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It did not know about the split skin beneath your gloves, the bruises arranged like ugly fingerprints along your ribs, or the little collection of scars hidden beneath silk and expert lighting. It did not know that the woman selling softness from a billboard had once followed a trafficking broker from a charity dinner to a private club in the East End and broken three of his fingers before midnight.

Gotham knew your face.

Red Hood knew your hands.

He knew them gloved, usually. He knew the way your fingers closed around a baton before violence, the way your wrist flicked before a smoke pellet hit the ground, the way your left hand always went to the blade at your spine only after someone gave you a reason to stop being polite. He knew the shape of you in darkness better than most men knew lovers in daylight. Black armor, fitted mask, hood drawn low, voice flattened through a modulator until nothing personal could escape unless you let it.

He knew you as Mirage.

He had known you for years.

The first time you happened to him, Jason had been twenty, angry enough to turn every alley into a confession booth and young enough to pretend that anger was the same thing as control. He had been hunting a gunrunner through the Bowery, following a trail of modified rifles and dead teenagers until it led him to the back of a pawn shop with barred windows and a loading door painted the color of old blood.

He had expected six men.

There were nine.

He had expected a shipment.

There were children in the van.

That was the kind of math Gotham liked to do.

Jason had taken down four before the fifth managed to get a gun up. Then the alley filled with smoke.

Not normal smoke. Not the cheap gray cough of a canister tossed by an amateur. This was black and silver, thick enough to swallow the light and laced with fragments of reflection that turned every movement into three. The armed men panicked. Jason did not, but only because panic looked different on him. He raised his gun toward the nearest shadow.

Someone dropped from above.

The gunman hit the pavement before Jason fired, his wrist bent at an angle that made him scream. You rose from the smoke like the city had imagined you out of its own bad dreams, all black armor and sharp angles, your baton already moving toward the next man’s throat.

Jason shot the alarm trigger out of a smuggler’s hand and turned his helmet toward you.

“Cute trick,” he said.

You looked over the unconscious men, then at the blood drying across his jacket. “Messy work.”

“I had it handled.”

“One of them had a van full of children.”

His finger tightened against the trigger.

You stepped past him, cutting the lock on the van before he could answer. The children inside stared at you with the frozen terror of people waiting to learn whether the next masked figure would be worse than the last. Your voice changed when you spoke to them. Still distorted, still careful, but lower. Gentler.

“You’re safe,” you told them. “Stay behind me.”

Jason remembered that more clearly than he wanted to.

He had named you Mirage after the third time you interfered with one of his missions, when you used hacked security lights, mirrored decoys, and smoke to make eight men in a warehouse believe there were four of you surrounding them. By the end of that fight, half of them had surrendered to shadows. Jason had stood amid the wreckage with a cracked helmet and blood in his mouth, watching you zip-tie a man to a forklift with more elegance than the situation deserved.

“So,” he said, “Mirage.”

You looked up. “Absolutely not.”

“Too late. It suits you.”

“It sounds like something a man with a branding problem would say.”

“I have excellent branding.”

“You wear a red helmet in Gotham.”

“Iconic.”

“Obvious.”

“Effective.”

“Loud,” you said, and vanished into the smoke before he could decide whether to be offended.

He kept calling you Mirage. You kept pretending you hated it.

Over the years, your paths crossed often enough that coincidence became an insult to both of you. You were not a Bat, though you knew them well enough to keep out of their way when it mattered and irritate them when it did not. You were not one of Jason’s people either, though you appeared in his territory with alarming frequency and a habit of leaving criminals gift-wrapped for the police before he could finish terrifying them. You chased different pieces of the same ugly machine: weapons moving through fashion warehouses, girls disappearing after private parties, donors with clean names and dirty hands, men who hid their violence behind money because Gotham had taught them that enough silk could cover any amount of blood.

Jason learned the shape of your silence.

You would fight beside him without hesitation. You would take his offered hand if you were dangling from a fire escape with bullets carving brick apart around you. You would let him press gauze to your side if you were bleeding badly enough to make pride impractical. But the second a fight ended, you became distant again, all smoke and deflection, humor sharpened into a blade before he could ask a single question that mattered.

He knew you favored rooftops over alleys when waiting for a target. He knew you hated guns but understood them too well to be naive about them. He knew you had expensive gear, better intel than half the people in masks, and a dangerous familiarity with Gotham’s elite. He knew you could walk into a room full of predators and make them think you were prey until the door locked behind them.

He did not know your name.

Gotham did.

That was the joke, though neither of you knew it yet.

By daylight, your name moved through the city like perfume. It rose from magazine covers and flashed across entertainment reports, appeared on invitations, press releases, donor lists, charity boards, luxury campaigns, and the sides of buildings so enormous that Jason had ridden past your face a hundred times without ever thinking to connect it to the woman who once broke a trafficker’s nose in front of him and told him his interrogation technique lacked imagination.

You had been famous long before Red Hood named you Mirage.

You had also been careful long before Jason Todd started looking.

Fame was not a mask you had chosen because you enjoyed being adored. It had begun as work, then leverage, then cover. People spoke in front of beautiful women. They spoke in front of models because they thought looking was a kind of ownership and ownership made them careless. Men who guarded their offices left doors unlocked when they wanted to show off. Men who had trained themselves not to mention crimes in boardrooms forgot themselves over champagne when they believed the woman beside them was too decorative to understand what she was hearing.

You understood everything.

You had learned how to turn being underestimated into a weapon.

You had also learned that no one survived a double life alone.

“Hold still,” Devin said, in the tone of a man who had said it five times already and was two seconds away from making it everyone’s problem.

You stopped flexing your hand.

Devin gave you a sharp look in the mirror. “That was not holding still. That was malicious compliance.”

“I’m holding still emotionally.”

“Wonderful. I’ll put that on your tombstone after I kill you myself.”

He bent over your hand again, his brush moving with the kind of precision surgeons probably envied. Devin had been your makeup artist for six years, which meant he knew your face better than some people knew their own. He was gorgeous in a way that made strangers check their posture, with warm brown skin, close-cropped curls bleached at the tips, and a wardrobe that treated black turtlenecks like a personal religion. He wore gold hoops, silver rings, and an expression of divine irritation whenever your nightlife interfered with his artistry.

He was also the reason half of Gotham did not know its favorite model regularly arrived at shoots looking like she had lost an argument with a brick wall.

“That bruise is deep,” he said, stippling color over the split at your knuckle. “Don’t tell me you fell.”

“I would never insult you like that.”

“You insult me every time you come in here with your face rearranged and expect me to make you look dewy.”

“You are spectacular at your job.”

“Yes, and I’m bisexual, overbooked, underpaid for the emotional labor, and far too beautiful to be color-correcting vigilante trauma at six in the morning.” Devin leaned closer to inspect his work. “Did you at least win?”

You looked at him in the mirror.

He rolled his eyes. “Of course you did. That is why you look smug and concussed.”

“I’m not concussed.”

“You said the same thing last year before you asked me why the couch had opinions.”

“The couch was ugly.”

“The couch was from Milan.”

“It had bad vibes.”

Devin’s mouth twitched despite himself. “Your agent bought that couch.”

“My agent loves me enough to survive the truth.”

“She also loves you enough to cancel Milan if you keep bleeding on my makeup chair.”

From the other side of the dressing room, Marisol looked up from her phone. “I have done it before.”

“You canceled one fitting,” you said.

“I canceled an entire day of fittings, two interviews, and lunch with a man who kept calling me sweetheart in emails even though my signature clearly says Marisol Vega, Agency Representation and Public Strategy.” She smiled without warmth. “I regret nothing.”

Marisol had been your agent for almost as long as Devin had been touching your face. She had started as your booker when both of you were younger, nicer, and less tired. Now she managed your contracts, your press, your charities, your excuses, your disappearances, and the public-facing shape of your life with the competence of a military commander and the loyalty of someone who had once held your hand in a hospital bathroom while Devin painted over a bruise on your cheek before an early morning campaign call.

Your crew was not large, but it was yours.

Devin handled your face and, when necessary, your lies beneath it. Talia, your stylist, had learned to sew hidden pockets into couture without disturbing the line of a gown and could smuggle a collapsible baton into a garment bag with the calm of a woman bringing snacks to a matinee. Nadia, your hairstylist, could hide an earpiece beneath a cascade of waves or a sleek knot so cleanly that security scanners looked like amateurs. Marcus, your driver and unofficial security, knew which alleys had cameras, which paparazzi could be bribed, and which photographers were too predatory to be allowed near the car.

They knew.

Not all of it at first. Not all at once. But bruises told stories, and the people who loved you had learned to read. They had noticed the blood beneath your nails, the torn seams, the exhaustion that followed nights when Gotham’s ugliest men appeared on the morning news with broken hands and no explanation. You had tried lying. Devin had said, with perfect eyeliner and a face like judgment, that he had not survived high school, beauty school, and dating men to be lied to badly by someone he loved.

After that, the lie became a system.

“Your left shoulder is still tight,” Talia said from the garment rack, not looking at you directly. “The gold dress is out.”

“I like the gold dress.”

“The gold dress requires symmetry and a deep breath. You currently have neither.”

“I can fake both.”

“You cannot fake breathing, darling. That is how we ended up with the corset incident.”

Marisol lifted one finger. “We do not speak of the corset incident.”

Devin dabbed concealer along the base of your knuckle. “I speak of it frequently because it was traumatic for me and I deserve community support.”

“You weren’t the one in the corset,” you said.

“No, I was the one explaining to a French photographer why his muse was on the floor breathing into a paper bag while her secret security gremlin threatened to stab him with a hatpin.”

From the doorway, Marcus said, “I did not threaten. I displayed options.”

“You are all impossible,” you said.

Marisol’s expression softened just enough to be dangerous. “We learned from the best.”

You looked away first because affection in a dressing room before a shoot at six in the morning was somehow harder to endure than gunfire.

Devin caught it, of course. He caught everything. He tilted your chin back toward him with two fingers and resumed blending along the edge of your jaw, where a bruise had begun to yellow under your skin.

“Do I need to worry about Red Hood?” he asked.

The room changed so subtly that anyone else might have missed it.

Talia’s hands paused on a hanger. Marisol’s thumb stopped moving over her phone. Marcus became very interested in the hallway.

You kept your face still. “Why would you worry about Red Hood?”

“Because the last time you came back from patrol with that look on your face, it was after you let him stitch your side and then pretended that was a tactical decision.”

“It was a tactical decision.”

“It was a rom-com for people with severe emotional damage.”

Marisol looked up. “Did he hurt you?”

“No.”

“Do we need to make a call?”

“To who?”

“Anyone. Everyone. Bruce Wayne, if necessary. The man collects damaged strays like other billionaires collect yachts.”

You almost smiled. “I’m fine.”

Devin snorted. “She says, while I am painting over what appears to be a handprint on her ribs.”

“It was a bad landing.”

“On what? A person?”

You said nothing.

“That silence is legally an admission.” Devin leaned back, inspecting your face with the offended pride of an artist forced to repair a masterpiece after raccoons attacked it. “There. You look rested, luminous, and entirely unlike a woman who spent last night fistfighting organized crime.”

“See? Spectacular.”

“I know. Praise is accepted in cash, compliments, or the name of the man who keeps putting that look on your face.”

“There is no look.”

All four of them stared at you.

You sighed. “I hate you all.”

“No, you don’t,” Marisol said.

You did not.

That was the trouble with being loved by people who knew where the armor ended and the skin began. They made it harder to disappear.

Red Hood did not have that problem, or so you thought.

Hood operated like a warning that had taught itself to walk upright. He had allies, obviously. Gotham’s vigilante scene was too tangled for anyone to be truly alone, whatever they told themselves. He had the Bats, though his relationship with them seemed to shift depending on the night, the case, and how recently Batman had said something emotionally constipated. He had people who would answer if he called. He had hands at his back when the world was ending.

But Hood carried loneliness like an old injury.

You recognized it because you had spent years turning your own into posture.

That was probably why the two of you kept finding each other on rooftops after fights were over, lingering too long in the gray hour before dawn. You would sit on a ledge with blood drying beneath your gloves. He would lean against an access door with the red helmet tucked beneath one arm, domino mask still keeping the last inch of ritual intact. 

Sometimes you talked about the case. 

Sometimes you argued about methods because arguing was easier than admitting how familiar it had become to breathe the same cold air.

Sometimes you said nothing.

One night, after the two of you stopped a shipment beneath the Westward Bridge, Hood found you sitting on the hood of a stolen van with a butterfly bandage half-applied to your cheek and an expression like you were debating whether pride could be used as a medical adhesive.

He held out his hand.

You looked at it. “What?”

“Give me the bandage.”

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“I noticed.”

“Mirage.”

The way he said your name was starting to become a problem. It had been a joke once. A label tossed at a stranger in smoke. Somewhere along the way, it had become familiar enough to make you answer as if it were your real name.

You handed him the bandage.

He stepped close, careful enough to be irritating, and tilted your chin with the back of one knuckle. His hood had fallen back after the fight, rain catching in the dark hair at his temples and the white streak cutting through it. The red mask was gone, leaving only the domino across his eyes and the stubborn line of his mouth when concern tried to disguise itself as annoyance. It should have made him feel less like Red Hood. Somehow, it only made the gentleness stranger.

“You always this difficult with people trying to help?” he asked.

“You always this bossy with people bleeding in your vicinity?”

“Usually I’m worse.”

“That tracks.”

He cleaned the cut with a disinfectant wipe, his thumb resting lightly near your jaw. The sting helped. Pain was easier to manage than his hands being gentle.

“You going to tell me why you were after D’Amico?” he asked.

“You already know why.”

“I know he moves girls through private clubs and auctions guns to men with too much money. I don’t know why you were angry enough to throw him through a windshield.”

“He landed badly.”

“He landed exactly where you aimed.”

You looked past him toward the river.

Hood taped the bandage into place and did not move away. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“I know.”

That was worse than pushing. Pushing gave you something to resist. Patience asked what you were so afraid of.

A siren wailed in the distance. The air smelled like wet asphalt, gunpowder, and the river.

“He was at a party once,” you said before you could stop yourself.

He went still.

“He thought no one important was listening.”

“And you were?”

You smiled faintly beneath the mask. “People talk in front of beautiful women.”

Hood’s gaze intensified.

You felt the mistake half a second too late.

His thumb, still near your jaw, went motionless. Not enough to trap you. Enough to tell you that something had shifted behind his eyes.

You slid off the van.

“I need to go.”

“Mirage.”

“Don’t.”

You looked at him then, and whatever he saw made him stop.

For all his anger, all his blood and guns and theater, Jason Todd understood the shape of a locked door.

He stepped back.

You fired your grappling line and left him with the body of your almost-confession on the street between you.

After that, he started paying attention differently.

Jason had always noticed things. It was part training, part paranoia, part having died once and come back with a nervous system that trusted danger more than peace. But after that night by the river, he began to notice the edges of Mirage that did not fit into his existing file.

The gear had always been expensive. Not Bat-expensive exactly, but custom, clever, built by people with money and taste. Your armor was too fitted, too cleanly repaired, too elegant in the details no one was supposed to see. Your boots were quiet but not cheap. Your gloves were reinforced at the knuckles and tailored at the wrist. The hidden compartments in your suit were not improvised; they were designed by someone who understood bodies, movement, fabric, and concealment.

You knew high society too well.

You knew which gala entrances had private security instead of city police. You knew the names of donors who never appeared in crime databases but turned up in the wrong rooms with the wrong men. You knew which senators drank too much, which council aides had gambling debts, which fashion houses hired girls too young and too desperate to ask why their contracts included private travel clauses.

People talk in front of beautiful women.

The sentence bothered him for weeks.

Then Bruce disrupted his life by asking him to attend a Wayne Foundation benefit tied to Gotham Fashion Week.

Jason said no.

Bruce did not blink. “You haven’t heard the details.”

“I heard benefit and fashion. That was enough.”

“Several names connected to Black Mask’s distribution network will be there.”

“Send Tim.”

“Out of the country.”

“Dick.”

“Blüdhaven.”

“Cass.”

“Hong Kong.”

“Damian.”

Bruce stared at him.

Jason sighed. “Fine, not Damian.”

“It’s at the Novick Theater,” Bruce said. “The public event is legitimate. The private after-event may not be.”

“May not be.”

“That’s why I need eyes inside.”

“You have eyes inside.”

“I need eyes that do not look like mine.”

Jason leaned back in the chair. “So you want me to play rich dead son at a fashion show.”

Bruce’s mouth tightened slightly at dead, but he did not take the bait. He rarely did when it would be satisfying. “I want you to attend as Jason Todd.”

“That usually goes well.”

“It goes better than Red Hood walking through the front door.”

“Depends who you ask.”

“Jason.”

The name landed with that particular Bruce weight, like a hand on a shoulder that was somehow also a locked gate. Jason hated it. He hated more that some part of him still responded.

He went.

He told himself it was for the case.

The Novick Theater had been restored with the kind of money that made old things look clean enough to forgive themselves. Gold trim shone beneath chandeliers. Velvet curtains framed a runway built over the orchestra seats. Gotham’s elite gathered in black tie and couture, drinking champagne beneath banners that promised art, philanthropy, and empowerment. Jason stood near a pillar with his back to the wall, wearing a black suit Alfred had tailored years ago and an expression that kept most people from trying to make conversation.

Bruce, naturally, found him anyway.

“You look like you’re planning a murder,” Bruce said mildly.

“I’m surrounded by people using the word curated in normal conversation.”

“That would explain it.”

“I found four concealed weapons.”

“This is Gotham.”

“Six if we count the woman near the west bar with the knife in her clutch.”

Bruce glanced once without moving his head. “We count her.”

Jason watched a man near the east corridor adjust his cuff too often. “You owe me.”

“I’ll tell Alfred you said that.”

“That’s low.”

The lights dimmed before Bruce could answer.

Music filled the theater, low and sleek, with a pulse beneath it that made the floor feel alive. Models moved down the runway in structured gowns, black silk, sharp white tailoring, flashes of silver and red. Jason watched because there were exits to monitor and suspects to track, and because if he looked too bored, Bruce would make a comment with three layers of disappointment in it.

Then you stepped onto the runway.

The room changed.

Jason hated that he noticed. He hated the hush that passed through the crowd, the way cameras lifted like worship, the way people leaned forward as if beauty could be breathed in through proximity. You wore a black gown cut clean across your shoulders, the fabric fitted through your body before falling loose around your legs. Diamonds flashed at your ears. Your hair was swept back from your face, leaving every expression visible and somehow revealing nothing at all.

You were beautiful. That was obvious, and Jason did not trust obvious things.

What caught him was the way you moved.

You walked like the room belonged to the idea of you, but your body knew better than to believe it. Every step was smooth, every turn controlled, but there was something beneath it that did not belong only to a runway. Your weight settled like someone who could pivot fast. Your gaze drifted over the room without seeming to search it, pausing for a fraction of a second at the east service corridor, the balcony door, the emergency exit half-hidden behind flowers.

Jason straightened.

Your face was familiar because Gotham had made it impossible for it not to be. He had ridden beneath it, past it, around it for years. Your campaigns filled the city. Perfume, jewelry, couture, charity appeals. You were a public myth in silk, the woman everyone seemed to know without knowing anything at all.

That was not why his mind caught.

Your right hand was covered in makeup.

He noticed because he had spent too much of his life hiding split knuckles to miss it. Foundation had been blended along the base of your fingers, careful and professional, but not enough to disguise the faint swelling near your middle knuckle. Your left shoulder sat a fraction too still beneath the gown. A pale mark near your jaw, mostly hidden by contour and light, looked very much like the edge of the cut he had taped closed two weeks earlier on the hood of a stolen van.

People talk in front of beautiful women.

Your eyes passed over him.

For one impossible second, Jason felt the same assessing attention he knew from rooftops. Not admiration. Not curiosity. Calculation. You looked at him and seemed to measure the distance between him and the exits, the breadth of his shoulders beneath the suit, the way he kept his left hand free. Then your gaze moved on with such perfect disinterest that half the room probably believed it.

Jason stood very still.

Bruce appeared at his side like an expensive haunting. “You saw it.”

Jason did not look at him. “Saw what?”

“Don’t do that.”

“Don’t be cryptic at fashion shows.”

“I’ve suspected for some time,” Bruce said.

That made Jason turn his head slowly. “You what?”

Bruce’s gaze remained on the runway. “There are patterns.”

“There are always patterns with you.”

“She has donated anonymously to clinics in neighborhoods that overlap with Mirage’s activity. Her travel schedule contains gaps that correspond to several interventions in trafficking cases. Men connected to private events she attended have later been found injured, frightened, and far more cooperative with investigators than expected.”

Jason stared at him. “And you didn’t say anything?”

“I didn’t know.”

“You’re Batman.”

“I suspected,” Bruce corrected quietly. “There’s a difference.”

Jason looked back at you as you reached the end of the runway and turned beneath the lights. The gown moved around you like shadow poured into silk.

Across the theater, a man stumbled into the path of a waiter. The tray tipped. A champagne flute slid loose.

You caught it by the stem without looking away from the cameras.

Jason heard Bruce breathe out softly beside him.

“Careful,” Bruce said.

Jason’s jaw tightened. “With her?”

“With yourself.”

That was worse.

After the show, the theater rearranged itself into a party. The runway disappeared beneath donors, photographers, stylists, politicians, and the kind of men Jason would have preferred to meet in alleys rather than under chandeliers. He kept you in sight without meaning to. You moved through the room like you had been trained for it, smiling at the right moments, touching a reporter’s arm, leaning toward a donor, turning your face toward cameras as if offering them exactly what they wanted while keeping everything else behind your teeth.

A man with silver hair and a senator’s pin kissed your hand near the champagne table.

Jason watched your shoulders go still.

Only for a second. Less than that, maybe. Then you smiled.

Mirage, his mind said.

The senator smiled back.

Jason wanted to break his fingers and did not know why.

Across the room, a man with perfect makeup and a black turtleneck watched Jason watching you.

His expression turned bright and sharp.

Jason had been threatened by assassins, mob bosses, ancient cultists, and Bruce in a bad mood. Somehow, the makeup artist’s smile still managed to feel personal.

You slipped away to a side corridor ten minutes later.

Jason followed.

He found you in a temporary dressing room behind the stage, one hand braced on the makeup counter while the makeup artist stood in front of you with a brush in one hand and murder in his eyes.

“I cannot fix a hand if you keep making a fist,” the makeup artist said.

“I’m not making a fist.”

“You are emotionally making a fist, and your body is following.”

“I need five minutes.”

“You need a therapist, eight hours of sleep, and possibly a priest, but we work with what we have.”

Jason stopped in the doorway.

The makeup artist’s eyes lifted in the mirror. 

There it was again. That smile. Bright, professional, sharp enough to draw blood.

“Mr. Todd,” he said, sweeping concealer over the split skin at your knuckle with flawless precision. “You’re staring.”

You went still.

Slowly, your gaze rose to the mirror and found Jason behind you.

He should have said something casual. He had not survived this long without knowing how to lie with a straight face. But the sight of you seated in front of a mirror, black gown pooled around your legs, bruised hand held in makeup artist’s careful grip while he painted the evidence away, unsettled him more than any mask could have.

There were garment bags along one wall. A tray of makeup arranged like surgical instruments. A first-aid kit open beneath the counter. A pair of black tactical gloves half-hidden under a silk scarf.

Your world, Jason realized, was not divided cleanly between glamour and violence.

It was stitched together by people who knew exactly where the seams were.

“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” he said.

The makeup artist’s expression suggested he absolutely believed Jason had meant to do several things, most of them suspicious.

“You did,” he said.

“Devin,” you warned softly.

“Oh, don’t “Devin” me. You let a Wayne boy into the dressing room while I’m covering what is very clearly not a backstage injury. I am allowed this complaint.”

Jason’s brows rose. “Wayne boy?”

“You heard me.”

You sighed. “Jason, this is Devin.”

“Makeup artist?” Jason asked.

“Artist, miracle worker, bisexual icon, emotional support menace,” Devin said. “And currently the only thing standing between her and tomorrow’s headline being ‘Gotham Darling Loses Fight with Door.’”

Jason looked at your hand. “Door?”

“You should hear some of her worse lies. Once she told Vogue she fell into a fountain.”

“I did fall into a fountain.”

“You were thrown through decorative water by a man with brass knuckles and no skincare routine.”

“That was one time.”

Devin looked at Jason. “It was not one time.”

Despite himself, Jason almost smiled.

You saw it in the mirror and narrowed your eyes.

Marisol entered then with a tablet in one hand and a phone in the other. She was beautifully dressed, visibly exhausted, and possessed of the kind of authority that made Jason stand straighter before he decided whether he wanted to. Her gaze moved from you to Devin to Jason, then returned to you with terrifying calm.

“Is this a problem?”

You opened your mouth.

Jason answered first. “No.”

Marisol looked at him. “That was not directed at you.”

“I’m figuring that out.”

“Good.” She smiled thinly. “Keep going.”

You pressed your lips together like you were fighting not to laugh. Jason decided, with a strange sense of alarm, that your civilian life might be more dangerous than your vigilante one.

“He knows,” you said.

Marisol’s face went still.

Devin’s brush stopped.

Jason looked at you in the mirror. “I don’t know anything you haven’t let me know.”

That shifted something in the room.

Devin’s gaze flicked toward him, assessing and no longer quite so amused. Marisol studied him as if deciding whether his body would fit in a garment trunk.

You looked away first.

“Who else knows?” Marisol asked.

Jason’s jaw tightened. “No one.”

“Anyone suspect?”

His silence lasted half a second too long.

Marisol’s eyes narrowed. “That was not a comforting pause.”

“People in my family are nosy.”

Devin resumed blending your knuckles. “Do we hate him?”

“Jason?” you asked.

“Obviously Jason. Keep up, babe. The nosy family can wait their turn.”

Jason looked at you.

You looked down at your hand, but the corner of your mouth betrayed you. “Not yet.”

“Progress,” Jason said.

“No one said that.”

Devin made a thoughtful sound. “I hate him a little less now.”

“How generous.”

“It is. I’m normally very good at first impressions.”

Jason glanced at the open first-aid kit, the hidden gloves, the bruises disappearing under Devin’s brush. “You all know.”

Marisol’s expression softened around the edges, but not enough to become harmless. “Someone has to.”

That landed somewhere Jason did not expect.

He had assumed Mirage was alone because Mirage disappeared alone. He had built that assumption out of his own reflection, out of years of leaving rooftops before anyone could see him bleed. But here you were, surrounded by people who knew what to pack in your garment bags, how to cover bruises, how to kill a story, how to turn a gown into cover and a schedule into an alibi. Not soldiers. Not Bats. A found family armed with concealer, contracts, exit routes, and love sharp enough to bruise.

It made something in him ache.

The dressing room door opened again, and a woman with silver pins clipped to the neckline of her blouse leaned in.

“Talia says the senator wants a photo before the private preview,” she said, then saw Jason and paused. “Oh. Is this Red Hood?”

Jason stared at her.

You put your face in your uninjured hand.

Devin, delighted, said, “Nadia, you can’t just ask people that.”

“Why? He has the shoulders.”

Jason looked at you. “The shoulders?”

“I said nothing.”

“You told them about my shoulders?”

“No,” Devin said. “She has taste, and we have eyes.”

Marisol pinched the bridge of her nose. “Everyone out who does not need to be in here. Nadia, tell Talia we need the black gloves. Devin, finish the hand. Jason Todd, if you are going to stand there looking like unresolved trauma in a suit, at least block the door from photographers.”

Jason blinked.

Then he moved to block the door.

You watched him in the mirror, and the expression on your face was too soft before you caught it.

Devin caught it too.

He lowered his voice, just enough. “Careful.”

“I know.”

“I’m not saying don’t.”

You looked up at him.

Devin’s smile faded into something gentler. “I’m saying make sure he knows what he’s holding.”

Your throat tightened.

Jason, pretending not to listen by the door, looked at the floor.

The private preview began at midnight.

By then, Devin had hidden your bruised knuckles beneath black opera gloves, Talia had altered the fall of your gown to account for your tight shoulder, Nadia had arranged your hair to conceal a comm, and Marisol had created a plausible gap in your schedule large enough to contain either a bathroom break or a small war. Marcus waited at the side entrance with the car running and three different routes out of the theater loaded into his phone.

Jason watched it all with a strange mix of admiration and discomfort.

Your people did not ask whether you were going to stop. They asked where the exits were. They checked your breathing, tightened a hidden strap, pressed a card into your hand with emergency contacts printed in tiny elegant font, and loved you with the exhausted competence of people who had accepted the impossible and built a system around it.

“You good?” Jason asked quietly when the others stepped away.

You looked at him, black gown brushing the floor, diamonds at your ears, baton hidden beneath silk. Mirage had not put on the mask, but she was standing behind your eyes.

“Usually,” you said.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one I have.”

Jason’s gaze dropped to your gloved hand. “The senator. Who is he?”

You looked toward the ballroom.

Senator Harlan Crowe stood beneath a chandelier, smiling benevolently while a photographer adjusted the angle. By daylight, Gotham praised him when it needed to feel good about itself. He funded clinics, shook hands with survivors, gave speeches about protecting vulnerable women, and built his career out of language polished smooth enough to hide the bones beneath it. He had kissed your hand six months earlier at a donor dinner and told you your advocacy work was inspiring.

His fingers had been warm, soft, and manicured.

His eyes had lingered too long.

“Someone who thinks public virtue is a locked door,” you said.

Jason followed your gaze. “And private vice is the room behind it.”

“You do have poetry in there somewhere.”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

“I would never ruin your reputation.”

His mouth curved faintly, but his eyes stayed on Crowe. “He hurt you?”

“Not directly.”

That was honest enough to make Jason’s jaw flex.

You touched his sleeve before he could move. The gesture surprised both of you. His gaze dropped to your hand, black glove against black wool.

“Not here,” you said.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

His eyes met yours.

Whatever answer he would have given vanished when Crowe lifted his champagne glass and looked directly at you.

Recognition did not show on his face. Not real recognition. He knew the public version of you, like everyone did. He knew your name, your campaigns, your usefulness at events like this. He knew how cameras loved you and how donors loved standing near whatever cameras loved.

He did not know that Mirage was looking back at him.

You smiled.

Crowe smiled in return.

Jason felt something cold move through the room.

The preview took place in the restored lower gallery beneath the theater, a private exhibition space lined with photographs from the campaign and couture pieces displayed like artifacts. Attendance was invitation-only, which meant wealthy enough to be careless or useful enough to be bought. Marisol kept you near the center of the room, circulating when necessary, letting you become the thing everyone expected you to be. Beautiful. Polished. Untouchable.

Jason stayed at the edges.

He was good at edges.

He watched Crowe. He watched the man with the cufflinks shaped like knives. He watched two private security guards who did not move like event staff. He watched Devin appear beside you every fifteen minutes with powder and a warning glance, fixing what no one else could see. He watched Marisol run interference with reporters and donors so smoothly that he understood why you trusted her with your life.

Then one of Crowe’s aides disappeared through a staff door with a young model from the event.

The girl was smiling too brightly.

You moved before Jason did.

He caught up to you in the corridor, where the music from the gallery faded into the hum of old pipes and emergency lights.

He said your name under his breath.

Not Mirage. Not the name Gotham’s criminals whispered after the smoke cleared. Your real name, the one printed on campaign contracts and shouted by photographers outside the theater. He said it softly, urgently, and with enough recognition beneath it that it felt more dangerous than the mask.

You did not stop. “Not here.”

“I know where we are,” Jason said. “That’s why I’m using the name everyone else knows.”

That almost made you look at him.

Almost.

“You’re moving like Mirage,” he said.

That stopped you.

For half a second, the corridor seemed too narrow for both versions of you. The public woman in the black gown. The vigilante beneath the silk. Jason in his suit, Red Hood in the way he held himself. He was not threatening to expose you. That was the problem. He was being careful, and somehow that made it harder to keep walking like he had not seen through you.

You turned your head. “You wouldn’t.”

“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

The certainty in his voice did more to disarm you than the threat ever could have.

A muffled cry came from behind the staff door.

You moved again.

The door opened into a narrow backstage dressing room cluttered with garment bags, lighting cases, a makeup counter, and a rack of unused costumes from whatever production the Novick had last hosted before money turned it into a venue for rich people with guilty consciences. Crowe’s aide had the girl pinned against the wall with one hand clamped around her upper arm and the other over her mouth. There was a syringe on the counter beside them.

Jason’s entire body went still.

You got there first.

The aide hit the floor hard enough that the mirror rattled. You put one heel on his wrist and pressed until he stopped reaching for the syringe. The girl stumbled toward Jason, who caught her carefully and moved her behind him with a gentleness that did not match the look on his face.

You kicked the door shut behind you.

Jason reached back and turned the lock without taking his eyes off the aide.

“Cameras?” he asked.

“Not in here.” You tapped the comm hidden behind your ear. “Nadia, kill the hallway feed outside prep room three.”

There was a faint crackle, then Nadia’s voice came through, calm and clipped. “Already on it. You have four minutes before someone notices the loop.”

“Make it six.”

“Do not start negotiating with me while committing crimes in couture.”

Jason glanced at you.

You ignored him.

The girl’s breathing came too fast, sharp enough to hurt. You softened your voice when you turned to her, though the anger in your chest had gone cold and steady.

“You’re safe,” you told her. “Dressing room at the end of the hall. Lock the door behind you. Call this number.” You pulled a card from the hidden slit inside your glove and handed it to her. “Tell them Marisol sent you.”

The girl nodded, shaking.

Jason stepped aside just enough to let her pass. He opened the door a few inches, checked the corridor, then let her slip out. The second she was gone, he shut the door and locked it again.

The aide made a small, frightened sound beneath your heel.

Jason looked down at him. “Talk.”

The aide looked at you, then at Jason. Whatever he saw between the two of you made him pale.

He broke quickly.

Men like him usually did once separated from their pack. He gave up the basement level, the shipment, Crowe’s private security, and the fact that the preview event upstairs was not only cover. It was a marketplace. Blackmail files, weapons, girls, names traded with champagne still on men’s breath. Not all of it would happen tonight. Enough would.

You listened without moving.

Jason watched your face.

The public mask did not crack, exactly. It emptied.

That frightened him more.

“Where?” you asked.

The aide swallowed. “Below the stage. Old trap room. Please, I swear, I don’t—”

You pressed your heel down once.

He stopped.

Jason crouched and zip-tied the aide with his own belt. “Anything else?”

The aide shook his head frantically. “No. No, I swear, that’s everything.”

Jason looked at you.

You gave a small nod.

The aide had enough time to look relieved before Jason struck him once, clean and controlled. His eyes rolled back, and he slumped sideways against the wall, unconscious before his shoulder hit the floor.

You looked down at him. “Was that necessary?”

“He saw us, heard enough to be useful, and was two seconds from screaming the second we left him alone.” Jason checked his pulse with two fingers, then stood. “Yes.”

You could not argue with that.

The room was quiet for half a breath. The locked door muffled the distant music from the gallery. Somewhere above you, people were still laughing over champagne while Crowe moved girls, weapons, and blackmail files beneath their feet. 

You reached beneath the slit of your gown, fingers finding the hidden fastening at your thigh.

Jason’s gaze dropped.

“Turn around,” you said.

His eyes lifted back to yours.

For one strange second, neither of you moved. Then Jason turned without a word and took up position by the locked door, one hand close to the weapon beneath his jacket while you worked behind him.

That was the part that should not have affected you.

The fight was waiting below. You did not have time to linger over trust, especially not here, with your gown still brushing the floor and danger moving beneath the theater.

Still, Jason turned around the second you asked.

Behind him, silk whispered to the floor. He heard the soft clicks of hidden fastenings, the slide of armor pulled from seams, the controlled rhythm of your breathing. The absurdity of it should have been funny: standing guard in a theater corridor while one of Gotham’s most famous women stepped out of couture and into vigilante gear behind him.

It was not funny.

It felt like being trusted with the door.

“You can turn around,” you said.

Mirage stood where the model had been.

The gown lay over one arm, black silk gleaming like spilled ink. Beneath it, you wore the flexible base layer Jason knew too well, reinforced pieces clipped along your ribs and shoulders, your mask still absent but tucked in your hand. You had not fully crossed from one life into the other. Not yet.

Jason looked from the unconscious aide to the gown. “That was dramatic.” 

“You knocked him out.”

“You changed clothes in the middle of a crime scene.”

“You like dramatic.”

“I like efficient.”

“It can be both.”

He loosened his cuffs and removed his jacket. Beneath the suit, he had enough armor to make your brows lift.

“You wore body armor to a benefit.”

“You wore a vigilante suit under couture.”

“That was practical.”

“That was insane.”

“You’re one to talk.”

Jason smiled, quick and unwilling.

You lifted the mask from your hand, but one of the damaged straps caught against your glove before you could fasten it. Jason stepped closer without a word, his fingers careful as he freed the clasp and let you secure it yourself.

The second it settled into place, something shifted between you. Not distance this time.

Understanding.

The fight below the stage was ugly.

Crowe had prepared for police, not vigilantes, but Gotham criminals adapted quickly when terrified. The basement level was a maze of storage rooms, trap mechanisms, old dressing areas, and reinforced crates marked as lighting equipment. Some held weapons. Some held files. One held two girls with zip ties around their wrists and tape over their mouths.

You went very quiet when you found them.

Jason noticed.

He always noticed.

“Get them out,” he said.

“Crowe is mine.”

“Mirage.”

You turned on him. “He is mine.”

Jason’s expression tightened behind the red mask and domino he had pulled on somewhere between the corridor and the stairs. “I’m not arguing that. I’m saying get them out first.”

You hated that he was right.

You hated more that he knew why you needed him to say it.

You cut the girls loose while Jason held the doorway. Gunfire cracked through the basement, loud enough to rattle the pipes overhead. You guided the girls through the side passage and sent them toward the emergency stairs, where Marcus would be waiting because Marisol had already received your coded alert and your people knew what to do when the night turned its teeth on you.

One of the girls clung to your hand for half a second before running.

By the time you returned, Jason was in the middle of the room with blood darkening the edge of his mask and three men on the floor.

“You’re bleeding,” you said.

“You’re late.”

“To your fight?”

“To subtlety as a concept.”

Despite everything, you almost smiled.

Then Crowe stepped out from behind a row of crates with a gun in one hand and a detonator in the other.

The room went still.

He looked different without cameras. Smaller, somehow, even with the weapon. Men like him always did when the performance ended. His expensive suit was rumpled, his benevolent smile gone flat and mean.

“Well,” Crowe said. “This is disappointing.”

Jason raised his gun. “Drop it.”

“If I do, you shoot me.”

“Probably.”

“Honesty from a masked criminal. Gotham really is changing.”

Your eyes moved over the detonator, then the wires trailing toward the crates. Enough explosives to bury the basement. Not enough to level the theater. Crowe wanted leverage, not martyrdom.

His gaze shifted to you.

The way he looked at your body in the armor made your skin crawl even more than it had at the gala.

“You,” he said slowly. “I know something about you.”

Jason moved half a step forward, placing himself just enough between you and Crowe to make a point.

Crowe smiled. “Protective.”

“Bored,” Jason said. “You going to monologue or bleed quietly?”

Crowe ignored him. His eyes stayed on you. “You have familiar posture. That sounds absurd, doesn’t it? But I spend a great deal of time watching women pretend not to hate rooms they willingly entered.”

Your fingers tightened around your baton.

Jason’s voice lowered. “Don’t listen to him.”

Crowe’s smile sharpened. “Ah. There it is.”

You moved first.

The gun fired.

Pain burned across your side, hot and bright where the bullet grazed the seam in your armor. Jason slammed into Crowe before he could fire again, driving him into the crates hard enough to splinter wood. The detonator clattered, skidding across the floor. You lunged for it.

Crowe caught your hood.

The fabric yanked tight. You twisted, but his fingers hooked the edge of your mask before you could break his grip. The fastening snapped with a sharp, ugly sound.

You hit him across the jaw with your baton.

He fell.

Your mask loosened.

For half a second, you caught it with one hand.

Then the broken strap gave way.

It hit the floor between you and Jason.

The basement went silent.

Jason stared at your face.

At the same moment, Crowe laughed through the blood in his mouth.

“Oh,” he breathed. “Oh, that is rich.”

Jason’s gun lowered toward him with lethal calm. “Don’t.”

Crowe grinned up at you from the floor. “Gotham’s darling. The girl on every billboard. Does your agency know what you do after parties? Do your sponsors know? Do all those little girls buying your perfume know their idol spends her nights playing hero in basements?”

You reached for the mask.

Jason got there first.

He picked it up, stepped close, and turned his body so the security camera in the corner caught only his back. His hood was still up, the red mask still covering the lower half of his face. With his free hand, he peeled the domino from around his eyes and pressed it into your palm.

Your breath caught.

His voice was low enough that only you could hear it. “Cameras.”

You stared at him.

Jason Todd stood in front of you in the basement light, hood shadowing his face, red mask still in place, his domino in your hand and your broken mask in his. He had not given you everything. He was not reckless enough for that. But he had given you the part of his disguise that could still save yours.

It was practical.

It was dangerous.

It was the first thing anyone had done all night that made you feel safe.

“Put it on,” he said.

Your hands shook only once.

You secured his domino over your eyes while he stood close enough to shield you from the camera, his body turned deliberately between your face and the lens. Your broken mask hung from his other hand, the snapped strap dangling against his knuckles.

It did not hide you the same way, not really, but it was enough. Enough for grainy footage. Enough for plausible denial. Enough for a man like Crowe to lose the certainty he had been so thrilled to hold.

Jason looked down at him.

Crowe stopped laughing.

“Now,” Jason said, very softly, the voice modulator in his mask turning his voice into something colder, “you were saying?”

By the time the GCPD reached the basement, Crowe was unconscious, the detonator was disabled, the girls were safe, and the evidence against half of Gotham’s philanthropic class was arranged neatly on a crate. Red Hood and Mirage were gone before Gordon could decide whether to be furious or grateful.

You made it as far as the side entrance before your crew descended.

Marisol reached you first.

She did not scream. She did not panic. She looked at the blood on your side, the broken mask in Jason’s hand, the domino across your eyes, and made three decisions in less than a second.

“Marcus, car. Devin, kit. Talia, coat. Nadia, kill every camera angle between here and the east door.”

Nadia was already moving. “On it.”

Devin appeared with the emergency bag, took one look at Jason, and said, “Oh, I hate this.”

Jason blinked. “Me?”

“The situation, mostly. You a little.” Devin turned your chin with a gentleness that did not soften his expression. “Baby, why are you wearing his domino?”

“It was a camera thing.”

“A camera thing,” Devin repeated, in the tone of a man being asked to accept a raccoon as a handbag. “Wonderful. Love that. Very normal evening in fashion.”

Marisol pulled a long coat around your shoulders, hiding the armor and blood from view. “Can you walk?”

“Yes.”

Jason said, “Barely.”

You glared at him through his domino. “Not helping.”

“I’m helping accurately.”

Marisol looked between you. “You can flirt after we prevent a scandal and possible organ damage.”

“We’re not flirting,” you and Jason said at the same time.

Devin made an offended sound. “Do not insult me while I’m trying to save your career.”

Marcus brought the car around to the service entrance, blocking the view with his body while Talia gathered the ruined gown and bundled it beneath another coat. Your people moved around you with terrifying efficiency, turning disaster into logistics. Jason had seen combat teams less coordinated under pressure.

He helped you into the car because you let him.

That was the part that made everyone notice.

Marisol slid in beside you. Devin followed with the kit, muttering about antiseptic and fools. Jason started to step back, because this was your world and he had already pushed too far into it.

Your hand caught his sleeve.

“Come with me,” you said.

The car went very quiet.

Jason looked down at your hand.

Then at you.

Devin whispered, “Oh, she is down bad.”

“Devin,” Marisol said.

“What? Am I wrong?”

Jason got in.

For three seconds, the car was silent except for the hiss of Devin opening an antiseptic wipe.

Then you said, “Crowe saw my face.”

No one pretended not to understand.

Jason’s head turned toward you, his hood still up, the red mask covering the lower half of his face. The domino was still over your eyes. It felt strange there, too warm from his skin, too intimate for something meant to be practical.

Marisol looked at you from the opposite seat. “Crowe thinks he saw your face.”

“He knows.”

“He knows something,” she said. “That is not the same as having proof.”

“He said my name.”

“He said a lot of things while bleeding on a basement floor surrounded by evidence of human trafficking, illegal weapons, explosives, and attempted abduction.” Marisol’s voice stayed calm, which meant she had already started building a strategy. “If he starts screaming that Gotham’s favorite model is a vigilante, half the city will think he’s desperate, the other half will think he’s concussed, and the tabloids will call it a breakdown.”

“He had cameras.”

“Nadia?” Marisol said.

From the front passenger seat, Nadia did not look up from her phone. “Bad angle. Worse lighting. Red Hood blocked the only clean shot, which I will be thanking him for never. The rest is motion blur, smoke, his back, and her wearing the domino before the camera gets anything useful.”

Jason glanced toward her. “Never?”

“Do not make this emotional.”

Devin pressed the antiseptic wipe to your side and ignored the way you hissed through your teeth. “Also, people believe nonsense faster when there are options. We give them options.”

You looked at him. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Marisol said, “we flood the zone.”

“With what?”

“Other theories,” Nadia said, still typing. “Mirage is your body double. Mirage is your secret sister. Mirage is an ex-model with a vendetta. Mirage is actually three people. Mirage is a Wayne-funded performance art protest.”

Jason went very still. “Do not put Wayne in it.”

Marisol’s mouth curved. “Relax. We’ll keep it ridiculous.”

Devin brightened. “Bruce Wayne is Batman.”

Jason stared at him.

“What?” Devin said. “Too ridiculous?”

From the driver’s seat, Marcus said, “Clark Kent is Superman.”

Nadia snorted. “Please. The reporter from Metropolis?”

“He is tall,” Marcus said.

“So are lampposts.”

Despite the pain in your side and the fear still sitting cold beneath your ribs, a laugh escaped you.

Jason looked around the car as if he had accidentally climbed into a vehicle full of lunatics. “This is your damage-control plan?”

“This is step one,” Marisol said. “Step two is legal pressure. Step three is every sponsor and charity board calling Crowe unstable before breakfast. Step four is making sure any real footage becomes one more blurry clip in a sea of conspiracy edits.”

“You make that sound easy,” Jason said.

Marisol smiled at him. “I am very good at my job.”

You looked down at the broken mask in Jason’s hand. The snapped strap hung loose against his knuckles.

“He still knows,” you said quietly.

Jason’s gloved hand closed around the broken mask. “Then he lives with knowing something no one will believe.”

His voice was still altered by the red mask, low and rough and cold enough to belong to the man Gotham feared. Then his gaze dropped to the hand you still had curled in his sleeve. Carefully, he covered it with his own.

“And if he tries to use it,” he said, “he deals with all of us.”

Devin made a small sound. “Oh, I hate that I liked that.”

Marisol looked at Jason for a long moment, then nodded once, as if he had passed some test he had not known he was taking.

“Fine,” she said. “He can come upstairs.”

Your apartment looked different with him in it.

It was too clean, too high above the city, too full of expensive silence. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over Gotham. Across the avenue, one of your billboards glowed above the traffic, the campaign image enormous and flawless. In it, you wore red silk and a mouth painted to match. The woman in the advertisement looked untouchable.

Jason noticed.

Your crew swept in behind you and transformed the space with the ease of people who had done this before. Devin set up at the kitchen island with the medical kit. Marisol took phone calls in a voice so calm it became threatening. Talia disappeared into your bedroom and returned with soft clothes. Nadia checked the security feed. Marcus stood near the door, arms crossed, like any paparazzo foolish enough to approach would be introduced to the architecture.

Jason stood in the middle of it all, too large and too quiet.

You sat on the edge of the couch while Devin cut away the damaged portion of your base layer with small silver scissors.

“You are not allowed to bleed on custom fabric this often,” he said.

“I’ll put it on my calendar.”

“Add sleep while you’re there.”

“Unrealistic.”

“Selfish.”

Jason watched Devin clean the wound with practiced hands. “You’ve done this a lot.”

Devin did not look up. “I’m amazing at many things. Unfortunately, field medicine became one of them.”

“It was never supposed to,” you said softly.

“No, babe.” Devin’s voice gentled without losing its bite. “A lot of things weren’t supposed to happen.”

That silence carried history Jason did not know.

He looked away.

Marisol ended a call near the window. “The story is controlled. Crowe had a medical emergency. The police response is being attributed to a credible threat. You left early due to exhaustion.”

“I did?”

“You will. Publicly.” Marisol looked at Jason. “Bruce Wayne is asking if his son is alive.”

Jason sighed. “How did he get your number?”

Marisol smiled. “I’m very good at my job.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“Yes.”

She handed him the phone.

Jason took it and walked toward the window. “I’m alive.”

Even from the couch, you heard Bruce’s low voice on the other end.

Jason looked tired suddenly. Younger and older at once.

“No, I didn’t compromise the case.” A pause. “No, I’m not at the theater.” Another pause, longer this time. “She’s alive too.”

You looked down at Devin’s hands.

Devin looked at you.

His brows rose.

You mouthed, Don’t.

He mouthed back, Pathetic.

Jason ended the call and returned the phone to Marisol. “He says thank you.”

“No, he didn’t,” Marisol said.

Jason’s mouth twitched. “He implied it in emotionally repressed billionaire.”

“I’ll bill him for the translation.”

Devin finished taping gauze over your side and leaned back. “There. You’ll live, though I am begging you to consider a hobby like ceramics or adultery. Something less hard on the face.”

“You always suggest adultery.”

“It has costumes, secrets, dramatic entrances. It’s practically the same thing, but fewer concussions.”

Jason made a sound that might have been a laugh.

You smiled before you could stop yourself.

Marisol saw it. Devin saw it. Talia and Nadia definitely saw it. Marcus looked at the ceiling as if he were asking God for professional strength.

Your found family, traitorous and beloved, began making excuses to leave.

Marisol claimed she needed to handle the press. Devin said he needed to save the gown from bloodstains and bad decisions. Talia gathered the ruined fabric. Nadia said something about security footage. Marcus announced he would be outside the door for twenty minutes and then downstairs, which was both a statement and a threat.

Devin paused before leaving.

He pointed a makeup brush at Jason. “You.”

Jason lifted his brows.

“She loves like she’s making contingency plans, which means she will try to turn this into strategy if you let her. Don’t be an idiot.”

Your face went hot. “Devin.”

“And you,” he said, turning to you, “do not use emotional intelligence exclusively on criminals and then act surprised when your personal life looks like a warehouse fire.”

“Are you finished?”

“For now.” Devin leaned down, kissed your forehead, and softened just enough. “Call me if the bleeding gets worse.”

“I will.”

“You won’t, but I love pretending.”

Then he left.

The apartment became quiet around you and Jason.

Not empty. Your people had been there too vividly to leave emptiness behind. Their coats, their voices, their care still lingered in the air. But the door closed, and for the first time all night, you were alone with him.

Jason stood near the coffee table, still in his torn shirt and half-hidden armor, his domino gone, his face bare. He looked at the closed door, then at you.

“They really love you,” he said.

“They’re nosy.”

“That too.”

You pulled Marisol’s coat tighter around your shoulders. “They saved my life before they knew what I was doing with it.”

Jason sat beside you, leaving space. He was always careful at the worst possible times. “Why tell them?”

“I didn’t. Not at first. Devin figured it out because I kept coming to shoots with injuries makeup couldn’t explain. Marisol figured it out because nobody gets food poisoning before every suspicious gap in their schedule. Talia found a knife in a gown lining. Nadia found blood in my hair. Marcus saw someone follow me from an event and handled it before I could.”

“You let them stay.”

“They refused to leave.”

“Smart people.”

“They’re idiots.”

“They’re family,” Jason said.

You looked at him.

His gaze was on the billboard across the avenue. Your own face looked back from the glass, distant and perfect and impossibly smooth. “I thought Mirage was alone.”

“So did I, once.”

“What changed?”

“They didn’t ask permission to love me.”

Jason went very still.

You had not meant to say it that plainly. The truth sat between you now, too large to pretend it belonged to the room and not to both of you.

Jason looked down at his hands. The knuckles were bruised. There was blood beneath one nail, though you were not sure whether it was his or someone else’s.

“Must be nice,” he said, and then his mouth tightened as if he hated himself for it.

“It is,” you said. “It’s also terrifying.”

He glanced at you.

“When people love you, you become something that can be lost.”

Jason’s expression changed, not dramatically. He was too practiced for that. But the words landed. You saw it in the small shift of his jaw, the slight lowering of his gaze, the way he absorbed the sentence like it had found an old wound and pressed gently.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s the part no one advertises.”

You laughed softly.

It hurt your side.

Jason noticed and moved closer without thinking. His hand hovered near your waist, then stopped before touching. The hesitation undid you more than contact would have.

“You can,” you said.

His eyes lifted to yours.

“Touch me,” you clarified, because you were tired and hurt and done speaking in code.

Jason’s hand settled carefully against your uninjured side.

Warmth moved through you, startling in its simplicity.

He looked at you for a long moment. “You sure?”

“No.”

His hand started to withdraw.

You caught it.

“I’m sure I want you to,” you said. “I’m not sure I know how to be normal about it.”

Jason’s mouth curved, sad and fond at once. “Normal’s overrated.”

“You would think that.”

“I died. I get some perspective.”

“You make jokes at terrible times.”

“Yeah.” His thumb moved once, slow against the fabric of the coat. “And you hide behind sarcasm when you’re scared.”

You wanted to deny it. You were good at denial. You had made a career out of making people believe the face you gave them.

Jason looked at you like he would let you lie if you needed to, but he would know.

“I don’t know what you want from me now,” you said.

“That depends.”

“On?”

“What you’re offering.”

Your breath caught.

His hand stayed where it was, steady and warm.

You looked at his mouth. Jason noticed because he always noticed, and the air between you changed. It had been changing for years, maybe. On rooftops, in alleys, in the space between his hand holding gauze to your skin and yours closing around his wrist before you let go too quickly. Suspicion had become familiarity. Familiarity had become trust in motion. Trust had become something neither of you named because naming gave a thing edges, and edges could cut.

“I’m tired of disappearing,” you said.

Jason’s eyes softened. “Then don’t.”

It was not that simple.

It was also exactly that simple.

You leaned in.

Jason met you halfway.

The first kiss was careful, almost unbearably so. His mouth was warm and firm against yours, his hand lifting to your jaw without touching the bruise Devin had painted over that morning. You felt the restraint in him, the strength held back so tightly it trembled. Red Hood was violence in a mask. Jason kissed like someone terrified of becoming a weapon in the wrong hands.

You made a small sound against his mouth.

His breath caught.

He pulled back just far enough to look at you. “Tell me if your side hurts.”

“My side hurts.”

His mouth twitched. “Then tell me if it gets worse.”

“Bossy.”

“Alive,” he said. “I want you to stay that way.”

Something inside you opened painfully.

You kissed him again, less carefully this time. Jason’s hand slid into your hair, dislodging what remained of Nadia’s careful work, and you loved that more than you should have. His other hand settled at your waist, warm through the coat and the thin fabric beneath, careful around the bandage Devin had just placed. Even that felt like a question.

You answered by shifting closer.

Jason made a low sound and broke the kiss to rest his forehead against yours. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t say yes because tonight was bad.”

“I’m not.”

“Don’t say it because I know now.”

Your throat tightened.

You touched his face, fingers brushing the white streak in his hair before settling along his jaw. “I’m saying yes because you knew enough to protect me before you asked for anything. I’m saying yes because you gave me your mask when mine broke. I’m saying yes because I want you.”

Jason closed his eyes for a second, like the words had struck somewhere deep.

When he opened them again, the green was almost too much to bear.

“Okay,” he said softly.

He kissed you as if permission were sacred.

The pace changed after that, though it did not become rushed. He helped you stand and move toward the bedroom, one arm around your waist, patient with your bruises, careful when your breath hitched. Your bed was still unmade from the morning, a black garment bag thrown across the bench at the foot of it, a pair of heels abandoned near the dresser. The room looked too human after the polished silence of the living room. Jason seemed to notice that too.

He paused by the bed. “Still okay?”

“Yes.”

“You can change your mind.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

You looked at him, at the blood on his hairline, the bruising along his jaw, the worry he was trying to turn into patience. “I trust you.”

Jason went still.

The words were not grand. They were not dramatic. But in your mouth, after years of vanishing, they were almost obscene in their honesty.

He touched your face with the back of his fingers. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He kissed you again, softer than before.

He helped you out of the coat first, then the damaged armor piece by piece, pausing whenever your breath caught for the wrong reason. His hands learned you through caution before desire: the curve of your shoulder, the bruises along your ribs, the line of your spine, the places that made you lean closer and the places that made you wince. You had been undressed professionally under bright lights, unzipped and pinned and arranged until your body felt less like yours than a garment someone else had borrowed.

Jason undressed you like he was returning you to yourself.

When the torn top came off, his gaze moved over you with open want and visible restraint. The wanting made heat rise beneath your skin. The restraint made you trust him more. He touched your uninjured side first, then your hip, then the soft skin below your ribs, his fingers callused and reverent.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

You laughed faintly, defensive before you could help it. “That’s the general consensus.”

Jason’s gaze returned to your face. “I don’t care what they think.”

The words stole the smile from your mouth.

He leaned in and kissed the corner of your lips, your cheek, the place beneath your jaw where the mask usually sat. “I’m telling you.”

Your eyes fluttered shut.

He kissed down your throat with a tenderness that made your hands curl in the sheets. You felt too exposed and somehow not exposed enough, caught between the woman Gotham touched with its eyes and the woman Jason touched with his mouth, as if both of them deserved gentleness. His hand slid to your thigh, then higher, slow enough that you could stop him.

You did not.

“Still okay?” he asked against your skin.

“Yes.”

“Good.” His mouth brushed your collarbone. “Keep telling me.”

Your laugh turned into a gasp when his fingers dipped beneath the last layer of fabric.

Jason watched your face as he touched you, learning each reaction with the same focus he brought to rooftops and violence. It should have embarrassed you to be seen that closely, but his attention did not feel like a camera. It did not take you apart for consumption. It gathered evidence of what made you feel good and treated the information like something precious.

You caught his wrist, not to stop him, only to hold on.

His thumb moved in a slow circle, patient and sure, until your hips shifted despite the ache in your side. He kissed your mouth, swallowing the sound you made, then kissed down again, over your chest, your stomach, the safe path around your bandage. He looked up from between your thighs, hair falling over his forehead, eyes dark with want.

“You don’t have to,” you whispered.

“I want to.” His hands moved along your thighs. “Unless you don’t.”

You swallowed. “I want you to.”

His mouth curved. “Then lie back, sweetheart.”

The endearment should have sounded too easy. From him, roughened by want and softened by care, it slipped beneath your skin like warmth.

You lay back against the pillows, his hands careful as he settled between your legs. The first touch of his mouth made you breathe his name. He paused as if the sound mattered, then did it again until your fingers found his hair and held on. He was patient in a way you had not expected from him, thorough and attentive, one arm braced carefully across your hips to keep you from twisting against your injured side.

The city watched itself in the windows.

Your billboard glowed across the avenue, bright and false and impossibly far away.

For once, you did not feel trapped beneath your own face.

Jason made you feel present. His mouth, his hands, the low approving sound he made when you stopped trying to swallow your pleasure. Heat built slowly, then all at once, your body tightening beneath him until you were shaking with it. He laced his fingers through yours when you came, holding your hand against the mattress while his mouth eased you through the aftershocks.

When he climbed back up your body, you pulled him into a kiss and tasted yourself on his lips.

He groaned softly, and the sound broke some last fragile thread between restraint and need. You reached for his shirt, clumsy with urgency, and he helped because there was still too much between you. Fabric, armor, weapons, grief. You wanted skin. You wanted weight. You wanted proof that he was real in a way Gotham could not take from you.

Jason stripped down with less ceremony than he had given you, but there was a moment when his shirt came off, and your hands stilled against his chest.

Scars crossed him in pale lines and rough patches, old wounds layered over newer ones, a history written in damage. Your fingers hovered before touching.

He watched you carefully.

You traced one scar near his ribs, then another along his shoulder. “Can I?”

His throat moved. “Yeah.”

You kissed the scar beneath your fingers.

Jason went still in a way that had nothing to do with danger.

You kissed another, then the center of his chest, then the place over his heart because you could not help yourself. His hand slid into your hair. He did not push. He only held you there, breathing unevenly while you gave gentleness back to him in the only language either of you seemed to understand.

By the time he eased you down again, both of you were shaking.

He moved over you carefully, mindful of your side, one forearm braced beside your head so his weight did not press where you were hurt. You guided him closer with your legs around his hips, and he looked down at you with an expression so open it made your chest ache.

“I’ve got you,” he said.

You believed him.

The first slow press of him inside you made your mouth part around a breath you could not quite catch. Jason lowered his forehead to yours, giving you time, his body tense with the effort of holding still. You slid your hands up his back, feeling muscle shift beneath scarred skin.

“Move,” you whispered.

He did, slowly at first, each thrust deep and controlled, his mouth brushing yours without quite becoming a kiss. Softness did not make him less intense. If anything, it made him more devastating. Jason touched you like every sound mattered, like every gasp was a confession he intended to keep safe. He murmured praise against your cheek, your throat, your mouth, low words that made heat pool beneath your skin.

“Beautiful like this,” he said, voice rough. “Not for them. Just here. Just you.”

Your eyes stung.

You pulled him down into a kiss before the feeling could become too large to survive. He let you hide in it for a moment, but only a moment. Then he kissed the corner of your mouth and slowed until you had to look at him again.

“I see you,” he whispered.

You came apart with his name caught in your throat.

Jason followed soon after, his rhythm breaking, his breath shuddering against your neck as he held himself over you and let go. For a long moment afterward, neither of you moved. The rain had softened outside. The city was still there, still hungry, still full of men like Crowe and masks that broke at the worst possible time.

But Jason was warm above you.

He eased away with a care that made you ache for reasons more emotional than physical, then returned with a damp cloth and the medical kit because apparently even sex could not stop him from being irritatingly practical. You complained about this. He told you to hush and checked your bandage anyway.

Afterward, he climbed into bed beside you.

You expected awkwardness. A joke, maybe. Some retreat behind sarcasm now that the wanting had been answered and the room was too quiet.

Instead, Jason pulled the blanket over both of you and gathered you carefully against his chest, one arm warm around your waist and gentle enough not to press against your bandaged side.

You let him.

Your head rested against his chest, your palm spread over one of his scars. His heartbeat was steady beneath your ear. That felt impossible and precious enough that you stayed very still, as if sudden movement might wake you from it.

Across the avenue, your billboard continued to shine.

Jason followed your gaze. “She looks lonely.”

You blinked. “What?”

“The billboard girl.” His fingers moved slowly along your arm. “She looks like she’s waiting for someone to tell her she can stay.”

You did not answer for a while.

Then you said, “Maybe she is.”

Jason pressed a kiss to your hair. “Then let her.”

The words settled over you with the warmth of his body and the ache of your own.

Morning came quietly.

You woke to pale light touching the windows and Jason’s arm heavy around your waist. For once, you had not vanished before sunrise. Your broken mask lay on the bedside table beside his domino and red mask, both of them useless in the honest light.

Jason was awake. You could tell by his breathing.

“You staring at me?” you murmured.

“Investigating.”

You smiled into the pillow. “Find anything useful?”

“Yeah.” His hand slid carefully over your hip, warm and possessive in a way that felt less like ownership than wonder. “You drool.”

You turned your head and glared at him. “I do not.”

“Little bit.”

“I regret trusting you.”

“No, you don’t.”

You should have. It would have been smarter. Safer. Easier.

Instead, you rolled carefully toward him, mindful of your side, and found him watching you with a softness that made the whole city outside feel distant. His hair was a mess. There was a bruise along his jaw. He looked nothing like the ghost Gotham had made of him and everything like the man who had held your mask in place before asking who you were.

“No,” you admitted. “I don’t.”

His smile was small and real.

Your phone began buzzing somewhere on the floor. Then Jason’s chirped from the pile of discarded armor. 

Gotham, impatient as ever, came knocking at the edges of the room.

Neither of you moved immediately.

Then a key turned in the front door.

Jason’s entire body went alert.

You caught his wrist. “Don’t shoot my agent.”

The bedroom door was still mostly closed, but Marisol’s voice carried from the living room. “I heard that, and I appreciate the warning.”

Devin followed a second later. “If he shoots me, I will haunt both of you with contour advice.”

Jason stared at the ceiling. “They have keys.”

“They have emergency keys.”

“Of course they do.”

“They also have breakfast.”

That made him pause.

From the living room, Devin called, “And coffee, because some of us contribute positively to society.”

You smiled against Jason’s shoulder. “You can run if you want.”

Jason looked at the broken mask on the bedside table, the billboard beyond the window, the door behind which your found family was pretending not to give you privacy while absolutely listening. Then he looked at you.

“I’m good,” he said.

Your chest warmed.

“You sure?” you asked.

His thumb brushed the inside of your wrist. “Yeah.”

Devin knocked once and opened the door without waiting for an answer. He took in the bed, Jason, your bandage, your hair, the general state of the room, and placed one hand over his heart.

“Oh, thank God,” he said. “The sexual tension was becoming a hostile work environment.”

You threw a pillow at him.

He caught it. “Please. I’m an artist.”

Marisol appeared behind him with coffee trays and an expression of long-suffering victory. “I assume everyone is alive?”

Jason lifted a hand. “Mostly.”

“Good. Bruce Wayne has called twice, Crowe is in custody, three sponsors want statements, and TMZ is convinced you left the event because you’re secretly pregnant, feuding with another model, or joining a cult.”

You sat up carefully. “Which cult?”

“I told them nothing, obviously, but if we need to choose, I can work with cult. It has mystery.”

Devin pointed at Jason. “He looks like a cult.”

Jason, still shirtless and scarred in your bed, looked at him flatly. “Thanks.”

“It was not a compliment, but you’re welcome.”

Marisol set the trays on the dresser, then looked at you. Her expression softened in that dangerous way that always made you want to hide. “How’s the wound?”

“Fine.”

Jason said, “Not fine, but stable.”

You glared at him. “Traitor.”

Marisol smiled at him. “I like him.”

“You do not get to like him before I decide what I’m doing.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Devin said, handing you coffee you did not remember asking for. “You decided somewhere between letting him into the car and letting him ruin Nadia’s work.”

Jason glanced at your hair. “It looks good.”

Devin pointed at him again. “Correct answer. Hate him less.”

The morning unfolded around you in a way that should have felt impossible.

Marisol took calls in the kitchen while Marcus guarded the hallway and Nadia scrubbed security feeds from a laptop. Talia arrived with a soft robe, a replacement mask, and the ruined black gown sealed in a garment bag like evidence. Devin sat at the foot of your bed and fixed the bruising near Jason’s jaw because, apparently, “if he’s going to be photographed leaving the building, he will not do it looking like a back-alley divorce.”

Jason submitted to the brush with visible suspicion.

“You’re tense,” Devin said.

“I don’t usually get makeup done.”

“Everyone says that until they see themselves with properly corrected under-eyes.”

“I wear a mask.”

“And yet your pores persist.”

You laughed so hard your side hurt.

Jason looked at you, and the annoyance left his face.

Devin saw that too. Of course he did. This time, he said nothing.

Later, when the calls slowed and the coffee went cold, you found Jason standing by the window. He was wearing his shirt again, though it hung open at the collar, and one of Devin’s tiny flesh-colored bandages sat over the cut near his cheekbone. Across the avenue, your billboard watched the city with manufactured longing.

“She’s not going anywhere,” you said.

Jason looked over his shoulder. “The billboard girl?”

You came to stand beside him. “Contracts.”

“Right.”

“She pays for a lot.”

“Armor?”

“Armor, clinics, safehouses, Devin’s emotional damages.”

Jason smiled faintly.

You looked at your own face in the distance. “I don’t hate her. Sometimes I think I should, but I don’t. She gets into rooms Mirage can’t. She makes people underestimate me. She protects the people who protect me.”

“She’s part of you,” Jason said.

“So is Mirage.”

“I know.”

You turned your head. “Do you?”

Jason looked at you then, and there was no mask, no domino, nothing but the man who had seen both of your masks break and still chosen to stand in front of the camera.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

The answer was simple enough to be terrifying.

You touched his hand where it rested near the glass. His fingers curled around yours.

Behind you, Devin yelled from the kitchen, “If you two are having a meaningful window moment, wrap it up. I need to discuss the press statement, and I refuse to let romance ruin my schedule.”

Jason closed his eyes.

You smiled. “Welcome to the family.”

He looked at you. “That a threat?”

“Usually.”

His laugh was low and warm.

Gotham still loved a beautiful lie. It would keep loving her. It would print her face, buy her perfume, whisper her name, and mistake distance for grace. It would look at the woman on every billboard and think it knew her.

Jason Todd knew better now.

So did Devin, and Marisol, and the small, ferocious family waiting in your kitchen with coffee, cover stories, and three different plans for getting Red Hood out of your apartment without being photographed.

The city would keep looking.

Let it.

For once, when morning found you, you did not vanish.

You just had to stick it out for the time being. You wished you could say it was easy, but your brain was slowly being fried along with your body.

“Can I get you anything, honey?” 

You cracked open one eye and almost sighed at the sight in front of you. 

Clark loved the sun. And the sun loved Clark. It was literally how he functioned. So, in times like these he was the chirpiest you’d ever seen him— meanwhile you were sluggish and irritated. But he still tried to fit in to keep up appearances. He’d done it all his life. Even when you told him he didn’t have to do that in front of you, it was just a habit. 

Seeing him strutting around in nothing but a pair of basketball shorts wasn’t doing much to cool you down. His tight white shirt had been discarded somewhere between him vowing he could fix the AC and him giving up. You hadn’t complained, but it was evil. Almost every inch of his Kryptonian skin was on display and it was making you hotter than you already were.

You tried to shake off all your dirty thoughts. Now wasn’t the time. “Working air conditioning.” 

He smiled, strutting over with his god-like body. It was a miracle you didn’t let out a whine when he craned his neck to kiss you sweetly. 

“Already tried that, did more harm than good,” he joked. His large hand brushed some of your damp hair away from your even damper skin. Despite the way your nose scrunched in insecurity, the sweat didn’t seem to bother him one bit. “Anything else?” 

You shook your head. You’d tried everything. Fans, going outside, popsicles (which nearly made Clark lose his mind). Nothing worked. You simply needed to not move an inch so you couldn’t possibly over exert yourself. That was the only way.

Clark felt bad that you were suffering, even though the sight of you in your underwear, with rivulets of sweat running down your body, was a rather appealing sight for him. He would leave you to your own devices until he found a solution.

By the time night fell, the air hadn’t gotten any cooler. Although the sun had long since disappeared, the temperature had remained at a similar level. To say you were over it would be an understatement. You were seconds away from snapping. Which made it all that much worse to be sharing a bed with a human-adjacent heater.

You had been tossing and turning for hours, trying to find any cool spot you possibly could. It wasn’t helping. Nor was the heavy arm thrown over your stomach. 

Normally you loved how Clark loved you. He was touchy, affectionate, and in any other weather you would have welcomed it. Right now though you were considering cutting his arm off just to cool you down. 

You tried to shuffle out from under him a few different times, and a few different ways. Of course your fidgeting was nothing on his otherworldly strength. He didn’t budge. Each time was getting you hotter and hotter. 

You were about ready to cry. 

By some will of God, with a quiet grunt he lifted his arm long enough to allow you your escape. As if even in his sleep he knew what you needed.

The relief didn’t last long. 

He couldn’t stay away from you. If you had known his next move you would have raced away before he trapped you again.

The first sign was his shuffling, followed by the creak of the bed as he shifted. His quiet mumbling, usually endearing, was now like a warning siren.

“No, honey,” you tried to warn, but it was no use. He hadn’t heard you.

His arm found its old place once again, only this time he tucked his head into the crook of your neck. That wasn’t the worst of it. The moment he pressed his front to your back it was as though your skin was sizzling.

There was zero way you could sleep like this. Not for a second. Your only choice was to enforce strict rules about staying on his own side of the bed tonight. 

Either keep your hands to yourself or go home.

It should have been easy. And it would have been. If hurting his feelings wasn’t like kicking a puppy.

You shook him awake, being met with a semi-startled grumble. 

“What’s wrong?” 

Even half asleep, with eyes lidded and awful bedhead, he was still the most devastatingly beautiful man you’d ever seen.

You had to soften the blow. “Clark, handsome,” you cupped his cheeks, stroking your thumb over the slightly heated skin. He gazed at you like you were the only thing that mattered. Not a single piece of his focus was aimed anywhere but at you. “I love you. You’re the light of my life.”

His entire face lit up, cheeks tinting pink as his big, doe eyes filled with adoration for you. It was how he always looked at you, you were just noticing it more right now because you were about to break his heart.

“But if you keep touching me right now I’m going to break up with you.” You would never, ever, but you needed him to understand the level of seriousness you were at. Nothing and no one should mess with your sleep like this.

His face fell.

You felt horribly guilty.

“Okay.” His voice came out quiet, which frankly made you feel even worse.

“It’s not you. Well, it is. Your body is, like, a thousand degrees. Must be some Kryptonian thing. Usually it’s great, but right now… It’s just too hot, you know?” You were over explaining because you felt bad.

He nodded. “Okay.” 

“Okay.” 

The two of you fell back into silence, filled with only the sheets underneath you rustling as you rolled onto your side again, facing away from him. You would cave too quickly if you could see his pouty expression. It was safer this way.

He managed to leave you alone for all of two minutes, a record for him.

He gently moved your hair from the back of your neck, pulling a huff out of you. “Clark, what did I just say?” 

The sudden icy breeze on the back of your neck was heavenly. You gasped, followed by something akin to a pleased moan as the feeling cooled your entire body down for the first time today.

“Oh my God. What is that?” 

“Super-breath. I didn’t tell you?” He knew full well he hadn’t. You could hear the smile in his voice.

Your eyes fluttered shut at the borderline orgasmic chill that ran down your spine. One of your hands reached backwards, landing on the hardened muscle of his torso. Yet another reason on the very long list of why Clark Kent was the greatest man in the world. The more you thought about it, the more sense it made that he was from another planet. No man on Earth could ever quite live up to him. 

“No! I’ve been melting all day— you’re evil. Why wouldn’t you tell me about this?” 

“I’ve got to leave some tricks up my sleeve.” 

He was enjoying this.

With a newfound energy that you hadn’t had all day, you rolled over to face him, finally able to stomach the thought of being near his molten body. You blinked a couple times at the sight of him, looking all smug and handsome in a sleepy way. It truly wasn’t fair that he could get away with being this attractive.

“Do you even love me?” 

That startled a laugh out of him. “Of course I do.” 

You narrowed your eyes, acting like you were unsure. “You promise to keep doing that until I fall asleep?” He hummed, entirely amused with you despite how tired he was. He would walk, or in his case fly, to the ends of the Earth for you— staying up a little longer to make sure you were comfortable wasn’t exactly asking much of him. “Okay. Then I guess I believe you.”

“Close your eyes, honey.” 

When your eyes fell shut you expected the same immediate relief he’d given you moments ago, but instead you were met with his thumb softly brushing underneath your eyes, then down the slope of your nose and over the line of your lips. 

Your heart thumped in your chest. 

The cool sensation of his so-called Super breath came a second later. 

You hummed, a small, content smile creeping onto your face. This was the happiest you’d been all day. “I am so in love with you, Clark Kent.” 

Who needed air conditioning when your boyfriend was basically Elsa?

He had always been strong per se, but Clark had begun working out at the gym within the apartment complex and, well, his bodily assets had grown with sturdy muscle, making it a hard task to wriggle into the suit with haste. 

You, sat on a stool, with one leg crossed over the other had been there for moral support. Other than that, you weren’t required but the Kent family had a hard time peeling themselves away from you.

(Sort of made sense with Clark’s inability to detach himself when his own mother ushered you into the sewing room to keep her company.) 

Clark turns to look at you from where he is standing, and warns, “Honey.” 

“Seriously, Clark,” you start in a tone of astonishment whilst your eyes are cast downward, “It’s massive.”

Your husband throws his mother an apologetic look from where he is standing, because—as much as he loved this aspect of you—he was married to a woman with zero filter, or means to bite her tongue. You say it how you see it, and what you had been seeing was the protruding backend of your husband; with or without the cape. 

Sure, he had his frustrations whilst tugging at the suit in previous circumstances and you had just assumed muscular thighs were to blame. When you’re around your significant other more or less all the time, the changes can sometimes go amiss. Now? Now you could see why Ma had to retrieve the additional scraps of Clark’s Kryptonian blanket from his baby days. 

You blink at the sight of it. His Daily Planet getup of a baggy suit was the probable cause for his suddenly well-rounded backside slipping under the radar. 

(Even seeing him naked, you don’t recall it ever being that big.) 

“What are you squatting?” you ask openly, brows in a pinch. 

Clark takes a breath for patience. He loves you, to the core, but your mouth knew no bounds when you became fixated on one singular thing. 

He chooses to bypass your question by diverting his attention to Ma and asking her about the alterations and if there were any further fittings he was required to do before the pair of you return to Metropolis after a short weekend stay at the Kent Farm. 

Ma adjusts the red cape on her son’s shoulders, “Some more fabric on the backside, baby. That won’t take more than a night for your Ma.” she lilts with innocence.

You, on the other hand—from where Clark can see you in the reflection of the floor length mirror—press your lips together to conceal the bubble of amusement from Ma’s honesty. 

When Clark throws you a petulant look, mortified by your behaviour, you gesture that you’ve zipped your lips from any further prodding whilst Ma’s ears were in the room. 

“I’ll go get the boots.” Ma says in her sweet midwestern twang. She pats Clark’s chest in passing before she passes you where she lovingly pats your cheek as she trudges out of the room. 

It goes quiet. In a foreboding, mischievous type of way. Clark clears his throat, shifting from one foot to the other whilst inspecting the talented craftsmanship of his Ma; where as you slowly turn your head, unable to land your attention anywhere but your husband’s curvaceous behind. 

Clark spots you from the mirror, trying his upmost hardest to contain the small quirk at the corner of his lips.

He couldn’t always push down the desire to appreciate when you showered him in praise in your own roundabout way. Even if it had his cheeks turn bright pink with embarrassment. 

Deep down, Clark thoroughly enjoyed the added attention. (He wouldn’t admit it at this present moment thought.) 

A glint of silver catches his eye on the floor where his Ma had accidentally dropped a pin from her pin cushion. He bends at the waist to pluck it from the wooden floorboard before an unlikely stabbing in someone’s foot happens. 

As soon as he’s bent, you stretch from the stool and slot two fingers between his vulnerable cheeks; making Clark shoot upright with a yelp. 

He grabs your wrist, “What the hey, honey. Cut it out.” He sounds a little irritated this time, so you back down with no visible shame on your features when you fully sit back onto the up-cycled stool. 

“Can’t a woman dote on her husband?” 

“You’re not doting. You’re harassing.” Clark grumbles with the pin rolled between his fingers. 

Your voice is laced with playfulness, “Your lobster is so juicy, baby.” 

Clark folds instantaneously. Your humour tangled with a poor show of flirtatious skills made for quite the hammer that could crack Clark’s—sometimes—moody exterior. His chuckle is low, head shaking at your words as he tries to conjure up a new conversation to steer your chatterbox-self into. 

He lets you roll with one more punch by encouraging it with, “You really think it looks big in the suit?”