she’s almost luminescent. She leans forward and smells her roses, nose crinkling as she pulls away. “Her flight comes in” - huge yawn - “next Monday. God, these flowers smell like that hobo who lives in front of that coffee shop down the street.”
“Really?” Blaine smells the flowers as well, and while he wouldn’t use as colorful language as Santana, the roses do smell awful. Awful in a really familiar way…
Santana passes out and the memory hits Blaine like oncoming traffic. “Santana, wake up! These flowers.” He stops, unable to fight back a jaw-cracking yawn. “These flowers…”
Everything goes black.
*~*~*
Blaine wakes up sometime later, only to find he has been relocated to the couch and that his ankles and his wrists are tied together… with vine. Sometimes he thinks that maybe superheroes and supervillains take this whole theme thing too far. And then he sees, through slitted eyelids, Poison Ivy - because the roses were from her of course, something Blaine would have realized sooner if he had just remembered that time about a month ago when she had captured Batman and Nightbird had been the only pre-approved for Gotham superhero available to help Robin - stroking Santana’s cheek in a strangely tender, and therefore completely disturbing, manner, and decides maybe now’s not the best time to worry about themes.
Doing his best to make his movements look like the restless motions of someone who is slowly regaining consciousness, but is definitely still knocked out, Blaine rolls his head to one side. Then he shrugs his shoulder up high enough to put pressure on his left ear and holds down until he hears two beeps in quick succession. He breathes an internal sigh of relief as he relaxes his arm again; the Justice League knows there’s trouble now, and all he has to do is try to keep the legally insane woman with an occasional penchant for turning people into/feeding people to plants from doing anything drastic until help arrives.
Luckily, the first few minutes pass fairly easily. Santana remains unconscious and Blaine pretends to do the same, secretly watching Poison Ivy who does nothing more suspicious than just acting generally creepy. But, of course, that bit of good fortune can’t last forever, and when Santana starts to stir, Blaine takes that as his cue to ‘wake up’ as well. There isn’t really much of anything he can do to protect Santana at the moment, aside from possibly trying to distract Poison Ivy by getting her to launch into a rant about deforestation in the rain forest, but as the resident superhero he feels like he has to try.
Santana, to her credit, doesn’t waste time being confused or disoriented due to her recent drugging. Instead, as soon as her eyes open, they snap to Poison Ivy, full of fire. “Oh, hell no. Pam, you better untie me this instant before I go Lima Heights Adjacent on your ass.”
“Santana,” Poison Ivy says, all smiles like she hadn’t heard what Santana had just said. “I hope you like your flowers, roses for my Spanish Rose. Although I’m not sure you deserve one after leaving me for this man.” Her voice goes hard on the second sentence, which is kind of a relief because Blaine was finding the sweetness creepy, and the glare she gives Blaine makes him grateful that she’s not one of the ones with heat vision.
“Okay, one, you’re a crazy bitch,” Santana says. “Two, I’m not Spanish, you crazy racist bitch. Three, even if I wasn’t lesbian, me and Anderson here is never going to happen.”
“Hey!” Blaine objects. Not that he has any interest in dating Santana, but she didn’t have to make the prospect sound so completely unappealing.
“Calm down. I just meant you’re the only thing in the room gayer than I am. Mostly.” Which Blaine had to admit made sense, even if it did still sound a little like an insult. “And four, I couldn’t have left you for anyone, because we were never together. Two dates do not make a relationship. ”
Poison Ivy falters for a second, but bounces back fairly quickly, this time with a mischievous smile that Blaine really doesn’t need to know more about. “We both know there’s more to it than that.”
“Okay, let me break this down for you Cabbage Patch Kid. I know my sexts are hot” - see, Blaine totally did not need to know that - “and that you still have them all saved in your phone, because you don’t delete a Santana sext. But none of yours are saved in my phone, because the only special things about you are that you’re a little hotter than my average hook up, although this whole emotional needy mess thing you got going on right now is really taking away from that, and you, and listen closely because I’m only saying this one more time, are a crazy bitch.”
It’s at that point, right when Blaine is sure he and Santana are about to get chopped up and fed to the Audrey 2 style plant that Poison Ivy just has to have in her greenhouse somewhere, that he hears the most beautiful sound in the world: a friend coming to save his ass. “You know, I’m pretty sure that’s what you get when you pick up people at insane asylums.”
“Nightwing,” Poison Ivy hisses, whipping around to where Nightwing was standing, leaned up against the window frame. “What are you doing here?”
Nightwing shrugs and saunters across the room into the kitchen in a way that’s almost painfully conspicuous. “Oh you know, was in the neighborhood, saw you terrorizing people, thought I’d stop by.”
“I’m not terrorizing anyone. Santana and I were just having a chat,” Poison Ivy says.
“Yeah, well I think Santana has made it pretty clear she’s done talking,” Nightwing says as he picks one of the roses off the bush Poison Ivy had sent. He makes a show of inspecting it before causally tossing it over his shoulder onto the ground. “So, how about you and I blow this joint, and I can take you back to your friends at Arkham?” By now it’s blatantly apparent to Blaine that Nightwing is deliberately trying to piss Poison Ivy off so as to distract her, but what he’s trying to distract her from is another question altogether, because there’s no way he could have predicted what ends up happening.
As soon as it’s clear Poison Ivy won’t be looking over in their direction anytime soon, Santana reaches her bound hands up to her hair and pulls out... a bobby pin with a razor blade on it. Blaine thought that was a joke!
“I don’t have any friends in that horrible place,” Poison Ivy objects, completely oblivious to Santana cutting herself free of her ties. “Unless you’re trying to claim those insipid therapist are my friends because ‘they only want to help me?’”
“Nothing of the sort,” Nightwing assures her with a charming grin. “But a little birdie, well maybe not that little anymore, told me that the Joker escaped the other night.”
“Why would I care about that?” Poison Ivy scoffs, but her body is tense with expectant energy.
“Because, unfortunately for her, Harley ended up getting left behind. Or fortunately, I guess, depending on your point of view,” Nightwing informs her.
Poison Ivy never gets a chance to weigh in on the fortunately/unfortunately debate, however, not that there was ever really any question as to what her feelings would be, because before she could respond, Santana knocked her out cold with a lamp to the back of the head. Santana regards the now broken lamp with some disgust before telling Poison Ivy’s unconscious body, “You’re paying to get this replaced.”
“Looks like you didn’t need me after all,” says Red Arrow climbing in the window; apparently he was who Nightwing had really been distracting for. Nightbird has met Red Arrow a couple of times, but Blaine hasn’t yet and he’d like to keep that way for today at least. The League can be worse than bored housewives when it comes to gossip and this has not been Blaine’s finest hour by any stretch. So he just sits there quietly, looking at his still tied wrists and praying to develop invisibility powers.
“Let me guess,” Red Arrow says, giving Santana a long look up and down. “Fire?”
“Try ‘out of your league,’” Santana snaps back, and Blaine heaves an internal sigh of relief. Now all he needs is for no one to correct Red Arrow’s mistaken impression that Santana is the superhero in civilian disguise, and ideally for someone to untie him before Kurt gets back, and he might be able to salvage the rest of this day.
“Actually, Santana is just Santana” - not exactly true, Santana was hardly just anything - “ that’s Nightbird over there,” Nightwing says, gesturing over to Blaine, which was just fantastic; Blaine could feel his cheeks flushing with embarrassment.
“Don’t worry about it; tied up is a good look for you,” Red Arrow says with an exaggerated wink. And that really wasn’t helping matters.
“Red, stop messing with him,” says Nightwing.
“Who says I’m messing with him?”
“I do, because he has a boyfriend, and you aren’t gay.” (In point of fact, Blaine did not have a boyfriend currently, but all things considered correcting Nightwing right now seemed like jinxing things.)
Red Arrow doesn’t bother to correct Nightwing either, just shooting out a quick “fine” before exiting through the window again. “I’m going to find my own way home. Have fun dragging an unconscious woman back to Gotham,” he calls before running off.
Nightwing shoots an annoyed glare in his direction before turning back to Poison Ivy, staring at her for several long minutes, no doubt at a loss for how he’s going to get her back to whatever form of transportation he used to get here (Blaine really hopes for his sake it wasn’t the motorcycle).
“You could probably just carry her, and if anyone asks tell them you’re taking her home from a costume party,” Blaine offers as Santana unties him (finally).
“A costume party at four in the afternoon?” Nightwing asks incredulously. “In March?”
“In New York City,” Santana shoots back.
“Plus this neighborhood has a lot of college kids living in it,” Blaine adds.
Nightwing gives them both a ‘maybe you’re right’ kind of shrug and hoists Poison Ivy over his shoulder. There are some good-byes, then some more good-byes and some awkward shuffling when Nightwing opens the front door to a grocery-laden Kurt and Rachel. But Kurt and Rachel manage to get in, Nightwing manages to get out, and finally all is back on track with Blaine’s day.
“What happened here?” Kurt asks. So, mostly back on track.
“Another Santana break-up gone wrong,” Blaine tells them, automatically going to help them put the food away.
“We did not break up,” Santana clarifies, sitting herself down at the counter and grabbing the bag of grapes out, “because we were never dating any more than you and Batman’s red-head stepchild are.” That isn’t really true; Blaine and Red Arrow definitely haven’t ever sent each other sexts (assuming she’s even talking about Red Arrow, since Blaine’s not entirely how he’d count as Batman’s stepchild, red-headed or otherwise), but Blaine really doesn’t see the wisdom in arguing the point.
“You have an admirer, Blaine?” Rachel asks brightly. A little too brightly.
“Not exactly…” Blaine begins.
“Nonsense!” Rachel says, cutting him off. “You’re a very attractive and compelling individual. In fact, I’m sure you have a lot of different admirers, right Kurt?”
“Rachel,” Kurt hisses.
“Kurt,” she snaps back, and there’s clearly something going on here that Blaine is missing. The two of them glare at each other for so long that Blaine almost feels obligated to interrupt them, as they don’t appear likely to stop of their own accord anytime this year, and Santana looks far too entertained watching them, popping grapes into her mouth like popcorn, to do anything about it.
“Thanks Rachel,” Blaine says because as weird as it had been, she had definitely given him a compliment. “Kurt can I talk with you for a second?”
“Actually, Kurt has something he wants to ask you first,” Rachel says.
Kurt throws Rachel one last glare, for good measure Blaine supposes, before turning to Blaine with an apologetic expression. “Do you mind?”
Blaine minds, very much. He knows how this story goes: he lets Kurt go first, at which point Kurt asks for Blaine’s help in asking out stupid tall, interesting, funny guy with straight manageable hair. Blaine would have to smile and pretend his question hadn’t been important and then help the guy of his dreams win over someone else, all the while acting like he wasn’t pining over his best friend and generally being sad and pathetic. Which is not at all how he planned this going, so yes, Blaine does mind.
“Doyouwanttogoouttodinnerwithme?” Blaine asks all in a rush, before Kurt can get his question out. It isn’t until Kurt is staring at him in blatant surprise that Blaine remembers why those poor people in rom coms always pretend their question is unimportant. Because it’s mortifying asking someone who is interested in someone else out. If Blaine wanted to make things awkward between him and Kurt, he should have just dragged Kurt down to the GAP and done it properly.
“I was going to ask you if you wanted to get coffee with me sometime,” Kurt says, still sounding a bit shocked.
“Oh.” Oh. “We could maybe get coffee after dinner?” Blaine suggests, and Kurt breaks out in a smile.
“That sounds great,” Kurt agrees a little breathlessly. Blaine had made Kurt breathless! He feels his own goofy grin spreading across his faces, and he thinks he could sit here like this, smiling at Kurt who’s smiling back at him, for… ever. Now that sounds like a good plan.
He gets, maybe, a minute before Rachel squeals in delight and Santana lets out an exasperated “finally.” He and Kurt are still busy trying to calm Rachel, who has somehow decided that she’s responsible for the two of them getting together and thus has the right to plan their first date, down when the front door burst open and Nightwing re-enters with Poison Ivy still slung over his shoulder: “I just got a text from Rachel; the two of you weren’t already dating?” But before either of them can respond to that, both their phones beep a text alert, Kon has sent them a picture of himself, Robin, Wonder Girl, and Kid Flash, the latter two of whom Blaine hasn’t even really met, all giving thumbs ups. Then there’s a crash of glass, and apparently someone has texted Kara as well (Blaine suspects that she deliberately flew through the closed window to be annoying).
“Well,” Kurt says to him as he tries to juggle a hug each from Kara and Rachel, and his phone which has Finn’s excited tones pouring out of it, “this definitely isn’t how I pictured this going.”
“Definitely not,” Blaine agrees as he glances down to see he has another congratulatory text, this one from Wes, who Blaine doesn’t think he’s even talked to in two years. “But I think this is better.”