my guiding moonlight

You just wanted to take a nap after the long day you had. Really, just one, quick nap to feel less like a walking corpse and have at least some energy for your plans tonight.

But two hours later, you get woken up by your door bell ringing. You look at your phone, fuck.

You hurry to your apartment door and press open, you unlock the door. You hear quick footsteps echoing in the stairwell.

You see black hair and soon enough, the whole man coming up the last step and approaching your door.

Dick  wears a nice shirt and well fitting jeans. To put it simply, he looks hot.

“Forgot about me?” He asks, looking you up and down.

You still wear a loose shirt and comfy shorts you threw on after coming home.

“Well,” you begin, “I had a really stressful day and needed a nap.”

His smile is soft and you almost melt. It was embarrassing how much you were pining after that guy.

“Can I come in?” His head slightly rolls to the side, some hair falling into his face.

You step aside, letting him in and he takes off his shoes. 

He begins to head for your bedroom, which doubles as your living room.  

Then, suddenly, you remember.

You rush past him, blocking his way through the door.

“You can't go in.” Your back moves closer to the door handle. “Not now.”

His eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Why not?" I don't care if it's messy.”

Offended, you scoff. “Thats not why, but thank you for thinking that I'm messy.”

You hear him laugh.

“Then why can't I go in? I don't want to wait in the hallway. It's boring.”

Your mind wanders to the pillow on your bed, the one you've just been sleeping on, the one with Dicks shirt draped over it as a pillowcase. No way he won't see that when going in.

“Too bad, you will have to. Sorry Dick.” You shrug your shoulders dramatically. Maybe you could go in first, hide the shirt and tell him he could come in? Maybe he would believe you if you would say you needed to change?

Before you could overthink anymore, Dicks hand reaches behind you, opening the door.

You almost fall in, but he holds you up.

He looks into your eyes, then down? And just as quickly up again.

You two are pressed close together by the hips. The scene coming across is way more dramatic than it actually is. 

He lets you go after reality hits him and just pushes past you. He could feel his face getting hot. He runs a hand through his hair as he tries to avoid facing you. 

He really needed to get a grip on himself, god.

He looks around the room to distract himself, everything looks as ever. Until his eyes land on the dark shirt covering a pillow. His shirt.

He turns around to you, embarrassment gone and replaced with pure, evil joy. A grin spreads across his face.

“Is that the shirt I spilled my drink on last weekend?” 

You're already red and stammering. "Look, I don't have fresh pillowcases anymore. They're all in the washing machine and I didn't want to stretch my shirts.”

“Your other pillow has a pillowcase tho?” he mock observes.

“I don't like that pillow.” you say.

“Then why not use that case on the pillow you do like?” His grin grows wider.

You want to choke the life out of him right now. “I don't like the pillowcase either?” You try, but fail because the knowing look on his face persists.

“Maybe you just missed me?” his tone was teasing, “Oh damn, does it still smell like me?” He laughs out.

You were still standing by the doorframe where he held you just a minute ago. 

You remember the first time you pulled the shirt over the pillow. A friend had mentioned setting Dick up with someone else. It had seemed easier than admitting how badly you wanted it to be you.

You feel like a creep now that he knows as thick wetness fills your eyes. You look to the side, too scared to find the disgusted look in his eyes.

“Whoa, hey.” Dick steps closer. “Hey, why are you crying?” He pulls you into a hug, resting his shin on the top of your head. “No need for that, I think it's adorable.”

You sob. “Its really not.”

One of his hands starts to play with your hair, he chuckles quietly before saying, “no it is, I didn't know you liked me that much.”

You bury your face into his shoulder, the fabric of his shirt already soaked in your tears. Enjoying the touch of your hair and the calmness of his breathing.

“Next time just text me to come over, okay? The real thing is way better anyways.”

The thought of your feelings for him destroying your friendship fading away in an instant. 

What?

You lift your head to meet his eyes. Tears weighing down your lashes. 

“You don't think I'm a creepy perv or whatever?”

Dick has the audacity to laugh at that. You were about to say something but his smile was almost blinding you. He looks so happy and beautiful, for a second you forget about the whole situation.

“Can I kiss you,” he says, adding a “please” when you don't answer immediately. 

“Yes,” your voice is barely audible.

He softly places a hand on your cheek, the other one traveling down from your shoulder, along your arm and then finding its place at your hips.

He softly strokes your probably red cheek. 

He holds the eye contact a second longer, before leaning down and placing a soft, almost shy, kiss on your lips.

The second one is longer, his lips pressed harder to yours but still careful. 

You lift your arms around his neck, pulling him even closer. 

Dick bites your bottom lip gently before pulling off of you. You let out a sigh. 

“I know we had plans, but I really don't feel like going out tonight.” He leans his forehead against yours. “Can we stay here?”

You nod and try to find your voice again.

“Am I that good?” His initial soft smile turns into a teasing grin again.

“Way to ruin a moment.” You swallow down your still lingering embarrassment and escape his grip to move to your bed. “And this,” you pull off the shirt from the pillow, “is freshly washed. It doesn't even smell like you. You can have it back.” You throw it at him.

Dick catches it, of course he does. “You don't need it anymore anyways.”

He follows you to bed and lets himself fall onto it. He gestures to you to lay down next to him and you do. He turns to his side and puts his arms around you, holding you close and warm.

After a moment, you shift again. “Your clothes are uncomfortable, my god.”

"The cute regular. Their name. Maybe their phone number. Normal people stuff."

"I don't need their phone number."

"You watch the door every Tuesday and Thursday starting at 3:45."

"I'm observing foot traffic patterns."

"You're pining."

"I don't pine."

"You're doing something sad and longing. That's pining."

Jason was saved from responding by the bell above the door. 4 PM. Tuesday.

You walked in, and like clockwork, headed straight for the classics section. You were wearing an oversized sweater, jeans, and the same nervous expression you always had—like being in public was slightly overwhelming and you were trying very hard to manage it.

"I'm just saying," Roy whispered, "that's a person who looks like they could use a friend."

"They look like they want to be left alone."

"Or they look like they're lonely and don't know how to not be."

Jason hated that Roy had a point.

You approached the counter with your selection—Jane Eyre, a worn paperback copy—and set it down carefully, not quite making eye contact.

"Just this today?" Jason asked, keeping his voice gentle. He'd learned early on that you startled easily.

"Yes, please." Your voice was soft, almost musical. "Thank you."

"You've got good taste. Brontë's underrated."

You looked up briefly, surprised. "You've read it?"

"Yeah. The madwoman in the attic is basically a gothic horror subplot in a romance novel. It's great."

The smallest smile crossed your face. "I never thought of it that way."

"Most people don't. They focus on Rochester and Jane, miss the whole psychological terror aspect."

"That's... actually a really good point." You were still looking at him, and Jason realized this was the longest conversation you'd ever had.

Then you seemed to realize it too, because you quickly looked down, pulling out cash. "How much?"

"Six fifty."

You handed him exact change—you always had exact change—and took your book.

"Thanks," you said again, already turning toward the door.

"Wait—" Jason said before he could stop himself.

You paused, looking back nervously.

"I'm Jason. I, uh, own the store. I realized I've been seeing you twice a week for months and never actually introduced myself."

"Oh." You clutched your book. You practcally mumbled your name and if Jason wasn't so focused on you, he would have missed it.

"Nice to officially meet you."

"You too." You hesitated, like you wanted to say something else, then just gave a small wave and left.

Roy waited exactly ten seconds before saying: "That was painful to watch."

"Shut up."

"You like them."

"I don't even know them."

"You want to know them. That's the same thing." Roy grinned. "And they smiled at you. That's basically a marriage proposal in shy person language."

"You're an idiot."

"An idiot who's right."

Thursday

You came in at 4 PM, same as always. But this time, you looked more tired than usual, like you hadn't slept well.

Jason noticed because he was pathetic and noticed everything about you.

You browsed longer than normal, picking up books and putting them back, clearly unable to decide.

After fifteen minutes, Jason walked over. "Can I help you find something?"

You jumped slightly. "Oh. Sorry. I'm just... I can't decide what I want to read next."

"What kind of mood are you in?"

"I don't know. Something... comforting? I've had a long week."

Jason thought for a moment. "Come here."

He led you to a different section, pulled out a worn copy of The House at Riverton. "Kate Morton. Historical fiction, mysterious, but ultimately hopeful. Good for when you need something engaging but not too heavy."

You took it, reading the back cover. "This looks perfect. Thank you."

"No problem. That's literally my job."

You smiled again, and Jason's heart did something stupid.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

"Okay."

"Why here? There are bigger bookstores, libraries, online shopping. Why come to a crime alley bookshop twice a week?"

You were quiet for a moment, considering. "It's quiet. The big stores are overwhelming. Too many people, too much noise. Here it's..." You looked around. "Peaceful. Safe."

"Safe?"

"Red Hood protects this neighborhood." You said it matter-of-factly, like it was obvious. "Everyone knows that. It's the safest place in Gotham for people like me."

Jason's throat felt tight. You had no idea you were talking to Red Hood. No idea that your safety was his personal mission.

"People like you?" he managed.

"People who aren't good at... people things." You clutched your book. "I have really bad social anxiety. Going out is hard. But I need books, and the library is always crowded, and online shopping feels impersonal." You looked at him. "Coming here is manageable. You're patient. You don't make me feel weird for being quiet."

"You're not weird."

"Most people think I am."

"Most people are idiots."

You laughed—actually laughed—and the sound was so unexpected and lovely that Jason wanted to record it.

"Thank you," you said. "For that. And for the recommendation."

"Anytime."

Two Weeks Later

You started staying longer.

Not talking, exactly, but existing in the same space as Jason. You'd buy your book, then sit in the reading corner for thirty minutes, an hour, sometimes two.

Jason would work on inventory, help other customers, and try very hard not to stare at you curled up in the armchair like you belonged there.

"You could sit with them," Roy suggested during another visit.

"They're reading."

"So read near them. It's called parallel play. Very soothing for introverted people."

"How do you know about parallel play?"

"I have Google and concerns about your social life."

Jason considered this. Then, feeling ridiculous, he grabbed a book and sat in the chair across from you.

You looked up, surprised.

"Is this okay?" Jason asked. "I can move if you want to be alone."

"No, it's..." You smiled shyly. "It's nice. Having company without having to... perform."

"Yeah. I get that."

You went back to reading. Jason opened his book. You sat in comfortable silence for an hour.

It became a routine.

You'd come in, buy a book, sit and read. Jason would eventually join you. You'd exist in the same space, peaceful and quiet, occasionally exchanging a comment about what you were reading but mostly just... being.

It was the best part of Jason's week.

One Month Later

"I brought tea," you said one Thursday, holding up a thermos. "I made too much. Do you want some?"

"You brought me tea?"

"Well, I brought tea. I'm offering to share it. If you want. You don't have to." You were already second-guessing yourself. "Sorry, that's weird—"

"It's not weird. I'd love some tea. Thank you."

You poured him a cup in the extra mug you'd brought, and Jason tried not to read too much into the fact that you'd planned this. Brought an extra mug. Thought about him enough to share.

"It's chamomile," you said. "I know it's kind of boring—"

"It's perfect."

You both sat in your usual chairs, drinking tea, reading in comfortable silence.

"Can I tell you something?" you asked after a while.

"Sure."

"This is my favorite part of the week. Coming here. Reading with you. It's the only time I feel... normal. Like I'm not broken for being quiet."

"You're not broken."

"I know. Logically, I know. But sometimes it feels like I am. Like everyone else got a manual on how to be social and I missed that day." You looked at your tea. "My therapist says I need to work on it, but the thought of going to social events or trying to make friends makes me want to throw up."

"So don't."

You looked up. "What?"

"Don't force yourself to be someone you're not. If you're introverted, be introverted. If you need quiet, take quiet. The world's loud enough already. Someone should get to be peaceful."

"That's... really validating, actually."

"I'm serious. You come here, you read, you exist exactly as you are. That's not broken. That's just different."

"Do you really think that?"

"I know that. I've seen every kind of person in this city. The loud ones aren't better than the quiet ones. They're just louder."

You smiled, and this time it reached your eyes. "Thank you. For understanding."

"Thank you for bringing tea."

"I'll bring it every week if you want."

"I want."

Two Months Later

You still came twice a week. You still brought tea. You still sat and read with Jason in comfortable silence.

But you also started talking more.

Small things at first. Comments about your books. Observations about the weather. Gradually, carefully, you opened up.

You told him about your job—data entry, remote, perfect for someone who didn't like offices. About your apartment, small and cozy, full of books and plants. About your cat, Mr. Darcy, who was an asshole but you loved him anyway.

Jason told you about growing up in Crime Alley. About loving books because they were an escape. About opening the store because the neighborhood needed something good.

He didn't tell you about being Red Hood. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

He liked being just Jason with you. The bookstore owner. The guy you drank tea with twice a week.

"Can I ask you something personal?" you said one evening, after the store had officially closed but you were still there.

"Sure."

"Do you ever get lonely? Running this place by yourself?"

Jason thought about it. "Yeah. Sometimes. But then I remember why I'm doing it. This neighborhood needs places like this. Quiet places. Safe places."

"You're really good at creating safe spaces."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. This whole store feels like a hug." You blushed. "Sorry, that's weird—"

"It's not weird. That's actually the nicest thing anyone's ever said about this place."

"I mean it. Coming here feels like coming home. You make it easy to exist."

Jason's heart was doing that stupid thing again. "You make it easy to exist too."

You looked at him, really looked at him, and something shifted in the air between you.

"Jason?" you said quietly.

"Yeah?"

"Would it be okay if I—can I hug you?"

"You want to hug me?"

"You look like you could use one. And I—I'd like to. If that's okay."

"Yeah. That's okay."

You stood up, crossed the space between your chairs, and carefully wrapped your arms around him.

Jason hugged you back, and you were warm and soft and you smelled like tea and old books, and he thought this might be the best moment of his entire life.

"Thank you," you whispered.

"For what?"

"For being patient with me. For making this place. For letting me be quiet without making me feel bad about it."

"You don't have to thank me for basic decency."

"It's not basic. Most people don't get it. But you do." You pulled back slightly to look at him. "I really like you, Jason."

"I really like you too."

"Even though I'm awkward and weird and can barely handle social situations?"

"Especially because of that. You're genuine. You're kind. You're exactly yourself, unapologetically." He tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. "That's not weird. That's brave."

"I don't feel brave."

"You leave your house twice a week despite anxiety. You talk to me even though talking is hard. You exist in a world that's not built for quiet people and you do it anyway. That's brave."

Your eyes were shining. "Can I kiss you?"

"Please."

You kissed him, soft and careful, and Jason thought that this—this quiet moment in a bookstore in Crime Alley with the most introverted person he'd ever met—was worth everything.

When you pulled back, you were smiling. "I've wanted to do that for weeks."

"Me too. I just didn't know if you... if I..."

"We're both disasters at this, aren't we?"

"Completely."

"Good. I prefer it that way." You settled back into your chair, pulling your book into your lap. "Can we just... keep sitting here? Reading?"

"For as long as you want."

"Forever might be too long."

"Forever sounds perfect."

Six Months Later

You'd moved some of your books into the store's back room.

It had happened gradually. You'd leave one book, then two, then a whole shelf's worth. Eventually, you'd brought a blanket, a mug that lived in the kitchen, slippers that stayed by Jason's reading chair.

You hadn't officially moved in. You still had your apartment. But you were there more often than not, existing in Jason's space like you'd always belonged there.

"I need to tell you something," Jason said one evening.

You looked up from your book. "Okay."

"It's... big. And you might hate me for not telling you sooner."

"I won't hate you."

"You might."

"Jason." You set down your book. "Whatever it is, just tell me."

"I'm Red Hood."

You blinked. "I know."

"You—what?"

"I've known for a while. A couple months, maybe?"

"How?"

"You have the same voice. Same mannerisms. Same way of moving." You smiled. "Plus, you're both obsessed with protecting Crime Alley, and the timing of when you 'step out' always matches Red Hood sightings."

"And you're not... scared? Upset?"

"Why would I be scared? You're you. The suit doesn't change that." You stood up, crossing to him. "And I'm not upset you didn't tell me. I figured you'd tell me when you were ready."

"You're amazing."

"I'm patient. There's a difference."

Jason pulled you into his lap, and you settled there like you belonged. "I love you. I should have said it weeks ago, but I was scared—"

"I love you too." You kissed him softly. "I have for a while."

"Even though I'm a vigilante?"

"Even though. Especially though." You rested your forehead against his. "You protect people like me. People who can't protect themselves. How could I not love that?"

"People like you are the reason I do this."

"That's really romantic."

"I have my moments."

You kissed him again, and Jason thought about how far you'd both come. The quiet reader who could barely speak above a whisper. The bookstore owner with a violent alter ego.

You'd built something together in the quiet spaces. Something real and gentle and perfect.

"Hey," you said.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you for making the world a little quieter. A little safer. For people like me."

"Thank you for existing exactly as you are."

"Even when I'm too quiet?"

"Especially when you're quiet. The world needs more quiet people. More gentle people. More people like you."

You smiled, settling against his chest. "Read to me?"

"What do you want to hear?"

"Anything. I just like your voice."

So Jason read to you, and you listened, and outside Crime Alley went about its noisy, chaotic business.

But inside the bookstore, there was peace.

There was safety.

There was love.

Quiet and gentle and perfect.

You eventually did move in officially, though it was hard to tell when it happened since you'd been gradually taking over Jason's space for months.

Mr. Darcy the cat also moved in and immediately claimed Jason's favorite chair.

You still came to the bookstore every Tuesday and Thursday, even though you lived there now. Some routines were too important to break.

Jason proposed with a first edition of your favorite book and a handwritten note inside that said: "You make the world quieter. Marry me?"

You said yes by nodding, too emotional to speak.

The wedding was small. Just Roy, Jason's family, and a handful of close friends. You barely spoke during the reception, but you smiled the entire time.

Your vows were three sentences long, spoken so quietly Jason had to lean in to hear them:

"You make me feel safe. You make me feel understood. You make me feel loved."

Jason's vows were longer, but they boiled down to the same thing:

"You taught me that quiet is powerful. That gentle is strong. That love doesn't have to be loud to be real."

And it was real.

So, so real.

Two and a half years ago, your very first novel was written. It was a romance, but it was the swirling, gentle kind that didn’t involve an abusive biker mafia boss. You pulled the good parts of yourself out and put them in the main character. You made something that was beautiful. You didn’t mind that it wasn’t exactly a smash hit. You weren’t getting billions of sales, but the people who did read it loved it. And your publishers wanted more from you. You wanted more from you. Your days had hit a lull, though. Your keyboard seemed to twist into something untouchable. Like it grew ten feet tall and glared down at you. You couldn’t even start to climb it and reach the first letter. Much less write something enjoyable. 

 You tried to find inspiration out of your house. You’d sit in the park and watch all the couples and eavesdrop on conversations. You’d take walks down the street, looking at advertisements and regular day-to-day people. You searched for inspiration in your own reading. You looked for it in museums and art. Nothing came to you. It was all boring. 

 You hoped maybe you needed a scenery change. So you packed up your laptop and headed down to a cafe. You settled into the corner, peeling open your laptop. You stared at the blinking cursor as the barista prepared your drink. You hovered your hands over the keys, focusing on the feeling of the cafe. 

 The warmth of the coffee shop prickled at his skin. 

Prickled? Cold prickles. Not warmth. That makes no sense. Is this your first day writing holy-You eyes shot up at the sound of your name being called. You stood from your table, leaving your laptop behind. You pulled your coffee from the counter, turning back around to head towards your seat. Only your eyes caught on the cover of your book. You paused. 

A big, hulking man was hunched over a small table. His back was to the window, the sun framing his large shoulders. At the part of his hair was a small patch of white. His face was scarred, but the pale lines didn’t cut through his beauty. It seemed almost like his face was carved with the scars in mind. They fit his face and made him look…

What’s that word? Reminds you of aubergine. Almost stunning. Not amazing, that’s too childish. Oh, what is that word? 

He lifted his eyes, meeting yours. He curved an eyebrow. You felt doom crawling up your back and digging into your shoulders. You were being a creep and staring. Either you silently move away, pack yourself up and leave, or you start a conversation. You took a step closer. 

“Enjoying the book?” You asked, glancing down at the page he was on. He looked about halfway through it. Your lips quirked at the sight of pen and highlighter covering the page. He was annotating your writing. The man glanced down at his book. He let out an awkward laugh, the points of his canines flashing. Hot. 

“Yeah. It’s pretty good. Have you read it?” He asked, pulling his eyes back to you. You stared at the cover. What have you gotten yourself into? You technically have. 

“Oh yes, a year or two ago.” You stated, feeling your face start to burn. His brows furrowed. He tilted his head to the side. 

“I thought it came out this year.” He questioned. His hands started flipping through the pages to find the publication date. You jumped. 

“Oh! Um- I got it early from one of those Goodreads giveaways. They give a couple people the books before the publication.” You covered. You were digging a hole and digging it fast. The opportunity to hear someone’s real thoughts was pushing you ahead. Especially because he was hot. His hands stopped flipping through the pages, returning to his last page. He nodded. 

“That’s pretty cool.” He stated. He sounded genuinely impressed. 

“It was signed too.” You added. Which was true. You had fucked your signature up so bad you couldn’t imagine anyone but you having it. The man looked up, his face twisting into a cringe. 

“Doesn’t mean as much when it’s an unknown, does it? That would be cool if it was like-” He paused, tilting his head up to think. “Jane Austen or something.” He finished. You tried to ignore the twinge of pain that hit your stomach with the word ‘Unknown’. 

“Well, that would be very impressive; they’d have to bring her back from the dead.” You chuckled. He grinned at you, letting out a small laugh. 

“That’s a bad example.” He mumbled, pulling his bookmark from the table. He pressed it between the pages, closing his book. He turned all his attention to you. You felt your chest warm; this stranger was giving such a sign of devotion. To put your book away for a stranger? Obscene. He might as well have stripped down in front of you. 

“What’s your favorite part?” You asked, drawing his attention back to your book. He thought quietly, wringing his hands on top of the table. He hummed. He turned his head from you, staring out the window in thought. You bounced on the balls of your feet. Jeez, your writing was so awful he couldn’t think of a single good part. His eyes snapped back to you. 

“The letters. They’re incredibly moving and very clearly show their devotion,” he whispered, almost too quiet to hear over the chatter of the cafe. You nodded. That was your favorite part too. 

“People don’t write love letters anymore.” You wistfully said. You truly missed love letters. You hadn’t gotten one, but you wished they were a part of society again. The man nodded. 

“They really don’t.” He mumbled. You pointed to the book again. 

“What’s your least favorite part?” You asked. You really wanted to know. You could use his input on your second novel. 

“The main character.” He didn’t have to think for a second this time. You were starting to regret this conversation. He had to think so hard to find his favorite, but he didn’t have to consider anything to find his least favorite. 

“Too annoying?” You asked. Yes, well, you were considered annoying sometimes, so clearly the character based on you must be too.  He furrowed his brows, glaring at you. 

“Not in the slightest. The issue I have is that they’re too perfect. There are no flaws. Real people aren’t like that. I understand it’s fiction, but it’s disappointing. It’s such a beautiful book that kind of falls flat because the main character is kind of two-dimensional. The book has this stunning message of unconditional love. It falls apart because it’s easy to love someone perfect. Real people aren’t like that. They’re horrifically flawed. They’re assholes sometimes; they blow up; they have things wrong with them. This character is like if the author made someone fall in love with a robot.'

'I can tell they’re capable of writing people with flaws because the love interest does. They just didn’t use that skill on the main character. But I guess I’m thinking about it too hard.” He rambled, leaning back to cross his arms over his chest. Your eyes dipped to his arms, following over the dipping and rising ocean waves of muscle. You sucked in a breath, looking back to his eyes. He’s right, of course he is. You didn’t give them any flaws. You worried that if you added the shitty parts of yourself, every reader would hate them. Your character was perfect, and that’s how you wanted to publish them. A simple character had to be better than an unintentionally hated one. 

“You’re right. The main character is a little two-dimensional. You’d be great in a book club.” You said, pulling your coffee to your mouth. You stared at him over the rim of your drink. He watched you from the corner of his eyes. 

“I don’t know about that.” He mumbled. He dropped his eyes to his lap, almost like he was flustered. You stared at his hair, zeroing in on the white streaks. At first, you thought it was bleached, a very good bleach job. But he didn’t have any black roots. So, unless he bleached it last night, it was natural. 

“Do you have vitiligo?” You asked, your eyes still examining his scalp. He lifted his head, making you meet his eyes. 

“What?” You lifted your hand, gesturing toward your head. 

“Your hair. Vitiligo sometimes causes white streaks in hair. It looks natural; you don’t have any roots.” You furthered, dropping your hand from your head. He scoffed at his lap. 

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He grumbled. You hummed. Weirdo. A hot weirdo. You gasped as the word came back to you. You snapped your fingers. 

“Alluring. That’s the word I was looking for.” You muttered. The man stared at you as you started to mutter about amazing aubergines. You slipped away from his table, dropping back into your seat across the shop. You set your coffee down. 

An alluring man with hunched shoulders sat in a coffee shop with a well-loved paperback book twisted in his hands. 

That’s almost something. It's a good opener, maybe. He’s hot; that's made clear. The book has been read before, and he twists his books around. He’s hunched; he’s a little shy. You have something. You glanced over the edge of your laptop to find the man staring at you. His mouth was parted like you just called him a bitch. You tilted your head to the side, asking him a silent question. He pressed his mouth together, patting his hands against the table. 

He’s been playing eye tag with the only other person in the shop engrossed in a novel for the past thirty minutes. 

The man stands from his seat, taking his book with him. He advances on your table, sitting across from you. 

“You left.” 

“You’d make a great detective.” You mumbled, dropping your eyes back to the screen. 

He liked to bend books to his whim. He got to lay claim to an entire universe and twist and pull it however he liked. Which was how his universe had treated him. Its twists and yanks left trailing scars across his skin. 

“My name is Jason,” Jason mumbled. You lifted your eyes, tracing over his face again. 

His cutting green eyes trailed across the pages. 

You hummed in response. He frowned at you, pinching his lips together. 

“What’s yours?” Jason pressed. You pressed your laptop screen down, breaking down the wall between the two of you. You leaned forward. You pointed your finger at your name sprawled across the cover of his book. Jason looked down at your hand, his eyes widening. He looked back up at you. 

“You’re joking,” Jason stated. All the humor in his voice was gone; he was begging you to say yes- you were joking. You pulled the book from his hands, flipping to the back cover. You held the small black and white picture of you next to your face. Jason groaned, dropping his face into his hands. 

“This is embarrassing.” He mumbled to himself. You hummed, closing your book again. You slid it across the table. 

“It’s okay.” You tried. Jason shook his head in his hands. 

“No. I totally insulted your writing to your face.” Jason grumbled. He pressed his hands into his face, completely mortified. You sighed. 

“You were right. I didn’t give the main character flaws. You gave me good analysis. I appreciate it, seriously, Jason.” You reached out, gently pulling on his wrist to reveal his face again. He gave you an embarrassed look, hiding his lips inside of his mouth.  

“I can’t believe I did that.” He whispered, staring at the cover of his book again. You smiled at him, watching him carefully. You were incredibly grateful he was reading his book in this coffee shop. 

“I’m glad. I think I beat my writer’s block.” You almost giggled. Jason huffed. 

“I’m mortified. I don’t think I’m living this down.” Jason muttered. You rolled your eyes. 

“Let me make it up to you. We could maybe get dinner.” You ventured. Please say yes. Say yes. You could spend only one evening with him and still write a whole book. Clearly something about him was pushing all the buttons you needed to be inspired. He was hot and smart. That’s not a frequent combo. Jason lifted his eyes, his eyebrows shooting up. He nodded quickly. 

“Yeah, yeah.” Jason stumbled out. You hummed. You moved to pull your phone out. The bell above the cafe door rang; another incredibly muscular man stepped through the door. His face was solid as his eyes swept over the people. His eyes landed on Jason, his face lighting up. He lifted his hand, waving back and forth. 

“Jay!” He shouted, making the quiet cafe-goers grumble. Jason clammed up, his shoulders tightening. 

“Oh, my god.” He mumbled. Jason pressed one of his pens into the cover of his book, sliding it towards you. 

“I have to go.” He said. You hummed, peeling open the front cover of his book. You scribbled your signature on the cover and left him your number. You slid it back to him. Jason snatched it up, making quick work of the cafe. He herded the loud man out of the cafe. You could see them arguing through the window. You grinned at the sight of Jason pressing the book to his chest. 

He picks up his fork. He puts it down. He picks it up again.

There is pie on the table between you. He ordered it like a man being held at gunpoint and it has been sitting there for nine minutes untouched, which is fine, because you've both been doing other things with your mouths, conversationally speaking, and now neither of you is doing anything with your mouth at all.

"Okay," he says.

"Don't."

"I didn't say anything."

"You said okay."

"That's a sound. Okay is a sound. I'm allowed to make sounds."

"It's a sound you make right before you say a thing."

"Sometimes." He sets the fork down for what you decide will be the final time. "Not always."

"Name one time."

He thinks about this. He thinks about it for longer than the question deserves, which is sort of his whole deal, and you watch him work through what is presumably a mental list of every time he has ever said okay, ranked by how much it preceded a thing, and you can see the exact moment he abandons the search.

"Fine," he says. "I was about to say a thing."

"I know."

"You want me to not say the thing."

"Correct."

"Even though we've now established, scientifically, that I was going to."

"Especially then."

He nods, slowly, like a man being reasonable. He is not about to be reasonable. You have known him long enough to recognise the specific quality of his nodding, and this nod is the nod of a man buying himself approximately four more seconds of runway before takeoff.

"I'm going to say the thing."

"Ryland."

It comes out before you can route around it. His name, in your mouth, sober, at a diner, on a Tuesday. You feel it land. He feels it land. The waitress, two booths down, refilling somebody's decaf, almost certainly feels it land. The whole diner tilts about half a degree on its axis and then rights itself, and you are both still sitting there, and the pie is still uneaten, and he is looking at you the way he looked at you the time you told him your dad was sick, which is to say like he is recalculating the entire evening from scratch.

"Right," he says, quieter. "Okay."

You wait.

He doesn't walk it back.

You've watched him walk things back before. You've watched him walk things back from cliffs of his own engineering. You have, on multiple occasions, handed him the rope yourself, and he has taken the rope, and you have both pretended very hard that the cliff was never there. It is one of the things the two of you do. It is, you might even say, foundational.

He doesn't take the rope.

"I have a thought," he says. "About this. The thing. The thing you said. I have a thought about it and I want to tell you the thought, and I'm asking, as a, as a friend, as your friend, I'm asking you to let me get to the end of the thought before you say anything, because if you stop me in the middle I'm not going to make it back to the start, and then we're both just going to be sitting here, and the pie is going to congeal, and somebody's going to have to pay for it, and it'll probably be me, because you always do this thing where you pretend you're going to pay and then you go to the bathroom right when the check comes."

"That's not."

"It is. It's a pattern. I've logged it."

"You haven't logged it."

"Mentally. I've mentally logged it. There's a spreadsheet, in my head, and you're on it."

You almost laugh. He sees you almost laugh. Something in his shoulders comes down half an inch and you realise, with the kind of clarity that only arrives slightly too late, that he was scared.

He is still scared. He's just less scared than he was eight seconds ago, because you almost laughed, and almost-laughing is, in the long and unwritten constitution of your friendship, a kind of green light.

"Okay," you say. "Tell me the thought."

He picks up the fork. He gestures with it, briefly, in a way that is not about pie.

"Here's the thought."

"Okay."

"The thought is, and I want to be clear that I've, this isn't a, I'm not. Okay. The thought is that this is a solvable problem."

You look at him.

"Not a problem," he says, immediately. "Wrong word. Solvable's the wrong, no, solvable's right, problem's wrong. It's a, it's a thing. It's a thing that has a, there's an answer to it. There's a, somebody could, with the right. Okay. Start again."

"You're doing great."

"I'm doing terribly."

"You're doing the talking-yourself-out-of-the-thing thing. Just say the thing."

He sets the fork down. He folds his hands on the table in front of him like a man who has decided to commit to a posture, and the posture he has committed to is guy at a parent-teacher conference, which is so deeply on-brand for him that you have to look at the dessert menu again.

"I think I could help you," he says.

The dessert menu is suddenly extremely interesting.

"Not. Not like that. I mean. Not, like. With me. I don't mean. I'm not proposing that. I'm proposing the opposite of that."

"The opposite."

"The supervised opposite. The, the. Okay. You've never gotten there because you're in your head. Yes? Generally? When you've tried? Solo, I mean. When you've tried solo."

You consider lying. You consider getting up and walking into the parking lot and starting a new life under a different name. You consider, briefly, the pie.

"Yes," you say.

"Right. Okay. So the variable isn't the, the mechanics. The mechanics are fine. The mechanics, presumably, the mechanics work. The variable is the part where you're in your head."

"And it's. It's been a thing. With. Generally. With other."

"With other people. Yes. I'm aware of the. Yes."

"Right. Right, sorry, of course you're, I wasn't implying you'd. I just meant. It's the same thing, every time, basically? The in-your-head thing?"

"Basically."

"Okay. So it's not a, it's not a them problem, necessarily, it's a, it's a you-with-them problem. Which is. That's a different problem. That's a much more interesting problem."

"Glad you find it interesting."

"I find everything interesting, that's a separate issue."

He's gathering speed now, the way he does when he's stopped being scared of the sentence and started being interested in it. You can see the gear-change happen. It's the same gear-change you've watched him do at parties, in your kitchen, in the passenger seat of your car on long drives, every time something has caught the front of his brain and the rest of him has had to scramble to keep up.

"So the solution isn't a technique thing, it's an environment thing, which means somebody can help with that without, without being a, without it being a."

"Without it being a sex thing."

"Yes. Thank you. Without it being a sex thing." He exhales. "I could sit with you. Not sit with you. I could be in the. Adjacent. I could be adjacent. I could help with the part of it that's the, the relaxing part. The talking part. The, you're safe, you can stop thinking part. And you would do the, the. You. You would do the you part."

You stare at him.

"I'd be a spotter," he says.

"A spotter."

"Like at the gym."

"Like at the gym."

"Yes."

"You're proposing to spot me."

"I am proposing," he says, with the dignity of a man who has heard his own sentence and decided to stand behind it anyway, "to spot you."

There is a silence. It is not a short silence. In the silence, the waitress refills both your coffees without making eye contact with either of you, which suggests she has been refilling coffees in this diner for long enough to know when not to.

"As your friend," he adds.

"As my friend."

"Yeah."

"In a totally."

"Totally."

"Platonic."

"Platonic."

"Capacity."

"That's the, yes. That is the capacity. The platonic capacity. I would be in a platonic capacity. Capacitating, platonically."

"That's not a word."

"It is now. I've logged it."

You drink your coffee. It is no longer too hot, which means time has been passing, which means you have actually been sitting here, in this booth, having this conversation, with this man, who you have known for years, who has just offered, in apparent good faith, to platonically supervise you having an orgasm.

The thing you should say is no.

The thing you should say is Ryland, what the fuck.

The thing you should say is any of the seventeen things lining up in your throat, all of which are reasonable, several of which are funny, two of which would let you both walk away from this booth with the friendship intact and the pie still uneaten.

"Okay," you say.

He blinks.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

"Okay as in."

"Okay as in I'll think about it."

"Right. Right. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Think about it. Take your. There's no, there's no timeline. There's no, I'm not. Take your time."

"Ryland."

"Yeah."

"Eat your pie."

He eats his pie.

It is Saturday. It is four in the afternoon. It is, by every reasonable metric, the least sexy time of day that has ever been invented, which is part of why you picked it.

You spent Wednesday thinking about it. You spent Thursday pretending you hadn't spent Wednesday thinking about it. On Friday morning you texted him saturday? and he texted back saturday eleven seconds later, which suggested he had been waiting, which you then had to spend Friday afternoon not thinking about either.

He is in your kitchen. He is in your kitchen because you let him in eight minutes ago and neither of you has yet been able to figure out how to leave the kitchen, which is the room in your apartment that has the most furniture between you and any other room, and therefore the safest.

"So," he says.

"So."

"This is your kitchen."

"It is."

"It's nice. I like the, the. There's a thing on the wall."

"It's a calendar."

"Right. Yeah. That tracks."

He has brought, for reasons he has not yet explained, a paper bag from the bodega on the corner. He sets it on the counter. He does not open it. The bag sits there, between you, doing the same job the pie did at the diner, which is being the thing both of you can look at instead of each other.

"What's in the bag," you say.

"Skittles."

You look at him.

"It's a bag of Skittles," he says.

"You brought me Skittles."

"I brought, yes, I brought Skittles. I went into the bodega and I, I needed to bring a thing, you bring a thing, when you go to a, when you go to a." He stops. "I don't know what the etiquette is. There isn't an etiquette. I made up an etiquette and the etiquette said bring a thing and I went in and I just."

"Skittles."

"Skittles." He reaches into the bag. He produces them. He looks at them like he's never seen them before, which is a face he makes a lot, around objects he himself has purchased. "For after. I think. I think they were for after."

"After-Skittles."

"Apparently."

You look at him.

"I'm aware," he says.

You take the Skittles. You put them on the counter. You leave them there because if you put them in a cupboard you have to walk past him to do it and walking past him is currently a thing that requires more planning than it should.

"Okay," he says.

You both stand in the kitchen.

"Okay," you say.

"So the. So I was thinking, on the way over, about the. About how to. Because there's a, I think there's a setup question, right, like, where do we, where does this. Where am I."

"Where are you."

"Spatially. Where am I, spatially. In the. During."

You hadn't, until this exact moment, thought about where he would be spatially. You had been thinking about it in the abstract, in the way you think about a thing by not thinking about it, and the abstract version had him as a sort of disembodied voice somewhere in the middle distance, not a six-foot man with a bag of Skittles currently standing four feet from you in your kitchen.

"Bedroom," you say. Because the bedroom is the room with the door and the door is the thing you are increasingly aware you are going to need.

"Bedroom. Right. Yeah. And then in the bedroom I'm."

"You're."

"On a chair? Is there a chair? I could be on a chair."

"There's a chair."

"Great. Chair. Chair is good. Chair is a, chair is a piece of furniture that says I am here in an observational capacity, which is, that's the. Yeah. Chair."

You lead him to the bedroom. You do not look at him while you do it. He follows you at a distance of approximately one and a half normal-person follow-distances, which is the distance a person follows you when they are trying very hard to seem like they are not following you.

The chair is the chair in the corner where you put clothes you have not yet decided whether to put away or wear again. You moved the clothes this morning. You moved them twice. The chair, freed of its clothes, looks naked in a way the chair has never looked before.

He sits on the chair. He sits on the chair like it is the witness stand. He folds his hands in his lap. He looks at you.

You look at him.

The bed is behind you. You are extremely aware of the bed being behind you. The bed is doing a thing where it is simultaneously much larger and much smaller than it has ever been. The duvet, which you washed yesterday, which is the same duvet you have had for four years, is suddenly the most aggressive piece of textile in the apartment.

"Do you want me to," he says.

"What."

"I don't know. I was going to finish the sentence."

"Finish it."

"I lost it. I had a sentence and I lost it. It was going to be helpful."

You almost laugh. You don't, because if you start laughing you are going to keep laughing, and if you keep laughing you are not going to do the thing you came here to do, except came here is wrong, this is your apartment, you live here, you have lived here for three years and now you cannot remember how any of the rooms work.

"Okay," you say. "I'm going to."

"Yeah."

"And you're going to."

"Sit. I'm going to sit. I'm sitting. I am, currently, sitting."

"Right."

You sit on the edge of the bed. The bed makes a noise it has never made before in its life. You look at the bed, betrayed. You look at him. He is looking very intently at a spot on the wall about three feet above your head, with the specific concentration of a man who has decided that this spot, of all the spots, is the safest spot.

"This isn't going to work," you say.

"No," he agrees, immediately. "No, it's not."

"I can't. I'm not even. I haven't done anything yet and I already can't."

"Yeah."

"You're on a chair."

"I'm on a chair."

"In my bedroom."

"In your bedroom."

"You brought Skittles."

"The Skittles, I will admit, in hindsight, the Skittles were."

"What were you thinking with the Skittles."

"I don't know. I don't know what I was thinking. I was thinking what does a person need, and I got as far as sugar and then I just sort of."

You start laughing. You can't help it. You laugh with your face in your hands, which is also not a thing you usually do, and you can hear him start to laugh too, and his laugh has always been one of your favourite of the things he does, and the bedroom, which forty seconds ago was the most charged room in the building, becomes, slowly, just a room again. Just a room with you in it and him in it and a bag of Skittles two rooms away on the kitchen counter.

He waits until you've stopped.

He waits a few seconds after that.

Then he says, quietly, in a voice you have not heard from him before, "Tell me what would actually help."

You stop laughing.

You look at him. He is still on the chair. His hands are still folded. His glasses are still askew. He is the same person he was four minutes ago in your kitchen and he is also, somehow, not, because the question he just asked is not a question a facilitator asks. A facilitator does not ask what would help. A facilitator already has the protocol.

He has put the protocol down.

He is asking you.

You sit with the question. You sit with it for longer than is probably comfortable for either of you, because the honest answer is I don't know and you have spent most of your adult life refusing to say I don't know out loud about this in particular.

He waits.

This, you realise, is the new thing. Not the chair. Not the bedroom. Not the bag of Skittles two rooms away. The new thing is that he is waiting. Ryland Grace, who fills silences for a living, who would rather narrate his own hands than let a quiet go unmolested, is sitting on a chair in your bedroom letting the silence sit.

"I don't know," you say.

"Okay."

"That's the. That's basically the whole problem. I don't know what would help because I don't, I haven't ever. I don't have a, a baseline. To work from."

"Right."

"So I don't know what to tell you. To do. Or not do. Because I don't know."

"Yeah."

"And that's the. That's why I said yes, at the diner, I think. Because you said environment and I thought, oh, maybe somebody else could figure out what the environment is, because I clearly can't."

You stop. You hear what you've said. You hear, specifically, the part where you outsourced the figuring-out of yourself to him, and you wait for the embarrassment to land.

It doesn't land. He's just looking at you.

"Okay," he says. Quiet. "Okay, that's. That's useful. That's really useful, actually."

"It is?"

"Yeah. Yeah, because I was about to ask you a whole list of things. I had a list. In my head. I was going to ask you the list. And the list was wrong, because the list assumed you had answers, and the answers are what you don't have. So."

"So?"

"So we don't do the list."

"What do we do."

He thinks about this. He thinks about it with his elbows on his knees and his hands loose between them, which is a thinking-posture you have seen him in a thousand times, in a thousand other rooms, about a thousand other problems. The familiarity of it does something to your chest you decide not to examine.

"I think," he says, slowly, "we just talk."

"Talk."

"Yeah."

"About."

"About anything. About nothing. About the. The thing you were going to do today before I showed up. About a movie. I don't know. I think the, the issue is that you're sitting there waiting for it to be a thing, and as long as it's a thing you're going to be in your head about it. So we make it not a thing. We just. We're just in a room. We've been in rooms before."

"Not like this."

"Not exactly like this."

"You're on a chair."

"I know I'm on a chair."

"You're on a chair for a reason."

"I am aware of the reason for the chair, yes."

"You can't just talk to me like the chair isn't a thing."

"Why not."

You open your mouth. You close it. Because you don't actually have a good answer to why not. The reason the chair is a thing is that you both agreed it was a thing. He's now proposing, with his elbows on his knees, that you both un-agree.

"Okay," you say.

"Yeah?"

"Talk to me, then."

He talks to you.

He talks to you about a documentary he watched last week about deep-sea anglerfish, and the absolutely unhinged reproductive arrangement they have, which involves the male biting the female and slowly fusing into her body over time until he is essentially a permanent attached sperm-producing organ, which Ryland thinks is wild, because, and this is his exact phrase, think about the first guy who tried that. He talks to you about how he keeps meaning to repot the plant on his kitchen windowsill and how the plant keeps almost dying and then rallying, which he has started to take personally, like the plant is doing it on purpose to make him feel bad. He talks to you about the undergrad his advisor has dumped on him for the semester, who has started labelling all of her sample tubes with the same brand of glitter pen in increasingly elaborate colour-coded schemes that nobody else in the lab can decode, and Ryland cannot decide whether to address it or just let it run its course and see what the system ends up being.

He talks to you the way he talks to you on long drives. He talks to you the way he talks to you in your kitchen when you're cooking and he's allegedly helping. He talks to you the way he has been talking to you for years, and you slowly become aware that you are, despite yourself, listening.

You are also, you realise, no longer sitting on the edge of the bed.

You don't remember the moment you moved. You are leaned back against the pillows now, knees up, one hand under your jaw. He is still in the chair. He has not moved. He has been very careful not to move. The not-moving is, you suspect, deliberate, but you can't tell whether he knows it's deliberate or whether he's doing it on instinct.

"And then," he is saying, "I realised the plant was on the side of the window that doesn't get morning sun, so I moved it about eighteen inches, and now the plant is, the plant is thriving, the plant is having the best week of its life, and I am taking this entirely too personally as a, as a sort of personal."

He stops.

He has noticed you're listening. He has noticed, specifically, the way you are listening. He looks at you for a second too long. He looks away.

"You should try it," he says.

You blink.

"What."

"Touching yourself."

You stare at him.

"Now," he says. "I mean now. Not. Not while I, I'll, the chair, I'll. I can. I'll be here, but I'll be. I'll talk. I'll keep talking. About the plant. I have more about the plant. I have a, a substantial amount of additional plant content. And you just. You do the thing. You don't think about me. You don't think about it. You think about, whatever, anglerfish. And I'll just be the." He gestures, vaguely, at himself. "The voice. In the room."

"The voice in the room."

"Yes."

"That's your pitch."

"That's the pitch. The revised pitch. The pitch is, I'm going to bore you into it."

Something in your chest loosens. You don't, this time, because the loosening would break the thing that has just happened in the room, which is that the temperature has come down about six degrees and your shoulders have come down with it and you are, against everything you would have predicted forty minutes ago, considering it.

"Okay," you say.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

You reach for the hem of your shirt.

He looks, very deliberately, at the spot on the wall three feet above your head.

He starts talking about the plant.

He talks about the plant.

He talks about the plant with a level of commitment that makes you understand, in a way you have not previously understood, that he has been thinking about this plant a lot. He has theories about the plant. He has theories about the theories about the plant. He is, you realise, talking about the plant the way a man talks when he is deliberately not talking about something else, and the something else is you, sitting on your bed with your hand under your t-shirt, and he is doing this for you, and the doing-this-for-you is the part you are not supposed to be noticing, because the whole point is that you are supposed to be thinking about anglerfish.

You are not thinking about anglerfish.

You are thinking about the specific care of him not looking. You are thinking about the way his voice has gone slightly quieter, which is not a voice he uses on purpose, it's a voice that happens to him when he's concentrating on a thing he doesn't want to break. You are thinking about how, in the entire time you have known him, you have never once heard him talk this long about a houseplant without circling back to a joke, and the absence of the joke is the most attentive thing he has ever done.

Your hand has stopped moving.

He notices. He doesn't look at you, but he notices. The plant content stutters, briefly, and then resumes at a slightly different angle, lower-pressure, easier, like he's giving you a wider lane.

"You okay?" he says, into the plant story. Doesn't break the flow. Just slips it in.

"Yeah."

"You sure."

"I'm. I'm in my head."

"Okay."

"It's not. It's not the room. The room is fine. The room is. The room is fine."

"Okay."

"It's me. I'm the problem."

"You're not the problem."

"I am, though."

"You're not. You're not a problem. You're a, you're a person trying a thing. That's not a problem. That's just a person trying a thing."

You close your eyes.

You close your eyes because if you keep looking at him on that chair with his glasses askew and his hands loose between his knees, speaking very quietly about how you are a person trying a thing, you are going to start crying, and crying is not what you came here to do, and crying would be, by any reasonable measure, worse than the original problem.

"Tell me something else," you say.

"About the plant?"

"No. Not the plant. Anything that isn't the plant."

He thinks for a second.

"Okay," he says. "Okay. There's this. There's a thing I've been thinking about. About, about how your body knows things before you do. Like, physiologically. There's a, there's a fraction of a second, before you consciously feel something, where your body has already, it's already done the thing. Your heart rate's up. Your pupils are dilating. You're already responding. The conscious feeling comes second. It's catching up. It's, like, narration. The body's already in the scene and the narrator's running to keep up."

You keep your eyes closed.

"And I think about that a lot," he says, "because it means the part of you that's, the part that's thinking, the part that's worrying, that's the slow part. That's the part that arrives late. The faster part already knows what it wants. It just doesn't have words for it. So sometimes, I think, the trick is to just. Let the body have a head start. Let it. Let it get ahead of the narrator."

His voice is the quietest it has been all afternoon.

"You don't have to think about it," he says. "Your body already knows. You're just. You're letting it run."

Your hand moves.

You don't decide to move your hand. Your hand decides. Your hand has, you realise with the part of you that is still narrating, been given permission, and your hand has taken the permission. It slides down past the waistband of your jeans, which you did not unbutton, which it turns out you do not need to unbutton, and the part of you that has spent your entire adult life trying to figure out what your body wants is, for the first time, briefly, quiet.

Your fingers find the place they always find. The pressure they always find. The small careful circle they have made a thousand times alone in this bed, in this room, against this ceiling, and never once with another person in the apartment, let alone in the chair.

He keeps talking.

You don't track what he's saying. You track the cadence of it. The shape. The fact of him still being there, still in the chair, still not looking, still giving you the room. He talks about something. He talks about something else. The words slide off you and what's left is the voice, low and steady, a thing in the room with you, and you let yourself listen to it the way you let yourself listen to rain.

You are getting wet.

You notice it the way you notice everything tonight, which is late. Your fingers have been making the same slow circle and somewhere in the last few minutes the friction changed. The drag of your fingertips softened. Your body has been listening to his voice in a way your brain was not keeping track of, and your body has responded, and the response is not ambiguous. The circle gets easier. Slicker. You press slightly harder to compensate and the pressure sends something up through you that you were not expecting, a small bright flare behind your navel, and your breath catches, and you hear him pause for a fraction of a second before continuing, and you understand that he heard it too.

Something is happening.

Something is happening that has not happened before, or has not happened in this shape before, or has happened in this shape before only in fragments you couldn't trust. Your body is moving toward a thing. The thing has an edge to it. You can feel the edge. You have never felt the edge from this side, or this close, or with this much awareness that the edge is what it is, and the closer you get the more you understand that the closeness is its own problem, because the moment you notice you are close, the noticing becomes a thing you are doing, and the thing you are doing is no longer the thing your body was doing, and the narrator is in the room again.

You try to push past it. You try to do what he said. You try to let the body run.

The body slows.

You can feel it happen. You can feel the precise moment your fingers become fingers that are trying. The circle gets slightly faster, slightly harder, the way it does when you are alone and impatient with yourself, except now the impatience has nothing to do with being alone. You can feel the precise moment your breath becomes a breath you are controlling. You can feel the thing you were moving toward stay exactly where it is, neither closer nor farther, and you are no longer moving toward it, you are negotiating with it, and the negotiation is the thing you have been doing your entire adult life, and you have never won the negotiation.

You stop.

Your hand stops. You leave it where it is for a second, pressed flat, willing the feeling back, and it does not come back. Your eyes are still closed. Your jaw, you discover, is clenched, which is the opposite of what was supposed to happen.

He notices the shift in your breathing. He stops talking.

The room is very quiet.

"It's gone," you say.

"Okay."

"It was. I was. I was almost. I think I was almost."

"Yeah."

"And then I noticed I was almost and it. It left."

"Yeah."

You open your eyes. You don't look at him. You look at the ceiling. The ceiling has a small crack in it shaped like the state of Florida. You have looked at this crack while trying to fall asleep more times than you can count and you have never once successfully fallen asleep faster for having noticed it.

"That's not. That wasn't nothing," you say. "I was close. I've never been that close."

"Yeah?"

"I think so. I don't. I don't have a baseline. But I think so."

"Okay."

"It's just." You stop. You try to find the word for the feeling, which is not just frustration, although it is also frustration. It is the feeling of having stood at the edge of something and watched yourself flinch back from it, and knowing the flinch was the part you have always done, and being briefly furious at the part of yourself that flinches. "It's just frustrating."

"I know."

"You don't, actually."

He huffs out a small laugh. Not at you. With you, or at himself, or at the situation.

"Fair," he says.

You slide your hand out of your jeans. You let your arm fall to the side. You stare at the Florida crack. You are aware, distantly, that you are not crying, which is a small victory, because for a second there it could have gone either way.

"Tell me what you noticed," he says. Quiet. "About what worked. Before it didn't."

You think about it.

You think about it for longer than the question deserves, because the answer is sitting right there, and you have not yet decided whether you are going to give it to him.

The answer is your voice.

The answer is that you were here.

The answer is that the thing that worked, that got you closer than you have ever been, was the specific fact of him being in the room with you, and the specific fact of him not looking, and the specific fact that he was talking, and the way the talking made you feel like you were being held without being touched. The answer is that the variable he controlled for was himself, and the variable he controlled for is the variable that worked, and you can feel, with the part of you that has been pretending very hard for years now, that telling him this would be telling him a different thing entirely.

"I don't know," you say.

He waits.

"I don't know," you say again, and you mean it slightly differently the second time, and you are fairly sure he hears the difference.

"Okay," he says.

He doesn't push.

He sits in the chair and he waits, with his hands loose between his knees again, and you stare at the Florida crack, and the room is full of a thing neither of you is saying.

You eat the Skittles.

This is not what you expected to be doing. You expected to be doing one of several things, most of which involved more clothing being removed and fewer sweets being consumed, but here you are, sitting cross-legged on your own bed with your jeans still buttoned, splitting a bag of Skittles with a man in a chair, and neither of you is talking about the thing that just happened.

He is sorting them by colour. He is doing this automatically, the way he does everything, which is without noticing he's doing it. He has a small pile of reds, a small pile of oranges, a slightly larger pile of yellows, and he is eating the greens first because, he told you once, two years ago, on a drive back from somewhere you can't remember, the greens are the worst and he likes to get them out of the way.

You remember this. You remember this the way you remember everything about him, which is involuntarily and in too much detail.

"You're staring at me," he says.

"I'm not."

"You are. You're staring at me and I'm trying to eat the greens."

"I'm looking in your direction. There's a difference."

"There isn't."

He eats a green. He eats it with an air of finality, like a man who has completed a task.

"So," he says.

"So."

"That was."

"Yeah."

"You were close, though."

"I was close."

"That's. That's something. That's data."

"It's data."

"We could. I mean, if you wanted. We could try again. Another time. Adjust the, the variables. I think the chair was maybe too far away. Not that I, I'm not suggesting I should be closer, I'm just. Spatially. The geometry of the room might have been."

"Hey."

"Yeah."

"It's okay."

He looks at you. He looks at you the way he's been looking at you all afternoon, which is carefully, but the carefulness now has something else in it, something tired, and you recognise it because you are tired in exactly the same way.

"Yeah," he says. "Okay."

He stays for another twenty minutes. He stays because leaving immediately would make it a thing, and if there is one skill the two of you have refined over the years it is the skill of making sure things are not things. You talk about a podcast he's been telling you to listen to. You talk about whether the diner has ever actually changed its menu or if the laminated dessert card is a permanent installation. He does a bit about the pie, about how the pie has been on that menu since before either of you were born and will outlive you both, and you laugh, and the laughing is real, and underneath the laughing is the thing neither of you is saying, and underneath the thing is the afternoon, and underneath the afternoon is everything else.

He leaves at six. He puts his shoes on in your hallway and he says "see you" and you say "see you" and he does the thing he always does, which is pat the doorframe on the way out, twice, like the doorframe is something he needs to acknowledge on his way through it. You have never asked him about the doorframe thing. You have noticed it every single time.

You close the door.

You stand in your hallway for a minute.

You go back to the bedroom. The chair is still in the corner, angled slightly toward the bed. The Skittles bag is empty on the duvet. You pick it up. You throw it away. You put the clothes back on the chair and the chair becomes, once again, just a chair.

You sit on the bed.

You sit on the bed and you think about the sound his voice made when it went quiet.

Three weeks go by.

Three weeks go by and nothing changes except that everything changes. You see him. You see him the way you always see him, at the places you always see him, doing the things you always do. He texts you about the plant. He sends you a link to an article about anglerfish mating habits with no caption, which is the kind of thing he has always done, and which you have always read as friendship, and which you now read as something you cannot stop reading as something.

You do not talk about the Saturday.

He does not bring it up. You do not bring it up. It sits between you like the broken spring in the diner booth, a thing you both know is there and have agreed, silently, to navigate around. Except the broken spring was always just a spring, and this is not just a spring.

You try, alone, one night. You try the circle. You try the pressure. You try closing your eyes and letting the body run and the narrator catch up. You try everything he said. You try the breathing. You try not thinking.

It is different now.

It is different because the silence in your apartment is the wrong silence. The silence in your apartment has a shape, and the shape is the absence of his voice, and you cannot not-notice the absence. You got closer with him in the room than you have ever gotten alone, and the reason was not the technique and the reason was not the breathing and the reason was not the letting-go. The reason was the specific fact of him, in the chair, not looking, talking about a plant, and his voice going quiet without him noticing it had gone quiet, and the way that quietness felt like a hand on the back of your neck that wasn't there.

You stop trying.

You lie in the dark and you stare at the Florida crack and you think about the fact that your body has apparently decided, without consulting you, that the thing it needs in order to let go is a specific man on a specific chair saying specific things in a specific voice, and your body has furthermore decided this without any regard for the fact that this man is your best friend, and that telling him this would be telling him something else entirely, and that the something else is a door you are not sure either of you can walk back through.

A few days later he calls you because he locked himself out of his apartment and needs to kill an hour while the super finds the spare key, and you sit with him on the steps outside his building sharing a bag of chips, and he is telling you about a simulation that keeps crashing and the very specific way it crashes, which involves a number going to infinity in a way that should not be possible, and you are not listening, because his knee is touching your knee, and the place where his knee is touching your knee is the loudest thing in the city.

He doesn't notice. Or he does notice and he is doing the thing you both do, which is not noticing.

The following week you go to a bar with a group. He is there. He is always there. He is across the table talking to someone else and you watch his hands and you watch his mouth and you watch the way he pushes his glasses up with his ring finger, specifically the ring finger, which is a detail you have been carrying for longer than you are willing to calculate, and a girl next to you says something and you say "sorry, what?" and she says it again and you hear it the second time but you do not remember it afterward because his laugh has just cut across the table and landed in your chest like a thing with weight.

You go home alone. You lie in your bed. You do not try. You do not try because trying means thinking about why it doesn't work and thinking about why it doesn't work means thinking about him and thinking about him means thinking about the Saturday and thinking about the Saturday means thinking about the sound his voice made when it dropped, when it went from the voice he uses to fill a room to the voice he used to fill just the space between the chair and the bed, and that voice is now a thing that lives in your body, and your body does not care that it is inconvenient.

Another week. He sits next to you at the diner. The same booth. The same broken spring. He has pie again. He eats it this time, which feels like a statement, although you could not tell you what the statement is. You watch him eat the pie and you think about the way he said you'd know weeks ago, sitting in this exact booth, with this exact fork, and how he was right, you would know, you do know, you know everything now except the one thing, and the one thing is what his hands feel like.

You are becoming an expert in the specific weight of him. The weight of his arm when it brushes yours reaching for the check. The weight of his laugh landing on you from across a room. The weight of the silence when he looks at you one beat too long and then looks away, and the looking-away is the thing, the looking-away is the tell, because he does it the same way every time, a small sharp cut of the eyes to the left, and you have been cataloguing this cut for weeks now and you know what it means. It means he was looking at you the way you look at him and he caught himself and he stopped.

You want to tell him to stop stopping.

You don't.

You go home. You lie in the dark. You don't try. You think about the voice. You think about the voice and the chair and the quiet and the way the room felt when he was in it, and the word that keeps arriving, the word you keep circling, is safe.

You felt safe.

You have had sex with people. You have been naked with people. You have been touched and held and pressed against and none of it, not once, made you feel the thing you felt sitting fully clothed on your own bed with your best friend in a chair talking about a houseplant. You felt safe. Not safe as in nothing bad will happen. Safe as in you can stop performing. Safe as in nobody in this room needs you to be anything. Safe as in his voice was a room inside the room and the room inside the room had no expectations and your body, for the first time, did not have to negotiate its way past the fact of being watched.

He wasn't watching. That was the thing. He was there and he wasn't watching and the combination of those two facts, present and not-looking, was the thing your body had apparently been waiting for your entire adult life, and your body had not thought to mention this to you until a man on a chair started talking about a plant.

You think about the fact that permission is the word. That the thing you cannot give yourself is permission. That he gave it to you without knowing he was giving it, because the permission was not a technique, it was not a word, it was the specific fact of being safe with him, fully, in a room, with nowhere to hide, and being safe was the thing that let your body stop negotiating.

You think about this for days.

And then he is in your kitchen. Because he is often in your kitchen, because your kitchen is one of the places he exists. He is eating crackers out of a box he found in your cupboard. He is telling you about a paper his advisor rejected and the specific, surgical way the rejection was phrased, and he is doing a dramatic reading of the margin notes, and he is funny, he is so funny, and you are laughing, and your body is doing the thing where it catalogues him without your permission.

His voice.

The way he leans against your counter. The way he uses his hands when he talks. The way his whole body is oriented toward you, slightly, like a compass needle that has found its direction and does not know it has found it.

You have been looking at this for years.

"You okay?" he says.

"Yeah. Fine."

"You're doing the thing."

"What thing."

"The thing where you go somewhere and don't tell me where."

You look at him. He is leaning against your counter, in your kitchen, with cracker crumbs on his t-shirt, and his glasses are slightly askew, and he is looking at you with the same expression he wore in the chair, which is the expression of a man who is paying attention to you with a kind of focus that has nothing recreational about it.

"I tried again," you say. "Alone. After the Saturday."

The crackers stop.

"Okay," he says.

"It didn't work."

"Okay."

He says it the way he said it at the diner. The way he said it on the Saturday. The way he always says it, which is like a man setting a plate down gently so it doesn't break.

You should stop here. You have given him the update. The experiment failed to replicate. That is a clean, scientific sentence and you could leave it there and he would let you leave it there and you would both go back to the thing you do, which is not saying the thing.

You are so tired of not saying the thing.

"On the Saturday I was close," you say. "I was closer than I've ever been. And then alone, after, I couldn't even. I couldn't get anywhere near it."

"Okay."

"And I've been thinking about why. About what was different."

He waits.

You look at him. He is leaning against the counter with cracker crumbs on his shirt and he is waiting for you to finish the sentence and you can see, in the very specific way he is not moving, that he already knows what you're going to say. He knows the way he knew at the diner. He has run the numbers and the numbers have told him something and he is standing very still because the numbers are telling him a thing he does not trust himself to hear without standing very still.

"It didn't work because you weren't there."

The kitchen is very quiet. The kitchen has never been this quiet. The kitchen is the room in your apartment that has always been the safest and it is no longer safe.

He puts the box of crackers down. He puts them down carefully, the way he put the Skittles down, the way he put the fork down at the diner, the way he puts things down when his hands need to be empty for what's coming next.

"Say that again," he says.

"You heard me."

"I did. I want to hear it again."

"It didn't work because you weren't there. Your voice. It was your voice the whole time. You asked me what worked and I said I didn't know and I was lying. I knew. I knew it was you."

He is very still. He is the stillest you have ever seen him, which is not a thing you thought Ryland Grace was capable of, because he is a man who moves, who fidgets, who narrates, who fills, and right now he is doing none of those things. He is just standing in your kitchen looking at you like the whole room has rearranged itself and he hasn't caught up yet.

"I need to tell you something," he says.

"Okay."

"I need to tell you something and I'm going to be bad at it."

"Okay."

"I am in love with you." He says it to the cracker box. He says it the way he said "solvable problem" at the diner, like a man who has arrived at a conclusion and is slightly surprised by it even though the data has been pointing there for years. "I have been. For a while. I don't. I don't know when it started. I think it might have always been. I think the diner might have been the first time I let myself. And then the Saturday. The Saturday was."

"The Saturday was what."

"The Saturday was the worst idea I've ever had. And I've had a lot of bad ideas. I've had, I've had professionally bad ideas. I once almost set a lab on fire because I wanted to see what happened. And the Saturday was worse than that, because I sat in your chair and I pretended I was there for, for science, for the experiment, for the variables, and I was there because I wanted to be in the room with you. That's it. That's the whole. That's what it was."

"I think I knew," you say. "I think I've been trying not to know."

He looks at you.

"For how long," he says.

"A while. A long while. I just didn't want to be right, because being right meant the chair wasn't a chair and the experiment wasn't an experiment and we weren't."

"We weren't what."

"We weren't just friends. And I wanted us to be just friends. I wanted that so badly, Ryland. Because the version of you that shows up in my kitchen with crackers and talks to me about his plant and pats my doorframe on the way out. I didn't want to lose that. I would rather have that version and not have this than not have you."

"You would rather not have this."

"I didn't say that."

"You said."

"I said I didn't want to lose you. That's different."

He looks at you. He looks at you for a long time.

"I'm scared too," he says. "I've been scared for, for a while. I've been scared since the diner. I've been scared since before the diner, probably, I've just been, I've been filing it wrong. I filed it as, as friendship. As, that's just how this is. That's just how you feel about your best friend. You show up in their kitchen and you eat their crackers and you send them articles about anglerfish at two in the morning and you pat their doorframe on the way out, and that's. That's friendship. That's."

"That's not friendship."

"No," he says. "It isn't."

The kitchen is still very quiet.

You should be happy. You are, you think, happy. He is standing in your kitchen and he has said the thing and you have said the thing and the things are the same thing and this is, by any reasonable definition, the moment. This is the part where the door opens.

But there is something behind the door, and it has been there the whole time, and you have been trying very hard not to look at it, and now the door is open and you cannot not-look anymore.

"I need to tell you something," you say, and your voice comes out wrong. It comes out small and tight and nothing like the voice you have been using for the rest of this conversation, and you can see him hear the change, and you can see the half-second where he braces.

"Okay."

You look at the floor. You look at the floor because looking at him while you say this is not something you are able to do.

"I'm scared that if we do this. If this becomes a, a thing." You stop. You start again. "Every person I've ever been with has eventually. There's a moment where they realise I can't. Where it stops being a thing we're working on and starts being a thing that's wrong with me. And they don't always say it. But I can feel it. I can feel the moment they start thinking about it differently. And I don't want. I can't."

Your throat closes.

"I can't watch you think about me like that," you say. "I would rather not have this than watch you get tired of me not being able to get there."

He looks at you.

"Hey," he says. Quiet. "Listen to me."

"I'm listening."

"If you never get there. If this is the thing that doesn't happen. If we spend the rest of, if we're together and it never. That's okay."

"It's not."

"It is. It is okay. It is genuinely, completely okay. I didn't fall in love with you because I thought you'd, because of what you can or can't. I fell in love with you because you let me sit in a chair in your bedroom and talk about a plant. Because you remember which Skittles I eat first. Because you go somewhere in your head sometimes and I can see you go and I just want to be there when you come back. That's it. That's the whole thing. The other part is. The other part would be nice. But it's not the thing."

"Ryland."

"It's not the thing."

You are standing in your kitchen, three feet apart, and he has cracker crumbs on his shirt, and his glasses are askew, and he has just told you that he is in love with you and that whether or not you ever have an orgasm is not the point, and you believe him, because he is the worst liar you have ever met, and because his hands are shaking.

"Come here," you say.

He comes.

He comes the way he does everything, which is slightly too fast and with not quite enough plan for what happens when he gets there. He crosses the three feet of kitchen and he is in front of you and his hands are at his sides and he is looking at you and neither of you has thought past this part.

"Hi," he says.

You almost laugh.

"Hi."

"I don't. I don't know what to do with my hands."

"You could put them on me."

"Right. Right, yeah. That's. Yeah."

He puts his hands on you. He puts them on your waist, carefully, like he is handling something he is not sure he is allowed to handle, and his hands are still shaking, and the shaking is the most honest thing in the room.

You kiss him.

You kiss him because if you wait for him to do it you will both be standing in this kitchen until the heat death of the universe. You kiss him and his mouth is warm and he tastes, faintly, of crackers, and there is a moment, a very small moment, where you can feel him not know what to do with the kiss, where his mouth is just receiving yours without participating, and then the moment ends and he is kissing you back and his hands are no longer shaking because his hands have found something to do, which is pull you closer, which they do with a certainty that the rest of him has not caught up to yet.

You pull back.

"Bedroom," you say.

"Bedroom. Yeah. Okay."

You take his hand. You lead him down the hallway the same way you led him down the hallway on the Saturday, except on the Saturday you did not look at him and he followed you at one and a half normal-person follow-distances, and tonight you are looking at him and he is right behind you and his hand is in your hand and neither of you is pretending about anything.

The chair is in the corner. The clothes are on the chair. He looks at the chair.

"I'm not sitting in the chair," he says.

"You're not sitting in the chair."

"Good. I just wanted to. Officially. For the record."

You sit on the edge of the bed. The bed makes the same noise it made last time. You do not look at the bed, betrayed, this time, because this time you are looking at him, standing in the doorway of your bedroom, backlit by the hallway light, with cracker crumbs still on his shirt and his glasses slightly askew, and you think, very clearly, I am going to remember exactly what he looks like right now for the rest of my life.

"Come here," you say, again.

He comes. He sits on the bed next to you. The bed makes another noise. He looks at the bed.

"Your bed is very opinionated," he says.

"It has thoughts."

"It has thoughts. Okay."

He is next to you. He is next to you on a bed he was not on the last time he was in this room, and you can feel the difference the way you can feel a room where someone has moved the furniture. Everything is almost the same and nothing is the same.

He kisses you. He kisses you this time, and it is different from the kitchen, because in the kitchen he was catching up and now he is here, and his hands are on your face, and his thumbs are on your jaw, and he is kissing you the way he talks about things he loves, which is thoroughly and with his whole attention and with small, unnecessary detours that somehow end up being the point.

His shirt comes off first because it has cracker crumbs on it and you both agree, in a wordless negotiation that takes about four seconds, that the cracker crumbs have to go. Your shirt comes off second and he looks at you and you watch him look at you and the looking is nothing like the not-looking from the Saturday. The not-looking was protection. The looking is something else.

"You're staring," you say.

"I'm looking in your direction. There's a difference."

"You said there wasn't."

"I've revised my position."

You pull him down. He goes. He is, it turns out, slightly worse at navigating the geometry of a bed than you would have expected from a man who thinks in spatial variables, and there is a brief, deeply human negotiation of elbows and knees and where things go, and you are laughing, and he is laughing, and the laughing is not the kind of laughing that deflects. It is the kind of laughing that says we are here and we are both bad at this and that is fine.

His mouth is on your neck. His mouth is on your collarbone. His mouth is on the place between your ribs where your breathing lives, and you can feel him paying attention, the same way he was paying attention from the chair, except now the attention has hands and the hands are on your skin and the difference is so large that your brain briefly whites out trying to calculate it.

"Tell me," he says, against your stomach. "Tell me what you want."

"You."

"More specific."

"Your hands. I want your hands."

He gives you his hands.

He gives you his hands and they are not shaking anymore.

He puts them on your stomach first. Just that. Just his palms flat on your stomach, warm, still, like he is introducing himself to your skin. He stays there long enough that you feel your breathing change under his hands, and you know he feels it too, because his thumbs move, just slightly, tracing the lowest edge of your ribs, and the trace is so slow and so deliberate that you understand he is paying attention to your body the way he pays attention to everything, which is completely.

His hands move down. Over your hips. Along the waistband of your jeans, his fingers tracing the edge where fabric meets skin, and the edge is the point, the boundary is the point, because he is touching everything he is allowed to touch and not one inch past it, and the restraint is doing something to you that the touching alone would not do.

"You're thinking," you say.

"I'm always thinking."

"You're thinking like you're taking notes."

"I am taking notes. Mentally. There's a spreadsheet."

"You're bringing the spreadsheet to bed."

"The spreadsheet goes everywhere. The spreadsheet is non-negotiable."

You laugh. You laugh and his hands are on your hips and the laughing does something to the muscles in your stomach that makes his hands shift, and the shift sends something through you, a small involuntary pull, and you feel his breath catch against your neck. He felt it. He felt your body respond to a thing neither of you planned, and the feeling of him feeling it is its own thing, a feedback loop you did not anticipate, his attention on your body and your body responding to the attention and his attention sharpening in response.

Your jeans come off. You don't remember which of you undoes the button. It might be both of you, simultaneously, which would be on-brand for the evening.

His hands move lower. Slowly. Giving you time to say stop. You do not say stop.

His fingers find you. He touches you the way you touch yourself, two fingers flat against your clit, the same slow circle, except his circle is slightly different from yours, slightly slower, slightly more deliberate, and the difference is everything. When you do this yourself your hand knows where it's going. His hand doesn't. His hand is learning you in real time, adjusting pressure by the half-second, reading your breathing like a dial, and the not-knowing is the thing, because when your own hand touches you the touch is predictable and your body discounts it, and when his hand touches you there is nowhere for your body to hide.

He slides his fingers lower. Through the wet. You hear him inhale, sharp, quiet, when he feels how wet you are, and the sound of him discovering that does something to you that his hands alone could not have done. He brings the slickness back up, spreads it under his fingertips, and the circle gets easier, slicker, and you feel your hips tilt toward his hand without deciding to, your body asking for something your mouth has not said yet.

"Talk to me," you say.

"About what."

"I don't care. The plant. Anglerfish. Anything."

He laughs, softly, against your hip.

"Okay," he says. "Okay. There's this thing. About, about the way nerve endings work. The ones in your skin. They fire faster when the stimulus is unfamiliar. Your own touch, your body knows what's coming, it can predict, it sort of. It discounts. But someone else's touch, it can't predict, it doesn't know the pattern yet, so everything is. Everything is louder."

His fingers adjust. You inhale. He hears the inhale.

"That's why this is different," he says, quieter now. "That's why. Your body can't get ahead of my hands the way it gets ahead of yours. So it has to just. It has to just be in it."

You are in it.

You are in it in a way you were not in it on the Saturday, because on the Saturday you were trying to let go and tonight you are not trying anything. You are lying in your bed with his hand between your legs and his voice in your ear and you are not thinking about whether this is going to work because you are not thinking. The narrator is gone. The narrator left somewhere between his mouth on your ribs and his fingers finding the place, and what is left is the body, and the body is not negotiating.

His voice drops lower. He is not talking about nerve endings anymore. He is talking to you the way he talked to you from the chair, low and steady and close, except he is not in the chair, he is pressed against your side with his mouth near your ear and the words are less important than the sound and the sound is less important than the fact that it is him and the fact that it is him is the whole thing. The whole thing. The only variable that ever mattered.

You feel safe.

You feel safe the way you felt safe on the Saturday, except more, except closer, except his skin is against your skin and his hand is between your legs and you are not performing. You are not performing for him. You are not narrating for yourself. You are not watching yourself from the outside trying to figure out if this is working. You are just here, in your body, in your bed, with a man who has seen you fail at this and did not flinch, and the not-flinching is the safety, and the safety is the permission, and the permission is the thing your body has been waiting for.

Something builds.

Something builds and it is not like the Saturday. On the Saturday the building had an edge and you moved toward the edge and the edge stayed where it was. Tonight the edge is moving toward you. You are not chasing it. It is arriving.

Your breath catches. Your breath catches and then, without deciding to, you hold it. You hold your breath and your whole body tenses, every muscle pulling tight at once, your hand gripping his arm, your thighs closing around his wrist, and it is the opposite of everything he told you. It is the opposite of letting go. It is the opposite of letting the body run. It is holding on, holding still, holding your breath and clenching every part of yourself around the feeling so it cannot leave, and it does not leave.

It does not leave.

It breaks over you like something with weight, like something that has been waiting, like something your body knew how to do the whole time and simply needed you to stop asking it to explain itself. You make a sound. You make the sound with no air in your lungs because you are still holding your breath and the sound is small and tight and broken-open and nothing like what you imagined, nothing like what you thought it would be, and his hand does not stop. His hand keeps moving, slower now, gentler, working you through it, and his forehead is pressed against your temple and he is breathing and you are not breathing and the room is the smallest it has ever been.

And then his fingers move over you again and your whole body jerks.

You have never felt this. You have never felt what comes after because you have never had an after. Everything is oversensitive, swollen, raw, his fingertips on your clit almost too much but not quite too much, and each pass sends a smaller wave through you, an aftershock, a bright sharp thing that pulls a sound out of you that is half gasp and half something else, and the something else is surprise, because you did not know there was more, you did not know it kept going, and it keeps going. He reads the aftershocks the way he has been reading everything tonight, adjusting lighter, slower, barely touching, his fingers moving through the wet of you with so little pressure it is almost nothing, and the almost-nothing is still sending you somewhere, still pulling small involuntary shivers out of your thighs, out of your stomach, out of parts of your body you did not know were connected to this.

You breathe.

You breathe and his hand goes still. Not because he decided to stop. Because he felt you come back. He felt the exact moment your body stopped shaking and your lungs opened and the air came in, and he stilled his hand at the same moment, like the two things were the same thing, like your breathing and his hands were part of the same system.

"You'd know," he says, very quietly.

You start crying.

You don't mean to. You don't expect to. It arrives the way the other thing arrived, without permission, without negotiation, your body simply doing the thing it has decided to do, and you are crying and laughing at the same time, which is a combination you did not know you were capable of, and he pulls you into him, both arms, your face in his neck, and he holds you the way he held the fork at the diner, which is like he is never going to put you down.

"Hey," he says. "Hey. You're okay."

"I know."

"You're okay."

"I know. I know I'm okay. I'm. Ryland."

"Yeah."

"That."

"Yeah."

"That was."

"Yeah." His voice is thick. His arms are tight around you. He presses his mouth to the top of your head. "Yeah. It was."

You lie there. You lie there in your bed with your face in his neck and his arms around you and neither of you says anything for a while, because there is nothing to say that the room does not already know.

After a while, you become aware of his heartbeat. It is fast. It is faster than it should be for a man who is lying still, and you realise, with the part of you that has started paying attention again, that his body has been doing its own thing this entire time, and its thing has been waiting.

You move your hand down his chest. Down his stomach. He breathes in.

"You don't have to," he says.

"I know I don't have to."

"I just mean. Tonight was. You don't have to make it about."

"Ryland."

"Yeah."

"Shut up."

He shuts up.

He is hard. He has been hard, you suspect, for a while, possibly since the kitchen, possibly since the aftershocks, possibly since a Saturday afternoon three weeks ago when he sat in a chair and listened to you breathe. You touch him through his jeans and his hips push up into your hand once, involuntarily, and the involuntary push is the most honest thing you have learned about him tonight, and you have learned a lot of honest things about him tonight.

His jeans come off. His boxers come off. You look at him the way he looked at you and you watch him let you look, and the letting is hard for him, you can tell, the same way the letting was hard for you. He is a man who fills silences and narrates his own hands and makes jokes at the exact moment a normal person would make a different face, and right now he is doing none of that. He is lying in your bed with his clothes off and his glasses off and he is just a person, quiet, watching you look at him.

"Hi," you say.

"You keep saying that."

"I keep meaning it."

He pulls you down. He pulls you into him and kisses you and the kissing has changed again, it is different from the kitchen and different from the first time on the bed, it is slower and more certain and his hands are on your back and your skin is against his skin and the amount of skin is new, the full length of him against the full length of you is a thing neither of you has had before and you both feel it arrive, the contact, the warmth, the simple animal fact of another body.

His hand finds you again. Not the same way as before. Slower. Exploring. His fingers slide through the wet of you and you are still sensitive from before, still swollen, and the touch sends a shiver through you that he feels against his chest. He keeps his hand there, not circling, not pressing, just feeling you, learning the shape of you with his fingers like he is reading something in a language he is teaching himself.

"You feel," he starts, and doesn't finish.

"What."

"You feel incredible. I just want. I want you to know that."

You kiss him because if you try to respond to that with words you are going to cry again and you have already cried once tonight and you are trying to maintain at least the appearance of a person who has it together.

His fingers move inside you. One first, then two, and the stretch is slow and careful and his thumb is still on your clit, barely touching, and the combination makes your back arch slightly, and he watches it arch, and you feel his cock twitch against your thigh.

"I want you," you say. "I want. All of you. I want."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He reaches for his jeans on the floor. He finds his wallet. He finds a condom. He tears the wrapper with his teeth because his hands are shaking again and you take it from him and roll it on yourself because his hands are shaking and your hands are steady for the first time all evening, and the reversal of that, the steadiness of your hands on him, makes him close his eyes and breathe out through his nose like a man counting to ten.

You guide him. He presses into you slowly, slowly, and you feel yourself open around him, and he makes a sound when he is all the way inside you, low and involuntary and slightly startled, like he is surprised by something he knew was coming, and you make a sound too, and the sounds are not performative, they are just the sounds two bodies make when they stop being separate.

He moves slowly. He moves slowly and carefully in a way that is not about being gentle, it is about paying attention, the same attention he has been paying all evening, except now the attention is inside you and the inside is a different kind of close. You can feel him adjusting. You can feel him reading you the way he read you with his hands, by breath, by sound, by the way your body tightens or opens, and the reading is the thing, the reading has always been the thing.

"Okay?" he says.

"Yeah."

"Still okay?"

"Ryland. I will tell you if I'm not okay."

"Right. Right. Sorry. I just."

"I know."

He moves. You move with him. There is a moment, early, where the geometry doesn't quite work, and there is a brief, honest negotiation of angles, and he laughs, quietly, against your neck, and you laugh, and the laughing is the permission it has always been. The laughing is what lets the bodies figure it out without the brains getting in the way.

He finds a rhythm. You find it with him. His forehead is against yours and his breath is on your mouth and his hands are in your hair and you are looking at each other, which is a thing you did not expect, because you have spent your entire life closing your eyes during sex, and tonight your eyes are open, and his eyes are open, and the openness is its own kind of naked.

He says your name.

He says it once, quietly, against your mouth, not as a question, not as a request, just as a fact, just as confirmation that you are here and he is here and neither of you is pretending, and the sound of your name in his voice in this room in this bed is a thing you are going to carry for a very long time.

It is not, you understand, going to happen again tonight. Your body is done with that particular miracle for now. But it does not matter. It does not matter because the sex is not about the orgasm, the sex was never about the orgasm, the sex is about the thing he said in the kitchen, which is that the orgasm is not the thing. The thing is this. His forehead on yours. His weight. His breathing getting faster. His hands gripping the sheets next to your head because he is close, he is close and you can feel it in him, and you wrap your legs around him and pull him deeper and say, very quietly, "it's okay, you can let go."

He lets go.

He lets go the way you let go, which is all at once, his whole body tensing, a sound pressed into your neck that he did not plan to make, and you hold him through it the way he held you through yours, your arms around his back, your mouth on his temple, and you feel him shake, and the shaking is the mirror of your shaking, and the room is very quiet, and the room is very full.

After a while he pulls out, carefully, and deals with the condom, and comes back. He comes back immediately, like the three seconds of not touching you were three seconds he did not care for, and he lies on his back and pulls you into his side and you go, your head on his chest, your leg over his, your hand flat on his sternum where you can feel his heart still going too fast. He presses his mouth to the top of your head and leaves it there.

After a while, you say, "The plant metaphor was a stretch."

He laughs. He laughs with his whole chest, the laugh you have been cataloguing for years, the one that cuts across rooms, except now it is in your bed, against your hair, vibrating through his ribs into yours, and it is yours. It is yours.

"The plant metaphor was science," he says.

"The plant metaphor was you buying time."

"The plant metaphor was me buying time, yes."

You lift your head. You look at him. His face, without the glasses, is a face you have technically seen before but have never seen like this, this close, with this specific expression on it, which is the expression of a man who is looking at you like you are the coolest thing he has ever seen, and he has seen anglerfish.

"Hi," you say.

"Hi."

"I think the experiment worked."

"I think," he says, "the experiment had a significant confounding variable."

"What variable."

"Me. Being in love with you. That's, that's a confound. You can't. You can't control for that."

"No," you say. "You can't."

"Might need a bigger sample size, though."

"Might."

"For rigour."

"For rigour."

He is smiling. You can feel him smiling against the top of your head. It is the smile of a man who has found a problem he would like to spend a very long time not solving.

You think about what it would be like. To get there with him inside you. To feel that edge and not flinch and hold your breath and let it break while he is as close as another person can be. You think about it not as a fear, which is new. You think about it as a thing that might happen. On a Tuesday. On a Saturday. On some unremarkable afternoon when neither of you is trying.

You kiss him. You kiss him slowly, with no urgency, with the specific calm of a person who knows she has time, and he kisses you back, and his hands are in your hair, and the chair is in the corner with the clothes on it, and the kitchen has cracker crumbs on the counter, and somewhere in this apartment there is a bag that once held Skittles, and the room is full of everything you have both been carrying, and it is light. For the first time in a very long time, it is light.

ᯓ★'s P.S. hes so ooc in this i hate it😭😭

don't forget to comment and reblog if you enjoyed!

← ゛masterlist ⸝⸝.ᐟ⋆

But despite everything, after a few hours of work that may or may not have been legitimate, the vent coughed out a dust bunny the size of a small mouse before cool air finally filled the store again. You thought, for a very dramatic moment in your relief, that you must owe the repairman your first born.

Jason had lingered even after the repairman left, he said nothing to you about payment. You figured that meant it must have already been figured out between him, Jason, and the guy with tools.

You had learned a lot about Jason since he started hanging around the shop. Well … not a lot. But you have learned a few things. Like how he made learning about him almost infuriatingly difficult. And that his middle name was Peter, which came up in a conversation about how many people hate their middle names. He had said he didn’t mind his, and when you asked you were surprised he actually gave it to you. You learned he was a Leo, which he told you he only knew because he had been talking to a girl back in high school who was really into that stuff.

After the air conditioner had been fixed, you had sorta expected your … whatever you had with Jason to fade out. His guy with tools sent a guy to fix the appliance, his binding complaint had been resolved, and the ugly copy of The Brothers Karamazov had gone off to live whatever life ugly Russian novels got when they were bought by handsome mechanics with oil under their nails.

But on Thursday he was back. Sort of. He was sitting on the curb outside of the bookstore, far enough that he was not technically in the store’s space, but close enough you would see him from the large front window, one leg stretched out in front of him, the other bent with a paper-wrapped sandwich balanced on his knee. He was wearing his work shirt, dark fabric, sleeves rolled up, and the name of his shop patched over his chest. His hair was a little damp with sweat falling against his temple, smaller beads of sweat ran down his forehead.

You told yourself that you probably shouldn’t stare, then moved the stack of bookmarks to the side so you could stare in a way that you could stare while pretending to be concealed.

Jason took a bite of his sandwich and looked up. You caught his eye and immediately looked back down. When you risked another glance, he had turned again, back to facing forwards, still eating. Which was perfectly fine, people were allowed to sit and eat outside of businesses that had visited occasionally.

The bell above the door gave a weak jingle as an elderly man came in carrying a plastic bag full of old westerns. He was chatty as you sorted through them, explaining that his wife wanted the garage cleaned out. By the time he left, Jason was no longer sitting on the curb.

No more customers came in the rest of the day.

On Friday, Jason was back. Though this time he sat beneath the narrow, sun dull awning between your store and the empty building that used to be a laundromat next door. He had a plastic container instead of a sandwich, and he was eating with a fork he had probably brought for home.

You didn’t know enough about him to be assuming things about his forks, but you were anyway. It looked like a home fork, not the flimsy kind from a takeout place, or what might come in a pack of fifty or sixty and might be kept in the break room of a mechanic shop. And for some reason your brain latched onto the strangest possible detail. He brought his own fork.

You decided to update the chalkboard sign near the window, even though you had no ideas for what new message to write, and so far have only scribbled down NEW ARRIVALS !! and then right below that: BOOKS

You figured that was good enough for you. Jason looked up right around the time you were balancing the chalk on the top of the board. Instead of pretending you hadn’t been watching him from the corner of your eye the entire time you were outside, you raised your hand in a small wave.

He stared for a moment, like he hadn’t expected you to acknowledge him despite the fact he’s been sitting outside of your store the past two days. Then he lifted his fork towards you in response. A fork wave.

His shop was closed on Saturdays. You knew because he had told you once that everybody closed on Sunday, and how was he supposed to get any good business if his business was like every other one. So he closed on Saturdays.

But on Sunday, he was back again. And closer this time. Not directly in front of the store, but on the curb a few feet from the door, next to the newspaper box that had only held spiders and dust for years now. He had a paper bag next to him, and a paperback open. You recognized the book by the cover. The Big Sleep. The one with the administrative pages torn out.

The shop had been quiet all day. Cool and quiet, with Jason sitting outside reading during his lunch break. You decided to let that just be normal, and went about pricing the westerns from a few days before. It was almost relaxing.

“Your sign just says ‘books’.”

You startled so hard you nearly threw the paperback at him.

Jason stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame, his lunch bag and book in the same hand. The bell above the door was wobbling, but it had made no sound when he entered. If it had, it would have saved you from the scare.

“It does not” You protested “It also says new arrivals.”

Jason leaned back, hand gripping the doorframe to brace himself. “Nah. Just says books.”

“Well then, it must have gotten wiped off.”

When Jason stood upright again there was a delighted looking smile on his face. You weren’t sure why. He stepped further in, not too far, just lingering at an invisible line he decided not to cross.

“Are you on lunch ?” You asked. There was an obvious answer, of course

Jason nodded, “Shop’s loud today.”

“Is that unlike other days ?”

“Louder than usual.”

You nodded and Jason shifted his weight, the brown paper crinkling in his hand.

“You can sit, you know.” You told him, nodding towards the chair in the reading nook.

He looked at the green chair for a moment, “Don’t wanna make a mess.”

You considered him for a moment. “Those chairs have survived a lot. I don’t think your lunch will be what kills them.”

Jason looked at the chairs again, then at you. He did not go sit down. Instead he leaned against the frame again and opened the paper bag.

You place a price sticker on another western with the focus of a surgeon attaching a severed fingertip.

For the new week, Jason’s lunch break became a thing. Not officially. There were no plans, no announcements, or formal agreements. He never asked to come by, and you never invited him. He just showed up.

Sometimes he sat on the curb, sometimes he leaned against the bricks next to the window, sometimes he stood under the awning eating with one hand and reading with the others. Sometimes he came inside, but never any further than the doorway, as if that made his visits count less.

It was a summer rain that finally drove him all the way inside, his hair wet and a paper bag tucked under his arm.

“Bad weather,” he said

You looked up, past him at the rain tapping against the windows “It’s drizzling.”

“Drizzling is still weather”

You gave a firm nod, “Well, you got a point”

“You eat yet ?”

The question felt too sudden, it made you forget how to make a face.

“What ?”

“Lunch. You eat ?”

“Oh — No. Not yet.”

“Why ?” He asked

You shrugged. The real answer was that you forgot. Or you got busy. Or you kept telling yourself you’d eat after finishing just one more task, and then before you knew it, it was late in the afternoon and your body and brain felt like it was an overheated laptop running at one percent.

But that seemed like too much to give right now. And you did not have the energy to explain your poor eating habits.

So you just told him: “I had a tea”

He stared. “That’s not lunch.”

“It had milk.” You offered

“Still not lunch.”

Jason set the paper bag on the counter and stared at you again. You stared back before staring at the bag.

“What’s that ?”

“Food.”

“Well — Yeah. I figured that much. But —”

“Got too much.”

“Too much food ?” You asked

He nodded “For one person, yeah.”

You looked inside the bag. There were two wrapped sandwiches, two small containers of grapes, two napkins, and two cookies in clear plastic sleeves. You looked back up at him, and he suddenly found the shelf closest to him fascinating.

“Jason”

“Hm ?”

“This is two whole lunches …”

“Though I was gonna be extra hungry today. I was wrong.”

“There are two cookies.” You noted

“I’m a growing boy. Though I’d need two.”

“You’re like … At least six feet tall.”

“Exactly. That’s a lotta boy to maintain.”

“Are you gonna eat two lunches ?” You asked

“I could.” He answered

“I asked if you were going to.”

He didn’t say anything. That was a good enough answer.

You pulled one of the sandwiches from the bag, “Thank you.”

“Didn’t say it was for you.” He mumbled

“Of course not.” You said, peeling the paper back.

“It’s extra”

“Of course.”

“Over estimated how hungry I’d be today.”

“Obviously.”

He finally looked back at you. You smiled at him and he looked away again.

He ate leaning against the counter, on the side customers usually stood. You sat on the stool behind it, one foot tucked under your bum, trying not to eat too fast even though eating made you realize you were much hungrier than your body had told you.

“This is really good,” You said, because you were not sure what else to do with the feeling of being fed. And it was really good.

“It’s just a sandwich” Jason shrugged

“Right.”

It became a familiar rhythm, Jason would show up around noon with his lunch and a reason that was not really a reason, and with enough food to share. He would come all the way into the store now, but always stayed on the customer side of the counter.

You learned more about him, more little bits and pieces. You learned he didn’t care how his coffee was, he’d drink it black and so sweet it was hardly coffee anymore, though there were days he preferred the latter. He liked classics, old detective novels, and poetry sometimes. You learned he didn’t like when people dog-eared library books, but did it to his own with no issues.

The food he brought was always good. He had brought a pasta salad one time with little cubes of mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, and herbs that made you think maybe Jason was a better cook than he let on. That, or someone in his life was very good at forcing vegetables into his meals.

Eventually he stopped trying to pretend his extra food and frequent visits were coincidences or accidents. Not all the time, he still gave at least a slither of plausible deniability. But progress was made the day he came in and said, rather directly, “Got you a lemonade.” and set the cold bottle on the desk in front of you.

“Oh.” You said. An absolutely brilliant response “Thank you.”

It took three weeks of lunch breaks for Jason to end up behind the counter. It happened because a little boy who had come in with his mother discovered the crates of children’s books near the front window and developed the focused determination of a miner.

Books were pulled out of the crate one by one. Board books, foam books, picture books, early readers about dinosaurs, cardboard books that had definitely been chewed on. He sat in the middle of the cushy space and organized the books according to a system it seemed only he understood, all while his mother looked like she wanted to turn herself into dust, trying quietly to get her son to clean up his mess. The boy listened to none of it.

“It’s alright.” You said from your spot behind the counter “They’re there for kids to mess with them.”

The boy held up a book with a whimsical looking rabbit on the front “This one has no pants.”

Jason, who was leaning against the side of the counter with his lunch mostly untouched coughed into his hand. The boy’s mother covered her face.

The duo left the shop with the rabbit book and another picture book about crayons quitting their jobs. The mother apologized three different times about the mess, but still left with the children’s section looking as if a small bomb had gone off in it.

You stepped out from behind the counter with a small sigh, but Jason was already half way to the mess. You crouched down across from him, doing your best to sort the books in a way that was semi-organized but wouldn’t feel like too much work had gone to waste when it was inevitably messed up again.

For a minute or two you worked together in a comfortable silence, passing books between each other, silently agreeing who would handle which type of book. Jason’s hands looked too big around small covers, which should not have been so endearing.

He paused all of a sudden with a picture book in hand. You recognized it. A copy of Corduroy that was in near perfect condition. A rarity for the store.

He stared at the cover for a while, thumb brushing over the paper edges. “Used to love this one,” He mumbled

“Yeah ?”

Both of you were quieter than usual

He nodded, “Had a copy when I was a kid.”

“D’you still have it ?”

He shook his head.

“I liked that one too,” You said, returning to your piles, “I always felt worried about him being left in the store overnight.”

“Yeah” It was Jason’s version of agreeing with you.

The moment righted itself on its own as the two of you continued with the kid’s books.

“So. Do you have any siblings ?” You asked, usually when you asked a direct question Jason would answer with sarcasm, or an answer too vague. You wondered if he was being mysterious on purpose, or if he really was just that bad at opening up.

“Yeah. I got six.”

You thought he was being sarcastic again, but Jason has a very specific tone and face he used when he was messing with you. He did not have it this time.

“Christ — Were you parents rabbits !?”

That got you a laugh from Jason. Not a full one, but it was real. A good, solid ‘Ha’.

“No. I was adopted.”

Your brows raised, “Adopted ?”

Jason finished putting his piles of books into the crate and stood up. You followed close behind, and when you got back to the desk, Jason had somehow ended up on the wrong side. Not wrong, just not the side he usually went. He went a bit stiff when he noticed.

He offered to move. You told him too quickly that he was okay. But he relaxed, and he stayed. He pulled a stool up next to yours, old and wobbly, not built for someone like Jason. When he sat on it it creaked a bit, but held.

He unpacked the lunch he brought. Two containers of rice, with shredded chicken and roasted vegetables. The content of his container had a sauce over it. Yours did not. He slid a much smaller metal container across the counter towards you, along with a fork.

“Sauce is spicy. Dunno how you feel about that, so I put yours on the side.” He explained.

“Oh …” Another brilliant response.

You popped open the container, and out of instinct brought it up towards your nose to smell it. It smelled warm, with something a little spicy that hit the back of your nose. “It smells good” You said, mostly to yourself.

Jason hummed around a mouthful of food. You stirred the contents up before you began eating.

“So … Adopted.” You said, a few bites in. You were cautious, testing the waters. Just to see if he’d give you something more.

To your surprise, he nodded. “Yeah. Grew up in Crime Alley.”

You had heard of it, of course. Everyone who didn’t live under a rock had. It carried stories like its own weather forecast. People usually mentioned it in lowered voices, like the Earth might open up under them if it heard them mention it. But Jason had said it so casually, the way someone might tell you where they went to middle school.

“Oh.” You hated yourself immediately for only saying that

“It’s really not as dramatic as people make it sound.” He shrugged. “Anyways. Parents left the picture, was on the streets for a bit, was adopted later by some rich guy.”

“Some rich guy ?” You repeated

“Yeah.”

“That’s probably the least descriptive adoption story I’ve ever heard.” You teased

“Well, he was rich and he was a guy.”

“Did he find you in a basket by the river ?” You asked, half teasing.

“No. He caught me tryin’ to steal his tires.”

That seemed more surprising to you than the river option. “His tires ?”

Jason nodded “Yeah. I mean, dude had this fancy, expensive ass car just parked there. I couldn’t drive, or I’d have stolen the whole car, but I figured I could get something for the tire.”

“Did you bite him ?” You asked. You weren’t sure why. But the possibility did not seem too far off.

Jason laughed, “No. I told him not to bully me, and then he adopted me.”

“Just like that ?”

“Just like that. Like a damn stray dog.”

That made you laugh, and Jaosn loosened up.

“His name’s Bruce,” He told you after a second “Not a bad guy.”

The way he said it maybe made you think that somewhere along the lines somebody had accused Bruce of being a bad guy. Or maybe it was Jason who had done it, and regretted it later.

“Did he adopt all of your siblings too ?” You asked

“Most. Youngest is his bio kid.”

You nodded, “That makes sense. Are you the oldest ?”

“Third oldest, but second adopted.” He answered. “Got an older brother, an older sister – she’s not older by much though. A younger sister, and three younger brothers.”

“How did anyone remember any birthdays in that house ?” You asked

“Alfred.”

“Who’s Alfred ?”

Jason pressed his lips together, “The butler” He mumbled

“Butler ?” You repeated

“I know. I know.”

“Jason. You have a butler ?”

“Had. Have. Sorta. It’s a whole thing.”

“You were adopted by a rich guy with a butler ?” You didn’t really need the clarification. But you were having trouble wrapping your head around the whole idea.

“Yes. It was not normal.” He said, a little too quick “And Alfred was more family than butler. Honestly.”

You nodded. That didn’t change the shape much, but enough that it didn’t sit so wrong between you. “So. Todd. Is that rich dad’s last name ?”

Jason shook his head. “No. No, by the time I was adopted I was old enough to you know, understand. That was already my name. He didn’t change it. I never really wanted him to either. So it all worked out.”

You gave a slow nod.

Jason went on, explaining little bits and pieces about each of his siblings. About how Dick will always let you talk to him, and never mention the fact that he can’t possibly hold anything else. And how Tim was too smart and it was probably bad for his health. And how Damian stopped by his apartment sometimes on his walk home from school.

It was lovely to hear him talk about them, even when he teased them, even when he complained about little things they did, there was affection woven through every word.

“What about Bruce ?” You asked, before you could think too much about it.

Jason did not fully close himself off, but you could tell the blinds lowered a bit.

“You don’t have to answer” You told him

He just nodded, looking down at his half eaten container of food “We’re uh … not as close as we used to be. Not estranged estranged. Just semi-estranged ? whatever the hell that means”

“I think that means holidays are awkward.”

He gave a short laugh “That’s one way to put it.”

“So what happened ?” The question was gentle, but you regretted it the second it left you.

“We just disagreed about stuff.” He glanced up at you, like he was expecting you to push. When you didn’t, something in him eased and he went on on his own. “He’s not a bad guy. He wasn’t even that bad of a dad. He’s just rough, in his own way. Has all this money. He provides. Roof over your head, food on your table, clothes on your back.”

He paused a moment

“He’s not bad.” He kept insisting that “He just doesn’t really get that that’s not how everyone needs to be loved all the time.”

You figured maybe it wasn’t appropriate to ask a man you’ve only known a few months how he needs to be loved. So instead you asked, “Do you still see him ?”

Jason answered, “Sometimes.”

“And your siblings ?”

“All the time.”

“Sounds like love.” You said

Jason smiled a bit, taking a deep breath before taking another bite of his lunch, then another, keeping himself busy with eating. He didn’t seem too upset, and you weren’t too worried that you had pushed too far. Had Jason not wanted to talk about it, he wouldn’t have talked about it.

The aircon hummed around you, outside a few streets down someone honked their car horn, and a maybe-customer passed by, glanced in through the window, and continued walking.

And Jason sat behind the counter with you, his knee almost touching yours.

The almostness became part of this routine too. His hand would almost brush yours when he passed you food, or a drink, or a napkin. Your shoulder almost touched his arm when you reached for the higher shelves. He almost laughed too loud before catching himself. You almost asked if he would come by tomorrow, but didn’t.

By the end of the month he no longer asked for permission to come in. He would walk right through the front door, nod to the bell above it like he had reached a personal and professional understanding of each other, and walk himself straight behind the counter. Unless there was a customer.

He almost always came by with lunch, the conversation was always easy slipping between customers, he stayed on his stool ( because it was his now ) when you wandered the store to help a customer find a book, or search for one you wanted to show him.

On a slower day, in the middle of an unusually cool week for summer, Jason had walked in and didn’t make his way directly to the counter. He leaned against the doorframe, and you thought maybe you did something wrong. You stared at him for a moment from behind the desk, squinting both from the light behind him and in an attempt to maybe read his mind if you tried hard enough.

“Do you have plans after work ?” He asked

You nearly choked on your own saliva “Plans ?”

“Yeah. Plans.”

“Like … Plans plans ?”

“Are there different levels of plans ?” He asked

“Yes …” You felt stupid

But Jason smiled and you felt significantly less stupid.

“So. Plans ? Of any level. Do you have them ?”

You shook your head, “No. No plans … Why ?”

He shrugged, but it was stiff. “There’s a food truck thing in an empty lot a few blocks over they do a few Fridays at the end of the month.” He answered, “Thought you might like it.”

“With you ?” You asked

“Yeah,” He said “With me.”

You would be lying if you said you hadn’t imagined Jason asking you out. In embarrassing flashes of thoughts when you were bored, or tired, or walking around. You imagined confidence, some teasing probably. Something easy, something a guy like him should be good at.

Instead he looked a little nervous.

“I’d like that.” You said

“Yeah ?” He asked

“Yeah” You nodded.

He smiled. “Cool … Cool.” Then his ears went pink, and his eyes widened a bit “Not like a date. It’s not a date. Roy’s gonna be there too. Some other people. Not a date.”

You almost waited for him to say it wasn’t a date again before you giggled

“Right. Of course. I never would have thought otherwise.”

It was a lie. You absolutely did think otherwise.

“That still cool ?” He asked

You smiled at him. “Yeah. That’s still cool.”

He came in on the first really hot day of the summer, the day that the air conditioner in your bookstore finally died. It didn't go quickly or quietly either. It died loud and dramatic, with a clunk that sounded haunted, and a rattling that reminded you of when you put buttons in metal cans to shake around as a kid.

There was one final gust of lukewarm air and dust before it went quiet. And then it got hot. By noon the whole bookstore felt like a cramped oven. You had propped the door open with a box of clearance cookbooks, but the air outside wasn't much better either.

Today had been a busier one, you'd sold three romance novels, two mysteries, a whole box of children's books, and a used copy of Jane Eyre that had three coffee stains on the first page. You had also made a call to your manager, who half heartedly promised she would call the repair guy. Which meant she might call the repair guy.

Until then, you were on your own. Hair pushed away from your forehead because you couldn't stand the feeling of it sticking to the sweat gathering on your temples, and the pathetic fan that sat on the front desk pointed directly at you as you stuck price stickers to the backs of new books.

That was when he came in.

He stopped just inside the door, one hand still on the handle, and stared at the narrow aisle of tall shelves like they'd been arranged specifically with his inconvenience in mind.

He cleared his throat, "Hotter in here than it is outside." His voice was kinder than you expected it to be.

It took you far too long to say something, and when you finally did ask "Do you need help ?" Your voice sounded embarrassingly small.

His eyes snapped towards you, green and sharp and startling.

And for a very stupid second all your brain could come up with was: Large man.

Followed by an equally unhelpful: Very large man

He stepped further inside, looking around the shop, at the shelves bending under the weight of the books on them, at the sun-faded paperbacks in a wooden crate near the door, and the handwritten sign taped to the desk that read :: WE ACCEPT TRADES !! BUY BOOKS WITH BOOKS

"I'm just killing time." He answered, "Waiting for a friend."

“Is your friend late ?” You asked, unable to resist the urge to be a bit nosey as you pressed another sticker to the back of another book.

“Friend’s always late”

You replied with a hum, and another sticker pressed to a new book as the man wandered closer to the front display, pretending to inspect it. You could tell he was pretending because his eyes moved over the books too quickly to properly read the titles, even for someone who might read fast.

It was the type of browsing you’d seen plenty of times before, people who came in for reasons that weren’t shopping but were trying to avoid looking awkward. You wondered when people would realize they weren’t required to make a purchase to be here. Maybe you should make a sign for that too.

People came in for all sorts of reasons that had nothing to do with the books. They came in to cool off, hide from rain, wait out bad dates, use the restroom, pretend to look thoughtful to impress someone, ask if you bought old encyclopedias ( which you did ).

This man looked like he had meant to stay near the door and suddenly thought he was expected to do something. He moved through the shops with careful steps, one hand trailing alongside him near the shelves, but not quite touching them. He scanned the spines with more attention than he did the font display, lingering over titles and authors now. 

Dickens. Shelley. The Brontë Sisters.

You let out a thoughtful little hum as you watched him wander. So he wasn’t just pretending then.

You watched him stop, tip his head, and slide out a half fallen apart paperback copy of The Count of Monte Cristo. You really did try your best to not grin, but it was always so satisfying to see which books betrayed people.

He flipped it over to read the back, and fanned through the pages with his thumb. The spine was broken, the cover was creased with the corners torn off, and a note written in pencil along the inside of the cover spoiled the ending. But in a way that would only be a spoiler if you had already read the book.

The man stared at it for a moment. Then he laughed so hard he snorted.

You looked back down at the front desk before he could catch you watching.

The afternoon moved on too slow and too hot. The visitor had settled himself in the reading nook tucked between the poetry and the classics, in one of the mismatched chairs under the crooked floor lamp. He had chosen the chair upholstered in green, with a single patch of floral fabric sewn into the left arm.

You couldn’t help but watch him again. The first thing you noticed this time was that he did not read like somebody who was just passing time. He did not flip aimlessly through the pages, or check his phone every other minute. He sat with his elbows on his knees, book held carefully, brow furrowed as his thumb moved along the margins.

The second thing you noticed was how inconvenient it was that you kept noticing him. You had work to do. But you didn’t want to work when it was so hot. And it wasn’t like the work would be passed on to someone else, so leaving it unfinished would only be a problem. A future-you problem. Present-you was currently far too interested in a complete stranger.

There was a moment where his phone buzzed, and he looked away from the book to check it. That’s when you took your chance to start a conversation again.

“Most people who read to pass the time would pick something shorter.” You said

He glanced up at you, before glancing back at the book. “I’ve read it before.”

“Really ? Recently ?” You asked, trying not to sound too surprised

“A couple years ago.”

“And you chose it again ?”

He turned his attention back to the page, “It was there”

The answer seemed too simple, you wanted to question it. But I didn't.

“That copy came in yesterday,” You said instead “Someone wrote in it”

“I saw that”

“People either really hate the notes in books, or love them.”

“Yeah ? What about you ?”

You paused, the fan on the desk hummed between you like an angry swarm of bees.

“I like them,” You answered, “Usually. Not when they’re distracting. Someone people want to annotate but don’t actually know how — which makes sense, I don’t think I was ever actually taught how to annotate. I just sorta learned it on my own. But I like the little notes people leave, or when they write their name and the date they finished the book on the cover. Or when they leave receipts, or flowers, or bookmarks in the pages. I like that —”

He was listening like he was actually interested, which made you uncomfortably aware of your own voice. You shrugged, then your shoulders pulled in a half failed attempt to make yourself a little smaller. “That’s kinda the point of used books though. They come with that stuff.”

He only answered with a nod, but didn’t turn back to his book. The silence was starting to make you feel uneasy.

“So, your friend. What are you waiting for ?” You asked

“He’s bringin’ me a part for a truck” He answered, leaning back in the green chair.

“Oh. Do you work at the shop down the street ?” You asked

“Own it.”

Before you could say anything else, the bell above the door rang again. A woman came in and asked if you had any self help books that didn’t feel condescending. You brought her to the proper section, where she explored the shelves for a bit before buying a slim book on meditation, and a murder mystery.

By the time she left again, the man was gone from the chair. For one sinking second you thought maybe he had slipped out while you were helping the other customer. Then you heard movement in the classics aisle.

You turned the corner and found him crouched in front of the lower shelves, The Count of Monte Cristo balanced on one knee as he looked across the shelves. Even in this position he still felt enormous, though not as intimidating as he did when he first walked in.

“Need help ?” You asked

He looked up. From this angle, with the light from the front windows spilling in in dusty stripes you could see just how green his eyes were. It made your stomach twist in a way that your brain briefly registered as being sick before going uselessly blank.

“Dostoevsky ?” He asked, “Been lookin’ but you don’t have these in … any order”

You let out a nervous chuckle, wringing your hands. “Yeahhh … We sorta have a free-for-all system. It makes it more fun ?” You weren’t sure why you said it like you were asking him a question. You quickly shook your head, forcing your brain to return from wherever it had fled to. “But uh, Dostoevsky should be on the top shelf actually.”

“Of course it is.”

“Do you want me to grab something ?”

He stood before you could finish the sentence. And there it was again. The size of him. The way he carefully held himself back from crowding you despite the two of you standing in the same, painfully narrow space.

“I’ve got it.” He said, reaching up and scanning the spines. His shirt pulled across his back and you found yourself suddenly very interested in the cart of books beside you.

“Looking for a specific one ?” You asked.

“The Brothers Karamazov ?” 

“We have two copies of that one. The nice one, and the ugly one.”

“Yeah ?” He asked, hand pausing over the shelf “What makes the ugly one ugly ?”

“Someone spilled tea on it.”

“And you know for sure that it’s tea ?”

You nodded. You did know for sure it was tea, because it was you who had spilled your tea on it. Months ago ! And you used the electric hand dryer in the bathroom to dry the pages, but it still left them stained and warped. But that gave it character !

He pulled the ‘ugly’ copy down first, turning it over in his hands a few times.

“There’s a nice one —” You said, for some reason worried the state of the book would disappoint him.

But he just shrugged, “Poor bastard,”

“The book ? Or Dostoevsky ?”

“The book.” He answered, tucking the messed up copy into his arm next to the other.

You decided right then and there that the books on the lowest shelf needed to be straightened, and crouched down to fix the books that were already neat. Before it could become clear you were only trying to distract yourself from staring at him you stood up again. A little too fast, nearly clipping your shoulder on the shelf.

His free hand came out, not touching, just hovering there between you and the shelf.

“You okay ?”

You nodded, too quick, “Fine.”

His hand lowered, and you did your best to pretend not to notice now gentle and instinctive the almost touch had been.

He looked back to the books in his hands, “How much for the ugly copy ?”

“Three dollars."

“And the nice one ?”

“Five”

He considered your answer.

“Have you read that one before too ?” You asked

His eyes flicked towards you, “Yeah.”

“So you don’t need it either ?”

“Didn’t say I needed it.”

“That’s not usually how shopping works.”

“It’s not ?” He asked, rhetorical but you didn’t process that in time.

“No. Not most of the time.”

He looked down at the stained copy again, and the corner of his mouth lifted. “I’ll take the ugly one.”

You stared at him. He stared back. Then you laughed. “Alright.”

He adjusted the books under his arm and followed you back to the front counter. He set the copies of The Brothers Karamazov and The Count of Monte Cristo next to the register.

“You getting Monte Cristo too ?” you asked

He looked down, and for a moment you expected him to put it back. It would make sense, he had only come in to kill time, escape the heat, and wait for his friend to bring a part for a truck. He was probably busy, probably only meant to sit in the store for a few minutes and leave once his friend showed up with what he needed.

Instead, he tapped the cover with one finger. “This one too.”

“But you’ve read that one already.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t read it again.”

You couldn’t argue with that, so you rang him up. The register made its familiar clicking noises as you slid the books carefully into a brown paper bag. He paid in cash, which for no real reason surprised you. A twenty from a worn leather wallet. When you handed him his change, your fingertips brushed against his palm. Barely, and for less than a second. Still, it was enough that you noticed the warmth of him, enough that his gaze dropped to your hand.

Then his phone buzzed again. He pulled it from his pocket, and a few swipes later his shoulders dropped with relief. “Friend’s back at the shop, he’s got my part.”

You gave him a little nod, “Your total was eight ten, by the way. Your receipt’s in the bag.”

“Thanks,” It came out quieter than the rest of him.

He didn’t make a move to leave yet, and for a second the noise of the street seemed to quiet down, the shop felt like it was holding its breath, or maybe it was just you that was. And he stood there, bag in his hand. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but couldn't figure out what it was, or at least couldn’t figure out how to say it.

“Good luck with the part,” You finally said, breaking the silence

His brows drew together, “What ?”

“The part …” You repeated “That your friend brought for you.”

“Oh. Oh yeah.” He shifted the bag in his hand, “Thanks.”

He lingered again.

“Name’s Jason, by the way.”

It took you a moment too long to process that, but once you gave him your name he nodded with a small promise to not forget it before finally leaving the store. The door shut behind him, and the bell settled leaving you in almost silence. You watched through the front window until he was far enough down the street you couldn’t see him anymore. But still, you stayed staring at the door.

You didn’t really expect him to come back. People came in all the time. Strangers, regulars, tourists who read the wrong map and though the store was still the business it had been before it became a bookstore, college students trying to snag textbooks for a lower price. Sometimes someone interesting would come in, sometimes people would wander and leave with nothing. That was how it was, the store was a place of brief intersections.

People came in. And then they left.

The next day the repair man had not shown up, and the aircon had still not been fixed. By the afternoon you had given up hope on maintenance ever showing up, and taped a handwritten sign to the front window.

AIRCON BROKEN. THIS IS NOT THE PLACE TO TAKE SHELTER. THE BOOKS ARE SUFFERING AND SO AM I.

It was more to entertain yourself than anything, and assumed nobody would actually pay much attention to it at all. You were halfway through rearranging the horror shelf when the bell jingled.

“Sign’s good,” a familiar voice said

You looked up from your spot on the floor.

Jason stood in the doorway, one hand braced on the frame. Your heart did a very stupid thing before trying to pretend that it had not.

“You came back.” You said, sounding a little too happy “I mean — Most people don’t come back the next day”

“Air conditioning at the shop’s busted too. Figured I’d stop by to compare tragedies”

“And ?” You asked

Jason looked around the bookstore before turning back to you, “You’re definitely winning. We’ve got better fans. More of ‘em too”

“Do I get a prize ?”

He reached into the back of his jeans and pulled up the battered copy of The Count of Monte Cristo.

For a second your heart dropped. “Did you not like it ?” You asked

“Loved it.” He answered, “But the binding is loose.”

Your eyes narrowed a bit, “The binding was loose when you bought it,” You said. You knew because you had sold it to him for a dollar less than what the sticker on the back said because of it.

“Yeah. I know.”

“And you bought it anyway.” You reminded him

“Yeah. I know," he repeated.

Your head tilted to the side, “You came back to report preexisting damage ? That you already knew about ? When you bought it ?”

“Thought you should know” He answered with a grin

There was a distant clang of metal from his shop down the street, followed by a much louder curse. Maybe a customer, maybe Jason’s friend. Either way, Jason didn’t even flinch.

You rested your hands on your knees, “Soo, did ya wanna exchange it ?”

“No.”

“Return it ?” You didn’t usually do those, but you were more than willing to make an exception for him.

“No.”

“Complain ?”

“Well if I’m allowed” He answered

You smiled “You’ll have to take a number and wait your turn. Aircons first, and she’s got a lot to say.”

“Yeah ? I might know a guy”

“A guy”

“I fix cars, not air conditioners.”

“Do you know a professional guy ?”

“I know a guy with a whole lotta tools.”

“Those things are not the same.”

Jason considered that for a moment. “True. But he also owes me a whole lotta favors. Fixed his car for next to nothin’ last week”

You looked at the paperback in his hand, the one he had brought back for no apparent reason. Then you looked back at him. He seemed very interested in the single shelf of staff picks, the one that you switched out every week or so with whatever recent reads had been your favorites.

A stupid amount of warmth bloomed under your ribs, more than you could blame on the heat and poor ventilation.

“Well,” You said, turning back towards the shelf. “You may as well browse. Since you came all this way to make your binding complaint.”

“May as well” He agreed, walking towards the aisle of classics again, slow enough that it did not initially seem like he had been planning that all along.

Over the next twenty minutes he kept finding reasons to ask you questions.

First about whether you had any Raymond Chandler. You told him you did, but he would have to find him on his own.

Then if the old ladder in the back was safe. You said absolutely not.

Then he asked why the store smelled like custard and vanilla. You told him it was the candles and the ghost. To which he nodded, as if that was a perfectly reasonable explanation.

Before leaving he bought a hardcover copy of The Big Sleep with all the Administrative pages torn out and a tulip shaped bookmark from the ceramic cup by the register.

He did not need either of them. You both knew that. Neither of you said a word about it.

CH. 01 — Out of Print

Jason owns the mechanic shop down the street from the used bookstore where you work. He wanders in one day waiting for his friend Roy to drop off a part for his current project. You think he's just killing time, Jason says he's bored and staying out of the heat. Neither of you expected him to buy a paperback he clearly doesn't need, and keep finding reasons to come back.

CH. 02 — Lunch Breaks

Jason starts spending his lunch breaks at your bookstore. Well, first he starts eating near the store, outside on the curb, close enough you can see him through the front windows. He slowly moves closer, until eventually he's eating leaning against the doorway, just inside inside, until he's eating sat behind the counter with you. He says it's because your shop is quieter than his garage, which may be true, but he always brings enough food for two.

CH. 03 — Mutual Favors

Your car starts making a noise that sounds like Hell itself is speaking to you through your breaks, and Jason insists on checking it. You try and pay him, he refuses to even give you a number. You swear you're going to do something to repay him, which leads to the two of you entering a dance of traded favors.

more tba . . .

You met Jason at the library. You went there to read and to find a quiet place to hang out after school. Jason was there a few days each week, constantly exchanging old books out for new ones. You were only 14, having just started high school. Though lots of people attended Gotham High you couldn’t seem to place him. You thought he may be new to town, maybe moved here from Blüdhaven or Metropolis. Each time he came to the library you took silent notice of him. You couldn’t help yourself, you were young and he seemed around your age and he was attractive, you couldn’t lie. This was your first real crush. 

He easily noticed your constant staring. It was hard to ignore when a young pretty girl was making extreme eye contact with him from across the library with her jaw slightly open. He hated to admit it but he started reading his books faster just so he could stop by the library more frequently to see you. Even though Bruce had nearly every book in the world, he couldn’t break the habit of using the library. He figured you attended Gotham High, as you were always here right when school got out. Bruce never put him into any school, deciding that he could teach him enough about life. He loved being Robin, the last two years with Bruce were the best years of his life. 

You couldn’t believe it, the pretty boy was walking over to you. Your mind started racing to all the possibilities on why he would be walking this way. You were sitting in the fantasy section, it was your favorite genre. You noticed he always stuck by the classic section, so he couldn’t be walking over here for a book. Right? He was probably your age so maybe he’s still exploring genres. But no, you only ever see him pick classic books. Maybe he was going to meet up with a friend? You looked around, nope, you were the only one in this section. He’s almost right in front of you and you quickly avoid any eye contact and focus on the book in front of you, your eyes going over the same sentences over and over. 

“Hi. I’m Jason.” 

You look up, feeling heat rush up into your cheeks. You look at his face, your first time seeing it up close. “Hi,” being the only thing you can mutter out. Realizing he told you his name and you never told him yours, you quickly mutter it out in a series of stutters. He repeats your name to himself. 

“It’s nice to meet you. What book are you reading?”

“Oh, just some stupid fantasy book. About dragons or something,” your voice goes down in volume by the end of your sentence. The red on your cheeks have no sign of leaving and suddenly you feel embarrassed by the fact that you’re reading a book about dragons. 

“That’s cool, I love dragons!” 

“Really?” you feel a smile start to rise up on your cheeks and you finally look at his face for the second time. 

The next few weeks, each time he comes to the library he walks over to sit with you. It started out as just fifteen minutes and now he’s sitting with you for hours. You started arriving home later and later each night, though you know your parents don’t mind, they never seem to care about anything anymore, you can’t actually remember the last time that you saw them. After being whisper-yelled at by the librarian for talking too loud or laughing too loud, the two of you started to write notes to each other. They were your own private conversations, absolutely no one else in the library has any idea what you two are always giggling about. 

One day he slides you a folded note. When you open it, it says: 

Do you want to get ice cream with me tonight? 

▢ yes 

▢ no

You quickly mark your answer, fold it back up, and slide it over to him. When he opens it you notice a big smile creeping up on his face before he looks at you. You see the silent question in his eyes. Now? You nod, pack up your stuff, and follow him out of the library to a small ice cream truck down the street. He orders a strawberry cone with sprinkles while you get a hot fudge sundae. He pays for both of your ice creams, though you do try to fight him on it and eventually give up when you realize you didn’t have your wallet with you. 

“I promise I’ll pay you back. Or pay for your ice cream next time?”

“You don’t have to, it’s my treat. And next time I’ll still be paying.” 

After hearing that he would also want another hang out outside of the library you feel your cheeks heat up and a small smile spreads across your cheeks. You both enjoy your ice cream while sitting on a small park bench that the two of you found. You sit there and talk to each other until the sun goes down. He looks at his watch, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, I have to go. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

You’re surprised, usually it’s you that has to leave first, “Yeah! I’ll see you tomorrow, good night!” Before he leaves he gives you a quick hug and then runs off. 

This goes on for more weeks. Almost everyday he slides you a note asking if you wanted to go somewhere. Sometimes it’s food and sometimes it’s just a long walk around a park. Each time though you feel like you’re growing closer and closer to him. 

One day, when he slides you a note he seems more nervous than normal. When you open it, you see a different kind of question: Can I be your boyfriend?

▢ yes 

▢ no

You immediately blush, looking up at him to see him run his hand over the back of his neck anxiously. You pick up your pen, eagerly writing a big X in the box by yes, and slide the note back over to him. You watch as he quickly unfolds it and looks up at you in a big smile before getting up and giving you a big hug, the biggest one he’s ever given you. 

A few more weeks pass, more dates pass, and you have your first kiss. It was awkward but at least you were awkward together. He invited you over to his house, to meet his dad and his older brother. Instead of walking to his house like you thought, a car pulls up in front of the library to pick the both of you up. You look at him nervously before you see him give you a quick nod of reassurance. 

If you thought the private car was anything, the mansion that you saw in front of you was even greater. You look over at Jason, “Who is your family?” 

“Um. My dad, my adoptive dad I mean, is Bruce. Bruce Wayne.” 

You look at him in shock. You never got a hint of a spoiled rich boy in him, just a joyful kid who never seemed to complain about anything. He opens the door and helps you out before walking you into the manor, where you see in front of you The Bruce Wayne. You feel your throat almost close up due to the nerves. 

“Hi Mr. Wayne, it’s nice to meet you,” you somehow manage to mumble out. 

“Just Bruce, it is very good to meet you, Jason has told us lots about you.” 

You meet Richard, or Dick as he insisted, and Alfred, the butler. They were all so welcoming, much more than your own family. Thinking about that makes you dread having to bring Jason over to meet your parents. You know they’ll eventually find out. Pushing that thought away you focus on the tiramisu in front of you. This is some of the best food you’ve had in so long, it’s been ages since you last had a home cooked meal.

The meal finishes up and Jason brings you up to his room to hang out for a little bit before you eventually have to return home. There, you continue your tradition of passing notes to each other. While he folds up one of his you see the same nervousness on his face that was there weeks ago when he asked if he could be your boyfriend. 

You open it up and read: 

i love you :)

You look up at him with a big smile on your face, “I love you too.” 

--- 

That was three years ago. Just three months after you got that note from Jason you saw Bruce Wayne walking into the library, straight towards you. He invited you to the manor that night and told you the news. Jason was dead. Those notes were all you had left of him. 

Today is your 18th birthday. You had the appointment made two months ago. Since that night, you, crying in Bruce Wayne’s manor, on his shoulder while Dick Grayson rubbed your back, you knew there would be no one else in this world for you. Jason was the only person that seemed to breathe life into you. 

You were getting the last note he left you tattooed on the inside of your wrist, so you could look down at it every time you missed him. Even though you were only 14, it was the only love you had ever known and you still cry almost every day over it. 

It didn’t hurt like you thought it did, though you didn’t expect it to. He had small handwriting and it only took the artist 15 minutes to complete it. 

--- 

You started college, studying English in hopes to maybe become a teacher, or a professor if you find yourself having the time or money.

There’s a new vigilante in Gotham. It's no crazy news, there seems to be a new one nearly every year. You’re not complaining, Gotham needs it with the amount of crime you see every single day here. Though this one seems different. Normally all the vigilantes in Gotham seem to be working with Batman, though this one seems to have absolutely no interest in him. 

You haven’t had a run in with him yet but most people have said he is nothing like any other vigilantes. He doesn’t care about Batman’s rules. 

You’re walking back to your apartment after your night class. It is the only one that could fit in your crammed schedule, you didn’t want to walk home in the dark three nights a week but you really had no other choice. And of course you just had to live in crime alley. It is the only area you can afford. Being in university doesn’t leave you with a whole lot of spending money. 

Usually you can avoid any creeps on your way back home but this night the guy doesn’t seem to let up and even tried to grab at your bag. You swing around, yelling at him, “Get away you creep!” He doesn’t seem to like that though and reaches for you again, even trying to swing at you. You bring your arms out to guard your face but no contact is made. 

You bring your arms down and open your eyes to see a mysterious tall figure in a red helmet beating up the guy. Must be the new vigilante, you think. You back up a little more, watching the scene in front of you. When the masked figure seems to be done he turns around and looks at you, really looks at you, making you feel slightly uncomfortable. 

“Thanks,” you mutter out before turning around and walking the rest of the way to your apartment. 

---

He couldn’t believe it, you were still in Gotham and living in crime alley no less. He thought you would’ve left this stupid town by now but you were always so stubborn. He couldn’t help himself, the next few weeks he found himself watching your apartment from a rooftop, watching as you left every morning and came home every night to be sure you were safe. He wasn’t going to let anything happen to you. 

He knew that you thought he was dead, there was no reason for you to think any differently. He didn’t expect to see you and he didn’t expect to be lost in your eyes all over again like he was five years ago. He never forgot about you, you were his first love, his only love. He wanted to talk to you again but he didn’t know how, he’s supposed to be dead and that’s exactly what he thought. How would he explain himself to you? I died, got thrown into a massive glowing green pit and then trained with assassins and now I’m here, back in Gotham. Surprise!

No, you would think he lost his mind, probably calling the police thinking he was having an identity crisis and pretending to be your dead boyfriend from five years ago. Technically he still is your boyfriend, you never broke up with him so…

--- 

He decided to knock on your door, as Jason. Either he would scare you or you would let him in. It didn’t hurt to try. 

You were sitting on your floor, leaning against your couch, working on your essay for one of your classes. You’ve been rewriting the same paragraph over and over again, never seeming to get it right. You heard a knock on your door, it was odd, you never made any friends in your classes and you’ve never talked to your neighbors. You walk over and look into the peephole, seeing a tall man in a leather jacket and jeans. He had black hair with a white streak in the front. His head was down so you couldn’t see his face. You looked back over him one more time, seeing no weapons on him, you cracked  the door open slightly, your hand leaned against the door frame, wrist pointing out into the hallway. 

“Hello?” you question. 

He finally brings his head up and you get a good look at his face. You pause, breath catching as you make out the features. He looks exactly like Jason did, though older and with more scars and that white streak in his hair. No, it’s not him, he’s dead. You remind yourself. You find your breath again, “Sorry, you just… look like someone I used to know.” 

His eyes don't look at you though. You follow his gaze to your wrist, the one with the tattoo. His mouth opens slightly and you see some tears welling up in his eyes. You bring your hand down, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. He finally looks at you, tears falling down his cheeks as he whispers your name. 

You’re confused, not sure who this man is but he looks too much like Jason for you to handle right now. “Sorry, you must have the wrong person,” you say before gently shutting the door, turning around, and leaning against it before you fall to the ground, crying over the same boy that you have been for five years.

You were unsure if Jason was a paranoid freak or an incredibly intelligent yet scarred person. On your third date, he started muttering about self-defense tips. He was hot enough that you ignored it, waving him off. By the time you were together, he was adamant about you taking his advice. He taught you how to shoot a gun and helped you pick out your own handgun. Before you got your license, he bought you a taser and told you to keep it on you. You understood Gotham was a dangerous city, but he was a bit overprotective. 

 When you finally moved in together, Jason spent the first hour showing you where he would be hiding every weapon imaginable. You were starting to worry that he was obsessive. He kept a gun in the drawer under his sex toy drawer. It’s a bit sadistic. He made it clear that you would not touch these areas unless you thought you were in danger. How kind. Baseball bat next to the front door, knives in the bathroom, and his gun in the bedroom. You remembered he mentioned hiding something in one of his potted plants, but you couldn’t remember what it was. 

 You didn’t picture yourself ever actually having to rely on them, until today. 

 You locked the door behind yourself as you dropped your keys into the bowl. They clattered against something else. Jason had dropped his keys in the bowl; he must be home. You took your shoes off, hobbling off the last one. 

 “Jason!” You called, not bothering to look around as you went directly to the bedroom. You could hear the shower running on the other side of the apartment. He usually took showers after you got home, but it wasn’t far from unusual. You yanked your uniform off, tossing it into a pile on the floor. You yanked open one of the dresser drawers, unfolding a T-shirt. You heard the water in the bathroom shut off. You dug into the drawer for pants as you hung your head over the edge of the doorway. 

 “Jay?” You asked. You heard him drop a soap bottle in the bathroom. It clattered rather loudly before he cursed. You snorted as you stepped into the pants. You jumped into them as you walked into the living room. You readjusted the string, tying it into bunny ears. 

 “You won’t believe who I ran into getting coffee this morning!” You laughed, giddy to see Jason again. From morning to evening was far too long a wait. You trudged to the bathroom, glaring at the open window. You told him plenty of times how hypocritical it was to be so far up your ass about being safe just to leave the windows open. Jason always had something to say about him being the thing people should be scared of in the night. You always had something to say about him being a cringelord.    “I’ll give you three guesses.” You called as you pushed open the bathroom door. You were expecting your boyfriend leaned over the edge of the sink. Your stomach dropped when a stranger was standing in the middle of your bathroom with your robe wrapped around him. You let out a startled yelp. He was ripped to hell and back, with black curls dripping onto his forehead. He glanced up at you, his eyebrows furrowing. In his hand was your shampoo. He had striking blue eyes. 

 Ice pulsed through your bloodstreams, making your heart skip a beat. An unknown man was in your house. You quickly slammed the door, rushing back into the bedroom. You pulled open the bedside drawer, grumbling as you lifted Jason’s gun. Oh, of course, he got it especially made with red swirls on the sides. Why on earth did you ever entertain the idea of dating him? You saw a flash of his arms in your head and rolled your eyes at your own subconscious. Jason was totally getting torn to shreds by you when he got home. Of course, his dumbass left the window open, and the one time he's not at home, a stranger breaks in. 

 You stood in the bedroom doorway, pointing the gun ahead of you at the bathroom. The man slipped out of the room, still wrapped in your robe, holding your shampoo. He kept his eyes on the floor as he stepped out. 

 “Who are you?” You asked, your tone hard. Just like Jason told you. Take up space, hold your ground. The man looked up, letting out a scream at the sight of the gun in your hands. He flung his hands up towards his head. 

 “Jesus fucking Christ!” He yelled, taking a step away from you until he was pressed to the wall. 

 “Doesn’t sound like your name.” You mumbled. “Sounds rather familiar.” The man’s mouth dropped open. 

 “My name?” The man squeaked, pressing the back of his hands to the wall. “Just put the gun down.” He begged. You shook your head. 

 “You’re in my home. In my robe. In my bathroom. Using my shampoo. And you expect me to put my gun down?” It was a rhetorical question. You expected far too much of him to understand that, apparently. 

 “Well, I personally believe all guns are unsafe. I think murder, even if used on bad people, is wrong. I don’t think the death penalty is very-” 

 “Shut up.” You said. He didn’t seem to care what you told him. 

 “And I thought this robe was Jason’s. We must’ve popped into the wrong apartment-” The man grumbled, still keeping his hands by his face. You narrowed your eyes at him. 

 “Jason?” You repeated. This man knew your boyfriend? You’ve already met everyone Jason knows. You. Case closed. The man raised a brow at you. 

 “Yeah, Jason Todd. You’ve met?” He seemed just as shocked as you that Jason knew other people. 

 “We’ve fucked so yes, I’ve ran into him a couple of times.” You snarked, snarling at him. His eyebrows shot up before he frowned. 

 “He doesn’t keep me updated on his relationships. I never know if he’s dating or not. How long have you been together?” He asked. You were unsure if you should tell him. Would Jason? No. 

 “Who are you?” You repeated. The man started up, giggling at himself. 

 “Where are my manners? Hi, I’m Dick, I’m Jason’s older brother.” He moved to walk across the room, holding his hand out for a handshake. You pressed your finger into the safety, the click bringing his attention back to the gun in your hands. He startled away from you, sucking in a gasp. 

 “Fucking hell.” He grumbled,  stepping away from you again. He turned around as he walked further from you. You hummed disapprovingly. Jason had a conniption every time you were practicing and turned your back on him. Absolutely never turn your back on someone dangerous. 

 “Your name is not Dick.” You glared. He turned back around, facing you again. 

 “It is. Dick, short for Richard.” You scoffed. 

 “Richie didn’t stand out to you? You had to go by your personality?” You quipped. He held up a finger, smirking at you. 

 “You’re not awful at word play, you’d be fun in a fight.” He giggled. You pressed your brows together. 

 “Are you aware of how a gun works?” You asked, uncertain if this man was an alien from Mars. Gun pointed at his chest, and this is his best behavior?

 “Yes, pull the trigger, I’m dead,” Richard grumbled. You hummed. 

 “Then I suggest you put on your best behavior. You need to leave my home now.” You stated. Richard pointed at the window. 

 “Jason’s right out the window. I’ll get him. He’ll tell you, I’m his brother.” Richard pleaded. You shook your head. You kept your eyes on him. 

 “Jay doesn’t have a brother. You dick. Well-” You groaned. “What’s your real name?” You asked. Richard frowned at you. 

 “Dick and Jason has multiple brothers,” Richard grumbled. You huffed. 

 “How many does he have then, Balls?” You asked, keeping your eye on your aim. You shouldn’t be entertaining these delusions. Jason told you not to. He also said the best way to make a criminal talk was to aim a gun at them and wait. Richard gave you a sad look. 

 “My name is Dick, not balls-” 

 “Well, you want to be named after a penis, so I’ll oblige your wishes.” You mocked. Richard glared at you. 

 “Give me a second, I have to count.” Richard lifted his head to the ceiling, his eyes flicking back and forth. You stayed silent as he mumbled. 

 “There’s me, and Tim…” He dropped his head down, meeting your eyes again. “Four, including Duke. Unless we are counting Damien’s pets, then we’ll be here awhile.” Richard said. You glared at him. 

 “I think I’d know if my boyfriend was a son of five.” Richard’s eyebrows shot up again, his mouth curving into a wholesome grin. He cupped his hands to his heart, tilting his head to the side like you were a baby animal taking their first steps. 

 “Boyfriend? That is so sweet. I know you’re holding a gun at me, but it is really a pleasure to meet you.” Richard said, cooing at you. You narrowed your eyes, really wishing you had enough reason to shoot him. Your morals were weary, but at the very least, you thought this Balls guy had to do something a little more egregious than lie to your face and break into your home to deserve death. 

 “Do you ever shut up, Balls?” You taunted. Richard tilted his head back and forth. 

 “Not really, and my name is Dick. I’d appreciate-” 

 “It is not Dick.” You grumbled.    “It is Dick.” Richard glared. You huffed. '

 “Why on earth would anyone name their son Dick?” You asked, feeling like Richard might be edging up close to you finally pulling the trigger. Richard broke into a wild grin like you just fell into his trap. 

 “‘Cause everyone loves dick.” Richard cheesed. You smirked. 

 “I’m sure you do.” You snarked. Richard brightened. 

 “I do-” Your eyes shot to the boots pushing through your window. Jason pulled himself through your window, straightening up. His red mask was still on, his hood pulled over his head. He tilted his head at you. 

 “Red Hood!” Richard shouted. You scoffed at him. Balls here is supposed to be Jason’s brother, but he doesn’t know who Red Hood is? Jason pulled at the hood before tugging his mask off. Richard slumped, huffing. Jason glanced over at Richard with his hands up in surrender. Jason grimaced. 

 “Hey, baby. I see you met Dick.” Jason said, approaching you like you holding a gun in your living room was casual. You stared at him. 

 “You know him?” You mumbled in shock. It was rhetorical, and Jason seemed to catch onto that. He reached for the gun in your hands, gently peeling it away from you. He turned the safety back on, setting it down on the coffee table. 

 “His name is really Dick?” You asked, making Richard scoff. Jason nodded, pulling your hands to his mouth and peaking the backs. 

 “Richard ‘Dick’ Grayson.” Jason clarified. Your mouth parted. Jason nodded more at your look. 

 “I know.” 

 “That’s- I mean- That’s so…” Your words failed you. Jason hummed in agreement, petting your arm. He must be antsy to hold you, but worried about the audience. Usually, when you got home, he’d pounce on you and hold onto you for hours. 

 “Crass.” You finished, shaking your head in astonishment. Dick glared at you. 

 “So when I say it over a million times, you call me Balls. When Jason says it, you believe him instantly?” Dick grumbled. Jason lifted his head, staring at Dick. He grinned, looking back at you. 

 “You called him Balls?” Jason’s voice was strained, like he was holding back absurd laughter. You yanked your hands from his, crossing your arms over your chest. 

 “You lied about your family! Dick and Balls here says you have four brothers!” You snapped. Jason pulled back from you. 

 “In my defense, when you asked, I was ostracized by my family. I only recently started talking to Dick.” Jason defended. You glanced at Dick resting on your couch his eyes ping ponging between the two of you. 

 “He’s wearing my robe!” You blurted, storming into the bedroom. Jason leaned down, taking the gun off the coffee table. Jason followed after you, shutting the door behind himself. 

 “You lied to me.” You sighed, turning your face from him. Jason sighed. 

 “I know.” 

 “You’re supposed to tell me things. We open up to each other and work through our issues together. I told you about my past. You trusted me enough to tell me you died and came back. I believed that, despite how insane it was! You told me you were fucking Red Hood. That was a tough pill, but I believed you. You didn’t bother to tell me you had brothers.” You rambled, shaking your hands back and forth. Jason listened as he returned the gun to its home. You really wanted to tear him a new one. Was there anything you could trust out of his mouth?    “What else have you lied  to me about?” You asked, finding his face again. Jason shook his head. 

 “Nothing. Nothing, I swear. I just didn’t think I’d ever see them again. I thought they were through with me.” Jason mumbled. His voice floated on a soft line, wavering when he met your eyes. You pressed your lips into a thin line. Jason held his hands out. 

 “And for what it’s worth, I thought I only had three. I know Dick, Tim, and Duke. I don’t know who this fourth one is. Unless we’re counting Dick twice or something.” Jason defended. You hummed. 

 “Dick mentioned a Damien.” You breathed, itching at your cheek. Jason furrowed his brows, staring at the ceiling. He shook his head, pointing his lips down. 

 “Nope. Never heard of him.” Jason stated. You sighed deeply. You stepped across the bedroom, slinking your arms around Jason’s waist. He wrapped his arms around you. You pressed your nose to his suit, inhaling the smell of him. Dirt, his cologne, a hint of blood. 

 “You need a shower.” You murmured into him. Jason hummed in agreement. You settled into comfortable silence. You felt your shoulders resting after finally getting the worries out in the world. 

 “My dad is Bruce Wayne,” Jason whispered. You paused, opening your eyes. Bruce Wayne? You startled away from Jason. 

 “Bruce Wayne! Millionaire Bruce Wayne? Sits in a castle on a hill at the top of Gotham, Bruce Wayne?” You stared at him with your jaw dropped. Jason grimaced, his face pinching. 

 “Billionaire Bruce Wayne. And he’s adoptive.” Jason offered. You pressed your palms to your cheeks. You stepped away from him, staring at the wall in disbelief. 

 “My life is a lie.” You mumbled to yourself. Jason sucked in a breath.    “Also, I lied about not being a virgin when we met. But I swear that’s all I lied about.” Jason said, sweeping his hands out in a line. You glanced at him. 

 “I already knew that.” Jason frowned at you. 

 “How? I didn’t tell you?” Jason asked. You grimaced, staring at him with a knowing look. Jason made a face, glaring at you. 

 “Okay. Enough.” You rolled your eyes at him. Jason held his hand out for yours. You grumbled at him as you dropped your hand into his. Jason tugged you closer, making your hips bump into him. 

 “Dick probably wants to stay for dinner,” Jason whispered, quickly jutting forward to press his lips to yours. You pulled from his kiss. You slipped from his hold, stepping into the living room. Dick was still sitting on the couch, only now he was awkwardly sitting on the edge. 

 “Were you eavesdropping?" You asked. Dick quickly shook his head.    “I would never!” Dick exclaimed. You glared as Jason joined your side. 

 “Damien is Bruce’s biological son. He’s about 12. His birthday is next month, you might consider getting him a dagger or something; he’ll tolerate you after that.” Dick said, looking to Jason. You snarled. 

 “You’re such a filthy liar, Balls.” You mumbled. Dick growled at you. You grimaced at him. 

 “You’re untrusting.” Dick countered. You nodded. 

 “Obviously. The world is psycho.” You glared at Dick as you walked past him to the kitchen. Dick glared back before looking to Jason. 

 “You two are a match made in hell,” Dick whispered. He held his hand up to hide his mouth from you. 

 “I heard that!” You yelled from the kitchen counter. Dick looked over his shoulder. 

 “You were supposed to!” Dick yelled back. Jason sighed, feeling a headache coming on. 

 “This is my own personal hell,” Jason muttered to himself, moving to join you in the kitchen. Dick kicked his feet onto your coffee table. 

 “I used all your shampoo, by the way,” Dick shouted to you, pulling the remote control for the TV off the table. You turned to face Jason. 

 “Jay, Love of my life, wind beneath my wings?” Jason looked up, slipping his arms around you. He hummed in response. 

 “If you want your brother to leave this apartment alive, you need to rehide all the weapons in this home.” You stated that you were feeling an eye twitch coming on. Jason pressed a kiss to your jaw. 

 “You know, I think we’re really going to grow fond of each other.” Dick sighed happily from the couch. You pressed your eyes tightly closed. You let out a shaky breath. Jason pressed his nose to your cheek. 

 “Really going to grow fond of tearing you from limb to limb.” You muttered under your breath. 

The place was called Harbour House, though it was less a house and more a stubborn little miracle wedged between a laundromat and a pawn shop on a street that always smelled faintly of rain, exhaust, and old salt from the river. Its front half operated as a crisis drop-in centre, offering hot drinks, clean socks, phone chargers, social workers, and the kind of kindness that did not ask for ID before it opened the door. The back half was a rescue unit for animals found in alleys, basements, fighting rings, flooded apartments, and all the other places Blüdhaven hid its damage when it did not want to be judged. It was loud most mornings. Dogs barking, cats yowling, kettle boiling, volunteers calling names over the chaos, someone crying in the bathroom because some days survival arrived with paperwork.

Then you said, “Hey, sweetheart, I know,” and the entire room softened.

Dick had been leaning against the reception desk, pretending he did not need to sit down, with a paper cup of coffee going cold in his hands. He had come in because the BPD had found three pit mixes during a warehouse raid, all terrified, underfed, and shaking with the kind of fear that had learned people meant pain. He had meant to drop off the paperwork, smile at the staff, make sure the dogs were taken somewhere safe, and leave before anyone noticed the bruise blooming along his jaw beneath the careful angle of his collar.

Then you knelt in front of the largest dog, a scarred brindle thing with torn ears and eyes like broken glass, and held out your hand.

The dog growled.

One volunteer whispered, “Careful.”

You did not move closer. You did not flinch away. You only tilted your head a little, as if listening to something no one else could hear. “You don’t have to like me,” you murmured. “You don’t even have to trust me yet. Just breathe. That’s all. Just breathe.”

Dick felt it before he understood it.

Not a force, exactly. Not pressure. Nothing that tripped the danger sense he had spent years sharpening until it lived under his skin like a second pulse. It was more like walking into a warm kitchen after standing too long in the rain. His shoulders dropped by a fraction. The pain in his ribs dulled. The night, with all its sirens and broken teeth and the child he had not reached fast enough, seemed to step back from him. Not gone. Never gone. But farther away. Manageable.

The dog’s growl cracked into a whine.

You smiled, small and tired and so gentle it made something in Dick ache. “There you are,” you said. “Good boy.”

The dog pressed its trembling muzzle into your palm.

Every animal in the room seemed to exhale.

Dick stared.

The receptionist, a woman named Mara who had known him since his rookie cop days and had never once let him get away with lying about being fine, glanced at him with a smirk. “That’s our miracle worker.”

You looked over then, as if the word had tugged on something behind your ribs.

Your eyes met Dick’s.

He had been recognised in many ways across his life. As the Flying Grayson. As Robin. As Nightwing. As Officer Grayson. As Bruce Wayne’s ward, son, shadow, scandal, successor, depending on which tabloid needed a villain or a prince that week. You did not look at him like any of those things. You looked at him like you could see he was tired and had already forgiven him for it.

Dick smiled anyway, because smiling was what he did when something hurt enough to matter. “Impressive,” he said.

You stood slowly, brushing dog hair and dust from your knees. “He did the hard part.”

“The dog?”

“He decided to try again.”

Dick glanced at the brindle dog, now leaning against your leg as if you were the only solid thing in the world. “Looks like you helped.”

Your smile shifted, not fading exactly, but thinning at the edges. “Helping is easy when someone lets you.”

Dick did not know what to say to that. So, naturally, he said something stupid. “Do you work on people too, or just dogs with trust issues?”

Mara snorted behind the desk.

You looked him up and down, taking in the collar hiding his bruise, the exhaustion beneath his grin, the coffee he had not drunk. “Depends,” you said. “Do they bite?”

Dick’s smile became real.

That was how it began.

Not with fireworks. Not with a dramatic rooftop rescue, though those would come later because apparently Dick’s life had a contractual obligation to include rooftops. It began in a rescue centre in Blüdhaven, with a traumatised dog deciding to breathe, and Dick Grayson mistaking the impossible warmth in his chest for the ordinary relief of being near someone kind.

He kept coming back after that. At first, there were reasons. Actual ones. Blüdhaven was Blüdhaven, which meant every other case seemed to end with someone needing a shelter, a social worker, a safe ride, or a place to take an animal that had been caught in the crossfire of human cruelty. Harbour House was good at all of those things, and Dick liked good things with the desperate loyalty of someone who had watched too many of them get crushed. As a cop, he brought in victims who refused hospitals, kids who needed somewhere bright to sit while adults figured out next steps, animals pulled from raids, witnesses too scared to go home. As Nightwing, he left envelopes of cash in the donation box, escorted frightened people to the back door, and once carried in a raccoon wearing a plastic six-pack ring like a terrible necklace.

You had opened the door at three in the morning, stared at him, then at the raccoon, then back at him. “This is not a dog.”

Nightwing, rain dripping from the tips of his hair and one glove clamped firmly around the furious animal’s scruff, said, “I know.”

“It is also not a cat.”

“I also know that.”

The raccoon hissed.

You sighed and stepped aside. “Bring the tiny criminal in.”

“It bit a drug dealer.”

“Then it has civic value.”

He laughed so hard the raccoon tried to bite him, too.

You were different with Nightwing than you were with Dick, though he did not understand why that bothered him when you did not know they were the same person. With Officer Grayson, you teased more openly, rolled your eyes when he flirted with volunteers for extra blankets, told him to drink water, and once threatened to staple a nap schedule to his forehead. With Nightwing, you were quieter. Not less warm, never less warm, but careful in a way that made him feel seen through the mask. You did not ask for his name. You did not ask what hurt. You did not ask why he kept showing up with blood under his nails and jokes in his mouth.

You simply opened the door.

He did not know you knew who he was.

You had known by the third visit. Not because he was careless. Dick Grayson was many things—dramatic, affectionate, pathologically unable to leave a conversation without making sure everyone felt at least five per cent better—but he was not careless in the mask. He changed his posture. Changed his voice. Changed the weight of his smile. Nightwing moved with sharper edges than Dick, like the joy had been stripped down to muscle and nerve. But comfort was your native language, and pain had accents. Dick and Nightwing carried the same ache differently, but it was the same ache.

The same grief that made him brighten rooms like an apology. The same guilt that gathered between his shoulder blades when he thought no one was watching. The same desperate, bone-deep instinct to become whatever the situation required: leader, brother, son, joke, shield, hand reaching through the dark.

You knew him too well too quickly.

That was the problem.

You loved him too quietly to stop.

The first time you used your power on him deliberately, he was not bleeding.

That would have been easier to justify. Blood made decisions simple. Crisis narrowed the world into triage, and triage had never cared much for ethics beyond survival. If he had stumbled through the back door with broken ribs and a concussion, if he had been shaking from fear toxin, if he had been holding a dying dog or a crying child or any of the other things that made your power surge before your restraint could catch it, you might have forgiven yourself faster.

But he was not bleeding. He was sitting on the floor of Harbour House’s supply room with his back against a shelf of donated towels, still in his police uniform, staring at nothing.

It was nearly midnight. The crisis centre had gone quiet in the strange, temporary way places did when exhaustion finally overpowered fear. Outside, rain tapped against the windows. Somewhere in the kennel room, a dog dreamed in tiny huffs. You had come looking for extra blankets and found Dick sitting in the dark with one hand pressed flat against his chest, as if holding himself together by force.

“Dick?”

His head jerked up. For half a second, he looked completely lost. Then the smile arrived, bright and practised and heartbreaking.

“Hey,” he said. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to steal your closet.”

“It’s a supply room.”

“Exactly. Very high-end closet.”

You stepped inside and let the door close behind you. The dim light from the hallway cut across his face, catching on the bruise near his temple and the wet shine in his eyes that he blinked away before it could become evidence.

You sat across from him without asking too many questions because you had learned, with Dick, that questions sometimes made him perform answers. “Bad day?”

He laughed softly. “Blüdhaven day.”

“That’s worse.”

“Yeah.”

Silence settled between you. It was not empty. With Dick, silence was almost never empty; it was full of all the things he was choosing not to say because he had spent his life becoming beautiful around grief instead of letting it make him ugly.

After a while, his smile slipped.

“A kid got hurt today,” he said.

Your chest tightened.

“He’ll live,” Dick added quickly, as if the fact should erase the shape of everything else. “He’ll be okay. Probably. Doctors said he was lucky.”

“You don’t sound like you believe in lucky.”

“I believe in lucky.” He looked down at his hands. “I just hate when people call it that because someone else was too late.”

There it was. The weight. You felt it in him like weather pressure, a storm packed behind his ribs. Dick Grayson carried guilt like it was a family heirloom he had been taught to polish. Every failure, every injury, every person he had not reached in time, every time he had survived when someone else had not—it gathered in him, hidden beneath charm and movement and that golden, generous smile. People thought Dick was light because he gave light away. They did not understand how much darkness a person had to know to become that determined to shine.

You should have sat with him. You should have let him feel it. You should have trusted that comfort did not always mean removal.

Instead, you reached across the narrow floor and placed your hand over his.

“Hey,” you whispered. “Breathe with me?”

Dick looked at your hand, then at you. Something vulnerable flickered through his expression. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

You let the power move. Only a little, you told yourself. Only enough to loosen the worst of it. Only enough to give him room to breathe. Only enough so the boy in the hospital was not sitting between you like a ghost with Dick’s hands around its throat.

Warmth left you in a slow, careful stream. It moved into him through your joined hands, not bright, not visible, but real enough that his breath caught. His shoulders dropped. The tension in his jaw eased. The grief did not vanish. It never vanished. But it softened, uncurling from around his lungs.

Dick closed his eyes.

“Oh,” he whispered.

You swallowed.

He leaned his head back against the shelf, and for the first time since you had met him, his face went completely still. Not empty. Not numb. Resting. Like his body had forgotten vigilance was not the same thing as existence.

You should have stopped. Instead, you held his hand until his breathing steadied, until the tremor left his fingers, until the room felt less like a confession and more like a shelter.

When he opened his eyes, they were damp and grateful.

“You’re really good at this,” he said.

You smiled because the truth was too sharp to hold bare. “Sitting on supply room floors?”

“Being here.”

The words went through you like light through broken glass.

You wanted to tell him then. You nearly did. You nearly said, Dick, there is something you should know. I can do things I don’t fully understand. I can make pain step back. I can make people feel safe. I can give you something I cannot give myself, and that is probably why I keep offering it when I should be asking first.

Instead, you squeezed his hand.

“I’m glad it helps,” you said.

It was not a lie. 

That was how you learned to forgive yourself for the first mistake. By telling yourself it was kindness.

After that, it became easier.

Not easy. Never that. You were not cruel. You were not careless. You did not use your power on him like a drug or a leash. You did not twist his feelings, did not manufacture affection, did not make him happy when he had reason to hurt. You only lifted. A little here. A little there. The worst edge of exhaustion after patrol. The jagged flash of panic when a trapeze act appeared on a charity poster and he went very still. The old grief that crossed his face on the anniversary of his parents’ deaths. The guilt after a fight with Bruce. The quiet devastation when Damian said something sharp enough to draw blood because he was thirteen and angry and did not yet know tenderness had to be practised.

You told yourself you were giving him breathing room. You told yourself he deserved one place in the world where the weight got lighter. You told yourself he would ask if he knew how.

But Dick did not know.

That was the root of it. The poison under the flower.

He thought it was you. He thought your presence comforted him because you were you: warm, steady, funny in a dry little way that always caught him off guard. He thought the relief in his chest when you touched his shoulder was the relief of being known. He thought the way nightmares faded faster when he slept on Harbour House’s ancient couch with your coat thrown over him was because the building felt safe. He thought, when his heart steadied at the sound of your voice through the phone after a terrible patrol, that maybe he was falling in love.

And he was.

That was the most unfair part.

He was falling in love for real.

So were you.

It happened around ordinary things, which made it worse. Dick bringing you coffee and remembering you liked it too sweet when the day had been cruel. You texting him photos of the brindle dog, now named Captain, asleep upside down in deeply undignified positions. Him showing up at Harbour House with donation boxes balanced in his arms and a grin bright enough to make volunteers swoon into the mop bucket. You calling him “Officer Grayson” when you wanted to annoy him. Him calling you “sunshine” once, casually, and then going pink when you stared at him too long.

“You can’t call me sunshine,” you said.

Dick leaned over the reception desk, smiling like trouble had good cheekbones. “Why not?”

“Because you’re literally the human equivalent of a golden retriever with trauma.”

“That feels like deflection.”

“It is. Respect it.”

His smile softened. “Noted.”

You looked away first because sometimes his gentleness was harder to survive than his flirting.

He told you about his family in pieces. Not the masked parts, not at first, but the shape of them. A father who loved badly because fear had eaten too much of him. Brothers who fought like stray cats in a bag and loved like they would burn down cities about it. Sisters who understood more than they said. A grandfather-figure who could make tea feel like absolution. A little brother with knives in his voice and a zoo in his heart. Dick told stories with laughter tucked around the painful parts, and you learned to hear the spaces where truth had been wrapped in comedy for safe transport.

You told him about your work. About animals. About the first cat you had ever helped, though not what happened when you touched it. About believing broken things deserved more than being admired for surviving. About the loneliness that had shaped you without asking permission.

Sometimes, when his eyes went too soft, you almost confessed. Then he would lean into your presence like someone finally resting, and the selfish part of your love would whisper, What if the truth takes this away?

So you kept the secret.

Storms hit Blüdhaven differently than Gotham. Gotham swallowed rain and turned it into atmosphere. Blüdhaven choked on it. Gutters overflowed, streets became rivers, basement apartments filled ankle-deep before anyone important cared, and sirens wailed all over the waterfront as power lines snapped and cheap buildings remembered they had been built by people cutting corners with other people’s lives.

Harbour House became an emergency shelter within an hour. Volunteers dragged out cots. Mara coordinated intake with the terrifying efficiency of a woman who could organise the apocalypse if given enough clipboards. Animals were moved to higher rooms. Kids arrived soaked and shaking. Elderly residents came in wrapped in plastic ponchos. A mother cried because she had lost her dog in the floodwater. Someone’s oxygen machine needed power. The whole building strained under fear.

Dick arrived as Nightwing just before two in the morning, carrying a child in one arm and a shivering terrier in the other.

You did not have time to be surprised.

“Generator’s failing,” Mara told you. “Basement’s taking water. We’ve got too many people in panic and not enough staff.”

Nightwing set the child down with a paramedic and looked towards you. His hair was plastered to his forehead, suit slick with rain, a cut bleeding along his cheek. “What do you need?”

Everything, you thought.

Instead, you said, “Help Mara clear the basement.”

He nodded and moved.

For the next hour, the building became a storm inside a storm. Nightwing was everywhere, carrying supplies, moving people, cracking jokes with children while water dripped from his gloves, making the terrified laugh because that was his gift, his curse, his reflexive offering to the world. You felt him even when you could not see him. His exhaustion. His worry. The way he kept glancing toward you as the crowd pressed closer, as people began to tremble, as the fear in the room rose toward something dangerous.

You held back as long as you could. Then the generator died.

The lights went out.

For three seconds, Harbour House was plunged into darkness. Three seconds was enough.

Someone screamed. A child began sobbing. Dogs barked from the upper rooms. In the black crush of the main hall, panic spread body to body, breath to breath, a living thing with too many hands. Someone shoved toward the door. Someone else fell. The storm hammered the windows. The emergency lights flickered but did not catch.

You heard Mara shout your name.

Then you heard Nightwing say, “Everybody stay calm!”

But calm could not be commanded. Calm had to be given room.

You opened yourself.

The power moved out of you harder than you meant it to. Not a trickle this time. Not a touch offered under the disguise of ordinary presence. It surged from your chest and hands and voice, filling the dark shelter with warmth that no blackout could touch. The crying softened first. The dogs quieted. The crush near the door slowed. Breathing steadied across the room in waves. Fear did not disappear, but it loosened its grip, enough for people to hear Mara’s instructions, enough for Nightwing to lift the fallen man without being trampled, enough for the building to become a shelter again instead of a trap.

Your knees nearly buckled. You grabbed the edge of the reception desk and kept pouring warmth into the room.

Too much. Too fast. But there were children in the dark and animals crying upstairs and Dick—Nightwing—standing in the middle of it all with too much weight on him, always too much, always trying to hold the whole world up with shaking hands and a smile. You felt his panic when the lights went out. Felt the old circus-dark flash through him, the memory of ropes and screams and falling. Felt him shove it down instantly because everyone else needed him.

No, you thought. Not him, too.

You reached for him across the room with your power, instinctive and intimate from months of practice.

Nightwing froze.

Even through the mask, even in the dark, you saw it.

He felt it this time. Not as presence. Not as your usual warmth beside him. He felt the direction of it. The touch without touch. The impossible hand lifting the weight from his chest.

His head turned toward you.

The emergency lights finally flared red.

Your eyes met through the chaos.

And Dick Grayson, behind Nightwing’s mask, understood.

Not everything. Enough.

Hurt flashed across his face so clearly it might as well have been lightning.

Then the ceiling over the west hall cracked.

The moment shattered. Nightwing moved on instinct, throwing himself toward the collapse as plaster and old wood came down near the stairwell. You pushed the last of your power outward, calming the surge of terror before it could become a stampede, and the world narrowed to red light, rain, shouting, and the cold emptiness blooming inside you.

You remembered Mara catching your arm. You remembered Captain the brindle dog barking from somewhere upstairs. You remembered Nightwing turning toward you after the last person was safe, his mask gone somehow, or maybe pushed up, or maybe your vision simply knew him too well to care.

Then you remembered nothing.

When you woke, you were on the couch in the staff break room with a blanket tucked around you and Dick Grayson sitting in a chair three feet away, still in the lower half of his Nightwing suit with a borrowed Harbour House hoodie pulled over the top.

For a moment, before memory returned, the sight was so absurd you nearly smiled.

Then he looked at you, and the smile died.

Dick’s face was pale beneath the bruises and rain-dried exhaustion. His hair was still damp, curling messily around his forehead. There was a bandage on his cheek. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together so tightly his knuckles had gone white.

He did not look angry at first. That would have been easier.

He looked hurt.

“You knew,” he said.

Your throat felt scraped raw. “Dick—”

“You knew who I was.”

You closed your eyes.

He laughed once, but it broke before becoming anything sharp. “Okay. Cool. Great start.”

You pushed yourself upright too quickly, and the room tilted.

Dick moved halfway out of his chair, then stopped himself. The aborted motion hurt worse than if he had not moved at all.

“You should rest,” he said, voice tight.

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Care about me like you’re not angry.”

His jaw clenched. “I can multitask.”

That almost made you cry.

You pulled the blanket tighter around yourself. “I knew by the third time Nightwing brought in an animal.”

“The raccoon?”

“The raccoon helped.”

Despite everything, his mouth twitched. It vanished immediately. “And you didn’t tell me.”

“You were the one with a secret identity.”

“Yeah,” he said, and there was the anger now, bright under the hurt. “I was. One that protects my family. One that keeps people alive. You knew my secret, and I didn’t know yours.”

You flinched. Dick saw it. He looked away, breathing hard through his nose.

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” you said.

“About the power?”

“About any of it.”

He stood then, restless energy driving him to the tiny break room window. Outside, the storm had softened to rain. Emergency lights still flashed somewhere beyond the glass, red and blue smearing across puddles in the alley.

“How long?” he asked.

You did not pretend not to understand.

Your hands tightened in the blanket. “The first time was in the supply room.”

He went very still. The silence that followed was so complete you could hear the old refrigerator hum.

Dick turned slowly. “The kid from the hospital.”

You nodded once.

His face changed. You had seen Dick hurt before. You had seen him bruised, bleeding, exhausted, furious, scared. But this was different. This was trust folding inward around a blade.

“I thought that was me,” he said quietly.

Your eyes burned. “It was.”

“No.” He shook his head, backing one step away as if the room had tilted under him, too. “No, I thought I calmed down because I trusted you. Because I felt safe with you. Because for once I could sit with someone and not have to be okay.”

“You could,” you whispered.

“But you were using your power.”

The word using landed between you, ugly and deserved.

You looked down at your hands. “Yes.”

Dick pressed his palms to his eyes for one second, then dropped them. “Did you ask?”

“No.”

“Did you tell me?”

“No.”

“Did I consent?”

The question struck harder than anger would have. You shook your head.

Dick’s laugh this time was almost soundless. “God.”

“I didn’t control you,” you said quickly, then hated yourself for how defensive it sounded. “I didn’t change your thoughts. I didn’t make you feel things that weren’t there. I just—”

“Made the bad ones easier?”

You swallowed. “Yes.”

“Without telling me.”

“Yes.”

He stared at you, and you could see him doing what Dick did best and worst: replaying every interaction, every touch, every moment he had felt lighter around you. The supply room. The couch. Your hand on his shoulder after patrol. Your voice over the phone. The nights he had mistaken supernatural relief for intimacy unshadowed by secrets.

His voice went quiet. “Did I tell you things because of it?”

“No.” You sat forward despite the dizziness. “Dick, no. I swear. It doesn’t work like that.”

“How do I know?”

The question broke something in you.

Because he was right. You had made yourself impossible to believe.

You pressed both hands against your mouth for a moment, trying to keep the worst of the grief inside. It came out anyway, shaking through your fingers. “You don’t.”

Dick’s anger faltered.

“You don’t,” you repeated, voice cracking. “And that’s my fault.”

He looked away again, but not before you saw the wetness in his eyes.

You wanted to reach for him. Every part of you wanted to. His pain was filling the room, huge and bright and calling to the power inside you like a wound calling for pressure. You could ease it. You could make his breathing steady. You could give him enough warmth to look at you without feeling the betrayal so sharply.

You dug your fingers into the blanket until the urge passed.

Dick noticed that too.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Not using it.”

His face twisted.

You laughed weakly, miserably. “Yeah. Too late for that to count for much, huh?”

He did not answer. The silence hurt, but you accepted it. That was the least you owed him.

After a while, he said, “Why?”

It was barely more than a whisper.

You looked up. Dick stood near the window with rainlight on his face, looking younger than he usually allowed himself to look. Younger and tired and so terribly wounded that your whole body ached with the need to fix what you had broken.

“Why would you do that?” he asked.

The truth was not noble. Not clean. It did not make you look good, which probably meant it was the only truth worth offering.

“Because I love you,” you said.

Dick went completely still.

The confession sat in the room like something alive. You wished you could take it back. Not because it was untrue, but because it was too much, too unfair, another thing handed to him while he was already bleeding. But it was out now, and you would not make it smaller by pretending.

“I love you,” you said again, quieter. “And I know that doesn’t make it better. I know it might make it worse. But you asked why, and that’s why. Because I saw how much you carry. I saw how everyone leans on you because you’re good at holding them up. I saw how you make yourself bright so nobody notices when you’re burning. And I had this thing in me that could make it hurt less for a little while, and I convinced myself that using it was kindness.”

Dick’s expression had gone unreadable in the way that meant he was trying very hard not to fall apart.

You kept going because stopping would be cowardice.

“My power manifested because I was alone,” you said. “I was a kid, and I wanted someone to come comfort me so badly it felt like it was killing me. No one came. An injured cat found me instead, and I wanted it to feel safe because I knew what it was like not to. That was the first time. Since then, I can give it to almost anyone. People. Animals. I can make fear loosen. I can make grief step back. I can make someone feel like maybe they can survive the next minute.”

Your voice broke.

“But I can’t do it for myself.”

Dick’s face changed.

You looked down before the pity could undo you. “So when I saw you hurting, I think some selfish part of me wanted to become what I never had. I wanted to be the person who came. And then you looked at me like I made the world easier to live in, and I didn’t want to lose that. I didn’t want to lose you.”

For a long moment, Dick said nothing.

Then he sat down again, heavily, like his knees had remembered gravity all at once. His hands hung between them. He looked at the floor.

“You should have told me,” he said.

“I know.”

“You should have let me choose.”

“I know.”

“I would have said yes sometimes.”

The softness of that nearly destroyed you.

Your eyes filled again. “I know.”

“No,” Dick said, looking up at you now. “I don’t think you do. I don’t think you understand that I would have trusted you with it if you had trusted me with the truth.”

There it was. The thing beneath everything.

Not the power. The trust.

You nodded, crying silently because there was no defence left in you. “You’re right.”

Dick looked like he hated that you agreed. He looked like he wanted a fight because fighting would let him stay angry instead of hurt. But you had taken enough from him already. You would not take the clean edge of his anger too.

“I’m sorry,” you said. “Not because you found out. Because I did it. Because I made choices about your pain that should have been yours. Because I let you feel safe without telling you why, and then I let myself feel loved for it.”

He closed his eyes.

You forced yourself to say the rest. “You don’t owe me forgiveness. You don’t owe me understanding. You don’t owe me comfort.”

A tear slipped down his cheek.

Dick wiped it away quickly, angry with it. “That’s my line.”

“What?”

“I’m supposed to say that to you.” He laughed again, but this one hurt differently. “I’m supposed to be the person who makes everyone else feel like they don’t have to earn being loved.”

“You are.”

“Yeah?” His eyes were bright when he looked at you. “Then why didn’t you believe me?”

The question hit so close to the lonely child inside you that for a second you could not breathe.

Dick seemed to regret it immediately. “I didn’t mean—”

“You did,” you whispered. “And you’re right.”

He looked wrecked.

You both sat there in the dim break room with the storm fading outside and the building full of sleeping survivors around you, two people who loved each other and had managed to hurt each other anyway. It should have been impossible for love to sit in the same room as betrayal. But there it was, bruised and stubborn, refusing to leave.

Eventually, Dick stood.

Your chest tightened.

He noticed. He had always been good at reading rooms, reading bodies, reading the tiny moments before someone broke.

“I need air,” he said.

You nodded.

He reached the door, then stopped.

For a second, his hand rested on the frame.

“I don’t know what this means,” he said without turning around.

You swallowed. “Me neither.”

“I’m angry.”

“I know.”

“I still—” He stopped. His shoulders rose and fell. “I still care about you. That’s making the angry part extremely inconvenient.”

A broken laugh escaped you. “Yeah. Same.”

He turned his head just enough for you to see his profile.

“No powers,” he said.

Your heart twisted. “No powers.”

“Not on me. Not unless I ask. Not unless you tell me exactly what you’re doing.”

“I promise.”

He nodded once.

Then he left.

Dick avoided you for five days.

Avoided was perhaps unfair. Dick Grayson did not avoid like a normal person. He sent updates through Mara, made sure Harbour House had generators by morning, arranged for Wayne money through Bruce without putting his name on it, and apparently delivered three crates of dog food at dawn on the second day like some emotionally unavailable Santa Claus. He cared from a distance with military precision, which was somehow both touching and deeply irritating.

You did not chase him. You wanted to. God, you wanted to. Every time your phone lit up, every time the door opened, every time Captain lifted his head as if expecting Dick’s familiar footsteps, your whole body went tight with hope. But love without consent had gotten you here. You would not turn apology into pursuit. You would not make your need another weight for him to carry.

So you waited. You worked. You slept badly. You taught volunteers how to read stress signs in dogs. You helped flood victims fill out forms. You did not use your power unless someone asked or unless immediate safety demanded it, and even then, you explained afterwards until your voice went hoarse. It felt clumsy. Terrifying. Like learning to walk with your hands open after years of hiding them.

On the sixth night, Dick came back.

Not as Nightwing. Not as Officer Grayson.

Just Dick, in jeans and an old blue hoodie, hair wind-tossed, eyes shadowed. He arrived after closing, when the building had gone quiet and you were sitting in the kennel room with Captain’s huge head in your lap.

The dog lifted his head first. His tail thumped once.

You looked up.

Dick stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. He looked uncertain, which was not a thing he let many people see. Dick could leap between rooftops without looking down. He could command teams of heroes, fight assassins, charm donors, soothe frightened children, and make grief look graceful. But standing in a doorway after being hurt by someone he loved? That was harder. That required no performance at all.

“Hey,” he said.

Your voice came out soft. “Hey.”

Captain, traitor that he was, immediately got up and lumbered over to press his entire body against Dick’s legs.

Dick looked down at him. “Et tu, buddy?”

Captain wagged his tail.

You looked at the dog. “Unbelievable. I feed you.”

Dick’s mouth twitched. The tiny, almost-smile felt like sunrise through boarded windows.

He stepped inside but stayed near the door. “Can we talk?”

“Yes.”

You started to stand, but he shook his head. “You can stay there.”

So you did.

Dick sat on the floor across from you, leaving careful space between your knees and his. The gesture hurt in its gentleness. He was giving you the same thing you had failed to give him: room to choose.

“I talked to Bruce,” he said.

You blinked. “That must have been cheerful.”

“It was emotionally catastrophic for everyone involved.”

“Sounds like a Wayne family speciality.”

“Pretty much.” Dick rubbed a hand over his face. “He was very Batman about it. Lots of silence. A few sentences that felt like they had been carved out of stone. Then Alfred gave us tea and somehow made both of us feel judged by a beverage.”

You laughed quietly.

Dick looked at you like he had missed the sound and was trying not to show it too much.

Then the humour faded.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said.

“Okay.”

“About why it hurt so much.”

Your fingers curled against your knees.

Dick looked down at Captain, who had settled halfway between you both like a furry mediator. “Part of it was the power. The consent. The lying. That matters. I’m still not okay with it.”

“I know.”

“But part of it was…” He exhaled slowly. “I thought I’d found someone who made me feel lighter without needing me to be anything. Not Nightwing. Not the oldest. Not the funny one. Not the person who gets everyone else through the hard thing. Just me.”

Tears burned behind your eyes.

“And then I found out there was a reason,” he said. “A power. A secret. Something I didn’t know was happening. It made me wonder if I had made the whole thing up.”

“You didn’t.”

“I know that now.” He looked at you. “Mostly.”

You nodded because mostly was honest, and honest was better than easy.

Dick’s eyes softened, but his voice stayed steady. “I don’t think my feelings came from your power. I know they didn’t. I’ve been away from you for five days, and I still feel them, so congrats, I guess. Betrayal did not cure my crush.”

A laugh burst out of you, wet and surprised.

His smile flickered, real for half a second. Then he said, “But I don’t know how to trust the comfort yet.”

Your laughter faded.

“That’s fair,” you whispered.

“I need to know when it’s you and when it’s your power.”

“I’ll tell you.”

“I need you to ask before you touch my feelings.”

The phrasing made your breath catch.

Touch my feelings. It sounded childish and devastatingly precise.

“I will,” you said.

“And I need you to let me hurt sometimes.”

That one broke through. You looked down, tears slipping free before you could stop them.

Dick leaned forward slightly, then stopped. “Can I say something that might make you mad?”

You laughed weakly. “Sure. We’re already in emotional hell. Might as well decorate.”

His mouth twitched. “You didn’t just take my pain because you loved me. You took it because watching me hurt made you feel helpless.”

The words landed hard.

You looked at him.

Dick’s gaze was gentle but unflinching. “And I get that. I really do. But my pain isn’t a problem you have to solve to prove you love me.”

Your chest ached with it.

“I know,” you said, though the words still felt too new to fully believe.

“You can sit with me in it.”

You wiped your face. “I’m bad at that.”

“So am I.”

“You? Dick Grayson, professional emotional support eldest sibling?”

“Especially me.” His smile turned crooked. “I am great at sitting with other people’s pain. My own? Garbage fire.”

Despite everything, you smiled.

Dick looked at your hand where it rested near Captain’s fur. “Can I?”

You froze.

He nodded toward your hand. “Just hold it. No powers.”

Your throat tightened. “Yes.”

He moved slowly, giving you time to change your mind, even though he was the one who had been wronged. That was Dick all over. Hurt and still careful. Angry and still kind. You loved him so much it frightened you.

His fingers wrapped around yours. You closed your eyes immediately, focusing inward, keeping the power still. It wanted to move toward him. Not because you chose it, but because comfort was the shape your love had learned first. You held it back. Let the feeling remain only feeling. Let your hand be only a hand.

Dick’s thumb brushed once across your knuckles.

“No warmth,” he said quietly.

You opened your eyes. His expression was soft with something fragile and relieved.

“No,” you whispered. “Just me.”

For a second, he looked like that hurt and healed in equal measure.

“Okay,” he said.

You sat like that for a long time, hands linked over Captain’s sleeping back, the kennel room quiet around you. Nothing was fixed. Trust had not magically rebuilt itself. Love had not erased the wrong. But Dick stayed. You stayed. The power stayed inside you, restless and unused, while something gentler and more human grew in the space it left behind.

Weeks passed before Dick asked.

You were on the roof of Harbour House, because of course he had found a way to make even emotional recovery involve heights. The city stretched around you in wet black and neon gold, the river cutting through it like a bruise catching light. Below, the rescue had finally gone quiet. Captain had been adopted that afternoon by Mara and her daughter, which had made you cry in the storage room for eleven minutes and then deny it to everyone except Dick, who had handed you tissues without mercy.

Dick sat beside you on the ledge, shoulder not quite touching yours.

“I miss him already,” he said.

“You visited him more than some volunteers.”

“He understood me.”

“He drooled on your shoes.”

“Love language.”

You smiled into the night.

Dick looked at you for a long moment. “Can I ask you something?”

“Always.”

He hesitated. That was new. Dick did not usually hesitate unless the question mattered.

“What does it feel like?” he asked. “When you use it.”

You leaned back on your hands and looked at the cloudy sky. “Like opening a door in my chest.”

His face turned toward you.

“Sometimes it’s warm,” you said. “If it’s small. If someone just needs a little help breathing, or an animal needs to know I won’t hurt them. But if it’s bigger…” You swallowed. “It feels like giving something away that I don’t know how to get back.”

Dick’s eyes lowered. “That’s why you get cold.”

“Yeah.”

“And empty.”

“Yeah.”

His jaw tightened. “I hate that.”

“I know.”

“No, I really hate it.” He looked out at the city. “I hate that something born from you needing comfort became something everyone else gets to receive except you.”

You did not know what to say to that. So, for once, you said nothing.

Dick’s hand rested on the ledge between you, palm up.

Your breath caught.

He glanced at you. “Still just me.”

You placed your hand in his. Still just you.

He held on carefully. “Do you think it would hurt less if someone asked?”

Your throat tightened. “Yes.”

“Do you think it would hurt less if you knew you could say no?”

“Yes.”

He nodded slowly. Then, after a silence, he said, “Would you help me tonight?”

You looked at him sharply. Dick’s face was open. Nervous, yes. Still bruised in places that had nothing to do with patrol. But open.

“You don’t have to,” he said quickly. “And I’m not asking because I think you owe me. You don’t. I just…” He exhaled. “Today was good. Captain got a home. Nobody died. No crisis. No collapsing building. And somehow that makes all the bad stuff louder. I don’t want you to take it away. I just want a little room to breathe.”

Your eyes burned.

There it was. Consent, fragile and holy. Choice. Trust, not repaired, not complete, but growing one careful root at a time.

You squeezed his hand. “I can do that.”

“Tell me what you’re doing?”

“I’ll give you a little warmth,” you said softly. “Not enough to numb anything. Just enough to help your body remember it’s safe right now. If you want me to stop, say stop, and I stop.”

Dick nodded, throat bobbing. “Okay.”

You let the power move. Only a little. Only what he had asked for.

Warmth passed from your hand into his, gentle as breath against cold glass. Dick closed his eyes, but this time you watched his face carefully, not with hunger for his relief but with respect for his choice. His shoulders loosened. His breathing steadied. The grief in him remained, because it was his and it mattered. But it stopped clawing quite so hard.

After a few seconds, he whispered, “That’s enough.”

You stopped immediately.

The power settled back inside you, present but contained.

Dick opened his eyes. They were wet.

“Thank you,” he said.

You shook your head, emotional enough to be vaguely offended by your own face. “Thank you for asking.”

He looked at you then, and the love between you was not simple. It had teeth marks in it now. It had rules. It had boundaries. It had the memory of hurt and the promise of trying again. But it was real. It had always been real, even when you mishandled it. Even when secrecy made it crooked. Even when both of you had to learn that comfort without truth could become another kind of wound.

Dick leaned closer, slowly enough that the question was clear before he spoke. “Can I kiss you?”

You nearly laughed, only because crying felt too predictable.

“Yes,” you whispered.

His free hand rose to your cheek, not glowing, not magic, not anything except warm human touch. He kissed you softly at first, careful in the way people were careful with things they had almost lost. The city hummed below. Rainwater glimmered on the roof around you. Your power did not move. It did not need to.

When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours.

“No powers?” he asked, voice barely there.

You smiled, trembling. “No powers.”

His breath left him in something like relief.

“Good,” he whispered. “Because I want to know it’s you.”

You closed your eyes. “It’s me.”

Dick kissed you again, and this time there was still pain in it, still apology, still the long road ahead. But there was joy too, ordinary and unassisted, rising between you like morning after a storm.

For once, you did not give it away. You let yourself keep it.

Likely tracking who knows how much dirt through your freshly cleaned carpet, you hear him awkwardly stumble his way down your hallway, past your slightly open bedroom door, and make his way towards the bathroom. Could be bad news.

Cool air creeps across your skin as you reluctantly shove your comforter back, blearily reaching up to rub your eyes and swinging your legs off the side of your mattress. You pause at the edge of your bed, listening. Blüdhaven was far from a quiet city; muffled music could be heard down the street, a dog barking a block or two away, and the constant shriek of sirens were an ever-present fixture in the familiar resonance of the city. What concerned you was the sickly silence coming from your tiny bathroom. Definitely bad news. 

Jamming your feet into your fluffy slippers, you lurch your way through the darkness towards the faint light at the end of the hallway. 

“Dick?” you call out croakily. “Are you okay in there?”

You hear the clatter of falling objects as you approach.

“Uh. Yeah. Everything's great! Get back to bed. I’ll be there in a minute.” His voice was airy and high with something latent. “Or, like, maybe five minutes–”

“Dick!” you shriek before clapping your hands over your mouth, remembering your neighbors were probably sleeping. Like you should be.

Dick sat on the tile floor, digging in the cabinet under your sink for the first aid kit. This meant that the first thing you saw, unfortunately, was his back. His suit had been ripped to reveal a nasty gash between his shoulder blades. Though not so horrific by itself, the sheer amount of blood covering the area shocked you. 

“Ohmygod–”

“Please don’t freak out babe–”

“What the hell?” you whisper-yell. You join him on the ground, quickly shuffling closer.

Subtly angling his back away from you, Dick looks at your face, offering an awkward, dimpled grin. “It’s fine. Everything's fine.”

“You’re covered in blood.” you hiss. “You’re actively bleeding out, asshole.”

“It’s fine! Not all of it’s mine anyway. I’m healthy as a horse.” He rolls his shoulders back in an attempt to prove it to you, but he immediately winces as he lets out a weak ‘neigh’. 

Sighing, you snatch the first aid kit out of his hands. “Turn around. Did you really think you could fix this up yourself?” Your shoulders sag. Then you add gently: “Let me help you.”

Slowly, he turns his back towards you again, grinning. “There’s a cloth in there. If you just clean the blood away, you’ll feel better. Probably don’t even have to stitch me up. Did we run out of those butterfly bandages?”

You dig around in the box a bit. “No, looks like we still have… more than enough probably. But next time you’re out, stop by the drug store instead of getting beat up.” You pull out a cloth and reach up to the sink to wet it. “You didn’t want to take a shower first?”

“Thought I might wait for you to join me.” Though you can’t see his face, you can still feel his wink and the wiggle of his eyebrows.

“Ha-ha. Not happening, pal.” You begin wiping the blood away, a muscle twitching on his back as the cold cloth makes contact with his bronze skin. There’s a moment's lull in the conversation as both of you take a quiet moment to listen to each other's breath.

“I have to go back out.” Dick hears your sharp inhale. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me, Dick. I know what you do is important to you. And what’s important to you is important to me too.”

“But…” he prompts.

“But I’m worried about you. I know you can handle the things that are thrown your way, but I just can’t help being uneasy. I don’t like seeing you get hurt.” Your cloth-bearing hand falls to your lap as you’ve finished cleaning the majority of the blood away, revealing the cut to you. It doesn’t look as deep or as intimidating to fix as it did before, but it made your shoulders sag nonetheless. 

He turns towards you slightly, saying your name. “I don’t like seeing you upset. So how about for the rest of the night, I try not to get hurt?”

“That sounds good to me.” you reply, rummaging in the kit for the butterfly bandages. “What about your suit? Can’t have you going out with a giant rip in the back.”

“I’ll put on a spare once the pretty doctor’s done fixing me up. If you’d have given me a minute, I could’ve taken this one off for you.” The playful tone to his voice returned, easing your anxiety slightly. If something terrible was happening, he would be much more serious. His upbeat attitude meant he would make it back home this morning.

You spend a few minutes in comfortable silence as you stick the bandages onto the injury one by one. When you finish, you plant a gentle kiss to a patch of exposed skin above the cut and rest a hand on his shoulder. Dick reaches for your hand and kisses the back of it. Then he turns, pressing a kiss to your lips; quick but full of intention, like the seal to the promise he made you.

“You should go get changed now.” You whisper.

“You should go back to bed.”

He gets up off the cold tiles first with a groan and a stretch, before reaching down to help you up. You didn’t realize until now how much the hard floor caused your legs to ache. The two of you make your way down the hall, hand in hand. Entering your bedroom, Dick turns on a small, dim lamp as you kick off your slippers and plop down on the bed. Quickly stripping and throwing the worn suit to the side, he reaches towards the closet to pull out a fresh one. 

“Good thing we got extras, huh?” Dick jests.

You hum sleepily in response. 

He slips into the fresh suit as your eyelids start to droop. Making his way over to you, he kisses your forehead tenderly. “I love you.”

“Love you too.” You reach for his cheek, rubbing it with your thumb.

“Goodnight.” On his way out, he turns off the lamp, leaving you in darkness. You hear him make his way down the hall towards the living room again. He grabs his abandoned escrima sticks before making his way back out the window, shutting it firmly behind him.

divider creds: @/portdividers @/dxstoeskyvjbess

The rain-slicked rooftops of Gotham glittered like broken glass under the sodium lights. You balanced on the narrow ledge of the old Wayne Enterprises annex, the city sprawling beneath you in a haze of neon and violence. Your suit clung to you like a second skin—black latex and reinforced kevlar, accented with subtle silver claw marks that caught the light when you moved. Not quite Selina’s elegant catsuit, but close enough to mock the family legacy. Where your older sister danced through shadows with calculated grace, you hunted through them. Fluid. Unpredictable. A blade wrapped in ballet precision.

Tonight’s mark was a mid-level arms dealer who’d crossed the wrong people. Your people. You’d already left three of his guards unconscious in the stairwell, their necks bent at unnatural angles. The fourth was still twitching on the rooftop behind you, blood pooling from a precise strike to the femoral artery. You twirled the butterfly knife between your fingers, the motion effortless, almost rhythmic—like a pirouette with lethal intent.

The deal was going down below: crates of high-end ordnance changing hands under flickering warehouse fluorescents. You were about to drop in and ruin everyone’s night when a shadow detached itself from the water tower above you.

Red Hood landed with a heavy thud, helmet glinting, dual pistols already drawn. “Kyle’s little sister,” he growled, voice distorted by the modulator. “Didn’t know the family business extended to amateur hour.”

You didn’t flinch. Instead, you smiled, slow and sharp, tilting your head as rain traced down your mask. “Jason Todd. Shouldn’t you be brooding in a graveyard somewhere?”

He holstered one gun but kept the other trained on you. “This isn’t your score. Walk away.”

“Make me.”

The fight was immediate and beautiful in its brutality.

He came at you like a freight train—raw power, street brawling elevated by Lazarus Pit rage. You flowed around him. A leap, a spinning kick that grazed his helmet, claws raking across his chest plate hard enough to spark. He grabbed your wrist mid-twist, yanking you close, but you used the momentum, hooking a leg around his and flipping him toward the edge. He rolled, came up firing rubber rounds that you dodged with dancer’s precision, each movement a deadly extension of the rigorous training that had shaped your body into a weapon.

You laughed—wild, unhinged, the sound cutting through the rain. Selina would’ve scolded you for enjoying it too much. You didn’t care. Pain and chaos were the only things that ever felt real.

Jason caught you mid-air during your next leap, slamming you against the rooftop access door. The impact rattled your ribs, but you headbutted him, cracking his helmet visor. For a split second, you saw his eyes—green, furious, alive. Something electric crackled between you.

“Bring it on pussycat,” he snarled, pinning your arms.

You leaned in until your lips nearly brushed the edge of his helmet. “Always crawling back from the grave just to play hero-villain roulette.”

He hesitated. Just long enough.

You kneed him in the gut, twisted free, and drove an elbow into the side of his neck. He staggered. You could’ve ended it—slit his throat, left him for the crows—but instead you backed off, breathing hard, adrenaline singing in your veins.

The arms deal below erupted into gunfire as someone noticed the commotion above. Jason cursed and vaulted over the ledge, guns blazing. You followed because why the hell not? The two of you carved through the warehouse like a storm—his brute force and marksmanship, your acrobatic savagery. A bullet grazed your shoulder; you barely felt it. You returned the favor by hurling a guard into Jason’s path so he could finish the job.

When the last body hit the floor, silence fell except for the patter of rain through the shattered skylight.

Jason ripped off his cracked helmet, revealing sweat-slicked dark hair and that infamous white streak. Scars mapped his face like a roadmap of hell. He looked at you like he couldn’t decide whether to shoot you or kiss you.

“You’re fucking insane,” he said.

You peeled off your own mask, letting damp hair fall across your face. Selina’s sharper features softened in you by youth and something feral. “Takes one to know one, Todd. Heard you blew up a building just to make a point once.”

He stepped closer. The warehouse smelled of cordite and blood. Your heart hammered against your ribs—not from fear.

“You’re not like her,” he murmured, eyes tracing the line of your jaw, the fresh cut on your lip.

“No.” You closed the distance, grabbing the front of his jacket. “I'm better.”

The kiss was violent. Teeth and rain and pent-up fury. His hands—gloved, rough—gripped your waist hard enough to bruise as he lifted you onto a crate. You wrapped your legs around him, claws digging into his shoulders, drawing a low groan from his throat. He tasted like smoke and copper. You bit his lower lip, and he retaliated by fisting your hair, tilting your head back to expose your throat. His mouth followed, hot and demanding, scraping teeth along your pulse point.

“You’re gonna get me killed,” he growled against your skin.

“Mutual,” you breathed, arching into him.

He pulled back just enough to look at you, chest heaving. The unhinged light in your eyes mirrored something dark and hungry in his. Two broken things who’d crawled out of their own graves—literal or otherwise—refusing to stay buried.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Jason pressed one last bruising kiss to your mouth, then stepped back, retrieving his helmet. “Next time you hunt in my territory, little cat… I won’t hold back.”

You smirked, licking blood from your split lip. “Promise?”

He disappeared into the rain like smoke. You stayed a moment longer, touching your bruised mouth, feeling the ache in your muscles like a lover’s promise.

Selina would disapprove. But Selina had never understood the joy of dancing on the razor’s edge.

He turned sideways to look at your sleeping frame. Your hair sprawled all over your pillow with a small pout prominent on your lips as you stayed cocooned in the warm blankets.

Dick smiled gently and pressed a chaste kiss to your forehead before getting out of bed. He turned his alarm off to let you sleep in for a bit because yours was set thirty minutes after his.

He stretched his body and cracked a few joints before making his way towards the bathroom. He splashed cold water on his face to wake him up before grabbing his electric toothbrush from the little Batman and Robin holder you had gotten as a joke.

He smiled at the memory as he mindlessly brushed his teeth, mind drifting back to you like it always did. Dick’s wildest fantasy involved you two quitting your jobs so you could stay in bed forever cuddling and having endless sex. He pictured your giggly face last night as he moved inside you, a matching look of giddiness on his face due to the wine you two had.

His eyes landed on the single love bite you had left just below his collarbone as payback for the twenty he left littered across your chest.

He had half a mind to cancel on Bruce but he was a man of his word so he spit the toothpaste out and hopped into the shower.

Twenty minutes later as Dick was standing in front of the sink in just a towel wrapped around his waist, he heard the bathroom door open as you strolled inside in one of his t shirts.

He gave you a quick peck on the forehead and you nudged him aside to grab your toothbrush. Dick had just been applying hair gel in his hair when your eyes met his through the mirror.

You began lazily brushing your teeth when Dick chuckled fondly at your puffy face. He picked up the hairdryer next and began styling his hair like he usually did each morning.

“You still had fifteen more minutes baby, why are you up?” Dick asked gently, afraid to disrupt the morning quiet.

You spit your toothpaste out before glaring at him through the mirror. “Someone left the bed and I was cold.”

“Oh you were cold?” Dick challenged and poked the side of your stomach, causing you to yelp. “You stole all the blankets you little thief.”

“I did not!” You protested.

“Yes you did and you rolled away from me I couldn’t even hold you,” he huffed dramatically as he continued fixing his hair.

“I’m sorry,” you apologised through mouthful of toothpaste, suddenly feeling bad for your boyfriend who was probably cold the whole night.

“It’s fine pretty. No need to apologise,” Dick smiled and wrapped his left arm around your stomach, resting his chin on your head.

You gave him a crooked smile before leaning down to spit the toothpaste out and rinse your mouth before finally turning around to look at your boyfriend.

“Hi,” you smiled, grabbing his face.

“Hello,” Dick chirped.

“Don’t you look dashing,” you commented, rubbing your palms over the coarse hair on his face.

“Well thank you m’lady,” he grinned and finally connected your lips.

“Dick that tickles!” You giggled, pushing him away. “Shave your beard.”

“I’ll do it tomorrow, I’m not going to work today,” Dick simply shrugged and grabbed the hair dryer again.

“You are going to Wayne Enterprises though,” you frowned, rubbing your palms over his face again.

“Baby it’s fine, Tim the CEO has to worry about that not me,” he gave you a quick peck on the cheek.

“You’re Bruce’s son too, you should look put together not like a rockstar who doesn’t know what a shower is.”

“What?” Dick snickered.

“I’m serious!”

“Just say you hate it.”

“I don’t hate it,” you replied. “I just don’t like it a lot.”

“Wow,” Dick muttered.

“Let me do it,” you offered, hopping on the counter.

“Yeah right,” Dick scoffed.

“Please!” You protested. “I shave my legs I know how to do it.”

“I think my face is a bit different than your legs angel, I do love them a lot don’t get me wrong,” as if to prove his point, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to your bare thigh before resting his hand there.

“Dick!” You whined.

“No,” he said firmly.

You huffed and grabbed the shaving can from the sink along with his razor before spraying the shaving cream onto your fingers. You grabbed his wrist next and rubbed the cream over the hairy skin and before he could say anything, you swiped the razor across it.

“See?” You beamed up at him as you continued shaving the cream off his wrist.

Dick chewed on his bottom lip for a couple of seconds before finally rolling his eyes.

“Fine,” he sighed, slotting his hips between your thighs.

“Yay!” You cheered and clapped your hands, momentarily forgetting that the razor was in your hand with the plastic cap off and you were waving it in front of Dick’s eye.

“Yeah nevermind,” he said and began pulling away but you tightened your thighs around his waist.

“Sorry!” You said quickly.

“If I die, just know that I loved you dearly and I leave my motorcycle to Jason.”

“And nothing for me?” You dramatically gasped.

“I’m not dying alone am I? In life and death and all that?”

“Thats in sickness and in health you dork and we’re not married,” you pointed out.

“Yet,” Dick reiterated, planting a kiss on your nose.

“Enough stalling Nightwing,” you narrowed your eyes at him before grabbing the shaving can.

You shook it for a second before spraying a good amount on your palm before rubbing it across Dick’s bearded face. He closed his eyes and hummed lowly as he felt your soft hands rub against his coarse skin.

You put your thumb on his chin to tilt his head back carefully as you began gliding the razor across his skin. You worked in silence for a good few minutes in complete concentration with your eyebrows furrowed and your tongue peeking out from between your lips.

Dick smiled at the sight as his hands came to rest on your waist. He earned a harsh “shh! don’t move” from you when you felt his cheeks move due to his smile.

You worked your way up his throat towards the easier part of the face which were his cheeks. When you finally got to his cupid’s bow, you sat up straight and grabbed his face in your hands almost knocking your forehead against his with how close you were but you managed to gently glide the razor against his moustache.

Dick had to tap your waist once to make you stop long enough for him to press a kiss to your forehead, causing some shaving cream to linger before he asked you to continue.

You shook your head lightly at him but the smile breaking out on your face was enough to show him that you weren’t actually irritated by his antics.

Few more quick yet careful swipes of razor across his face and he was done, looking fresh with a clean shaven face.

He tapped your thigh to get out of the grip you had on his hips and washed his face with water to get rid of any remaining cream on his face. You watched him intently as he grabbed the razor from your hand and made a quick swipe across the corner of his mouth to get the patch of hair you had missed.

He washed the razor under the sink and wiped his face with a towel and before he even had the chance to put the towel back, you pulled him back between your thighs with your elbows resting on his shoulders.

“Hello handsome,” you grinned and touched your cheek to his.

“Wow,” Dick mused. “You really hate my beard huh?”

“I just like seeing your whole face,” you replied and before he could utter another word, you cupped his face in your hands and began pecking his face, causing him to let out a laugh.

“Okay!” Dick protested but you didn’t relent as your lips reached his adam’s apple. “If you keep this up I’ll cancel my meeting and you’ll have to miss work because I’ll keep you in bed all day.”

“Sorry,” you apologised, planting one last kiss on his nose. “I forgot it’s a crime to love on your boyfriend. You should punish me Nightwing,” you finished, giving him a playful smirk.

Dick closed his eyes for a beat and sucked in a harsh breath before he leaned forward to connect your lips in a searing kiss that lasted only for a beat.

“I’m calling Bruce, he doesn’t need me that bad,” he murmured against your lips.

You giggled and tugged at his styled hair to push him off you. “Go, I made coffee.”

“M’kay,” Dick hummed, pressing another kiss to your mouth before he helped you hop off the counter. “I’ll make you some toast before leaving and don’t forget your vitamins.”

“Yes daddy!” You said with a dramatic salute.

“Oh you’re done now,” Dick warned before lunging towards you.

You yelped as he scooped you up in his arms and turned around to go to the bedroom. He fell backwards on the bed with you still in his hold.

“Dick!” You giggled as you tried to wiggle out of his iron grip.

He flipped you two over with practiced ease, causing you to lie flat on your back under him. You smiled up at him when his fingers came down to your face to brush your hair away so he could see your face.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured.

“You say that every day,” you scrunched your nose as a wave of shyness washed over you.

“You look pretty every day,” he simply shrugged.

“Stop!” You whined playfully before covering your face with your hands. “I haven’t even washed my face yet it’s puffy and dry.”

“Look at me,” Dick urged and pried your fingers away from your face, pinning both of your hands in his over your head.

You pouted in response when he managed to make you look at him.

“I love you and your puffy face,” he smiled and leaned down enough so your noses were touching but he didn’t kiss you yet. “And your perfect tits,” he murmured and finally kissed you.

You giggled against his mouth as he brought his free hand to your chest to really send his message.

No matter how many years you and Dick spent together and how many ways he fucked you, he still managed to make you blush with one simple look. His blue eyes always looked at you with so much love and relief especially in mornings when he could just be Dick Grayson and stay in bed with you. When he didn’t have to put on a mask.

His tongue glided against your bottom lip before let his teeth bite lightly at your mouth, causing you to moan and squirm in his hold. His hips came down to hold you still and you realised your panties and Dick’s towel were the only things separating you both.

He pulled away and trailed his lips down to your jaw, slowly kissing over the marks he left last night as if to revisit them. Your shirt was swiftly pulled over your head by the hem as Dick sat back on his knees to admire your bare body and when a smirk appeared on his lips, you knew he was feeling proud of the love bites and hickeys he left all over and below your chest.

Before Dick could attach his mouth to your breasts, his phone began ringing but he didn’t budge as he began planting hot open mouthed kisses between the valley of your breasts.

“Dick your phone,” you panted.

“Leave it,” he mumbled.

“It could be important,” you reasoned but your fingers tangled themselves in his silky black hair.

“It’s not,” he replied.

A few seconds later his phone finally stopped ringing but Dick’s movements didn’t relent. He kissed a path down to the waistband of your flimsy panties and when he pulled them up by his teeth, the ringing came again.

“Dick!” You said, louder this time and pushed him away to grab his phone from the nightstand. “It’s Jason,” you informed him but he shook his head and continued planting kisses on your thighs.

You rolled your eyes and picked up the call, bringing the phone to your ear. “Hey Jason.”

“Oh hey,” Jason said your name so casually like you picking up Dick’s phone was normal for him. “Just wanted to check in and see Dick is coming to the meeting right?”

“Yeah he is,” you said the same time Dick yelled “No he’s not!”

“Ignore him, he is,” you huffed and tried pushing Dick away again but he didn’t move, still holding on to your calves as he planted stray kisses to your thighs and knees.

“Dude,” Jason said and you put the phone on speaker.

“What?” Dick sighed.

“You’re coming or I’m not going either and then Tim won’t go,” Jason added.

“Fine,” Dick groaned. “I’m leaving in a bit.”

“Good,” Jason replied.

“You just cockblocked me by the way.”

Jason snickered in response before hanging up.

Dick reached for you again but this time you were quicker than him. You stood up from the bed and ran towards the bathroom, locking the door behind you.

“Seriously?” Dick groaned. “Not even a bye kiss?”

You ducked your head out of the bathroom door and gestured for him to come closer with your finger which he obliged and within seconds, he was in front of you.

You quickly gave him a peck and before he could deepen the kiss, you pulled away.

“Bye! Good luck!” You beamed, shutting the door again.

one of my favs ive written so far which was also inspired by a harry fic i read back in like 2019 soo if i find it again i’ll tag it!