What if Joy and Deathbringer could read minds?

They're fucking insufferable, that's what they are, especially if you ask Glory. She's gotten stupidly good at shielding her thoughts over the years (ESPECIALLY after they found out Joy could read minds. There are some thoughts your daughter should never have to see), but no matter how damn high she builds those mental walls, Deathbringer always finds a way in.

Prick.

It makes it very difficult to be angry and sarcastic with him when he can just glance into her head and see all the stupid hearts and glitter and pink scales she gets around him no matter how long they've been together. It was much worse when they were just dating, and you think she would've gotten used to it by now, but Deathbringer is stubborn. SO damn stubborn, and he won't ever let her live it down. She's recruited Joy many times to get leverage back at him, and he deserves it too, but with Joy at JMA? Things got a lot more one sided, and a lot more irritating. Especially when Deathbringer makes the whole forest well aware of her feelings for him (not like they didn't all know already).

Currently, he was singing about it as they flew to the Nightwing village, despite Glory's thoughts about him being VERY ANGRY and VERY MURDEROUS and NOT AT ALL ROMANTIC OR ENDEARING.

"You think I'm gorgeous," Deathbringer sang overdramatically. " You want to kiiiiiss me, You want to huuuuug me-"

"I want to stab you in the vocal chords," Glory corrected. "It'd make you a lot more tolerable to be around."

"You want to looooooove me, you want to smooooooch me-"

"YOU ARE ACTUALLY A TODDLER-"

"You think I'm gooooorgeous-"

"No, wait, I've figured it out," Glory smirked. "You're singing about yourself. Now that makes sense." Deathbringer whacked her with his tail.

"YOU WANT TO KIIIIIIIISSSSS ME, YOU WANT TO DAAATE ME-" 

"WE ARE ALREADY MARRIED, I DO NOT FEEL LIKE DATING YOU AGAIN."

"But it was ever so fun, Glory."

"I hate you."

"Awww, aren't you sweet?"

"FUCK OFF."

******

"Hello lovely, lovely Joy," 

The slimy dragon blocking Joy's way had introduced himself as Macaw, and Joy got the feeling that even if she couldn't read minds, she'd still hate him. But since she could, and Macaw had more air in his empty head than a balloon, she checked his thoughts anyway.

And oh dear moons that was fucking DISGUSTING.

No, disgusting was an understatement. This was literal vomit worthy. She considered it with the bile rising in her throat. This dragon meant NOTHING good for her. EVER. And his removal would be VERY much appreciated. 

But as tempting as it was to string him up by the nearest tree for a game of tether dragon, she had a better idea.

"Do you wanna go with me somewhere?" She asked sweetly. "I have someone I want you to meet." Macaw's eyes lit up, like he couldn't believe it had actually been that easy.

"Yeah!"

So they flew to the Rainwing village, and Joy landed them outside of a hut, where Deathbringer was looking bored and eating an orange.

"Hey Dad," Joy started.

"Sup," Deathbringer offered. "Want an orange slice?"

"No thanks....This is Macaw," Deathbringer's gaze shot to the slimy dragon, and his eyes narrowed.

"He's got some....interesting ideas," Joy said, and judging by the look of rage forming on her father's face, Deathbringer was discovering all of them.

"So he does." He said coldly. He threw down the orange. "Say Macaw? Let's go for a walk."

"But-" Macaw glanced back at Joy, suddenly fearful.

"Have fun!" She declared. Deathbringer dragged him by the neck and carried him off.

****

"DEATHBRINGER!" Glory shouted.

"Yes, darling?" Deathbringer asked. Glory glared at him, and he smiled back.

"Did you kill a dragon in my forest?" She demanded.

"No."

"DEATHBRINGER."

"What? My talons slipped!"

"D E A T H B R I N G E R." He shrugged.

"He was thinking some very not so nice things about Joy. She asked me to take care of him."

"YOU CAN'T MURDER DRAGONS FOR THEIR THOUGHTS!"

"Oh trust me, for those ones I can."

"NO MORE MURDERING."

"Yes, ma'am."

****

 It turned out going to school with a fellow mind reader was a lot more fun than going to school without one. Joy and Moon became fast friends, especially since they could have full on conversations without saying a word. It made Webs' history class a lot more interesting. He couldn't yell at you for talking in class if he couldn't hear you, after all. And since they both had Nightwing blood, Joy and Moon found that they were way more awake at night, and they could keep talking as late as they wanted without disturbing Air's sleep. They could point out cute dragons in the halls and mock the teachers in front of their faces and no one was the wiser. Not laughing was the only difficult part.

But Air could hear them laughing. She was glad she had skyfire on her. It wasn't that she was afraid her friends would invade the privacy of her own mind, but...She didn't want them to know just how much she thought about those late night talks, the silent ones she couldn't be apart of. It was hard sometimes, staying in the same room as two other dragons that kept giggling for reasons she didn't understand. They had so many more inside jokes with each other than Air did. She had thought on their first day of school that her and Joy would be best friends. Their parents were family, after all. Shouldn't that have made them super close as well? But somehow it hadn't worked that way. They were friends, yes, but Joy was always with Moon. Joy always wanted to hang out with Moon.

"It gets easier," Rainkeeper told her. "The mind-reading conversations." Air poked at the clay she was sculpting and frowned.

"It doesn't feel like it," She insisted.

"My dad and Joy have them sometimes too," Rainkeeper said. "They don't even realize they're doing it, but...sometimes it makes me feel left out. If you just bring it up, they should do it less. I think the mind reading is just so unconscious that they don't always realize they're excluding someone."

"I know it's selfish," Air said. "But part of me always wonders if the reason they talk in their heads is because they're making fun of me." Rainkeeper shook his head.

"I promise you they're not," He said. "Joy and Moon are too nice for that, and besides, they're too busy making fun of Webs."

"Well maybe I want to make fun of Webs too," Air grumbled. 

"Tell you what," Rainkeeper said. "I'm in your class. I'll switch my seat to be next to yours. We can mock him the old fashioned way, with paper notes."

"Paper's way better than mind reading anyway."

"Yeah!"

****

Joy was pretty positive it would be painfully obvious Kelp had a crush on her even if she weren't a mind reader. All of her friends saw it too, so that was definitely true, but the mind reading bit made it even cuter. 

He'd been so embarrassed when she told him she could read his thoughts, but it wasn't like there was anything bad in them. Nothing like Macaw. Kelp just wanted to get better at dancing to impress her. He thought about things he saw that she might like, and how badly he wanted to hold her talons in his and do cute things together. She kept offering to give him skyfire, especially after they started dating. It seemed rude for her to have access to his head all the time. Dragons deserved that privacy, even if sometimes she read minds unintentionally, and it seemed impossible to give skyfire to everyone on the planet. But Kelp didn't have to share his every thought with her; that would be too much to ask, she thought. 

But Kelp never took the skyfire. Not even after they'd been dating for years. It had saved them a lot of silly arguments, in Joy's opinion, but she still thought it'd be kinder if he just took it.

"I don't need it," He insisted. "I have nothing to hide from you, and chances are I was going to share my thoughts with you anyway, so I might as well just let you see them from the beginning."

"But you don't think it's a little invasive?" Joy said. "Like, I have access to EVERYTHING you think. ALL the time."

"Then I'm sure you're bored of my head by now," Kelp said. "I definitely don't think about interesting things all the time." Joy smirked.

"You think some pretty interesting things about me sometimes." Kelp blushed, and an image of Joy throwing knives at a target flashed in his mind. He thought about that one a lot. He thought about kissing her a lot too, but to be fair, she thought about kissing him a lot too.

"You know," She said. "Me throwing a knife is not that interesting."

"I sincerely beg to differ." Kelp said. He was thinking about it again, harder this time, and he kept blushing. 

"You're a simp, Kelp."

"Oh, I know."