apple cider ᯓ★

"Timmy," you said, reaching out to twirl a strand of his wildly overgrown hair around your finger. "You're leg's bouncing pretty hard. Literally. I can feel the desk shaking."

"I'm fine," he muttered, though he didn’t pull away from your touch. In fact, he leaned into it slightly, like a plant tracking the sun. "I just need to finish this routing protocol before Bruce gets back from Berlin."

"Counter-proposal," you whispered, leaning down so your breath brushed his ear. You reached past him, your forearm pressing deliberately against his shoulder, and hit the power button on his main monitor.

The screen went black.

Tim froze. For a second, you thought he might actually code-blue right there in his chair. Then he turned his head to look at you with desperation.

"You're a demon," he argued.

"I'm a delight," you corrected, sliding off the desk and directly onto his lap. He caught you by the waist out of pure reflex, his hands digging into your hips. You reached into the collar of his shirt, your fingers tracing his collarbone, feeling his pulse leaping like a trapped bird. "And you need to sleep. Or, at least, do something that doesn't involve a keyboard..." you trailed off suggestively.

When you kissed him, it was messy. He made a ridiculously desperate sound when you pulled him closer by his belt loops. You left him twenty minutes later, all flushed, dazed, and completely incapable of remembering his own passwords. Mission accomplished.

The problem was that Jason found out by Friday.

Jason didn't do "subtle" which was ironic considering you had the worst on and off since Bruce and Selina. When Jason was pissed, the entire zip code knew about it.

You were walking back to your apartment through a particularly sketchy alley in Crime Alley (mostly because you would rather take that shortcut than get in public transport) when a heavy weight dropped from the fire escape right in front of you.

"We need to talk," Jason growled. He didn't have the helmet on, just the domino mask. He looked massive, very pissed off you wondered why, and entirely too attractive for someone who spent his nights punching people in the face.

"Jay!" you chirped, stepping right into his space. "Did you bring me those kiwi tarts from the place on 5th?" If not, you were okay with getting dicked down by Jason Todd either way.

Jason put a hand flat against your chest, stopping you in your tracks. His palm was warm, even through his glove. "Don't play cute. What the hell were you doing in Drake’s safehouse on Wednesday?"

"Helping him with his… data entry," you said innocently.

Jason’s jaw clenched so hard you heard the click. He stepped forward, forcing you back until your spine hit the brick wall of the alley. he crowded you, his chest pressing against yours, trapping you entirely within his shadow. He smelled like leather, and that expensive cologne Dick had clearly bought him for Christmas that he pretended to hate.

"Data entry," Jason echoed. He leaned down, his nose brushing against yours, his breath hot. "Is that what we're calling fucking my brother now? Because last week, you were in my kitchen, wearing my t-shirt, telling me nobody else knew how to handle you."

"You do know how to handle me, Jay," you murmured, reaching up to grip the lapels of his jacket, pulling him down that extra inch. "You're so… loud about it. I love it, love you" you said casually, but it meant everything to him.

He swore under his breath, and then his mouth was on yours. It wasn't nearly as gentle as Tim had been with you. Jason kissed like hell. He hooked a leg behind your knee, pulling you flush against his thigh, his hands gripping your hair so tightly it pulled you liked it too much to protest. It was angry and messy which was exactly what you wanted.

You stayed with him that night in his bed, let him think he’d won.

And then, on Sunday, you texted Tim a selfie from Jason’s bathroom, wearing nothing but one of Jason's oversized flannel shirts, with the caption 'Found your favorite coffee mug. Jay says hi.'

You knew you were pushing your luck, the Batcomputer probably had a dedicated file on your psychological warfare tactics by now. But you hadn't expected the firstborn to get involved.

You were sitting on the roof of an abandoned clock tower, eating cold Chinese food out of a cardboard container, when you felt someone behind you.

"You know, Bruce is genuinely considering putting a tracker on you," a voice said from the darkness.

You didn't even look up as Dick Grayson stepped out of the shadows. He wasn't in uniform, not completely. He had the tactical pants on, the heavy boots, but he was wearing a tight black compression shirt instead of the full Nightwing suit. His jacket was swung over one shoulder. He looked infuriatingly relaxed.

"Bruce won't put a tracker on me," you said, taking a bite of a crab rangoon. "He's too afraid I'll find a way to stick it on Clark instead."

Dick laughed a little as he walked over and stood right over you, blocking out the light from the Gotham moon. "Probably. But that doesn't mean you get a free pass for what you're doing."

"And what am I doing, Grayson?"

"You're running a demolition derby through my family," Dick said. He dropped his jacket to the gravel and knelt down in front of you, bringing himself eye-to-eye with you. Up close, the ridiculous symmetry of his face was offensive. He looked tired, but under the fatigue there was a sharp intensity that he usually kept hidden behind his golden-retriever smile. "Jason hasn't slept in three days because he's too busy pacing his floor trying to figure out if you're doing that thing with your tongue on Tim too, and Tim spent six hours yesterday trying to hack into Jason's security cameras to see if you actually enjoyed him."

"They're men, Dick. They like to compete," you said, offering him a dumpling.

Dick didn't take it. Instead, he reached out with his fingers wrapping around your wrist. His grip was surprisingly gentle but still hard. He forced you to set the container down.

"It's not a game," Dick said, his voice dropping into a serious tone that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. "They're falling apart over you. And you're just sitting up here watching the fireworks."

"Are you going to tell me to stop?" you challenged, tilting your chin up. "Going to give me the big hero speech about feelings and responsibility?"

"No," Dick whispered. He leaned in closer, his blue eyes darkening in the shadows of the roof. He didn't look like the nice brother anymore. He looked like the boy who grew up in a circus, comfortable with heights and completely unafraid of a fall. "I'm not going to tell you to stop. I'm going to tell you to change targets."

You blinked, your brain momentarily stalling. "What?"

"You heard me," Dick said. He slid his hand up from your wrist, his fingers tracing the soft skin of your inner arm, his thumb pressing against the quickening pulse at your elbow. "You want to play with fire? You want someone who can actually keep up with you without crying to a therapist? Pick me."

"Dick, you're their brother," you laughed, though it sounded a little breathless. Fuck you'd bang that. "That's… incredibly messed up, even for me." It absolutely wasn't. You'd smash him anyday

"I don't care," he murmured. He leaned in until his lips were a mere fraction of an inch from yours, his breath hot and smelling faintly of mint. "I am so tired of hearing your name in the Cave. I am so tired of watching them lose their minds over you. If you want to break someone, come break me. I promise you, I'm a lot harder to shatter than they are."

He stayed there hovering in that excruciatingly tight space, his fingers tightening on your arm, his eyes locked onto yours with a terrifyingly suggestive weight.

"So," Dick whispered, his lips brushing yours as he spoke, teasing little contact that made you ache. "Are you going to keep playing in the sandbox, or are you ready for the real thing?"

It is supposed to be a quiet sweep —docks, warehouses, the usual assortment of Gotham’s nocturnal vermin scuttling around crates a civilian isn't supposed to touch. Nothing you can’t handle. Nothing that should leave your stomach twisted the way it is now.

You remember the first red flag of the night: a shipping container cracked open just an inch, light bleeding out where there shouldn’t be any. Soft. Yellow. Wrong. The kind of wrong that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up before your brain catches up.

You tell yourself you’ll just check it out. Quick peek. In and out and report to Bruce. Because that’s what you do —you poke the things you should probably report first. All the reason Diana would scold you during your wonder girl days.

You slip between the stacks of metal giants, metallic boots silent, breath steady, pretending that the atmosphere isn't pressing in around you the way it always does at the harbor. The scent of saltwater, diesel, and rust; familiar, grounding and just so Gotham by night, should anchor you.

But the voices inside the container don’t sound like normal smuggler chatter. They are… scared.

High pitched.

“Please— don’t—” A girl’s voice. Too close. Too close.

And that’s when the entire night tilts. That’s when the rewind button should be smashed to pieces. Because you don’t think. You don’t call it in. You don’t wait for backup.

You kick the door open.

And the universe, obviously bored at how much of a mundane life you’ve led so far, decides to reward your heroism by giving you not one, not two but twelve armed men. Broad, burly, pissed and dressed in very cheap tuxedos— the kind of men who only take orders from someone with a lot of money and even worse taste in ethics and consequently in fashion too.

You are already moving, already swinging. Your knuckles meet teeth, ribs, soft cartilage. It’s always satisfying in a way you’d never admit aloud. They swarm, and you dance through the mess of it, heart pounding, thoughts sharp.

You have no idea where their boss is. No idea whose operation you’ve just cracked open like an idiot with a crowbar trying to pick a comically big lock. No idea that you’ve just landed in the middle of something massive. Nationwide massive.

All you know is that there are girls crying behind you. And that one of the men has just pulled a gun.

You don’t quite register the gunshot. Not at first. Not the way the world should split open. Your bangled forearms form the familiar ‘x’ in front of your chest for cover and then; burning pain rips across your right side. Sharp, hot and just wrong. Your pray it’s a graze at the very least, but maybe it’s worse. It knocks the wind out of you just long enough for your footing to falter.

“Hey! Dumbasses, pick on someone who shoots back.”

You turn just in time to see something red flash across your peripheral, followed by a scream and the metallic clang of a pistol sliding across concrete.

Red Hood. Jason.

Of course it has to be him.

And then, because Gotham loves overkill like Batman loves to chase after Catwoman, two more figures emerge behind him —one glowing with auburn locks and barely restrained murder and the other the size of a small building. With a light grey skin color to match.

The Outlaws.

The newly formed at least.

Perfect. Just what every terrible night needs: commotion and reinforcements.

Not that you’d admit you need the latter.

Red Hood moves first —because of course he does— charging into the mess like he’d been waiting all night for someone to shoot at, jumping from one of the containers in order to place himself between you and armed men. Artemis follows, brutally, elegant in the way she wields her lethal axe and Bizarro lumbers after them with a confused but eager rumble, shadowing over the wailing victims to shield them from any collateral bullet.

And you?

You do the most reasonable thing a semi-feral Amazon-raised vigilante can do.

You plant a hand on Red Hood’s chestplate and shove. Hard.

“Back off,” you snap, spinning into another strike before he can get a word in. “I had this.”

Jason actually stumbles. More from shock than your strength, though you very much like to pretend it is both. “You ‘had this?’ Sweetheart, there are,” he stops, silently counting the men left standing with his fingers “eight of them.”

“Seven,” you correct, elbowing one man in the throat. “He isn’t getting up from that.”

Artemis steps into your periphery with the commanding presence that makes mortals straighten up on instinct. Her blade flashes, catching the dim light, cutting down a man who thought he could get the drop on you.

“Princess,” she says, voice low but thunderous with authority as she speaks the title. “You are injured.”

Her gaze lingers too long on your side—on the blood soaking through your suit—jaw clenches almost imperceptibly.

“I’m fine.” You pout. It’s great that Artemis respects you enough for the honorifics, but it isn’t something you need at the moment “And don’t call me that!”

“You are bleeding.”

“It’s not mine.”

Bizarro perks up at that, blinking his pale eyes. “Bleeding-yours good?” he asks, unsure.

“Not good,” you mutter, ducking under a wild swing and kicking the man’s knee out so hard it buckles.

The movement tears something in your side—fresh pain blooms under your ribs—but you swallow it down.

Jason tries again. “Look, you don’t have to—”

You shove him a second time. Harder.

“Stop helping me.”

At that, he throws his hands up, offended.

Artemis cuts through two men like she is slicing air, then steps directly between you and the next attacker. “Daughter of Hippolyta,” she intones, “your pride is admirable. Your strategy, however, is lacking, your grace.”

You catch her looking again—this time not at your wound, but at Jason, at the way he keeps drifting too close to you. And Jason, you understand; you pull closer to him as well, like instinct, but there is something taut in her expression, something sharp and territorial she tries to hide behind warrior neutrality.

So, Artemis, you don’t understand.

That one ‘your grace’ hits you like a spear to the ribs— because she isn’t wrong, and she is using the title you haven’t heard in years. The one reserved for you as Hippolyta’s adopted daughter… and by extension, kin to the Queen, after your sisters. The title you hate.

You grit your teeth, no time for such semantics at present. “I don’t need—”

A gunshot cracks the air.

Jason tackles you sideways before you even see where it comes from. You hit the concrete with a curse as the bullet whizzes past where your head was.

The impact jars your wound, white-hot lightning searing through your side. You bite back a hiss, refusing to give Jason the satisfaction.

He doesn’t get off you. Doesn’t even pretend he is planning to.

“You were saying?” he growls above you. “Because that sounds a lot like needing help.”

You glare up at him, face inches from his helmet, breath hot between you.

Artemis sees that proximity—sees Jason’s hand braced beside your head, sees the way his body hovers perfectly over yours—and her shoulders go rigid. A flicker of something old and Amazonian crosses her face. Not jealousy. Not quite. But close enough to sting.

“I said,” you hiss, “get. Off.”

Artemis looms over both of you, quirking a curious eyebrow, the corner of her lip twitching, her expression turning into something that can only resemble actual envy now. You catch it, just by a fragment. “You two may continue your quarrel after we have defeated the criminals.”

Bizarro shakes his head up and down, happily. “No! Quarrel now. Punch bad men later.”

You shove Jason off with Amazonian strength this time, roll to your feet, and launch yourself back into the fray because if there is one thing you refuse to let stand, it is being saved.

Or worse. Being treated like someone who needs saving.

Red Hood moves toward you again, clearly gearing up for another lecture you have zero intention of listening to.

You don’t even look at him.

You move.

One heartbeat you are trading blows with the last guy in your reach, the next, you pivot sharply, sweeping your leg under Jason’s wrist with pinpoint precision. His gun pops out of his hand before he can react.

“Hey—!”

You snatch the weapon midair without breaking stride, spin on your heel, and fire a single clean shot into the shoulder of the armed man who’d been aiming at Artemis from behind. He drops with a howl, gun clattering away.

Artemis tenses at the sound—your aim flawless, your awareness unwavering despite the blood steadily leaking down your torso. And she shoots Jason a look you can’t decode. Something heavy. Something protective.

Jason barely blinks before you are already flipping backward —a quick, tight arc that makes your lungs flare —and landing right in front of him.

The butt of the gun taps his palm as you press it back into his hand. Firm. Fluid. Like handing a partner a tool during a dance.

You don’t wait for a thank you, or the stunned silence that should follow after.

But you feel it.

Jason actually stares between his own gun and you, like he has to double-check it is the same one he’d been holding two seconds ago. “What the—”

Artemis smirks. Just a little. “She was trained by General Antiope,” she reminds him, tone dipped in pride, too smug “Precision is second nature to her.”

Jason looks back at you as you lunge into the next wave of attackers with that clean, lethal efficiency only Themyscira and many hours with Bruce in the cave produce.

“Yeah,” he mutters under his breath, awe cracks through the gravel in his voice. “No kidding. Missed watching her fight.”

Bizarro, bless him, adds loudly, “She not cool at all. Do not do flip again!”

You don’t. But you could. And Jason clearly knows it.

The last of the men goes down hard, courtesy of Artemis clotheslining them into a stack of crates. Bizarro gently peels the shipping container completely open, careful with his massive hands, and the girls inside flinch before realizing the fight is over.

You step in, lowering your eyes at them, softening your voice. “It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

One of them grabs your wrist with trembling fingers and you pretend not to notice the way your ribs scream when you bend down to help her out.

And then, you see it, right before your vision pulses at the ashes of it, a Lexcorp Easter egg, right at the handle of the container’s door. It’s a flick of your eyes but no word spoken, you show it to Jason.

And around that time your side goes completely wet, sticky, definitely worse than you’d hoped.

Before you know it, GCPD sirens wail in the distance. Fast approaching.

Artemis guides the girls toward an officer she trusts, speaking in calm, formal tones that make grown men straighten their posture. Bizarro waves at the girls proudly, like he thinks the job is done because they aren’t crying anymore.

Jason, though, is watching you.

Too closely from the shadow he has scattered at.

You try to walk it off, ready to storm in his direction and tell him off for stepping in amidst your patrol route, pretend the sharp pain isn’t radiating down your side, pretend you aren’t gritting your teeth. But the second you straighten, the world tilts just enough to betray you.

Jason steps forward, catching your elbow before you can pull away.

“Whoa, hey— easy.”

“I’m fine,” you lie.

He raises an eyebrow behind the helmet. “You’re bleeding down your side.”

You glance. He isn’t wrong. Blood soaks through the fabric of your costume, warm and inconvenient. But he remains too close, too nurturing, too caring and you are still mad at him. It doesn’t really help you think he looks hot with his crime-fighting outfit.

Artemis stiffens again when Jason touches you—his grip steady, his voice softening in a way she clearly doesn’t like. That quiet flare of feminine, hidden jealousy curls around her posture, controlled but unmistakable.

Artemis approaches, her gaze sweeps over you with the same displeased concern she once reserved for battlefield injuries. “Princess, you require medical attention.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“You look like hell,” Jason says, entirely unhelpful, but you know his brows are furrowed with worry underneath.

You glare at him. He doesn’t budge.

“Look,” he continues, softer this time, “I can take you home. Or to the Manor. Alfred can stitch you up before you pass out or try to fight me again. Your choice.”

You scoff. “I’m not getting on your bike.”

He gestures at your side with his helmet. “You aren’t walking far either.”

Artemis crosses her arms. “Go with him. The wound is deep.” Of course, you think, she’d take his side.

But even then her voice carries something else. Tight. Reluctant. And when Jason steps closer, guiding your arm over his, Artemis’s jaw flexes. Hard.

“Just go with him,” she says. “You require proper care.” She looks at Jason, then back at you, as if silently urging something you don’t understand. “Jason, Wonder Woman will go mental if we leave her here, take her home, please.”

And that feels weird! Because she doesn’t say it with the tone a partner would, but with a tone you recognize as silent acceptance.

What now?!

Why does she care that much?

Her voice softens in a way it never has for Gotham men. Soft enough that you blink in confusion.

Since when does Artemis speak gently to Red Hood? Since when does she speak gently to anyone?

You don’t like how the air feels suddenly coded, like you are missing the subtext of a language you should know. Still, with a defeated sigh, you let Jason know you are okay with him taking you to the Batcave.

You exhale sharply, annoyed at all of them, annoyed at the pain, annoyed at the part of you that knows they are right.

Jason extends a hand toward you —not pushy, not smug, just steady.

“That’s a yes?” he asks.

“Ughhhh.. fine,” you mutter.

He chuckles. “You’re a terrible patient.”

“You’re a terrible option.”

Jason shrugs his shoulders, "I'm the only option you’ve got.”

You swat his hand away but don’t protest when he guides you toward the bike anyway, his palm warm against your lower back to keep you steady. Artemis glances at that hand. You stare at her, thrown.

Artemis gives you a small, unreadable nod. “You will be safe with him.”

Safe with him??? What kind of endorsement is that? You frown, entirely lost.

It’s just Artemis being Artemis, you tell yourself. She’s protective. She respects you. She respects your station. That’s all.

And yet…

As Jason hands you the helmet, Artemis looks away. Not kindly, not fondly but somehow dismissively. Annoyed.

Almost sorrowful.

Your brain refuses to process that one.

Jason revs the engine once, checking you are steady behind him. You aren’t sure where to put your hands —definitely not around him, that’s still too intimate— but your ribs pulse with a reminder that stubbornness has consequences.

“Hold on anyway,” he says over his shoulder.

You don’t.

Five seconds later, the bike lurches forward and you grab his jacket because you want to live.

He doesn’t comment, but you feel him smirk.

Gotham blurs by sooner than you can process. Neon streaks, wet pavement, that sharp metallic smell the city never shakes off. Your side burns with every bump; Jason tries to avoid them, but even you can tell he is riding smoother than he usually does.

The bastard is being careful.

You try not to think about that.

You try not to think about Artemis, either. Her weird tone, her glances, the way she’d spoken to him like there is history.

No. No way.

Artemis doesn’t do mortal entanglements. And Jason doesn’t do Amazons. You had to learn this the hard way.

You are overthinking again. Clearly.

But unfortunately for him, Jason keeps too quiet.  Which gives your brain room to wander right back to Artemis.

How she looked at him. How she looked away. How her voice softened. How she stood a little too close, but not in a protective way— in a familiar way.

You hate the thought that worms its way into your mind. Is that… something?

No. No, you must be concussed, through your ribs at least.

——-

The next two weeks go by in a weird, lopsided rhythm; half recovery, half denial, and some pretending the world isn’t shifting under your feet. Bruce, in full Batdad rigidity, drops the hammer first.

“You are not patrolling at all until that wound heals.”

That’s final. No debate. No loopholes. No rooftop loopholes. Not even an alley loophole.

You try arguing with him once. Once! Bruce shuts it down with the patented Batglare #4, as Stephanie calls it: The “I’m Right and You Know It” Variant, and well, you’re ultimately benched.

But weirdly enough, he doesn’t completely bench Jason for raining into your parade. Actually, he does the opposite.

“Since you’re staying in Gotham, for a while, follow up on the harbor incident. Full report. Every angle.”

Which means for the next two weeks, Jason is everywhere. And you mean everywhere. Manor and Cave and he has been buzzing around you like a bee. 

Not in a subtle, casual way, not “I’m just passing through,” no, more like a six-foot-four heat-seeking missile programmed exclusively toward you.

Bruce told him to follow the leads, sure— the Lexcorp-branded shipping containers, the fancy-tux muscle with off-market weapons, the blood samples from the docks, the grainy surveillance that caught more shadows than faces. 

Jason keeps finding excuses to buzz around you specifically. Something about teaching him that kick and the flip you did at the cave’s fight simulator when you get better. And you say yes with no actual intention of teaching him in mind.

He probably knows that. But he still asks. Over and over. Like he loves hearing you say ‘yes, yes, sure.’

“Hey. Teach me that flip you did.”

“Show me that counter you used on that guy with the chain.”

“That kick— yeah, the fast one — how the hell did you angle it like that?”

And while you’re benched from patrol and forced locked inside the manor, so Bruce can make sure you don’t go out on your own, your days don’t pass as melancholically as you’d like to admit. 

Life at Wayne estate becomes its own kind of whirlwind. A softer one. A strangely grounding one. The kind that sneaks up on you until you realize you’ve fallen into a routine you secretly like.

It always starts in the kitchen.

Wayne Manor’s kitchen is big enough to host a wedding reception, but somehow the three of you —you, Damian, and Alfred— always end up crowded on the same little stretch of counter.

Cinnamon rolls become your shared project. Damian’s idea. Your execution. Alfred’s supervision and recipe. (Although the latter always pretends to be on some sort of break when you and the child are cooking)

Damian insists on doing the mixing himself, standing on a wooden stool he pretends he doesn’t need. He’s precise, almost militaristic, using the wooden spoon like he’s interrogating the bowl.

Today isn’t any different. 

“You’re holding it like a sword,” you say.

“Tt–I hold everything like a sword,” he replies, which is fair.

Flour ends up in his hair. You swipe at it. He huffs and swats your hand away, but he doesn’t really mean it.

Alfred watches from the head of the table, a mug of tea in hand, his expression fond in a way he pretends is just normal British neutrality.

“Miss,” he says without looking up from his book, “the dough is not meant to be kneaded as though you’re attempting to strangle it.”

You freeze mid-knead. Damian snorts like he’s been waiting all morning for Alfred to roast you. And while Alfred’s politely judging your kneading technique, Jason storms in the kitchen.

He stands there like he’s checking the perimeter, but you know that posture— stiff shoulders, jaw tight, eyes dragging over the three of you like it physically hurts him he isn’t part of it.

He doesn’t step inside. Just watches —at least he has stopped asking you to teach him a kick he should be able to do just by thinking about it—watches Damian lean subtly into your side. Watches you brush flour off the child’s cheek and laugh. He watches you shoot Damian a squinted look. 

“Help, then.” You command.

Damian climbs down from his stool and nudges you aside with all the dignity of a prince reclaiming his throne. “Move. You are bruising it.”

“It’s dough, Damian.”

“It is delicate.”

Alfred clears his throat. “As is the young Miss’ injury. Might I remind you both she is supposed to be at rest?”

You and Damian share a guilty glance, all purses lips and side eyes… and then immediately carry on kneading like two gremlins who’ve made a blood pact.

The kitchen fills with the warm smell of cinnamon and sugar. The oven clicks. The house feels small for once, like a home instead of a mansion. Jason does his own thing after a soft greeting, making a quick sandwich that he insists on not toasting and disappears into the space outside the kitchen.

He remembers a time you took the train from New York to Gotham on a Saturday morning so Alfred could make said cinnamon rolls for both of you, while you studied in one of the living rooms.

When the rolls come out unevenly shaped, slightly lopsided, a little too thick in the center, Alfred still says “Perfect.”

He sets three on a plate and joins you at the counter. Not at the table. Not in his usual spot but right beside you.

And Damian, for all his bravado, leans into your side just a fraction as he eats —carefully, politely, as if he’s trying not to show how much he likes that you’re here.

He helps you pack a roll for each and every member of the family, by attaching a sticky note pad on all of them. And while you usually store them in the fridge, he watches puzzled as you place Jason’s roll in the middle of the kitchen table.

___

After baking, the Manor usually becomes a revolving door of adolescents with highly specific needs.

Cassandra decides she must own a UV nail kit. Today. Immediately.

So she begins silently stalking Bruce through the hallways like a tiny and very polite cryptid until he finally caves and mutters, “Fine,” and goes out to buy her the damn thing.

Then, Cassandra starts looming around you too, Stephanie always tagging along. They thank you for the cinnamon rolls and very politely ask if you can do Cassandra’s nails. You say yes, because employing yourself with something that isn’t exchanging TikToks with Dick, Donna and Wally in the groupchat, sounds like sole salvation.

And that’s how you find yourself in the living room at the west wing of the manor.

You’re midway through painting tiny black bats on Cassandra’s ring fingers. Stephanie is perched beside you, recounting every rumor she heard at Gotham Academy in the last forty-eight hours, talking so fast she barely pauses for breath. Tim, who has now joined you, sits on the armrest behind you, correcting her like an overworked Wikipedia editor who’s had his article vandalized one too many times.

You’re relaxed. Cass is serene. Steph is loud. Tim is Tim. And then, there’s…Jason at the door who doesn’t come in at first.

You catch him in your peripheral —lingering just outside the doorway, pretending he’s checking something on his phone, except he’s holding it upside-down. You see the camera peeking from the flat end of his palm, like the world’s worst actor.

He’s watching the scene like it’s something delicate. Something easily shattered. You try not to stare too much. He tries not to look like he’s staring at you and fails, once again, miserably. 

When Stephanie finally notices him and waves her hand wildly, inviting him in, he finally steps inside.

“Jason! Wanna get your nails done? We can do tiny skulls—”

“I’m good,” he says quickly, stepping half inside, half out, like the threshold is made of lava.

Cassandra lifts her head toward him, blinking slowly. A greeting. An invitation. Jason nods back but doesn’t move. You paint another tiny bat. Cass smiles shyly.

“Pfffft—Why are you good at nails?” Steph asks.

“Diana taught me,” you say, like it’s obvious that Wonder Woman knows how to do nails.

And while Cassandra beams, Stephanie looks offended no one taught her, but you wield her closer, keen on teaching her some of your amateur knowledge. Tim just looks at your handiwork like you’ve unlocked a new side quest.

The room is buzzing with life even if Jason looms at a corner like a meme—Steph dramatizing with pursed lips as she watches your handiwork, Cass studying your brushwork, Tim fact-checking like his life depends on it. You’re halfway through Stephanie’s thumb when Tim finally glances up from his phone and throws a casual question over his shoulder.

“Jason—how are the Outlaws doing, anyway? Haven’t seen you on a rooftop with Artemis in a while.”

The name lands like a pebble dropped into a glass of water. Small, quiet ripple. Right across your spine, because they do what now!?

Jason straightens from where he’s leaning against the wall. Not much—just a shift. A recalibration. But you notice it. You always notice him like he notices you.

He scratches the back of his neck. “They’re… fine,” he says. Neutral. Too neutral.

Steph squints. “That sounds not fine.”

Jason shoots her a look. “It’s fine.”

Tim doesn’t buy it. “Conner mentioned Bizzaro, but is Artemis still out of the country?”

Jason shrugs, trying to look casual. “Yeah. Doing her own thing. We all take space sometimes.”

Space. The word hooks under your ribs uncomfortably.

You concentrate a little too hard on drawing a tiny bat wing. Cass’s fingers twitch once but she doesn’t look away from Jason—not with her eyes, at least. She’s reading him in that silent, surgical Cassandra way. Then, when she looks at you, you know damn right she knows what’s going on.

Jason keeps talking. “We’re still in contact. It’s not like—” He stops to clear his throat. “Just team logistics.”

You hate how something in your chest reacts. Irrational and stupid. The leftover paranoia from the harbor clinging like fog.

Steph leans forward. “So you guys aren’t fighting?”

Jason snorts. “Steph, Roy and I fought constantly. Artemis just… avoids the drama.”

“Which you create,” Tim adds dryly, cocking an eyebrow.

Jason points at him. “I will throw you out a window.”

“You won’t.”

“Try me.”

The bickering draws laughter from Steph, a tiny grin from Cass, and some of the tension evaporates. The kind of normal chaos that should settle you.

But you still feel it. Jason has been acting weird today. And Steph and Tim sound like they know something you don’t, but you assure yourself Stephanie wouldn’t have kept her mouth shut if that was the case. However, the soft little bruise you’ve been pretending isn’t there doesn’t really settle into reality.

Jason glances in your direction. Just a fleeting check-in. And you look down fast, pretending to concentrate on checking if Cassandra's nails are properly cured.

Jason goes quiet again, not the comfortable kind at least.

The kind that makes the air feel like a loaded question no one’s asking.

Once you’re done with Cass’ nails and he’s already fleeted the room, you text him that you should talk about the case, later tonight if he’s free.

–

Homework in Wayne Manor is also a group sport, apparently.

You’re sitting cross-legged on the floor of the library with Damian, who is being difficult today and is absolutely refusing to accept that yes, even he has to show his work on geometry proofs. Dick, your savior to this ordeal for the evening, is sprawled on the couch upside-down like a human Labrador, tossing encouragement into the air every few seconds.

“Okay, buddy,” Dick says, pointing at the worksheet that Damian is actively glaring into submission, “you can’t just write ‘because I said so’ as a theorem.”

“That is a perfectly valid justification,” Damian snaps.

“No,” you say gently, tapping the page. “Not unless you’re running the Justice League.”

“I will one day.”

“Sure,” Dick chimes in cheerfully, “but until then, we need angle-side-angle to make an appearance.”

“This theorem is stupid.” Damian huffs. Loudly. Dramatically, as if the world’s collective incompetence has personally offended him and you get up, pulling a chair next to him.

You lean over his shoulder, guiding him through the problem—your hand brushing his as you redirect his pencil—and Dick drops off the couch entirely, doing a little flip that only he thinks is casual. He lands beside you two and pulls a chair up too, corralling Damian between the two of you like a very gentle, very loving academic intervention.

Moments like these feel easy. Natural. A rhythm the three of you have slipped into without ever formally discussing it. It’s a kind truth. When Bruce doesn’t have time for mundane normal activities like this, when he is too busy with Justice League meetings or evening galas, you and Dick take the wheel. 

Dick comes to soccer matches with you both now. He’s already floated the idea of taking Damian to a few basketball games, too, after forcing you to watch two or three on TV. The way he explains basketball rules to Damian and you —since he was a basketball player during his school days— always feels like a truce, until the kid comments on Dick’s height or lack there off and the first robin tells him off like he’s offended.

The truth is, no one has quite the bond with Damian the way you two do. And no one gets Damian’s respect the way Dick has earned it. Between the two of you, homework gets done. Sometimes begrudgingly, sometimes chaotically, but always done.

In moments like this, you’re grateful Dick never held a grudge. Not for the kiss you shared with Jason, not for the slow, inevitable drifting apart afterward. The two of you have settled into something softer. Something like family. Something stable. You are friends now. The best of friends and between a TikTok groupchat and shared patrols occasionally, it’s like you were never even together in the first place.

And despite what anyone says, you’re not treating Damian like your gentle, mutual divorce child.

Damian finishes writing out a line of the proof and then pauses. Tilts his head. He looks between you and Dick with far too much calculation for a ten-year-old.

“Actually,” he says, pencil still in hand, “I have a question.”

Dick stiffens. “Shoot away.”

Damian looks directly at you, then at his brother. “Why did you and Grayson break up?”

The air freezes, of all the days he could have asked that, he chooses to do so today.

You blink and Dick makes a noise like a dying bird.

Damian waits, perfectly content, perfectly patient, like he just asked whether the library closes at eleven.

“You were courting,” Damian adds helpfully. “And then you were not. I noticed the shift.”

“Courting—? Damian, we were— it wasn’t—” Dick sputters. “Look you can’t just ask that–”

“You once mentioned you considered adopting me when Father was… away.” Damian looks at Dick pointedly. “I shall not entertain the idea further. However, if a young couple plans to adopt a child, and then dissolves their relationship without explanation, the hypocrisy is rather despicable.”

You stare at him. Dick stares at him.

The idea of Dick telling Damian something that emotionally intimate shouldn’t surprise you at all. And yet, it still knocks you flat. Sure, when you were nineteen and with Dick it sounded like a good idea. You thought maybe, maybe, you could treat the little kid better than Bruce or Talia. No more bloodshed, just a little kid living life normally. Something almost none of you ever had.

You loathed everyone especially for what Jason had gone through and you didn’t want someone else to go through similar horrors at such a tender age.

You open your mouth to answer but you don’t know what you plan to say. And that’s when the library door clicks open.

Jason. Of course. 

What is it that they say? Speak of the devil—think of the devil and he shall appear.

You had texted him earlier ‘Swing by if you have any new leads on the harbor case,’ but homework took so much longer than expected and now he’s here in the worst possible moment, like he buzzed in from a parallel timeline just to witness your utter humiliation.

Jason does what he always does lately. He appears in the threshold like the world’s most heavily armed housefly with abandonment issues. He lingers. Watching before speaking. Taking in the entire scene with those sharp green eyes of his.

You don’t look up immediately anymore, because every time you do, he pretends like he wasn’t watching you. Like he wasn’t assessing the air you breathe, the mood you’re in, the distance between you and someone else.

“I gotta go.” You shift, ready to stand. Maybe pull him aside. Maybe get this stupid case-talk over with before Dick combusts from sheer discomfort.

You’re halfway to standing when Damian suddenly says, very plainly.

“Wait.”

Jason’s head snaps toward you so fast his neck probably cracks. His brows go up. Way up. And then his expression shifts into something darkly amused.

You exhale through your nose. “Damian, maybe now isn’t—”

“No,” Damian says, tone crisp. “You still have not answered my question. You were courting again, yes? I saw evidence.”

“E–evidence?” you stammer.

He nods, very matter-of-fact. “He brought you pastries. You sat too close on the couch. You laughed at his jokes when they were not funny.”

Dick clutches his chest. “My jokes are funny.”

Jason coughs out a laugh he absolutely does not try to hide and leans a shoulder into the doorframe, crossing his arms. “Oh, this should be good.”

You glare at him. “Don’t you have… I don’t know. Crime to fight?”

“Harbor case?” he reminds you with a shrug. “You said you wanted to talk. Privately.”

The last word lands heavier than it should. Dick definitely notices. Damian absolutely notices. You feel it hit the air like static.

“We do need to talk,” you mutter, avoiding Jason’s eyes before they can pin you in place.

Jason huffs out a low laugh, something bitter at the edges. “Yeah, sweetheart, so do they apparently.”

Damian shakes his head and continues, relentless, “And then one day you stopped. So logically I assumed one of you failed. Grayson, most likely.”

“Hey—” Dick protests.

You want the earth to open and swallow you whole.

“Damian,” you manage, rubbing your forehead, “that’s… not really… a thing we need to talk about.”

He scowls. “Why not? Adults are always saying communication is key.”

Jason folds his arms, leaning against the doorway like this is the single greatest moment of his week. “Let the kid speak.”

You shoot him a look so sharp it could impale him. It only makes him grin wider.

“Damian,” you try again, “Dick and I didn’t—we—“

“I kissed her.” Jason states, bluntly, shrugging his shoulders, his face unreadable. The words slip out without dramatics or flourish, but they carry weight anyway—an admission placed on the table with meticulous honesty, not tossed or thrown. The kind that changes the temperature of the room without raising the volume.

Dick’s breath catches, sharp and almost imperceptible. Damian’s eyes narrow the slightest bit, absorbing the new information like data in a case file, like this finally explains why Jason has been acting weird with you, or why you’re acting weird with him. 

For one suspended beat, no one moves. Not even the air.

You swallow against the dryness in your throat. “And I broke up with Dick shortly after.”

The silence that settles feels older than Wayne Manor itself. It sinks into the bookshelves, the cracked leather of the armchairs and couch, the cold sweep of the hardwood beneath your knees. Somewhere down the hall, the grandfather clock ticks with pointed indifference, marking each second you wish would pass faster.

Damian, unfazed by atmospheres adults buckle under, tilts his head. “Did you love him?”

You don’t answer, simply because you don’t know who he’s referring to.

Dick straightens, eyes wide. “Hey—Damian—no, that’s not—look, that’s too personal—”

“Again! You told me once,” Damian continues, calmly, ruthlessly, “that you considered adopting me together should Father have remained indisposed. If this was merely a temporary illusion of stability, I believe it should have been disclosed.”

You feel the room lurch. This is something you didn’t want Jason to know, but you don’t expect Damian to keep silent when given family gossip. He always digs. 

This is exactly why you and Jason have never discussed what happened at his house that night. Gotham’s walls have ears and they answer to the names of the Batfamily.

Dick clears his throat, shifts on the chair, his voice suddenly delicate in a way you rarely ever hear. “It was… a moment. A possibility. And maybe not a realistic one. It doesn’t mean it was your fault. Or hers. Or even mine.”

Damian processes this without blinking, and then—inevitably—turns toward Jason, the way children turn toward open flame without fear. Except, he’s the only child that does that.

“And now you.”

Jason’s posture tightens, like someone bracing for the recoil of an unanticipated hit. His eyes flick briefly to yours, a crack of something unguarded showing beneath the practiced calm.

Dick notices the exchange silently.

“Are you courting her?” Damian asks, with all the decorum of a ten-year-old interrogating a suspect. “Yes or no?”

To your side Dick looks puzzled, he keeps looking back and forth between you and Jason as if trying to decode a cryptic message.

Jason’s answer comes low, but not harsh. “That’s not something you need to be involved in.”

“It becomes relevant,” Damian replies, steady as stone, “if she keeps returning to this household. If her presence intertwines with ours.”

“Nothing’s going on between us.” Jason hums.

Your breath catches in your chest—not because he’s wrong, but because he’s right in a way that forces you to look at everything you’ve been trying not to see. Of course it’s nothing. 

People who want each other are together. They have courage to fight for what they want. You and Jason fight for nothing. You orbit. You retreat. You pretend. Thus, yes, there’s nothing going. 

So why does your heart hurt so much when all you should do is simply accept?

“Damian,” you whisper, “this isn't what you think. I’m not—no one is—” then with quiet defeat, your words fall apart before they even reach shape “there’s nothing here..”

Jason moves then, just a fraction closer, not enough to loom again, not even enough to take up more space, just enough to make the air between you shift in density.

His voice is quiet, smooth as polished steel, but undeniably tense around the edges.

“We need to talk.” There’s a pause, long enough that Dick glances up, and Damian observes the two of you with eerie attentiveness as the room seems to tilt in anticipation.

Damian blinks once, the way cats do before pouncing. “Talk about what?”

Dick groans into the carpet. “Okay, we’re done interrogating adults tonight—”

The words aren’t a command, but they carry warning and want and worry all braided into one. The kind of request he only makes when he’s afraid you’ll run from the answer.

“Todd,” Damian is already aiming his full focus at Jason, surgical and relentless. “You have been staying here excessively. And you monitor her movements.”

Jason’s jaw clicks. A tiny break in the armor. “That’s not what’s happening.”

“You’re lying to me,” Damian says simply. “Both of you.”

Jason holds your gaze for the first time since he stepped into the doorway, his eyes bored, lips pursed. “Come on.”

Damian watches the two of you stand close, eyes flicking between your posture, your breath, the sharpness of your silhouettes in the lamplight, the way your eyelids fall underneath your eyebrows as sadness ensues. He doesn’t miss a micro-expression, not a shift of weight, not the way Jason’s hand brushes—almost accidentally, almost not—close to your spine without touching.

And because he is ten and blunt and terrifyingly observant, he says the most dangerous thing possible.

“No,” Damian says, lifting a hand like a tiny general halting troops. “You do not leave until you answer my question.”

Something inside you flares; frustration, shame, the kind of helpless anger that tastes like too much salt on a food you've been starving to taste. “Damian, enough.” 

Dick, who has settled for laying on the floor next to his chair, whips around on the carpet, wide-eyed. “Dames—buddy—hey—how about we redirect to—literally anything else?”

But Damian is already squaring his shoulders, pupils narrowing in the exact way Bruce’s do when he corners a suspect. He looks directly at Jason.

“What is your relationship with her now?”

Jason doesn’t flinch, but something in him contracts—a small, deep, invisible recoil. He flicks a glance toward you, not for answers but for alignment, like he’s making sure you’re breathing before he speaks.

“There’s literally nothing to talk about there,” Jason says finally. Calm. Controlled. Too controlled for your liking.

Damian shifts his focus to you. “And you? Do you deny there is something unresolved between you?”

Your throat tightens. Heat blooms beneath your skin in a slow, humiliating wave. “There’s nothing,” you say, aiming for steady but hitting somewhere closer to brittle. “We’re fine. We work together. That’s all.”

Every ‘nothing’ feels like an arrow straight through the heart.

Damian’s eyes narrow with surgical disappointment.

Jason exhales through his nose, a short, sharp breath that sounds too much like restraint. “Kid—drop it.”

“I will not,” Damian fires back, chin lifted in perfect Amazonian stubbornness he learned from you, not Talia. “You kissed her. She broke up with Grayson. The tension between you two today is unbearable. Something has changed. I demand an explanation.”

You open your mouth, scrambling for denial, but Damian barrels through it.

“You are walking closer and then you retreat,” he says, flicking his gaze to Jason, “you scan the room every time she enters. And you,” he turns to you with the same merciless precision, “you look at him like you expect him to vanish.”

You inhale sharply. Jason’s jaw flexes. Damian surely isn’t done.

“And the last time he visited,” he continues, “you refused to make eye contact. He refused to speak to anyone but you. You were both… unsettled.”

Dick snorts softly. “That’s one word for it.”

Jason shoots him a look that could peel paint, then turns back to Damian, voice low, strained.

“I won’t say it again. Nothing is happening.”

Damian folds his arms. Your breath stutters. Jason shifts half a step forward, like he’s about to stand between you and the interrogation and even though you don’t need protection from Damian, he does it anyway.

Damian watches that movement with eerie calm. “You are both radiating unresolved emotional conflict. It is affecting the household.”

“Oh my god,” Dick mutters under his breath, “he’s been hanging out with Raven again.”

“Enough,” Jason snaps, rubbing the heel of his palm over his brow. “This isn’t your business.”

“It becomes my business,” Damian counters, “when your unresolved feelings compromise my family time and your ability to work together. I refuse to witness another example of disastrous interpersonal dynamics in this family.”

You swear the room tilts. Jason takes one slow, anchored breath before lifting his gaze to you.

“Come with me, that’s enough” he says quietly.

Not an order. Not a plea. A boundary. A request forged from the need to end this before it spirals further into territory you’re not ready to unpack in front of an audience.

“We need to talk,” he continues. “Somewhere else.”

Damian opens his mouth again—probably to cross-examine you both within an inch of your sanity—but Jason cuts him a look that even Bruce would respect.

You nod once, barely, and Jason’s shoulders loosen by a fraction. Just enough that you know he was bracing for you to say no.

Dick lifts a hand without looking up from his seat. “Go,” he murmurs. “I’ll keep the kid from stage-managing your emotional arc.”

Damian scowls. “I don’t stage-manage—”

“Yes, you do,” all three of you say at once.

Jason gestures toward the hall. You step past Damian, past Dick, past the heaviness of the library, and into the dim corridor where only moonlight from the long windows touches the floor.

_______

Later that night, after some intense sparring and stretches, you follow Jason across the rooftops near the Iceberg Lounge. He doesn’t ask you to come with him, and you’re not exactly supposed to be on his patrol route, because well, you're benched, but neither of you knew what to do with the silence that hung between you after the library. He stepped outside expecting you to say something, and you followed expecting him to say anything, and neither attempt ever materialized.

With a case that needs your full demand to at least start unravelling though, you don’t spend much time in the manor sulking. You put on your suit solely for not following around Red Hood in civilian clothes and ignore Bruce’s plea to take a few more days off.

Now you move several paces behind Jason, close enough to track his path but far enough to maintain the thin line of distance he drew in the hallway. Both of you pretend this is about work, about leads, about the case involving Penguin, when in reality you are both avoiding the conversation you weren’t prepared to have. 

It works, for a second, better than you’d like to admit.

Jason lands on the edge of a rooftop and crouches, his silhouette cut sharply against the neon wash of the street below. For a long moment he simply looks out over the streets, keeping his face angled away from you. When he finally speaks, the words carry a quiet frustration that feels heavier than anger.

“You really shouldn’t be here,” he mutters. His voice is steady through his modulator, but the tension rides beneath it like a pulse.

You settle beside him with careful distance. “I told you I’m not interfering. I just need to check on the Penguin lead myself.”

Jason exhales through his nose, a controlled breath you might have missed if you weren’t watching him so closely.

“It’s not the case I’m worried about.”

Your throat tightens. You look down at the busy street so he doesn’t see the way those words land. “Hood…”

“Don’t,” he murmurs, cutting you off. His tone isn’t dismissive. It’s protective and conflicted in a way you’re not sure he even recognizes in himself.

He shifts slightly, and the back of his glove brushes your elbow. It isn’t a touch—more the shadow of one—but it’s enough to make you aware of how warm he is at this distance, and how easy it would be to close the space between you.

“After what happened that night,” he says quietly, still scanning the street below, “you really think I’m going to let you parade out here tonight? You got shot.”

You swallow hard, unsure whether he’s scolding you, worrying about you, or trying not to admit either.

“It wasn’t supposed to go like that,” you say softly.

Jason keeps his gaze forward, but the set of his jaw shifts. “It never does. Not with us.”

The way he says “us” breaks something open inside you. He feels it too, because his eyes flick toward you beneath his helmet with an expression you can’t read—something sharp, frustrated, and vulnerable all at once. You look away first, not because you want to, but because holding that look against the cold scowl of his helmet feels dangerously close to admitting all the things you’ve managed to bury.

The atmosphere between you grows heavier, tense in a way that feels fragile and combustible. This is the beginning of the slope. The slow, inevitable drift back toward the kind of closeness that ends behind closed doors with heat and steam and apologies neither of you are ready for. You can sense it forming even here, in the cold glow of Gotham’s neon.

Before either of you can speak towards the inevitable again, a noise cracks through the alley—someone shouting, followed by the crash of something metal hitting pavement. Jason straightens immediately.

“Stay behind me.”

You don’t bother answering. You both know how that always goes.

You follow him down the fire escape, boots finding rusted rungs as the noise fades into the dark. The street is empty by the time you reach the ground. Only a tipped trash bin and the ripple of movement disappearing around a corner.

Jason scans the area, curses under his breath, then pulls out his comm for a quick check-in with Oracle. You catch the way his shoulders drop when he realizes the disturbance wasn’t connected to Penguin.

“Great,” he sighs. “Waste of time.”

You nudge him lightly. “Not totally. We still have the lead from that warehouse sweep you did. And whatever the hell that encrypted file was.”

He speaks in a tone that’s half-exasperation, half of something softer. “You’re not letting this go, are you?”

“Absolutely not. The longer that file sits unread, the more ground we lose. We need to decrypt it, instead of just waiting to beat Penguin up.”

“I’m not trying to beat him up…” Jason chuckles, the sound low and almost amused. “A bullet in the shoulder would probably make him talk.”

“Jason!” you snap, half-laughing, half-scolding. “No shooting unless we’re sure he’s behind this!”

“So you’re saying I can shoot him?”

You shove playfully at his shoulder, feeling a grin you can't contain creep up your cheeks "I'm not Batman.” You shrug.

You can’t possibly know, but underneath his helmet, he sports a grin that's just like yours.

“I know, Batman doesn’t exactly leave cinnamon rolls for me on the kitchen table.”

You stop the urge to ask him if he liked his roll and simply choose to be content with the fact that he did in fact see it.

A silent beat passes after. Jason huffs out a breath, slightly annoyed, but also giving in. “Fiiiine. Come on. My place is closer. We can sort everything out there.”

You pretend your heart doesn’t do something stupid and eruptive at that. You pretend you don’t remember exactly how many times crossing that threshold has led to something you swore you wouldn’t repeat.

The drive to his apartment is quiet, but not entirely cold. You make a stop at a safe house to change your costumes and after, that strange, dangerous hum sits between you like a live wire neither of you touches yet. But you’ve got your arms wrapped around his torso, and your face buried on the slope of his back. He even caresses your knee at a red light, and even if the touch is unsure and trembling, you don’t push him away.

You want to not panic, but your mind is a puddle of goo, baptised in the sole affirmation that going to his apartment is solely for case purposes.

When you reach his building, Jason unlocks the door and steps aside for you to go in first. 

“After you,” His voice is steady, but something in it trembles beneath the surface.

Jason’s apartment is dim when you walk in—only the kitchen light left on, humming faintly like it’s trying to apologize for existing in a not so normal tidiness. You toe off your boots, the ache in your legs finally catching up to you now that the adrenaline’s burned off.

Jason locks the door behind you with a soft click. He stands there for a moment, still facing the wood, shoulders rising and falling with a slow, uneven breath.

You take a seat at his kitchen table.

“Let’s see what we’ve got,” he says, finally drifting closer to you.

“Yeah”

“Just… ”

You know that stance that follows. That’s the stance of him not even trying to finish his sentence, in case he says something that sounds stupid.

You set your tech gear down on the table, pulling out your phone, with your stored notes from the night. “So,” you start, keeping your voice light, “uhm, before we start, are we gonna talk about what happened with Damian tonight orrr—”

“No.” He’s quick. Too quick.

You lift a brow. “Really? Just ‘no’? That’s the whole sentence we’re going with?”

Jason scrubs a hand down his face, like he already regrets being conscious. “I’m not doing this right now.”

“Neither am I,” you counter. “I’m not looking for a fight. I just want to understand what set him off.”

He turns toward you, leaning back against the direction of the door. His eyes flicker with frustration—more at himself than at you. “He’s a kid. He gets ideas. He says things.”

“Jason,” you say, a little softer, “he wasn’t just saying things. He’s a kid that doesn’t understand why we circle each other so awkwardly.”

That cracks something. Just barely.

Jason pushes off his chair, letting it balance on two legs. “Look, Damian—he thinks he’s protecting people. Or judging people. Or whatever the hell he does when he puts himself ten feet above the rest of us.”

You fold your arms. “He implied you were hiding something from me.”

Jason’s jaw tightens. “Yeah. Because he runs his mouth like he’s trying to win a medal.”

“And are you?”

That hits harder than you meant it to, and you see it immediately—the flash in his eyes, the way he exhales like you struck a match in a gas-filled room.

“I’m not hiding anything,” he says, low. “I just—don’t want to dump more shit on your plate.”

You blink. For a moment, all the tension stutters. “Jason… that’s not fair.” 

“Yeah, well,” he mutters, “life’s not fair. And Damian tired me out.”

“You’re not more shit on my plate. You’re not shit, at all.”

He huffs bitterly, almost a laugh “Now, you’re not gonna like my response to that”

You feel the edge of frustration rise, sharp, too hot— you hate it when he talks like that about himself– but you’re tired too. Too tired to hold onto a conversation that is going to lead to a fight. So instead of pushing, instead of digging deeper into words you’re both too frayed to handle, you let out a long breath.

“Okay,” you say quietly. “We don’t have to talk about it tonight.”

The room softens. Not fixed entirely, but simply deflated. Two people holding stress like wet coats, too heavy to wring out right now.

Jason’s shoulders drop a fraction. He nods once, like he appreciates you not poking the bruise, even if it is still sitting there between you. He would definitely hate to enter a conversation that unravels the fact that you and Dick wanted to adopt Damian like a papyrus.

“Thanks,” he mutters.

You both migrate toward the desk with his computer without saying anything, like two planets stuck in the same orbit frustrated and exhausted, but still pulled toward each other out of habit. 

Jason drags out a chair, drops into it like gravity doubled just for him, and starts peeling off his driving gloves. You sit next to him and spread the files he has neatly printed out on an envelope in the top drawer of his desk. For a few minutes, it’s quiet except for the rustling of paper and the soft clink of gear being set aside.

But the quiet isn’t neutral. It pulses. It’s the kind of quiet where you can feel the shape of his attention even when he’s not looking at you.

You catch him watching you once—half a second, a sideways glance as you jot down a note. His eyes flick back to the paper the instant you look up, jaw tightening like he’s annoyed at himself.

You pretend not to notice, but the back of your neck warms anyway.

“So,” you say eventually, tapping a photo, “this guy at the warehouse— You’ve written down that he bolted when heard your name? Fetch me the surveillance camera from the building across.”

Jason leans forward, forearms braced on the table. The shadow under his eye makes him look sharp as he clicks on the video you asked him for. “Penguin’s been running a new gun trafficking route. Word on the street is he’s got fresh guards, fresh cash, fresh paranoia. Anyone connected is jumpy.”

“That seems like more than regular criminal jitters, that wasn’t just jumpy,” you say, studying the video frame by frame “That was terrified.”

He considers that, lips pressing into a thin line. “If the men we encountered were Penguin’s, then he probably knows something. He’s probably been told to avoid vigilantes at all costs.”

Jason’s trying to keep it about the case. You can tell; every answer is clipped and efficient. Too professional.

But every now and then his voice softens by accident, usually when he’s talking to you. And each time it does, that crack in the armor gets just a little wider.

You reach for a file at the same moment he does, your fingers end up brushing. Just a small thing. Barely contact. It jolts you enough to make you pull back instantly, but Jason is faster than you.

He pulls his hand back first. “Sorry,” he mutters.

You don’t say ‘it’s fine’. Because, one, it’s not. Two, it wouldn't cover the actual problem anyway. Instead, you slide the file toward him. “Here. You were going for it.”

Something in his expression loosens just a millimeter. Enough to show that the almost argument still sits in the back of his mind, unspoken and unfinished, but not as sharp now. More like, raw.

The case-work eventually bleeds into that late-night haze where sentences start slurring at the edges. Your handwriting gets messier. Jason’s notes start trailing off mid-thought. Both of you push through it out of stubbornness alone.

You rub your eyes, leaning back in your chair with a groan. “My whole body hurts,” you mumble. “Why does detective work feel like I got hit by a car?”

Jason snorts. “Because we chased a guy across two rooftops.”

“That was your fault.”

“It was teamwork.”

You glare at him half-heartedly, but your eyelids are already heavy. You stifle a yawn behind your wrist and blink slowly. “I’m gonna die.”

“You’re not gonna die,” he says. But his voice has softened. Hearing you fading is doing something to him. His shoulders relax just a little, the worry line between his brows easing. “You just need to sleep. Or—”

He hesitates, glancing toward the hallway like the thought snuck up on him.

“—maybe a hot shower would help,” he says. “Your muscles are probably locked up after all that climbing, you haven’t even been training for two weeks.”

You let out a tired, sarcastic laugh. “Yeah, that’d be great… if I had the energy to stand to go home.”

“You can crash here,” Jason leans back in his chair, arms folded, when you ‘tch’ him, studying you the way he does when he’s already made up his mind. “Aw…You look like you’re about ten seconds from face-planting.”

“I’m fineeee,” you insist, but the sentence melts into another yawn mid-word.

He raises a brow. “Uh-huh. Totally convincing.”

You try sitting up straight and immediately sway. “Okay… maybe… not fine.”

Jason pushes to his feet with a quiet sigh, one part annoyed, one part concerned, one part something warmer he would never admit to. He comes around the table and crouches slightly so he’s eye-level with your very distracted, very sleepy face.

“Want help?” he asks.

You blink at him—slow, lazy, and just honest enough to let the truth slip through.

“Yeah,” you murmur. “Help me.”

The way he breathes in at that, almost imperceptible, says everything. It’s nothing sexual. Not yet. It’s just that you are asking for help over something so mundane, just that it hits him somewhere soft inside him.

“Alright,” he says quietly. “Come on.”

He slides an arm around your back, warm and steady, lifting you from the chair like you weigh nothing. You cling to his shoulder instinctively, half-asleep and trusting him without even thinking about it.

He steadies you with both hands, his voice low and a little rough in your ear.

“Let’s get you in the shower,” he says. “Then straight to bed.”

You don’t catch the way he swallows after he says it. You’re too busy letting your forehead rest against his shoulder.

You’re too tired to see that this moment—this softness, this closeness—is exactly where the slope starts to tip. You tap lightly at his shoulder—your version of I got it, even if you very much do not have it. Jason eases you down, letting your feet touch the floor, but he keeps one hand braced at your waist until he’s sure you won’t topple over again.

The second you wobble, his grip tightens.

“Careful,” he murmurs.

You nod, but your brain feels like it’s wrapped in warm cotton. The room sways just slightly, or maybe that’s you swaying in his hold. Jason’s thumb presses once—barely there—at your hip, either steadying you or grounding himself. Hard to tell which.

Jason guides you down the hall with a steady arm around your waist, the soft thud of your steps echoing in the quiet apartment. You’re leaning into him more than you intended to. More than you should. Enough that it feels  familiar. Too familiar.

And that’s when the thoughts start.

Artemis.

You try not to flinch at the thought of her name, but it threads its way through your brain anyway. The image of her—confident, tall, lethal, the kind of woman who fits into Jason’s world without ever having to try.

Are they doing this too? Driving home from patrol. Trading quiet glances. Having these subtle, careful moments in hallways when no one else is around.

You swallow hard.

You and Jason both told Damian tonight that there was nothing. Nothing happening. Nothing unresolved. Nothing worth looking at twice.

So what is this now?

His hand slides just a little higher on your back as he steadies you through a patch of uneven floor. It’s harmless. It’s instinctive. But your body reacts like it remembers something you aren’t supposed to talk about.

This isn’t nothing, a small, traitorous part of you whispers.

You push the thought away immediately. You’re exhausted. Your brain is doing that fuzzy, emotional spiral thing it does when you need to sleep the tiredness away.

But still. If there’s absolutely nothing between you, then why does Jason handle you like this? Careful. Focused. Like you’re something breakable he keeps pretending isn’t in his hands. And why does your chest ache at the thought that maybe someone else gets this version of him too?

You’re frowning before you even realize it, mind spinning, steps slowing. Jason notices instantly.

“Hey,” he says softly. “You good?”

You nod, but it’s the slow, distracted kind. The one with the pursed lips and the tightly shut eyelids; the universal code for ‘totally not good.’ He watches your face for a beat longer, concerned, but doesn’t push.

He guides you toward the bathroom, keeping close, his hand steady at the small of your back. And gosh, looking at him right now makes you want to kiss him.

Every step feels like a line you shouldn’t cross, but somehow already did when that thought creeped up on you. The hallway between his living room and bathroom has never felt this long or this quiet or this charged.

Halfway there, you dare another glance up at him. His jaw is tense, his brow drawn. Not with annoyance, but something dangerously close to longing and he’s biting his lip.

You look away before he can catch you staring.

When you reach the bathroom doorway, he pauses. You feel him hesitate before he speaks.

“You sure you’re alright?” he asks, quieter now. “Because if we’re doing this—if I’m helping you—you need to tell me if you’re uncomfortable.”

Your throat tightens at the softness in his voice. “I– I’m fine,” you say again, but gentler this time. “Just tired and it aches everywhere.”

He nods once, slowly. “Okay. I’ll stick around in case you need anything. Don’t want you slipping.”

It’s reasonable. Responsible. The exact kind of helpful gesture anyone could offer. And yet, it feels like the start of something neither of you will be able to pretend away later.

He opens the bathroom door with one hand while keeping you upright with the other. The warm light spills across the tiles, and he guides you inside gently, thumb brushing your bicep in a way that feels too intentional to be accidental.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? Intentional or not, this is intimacy. And you both swore there wasn’t any.

"Can you walk?"

You nod, biting back another wince. "Yeah."

You lie, because admitting the truth would open a door you are absolutely not prepared to walk through.

“Mm-hm,” He lets out a slow breath, one you feel against your cheek more than hear. “Alright. Shower first. I’ll make sure you don’t fall asleep standing up.”

“Not gonna fall asleep,” you mutter. Your eyes immediately begin to shut as a muscle on your calf pulls.

Jason snorts. “Sure you’re not.”

Jason steadies you on your feet, hands firm at your waist for a second longer than strictly necessary. You open your mouth to tell him you’ve got it, that you can stand just fine—but your balance wobbles again, and he shifts automatically to catch you.

That’s when he sees it.

His jaw tightens. Just a flicker. His eyes drop to your side, to the dark smear on your shirt where the fabric clings wrong.

“Hey—” His voice changes. Sharper. Controlled in that way he gets when something hits the wrong nerve. “You’re still bleeding from that?”

You blink, slow and confused, following his gaze. It takes a second for your brain to catch up. “Oh. I guess it pulled a little.”

“‘Pulled a little.’ My ass” Jason repeats it like you’ve just casually told him the sky fell but you think the weather’s perfectly fine. He reaches out carefully and lifts the hem of your shirt just enough to check. Not touching skin—he’s too careful for that—but close enough that you feel the disappointment seething across his face.

Your skin is stained in dried up blood. Not bad, the wound is almost closed. But it’s not nothing.

His expression darkens.

“You should’ve said something,” he murmurs. “You shouldn’t even be running rooftops on this.”

“Honestly, It’s fine I’m full of bruises that are worse than this,” you admit. You’re too tired to lie about this too, and too worn down to pretend you’re invincible.

Jason exhales slowly, the kind of breath that’s half frustration, half relief that it’s not worse. “You can barely keep your eyes open. And you’re hurt.” His voice is low, steady, but the edges are fraying with worry. “You need to take it easy.”

You try to laugh it off. “That’s what I said.”

He looks at you like he’s debating if he should lecture you, wrap you in bubble wrap, or carry you the rest of the night.

Then, more gently, he says “Let me help. Fuck– You can barely stand.”

The softness in his tone sets off that familiar flicker of doubt deep in your chest, uninvited and unwelcome. Because you insisted nothing was happening. He insisted nothing was happening. Friends, partners, whatever the hell label you two keep pretending fits. You’re close. Comfortable. Familiar. And you’re still thinking about kissing him like it’s a crime.

You swallow. The space between you feels suddenly so much smaller. And suddenly, you're wide awake. A conscious decision you should make is to pull back now, before this gets any worse “Jason… you don’t have to—”

“I know I don’t.” The words drop solid between you, stopping your protest cold. “I want to.”

And oh well, you don’t want to pull back from that.

Jason adjusts your balance with one steady hand at your elbow and reaches past you. His arm brushes your shoulder as he turns the shower knob, wrist flexing, testing the temperature with a careful pass of his fingers under the stream.

“The water’s warm,” he says quietly. His voice is low, muted. “You should get in”

You nod, but your feet don’t move. Exhaustion makes everything feel far away, like you’re watching yourself lag a few seconds behind reality.

Jason studies your face for a beat, expression unreadable but tight around the corners of his eyes. You can almost see the thoughts he won’t speak. The worry and frustration, that quiet ache he gets when he’s too protective for his own good. 

“You fading on me?” he asks, tilting his head.

“Just tired.” You repeat for the upteenth time.

His jaw flexes faintly. He believes you, but not completely. He never does when it concerns your safety.

You brace a hand on the counter, steadying yourself, and your breath stutters when another ripple of pain hits your side. Jason’s gaze drops to the movement instantly, a reflex, protective and quiet.

This is where he should step back. Leave you to it. Give you space.

He doesn’t though. He lingers instead. Not hovering, but just present. Solid. Close enough that you feel the warmth of him even through the fatigue pulling at your eyelids. His touch is so careful, like he’s terrified of hurting you or, worse, making you think he’s touching you for any reason other than necessity.

And that’s when the thought hits him. It comes quietly. Without drama. Without intention.

Just there. Just a thought he’s had in the past, creeping up on the worst imaginable moment.

If this were normal. If this were every night. If you came home like this, tired and sore and bruised from whatever madness the day brought. If he guided you toward the shower because that’s what partners do—because you lived in the same space, shared the same routines, the same air. If this soft, half-sleeping version of you was something he saw all the time instead of just when the universe forced your paths too close together.

His throat works around a sound he doesn’t let out. He imagines it too easily. That’s the problem.

You, dropping your bag on the floor, grumbling about your day, leaning against him on the couch out of habit instead of exhaustion. You, in his bathroom—not because you’re hurt or overtired or slipping—but because this would simply be home.

The picture is so clear it almost rattles him.

His fingers tighten slightly where they rest against your back. Just half an inch. Just enough to anchor himself. Then, his own hands betray him as they slide to the wide of your back, his thumb rubbing a few circles over newly found knots of sore muscle.

He clears his throat softly. “Your back’s hard as a rock.”

“I know,” you mumble, eyes half-closed.

He exhales through his nose, slowly, almost resigned.

“Alright,” he says after a long, measured pause. “Let me see what I can do.”

You lift your gaze to him through the cabinet mirror, unfocused. “Jason…”

“Just steadying you,” he adds, though you didn’t accuse him of anything. He says it more for himself than for you. “Nothing else.”

But the truth sits between you anyway.

This isn’t nothing.

Not the way he’s touching you. Not the way you’re leaning on him. Not the way he’s looking at you—quiet, conflicted, like he’s trying very hard not to think about the version of his life where moments like this happen every night.

You swallow, voice smaller than you intended. “I… could use the help. Actually.”

He nods once, slow. The smallest shift in the world, but it feels enormous.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “I’ve got you.”

“Tell me if I hurt you,” he says.

“You won’t.”

The corner of his mouth twitches, like he wants to believe that too.

He lifts your shirt slowly. Pauses when it brushes the tender edge of your healing wound. His breath stutters, just barely, but you feel it. He adjusts the angle, coaxing the fabric over you with this impossible gentleness that makes your chest tighten.

Your arms raise. The shirt slides higher. His fingers skim your sides.

The moment should be clinical. Neutral.

It isn’t.

Your breath catches. Jason’s does too, but he keeps his eyes carefully averted, focused strictly on the fabric he’s tugging upward. When the shirt finally comes off, he steps back like he’s afraid to be too close.

You stand there in your bra, wishing the room didn’t feel so small.

He clears his throat softly. “Pants?”

You nod, and turn around to face him, cheeks warm. “Yeah.”

He goes slower this time. Kneels slightly to steady the waistband, his hands warm against your hips. Your heart kicks at your ribs as he eases the fabric down, eyes pointed firmly at the tiles, his jaw tight with restraint.

There’s a moment, so brief and fragile, where his knuckles graze the bruised skin at your thigh. His breath hitches. He pulls back immediately.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, voice tight.

“It’s okay,” you say quietly. And it is. Too okay.

The pants pool at your ankles. He lets you hold onto his shoulder as you step out of them, his hand steady on your calf so you don’t slip. Every point of contact feels charged, but silent. Both of you pretend it’s fine. Normal.

Jason starts rising slowly, but he doesn’t move far. He’s close enough that you can feel the heat radiating off him, close enough that his eyes flick upward—and then away just as quickly.

You’re in nothing but a bra and underwear. Hair sticking to your forehead, damp with sweat. Exhausted and sore and barely staying upright. And he’s looking at you like you’re something he shouldn’t be allowed to touch, but can’t stop wanting to.

You swallow hard, then whisper his name. “Jason…” 

Fuck—fucking hell, does he love it when you say his name so desperately.

His hands steady on your thighs and he looks up at you with that pleading, puppy-like gaze you can’t even pretend doesn’t make your stomach twist and churn.

And you think you should screw whatever the hell you told Damian, or anything that has been making your insides bleed with doubt lately.

You crouch ever so slightly, cupping the underside of his jaw into your open palm.

Jason rises slowly, like any sudden movement might startle you. When he’s fully standing, you find yourselves too close enough that the warmth from the shower behind you gathers around both your bodies like a hanging question neither of you wants to ask first.

You shift a half-step toward him. He shifts a half-step back to adjust. Matching your movement before his brain lets him admit it.

You breathe in. He breathes out.

Your chests almost brush.

Then, for just an instance, he glances at your mouth. Just a flicker, fast and wrecked, like he hates himself for knowing what gonna happen next when he has no intentions of stopping himself.

Your hand is still on his jaw, warm against the faint stubble that pierces through your delicate skin. His own hands hover at your waist—to feel, not to claim. He’s holding himself together by rotten threads.

You snap them.

“Can I?” You ask, whispering.

Jason doesn’t have to question what you’re asking to do. He knows the quiet ruin that preludes your kisses, he loves to feel it. So he nods.

He leans in first, his lips shake with a quivering breath. His forehead touches yours for one suspended second where neither of you moves, even though the decision has already been made.

Then you tilt your chin closer to his face and tug at his jaw to urge him to close the distance.

Your lips meet in the smallest possible kiss. Just a pucker and a smooch, but it’s so soft and tender, your lips engulf his own so tenderly and suck so subtly, that even the sounds of your parting is barely ever heard.

None of you make a move for a second kiss for a moment too long.

It’s Jason actually, who lacks the discipline to be patient that wraps his arms around your waist and lifts you just enough so he can set you on the top of the counter.

You let out the faintest inhale, legs brushing his hips, and Jason stands between them like he’s afraid stepping away will undo whatever fragile thing he’s just been handed.

You open your mouth, unsure where to even begin. The words you want to say have scattered, dissolved. Your breath catches in your chest instead. Neither of you moves to break the spell, and that stillness becomes its own magnetic gravity, pulling you towards each other.

“Wanna shower together, Jay?” You manage to say through a gulp.

It’s so quiet, so barely there, as if you’re scared someone’s going to hear you and steal the moment away from you.

Jason’s hand lifts, hesitant and slightly uncertain as if he’s only reacting to instinct. His fingers brush your jaw, and his nose bumps into the space above the top of your lips.

“Yeah,” he whispers and nudges your face upwards with his to steal another soothing kiss from you. “If you’ll have me…”

This one is barely a kiss—more a press of warmth, a shared breath, a soft meeting of mouths that lingers a fraction too long to be innocent. His lips brush yours again on the exhale, unhurried and reverent, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of this moment rather than deepening it.

Jason pulls back slightly, eyes half-lidded, studying you with a tenderness he clearly didn’t mean to let slip. His hand stays on your jaw longer than it should. Your noses stay close enough to touch.

His thumb traces your cheek once, slow and unsure, as if asking a question he can’t bring himself to say out loud.

Then he breathes out, shaky and warm.

“C’mon,” he murmurs, voice gentled to something almost fragile. “Let’s get you in before you fall asleep on me.”

He drops his forehead to yours again, just for a heartbeat, grounding himself—or maybe grounding you. His hand slips from your jaw to the side of your neck, guiding you with a steadiness that feels like a promise he hasn’t admitted to making.

When he finally steps back, it’s gradual, like peeling himself away from gravity. His hands slide down to your waist, then lower, helping you off the counter with a slow caution that sends a pulse straight through your ribs.

You land on your feet unsteadily and Jason catches you before you can sway. Neither of you really acknowledges how close your chests press together but then again he doesn’t let go right away.

When he does, he only steps back another foot, just enough to breathe, not enough to break whatever thread has formed between your bodies.

His eyes flick again to your lips. Yours drop to his. A shared second of understanding that neither one of you is making a move to stop.

Then he reaches for your hand, not your elbow, not your back, but your hand, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

His fingers close around yours with gentle certainty, and he gives the softest tug.

He guides you toward the shower with careful hands, steadying your balance as the heat rolls out in waves.

You stop just at the edge of the steam. The air is hot enough to prickle against your skin, warm enough to make the room feel even smaller.

Jason stands close behind you. You can feel the hesitation rolling off him in slow, uncertain breaths. The kind of breath a man takes when he knows he’s about to cross a boundary he promised himself he wouldn’t.

His hands hover at your waist again, then fall away.

“I should… uh—” His voice drops low, almost apologetic. “Let you get in first.”

He’s completely still, a contemplating look painted on his face when you turn to him.

It hits both of you at the same time: you’re almost naked, inches from him, in a room full of heat and quiet choices.

“Can I take off your clothes?” you ask softly, fingers brushing the hem of his shirt.

His breath catches. A noticeable, undeniable pause. “You… you don’t have to.”

“I know.” You meet his gaze. “But can I?”

Jason’s answer isn’t verbal—not right away. He just nods once, definitely. A surrender wrapped in restraint.

You step closer. “I want to take care of you too.”

Your fingers slip under the fabric at his waist. He’s too warm for someone who insists his blood runs cold. His muscles tighten instinctively beneath your touch, then soften as he forces himself to breathe.

You lift the shirt inch by inch.

Jason raises his arms a beat late, dazed, like he can’t quite believe he’s letting you do this.

The shirt slides up his ribs, his chest, over the scar that cuts across his sternum. You pause there but not to touch, just to see. Jason swallows hard, eyes flicking away, embarrassed in a way he hates. You've already seen him without his shirt countless times since that night on his couch.

You tug the shirt over his head.

He stands bare chested before you, skin flushed from the heat, breath unsteady in the close air.

His eyes lower to your hands again. “You good?” he murmurs.

“Yeah,” you whisper. “You?”

He lets out a quiet laugh—more exhale than sound. “Not even close.”

You don’t smile, but something inside you loosens.

He reaches for his belt next, hesitantly, then looks at you. Not for permission—more like asking if you’re sure you still want to be here, in this moment, with him or if you regret wanting him in the shower with you.

You nod.

He undoes it slowly, metal clicking softly. His pants loosen on his hips. Before he can take the next step, you touch his wrist.

“Let me,” you say, voice barely above a breath.

Jason stops moving completely.

You ease the zipper down, steady, as if the motion might spook him. He exhales sharply, the sound low and warm, and steps closer without meaning to.

The pants fall to the floor.

Jason’s hands lift in a slow, hesitant motion, settling at your hips. Not pulling. Just holding. Just grounding himself. His forehead rests gently against yours.

And another shared breath takes places as he hooks his thumbs under the elastic of your panties.

He whispers, barely audible, “…we don’t have to rush.”

“I know,” you murmur. “I’m not rushing.”

“‘M not either.”

You tilt your chin. He tilts his. Your lips brush once again soft, warm, searching. Then again. Deeper. Slower, still careful, but full of longing. He pulls back, only far enough to take your image in.

Underwear is soon discarded on random spots of the floor and the shower steam swallows you both the moment you step inside.

The water hits your shoulders first, hot, almost too hot actually, after the cold night and the ache threading through every muscle, it feels like your body melts from the inside out.

You brace one hand against the tile.

Jason steps in behind you, slow and careful, like he’s entering holy ground. The curtain slides closed with the whisper of fabric, sealing the two of you in a small world made of heat running water.

Then Jason exhales soundlessly and places one hand between your shoulder blades.

“Still with me?” he murmurs.

You nod, eyes closing as the water streams over your spine. “Yeah.”

His thumb drifts once across your back, tracing the line of muscle there. A gentle check-in from someone who’s watched you get hurt too many times.

He reaches for the detachable showerhead, tests the temperature on his palm, adjusting it a degree warmer— like he magically knows how hot you like your water to be. Then he lifts it above you, guiding the water along your shoulders, down your arms, careful of your healing side.

The first sweep of heat makes a breathy sound escape you half relief, half relaxation.

“Good?” he asks, voice low.

“Feels too good, actually,” you murmur.

He swallows, the movement visible down his throat. “Alright. Just… tell me if it’s too much.”

He works methodically. Letting the water loosen each knot he felt earlier under your skin. Every time his knuckles graze your back, he draws them away quickly, like touching you too long might cross a line he’s terrified of.

You lean your forehead against your arm. “Jason?”

“Mm?”

“You can touch me. I won’t break.”

His breath stutters. His hand returns, a little more grounded this time. Less afraid.

He smooths your hair back gently, guiding the water through it. His fingers slide near your scalp, and the kind of quiet sound you make this time is different—small and honest.

“Sorry,” you whisper, embarrassed.

“Don’t…” His voice comes out too rough. “Don’t apologize for that.”

The water hits the tile around your feet in rhythmic bursts. His hands keep moving, learning the shape of your muscles, the warm slope of your back, the tension in your neck.

You turn, so you face him. Jason steps back automatically—then stops himself, forcing his feet still. You can see the way he’s fighting the urge to retreat, in this new uncharted territory but something about him right now is so unapologetically beautiful.

His lashes are wet. His hair is beginning to drip. His chest rises and falls with an unsteady breath.

You step closer, with a hand reach towards his face despite him not moving an inch. Reaching up your fingers brushing the water from his jaw. The contact is featherlight, but it pulls something deep from his chest—a low exhale he doesn’t catch in time.

You want to ask him, if he really means this is still nothing, but no words come out. You also want to tell him how handsome he looks in this setting.

Instead, you reach for his bottle of shampoo.

You spent no time to lather it in your hands and work it through his hair, his eyes half-lidded under the spray as your fingers knead his scalp. He leans into your touch with this heavy sigh, his hands resting on your hips like he needs the anchor.

You let him do the same to you, with hands that engulf the entire of your head.

Occasionally, he switches —turns you gently, brushing your wet hair over one shoulder so he can run his soapy thumbs along the knots in your neck, working warmth into your muscles, slow circles that melt the tightness under your skin. He doesn’t rush the rinse. Doesn’t rush you.

When it’s your turn to massage his shoulders, he lets out whimpers of relief, like he’s finally unclenching somewhere deep. A dark part inside you thinks you’ve won a battle against imaginary foes. It is very unlikely anyone else gets to touch him like that in such vulnerable moments. At least no one has ever cradled your head and washed your hair before.

The two of you move like you’ve found a rhythm without speaking. trading touches, rinsing each other’s backs, smoothing suds down arms and over ribs. It’s domestic and intimate and a little hungry around the edges, each brush of skin a little slower than it needs to be.

At some point, he steps in closer. You feel his chest brush your back. 

You’re both slick with water, faces inches apart, breath mixing with the steam. You reach from behind to rinse the last of the soap from his jaw, and his fingers curl lightly around your wrist.

He peppers kisses along your cheek like they're one promise each. All of them, full, soft, pulled and his body fits so perfectly behind yours, like the perfect puzzle piece.

Is it just too bad to want this as your normal, day to day life? 

Is it too much to ask?

Just the two of you, holding each other without the angst?

“Hey,” he whispers, voice breaking. “Hey—look at me.”

You try. Your vision blurs. Your chest stutters. It’s embarrassing and overwhelming and too much, too honest, too vulnerable. But Jason gathers your face in his hands anyway, thumbs brushing your cheeks, catching your tears even though the water keeps washing them away.

“Talk to me,” he breathes, forehead pressing to yours. “Please. What’s wrong?”

You pull in a ragged, uneven breath ragged, but the words don’t come. They can’t. If you start talking, you’ll unravel, and if you unravel, you’ll say the things you’re not allowed to say.

So you shake your head, quick and helpless, hoping he takes it as ‘I’m fine’ instead of ‘I’m falling apart.’

“Nothing I’m” you start, choking on a sob “im okay”

Jason’s eyes flick over your face like he’s scanning for an explanation, for something he can fix. But you don’t give him anything.

“Did I hurt you?”

You shake your head, but the tears keep coming anyway.

His jaw flexes twice. A quiet, controlled violence of muscle under the skin—panic and guilt and something too raw to name fighting for space in his chest and in his head. You can hear it in his breathing, the way it stutters like he’s bracing for impact.

He opens his mouth—to ask again, maybe, or to say something too real—but shuts it before a sound slips out. You see the moment he decides that pressure is a risk he can’t take.

Jason Todd, actual king of bad and irrational , sentimental decisions, actually chooses silence.

Instead, he brushes a thumb over your cheek. Just once. He contemplates the thought of placing a kiss at the highest point of your cheek, but finds the motion overkill.

You don’t speak and neither does he.

Inside your head, your thoughts are screaming.

You want him. You want certainty. You want a promise he can’t give. But the minute you try to shape any of it into words, your throat closes like it’s trying to save you from yourself.

Jason watches you like he’s waiting for the real reason you’re crying, the real fear, the real plea—but he doesn’t ask. He won’t, because he is terrified of the answer.

Terrified he already knows it. It’s probable that you’re thinking about Damian’s picture of a perfect nuclear family, and even if he tried so hard to suppress it within him tonight after what he heard, he can’t help but think he ruined this for you. He should’ve stopped this before it became something he can’t control. Before it became something he wants too badly, but it’s obvious he brings destruction into anything burrowed he ever touches.

“Okay,” he murmurs finally—not an agreement, not comfort either and definitely not understanding. Just a placeholder.

He slips out of you and steadies both your feet on the shower floor. A tiny, fragile truce.

He wipes another tear from your jaw even though the water keeps replacing it. You see the way his hand hesitates, like he wants to pull you in, kiss you again, swallow whatever pain you’re drowning in—but he doesn’t. He stays right where he is, close enough to feel your shaking breath, far enough to pretend it’s not intimacy.

Your chest aches. His chest rises like it hurts him too. And this silence between you is thick, steaming, suffocating, it feels like a panic attack instead of the only thing holding the moment together.

Jason swallows hard, eyes dropping to your mouth for a split second too long before he looks away like he caught himself wanting something he’s not supposed to want.

You feel it. You feel all of it, but you keep your lips sealed.

“Don’t… cry like that,” he says, finally, voice low and scraped raw. “Not because of me.”

You swallow hard. Your throat feels painful, like someone forced you to swallow sandpaper. “I’m not—” But you can’t finish. You don’t know what you’re not.

You don’t know what you are.

Jason’s jaw tics again, like he’s swallowed a piece of sandpaper himself. He shakes his head once, slowly, water dripping off his chin and his hair like punctuation.

“Let’s get out, maybe if you sleep on it you’ll be better in the morning.”

You nod in response.

Neither of you touches the other as he reaches for a towel to hand you.

His arm extends just far enough for you to take it without brushing his fingers. You match his effort, carefully, performing this delicate little choreography like you’re animals trapped in a tiny cage.

You wrap the towel around yourself with stiff fingers. Jason steps out of the shower right after you, reaching for his own towel with the same rigid precision—like every movement has to be deliberate so he doesn’t reach for you instead.

He keeps his eyes low, fixed on the tiles, on the ground, on anywhere that isn’t your face. You keep yours on your feet.

The room feels colder the moment the water stops, even though steam is still thick in the air, fogging the cabinet mirror and the small window in the corner, next to the toilet.

Jason clears his throat, quietly. Barely more than a scrape.

He drags the towel across his neck, then his chest, the muscles in his jaw working like he’s grinding down words he refuses to let escape.

You can feel the moment he looks at you, even though you don’t look back. A brief flicker—soft, charged with guilt—and then he shuts it down so hard it’s like slamming a door on his own raging heartbeat.

He turns slightly, giving you space or taking space on his own. It’s impossible to tell which.

“Use the bed,” he says finally. Not an order. Not tenderness. Not distance either. Just neutrality. Like he’s trying to erase all evidence of what happened. “I’ll take the couch.”

You nod again, because that’s all you can manage without your voice cracking around the edges.

He wraps his towel around his waist and bends to pick up the clothes he shed earlier. His movements are stiff, efficient, almost too fast as though if he slows down even a second, everything inside him will come spilling out and he’ll accuse you of what he suspects is going on.

You watch the floor so intensely that if you had laser vision, you would have already burned an enormous hole in it.

Jason hesitantly moves towards the hallway, though just for a heartbeat he pauses. Like he wants to say something. Like he’s trying to decide whether he should apologize or ask if you’re okay, again, or tell you he didn’t mean for any of this to go so wrong. 

But how does one even say something along the lines of ‘I didn't mean to have sex with you, it just happened’ without sounding like an absolute asshole?

Jason Todd does not risk emotional honesty. Not tonight.

So he settles on silence again instead, one final look at you from the corner of his eye before he slips out of the bathroom to give you the much needed time and space to pull yourself together.

The door doesn’t slam—It just clicks shut.

Ever so tenderly.

And somehow that hurts worse.

Jason Todd Masterlist

~All rights reserved: @/strawberry-nugget, 2025. Please do not copy, over write or steal my work // Likes and reblogs are so appreciated but if you you liked this you can let me know in the comments <3

(The next installment will feature Roy and Lian and i promise its just going to be fluff. As always my inbox is open to discuss things regarding the fic)

Taglist: @starfiremylove @i-gotta-go-so-much-bigger @fanggq @cicikent @cowboysaveme @osclerc @dyanasaur (I hope im not forgetting anyone, but i'll check again)

you’re sweating, body sticking to the cool silken sheets like a fly on a paper trap. it hot—you’re hot. and your head is so fuzzy, spinning in circles while your thighs tremble.

“mm..she is so sweet grayson..like a nectarine..” kory mumbles against your folds, a airy giggle following her words. she’s between your legs—keeping them open with her soft hands. you’re at her gentle mercy, taking what she hands out with shaky breaths.

“is that right baby?” dick smiles from the chair he’s seated in, hands folded over his lap as he watches. his cock throbs beneath them but he doesn’t make any moves to touch himself, instead keeping his eyes trained on you both.

“ahuh,” kory hums, licking up and down like you were a sweet treat. a feeling of satisfaction blossoming in her chest when your back arches and you gasp out. her green eyes twinkle with amusement, tongue lapping at your dripping entrance.

“kory..” you utter shakily—fingers clenching and unclenching around the sheets. the woman between your legs only lifts a perfectly plucked brow, her hands shifting beneath your hips and lifting.

“jesus sweetheart you’re gonna eat her soul out if you keep it up.” dick muses quietly, fingers just barely brushing his groin. his cock is uncomfortably hard against his jeans, had been since his girlfriend laid you in their bed.

it was sexy—seeing kory being so dominant with you. even more seeing just how pliant you were for them. it was something the couple had fantasized for a long while yet had never acted on. you were a close friend—best even. someone they had grown close to over the past two years.

hell, it was always you three. and they thought they had made it obvious—everyone practically could tell how much they liked you. well, everyone but you. so when you had been invited over for movies and snacks you thought nothing of it. you three had a long mission that week so a relaxing movie didn’t sound terrible to end your week. your agreement like music to their ears.

and now you were here. sprawled on their bed like a gift from heaven with kory eating your pussy. it was enough to make him bust in his jeans like a teenager.

the acrobat watches your face closely, watching the way your lashes flutter and your legs try to close around kory’s head. his girlfriend letting her hands roam your chest while she eats you out at a slow, drawn out pace. like her goal isn’t to make you cum but to simply lavish your pussy.

and it probably is. kory was a giver—dick learned that from the first time they had sex. when she had given him the best—nastiest head of his fucking life in some dirty alley after they had just cracked some bad guys less than an hour prior. pretty green eyes flowing with nothing but pure joy. she could give and give and that’d be exactly what she wanted.

“mhm..” kory breathes softly against your folds before she’s pressing two fingers into you. watching the digits sink into your cunt with little to no resistance. her saliva and your natural essence providing a good bit of lubricant.

pulling off your cunt with a soft mmp! sound the redhead licks her lips, taking in your pleasure painted face as she climbs back up your body. her lips mesh against yours in a messy kiss and she tastes like nothing but pussy. a choked moan swallowed by her as she steals what little breath you could conjure, fingers still working your pussy.

the girl kisses like she’s claiming you as hers, her tongue running over your teeth and gums sensually. you’re forced to break away from the kiss when you really can’t breath. kory laughing softly although she doesn’t seem much deterred, her lips meeting your neck, tongue slowly licking a bead of sweat from your skin.

then you feel the bed sink and your eyes meet his. his usual electric blue eyes a deep azure pool now, pupils blown wide. and his hand—hovering over your bare chest before he gently grabs at the plush flesh. humming at the weight in his palm “soft.”

he chuckles when you arch into his touch, biting his lip habitually. he’s so hard it hurts, his gaze flitting to your parted lips. he’s wonders what they’d feel like wrapped around his cock—how warm your mouth would be.

“y/n,” kory catches his gaze, smiling subtly and pulling her fingers from your cunt despite the sound that leaves you.

“y-yes.?”

the girl doesn’t say anything, shifting around the bed until dick is now in your place and you’re between his muscled thighs.

“have you ever..” kory bats her lashes, running a hand over dicks erection. the question makes your face hot—

“o-of course i have.” you retort “i’m not a virgin kory.”

“well—do you wanna.” she snorts, tugging his jeans open and pulling the zipper down.

glancing at dick who’s tanned skin is dusted pink you swallow, pressing your thighs together “…”

“he won’t bite,” kory murmurs as dick eases his jeans and boxers down in one go. and god, is he hard. his cock slaps against his lower abdomen, leaking a small puddle into the curve of his abs.

“unless you maybe—want him to.”

glancing back to the man you’re gaze moves to his cock, watching how it twitches and leaks even more. hell it was the hottest thing you’d seen since you met superman in person.

“i—how does he like it.?” you manage.

the question makes the two exchange looks, kory running a hand up your bare back.

“i’ll show you.”

uh..yeah—this was almost longer but .. i haven’t been enjoying my writing lolz

comments not needed but appreciated <3

You wake slowly, gradually surfacing from sleep to the subtle pressure of lips against your temple. Bruce has always been like this—soft in private, reverent in the moments he thinks you aren’t fully awake. You feel him before you see him, the weight of his hand gentle against your waist, his breath warm on your cheek, then your jaw, and finally your shoulder.

“Happy birthday,” he murmurs. His voice is low, gravel-laced from sleep, still carrying the intimacy of night.

You tilt your head toward him without a word, letting him continue, soft kisses melting into your skin like candle wax. His hand spreads over your belly, thumb sweeping along your ribs with an affectionate press.

“You don’t look a day over twenty-five,” he mutters into your hair, lips curling, “but I have irrefutable evidence of your actual age in my safe downstairs.”

You laugh—quiet, but genuine. “Evidence?”

“Mmhmm. License. Passport. A file labeled ‘Kent—Wayne, Y/N’.”

“You keep a file on me?”

“I keep a file on everyone,” he says, smiling against your cheek. “Yours just happens to be my favorite.”

“I love you,” you murmur, fingers curling around the sheet. “Happy birthday... to me.”

He smiles bigger. “Morning missions are canceled today.”

You let out a contented breath and settle back, the world soft around the edges for the first time in weeks.

As if summoned by prophecy, your bedroom door bursts open with all the force and drama only children—and Alfred—can carry. Behind them bounds Ace, his claws scrabbling against the hardwood floor before leaping effortlessly onto the bed, and last—but not to be forgotten—Miss Whiskers the cat slinks her way across the room, tail flicking with regal entitlement.

“Happy birthday to you—!”

“—happy birthday to you!”

“Happy birthday, mama—!”

The singing is off-tune, chaotic and stumbling over itself, but you barely have time to laugh before the whole room is full. Tim enters first, balancing a massive tray of breakfast with the careful hands of a boy who probably bribed Alfred with tech work to help him. Cassandra is close behind, clutching the edge of the tray to help. Dick follows in socks that slide on the floor, his hair an overgrown mess of curls, and Alfred walks behind them with all the calm grace of a man used to waking up early for every major holiday.

You sit up slowly, sweeping the comforter up over your chest as you lean into the headboard, smiling so widely your cheeks ache.

“Careful, careful!” Alfred warns as Tim sets the tray on your lap. “Master Timothy, do not spill the syrup on her lap again.”

“That was once, Alfred,” Tim mutters, half-pouting. “Once.”

“Once too many,” Cassandra adds in deadpan, but you see the curve of a smile in her mouth as she perches herself by your side.

Bruce groans and flops onto his back beside you, one hand shielding his eyes. “You’re lucky I love you all,” he says into the ceiling, voice gravelly.

“You’re lucky we made pancakes,” Tim says, grinning now, clearly proud of the work. He points to the top stack. “That one has a candle. For blowing out. It’s the birthday one.”

Indeed, a single birthday candle—pink and a bit crooked—has been stabbed into a tall pancake, the wick already smoking faintly from being lit downstairs.

You shake your head in disbelief. “You all planned this?”

“Of course we did,” Dick says proudly. “Cass supervised the syrup-to-pancake ratio. Tim made the coffee. I was... moral support.”

“I made the list,” Cassandra says softly.

Your gaze slides to Alfred, who bows his head and offers a fond smile. “It was a group effort. But allow me to assure you, no one left the kitchen with unwashed hands or unsupervised fire.”

Your heart warms. Completely and without hesitation.

“Madam,” he says, formal as ever, though you see the fondness dancing in his eyes. “Many happy returns.”

You sit there, tray heavy with pancakes and steaming coffee, your family crowding around you on the bed, all warmth and chaos and love. Your children. Your animals. Your people.

Tim leans over your shoulder and nudges the plate. “Blow the candle, mom.”

You glance around the room, at the hopeful faces, at the kids trying to be casual and Bruce trying not to get smothered by a hundred-pound dog, and you close your eyes.

You blow.

Applause erupts around you. Whiskers flinches and Ace barks once, as if offended he wasn’t warned. Tim beams. Cassandra claps her hands gently.

Bruce leans in to kiss your cheek again. “I love you,” he whispers. “Every year more.”

“I love you back,” you murmur.

Dick leans in to kiss your cheek with an exaggerated smooch. “Happy birthday, mom,” he says, loud and proud. “God, thirty-seven? You’re so ancient.”

Bruce groans again. “You’re still grounded.”

“I’m literally not even living here right now,” Dick replies, unbothered.

Cassandra leans in and rests her head on your shoulder. “I made the card,” she whispers.

“You did?” you ask, touched.

She nods, and from beneath one of the pillows, she carefully pulls out a folded paper full of hand-drawn symbols and flowers. On the front is a little sketch of your garden, her signature now unmistakable in the corner. Inside, the message is simple.

Happy birthday to the best mom in the world. Love you forever, your daughter Cassandra.

You don’t realize your eyes are misty until Tim tries to pass you the syrup and you blink too hard to see the bottle clearly.

For a while, it’s nothing but laughter and coffee and the kind of slow joy you’ve fought for. It’s been two years now—two years since Tim started calling you “mom” without flinching, two years since Cass came into your life and quietly wrapped herself around your soul. Two years of growing, healing, building something new.

You think of Jason—always. You wonder what he’d look like now, how his voice might’ve deepened. If he’d still call you “ma” in that gruff, reluctant way that made your heart flutter. He would’ve turned eighteen this year. You breathe in and let the grief pass gently, respectfully, like an old companion.

You all stay like that—eating, laughing, sharing soft smiles and playfully stealing bites—for well over an hour. Your phone buzzes sometime between coffee refill two and three. Bruce picks it up from the nightstand and peers at it.

“Smallville.”

“Put it on speaker,” you say, mouth full of berry pancake.

He does.

“Happy birthday, baby girl!” your mother’s voice cries through the line. Behind her, you hear your dad trying to figure out speaker settings.

“I got it! No, Lois said—oh, there we go. You hear us, sweetheart?”

You laugh. “Loud and clear.”

Lois cuts in with a sarcastic drawl. “Happy birthday, Y/N. We’re trying to keep Jon from eating the cupcakes meant for your virtual party.”

“Too late!” Jon’s voice says proudly. “I got blue frosting!”

Conner snorts. “That was your cupcake.”

“Happy birthday,” Clark says gently, his voice coming clearer now. “I hope they’re spoiling you over there.”

You glance around the room—at the tray on your lap, the kids half-fighting over whipped cream, Bruce kissing your temple—and you smile. “Yeah. I think they are.”

The call lasts longer than it should, but nobody minds. Even Bruce smiles when your mother insists on telling a story about your eighth birthday and a goat from the neighbor’s farm. You hang up feeling full in ways no breakfast could cause.

After that, the Justice League transmissions begin. Diana sends flowers and a beautiful poem in Themysciran. Hal sends a recorded birthday serenade that is absolutely off-key. J’onn writes a hauntingly beautiful message about strength, resilience, and peace. Even Ollie calls—though he’s more interested in catching up on gossip.

And the kids’ friends all send messages. Stephanie’s is the longest, chaotic and peppered with sarcasm.

“I would’ve baked you something but last time I set off the fire alarm. Cass tried to stop me. She tried signing at me from the couch like ‘STOP. OVEN. DEATH.’ Anyway, happy birthday, mom two.”

You laugh so hard Bruce makes you tea to keep you from choking.

But the truth is, despite all the brightness of the day, the back of your mind doesn’t stay quiet.

Because you’ve felt it again. That feeling. That slithering unease crawling up the back of your neck.

For weeks now, you’ve been feeling watched. Not overtly. Not enough to raise alarms. But enough that your skin prickles at the back of your neck. You’ve told Bruce, casually. He said he’d sweep the area more thoroughly. Tim ran a few digital traces, checked the perimeter cams. Nothing. No breaches. No spikes in digital traffic. Nothing unusual.

But still.

It’s been there—during your walks with Ace, when the dog pauses for a second too long, staring at something behind you before you turn and find nothing. It’s been there at pilates, when you catch a shadow moving across a mirrored wall that no one else notices. It’s been there at interviews, press events, even just shopping with Cass—who once held your hand a little tighter in a department store without knowing why.

Cass leans into your other side. “Big party tonight.”

“Yeah,” you sigh, pretending it’s a burden, though it’s not. “You’re all coming, right?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Tim says.

“Gotham needs to see what royalty looks like,” Dick adds from across the room. “And it needs to know I’m still your favorite, mom.”

“You’re literally not,” your third son replies back, nose wrinkling. “There’s no ranking system.”

“There is,” Dick says without hesitation, as though he’s been holding this argument in his pocket for years. “One day a year. It’s a sacred event. Mom’s birthday. On this day, I, Richard John Grayson, hold the coveted title of Favorite Child.”

“I’d like to motion to have this unconstitutional system abolished,” Tim mutters, raising a hand like he’s at a city council meeting.

“Overruled,” Dick replies, cheerful as ever. “Motion denied. Appeal rejected. I am democracy.”

“You are drama,” Tim snaps back.

“Oh please,” Dick sighs. “You say that like it’s not a birthright. Do you know how many years I spent in tights?”

Cass finally makes a sound — a little snort — before muffling her mouth with her free hand. You catch her eye, eyebrows raised. She grins wider and lifts her hands with casual ease.

“Dick was favorite yesterday,” she signs. “I’ll be favorite tomorrow.”

Tim groans. “You two are seriously delusional.”

“You’re all delusional,” you interject finally, eyes still sleepy but smile blooming warmer with each second that passes. “Do you want the truth?”

The room goes quiet. Four sets of eyes land on you at once — Dick’s wide and eager, Tim’s narrowed with suspicion, Cass’s intense with anticipation, and Alfred’s politely interested, sipping tea like this is a morning soap opera.

You make a show of stretching your arms over your head, smothering a yawn, and then you reach for the fork beside your pancake with agonizing slowness. You chew a bite. Swallow. Take a sip of juice. Then:

“I don’t have a favorite.”

All three groan at once.

“Come on!”

“That’s a lie.”

“Not true,” Tim insists. “You literally kissed me on the forehead first this morning. That counts.”

“Only because you elbowed me in the ribs to get to her first,” Dick retorts, throwing a pillow at him with perfect aim.

Cass says, cheeky and quick: “I brought her the coffee.”

“And I brought the syrup,” Tim says quickly.

“I brought the charm,” Dick announces proudly.

“I brought the dog,” Alfred deadpans from the doorway, setting his tea aside.

That earns a round of chuckles.

“Alfred wins,” you declare, raising your glass in a mock toast. “Favorite forever.”

“Traitor,” Dick whispers, feigning heartbreak as he clutches at his chest like he’s been mortally wounded.

“Unfair advantage,” Tim huffs. “He made pancakes.”

“I helped,” Cass adds. “I put the candle in.”

“Let’s be honest,” Bruce’s voice calls in from the closet doorway, low and amused. “Only reason none of you are actually her favorite is because I got to her first.”

Dick lets out a theatrical gasp. “You stole our mom with seduction?”

Tim blinks. “Oh my God. Ew.”

Cass is already shaking with laughter, her fingers stuttering through a very expressive, chaotic sentence involving the word “betrayal” several times. You cover your mouth to stifle a giggle.

“She’s my wife,” Bruce replies smoothly, resting a hand on the curve of your shoulder as he leans down to kiss your temple, slow and deliberate. “That’s allowed.”

“That’s favoritism,” Dick cries.

“That’s romance,” you correct, smirking into your coffee.

“You’re all terrible,” Tim mutters, though he doesn’t seem particularly upset. “We’re supposed to be showing her love, not launching a full-on popularity contest.”

“Tim’s just mad he’s not winning,” Cass declares.

“I am not,” he snaps, looking straight at her.

She raises both brows.

“Okay, maybe a little,” he admits, sitting back with a scowl.

“I think,” you murmur slowly, resting your hand over Bruce’s wrist where it lingers on your shoulder, “that this morning has made me feel like the luckiest woman on the planet. And I think that anyone who brings me a second pancake might secure a temporary win.”

All three jump into action.

“On it!”

“Wait—no—I got it!”

“Move, nerds!”

The tray tips slightly, and you almost lose a fork to the floor, but miraculously everything remains intact. Cass bolts ahead, plate in hand. Dick leaps over the edge of the bed like a gymnast. Tim is practically airborne behind them.

“Good God,” Bruce mutters.

“Every year,” Alfred sighs.

You lean back against the pillows, heart full, laughter warming your chest. Ace barks once, excited, and tries to chase after the trio. Whiskers lifts her head from the blanket, unimpressed, and jumps onto the pillow as if to remind everyone she, in fact, is the true favorite.

The gala sparkled around you.

Gold chandeliers flooded the grand hall with a honeyed glow, and the dark marble beneath your heels shimmered like liquid ink. The building—Gotham’s refurbished Astoria Theatre, a place that had once seen opera and violence in equal measure—had been transformed into a palace of warmth and light for you. Bruce had insisted on it. 

Gotham’s elite had shown up in tailored tuxedos and glittering gowns, every one of them eager to smile and raise a glass to her, the woman who had made the Prince human, the heart that softened the myth.

Your birthday gala was already trending in Gotham social circles. “Gotham’s beloved,” one headline had read. “The softer heart behind Wayne.”

You’d laughed when Vicki Vale sent you a preview of her column—claiming it was meant to “balance the image.” You didn’t mind. You liked being the softness, the warmth, the tether. You liked standing in the glow of the chandelier with a smile painted on your lips and your hand wrapped around a flute of champagne, watching the people around you light up like candles.

Clark had made a speech. Lois had kissed your cheek. Even Selina had flown in—draped in velvet, her signature grin sharp as ever as she twirled you across the floor in a surprisingly graceful spin.

“You age like a secret,” she’d whispered against your cheek. “No wonder Bruce still can’t take his eyes off you.”

You’d laughed, flustered, hiding your flushed face behind a crystal glass.

And now, hours in, with music still thrumming gently in the air and laughter bouncing between the pillars, the attention had started to catch up to you.

Not in a bad way. Just… loud. Too much all at once.

“You look like you need a breath,” Bruce murmurs against your ear. He’s handsome, devastating in black, one hand resting comfortably on your waist. “I’ve watched you charm forty-seven different people in the last two hours. I counted.”

You smile tiredly, leaning into his touch. “You’d think I was the one running for mayor.”

“No, you’re just beloved,” he replies. “More dangerous, honestly.”

You press a quick kiss to his cheek and mumble, “I’m going to get some air.”

He kisses you back, slower. “Alright. But if you don’t come back in ten minutes—”

“You’ll come get me.”

“Exactly,” he says, his gaze softening, jaw still tense like always. “Ten minutes. I’ll time it.”

You step away with a grateful smile and disappear up the grand staircase, your heels echoing against the marble, slipping into softer silence with every floor. The upper terrace is quiet, tucked above the gala, its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Gotham’s skyline. You slip through the doors, out into the breeze. The chill is sweet relief. A balm.

You close your eyes. Breathe in. Let the night air undo the tension in your shoulders. Gotham glows below you. The music becomes a murmur behind thick walls. The stars are faint. But you let yourself be small beneath them, just for a second.

And then you feel it. The same sensation that’s been haunting you for weeks.

The eyes.

A cold tickle runs down your spine, a breath on the back of your neck—except there’s no breath, no breeze, just that feeling. You’re not alone.

But this time, for the first time… you see him.

Across the rooftop, half-shadowed by the arched curvature of a decorative gargoyle, stands a man. Not just any man—tall, broad, easily Bruce’s height and build. His shoulders are massive, arms braced with thick leather. But it’s the helmet that stops your heart for half a second.

A red helmet. Blood red, high-gloss, molded like a skull and faceless all at once.

You don’t flinch. You don’t run.

Your stomach clenches like a fist, but there’s no fear blooming in your lungs. No spike of danger. Just a tightening in your chest—foreign and familiar at once. Something instinctual. Something human.

You tilt your head slightly.

“Are you the one who’s been following me?” you ask, your voice calm — a murmur that curls into the night.

The helmet doesn’t move.

You squint through the dark, shifting your weight slightly on your heels. 

“I’ve felt you for weeks,” you continue, softly now. “Walking my dog. While going out. Even when I'm buying flower seeds. I thought I was going crazy.” 

Your voice doesn’t waver. 

“I’m not crazy. Yet, you never do anything. Just watch. Are you looking for something?” You pause. “Or someone?”

He tilts his head just barely — not in acknowledgment, not even confirmation. Just… something like listening. His fingers twitch, gloved hands tight at his sides.

You try again. “If I’m in danger, just say so. I can take it. I’d rather know than be left guessing.”

Still, he doesn’t move. No words. Just that helmet reflecting the lights of the city. Something about the shape of his shoulders, the stance of his legs — you’ve seen something like it before. Familiar in a way that makes your chest ache. But you can’t place it. You don’t dare.

 Your heart is speaking a language your mind hasn’t caught up to yet.

“Why?” you whisper, almost to yourself now. “Why do I feel like I know you?”

The wind shifts again, tugging strands of hair into your eyes. You don’t move to fix them.

He flinches.

It’s quick. Subtle. But unmistakable. A slight tightening in his shoulders, his chin angling down half a degree. It hits you like a wave crashing over raw skin — a surge of something too complex to name. Like grief. Like memory. Like recognition hidden under years of dust.

He takes another step — one foot on the ledge now. You think he might leap, vanish into the sky like some ghost, some myth.

And then—

“Auntie?”

You blink.

The rooftop door bursts open, golden light from the ballroom spilling into the night. Jon’s voice is sweet and bright and too loud against the hush.

“Aunt, are you out here?” he asks, running toward you. He’s ten now, all limbs and energy, dressed in a tux that doesn’t quite sit right on his skinny frame. His red-and-blue tie is crooked.

You turn to him on instinct. “I’m here, sweetheart.”

“Uncle Bruce said to look for you. The dessert table’s out now and they have macarons, real ones, like the ones in Paris!”

You smile, grabbing his little hand warmly, turning your body with him—only to glance back, just for a second—

—but he’s gone.

The man in the red helmet.

Vanished. Like smoke, like mist. The corner of the rooftop where he’d stood is empty again, just dark stone and wind and the silence he left behind.

You frown slightly, lips parting. But there’s no trace.

“Come on, Auntie,” Jon tugs insistently. “They’re gonna run out. Mom says the lavender ones are the best and I want you to try them before dad eats them all.”

You let him lead you. Your fingers grip Jon’s hand a little tighter.

But your eyes drift once more to that far ledge.

There’s something strange swelling in your chest. You’re not frightened. You’re not confused, but something in your gut refuses to let go. Like a song you used to hum in the dark. Like a name you’ve forgotten how to say.

(You never see the figure slip down the fire escape, muscle and leather and silence; never see the helmet come off once he hits the shadows. Never see the streak of white hair beneath the edge. Never hear the way his voice cracks like dry paper when he mutters softly to himself, just two words.)

“…hi, ma.”

(But he’s gone before the wind can carry it anywhere but the night.)

You sit in front of the vanity, bathed in the soft golden hue of the bedroom lamp, fingers working the cream into your skin with practiced, gentle swipes. 

The end of your nighttime routine is always meant to bring you some semblance of peace — the familiar scent of lavender and hyaluronic acid, the cold smoothness of glass jars, the soft bristles of the brush you use to comb your hair. All of it should feel grounding. But your mind isn’t cooperating.

The memory creeps back like it has every night for the past week. That rooftop. That night air. That man. You still haven’t said a word about him to anyone — not to Bruce, not to Alfred, not even to Clark, who would’ve squinted at you with that overly concerned look he inherited from your father. But you’ve kept it in. 

Not out of fear, exactly — you’re not afraid of the man in the red helmet. If anything, the memory of him feels… unfinished. Like something left unsaid, unread, a name dangling on the edge of your tongue without ever quite taking shape. His presence didn’t scare you. It rattled you, sure, unsettled you — but not in the way danger does. In the way familiarity does. That unbearable tug that pulls somewhere behind your ribs when something deep inside you recognizes something your conscious mind cannot.

You exhale slowly, running your fingers down the arch of your jaw as you look at yourself in the mirror. The edge of that rooftop flashes behind your eyes — the glint of moonlight off that crimson helmet, the firm weight of his silent gaze. His sheer stillness. The way your voice had filled the quiet. The way he had said nothing in return.

And the worst part — the part that lingers like a splinter under your nail — is that when Jon called for you and you turned your head, just for a second, he had vanished like smoke. Gone in an instant. And still, the feeling remained: that you had just seen someone you knew. Someone long gone. Someone you’d mourned.

The skin around your eyes tightens as you reach for the under-eye serum. You press it in with your ring finger slowly, one tap at a time, but your thoughts are elsewhere again. You’d replayed every detail. 

The way he stood — tall, grounded, not a single ounce of insecurity in his posture. He’d been solid, grounded, heavy. Like he’d been trained to stand like that. And those broad shoulders, the width of his chest — he’d been built for combat. 

Not lean like Dick or narrow like Tim. Broad like… like Bruce. But not Bruce. And not Clark either. Not a soldier. Not a god. Something else. Someone with pain carved into his very stance. Someone who watched you like he didn’t know how to speak anymore.

You blink, pushing the bottle back into place. You don’t want to dwell on it. But you do. You always do.

The subtle sound of the grandfather clock chimes downstairs. You hear the faint, nearly inaudible swoosh of the Cave’s entrance shifting, the near-silent hum of systems disengaging. Bruce is coming up. But he doesn’t come to the bedroom — not immediately. That makes your brows furrow. You glance at the clock again, then the door, and wait. A few minutes pass.

Still no Bruce.

You sigh, standing up slowly and grabbing your robe. The silk glides against your arms as you wrap it around your frame and tie the belt with a quick knot. Barefoot, you step out into the hallway, the coldness of the wooden floor making you shiver slightly. 

The manor is quiet — no flickering lights, no sounds of movement. You pass by the stairs, down the long corridor, and find Ace curled near the fireplace. His big head lifts just slightly, those warm eyes following your approach.

“Hey, handsome,” you whisper, crouching to give him a gentle rub behind the ears. “You waiting for him too?”

Ace leans into your touch, tail thudding once against the floor. You smile, kiss the top of his furry head, and keep going.

The lights are on in the living room. You pause in the archway, still in the shadows of the hall, and then you hear his voice. Bruce. Low, not that calm, careful.

“—you don’t speak of her that way. Ever. Do you understand me?”

Your brow rises slightly. You step through the doorway.

Bruce is standing tall near the hearth, part of his suit still on. His jaw is locked tight, arms crossed. But your eyes go straight to the boy standing near the center of the room.

A child.

A boy. No more than ten, maybe eleven. Shorter than Jon but standing far more rigidly, shoulders squared like a miniature soldier. He’s dressed in black — high-collared, fitted, polished. His hair is raven-black, combed back with ruthless precision. His skin is olive-toned, his features sharp. His eyes — green. Bright green. Piercing.

You blink.

At first, you think Bruce’s picked up another stray. Another orphan. Another lonely soul from Gotham’s cracked corners. You’ve done it before. You’ve done it so many times. And your heart has always had room for one more.

But then you look closer.

And it hits you, all at once.

The shape of the boy’s nose. The set of his jaw. That slight downturn of the mouth when he frowns—just like Bruce does when he’s pretending not to be upset. And the arrogance in his voice. The cold assessment in his eyes.

“Hi,” you managed, softly. Quietly, with a politeness that felt absurd in your own living room. “I’m Y/N.”

He gives you one disinterested sweep of his gaze — head to toe — and raises a single unimpressed brow.

“So,” he says, voice steady and cool. “You’re the woman who warms my father’s bed.”

You blink.

Bruce growls. “Damian.”

You don’t move.

You can’t move.

Everything in you stills, like your blood has stopped pumping entirely. Like your organs have turned to stone. Your hand is still curled gently at the edge of your robe, and your nails dig in before you even notice it.

He called him father.

You glance at Bruce, sharply, not trusting your voice yet, and then look back at the boy, stunned.

“Did he just—” you swallow, your tone dangerously calm, “—did he just refer to me as your night companion?”

The boy shrugs with infuriating nonchalance. “Should I have said concubine?”

“Oh my god,” you mutter, not looking at him anymore, instead turning fully to Bruce, whose face looks like it’s been carved from granite. “Did that child just call me a whore in the most diplomatic way possible?”

Silence.

Bruce doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t even blink.

And that’s when the numbers start adding up in your head, as easily as breath. He’s ten. Or close to it. Ten years old, with that face and those eyes. And ten years ago, you and Bruce—you were already together. You were already raising Dick. Already sharing a bed. Already deep in love. Maybe not married, maybe not as steady as now, but it wasn’t casual. It wasn’t new.

Your stomach twists violently.

Your lips part, but nothing comes out.

You can’t breathe past the lump in your throat. You step backward, just once. Just to keep upright. It’s not the betrayal that hits hardest. It’s not even the secrecy. It’s the sight of the boy—the proof—a child that bears Bruce’s features, flesh and blood. A child someone carried for him, birthed for him.

A child that wasn’t yours.

Because you tried.

You tried.

Year after year, doctors and heartbreak and hospital beds and grief. You buried one. You mourned others before they even had names. You named them, and he held you while you screamed yourself sick into his shoulder.

And now this.

Now a ten-year-old with your husband’s face is standing in your living room, and Bruce didn’t warn you. Didn’t tell you. Didn’t say anything.

You stare at him, stunned, trembling. “When were you going to tell me?”

Bruce finally speaks, but his voice is rough. Measured. “I didn’t know about him until recently.”

You pursed your lips. “How recently?”

He doesn’t answer.

That’s answer enough.

There’s something ugly rising in your chest now, something bitter and furious and deeply, deeply sad. 

You force yourself to look at the boy again—Damian—and you wonder if it’s wrong to feel what you feel. He’s a child. And it’s not his fault. But the hole in your chest has been carved wide by every failed pregnancy, every doctor’s quiet apology, every night spent curled in Bruce’s arms as he promised you again and again that it didn’t matter. That you were enough. That your family—his family—was yours, no matter what.

But now there’s this. Flesh of his flesh. Blood of his blood.

 “Talia never told me. Not until recently. She raised him in the League. I—I didn't know of his existence.”

You shook your head. “That doesn’t change what it means.”

“I didn’t betray you,” he said, quieter now, moving closer. “He was born—”

“When we were together,” you hissed. “He looks ten. Look at him. You do the math. We were together. Engaged, even. We had a child together by then, Bruce, for fuck's sake.”

The boy doesn’t speak. He just watches you.

“He’s yours.”

“Yes.”

You flinch when Bruce answers. You expect it. You knew it from the moment the boy looked at you with those eyes—so like his father’s. So unlike your own.

You take a step back. Then another. And Bruce doesn’t stop you.

You say, without looking at him, “I need a minute.”

He doesn’t follow.

You walk to the hall. You don’t run. You don’t cry. Not yet. You walk, slow and steady, through the old corridors of the manor until you reach your room. Your shared room. And you close the door behind you, softly.

Then you sink to the floor.

And you cry into your hands, knees pulled to your chest, sobs silent and shaking, full of a grief that you thought you buried years ago.

Because now it’s alive again.

Now it has a name.