ᴰᵃⁿⁱ!

Something is wrong.

Jason feels it like a pressure change—subtle, almost polite—but it crawls under his helmet and settles behind his eyes. It hasn’t clicked, not cleanly. Not yet. He hasn’t asked. Hasn’t said a word through the harbor sweep, through the cold iron stink of saltwater and oil and Christmas rot. A small job. The kind that should feel easy. The kind that still manages to choke the air out of his lungs anyway.

Everyone’s moving like the night might shatter if they stop.

Tim keeps choosing his words too carefully, syllables slowed and smoothed like he’s sanding down sharp edges. Dick’s doing that thing where he smiles first and speaks second—but the timing’s off, the warmth a fraction too late, like a recording lagging behind the video. Damian watches Jason more than the perimeter, eyes sharp, calculating, guarded. Stephanie hasn’t joked once. Not even a cheap jab to him, not even under her breath. That alone feels wrong enough to tilt the world sideways.

Bruce didn’t come.

That absence is loud. A hollow where a presence should be, echoing through comms and instinct alike. The Cave, he’d said. As if that explained anything. As if Bruce ever sits things out without a reason that claws.

Cassandra says nothing—but she’s closer. Close enough that Jason can feel her awareness like static along his spine. When the group splits, she falls into step beside him without discussion, without a glance. Just there. Solid. Protective in a way that feels less like trust and more like vigilance. As if she’s guarding him.

That’s when unease really sinks its teeth in.

Bruce didn’t need all of them.

Didn’t need six sets of boots scraping concrete, six heartbeats crowding the same dark. Dick alone could’ve dismantled this whole thing with half the effort. Hell, Jason himself could’ve wrapped it up fast and bloody and been home already. Instead, they’re stacked together, overlapping, slowing each other down like they’re afraid to let him out of their sight.

He agreed because no one argued about his presence. Because no one questioned whether he was needed. Because the silence around that decision felt intentional.

That should’ve been his first real warning.

Between two groups of thugs, he had ducked behind a row of shipping containers, Gotham’s lights bleeding gold across the black water. He had pulled out his phone and called you, already rehearsing the apology in his head. Late for presents. Again. You’d tease him, pretend to scold, maybe force him to wrap some gifts for your co-workers. 

You didn't answer.

Probably a bath, he told himself. You’d mentioned one. Candles. The fancy bath salts you bought. Something soft to push the cold out of your bones. The thought settles him, briefly. He sends a text instead—short, careful. An apology. An I love you so much that he doesn’t overthink, because with you, he never has to.

You always know what he means.

The phone stays quiet in his pocket.

No buzz. No vibration brushing against his thigh like it usually does, grounding him, tethering him back to something warm and real. He told himself it’s nothing. That you’re relaxed, distracted, asleep. That the night is just heavy, that Gotham is doing what Gotham always does—making ghosts out of shadows and dread out of coincidence.

Still.

When he looks back at the others, he notices the way Dick avoids his eyes now. The way Tim’s gaze flicks to Jason’s pocket and away again. The way Damian’s jaw tightens when Jason shifts his weight, like he’s bracing for impact. Cassandra meets his eyes once—just once—and there’s something there that twists low and sharp in his chest. Not fear. Not exactly.

Knowing. Jason doesn’t ask. He doesn’t press.

But the harbor feels too quiet, the night stretched thin and listening, and for the first time since he sent that text, a cold, irrational thought curls in his gut—

That whatever is wrong didn’t start here.

And that somewhere far from the water, far from the mission, something precious has already slipped out of reach.

“That was the last of them,” Jason says, voice rough through the helmet, as Tim finishes cinching zip-ties around the final goon and anchors him to a rust-flaked shipping container. The plastic bites down with a sharp click that echoes too loudly across the concrete. The man mumbled insanities through spit.

The harbor exhales around them—cold wind off the water, carrying brine and diesel and something rotten that’s been sitting too long. Sodium lights flicker overhead, casting everything in jaundiced gold and long, distorted shadows that stretch and tangle at their feet. The concrete is damp beneath Jason’s boots, slick with mist and old oil, the kind of surface that never really dries no matter how many ‘sunny’ days Gotham pretends to have.

“We should do another check around the harbor,” Dick says.

He’s already kneeling, already breaking the man's phone in half with practiced efficiency, grinding it into the concrete with his heel until the screen spider webs and dies. He doesn’t look up when he says it. Doesn’t grin. Doesn’t even sound casual about it.

Jason lifts an eyebrow, slow, deliberate. His gaze slides to Damian automatically—because Damian is usually the first to shoot an idea like that down, sharp and impatient and blunt as a blade.

Instead, Damian just mutters, “Tim could be wrong.”

Mumbles it. Like he’s afraid the words might carry.

That alone sends a small, unpleasant chill up Jason’s spine.

Tim doesn’t argue. Doesn’t bristle. He straightens from the goon and dusts his gloves together, eyes flicking—not to Jason—but to Stephanie. The movement is quick, practiced, like muscle memory.

“Do you want to take the gates with me?” Tim says, too smooth. Too rehearsed. “Jason and Dick could go along the—”

“What?” Jason cuts in before he can finish, blinking once. “You two were perched on the gates the entire op. What’re you talking about?”

The wind gusts harder, rattling loose chains and setting a tarp snapping somewhere down the dock. Water slaps against concrete pylons in a slow, hollow rhythm. 

Jason suddenly feels like the sound is counting something down.

“It wouldn’t hurt to double-check,” Tim says, rising to his feet.

He still won’t meet Jason’s eyes.

Jason’s jaw tightens. He shifts his weight, the concrete cold and unforgiving through the thinning soles of his boots, and for a split second his mind drifts—unbidden—to you. To the warmth of your kitchen lights. To the way you’d probably be halfway through setting out plates by now, humming something low and off-key, waiting for him in that way that makes him want to claw his soul out and hand it over to you. 

The thought lands soft, intimate, grounding—and then slips through his fingers when he remembers his phone, silent and heavy in his pocket.

“…You guys don’t need me for that,” Jason says, firmer now. There’s an edge to it, something protective and stubborn. He already has plans. A timeline. A promise he intends to keep. “Seriously. If you want to sweep again, even one person could—”

Dick finally looks up.

It’s just a glance, quick and loaded, the kind Jason’s learned to read over a lifetime of almosts and unsaids. Cassandra shifts closer at the same moment, her shoulder nearly brushing his, her presence steady and deliberate. Jason doesn't think she's ever willingly touched him in his life. Stephanie opens her mouth like she’s about to say something—anything—then closes it again.

The harbor feels tighter suddenly. Smaller. Like the stacks of containers have leaned in, hemming them closer, their corrugated sides looming like silent witnesses. The wind cuts sharper off the water, needling through the seams of Jason’s jacket, and somewhere deep in his chest, that pressure builds again.

Jason turns fully to Damian.

“Kid, I swear to God, tell me what—”

Damian snaps at the exact same moment Cassandra moves. Her hand closes around Jason’s shoulder, firm and sudden, fingers digging in through armor like she’s trying to anchor him to the concrete before he does something irreversible. The contact is intimate in a way that feels wrong, alarmed.

“How the hell should I know? They didn't tell me—” Damian bites back, voice sharp, flaring too fast, too hot.

“Damian!” Dick hisses, the sound cutting through the night like a blade dragged too quickly from its sheath. He’s already moving, stepping between them without quite committing to either side, hands up in a placating gesture that lands closer to panic than calm. He turns to Jason almost immediately, words tumbling over each other. “Come on, dude, let’s just go check the security towers and—”

“That’s going to take another hour,” Jason cuts in.

The words come out flat, but there’s steel underneath. He shrugs Cassandra’s hand off—not rough, but final—and reaches into his pocket. The harbor lights blur for a second as his fingers close around his phone, the familiar shape of something that connects him to you grounding him. It’s 10:20. He knows that without looking but checks anyway. He’s been counting the minutes since the mission dragged past its supposed end.

“I had plans,” he says, quieter now, but more dangerous for it. “Let me at least—”

The batarang whistles through the air.

Jason barely has time to register the movement—Damian’s arm snapping forward, wrist precise, expression tight and furious—before metal slams into his hand. The impact jars up his arm, sharp and biting, and the phone slips free, spinning once before it hits the concrete.

Crack.

The screen fractures instantly, a spiderweb of dead glass blooming beneath the sodium lights before the device skids to a stop near Jason’s boot. The harbor seems to hold its breath. Even the wind falters, the water’s slap against the pylons momentarily muted, as if the night itself is listening.

Jason stares down at it.

At the dark screen. On the way his reflection breaks apart in the shattered glass.

Jason’s gaze lifts slowly from the ruin at his feet.

It settles on Dick.

“Call Bruce.”

The words aren’t loud. They don’t need to be. They cut anyway—clean, controlled, edged with something that’s starting to slip. Dick falters under it, hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck, eyes flicking anywhere but Jason’s face. The harbor lights stutter overhead, one of them buzzing like it’s about to give out, bathing Dick in a sickly gold that makes him look younger. 

Guilty.

“What, you gonna tattle?” Dick says, trying for levity and missing it by miles. His laugh lands wrong, brittle against the cold. “C’mon, Damian's just in a mood. I was going to surprise you with burgers but I thought the kid would spill. I’ll buy you a new phone, okay? Just—”

“Call Bruce,” Jason repeats.

This time it’s a hiss, dragged out through clenched teeth, something feral and fraying around the edges. The wind picks up again, slicing between the containers, rattling loose metal and carrying the sharp tang of rain that never quite falls in Gotham. Jason turns his head, slow and deliberate, until his eyes find Cassandra.

She hasn’t moved. She’s watching him like she’s afraid he might break.

“…He’s busy,” Cass says.

Her voice is barely there. Smaller than usual. Soft enough that Tim, standing a good ten feet away, doesn’t hear it at all. The words dissolve into the night almost as soon as they leave her mouth, swallowed by wind and water and distance—but Jason hears them. Every syllable.

Busy.

Something inside him tightens, winding down to a thin, dangerous thread.

His hand comes up to his comm without conscious thought. He adjusts it once, fingers steady despite the way his pulse thuds too hard, too fast. The harbor seems to lean in again—the stacked containers looming like watchful giants, the river below churning black and endless. 

Gotham breathes around him, damp and unforgiving.

“B,” Jason says.

Sharp. Precise. A single syllable fired into the dark like a flare.

Static answers him. Wind whistling through steel corridors. The distant cry of something alive and miserable echoing off the water. No voice. No correction. No irritation crackling back through the line.

Just silence. It stretches. Pulls thin. Grows teeth.

Jason exhales through his nose, a humorless breath that fogs faintly in the cold air. He thinks of you again—too vividly now. The way your voice softens when you say his name. The way you always pick up, even when he thinks you shouldn’t. The way silence has never belonged between the two of you.

His jaw locks. Fuck this shit, I should be at home with her.

Jason moves before anyone can stop him—before anyone even realizes he’s decided something.

He’s across the concrete in three long strides, boots splashing through shallow puddles that mirror Gotham’s jaundiced lights in broken pieces. Damian doesn’t flinch when Jason grabs his comm. Doesn’t pull back. Doesn’t protest. That, more than anything, makes Jason’s teeth grind.

He clicks the emergency signal to the Batcomputer—once, twice, a break, two clicks hard enough that it hurts his thumb—then rips the comm free. His helmet follows, clattering against the concrete with a hollow, echoing crack that ricochets between the shipping containers. The sound feels too loud, too exposed. Jason presses the comm to his bare ear, cold metal biting into skin.

No one stops him.

Not Dick. Not Tim. Not Stephanie. Cassandra watches with that same quiet intensity, hands flexing like she’s bracing for impact. They stand there and let it happen, like this is how it was always meant to go—like they’ve already accepted that Jason finding out is inevitable, but telling him would be worse. Like this is some twisted test, or penance, or family tradition he never agreed to.

The harbor hums low and restless. Wind slides through steel corridors, rattling chains, carrying the stink of oil and brine and rain-soaked concrete. Gotham feels awake in that way it only does when something bad is already in motion.

“Robin?” Bruce’s voice cuts through the static, sharp and immediate. Too immediate. There’s an edge to it Jason hasn’t heard in years—tight, almost nervous, parental. “Robin, what’s wrong?”

Jason almost laughs.

Instead, his mouth twists.

“I’m going home, old man,” he hisses, already turning away from Damian. “What was this? Ya trying to tire me out, or did you get mind-controlled again? ‘Cause everyone here apparently likes you enough to not tell me the truth.”

“Jason—”

“Red Hood,” Jason snaps, the correction coming fast and mean. He bends, scoops his helmet up by the chin guard, and starts walking toward the exit between the containers where the harbor opens up to the road. “What happened to keeping hero names on comms? Or are you the only one allowed to break rules tonight?”

“Red Hood, just give me—”

“It’s a lousy gang!” Jason shouts, voice tearing loose now, bouncing off steel and concrete and dark water. “They don’t even crack the top twenty. Damian could’ve done this shit by himself.”

He doesn’t look back, but he knows they’re following him. He can feel it—the weight of their footsteps, the way they trail just close enough to intervene if he breaks. Later, it’ll hit him why Tim made sure every single goon was double zip-tied, wrists biting white beneath plastic. Insurance. 

Tim knew Jason would find out. 

Knew none of them would be coming back to clean this up.

“Red Hood—”

“Merry Christmas, B,” Jason cuts in, bitter and sharp as broken glass. “Please don’t call.”

“JASON—”

Bruce’s voice snaps through the comm like a gunshot, dragging Jason straight back into another life, another night, another version of himself that answered to that tone. “She’s in danger. And if you want any chance of seeing her again, get to the Batcave—”

The line goes dead.

Not static. Not interference.

Bruce cut it himself.

Jason stops, because there's only one person he could be talking about to send all five of them with him.

The harbor seems to lurch, the world tilting just enough to make his balance feel theoretical. The wind howls between the containers, louder now, like Gotham exhaling something foul and satisfied. Water slaps hard against concrete pylons below, relentless, counting seconds Jason no longer owns.

Slowly—too slowly—he turns.

He looks at them. At Dick’s pale face. At Tim’s clenched jaw. At Damian’s rigid stillness. At Stephanie, eyes bright with unshed panic. At Cassandra, whose gaze is already on him, steady and mournful, like she’s watching something crack.

They look at him like he’s glass.

Like he’s a bomb they’re waiting to defuse—or clean up after.

Jason doesn’t give them the chance.

“Fuck all of you,” he spits, the words coming out broken and small despite his best efforts.

Then he runs.

Out of the harbor. Out of the sodium lights and rust and the weight of too many eyes. Jason runs like Gotham itself is on his heels, boots striking concrete in a brutal rhythm that drowns out thought—or tries to. The city stretches around him in jagged silhouettes and wet stone, skyscrapers looming like blackened ribs against a low, churning sky. Clouds hang heavy and swollen, bruised purple and gray, threatening rain they never quite release. Gotham loves the anticipation of pain more than the act itself.

His blood is loud in his ears. Too loud. Every heartbeat punches through his ribs, frantic and unforgiving, as if his body already knows something his mind refuses to accept.

Toward the manor. Toward answers.

Toward the awful, creeping certainty settling into his bones that whatever Gotham has taken this time, it didn’t take lightly—and it didn’t take something he can afford to replace.

He takes the shorter way.

Fire escapes. Rooftops slick with mist. Narrow alleys that smell like old rain and older sins. He vaults gaps without slowing, coat snapping behind him like a torn banner, the city blurring into streaks of shadow and light. This route cuts close to your place. Too close. He doesn’t consciously choose it; his body does, muscle memory dragging him along a path his heart has memorized better than any map.

And then—

Mid-leap, suspended between one rooftop and the next, he sees it.

Your building sits quiet against the skyline, dark in a way it never is. Your lights are off. All of them. The windows—your windows—are shattered, glass glittering weakly under the city’s glow like fallen stars. The balcony rail is smeared with something darker than shadow.

Blood.

The word doesn’t form. Not fully. His brain skids around it, refuses to give it weight. At most, he tells himself, you’re hurt. Something small. A cut. A scrape. A stupid accident that looks worse than it is. You’ll laugh it off when he gets there, scold him for worrying, tell him he’s being dramatic again.

Because you’re untouchable.

That’s the rule his mind has always clung to. Gotham can drown him in filth and violence and rot, but you—you—are clean. Untarnished. Something soft the city hasn’t learned how to bruise yet. You exist outside its reach, outside its hunger. Gotham takes things like Jason. It breaks people like him. It doesn’t get to put its hands on you.

It can’t have you.

Because if you’re hurt—if you’re really hurt—then everything Jason has built inside himself caves in at once. Every fragile structure, every careful compromise, every promise he’s made to stay standing for you. There’s no version of the world where you’re broken and he survives it intact.

He lands hard, barely absorbing the impact before he’s running again, lungs burning, throat raw. The manor rises ahead of him through the trees like a dark monument, windows glowing warm and oblivious against the night. Too slow. The gates are too slow. The doors are too slow.

Jason doesn’t bother.

He barrels straight for a ground-floor window and drives his elbow through it without hesitation. Glass explodes inward, sharp and screaming, biting into skin. He doesn’t feel it—not really—until he’s inside, boots skidding onto the polished floor, breath tearing out of him in harsh, uneven pulls.

Blood runs freely down his forearm, drips onto the pale carpet in dark, blooming stains.

It looks wrong there. Violent. Out of place, just like the blood on your balcony.

Jason stares at it for half a second too long, chest heaving, and something in him splinters quietly—because now he knows. The city has already touched you and it has never, not once, let go without breaking something in return.

Jason doesn’t slow down in the Cave.

The platform is still lowering when he’s already moving, boots striking metal too hard, too fast, the sound ricocheting off stone and steel. The Batcave yawns around them—vast and echoing, all cold water and colder rock, computer screens throwing pale blue light across jagged walls. The waterfall roars like it’s trying to drown the night itself, a constant, punishing noise that usually steadies him.

Tonight it only sharpens the edges.

Bruce turns at the last possible second. His eyes flick first to Jason’s face, then to the blood smeared down his arm, dripping steadily onto the pristine metal floor. Bruce’s mouth tightens. Not in anger. In calculation. In fear he refuses to name.

Jason shoves him.

Hard.

Bruce’s back slams into the Batcomputer console, screens rattling, data stuttering for half a heartbeat. A lesser man would’ve been airborne. Bruce Wayne could have thrown Jason across the Cave without effort—could have ended this in a clean, controlled second.

He doesn’t.

Jason knows he won’t.

“Where is she,” Jason spits, the words tearing out of him raw and shaking. His hands fist in Bruce’s cape, knuckles white, trembling despite the strength coiled beneath them. The fabric bunches beneath his grip like it might rip if he pulls any harder. “Where is she?”

Bruce lifts his hands slowly, carefully—not in surrender, but in containment. Like approaching a live wire. His voice, when he speaks, is measured to the point of pain.

“…Jason.”

The name alone is an attempt. An anchor. Bruce is already running scenarios, already gauging angles and exits and how much damage Jason could do if this slips another inch. He knows Jason’s tells. Knows the way his breathing has gone uneven, the way his eyes are too bright, too fixed. Knows this isn’t rage yet.

This is terror.

“Don’t,” Bruce says quietly. Not commanding. Pleading, buried deep beneath control. “Just—listen to me.”

Jason laughs once, short and broken, the sound scraping his throat raw. “No. You don’t get to slow this down. You don’t get to prepare me.”

Bruce swallows. “…Joker—” he begins.

And the world fractures.

The word lands heavy and obscene between them, fouling the air of the cave like poison gas. Joker. The name crawls under Jason’s armor, past muscle and bone, straight into the place where you live inside him.

Suddenly, you’re not untouchable.

You’re not the one clean thing Gotham never got its hands on. Not the soft place Jason runs to when the city claws at him too hard. Not the warmth in his bed, the light in his kitchen, the voice that says his name like it belongs to something human.

You’re not safe.

You’re not distant.

You’re not protected by the simple, impossible belief that the worst things in the world know better than to touch you.

You’re real.

You’re fragile.

You’re reachable.

Jason’s grip tightens without him meaning to, breath hitching violently in his chest. His mind fills with images he refuses to finish forming—broken glass, blood on pale surfaces, your windows shattered open to the night the same way his chest feels split open now. He thinks of your hands. Your laugh. The way you look at him like he’s something worth keeping.

And now—

Now you’re the blood he’s already wearing.

The blood he’s going to feel soaking into his gloves tonight.

Bruce sees it happen. Sees the moment Jason slips past anger and into something far more dangerous. His own heart lurches, sharp and traitorous. This—this is what he’s been afraid of since the second he knew Joker was involved. Not Jason lashing out blindly.

Jason focused.

Emotional.

Unanchored.

“Jason,” Bruce says again, softer now, steady as bedrock despite the fear tightening his chest. “I need you to stay with me. I need you here. Because if you go out there like this—”

Jason’s eyes snap back to him, glassy and feral and devastatingly alive.

“If I don’t go,” Jason says hoarsely, “she dies.”

“If you go,” Bruce says, low and sharp, the words cutting through the roar of the Cave, “you die—and you could lose her at the same time.”

The Batcave hums around them, fluorescent light washing the rock walls in cold blue, computer screens flickering with restless data. The waterfall crashes endlessly behind Bruce, mist clinging to the air, dampening everything it touches. It feels like the Cave is breathing—slow, heavy, watchful.

Bruce moves closer and grips Jason’s jacket with both hands, fingers clutching the leather like it’s the last solid thing in the world. He holds on the way a man holds a ledge he’s already slipping from, hoping friction alone might be enough to keep someone from falling.

It isn’t.

“Where is she,” Jason says.

His voice is flat. Too controlled. His eyes have already left Bruce, already slid to the Batcomputer, to the glowing map littered with red and yellow pings like open wounds across Gotham’s body. Each marker pulses faintly, alive and accusing.

He doesn’t notice his siblings closing in—Dick’s careful steps, Tim’s rigid stillness, Damian hovering sharp and coiled like a drawn blade.

“She’s alive,” Bruce says quickly, desperately. “She wasn’t the only one—at least four other children and three women—”

Jason turns his head.

The look he gives Bruce is devastating in its emptiness. Eyes glassed over, jaw set too tight, brows drawn together like the world has narrowed to a single, unbearable point.

“Do you honestly think I give a damn about them right now?”

The words aren’t shouted. They don’t need to be. They land heavy, obscene in their honesty, and Bruce’s grip tightens reflexively, knuckles whitening against Jason’s jacket.

“I know you don’t,” Bruce snaps back, frustration bleeding through control. “Which is why I didn’t tell you she was taken. Because we need a plan that keeps everyone who was captured safe—”

“At the risk she dies in the process?” Jason cuts in.

Then—he stills.

Something shifts. His hands loosen, falling away from Bruce’s cape as if the fabric has suddenly burned him. His gaze slides, sharp and intentional, and locks onto Tim.

“How long,” Jason says.

The question is steady. Solid. Frighteningly calm.

Tim swallows and flicks a glance at Bruce—a silent check, a plea, a habit Jason has seen a thousand times. Jason shoves Bruce’s hand aside and crosses the distance in two strides, grabbing Tim by the shoulders, fingers digging in through armor.

“Don’t,” Jason hisses, thumbs pressing hard, grounding, painful. “Don’t look at him.”

The words aren’t just for Tim. They’re for Jason too.

He vaguely registers Dick saying his name, Stephanie’s voice tight with panic somewhere behind him, but it all dissolves into a dull ringing as he stares down at Tim. Tim doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away. He meets Jason’s gaze head-on.

“How long,” Jason repeats. “Where.”

Tim exhales, slow and controlled, the way he does when delivering bad news. “Two hours,” he says quietly. “Warehouse two blocks from Crime Alley. Behind that busted playground.”

Crime Alley.

The name echoes through the Cave like a curse, sinking into Jason’s chest and blooming outward, cold and malignant. Of course it’s there. Of course Joker chose that place—layers of history piled atop rot, a shrine built from other people’s pain.

Jason releases Tim slowly, hands trembling now, control finally beginning to crack.

Two hours.

Two hours of you alone with the man who taught Gotham how to laugh while it kills.

The Batcomputer hums on, indifferent. Gotham’s skyline glows faintly on the monitors—jagged towers under a bruised sky, rain finally starting to smear the camera feeds, streaking the city in gray. Somewhere out there, windows are broken. Somewhere out there, that cashmere scarf he wrapped and placed under your tree stays un-wrapped.

Jason understands then—with a clarity so sharp it almost feels merciful—that plans are a luxury meant for people who still believe time is something they own.

Time has never belonged to him.

Because you—you—aren’t alone. You’re trapped with seven other people. Four of them children, Bruce had said, like that word didn’t rearrange Jason’s insides completely. His mind does something traitorous then, something he hates himself for even acknowledging: it calculates. It knows how these things go. It knows Joker’s sense of theater, his appetite for cruelty, his fondness for leaving one survivor behind as punctuation.

And the last one standing is never the strongest.

It’s the smallest. 

You would be dying before those kids.

Jason’s breath stutters, just once.

“Jason,” Bruce says from the Batcomputer, voice tight, forced into calm the way it always is when he’s terrified. The blue glow paints him hollow, all sharp angles and restraint. “Don’t make me stop you. The cops are on their way. Joker just wants cash.”

For the first time since the harbor, the noise in Jason’s head goes quiet.

Not peaceful—focused.

Everything narrows down to Bruce. To the way his shoulders are squared like a barricade. To the way his hands hover, uncertain, like he’s trying to decide whether to reach out or brace for impact. Jason’s heart hammers so hard it hurts, louder than the waterfall, louder than any threat Batman could ever make.

“If you even try, Bruce,” Jason says.

He doesn’t look at him when he says it. He can’t. The name comes out wrong in his mouth—too raw, too intimate, scraped down to bone. Instead, he keeps his eyes on Tim, standing rigid in front of him, small in a way Jason suddenly can’t stop seeing. He hopes—distantly, uselessly—that he isn’t glaring at his little brother. Hopes Tim understands this isn’t anger.

Just pure desperation. His last attempt, his last shot.

“Ill fucking shoot myself. I’ll make sure you know it’s your fault,” Jason continues, voice low and shaking despite his effort to keep it steady. “I’ll use my gun. And if you tie me up today, I’ll wait until next week. If you lock me down for a week, I’ll wait a month. I’ll do it.”

He swallows.

Because that’s the only thing that’s ever worked. The only language Bruce Wayne never ignores.

Dick moves fast—too fast—grabbing Jason’s arm where it’s still braced near Tim, fingers digging in hard. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he shouts, panic cracking straight through his anger.

Jason turns on him then, eyes blazing, voice breaking loose at last.

“Would you be this still?” Jason yells back. “If that was me with Joker again? If it was me instead of her—would you have left me there for the police to find? Again?”

The word hangs between them, heavy and damning.

Again.

Jason knows Dick well enough to see it land. To watch his brother’s grip falter, fingers loosening like they’ve forgotten what they were holding onto in the first place. Dick’s face goes pale, mouth parting uselessly, and Jason twists the knife—not because he wants to hurt him, but because he needs them to understand.

“This,” Jason snaps. “This is why none of you fucking knew about her.”

He looks at all of them now—really looks. At Bruce, frozen behind the console like a man staring down a live bomb. At Dick, wrecked with guilt.

“If you can’t even see me beyond a mistake you made,” Jason says, voice hoarse, “there was no way you wouldn’t have seen her as that too. And I love her too much for that.”

The words leave him hollowed out.

Then he’s gone.

The Cave swallows the echo of his footsteps, leaving only the roar of the waterfall and the hum of machines that suddenly feel pointless. No one moves to stop him. No one even tries.

It takes Tim a full minute to cross the platform and reach the Batcomputer, fingers hovering uselessly over keys he knows by heart.

It takes Cassandra four times as long to find a part of Bruce that still moves—some small, human place in his arm or shoulder that isn’t locked rigid like a man bracing for an explosion he knows is already ticking down.

Dick follows Jason’s trail almost immediately. And Damian follows Dick.

You don’t remember the last five hours.

They’re gone—hollowed out—like someone reached into your head and scooped the time away with a careless hand. The last thing you have is small and warm and ordinary: the coffee table between the couch and the window, set for two. Plates aligned just so. The new glasses you bought with Jason on that stupidly perfect thrift-store date, thin and elegant and impractical. You’d laughed about them, about how easy they’d be to break. Jason had pretended to scold you, fingers warm around yours as he tugged you toward the bookshelves, already stacking paperbacks in his arms like treasure.

You’d bought homeware. A vintage mirror with a gold edge, slightly warped, the kind that makes everything look softer than it is.

Jason always said you needed better locks. You realize it numbly.

He always said it gently, like a suggestion instead of a warning. Like he was talking about replacing a lightbulb or buying better coffee. You brushed him off every time, smiling, pressing a kiss into his shoulder, telling him Gotham wasn’t that bad. That you were fine. That you were safe.

And you were right. You always are.

Because an extra lock wouldn’t have stopped the man with the red smile.

It wouldn’t have stopped hands tangling in your hair, fingers tight and merciless as he dragged you across your rug, skin burning where it scraped against the fibers. It wouldn’t have stopped the way your mirror shattered when he slammed you against it, glass singing as it broke, your own reflection splintering into a hundred terrified pieces that stared back at you with wide, unbelieving eyes.

It wouldn’t have stopped the way he looked at you.

He crouched in front of you like this was intimate. Like this was a secret. His smile stretched too far, paint cracked and smeared, eyes bright with something wrong and delighted and ancient. 

Joker tilted his head, studying you the way a child studies an insect pinned to cork.

“Here’s the other lovebird,” he murmured, voice lilting, almost fond. “Ohhh… how cute you are.”

You remember thinking—absurdly, desperately—that Jason would hate that word. That he’d bristle at it, roll his eyes, pull you closer just to prove a point. You remember the ache of missing him hitting harder than the pain at first, your mind reaching for him the way it always does when the world goes wrong.

Jason would know what to do.

Jason would make this stop.

The thought is a comfort even now, curled tight in your chest, fragile but stubborn. You cling to it as the man stands, as one of the shadows behind him passes up an old, rusted crowbar. The metal is pitted and dark, flaking with age and something older still. It smells like iron and damp and rot.

It doesn’t take a lock to stop that.

It doesn’t take a security system to stop the sound your bones make when he brings it down.

The pain comes in blinding flashes—white-hot, nauseating, wrong. Your legs scream before you do, nerves lighting up in protest, your body trying to fold in on itself, trying to protect something already broken. You taste blood, copper and thick, your teeth chattering even as your throat burns raw from crying out.

Through it all, you think of Jason.

Of his hands—gentle despite their strength. Of the way he says your name like it’s something precious, something he’s afraid to drop. You think of his laugh, low and surprised, the way he softens when it’s just the two of you and Gotham can’t see him. You think of the books still stacked on the table, waiting to be read, of the glasses that shattered just like the mirror did.

Of how he warned you.

Of how he would be here already if he knew.

The room feels wrong—tilted, smeared with shadow, the air thick and sour. Blood pools where it shouldn’t, dark against your floor, soaking into the rug you picked out together. The city hums outside your broken windows, indifferent and vast, neon bleeding into the night like nothing is wrong at all.

You breathe when you can. You hold onto Jason’s name like a prayer you’re afraid to say out loud.

Because if he comes—when he comes—you need to believe there will still be something left of you for him to find.

Your consciousness returns in fragments, drifting in and out the same way you remember nights with him. Not clean breaks. Not mercy. Just gaps.

A void of sleep.

Jason easing your window open like the city might hear him, hands raised in mock surrender, voice low and careful. I didn’t mean to wake you… shh… go back to bed. The mattress dips, familiar weight settling beside you, warmth bleeding into your back.

A void of sleep.

Jason in your bathroom, the light too bright, the mirror fogged. Gotham’s blood and grime rinsed down the drain while he rubs his hair dry with one of your soft, ridiculous pink towels. He smiles at you through the doorway, sheepish and fond, promises he’ll be there in a second. He always is.

A void of sleep.

Jason shifting beside you, breath warm against the delicate skin beneath your ear. His arm tightens in his sleep, possessive without knowing it, like even unconscious he’s afraid the world might take you if he lets go. He murmurs your name—broken, reverent.

A void of sleep.

White hands. Cracked paint. Fingers threading through your hair, slick and tangled with blood. The touch is intimate in the worst way, scalp burning as he hums—no, sings—a childish tune about robins, voice lilting and wrong, laughter bubbling beneath it like rot under sugar.

A void of sleep.

Concrete tearing at your skin as you’re dragged, knees bouncing, spine jolting with every crack in the ground. A van door yawns open, metal teeth waiting. A child sobs near your ear, small and hiccuping. A woman screams at the child to shut up—panic sharp and desperate—until a gunshot rings out like punctuation. The woman goes silent. The child doesn’t. The word mommy repeats, thin and broken, drilling into your skull.

A void of sleep.

You wake choking on pain.

Your body is bound to a chair, wrists cinched tight, ankles screaming. Barbed wire coils around you like something alive, biting deep with every involuntary twitch. The metal is rusted, flaking, cruel—tearing skin open in ragged kisses that burn and throb and never quite stop bleeding. Your legs are numb in places, screaming in others. You can feel blood soaking into fabric, sticky and cooling as it trails downward.

He’s in front of you.

Smiling.

Head cocked, eyes bright with interest, like you’re a puzzle he’s just started enjoying. He steps closer, crouches until he’s eye-level with you, hands clasped together as if in prayer.

“You do love your sleep, don’t you?” he says, voice almost gentle.

Your vision swims. The room smells like iron and oil and damp concrete. Somewhere nearby, something drips steadily—water, or blood, or both. The walls feel too close, the shadows stretching and curling like they’re listening.

“The other birdy,” he continues, grinning wider, “wouldn’t even sleep if I cracked his skull. Such a shame.” He sighs theatrically, tapping the barbed wire with one gloved finger, delighted by the way you flinch. “I suppose I’ll have to find a way to keep you awake.”

Through the haze, through the pain, one thought stays stubbornly intact.

Jason is coming.

And you cling to that like a lifeline, even as the horror closes in, even as the night tries to peel you apart—because if you let go of that belief, if you let the void take everything—There will be nothing left for him to save.

You can’t see farther than four feet in front of you.

Anything beyond that dissolves into smears of color and motion, the edges of the room bleeding into one another. When you try to focus, your vision tilts violently, the world pitching sideways as warm blood slips down from your temple, sticky and insistent. It drips into your eye, blurring everything further, each blink making it worse. The ceiling swims. The walls breathe.

He notices.

Of course he does.

He steps into what little clarity you have left, face snapping into focus like a nightmare finally deciding to be seen. His hand comes up fast, fingers prying your jaw open with impatient familiarity. Something chalky presses against your tongue.

You gag immediately.

Your throat spasms around his fingers, saliva thick and useless as panic claws up your chest. Your head jerks instinctively, barbed wire biting deeper in protest, fresh pain flaring white-hot along your wrists and ankles. He doesn’t pull away. He shoves the pill back, past your tongue, past your resistance, until your body betrays you and swallows.

You choke.

Tears spill from your eyes, hot and humiliating, streaking through the grime on your cheeks. Your lungs burn as you suck in air in sharp, broken pulls.

Jason, you think, distantly, desperately. The name is a reflex now. A prayer you don’t dare say out loud.

His hand withdraws at last.

Then—

Smack.

Your head snaps to the side, vision exploding into sparks. Before you can react—

Smack.

The second strike lands harder, ringing through your skull, teeth clacking together as pain blooms anew. The world steadies just enough to be cruel about it.

“That’ll keep you awake, birdy,” he croons, pleased.

Your heart slams against your ribs, frantic and trapped. Already you can feel it—the way the haze pulls back just a little too much, the way your thoughts sharpen against your will. Your eyelids burn, heavy but refusing to close, nerves screaming as the drug seeps in and denies you even the mercy of darkness.

“Now.”

He leans back into his own chair like this is a rehearsal, like he’s bored of waiting for his cue. The legs scrape loudly against the concrete, the sound sharp enough to hurt. He reaches forward and adjusts the camera in front of you with careful precision. A small red light blinks every few seconds—steady, patient. Watching.

“We’re going to make a deal, okay?”

You don’t answer.

Your eyes refuse to cooperate, swimming uselessly as you blink through blood and tears. Every attempt to focus sends a wave of nausea through you, the room tilting, your pulse roaring in your ears louder than his voice. Your jaw trembles. Your tongue feels thick, wrong in your mouth.

“Okay?”

Nothing comes out.

The barbed wire strung cruelly across your throat digs in deeper with every breath you take, a quiet reminder that sound would cost you skin. Air hisses past your teeth in shallow pulls. You can feel your heartbeat there, fluttering and frantic against metal.

His smile thins.

He stands.

The rusty crowbar tightens in his grip as he rises from a stupid, bright orange folding chair—out of place, obscene against the filth of the warehouse. He steps into frame, then closer, until the camera, until you, are all that exist. He hooks two fingers under your chin and lifts your face, forcing your eyes up.

“Answer.”

You try.

Your mouth opens. Nothing happens.

All you can see is him—cracked white makeup creasing around his eyes, green hair greasy and limp, age showing in the lines around his mouth where smiles have lived too long. He smells like oil and metal and something sour beneath it all. The warehouse stinks of rust, damp concrete, old fuel. It crawls into your lungs.

And then—

You hear it.

A sound that doesn’t belong to him.

Crying.

Your head turns slowly, painfully, vertebrae protesting as the wire shifts against your throat. The movement costs you another sharp breath. Your vision blurs again—but this time, shapes resolve.

A cluster of bodies huddled together against a dented equipment container. Two teenage girls with their knees pulled tight to their chests, faces streaked with dirt and tears. Four little boys wedged between them, shaking, hands bound too tight, mouths open in silent sobs like they’ve already learned screaming doesn’t help.

Something in your chest caves in.

You don’t even see the crowbar move.

The impact comes out of nowhere—white-hot, brutal. The hooked end of the bar slams into your shoulder with a wet, tearing sound, metal biting deep as it pierces flesh. Pain detonates through you, ripping the air from your lungs. He yells as he does it, manic and delighted, like the violence startled even him.

Your body jerks against the restraints.

Barbed wire bites deeper. Blood spills warm and fast down your arm, soaking into your sleeve, dripping to the floor in thick, uneven drops. Your vision fractures, stars bursting behind your eyes.

You clamp your teeth down hard on your lip to keep from screaming.

You taste iron immediately—sharp and overwhelming—as skin breaks beneath your bite. Tears spill freely now, blurring everything, mixing with the blood already clinging to your lashes. It burns. It hurts. Your whole body shakes with the effort of staying quiet.

Behind you, the crying gets worse—fractured, panicked.

“Okay,” you choke out.

The word scrapes your throat raw on the way out, barely more than a breath. It tastes like blood and rust and surrender.

Immediately, the pressure is gone.

The crowbar pulls free with a wet sound that makes your vision white out, pain screaming down your arm as the hooked metal tears away from muscle and skin. You shudder hard, a broken gasp ripping out of you despite your best effort to swallow it down.

He steps back like a magician deciding on the next trick.

Then he leans in again—careful, deliberate—and pats at the wound where the bar pierced you. Not gentle. Never gentle. His palm presses just enough to make you flinch, fingers smearing warm blood across your torn clothes.

“See?” he says brightly, turning slightly so the camera gets a better angle. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Your breath comes shallow and fast, chest stuttering against the wire. Every inhale sends a fresh bloom of pain through your shoulder, the edges of it pulsing in time with your heart.

His hands come up next.

Dry. Cracked. Too warm.

He grabs your face, fingers digging into your cheeks, thumbs pressing at your jaw as he tilts your head from side to side. The movement drags the skin of your neck against the barbed wire, a searing, intimate pain that makes your eyes flood instantly.

“What a dumb dumb birdy you are,” he croons, affectionate in the way predators are. “It’s okay. Joker can teach you.”

Your body trembles uncontrollably now. Your fingers spasm uselessly against the wooden arms of the chair, nails scraping shallow grooves into the surface. You can feel blood slicking your palm and you don't even want to think about how you got hurt there too.

He releases your face.

Pats your head once.

The gesture is almost worse than the violence.

“Now,” he says softly, pleasantly, “say thank you.”

Your vision swims. The room feels too loud, too close. Somewhere behind you, one of the children sobs so hard it turns into hiccupping gasps. You swallow around the wire, throat burning.

You look up at him with shaking eyes, lashes heavy with tears and blood. Your mouth opens. Your lips quiver.

“Thank—” Your voice breaks completely. You force it back together, dragging the word out of yourself like it’s being pulled through glass. “Thank you.”

His smile spreads slow and satisfied, stretching the cracks in his makeup wider.

“Good birdy,” he coos, pleased. “So much more compliant than your love bird already!”

“Now—” Joker announces, voice lifting into a theatrical lilt, like he’s stepped beneath a spotlight instead of flickering warehouse fluorescents. He turns toward the camera, gives it a jaunty little nod, then looks back at you, grin splitting wider. “I was gonna let you go for some cash. Thought your little boy bird might get scared shitless—just a fun little bonus, really—buttt—”

He drifts away from you, footsteps light, almost playful. You can’t turn your head far enough to see what he’s doing. The wire bites when you try. Your vision pulses, dark at the edges.

Then—

A scream.

Sharp. High. A girl’s voice.

It cuts off halfway through, collapsing into a thin, broken cry that echoes far too long in the hollow space of the warehouse.

Something in you fractures.

Joker reappears at your side, breath brushing your ear, laughter bubbling out of him like it’s a private joke the two of you share. “Got lucky with a rich bitch on the road,” he cackles, delighted. “Gotham really does keep on givin’.”

Your stomach twists violently. You taste bile. The crying behind you swells again, panicked and animal, and you can feel your own body trying to fold in on itself despite the restraints, like if you curl inward hard enough you might disappear. 

His hands slide to your throat and at the same time your eyes land onto his hands. Diamond earrings.

He ripped her earrings out of her ears. 

Before you can flinch at the sight of pieces of skin in his open hand, he yanks.

The chain snaps free with a sharp tug, metal biting into your skin as the necklace tears away. You gasp, the wire at your neck punishing you for it, and the sudden cold where the chain used to rest feels obscene—too exposed. You feel lucky that you took off your earrings when you were doing your hair.

He dangles it in front of the camera, letting it glint under the harsh light, gemstones smeared faintly red from your blood. “This could go for a couple hundred too!” he sings. “Ohhh, how delightful!”

He leans closer, eyes alight, savoring every tremor that runs through you. “At least one of the birdies knows how to decorate their nest. Found a few rings at your place as well.”

Joker pockets the necklace with a satisfied hum.

“Well, now that I don’t need the money,” he croons, voice lilting, playful, like he’s deciding which joke to tell next, “what should I do with you?”

His fingers drag along your cheek again, slower this time, the pad of his thumb pressing just hard enough to bruise. His touch leaves heat behind, a crawling sensation that makes your stomach revolt. You feel contaminated where he’s touched you, like your skin is remembering something it shouldn’t.

“…I’ll give you more,” you whisper. Your voice fractures around the word, splintering into something pitiful and thin. “However much you want—just—”

“Oh, I don’t need money.”

The change is instant. His tone drops, sharp and venomous, and when he leans in his eyes are blown wide and empty, pupils swallowing the green like oil slicks. A hawk spotting movement. A blade finding flesh.

“I was looking for some fun, love bird,” he hisses. “You can’t give me that?”

You whimper around the grip on your jaw as his fingers tighten, nails biting into your skin. The wire at your throat digs deeper when you gasp, its teeth kissing something vital. Pain blooms hot and bright, stars bursting behind your eyes.

“Jason— Jason will—”

He doesn’t even flinch at the name.

Maybe that’s mercy.

His fingers move higher, rough and invasive, smearing through the makeup you’d put on hours ago with careful hands. The eyeshadow burns as it’s ground into your skin, sweat and blood turning it into a dark, ugly paste. His thumb drags through the faint blush on your cheeks, erasing it like it was a mistake.

“How pretty you are,” he murmurs, almost tender. “I do makeup on myself too, you know.”

Then his hands leave you entirely.

He grabs his own face, fingers digging into the cracked greasepaint, stretching the red grin wider, tearing at the corners until the white creases and flakes. For a second you think you see real skin underneath—white, lined, angry. Horrid.

“Do you like mine?” he asks brightly. “Do you think I’m pretty?”

Your mind blanks.

Your eyes flick helplessly to the camera instead—the blinking red light pulsing steadily, patiently. Recording. Waiting. You try to speak, to say yes or no or anything that might stop what’s coming, but your throat locks around the wire and all that comes out is a wet, useless sound.

Then—

“Very pretty!”

The voice is behind you.

Too young.

A teenage girl, no older than seventeen. Her voice trembles, thin and frantic, the words tumbling over each other. “So—so pretty—”

You feel something inside you tear open.

She’s trying to survive. You can feel that hope radiate off of her. The hope of throwing words into the dark and praying it lands somewhere safe.

Joker’s head snaps toward her.

His eyes narrow, sharp and wrong, smile freezing into something predatory. “You think so?”

There’s a frantic nod you can hear more than see—the quick intake of breath, the shuddering little sob that follows.

Joker bends down.

The crowbar scrapes loudly as he lifts it, metal screaming against concrete. You catch a glimpse of it as he moves past you—rusted, pitted, darkened in places where it’s already been used tonight.

Then he’s gone from your line of sight.

The scream that follows is immediate and unbearable.

It’s not just pain—it’s shock, terror, the sound of someone realizing too late that they were wrong. The metal wall amplifies it, throws it back at itself until it feels like the warehouse is screaming with her.

There’s a wet, sickening crack.

A sound like meat hitting concrete.

“Why don’t we match?” Joker coos from behind you, voice light and delighted. “I did one side, now the other!”

The crowbar hits again.

You hear bone give this time—feel it in your teeth, in your chest. Her scream fractures into something animal, then into choking sobs, then into a raw, bubbling sound that makes bile rush up your throat.

Your own crying breaks free, ugly and uncontrollable. Your body jerks against the restraints, fingers cramping, nails tearing uselessly into the wood of the chair. Hot tears spill down your face, mixing with blood, dripping off your chin in thick, dark drops.

The camera’s red light blinks again.

Once.

Twice.

It taunts you by matching every sound that breaks out of you.

Every gasped sob, every wet, hitching breath. The camera’s red light blinks in time with your chest, like it’s learned your rhythm, like it’s decided to breathe with you instead of for you.

And then the Joker comes back.

You smell him before you see him—iron-thick blood, old rust, sweat gone sour. His hands are slick, red to the wrist, fingers shining under the warehouse lights. The crowbar hangs loose in his grip, darker now, clotted, strands of hair caught cruelly in its curve.

He crouches in front of you, bringing himself eye-level, like he’s talking to a child.

“Well,” he hums thoughtfully. “I can’t give you her look, can I?”

Your vision swims. You can’t stop shaking. Tears slide down your face in hot, unstoppable streams, carving clean paths through blood and grime. Your mouth opens, but nothing coherent comes out—just a broken, animal sound that folds back in on itself.

His smile twitches.

“What should I do with you?” he asks softly. “Hm?”

You don’t answer. You can’t. You just cry harder, chest stuttering against the wire, throat raw and burning.

That seems to irritate him.

He clicks his tongue, disappointed, and lifts the crowbar. The cold metal taps against your cheek once—tap—just enough to make you flinch violently. He pauses, head tilting.

“Oh—”

His eyes light up.

“Oh yes, that’s wonderful! Oh—” He erupts into laughter, sudden and explosive, clutching his stomach as if the joke is too much to bear. Spit flies from his mouth, warm and disgusting as it lands in your hair, streaking through blood-matted strands. “Oh, isn’t my brain just splendid?”

He straightens, still laughing, wiping his eyes like he’s genuinely amused. “You bats are all poetry, I say—pure poetry!”

Then he turns.

Walks away.

His footsteps fade, echoing hollowly through the warehouse, until there’s only the hum of the lights, the distant crying behind you—and the camera.

You’re alone.

One last sob claws its way out of your throat, wet and choking. Blood follows it, dribbling down your chin, splashing darkly against your chest. You force your eyes open, drag them upward, lock them onto the camera.

You don’t know who’s watching. You don’t know if anyone is.

Your voice comes out steadier than it has any right to be.

“How—”

“Shut up!” someone whisper-yells behind you, frantic and terrified. “There’s other men!”

Your mouth snaps shut.

And the red light keeps blinking.

The metal door slams open with a shriek of abused hinges, the impact shuddering through the warehouse floor and straight up your spine. Dust rains down from the rafters in a thin, dirty veil, catching in your hair and sticking to the blood already drying there.

He’s laughing before you even see him.

Not distant laughter—close. Moving. Each step accompanied by a wet, dragging sound, like something heavy being pulled across concrete. His cackle ricochets off the shipping containers, off the steel beams, off the low ceiling that traps the sound and forces it back into your skull.

A little boy cries out behind you as Joker passes him. A sharp, panicked sound that fractures into a sob and then cuts off abruptly, like someone clamped a hand over his mouth.

The air grows hotter.

Through the warped reflection in the camera lens, you see it clearly now: a long metal bar burning red-hot, so bright it hurts to look at directly. Heat ripples distort the image around it, the glow painting the walls in feverish streaks of crimson. The smell hits you next—burning iron, scorched metal, something faintly organic beneath it that makes bile crawl up your throat.

Joker taps the brand against the concrete behind you.

It doesn’t clang.

It hisses.

The sound is sharp and alive, like meat on a skillet. Tiny sparks spit outward where it kisses the floor, leaving blackened scars in the cement. The red glow doesn’t dull. Doesn’t cool. It stays furious and bright, as if fed by something endless.

Whatever fragile hope you were clutching evaporates in that moment, leaving you hollowed out, lungs burning as you exhale something that feels like your last prayer.

He’s behind you in the next second.

Joker’s hand comes out of nowhere, clamping over your mouth, palm slick and hot. The copper taste floods you as his fingers press into your cheeks, nails digging in just enough to hurt—just enough to remind you that restraint is a choice he’s making. Your head is forced back, neck screaming as the wire saws deeper, the barbs biting into tender skin.

“Would you like to match your birdy?” he murmurs.

His voice is serene. Gentle. Almost affectionate.

He angles the brand around the arm of the chair so you can see it clearly. The letter is unmistakable now, its edges glowing white-hot, heat radiating off it in suffocating waves.

A ‘𝙹’.

Your body reacts before your mind can—your stomach convulses, gagging against his hand, breath stuttering uselessly through your nose. Your skin feels too tight, like it’s already shrinking away from what’s coming.

“We’re going to make the deal now,” he coos.

In the camera’s reflection, you can see his eye—wide, bright, utterly focused on the blinking red dot. Performing. Enjoying the audience if there even is one.

“You either get a matching look…” The brand drifts closer, close enough that the heat kisses your cheek, nerves screaming in anticipation, sweat instantly breaking out along your spine. “…or you tell me who you hate.”

His hand peels away from your mouth.

Air rushes in too fast. You choke on it, coughing hard enough that the wire grinds into your throat, pain blooming hot and blinding. Your voice comes out shredded. “Who… who I hate?”

“Who put you here?” he hums thoughtfully, as if the answer delights him. “It wasn’t me.”

The brand pauses, hovering inches from your skin. You can feel the heat burrowing inward, like it’s already memorizing you.

“Why do you think I found you?” he continues lightly. “Do you know how sloppy he is?”

Silence stretches, thick and oppressive.

You stare at the glowing red letter, your mind drifting somewhere distant and numb to survive. Absurdly, irrationally, you think of Jason’s helmet—the same violent red, the same defiant color. You wonder if he’s thinking of you right now. If he can feel this, somehow.

“Tell me who you hate.”

The words don’t just reach you—they enter you, heavy and cold, sinking past bone and settling somewhere deep and irreversible. They press the air flat, make the warehouse feel smaller, closer, like the walls are leaning in to listen.

He stands before you in all his wrongness, and up close there is nothing theatrical left. The Joker’s makeup has melted into something corpse-like, white cracked and flaking into the grooves of his face as though his skin is trying to shed it. The red smile is no longer a grin so much as a wound, smeared unevenly, darker where blood has mixed in, the corners dragged downward by age and use. His hair hangs limp, green dulled to the color of mold, clinging to his scalp in greasy strands. His eyes are too bright—glass-bright, feverish—never still, never soft, reflecting the warehouse lights like knives.

The space around you hums with misery. The concrete beneath your feet is slick with blood and oil, cold seeping up through the chair and into your bones. Shipping containers loom like coffins, their metal sides scarred and rusted, shadows pooled so thick between them it feels like something could step out at any moment. The air reeks—burnt iron, old sweat, copper, rot—and every breath feels like inhaling something alive and hostile.

You look at the camera.

That red eye blinks steadily, rhythmically, a heart that isn’t yours. It sees the way your chest shudders, the way your fingers twitch uselessly against the bindings, the way your body is already bracing for pain it knows is coming. Your thoughts drift, slow and exhausted, slipping through your hands like water you can’t quite hold.

You think of Jason.

Not the helmet. Not the blood. But his hands—warm, callused, careful when they touch you. The way he looks at you like the world might soften if you stay. The way he says your name like it’s something solid.

You could say his name now.

You could offer it up like a sacrifice and pray that this monster believes in deals, that you might walk out of here broken but breathing. You could lie and hope he lets you go.

Or you could say Jason’s name and watch Joker’s smile vanish as he switches off the camera and kills you quietly, preserving this horror to show your sweet boy later.

Or you could stay silent and take the brand—feel your skin burn, your body marked, watch the ecstasy bloom in Joker’s eyes as he claims you like an object he’s improved.

None of them feel survivable.

Something inside you twists—not courage, not bravery, but love sharpened into something desperate and ugly and defiant. You gather what spit you can in your blood-wet mouth and turn your head as far as the wire allows.

You spit in his face.

It lands wet and unmistakable, dragging a slow line through the cracked white paint, cutting through the red smile like an insult carved in flesh.

For a heartbeat, everything freezes.

The Joker goes utterly still, his expression emptying out in a way that is far more frightening than his laughter. Then his eyes widen, pupils dilating, fury flaring bright and feral—pleased.

You lean forward, neck screaming as the wire bites deeper, and you whisper because your voice will not survive being louder.

“You know,” you murmur, breath shaking despite everything you do to steady it, “he’s never mentioned you before.”

His breath stutters.

“You must not have left quite an impression.”

It’s a lie. A reckless, transparent lie.

You have lived in Gotham long enough to know exactly what he is—his name written in blood across the city’s history—but lies can still cut, and you see it land. You see the way his smile stretches wider, hungry and thrilled.

You’ve given him a reason.

A reason to prove himself.

A reason to keep you alive.

A reason to make you hurt longer.

His hand tangles in your hair and yanks your head back violently. Your neck slams into the barbed wire, spikes tearing in with a wet, intimate sound that makes you sob despite yourself. Warm blood spills down your throat, choking you, slicking your chest.

Then the brand descends.

The heat is indescribable—ancient, total, a pain so vast it consumes thought itself. Your flesh screams as it burns, the smell of seared skin rising thick and sweet, smoke curling upward as the letter is carved into you slowly, deliberately. Your body arches uselessly against the restraints, every nerve on fire, and the sound that leaves you is not a scream so much as something torn out of your soul.

You hate that he hears it. And when that drug denies you the void of sleep you so desperately need, you allow yourself to think numbly as the man pulls it away that at least Jason can't dwindle his appearance anymore.

Your tears stripe down your cheeks, burning as they touch your skin.

We match. You think numbly, Atleast we match.

He strokes over the brand with more delicacy than he has ever had in this whole nightmare, mumbling, “This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.”

When you wake again, it’s to the weight of tears landing on your face—warm, uneven drops that pull you out of the dark in slow, reluctant pieces. For a moment you don’t know where you are. The world rocks gently, like it can’t decide whether to keep moving or stop altogether. There’s the low hum of an engine beneath you, vibration traveling through bone and bruised muscle, and the smell of old leather surrounds you—worn, familiar, grounding in a way that makes your chest ache.

Leather is good.

Leather is not acid.

Leather does not burn your lungs on the way in.

“Hurts,” you mumble, the word barely surviving the journey out of your throat. You offer it up like an apology, like a peace offering, half-expecting pain to answer you back.

Instead, the crying breaks harder.

It comes undone above you, raw and ugly, and through the haze you realize you aren’t lying flat on concrete, waiting for the Joker to press a cinder block to your stomach. Your body is stretched across someone, your legs draped over another set of knees, your weight distributed carefully, reverently, like something fragile that might shatter if shifted wrong. 

An arm is braced beneath your neck, steady and strong, keeping your head from lolling, and your cheek presses into a leather jacket that smells unmistakably like gun oil, sweat, rain—

Jason.

The knowledge hits softer than it should, cushioned by exhaustion and shock, and when your eyes finally manage to open, everything swims. Light smears at the edges, colors bleeding into one another, but his face is there anyway, hovering close, carved with terror and relief and something so naked it almost scares you more than the warehouse did.

“Am I in heaven?” you mumble.

He lets out a sound that isn’t quite a sob and isn’t quite a laugh, choking on it as his chin trembles. “You don’t even believe in heaven.”

“Well,” you murmur, trying—and failing—to pull your mouth into something that resembles a smile, “what else could you be?”

Your jaw burns when you speak. Everything burns. It feels like your body has been filled with broken glass and lit from the inside, and you’re dimly aware of warm liquid slipping from your mouth, darkening the leather beneath your cheek every time you breathe wrong. You hate that you’re staining him. You hate that you can’t stop.

“I’ll kill him,” Jason whispers, like a prayer he’s been holding onto with both hands. His fingers shake as they brush your hair back, careful to avoid places he knows are hurt. “I’ll kill him. I promise.”

“Can I have hot chocolate first?” you mumble. The words feel distant, like they belong to someone else. “I bought that expensive kind… from Finland. Asshole knocked it all over my carpet…”

Jason’s breath fractures completely at that. He nods too hard, tears spilling freely now, dropping onto your cheeks, your neck, your collarbone. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll buy you hot chocolate. I’ll buy you all of it.”

Somewhere near your feet, another voice cuts in, low and strained with concern. “Hey, Jay—breathe—”

Jason doesn’t hear them. Or maybe he does and simply can’t afford to listen. His chest is rising too fast beneath you, breaths sawing in and out like he’s drowning on dry land, his eyes glassy and unfocused, the green in them shifting with every frantic blink.

Or maybe that’s just your vision still failing you. That would make sense. The powder. The smoke. The way light hurts now.

“Stop crying,” you murmur weakly. “I can’t die with you looking like that.”

That breaks him.

His face crumples completely, grief spilling over into something fierce and desperate as he bends closer, forehead almost touching yours. “Good,” he chokes. “Fuck you. I’ll cry even more, so–so stay with me, yeah?”

“No,” you whisper, your voice scraping raw against your throat. “Wanna sleep.”

“You slept an awful lot,” he snaps, but there’s no anger in it—only terror wearing sharp edges, only love clawing its way out however it can.

“Well,” you murmur, your voice thin but soft, like you’re afraid of startling him, “You show up in my dreams an awful lot.”

That does it.

Whatever fragile control Jason had left fractures clean through. He folds over you instinctively, shoulders caving as he tries—fails—to hide the sound of it. His breath comes apart against your hair, his forehead dipping close to your temple like if he presses himself near enough, he can keep you here by force alone. You feel the tremor of him through your whole body, every hitch of his chest echoing in your ribs.

You smell blood on him then. Copper and iron, sharp beneath the leather and sweat and rain. For a distant, numb second you think it’s yours again—until the scent is too heavy, too layered.

Oh.

Was this—

“Did I interrupt family bonding?” you whisper.

Your lips barely move. The words slip out half-asleep, half-dreaming, and they earn you a startled huff from somewhere behind you. Jason doesn’t answer. He can’t. His arms tighten instead, one hand splayed carefully at your back like he’s afraid even breathing too hard might hurt you more.

A voice comes from the seat behind, dry and unimpressed, because Jason is currently incapable of speech and whoever has your legs resting in their lap is rubbing slow, grounding circles into his back.

“If this is what you think family bonding is, you’ll fit right in.”

“Damian, be quiet,” another voice snaps.

“She’s the one shamelessly flirting with him in front of all of us, Tim” Damian continues anyway, undeterred. “And Father isn’t even saying anything, so—”

“Well she’s the one dying!” Tim blurts, voice cracking sharp with fear.

Jason chokes on the words that come from Tim’s mouth, breath stuttering hard, and a deeper voice cuts in from the front seat—controlled, measured, holding itself together by sheer will.

“She’s not going to die, Tim.”

“I want hoya bellas on my grave,” you interrupt softly.

Jason lets out a broken sound that might have been a laugh in another universe. He shakes his head over you, forehead brushing your hair, and through your blurry vision you think you catch a gloved hand popping up behind him in a solemn thumbs-up.

“Got it.”

Another voice joins in from the front, exasperated and strained. “Cassandra, she’s not being serious.”

“I’m sorry,” Jason whispers, over and over, like a mantra, like something he’s trying to carve into reality. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” His thumb strokes your hair away from your forehead again, impossibly gentle, avoiding the places he knows hurt, the places he doesn’t want to know at all.

“I’m gonna sleep now,” you murmur. It takes effort to shape the words. The dark is getting heavier again, tugging at you, warm and deep. “Can one of you give Jason water?”

“Hey—” Jason breathes, panic flaring sharp as his voice cracks. “Hey, no—no, no, no, stay with me, come on—”

But you’re already slipping.

Your eyes flutter closed despite him, despite the warmth of his arms, despite the way his heart is racing beneath your ear like it’s trying to outrun fate itself. His glove comes off hurriedly and you feel his bare fingers press to your pulse, grounding himself in the steady beat there, in the fact that it’s still happening.

After a few minutes, Dick leans forward and taps Jason’s shoulder gently, offering a water bottle. His uniform is torn and scorched like the rest of them, a thin cut bright against his cheek, but his voice is soft when he speaks.

“Drink.”

Jason doesn’t look up. He doesn’t let go. He just nods once, tight and shaky, eyes fixed on you like if he looks away for even a second, the world might take you again.

He forces himself to take a full gulp of water, the plastic bottle crinkling loudly in the too-quiet car, his throat working like it has to remember how swallowing goes. His hands are still shaking when he passes it off to Tim.

“Hey, I don’t need any—”

Jason looks at him.

Not sharp. Not angry. Just steady in a way that leaves no room for argument, the kind of look that says do this or I will fall apart next.

Tim takes a long swig immediately. Somewhere in the background, Damian lets out a low, satisfied cackle.

The digital clock on the Batmobile reads 4:00 a.m.

The numbers glow cold blue against the dark interior, reflected faintly in the windshield like a second set of eyes staring back at them. Gotham outside is hollow and half-dead at this hour—streetlights flickering, rain-slick asphalt stretching endlessly, buildings slumped together like they’re exhausted too.

Bruce’s voice is calm as he calls Alfred, clipped and precise, already listing supplies like this is something he can control if he names enough of it out loud.

Jason doesn’t listen.

He keeps his focus on you.

On the shallow rise and fall of your chest. The warmth is still clinging stubbornly to your skin. On the way your weight settles into him like it belongs there, like it always has. One hand stays firm at your neck, holding you upright because you need it—because you need him steady, and that knowledge anchors him harder than anything Bruce could ever say.

You need him here. You need him present. You need him not to break.

He knows that, because once—once—that was all he ever wanted too.

And that’s the cruel part of it.

Because the weight of you in his arms has only ever meant safety. Home. Sleep curling warm and heavy in his bones. His body doesn’t know the difference between holding you safe and finally being allowed to rest.

Jason Todd passes out with his forehead dipping gently toward yours, his grip loosening only by a fraction, like even unconscious he’s afraid to let you go.

The last thing he hears before everything goes dark is Tim’s voice, sharp with panic and disbelief.

“Dude—what the fuck—”

“Hold his head up—don’t let him fall on her!” Bruce barks from the front, voice cracking sharp through the Batmobile like a snapped cable.

All at once, everyone moves.

Damian fists the back of Jason’s T‑shirt, knuckles white as he yanks him upright with a strength born of panic he’d never admit to. Dick stretches impossibly from the passenger seat, arm braced awkwardly as he cups the back of Jason’s head, careful, reverent, like he’s afraid one wrong angle will shatter him. Tim presses a steadying hand to Jason’s chest, feeling the uneven rise and fall beneath his palm, grounding him the way he’s learned to do with bombs and brothers alike.

Jason is dead weight. Heavy. Still clinging to you even in unconsciousness, his arm slack but stubborn around your shoulders, like muscle memory alone refuses to let you go.

The Batmobile hums on, tires slicing through wet streets, Gotham blurring past in streaks of sodium light and rain-slick concrete. The city feels distant now, muffled, like it’s holding its breath with them.

“…Did someone check if the Joker was—uh—breathing?” Stephanie asks from the back, her voice small in a way it rarely ever is.

She hadn’t stayed for the end. Her job had been triage—getting the kids out, shouting orders, dragging civilians through blood and broken glass while the rest of them stayed behind in the warehouse with the laughter and the screaming. She’d smelled the aftermath on them when they regrouped. She didn’t need details then but...

Bruce doesn’t look back. His hands tighten on the wheel.

“Jason didn’t hit any vital points,” he says quietly, like he’s reciting a report he’s already memorized. “Just… ah—”

“Carved his face like a jack‑o’‑lantern,” Damian supplies, entirely too calm. “Heated up a crowbar to do it too. Very effective.”

There’s a beat of silence.

The city lights flash over Bruce’s face—old stone and deep eyes that are hollowed by relief he doesn’t let himself feel yet.

“…Yeah,” Bruce exhales, short and rough. “That.”

The Batmobile keeps moving.

Jason breathes.

You breathe.

And for now, that’s enough to keep the night from swallowing them whole.

You wake up in bed.

Not the thin, borrowed kind your body has learned to tolerate at your apartment, but something deep and indulgent—clean sheets tucked tight, the mattress yielding just enough to cradle you instead of swallowing you whole. The pillow beneath your cheek feels stupidly expensive, cool and smooth, smelling faintly of detergent and something old and comforting, like cedar and money and quiet hallways that echo.

For a moment, you think you’re dreaming again.

Then you feel him.

Jason is asleep beside you, solid and unmistakable. You don’t need to move—you can’t really anyways—to know it’s him. The arm wrapped around your waist is heavy with familiar strength, protective even in unconsciousness. His hair brushes against your arm every time he breathes, soft, tickling your skin in a way that makes your chest ache.

He’s breathing.

That fact alone nearly undoes you.

God. You really need to raise your standards, you think hazily. You’re reduced to this—listening to him breathe, feeling the slow rise and fall of his chest, and already you want to curl into him and coo like nothing in the world has ever gone wrong.

Then you see Bruce.

He’s standing near the bed, still as a statue, watching you with the careful intensity of someone afraid to spook a wild animal. It takes effort to focus on his face, your vision dragging itself into clarity inch by inch.

When you try to lift your head—manners resurfacing before sense—your body protests sharply.

Bruce moves instantly.

“Hey, hey—no,” he murmurs, hands gentle but firm as he presses you back into the mattress. “Relax. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

Your head sinks back into the pillow, and the moment stretches. You swallow thickly before managing a small, hoarse sound of politeness.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Wayne. Jason—”

“Hasn’t told you much about me,” Bruce finishes for you, a faint, tired chuckle slipping out. “That’s alright. I just need you to sleep right now.”

You glance downward as best you can, feeling something sharp dig into your side.

“…I can’t sleep if your son’s elbow is in my ribs.”

Bruce blinks.

Actually blinks—surprised enough that it breaks through the carefully assembled calm. “Ah—” he starts, then reaches for Jason, trying to rearrange him with the same precision he uses on everything else.

It doesn’t work.

Jason huffs in his sleep, a low, irritated sound, and somehow manages to make it worse—his arm tightening, his leg hooking over yours possessively, like you’re something he’s afraid the world might steal back if he lets go.

Bruce freezes.

You mumble, exhausted but soft, “It’s alright. I’m sure he hasn’t slept… I’ve gotten quite a lot, so…”

Bruce looks like he wants to argue. His jaw tightens, then loosens, the fight draining out of him. He exhales and sits back in the chair by the bed, elbows on his knees, hands clasped tightly together.

“It’s the 26th,” he says quietly.

Oh.

You missed Christmas.

What a shame.

After a moment, Bruce speaks again, and his voice is heavier now—careful, deliberate, like every word costs him something.

“I… want to apologize to you.” His fingers interlace, knuckles whitening. “I knew you’d been taken. And I didn’t tell him. Possibly… he could have been there sooner. But I needed to make sure the others would be saved as well.”

“Well,” you murmur, the word barely more than breath, “I don’t exactly blame you for that.”

It isn’t forgiveness exactly—nothing so grand—but it’s honest, and it lands heavier than anger ever could.

Bruce doesn’t relax. If anything, his shoulders pull tighter, like he’s bracing for a blow that never quite comes. He’s spent his whole life learning how to de‑escalate men with guns, gods with vendettas, cities with teeth—but you unsettle him in a quieter, more dangerous way. You’re calm. You’re lucid. You’re something Jason had threatened to shoot himself for.

He clears his throat, trying to give you something solid, something measurable. Facts are safer.

“Jason… got him,” Bruce says carefully. “Badly. I think—” He hesitates, eyes flicking once toward Jason like he’s checking for movement. “I think the Joker may be blind now. Or at least permanently impaired.”

“You let him?” you ask.

Still no accusation. Just a soft, stunned curiosity, as if you’re piecing together a story you were never meant to survive.

Bruce nods. Once. The motion costs him. “I did,” he admits. “But I—”

“Then that’s enough,” you whisper, interrupting him gently, like you’re afraid the words themselves might hurt. “Jason will realize that too.” Your lashes flutter; exhaustion tugs at you like a tide. “I mean… he probably won’t. He’ll still try to kill him.” A faint, crooked exhale. “But you did everything you could yesterday.”

Your gaze drifts—not to Bruce, but to Jason. To the way his arm is still locked around you, even in sleep. To the stubborn set of his jaw, the crease between his brows that never fully smooths out anymore.

“Thank you,” you add quietly. “For finding me.”

That’s when Bruce goes still.

Not rigid. Not defensive.

Still.

Because he’s been looking at you, yes—but now you realize he hasn't been looking you in the eye while he speaks. His eyes have been caught in one place, drawn there again and again like a bruise you can’t help but press.

Your cheek.

The skin there is angry beneath the bandage’s edge—raw, faintly swollen, discolored in a way he winced at while he bandaged it. Bruce didn't let anyone else tend to it, not even Alfred. 

Because this was a wound he inflicted, one that he needed to tend to.

“It’s still fresh,” he says, softer now, stripped of the Bat and the rules and the fear. Just a man speaking carefully around something fragile. “I’ll get you better medicine. The pigment should fade.” A pause. His voice lowers. “I can’t promise about the texture.”

You don’t look away. You don’t flinch.

“That’s okay,” you say.

And Bruce doesn’t know if you mean the scar, or the pain, or the fact that you’ll carry this forever—but Jason shifts in his sleep then, brow tightening, arm drawing you closer like he sensed the weight of the moment and refused to let it settle on you alone.

Bruce watches that. Watches how Jason anchors himself to you without waking, how his breathing steadies when yours does, how it pauses even in sleep when yours hitches.

“He loves you a lot.” Bruce mumbles.

“...And you too Mr.Wayne.”

jason peter todd tag-list (check pinned post for info on how to be added .ᐟ ) :@justamarsbar, @peridotnature854, @nayy-a, @that-willowtree,

let me know what you think!

© shisuni all rights reserved

“Where’s Nightwing?” Artemis asked, already outside.

Your heart leapt, and then you saw it, through the internal cameras still active on your visor: Dick, kneeling in front of the control panel, his fingers flying over the codes. Alone.

00:06... 00:05...

“Nightwing, get out of there now!” Aqualad shouted through the communicator.

But Dick didn't move. He remained kneeling in front of the panel, his brow furrowed, his fingers dancing among the wires, trying to short the correct circuit.

You saw her from above, standing on one of the ceiling beams, your muscles tense, the web loaded on your wrists.

00:04...

“He’s not going to arrive,” you muttered to yourself.

00:03...

You jumped without thinking.

"Spidergirl, don't go!" Aqualad tried to stop you, but without thinking, you shot a web at the edge of the upper access and launched yourself back into the warehouse.

You shot through the skylight, just as the countdown reached three, you didn't call out his name this time. You looked for it with your eyes.

He turned around slightly, surprised, but it was too late.

With perfect momentum, you shot a web straight at his torso, wrapped him in a dense net, and dragged you both upwards.

Dick's feet left the ground just as the bomb exploded.

The blast wave threw you into the air. The skylight glass shattered, you fell together onto the warehouse roof, rolling, covered in smoke and dust.

Your forearm was bleeding from a cut. Both were covered in debris, it was painful to breathe, your chest felt tight, and the ringing was still in your ears, but your head immediately turned toward him, and he was already looking at you.

His eyes were open, alert, just a little disoriented, but he was alive. He struggled to his feet and crawled over to you. “Are you okay?” he asked, his brow furrowed, his voice raspy.

"Are you kidding me?" you replied with an incredulous laugh, unable to hide the trembling in your hands. "You almost exploded into a thousand pieces and asked for me!"

Then Dick leaned slightly toward you. He rested his forehead against yours. He closed his eyes. “Thank you,” was all he said. His voice was barely audible, heavy with relief, guilt, and affection.

The silence fell heavy between the two, broken only by the distant sound of the building still creaking inside, and the static of the communicator where the rest of the team confirmed they were safe.

Your fingers sought his hand again, firmer this time. “Don’t fall behind again, don’t do that to me.”

Dick opened his eyes, looking down at you. His eyes were red, not from the smoke, but from everything he didn't dare say. "I'm not leaving you alone in this world."

“Then don’t scare me like that again.”

── 🕸

You were running along the ledge of a building when you were hit in the head, a sharp blow you didn't see coming at all. The world spun around you, everything became a blur. Your balance was completely lost, and when you tried to shoot a web, dizziness made you fail, sending you tumbling off the tall building. You thought you'd never screamed as loud as that time. You were free falling at least 40 meters. You felt the wind crashing against your body, which intensified your dizziness.

Dick didn't think twice as he threw himself after you. His arms caught you midair, holding you tightly against his chest. One of his hands shot his grappling hook line into the nearest building. The impact was violent; you both spun around, the cable going taut, and your bodies crashed into a wall before dangling more than twenty stories above the ground.

you struggled for air, adrenaline pumped, their sneakers euphoric and a bit nervous. Silence weighed heavily between you, interrupted only by the rain that pounded steadily.

“You’re copying my posts,” you muttered, your voice breaking, trying to laugh, even though you were still shaking.

“I liked yours.” Dick held it a little tighter. “I just wanted to feel what it felt like.”

But this wasn't a joke to him, he watched you as if he couldn't believe you were in his arms, as if that fall had lasted an eternity, because if he had reacted two seconds later...he would have thought he would have lost you.

Dick looked down, squinting for a second. His breathing was still labored, not only from the exertion, but from the fear still gripping his chest. “Don’t do that again,” he murmured.

“Fall?” You tried to lighten the moment, but your voice sounded more fragile than you expected.

He shook his head, barely. His fingers slid down your back, searching for a place to hold, as if he still needed confirmation that you were there. “Scaring me like that.” His voice came out low, barely a whisper through the rain. “I don’t want to go home without you.”

Your lips parted. The world was still spinning beneath you, but in that instant, everything stopped. “You won’t have to.” Your hand slid down his neck, warm despite the cold, and you looked him straight in the eyes. “Never.”

── 🕸

The roof collapsed with a crash, sending debris flying in all directions. The fight had escalated too quickly. There were more of them, they were armed, and the building wasn't going to hold much longer. You twirled between enemies, shooting webs in all directions, covering the team's backs, when a sound paralyzed you completely:

A stifled scream, a loud bang.

Dick.

Your gaze turned just in time to see him fall from the ledge, his body skidding through the rain and smoke. The blast had thrown him backward. He wasn't holding onto anything. Just... falling. "Dick!" you yelled, without thinking.

In pure reflex, you shot out a web. It caught on his ankle just before he disappeared between floors. The jerk jarred your arm, but you held on. He hung there, upside down, the rain hitting his face, panting. His eyes moved slowly up to meet yours.

You were still kneeling on the ledge, clutching the dripping cobweb, your heart in your throat. “I’ve got you,” you murmured, almost breathless.

He chuckled faintly, stunned. "Thank you for... not letting me die honey."

“You haven’t finished training anyone to replace you yet.”

The rain continued to fall, the sky roared in the distance. And then, as if the universe aligned in that perfect instant, he looked at you with a different intensity. “I'm on the ground now, come closer…” he murmured.

With a swift motion, you shot out a new web and slid down from the ledge. You hung upside down right in front of him, suspended by a single strand, your body swaying gently in the breeze.

You stood face to face, both of you hanging in the air, you upside down, your hair dripping in the opposite direction of gravity. Your eyes dropped to his face, to his lips, to the way the rain trickled down his chin.

Dick leans down, his large hands slowly rising, and with the same delicacy with which one treats something precious, Dick took the edge of your mask and lowered it until your lips were uncovered. His fingers lingered there for a second longer, as if he didn't want to let go of the image of you, hanging in front of him, completely his for an instant.

And then he kissed you, his mouth finding yours with a care that belied the urgency of the moment. It's an awkward kiss because of the position. But it's also honest and intense.

When you separate, you're still inches away. Breathing the same air. You, hanging upside down, and him, his cheeks flushed as if he were fifteen again.

When you broke apart, he leaned his forehead against yours. Your voice came out low. Barely a whisper through the rain. “Well…”

“Would you like to tell her.. about these feelings?” Dick tries again, settling for a more emphatic approach.

Damian winces, averting his gaze—trying to displace the sudden lodge in his throat. “I assumed there were more steps that entail to a courtship. You’re clearly well-versed in them.”

Dick clears his throat. “It isn’t like a routined dance, Damian.” At Damian’s furrowed brow, he continues. “Falling in love—dating, it comes naturally between two people. It’s the million little moments, built upon each other that no practiced motion can recreate. It happens regardless of choices, and that’s the beauty of it.”

“Naturally.” Damian tests the word on his tongue, but like he suspected, it ran off with a bitter taste. While he has been deemed a prodigy, a perfect weapon—being a normal human was not something trained into his veins, but rather suppressed.

“Maybe it is for you, Grayson—but where I was raised, details of courtship and emotional connection with another person were never discussed. My body is not programmed to have these natural decisions come forth to my mind, and I-”

It feels like swallowing glass when he mutters. “I require your assistance to explain it to me.”

Dick’s gaze softens in pity, which weighs heavier, worse than his laughter earlier. “Hey, we actually started off on the same boat. If anything, at least you didn’t have to experience Bruce’s attempt at explaining it. He’s more an expert than any of us when it comes to emotional suppression.”

“Love..” Dick ponders. “It hits you when you least expect it, but spending time together does test if the feeling is reciprocated.”

“I suppose there are some steps that you could follow.” Dick murmurs, thumb trailing his chin in thought. “Alright, here’s the plan.”

Gotham Outdoor Ice Rink, Bristol, Gotham. (Grayson's Brilliant Plan)

Damian may not be well-versed in the matters of courtship. However, standing stiffly in competition with the street lamp beside him, his nose buried into his green scarf more so to hide his shame rather than from the winter cold, his regret grows tenfold with every passing minute for even agreeing to this.

You're bound to arrive at any moment, and he'd rather suffer in his regrets than leave you stranded on a date his brother suggested. Not that he used that term, he could barely handle deeming it a hang out.

In his earpiece, Dick’s voice echoes with irritating amusement.

“Damian, you need to relax. You look like an assassin waiting for your target to appear.”

“Train to be one from the moment you were born with a family legacy on your shoulders and see how that affects your posture.” Damian grumbles.

“It’s okay if you’re nervous. I’ll guide you if you freeze, remember?”

“I’m not nervous—”

His peripheral vision recognises your silhouette before he can even finish his retort. All sound seems to fade past the stuttering in his chest, including his brother’s teasing, and maybe time slows too—he wouldn’t put you below that possibility. You’re busy with your scarf that’s loosened enough to reveal your lips, and you don’t even notice that you’re speed-walking right towards him.

It’s instinctive, not at all pleasing when his hands reach out just in time to grab onto your shoulders before you slam face-first into his coat.

Your eyes widen comically, but it doesn’t appease the thundering of his pulse, not especially when you smile at him like that, bashful and sweet. “Damian! Fancy bumping into you here." You tease.

“Perfect meet-cute.” Dick whispers to himself. “Tell her it’s fine—that you actually think it’s cute.”

“What?” He snaps, feeling ashamed at the mere suggestion.

You blink twice at his sudden reaction. He needs to recover quickly, say something.

“Watch where you’re going.” He slips out.

He can hear the sound of Dick slapping his own forehead, echoing in his eardrums.

Thankfully, you don’t seem deterred by his slow-witted response, grin still in-tact. “Apologies for almost ruining your luxurious scarf. Though I’ll must say, green looks really good on you.”

He tenses. This is the moment, he must say something right this time.

“Brings out the colour of my eyes.” Dick offers through a sigh.

Perfect. Something witty, and completely appropriate for the situation.

“Brings out the colour of my eyes.” Damian’s delivery is completely robotic, unlike the one he heard in his ears, carrying none of the light-hearted tone that made it sound right.

Miraculously, it only cracks a laugh out of you.

“She’s an angel.” Dick groans, almost pitifully.

He winces, letting you go before offering his hand. “The snow’s slippery.” His excuse is well-rehearsed, recovering back into the steps Dick gave him.

Your expression brightens, taking ahold of his hand. It’s a perfect fit, your glove in his and a warm glow is forming behind his ribs—an unsteady, pleasant feeling, almost enough to forget the mistake he made.

“Smooth recovery.” Dick comments in approval. “Bring her to the next location.”

If Damian could, he’d mute Dick's channel immediately if he was going to be reminding him every second. It was distracting and nerve wracking to be multi-tasking two tasks at once, especially when you easily compelled him to lose all train of thought.

The skating rink is crowded, more than he’d like, but he wasn’t up for improvisation after his earlier attempt. It’ll have to do, and he’s sure his withering glare can clear enough space for the two of you.

“I’ve always wanted to try ice skating.” You’re brimming with glee with your gaze glued to the ice, and his eyes trail over your excitement with a tender patience. He’d like to sketch it out when he was back home, but even the thought of ending this moment was incomprehensible, so he settles on bending down to tie your skating shoes.

”Just to warn you—” Your joyful glimmer falters into a rare bundle of nerves. “I’ve never skated—like ever. You’ll need to teach me the ropes.”

His lips quirk the slightest lift. “You have the best teacher in all of Gotham.”

“Really?” You tease, leaning down slightly that he feels the warmth of your breath over his nose, sending goosebumps down his arms. “That’s a bold claim.”

“I was raised on snow mountains since I was an infant. A skating rink in Gotham is a small feat for me, and it shall be for you.”

“Less bragging, more swooning.” Dick’s voice echoes in his eardrums.

Damian’s expression clamps shut as he leads you towards the ice. He takes the first step and balances himself perfectly on the naturally formed ice. You enter immediately on the wrong angle, and slip. He doesn’t think, his free hand wrapping around your waist before you fall.

He freezes, and you do too. Caught at the entrance of the rink in the corner where no one is watching, you’re wrapped so closely in his embrace—his body instinctively shielding and protecting you. He feels his entire face burning up from the lack of distance.

“Maybe ice and me are less compatible than you think.” You whisper, as if the ice would crack and swallow you whole if it heard you.

It’s enough to kick him back into his senses, and he quickly lifts you back up to your feet. Gently letting go of your waist, he ignores the jittering in his fingers by taking hold of your hands instead.

“Hasn’t been proven yet.” He answers, looking down at your feet. “Mirror my stance.”

Your own gaze shifts down, and you adjust the blades of your shoes into the same V position. You’re shuffling less, which is already a sign of improvement.

“Alright, now one step forward, and the other leg lifts like a kick.” Damian instructs.

You try, but your feet wobble at your first kick, making you fall into his arms again. Not that he minds.

“You’re lifting too early.” He notes. “You’ll have to glide with your other foot first.”

Your brows furrow together, an adorable concentration creased in the centre as you try again. You manage it the second time, and he finds it despite himself, vulnerable to smiling when you let out a huff of joyous laughter as you glide with him, his hands still holding onto you.

“I guess you proved yourself right.” Your focus is still on your feet, but when you lift your gaze, you’re leaning close to him just like before when he had caught you—with such pure, content bliss that the word ‘beautiful’ fails to describe your features. “You are a good teacher.”

Dick’s muttering something in his ear, but the erratic signals shooting through his brain fries all comprehension of what he’s supposed to do next other than stare at you speechless like a bumbling fool.

He messes up his next step, and before he knows it, he’s tumbling down to the ice, and you fall down with him through your connected limbs. His body shields you from the freezing ice, but nothing protects him from the shame that drowns his entire conscience—of falling onto the ice which he has never done in his lifetime, and dragging you down with him.

He hears Dick clearly now, laughing so hard that it stings his eardrums from the high frequency.

“Damian!” You call out, and your gaze is half worry, half shock. “Are you okay?”

His ears flush with blood at your question, most likely reddened as if there wasn’t enough to mope about.

“I would very much like for the ice to swallow me whole.” He mutters dryly. “Other than that, I am uninjured.”

“I so have that captured.” Dick howls through the earpiece. “I’m calling it, this is going to be the topic of discussion for our next family dinner.”

Damian discreetly rips his ear-piece out and shoves it into his coat’s pocket when your gaze averts to an elderly couple stopping by the two of you like his fall is some tourist attraction, asking if he needed any help to get back to the entrance.

He is never asking Grayson for help ever again.

The Bat-Cave, Wayne Manor (Drake’s Secondary Home)

“You sure you have the right person?” Tim guffaws, his expression a mixture of horror and fascination. “Haven’t you tried—”

“Grayson, yes. He has failed.” His scowl has dug deeper if possible, the faint memory of Dick’s laughter still penetrates his eardrums when he isn’t preoccupied with his responsibilities.

Pointing an intrusive finger to his new prey, he speaks. “You are to prove yourself more worthy than he is, as the next best in line for successful courtships.”

Tim raises a brow. “Didn’t know you kept track.”

Damian scowls. “Your methods are unconventional, but there are no other better alternatives.” Imposing and distracting with his crossed arms, casting a shadow over the littered papers, his presence eventually forces Tim to detach from the case he was working on.

“Alright, what’s her name?” Tim sighs, his fingers switching to a new tab where the identity search bar flickers.

Damian stiffens, defensive. “Why would you require her name?”

“To search for her, genius.” Tim comments as if it’s obvious that an illegal identity search is the best course of action. “I can have her interests, dislikes, and her entire profile mapped out in less than five minutes.”

“That’s dishonourable.”

“It’s efficient.” Tim fires back. “Or else we’ll be here all day. Why waste time on the uncertainties when you can already mould everything to go perfectly?”

“My respect for you shrinks by the second, Drake.”

Tim snorts. “As if you had any in the first place. Don’t act like you haven’t done your own illegal searches. Suddenly, it’s your crush and I’m not allowed to look into it?”

The back of Damian’s neck grows hot at the mere use of the word ‘crush’, dumbing his feelings down to something so.. pathetic. “Fine, I’ll do it myself. You’re not allowed to so much as glance at her.”

Tim’s hands raise in mock surrender. “I would never.”

As Damian settles into the seat, given the privacy as Tim launches himself into the spare chair, spinning it backward with his back facing the Bat-computer, he can feel the latter brewing with something to say.

“Spit it out.” Damian huffs.

“I just—” Tim starts. “Never thought I’d live to see the day of you softening up for someone. I mean—it’s even made you come all the way for my assistance.”

“I did not come for assistance.”

“Advice is practically the same thing.” Tim remarks. “You may have called it dishonourable, but can you truly claim you love a person if you don’t know them fully? I think falling in love means having a curiosity so strong for someone that you would like to know them as deeply as they know themselves. Isn’t that what it means to love?”

Damian’s gaze flickers to Tim who yawns widely, tucking his head into his elbows over a long drought from sleep after staying up for two days straight. It… resonated with him, his never-ending greed to learn the intricacies of your emotions and actions, to know the depths behind each story you held in your mind.

He’s spent long, treacherous months avoiding even the mention of your name anywhere outside the confinements of his mind, aside from the occasional scribble and tear of his paper, and his hunger has become an obstacle that even he can’t tackle any longer. With a mental push, the mere action of typing your name numbs his fingers from the anticipation.

Your social media accounts pop up—one is public with your name listed, and another is a photography account. There’s not many photos, but there’s enough that it feels like he’s peeking into something intimate, a catalogue of your life that has his heart quickening.

He remembers vividly of you asking to exchange social media accounts when you had first met, before he quickly shut it down, commenting that he refused to have such useless applications.

Yet, here he was—frozen, mesmerised at the sight of your smile captured on your digital camera, unable to scroll further past your most recent post. It didn’t capture the true essence of your joy like he remembered so clearly from that failed date, but it still struck him all the same.

Even his denial falls silent when he’s looking at you, because he’d be a fool to pretend away the quick pattering of his heart, or the small smile etched into his lips caused by you. His mind has formed a despicable habit—a quiet, dreadful longing whenever he envisions even a frame of you in his mind.

He has fallen for you quietly—strongly, and even as he scrolls further, to the latest bookstores you’ve frequented, or your blurred snapshots of sunsets along the Gotham horizon, he’s not satisfied. What is the use of seeing these images if he wasn’t there to witness it or hear from you in person?

He wants to be in your life, not just a mere bystander, but he doesn’t know how to say it.

“You’ve been deathly silent for ten minutes.” Tim comments. “It’s kind of making me curious—”

“I will gouge out your eyes myself, Drake.”

There’s only one person he has left to ask, and as he pierces a coffin-burying glare into Tim’s prying gaze, he wasn’t sure if he’d get the answer he needed.

89, Skirley Apartments, Park Row (Crime Alley) (Todd’s Rebellious Man-Cave)

Jason whistles, leaning against the door to his mess of an apartment. “You must be desperate if you’ve come to see me.”

The disgruntlement in Damian’s expression comes mostly from embarrassment and partly from the state of disarray he finds from one single swipe past the gap of Jason’s shoulder and the door frame. Motorcycle gear is splayed out over the scratched floorboards, signaling another random side project.

Barely lived in, and somehow a complete mess that would have Alfred over in a snap with his emergency cleaning set.

“Grayson’s overly optimistic and Drake’s downright creepy.” Damian huffs.

“And that leaves me..?” Jason’s brow raises, a taunting smirk on his lips.

“As the last option.” Damian grits.

Jason steps back, his back pushing against the wood to allow Damian into his less-than-adequate living quarters.

“Well, sorry to break it to you, kid—” Jason plops down onto the couch, and the pillow-seat sinks under his weight. “But my understanding of love is barely any better than yours.”

“You’re still the second oldest.” Call it desperation, Damian isn’t sure if he’s above that anymore after the failure of his two other brothers. “You must’ve had some experience.”

“Now, age matters?” Jason mocks. “Well—if you want my two cents, I suppose I can give it.”

“There’s no point beating around the bush.” Jason states. “If you really like her, you just have to say it. Even if it hurts, especially if you’re scared it’ll hurt. That means there’s something worth to lose, and to never ask, it’s always gonna hurt worse than knowing.”

“That’s the whole point of love. It takes being brave, and realising the possibility of something real right in front of you—and fighting for it. You only have so few chances in the world to experience it, and you’re going to waste something like that over fear of what—rejection?”

“Have a heart-to-heart. That’ll always mean more than some hidden message, hoping she’ll notice and give in first.” Leaning back, Jason eyes Damian with a rare look he doesn’t recognise, because there is no possibility in the world that wisdom could exist in that big-head of his. “If she doesn’t return how you feel, that sucks. You’ll live barely, then it’ll heal and you move on. If you never answer the question? It’s gonna haunt you for life. The one that got away.”

The thought of losing you to cowardice, of being a permanent outsider to your life, nearly ruins him. Damian can’t afford that, not when there’s never been a person he desired for more than you. This week has made sure of that.

Even more of a horrifying realisation is that of all people, Jason Todd was the one that got through to him. His trained eyes scan the perimeter for any signs of a secret partner, a reason for this sudden shift in his usual, thick-headed sibling. “Where did you obtain such knowledge?”

Jason’s lips quirk up. “Jane Austen, you should try her sometime.”

135, Kane Street, Otisburg (Damian's Last Resort)

Damian has only felt the urge to puke on two occasions this past year. Firstly, when he discovered old photos of Dick’s first Nightwing costume in an old album, and had to wash his hands twice with anti-bacterial soap. Secondly, when a rare poison seeped into his bloodstream that he had not already trained to be immune to.

Never had the nauseating feeling of nerves scale till the point of trembling fingers and stiff legs. He just needed to tell the truth, so why did the matter seem so petrifying?

He’s been standing outside your door, letting the winter frost bite at his exposed skin—like a pathetic loser for the past fifteen minutes and if he stood there any longer, he might as well brand himself as one. His hand comes up to knock in three measured beats, and he waits with the patience of Dick’s pit-bull for a belly rub.

The door unlocks, and your tousled hair greets him first. His heart tugs at the sight of you in your home attire, with your loosened shirt and pajama pants dragging against the floor. You’re utterly beautiful, even as you’re slapping your cheeks lightly to coerce yourself awake. It takes a few seconds for the realisation to hit your half-asleep features before your eyes nearly pop out.

“Damian? It’s five in the morning! What are you doing here?”

“I have romantic feelings for you.” He blurts with the subtlety of a ramming gun.

“If you reciprocate, I would like to..” He pauses, his thoughts competing with the rapid pace of his heartbeat. “Wait, I didn’t think this through.”

You blink slowly, shock blasted over your face, before a soft, warm smile creeps over your lips. “No-no, go on.”

He wants it to be perfect, but his words were too direct, too harsh. He wasn’t like Dick, who was naturally charismatic with others, or Tim who thought two steps ahead for every interaction, or Jason who bulldozed through without a care in the world. He doesn’t want to risk losing you over his own incompetence. “No, I feel like I’ve started it all wrong.”

“It’s five in the morning, even Damian Wayne is human enough to mess up his words at this hour.” You tease. His shoulders sag in relief at the sound of your comforting voice, which he suspects is the purpose of your teasing. To calm him, tell him it’s okay.

“Right.” He mutters. “May I start over?”

“I’m all ears.” You grin.

He cracks a soft smile in return. It is difficult for him to be human, to feel his faults bubble to the surface, but in front of you, he is willing to try. “I am unfathomably, undoubtably.. and completely in love with you. Romantic feelings don’t even come close to describing the knowing in my heart that it has chosen you from the very moment you entered my life.”

“When I am around you, it’s as if the world disappears, and all I envision is you.” He admits. “From the moment you approached me with your maddening smile and charming wit, I don’t believe I could have ever fought against it, against you.”

“Your laughter brings joy to me, your sadness distracts me of all my senses, and your very existence is a gift in my life that I cherish deeply and.. I’m terrified at the idea of losing that, losing you.”

“Love..” He hesitates. “..is a difficult concept for me to understand, because it has never been shown to me outright. So when I felt this desire—this constant want to be in your presence, I sought for understanding.”

“I see now—that love can’t be explained in just mere words. It is the shared moments between us that I replay in my mind, the small details I find myself noticing of you and cherishing deeply, and the fear of losing that privilege of knowing you. I realised.. that I can’t fathom continuing my life without you in it.”

“I don’t know if I deserve to be by your side, but I would like to try.” His gaze finds yours, and he hopes. So desperately, he hopes. “Would you have me, even if I am a fool who doesn’t know the right things to say?” His plea is quiet against the silent rustle of the trees, the dark twilight sky that watches over them.

Your eyes soften, filled with warmth and that same, brimming happiness he has memorised from the time spent on the ice. “You’re only an idiot if you think you didn’t say all the right things, Damian.”

His chest, tight till the point of rupturing, feels like it’s finally able to breathe.

Leaning in slowly, right across the barrier of the doorstep that separates you from him, you gift him with a soft kiss pressed against his lips and his entire world falls apart, not that it ever truly existed before you.

He takes you into his arms, lifting your feet off the doorstep as his boots crunch against the melted snow when he kisses you back. He has never kissed anyone before, but the feeling of wanting you so close to his soul only feels natural when you’re here in his arms.

It’s sweet, clumsy—and out of all the moments he’s spent with you, he truly wished he could replay this over and over.

When you break the kiss, he has to remind himself to not follow after you when you whisper softly against his lips. “You never finished. What did you want to do if I reciprocated?”

Visions, blurred and incoherent, flash through his mind but it’s nothing compared to the real thing right in front of him. “Everything. As long as you’re mine, the possibilities are endless.”

“Of course I’m yours, Damian.” Your eyes crinkle into that puddle of warmth that melts through all his defences. “No one has ever come to my doorstep, at five in a winter morning, professing their love before.”

His brows furrow, lips nearing to a pout. “Has anyone ever tried professing their love in other ways?”

You laugh, and he can get used to that. Making you smile and laugh as if it’s his one purpose on this planet. “No—I think my heart was too busy being taken by the person in front of me, who just conveyed what love is so perfectly that I can never think of anyone else.”

He relaxes at that, feeling his own smile deepen at the relief of finally having you in his arms, and in the comfort of the warmth shared under the dim streetlights, he thinks he’ll have to temporarily bump Jason to the number one spot in his long line of siblings.

Not that he’d ever tell him that—but he supposes if a limited edition of Jane Austen's collection ends up at Jason's doorstep tomorrow, it would have simply been the universe's divine gift.

likes, reblogs, and comments are highly appreciated! <333

Jason nervously toyed with the small box in his trouser pocket. It was perhaps the size of a peculiar walnut, yet despite its light weight, it felt so heavy in his hand. He let the lid snap open briefly, tracing the delicate stone with the pad of his thumb, before gently closing it gently.

Or perhaps he thought he was closing the lid gently.

He cursed softly when the stupid lid pinched his thumb. Surely it couldn't be that hard - why was he worrying? He didn't even shit his pants when he had the Black Mask standing right in front of him. But that hadn't been Jason. It had been Red Hood who faced the frightening reality of Gotham.

Maybe that was a lie. Maybe he was shitting his pants a little. He took a deep breath before exhaling slowly; his sweaty hands were already getting on his nerves.

For weeks - if not months - he had planned this evening. Down to every teeny tiny element. Meticulously: every single detail, every single scenario. A little too Bruce for his taste. But good God, what would he do if this evening went wrong? He would never be able to handle loosing his darling.

And how long had she been with him by now? No one would put up with his problems for five years unless they wanted to get married. Right?

He tugged at his shirt. He was Jason Peter Todd, for fuck's sake! Who wouldn't want to marry him, right? Right? He rose from his chair and cleared his throat.

Could it really take that long just to wash one's hands?

He turned in a semicircle, his heart pounding in his throat. What the hell was he doing here? He tugged once more at the table decorations and stared down at the bustling streets of Gotham. Up here on the roof, it almost seemed peaceful, silent. The small garden radiated an almost soothing atmosphere.

Dinner went well. Not just well or good, it was great. He had noticed that she had done her nails. Had she, perhaps, suspected after all what his plans for today was? That was a good sign, right? A woman caring about her nails, maybe even expecting a proposal.

His loud thoughts came to a halt when he heard the door open. Seeing her step out into the soft light of the lanterns (which he had lit specifically for the occasion) in her pretty dress, with those stupid kitten heels that somehow turned him crazy. Perhaps it was the way her legs stretched just a tiny bit more, that struck him as even more alluring.

She had reapplied her glossy lipstick. A broad smile was on her face as she walked towards him.

" 'M sorry, that took longer than expected."

He hummed in acknoledgement. He stepped a tiny bit closer and took her hand in his. Slowly, he rubbed his thumb over her soft knuckles.

"Did you like it?" he asked slowly, leaning down to plant a kiss on her cheek. "The food, I mean. I also have dessert downstairs in the fridge."

She smiled and leaned slightly toward him, nodding slowly. The meal had been simple. Jason Todd’s culinary skills left something to be desired - but pasta al pomodoro with Parmesan? That was something he aced.

"Hmmm, nothing compares to Jason Tood's spaghetti."

For a second he just stared at her and runs a hand through his hair.

"Great, good," he murmured, playing with the small box in his trouser pocket. "Fantastic."

She glanced at him, somewhat confused, and blinked toward his trouser pocket.

"You've been fiddling with your hand in your pocket all evening. What's in there?" she snorted, reaching out to tug his wrist curiously. He wriggled gracefully and gently out of her reach and chuckled softly. A tiny, displeased sound left his throat, but still soft. "It's a secret," he grunted.

"You're stupid," she said, her gaze following his. He took a glimpse at her so gently through his long lashes, as if she herself had hung the stars in the evening sky. He kissed her again on her temple.

"Wanna know?"

His words were barely more than a hum. The moment was perfect. They stood close to one another, amidst that familiar banter that so often passed between them. He had written a text of epic length, spanning from the very first moment he had laid eyes on her, and secretly, deep down, knew that she would become his wife.

Even though his mind told him that he shouldn't open up. Who would want to marry a man like Jason? With his many issues and mild aggression problems? From their first date right up to their first fight, after which he spent an entire evening in his apartment (before they moved in together) crying his eyes out.

He slowly sank to his left knee, yet did not let go of her hand. He watched as her eyes widened and her own hands grew warm. His own heart pounded in his throat. He felt as though he could not breathe. And not a single word of his memorized monologue would come to mind.

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out except a hoarse "I-" His hands were sweaty, trembling slightly as, with his free hand, he pulled the ring from his trouser pocket; and nearly dropped it onto the concrete of the roof.

"Sweetheart-"

He never claimed to be a nervous wreck or a helpless simp. But the way she looked at him, so full of anticipation, while barely holding back her own tears of joy… and the ring, looking a little lost inside its box, sparkled in the soft glow of the lanterns.

"Please...", he almost whimpered.

She laughed softly through a few tears that escaped her eyes. She herself couldn't manage to utter a coherent sound - only a wild nod - before leaping into his arms and sobbing, in broken gasps,

"Yes… oh God, yes."

Jason liked taking care of people. It was buried somewhere deep beneath the violence, the sarcasm, the helmet, the terrifying reputation, and the lifetime’s worth of anger issues, but it was there. Raw and instinctive. He liked memorizing what people needed before they asked for it. He liked patching wounds, carrying heavy things, walking on the outside of the sidewalk, checking locks twice before bed. Maybe it came from a childhood where nobody took care of him properly. Maybe it came from being Robin once upon a time, before the world had split him open and rebuilt him meaner. Whatever the reason, taking care of someone he loved felt as natural to him as breathing.

Unfortunately for him, y/n would rather throw herself into oncoming traffic than accept assistance gracefully.

Which was deeply inconvenient considering Jason Todd had money now. Not respectable money, obviously. Not “stocks and mutual funds” money like Bruce. Jason’s finances existed in a morally gray area populated by terrified drug lords, black-market deals, confiscated cash, and the occasional envelope Bruce shoved into his hands disguised as “mission funding” when they both knew it was guilt money.

Jason accepted all of it without shame.

And when he got a girlfriend? Jesus Christ.

He immediately developed the overwhelming urge to spend every cent on her.

Not in an obnoxious way. Not because he thought she couldn’t survive on her own. If anything, y/n surviving independently despite Gotham actively trying to eat people alive was one of the things he admired most about her. She worked herself ragged, paid her own bills, handled her own problems, and carried herself with this stubborn, infuriating pride that made Jason want to simultaneously shake her and marry her.

But he loved her. Of course he wanted to make her life easier.

Apparently that made him public enemy number one.

Every single attempt at paying for something turned into a war of attrition.

Coffee dates were the worst. Jason would buy their drinks with the smug satisfaction of a man fulfilling his divine purpose as a boyfriend, only for his phone to buzz ten minutes later.

Y/N SENT YOU $10.00

Jason would stare at the notification with pure resentment.

Once, after their fourth argument about it that month, he’d deliberately paid for dinner while she was in the bathroom, thinking he’d finally outsmarted her.

The next morning she’d transferred him exact reimbursement down to the tax.

Psychotic behavior.

Another time, he’d tried being direct about it.

“You know normal girlfriends let their boyfriends spoil them,” he muttered while leaning against her kitchen counter.

Y/n, sitting cross-legged on the counter eating a banana with the confidence of a woman impossible to embarrass, looked unimpressed. “Normal boyfriends don’t source their income like Batman’s most wanted.”

“That’s hurtful.”

“That’s accurate.”

Jason narrowed his eyes before pulling a thick stack of cash from his jacket pocket and tossing it onto the counter beside her. “Take it.”

She glanced at the money, then at him, then back at the money. “I don’t want your guilt money from your daddy.”

“It’s not guilt money,” Jason corrected immediately. “It’s drug money.”

Y/n stared at him slowly, banana halfway to her mouth, looking genuinely uncertain whether she should kiss him or book him a therapist.

Jason had shrugged like that clarified everything.

Because to him, honestly, it did.

Then there were the bills.

God, the bills argument nearly killed him.

It had been late evening, rain tapping softly against the apartment windows while Gotham drowned itself in neon and smog outside. Y/n’s apartment wasn’t terrible, but it was small in that distinctly Gotham way—thin walls, unreliable heating, pipes that screamed like dying animals whenever someone showered. Jason practically lived there anyway despite technically owning a much nicer place. Mostly because he preferred her cluttered little apartment over any penthouse money could buy.

She was sprawled on top of him on the couch, wearing one of his hoodies and soft sleep shorts, her cheek pressed into his neck while he worked on his laptop balanced precariously against her lower back. One of his arms rested around her waist automatically, hand underneath the hoodie, fingertips tracing absent patterns against her skin while he typed with the other hand.

“Ugh,” she groaned suddenly into his throat. “My landlord is up my ass about rent.”

Jason’s fingers paused over the keyboard instantly.

“How much?”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I was gonna say.”

“You were gonna offer money.”

“I was gonna offer money.”

She made a triumphant sound against his skin. “Exactly. Denied.”

Jason clicked his tongue in annoyance, shifting slightly beneath her. “Baby, I basically live here anyway. Let me help with bills.”

“No.”

“You’re working doubles.”

“I’ll survive.”

“You shouldn’t have to survive,” he muttered.

That made her lift her head slightly. Her expression softened around the edges when she looked at him, because no matter how much they argued about this, she knew where it came from. Jason wasn’t controlling. Wasn’t condescending. He wasn’t trying to own her.

He just loved hard. Recklessly. Like a man who never learned moderation.

“I wanna do things myself,” she said quietly. “I need to prove I can.”

Jason looked at her for a long moment.

Most people saw anger first when they looked at him. Violence. Volatility. But underneath all of that, Jason understood pride better than almost anyone. Understood what it meant to claw your own survival out of the dirt with bloody hands. Understood how humiliating dependence could feel.

So instead of arguing, he just sighed softly through his nose and kissed the top of her head.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Okay.”

Which should’ve worried her.

Because when Jason Todd stopped arguing, it usually meant he’d already decided to do something significantly worse.

The next afternoon, while Jason was in the middle of interrogating a weapons trafficker, his phone vibrated in his pocket.

He glanced at the caller ID and immediately smiled beneath the Red Hood helmet.

“Hey, gorgeous.”

“You paid my fucking rent?”

Jason leaned casually against the damp brick wall beside him while the criminal tied to the chair whimpered quietly in the background.

“For the next six months, yeah.” He checked his gun lazily. “Oh, and your car’s in the shop. Your brakes sounded like a dying walrus. Figured I’d get them replaced.”

There was silence on the other end.

Then came one long inhale that positively radiated fury.

Jason grinned harder.

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Yeah?”

“You are insane.”

“You still love me though.”

“I’m considering arson.”

“That’s my girl.”

The line went dead with an aggressive beep.

Jason stood there for another second staring at the phone in his hand, helpless affection spreading warm through his chest before he could stop it. The kind that made him feel seventeen again. Human again. Soft in places he usually kept armored shut.

If anyone ever saw the look on his face right now, Jason would actually have to kill them.

With a sigh, he slid the phone back into his jacket and finally turned toward the terrified criminal still zip-tied to the chair in the abandoned warehouse.

“You know,” he muttered while pulling another zip tie tighter around the guy’s wrists, “I buy one woman six months’ rent and suddenly I’m the bad guy.”

The guy had apparently developed a death wish.

“F-females,” he laughed nervously, sweat dripping down his temple. “Am I right?”

Jason’s smile vanished instantly.

Gone was the lovesick idiot paying for brake repairs. This was the man criminals whispered about in panic.

Jason grabbed the chair sharply, yanking it forward until the man nearly choked on his own breath.

“That,” Jason said quietly, “is my girl you’re talking about.”

The criminal went pale.

“And trust me,” Jason continued, voice calm in the way that scared people most, “you do not wanna disrespect the woman willing to date me voluntarily.”

“R-right. I’m sorry. Sorry.”

Jason stared at him another second before sighing heavily and releasing the chair.

©𝓐𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒍𝒑𝒆𝒅𝒊𝒂𝒂. do not copy, translate, or repost my work on any other sites without my permission. 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭.

BY GOD’S GRACE —- OR ALFRED’S PATIENCE, WHICHEVER COUNTED AS THE BIGGER MIRACLE — NO ONE KNEW HOW DAMIAN WAYNE ENDED UP WITH YOU.

you, in your hot-pink mini skirt and glitter nails and perfume that could probably be classified as a biochemical weapon. you, who once asked if bats had “like… eyelids?” and said it with total sincerity. you, who got distracted mid-sentence because you saw a dog wearing a sweater across the street and immediately forgot what you were talking about.

he didn’t understand it. not even a little.

in public, he looked like he was enduring a hostage situation anytime you laced your fingers through his, and yet he never pulled away. even when your rings (all four on one hand, because of course) dug into his knuckles. even when your bracelets jingled like an incoming sleigh team every time you moved. even when people stared — and they did stare, because you were a walking neon sign next to gotham’s resident brood incarnate — he held on.

the part that truly terrified him was how natural it had become. you walked a half-step ahead of him, your attention flickering everywhere at once, like a very pretty, very distractible magpie. every few seconds you’d gasp softly, at a storefront display, or a pigeon, or a baby in a stroller, and damian would be forced to stop, recalibrate, and wait while you admired whatever had stolen your focus this time. he pretended irritation, checking his watch, sighing dramatically, muttering something about time management, but he always waited. he always looked back to make sure you hadn’t tripped over a crack in the sidewalk or wandered into traffic because you spotted a cat.

he didn’t like how instinctive that check had become. how protective. how fond. even now, walking beside you through gotham’s crowded winter market, he found himself cataloguing every variable: uneven cobblestones you might twist an ankle on, the man selling roasted chestnuts who had a suspicious glint in his eye, the group of teenagers he didn’t trust within a ten-foot radius of you.

meanwhile, you were enthusiastically informing him that hot chocolate “tastes better when you’re cold, it’s like a scientific fact,” and waving your arms enough that he nearly intercepted a candy cane you almost smacked someone with. damian endured it with the same expression he used during board meetings: thin-lipped, jaw set, eyes forward like he was marching toward an execution he’d personally scheduled. you didn’t notice. you never noticed. you were too busy being incandescent.

you tugged him deeper into the market, past the string lights dripping like molten gold from the eaves, past the vendors shouting holiday deals, past the speakers humming old carols warped by cold air. your boots clicked over the cobblestones, a rhythm at war with itself, but you walked like someone incapable of stumbling. pure luck, damian thought grimly. or some divine protection he absolutely did not trust.

you stopped every ten seconds. literally every ten. at a stall selling knit hats shaped like reindeer. at a booth offering “mood scarves” that allegedly changed color with emotion. at a stand where a man was playing holiday songs on wine glasses filled with water, and you stood there, enraptured, like you had just discovered music for the first time in your life. you pointed at everything. gasped at everything. oohed and aahed and squealed at everything.

damian — who had been dragged out of the manor under the pretense of “getting fresh air” — followed silently behind you like a highly disgruntled bodyguard, hands in his pockets, scarf wrapped too neatly. he looked miserable. he was miserable. the cold, the crowds, the noise. you, on the other hand, were explaining — loudly — that snow “should be illegal because it’s too pretty and also slippery and also cold and also sparkly,” and damian was trying to figure out how one person could hold that many contradictory opinions in a single breath. then you gasped. you always gasped. this time it was because a vendor had tiny mason jars filled with glitter suspended in clear gel, labeled aesthetic snow globes. you sprinted.

damian muttered something in arabic that was probably a curse, then sped up to keep you from accidentally joining a passing family and wandering home with them. you pressed your face so close to the jars your breath fogged the glass. “damian,” you whispered. “it’s like… the universe. but tiny.”

he stared at you, then stared at the jar. then back at you. “…it’s glitter.”

“IN A JAR,” you insisted, as if that changed the nature of the cosmos.

he pinched the bridge of his nose, which he did often around you, because loving you required full-body endurance. you were beautiful, incandescent, a human firework. but you also operated on a wavelength that fried ninety percent of his higher brain function on contact.

after several minutes of you debating which jar “felt like your aura,” damian became aware of movement to his left. teenage boys again. different group, same expression: wide eyes, slow grin, subtle nudge. damian didn’t turn his head, just let his gaze slide sideways with the precision of someone trained to kill you with eye contact alone. he assessed them like threats. measured distance, posture, intent.

then he exhaled, and in one smooth motion he unwound his scarf, his favorite scarf, the dark green cashmere one alfred bought him. you looked up just in time for him to loop it around your neck. it swallowed your collarbone, your shoulders, half your face. you blinked at him, startled, already forgetting the glitter jars existed. “oh.. but… this is your scarf,” you said, muffled behind fabric.

“it’s cold,” he said simply. “and you’re incapable of dressing yourself appropriately for winter.”

he did not mention the boys. he did not acknowledge the way they looked away instantly, suddenly very interested in a nearby churro stand. he just tugged the ends of the scarf tight, adjusting it so it framed your jaw the way he liked. “you’re so cute!” you said, beaming, patting his cheek with a glove that had sequins glued onto it in a pattern that made absolutely no sense.

he closed his eyes, breathed in patience, and opened them. “we’re going home.”

“nooo,” you whined immediately. “i’m not done seeing things.”

“you have been ‘seeing things’ for two hours.”

you crossed your arms, pouting so dramatically a small child walking by mimicked it. damian watched this happen from the corner of his eye and genuinely considered the possibility that god was punishing him for past sins. “i’m not cold.” you said stubbornly.

“you were shivering.”

“i’m fine.”

“your lips are turning blue.”

“blue is festive.”

damian stared at you for several seconds, long enough that you began to sway a little under the weight of his silence. then he sighed, one of those deep, despairing sighs that felt like he was exhaling his whole soul. “please,” he said, voice barely above a murmur. “let’s go home.”

you paused. not because you understood, not because you perceived the emotional vulnerability behind the word please, but because your ears caught something else. “home?” you repeated, eyes lighting up. “can we make hot chocolate?”

“yes.”

“with the marshmallows?”

“yes.”

“AND whipped cream?”

“yes.”

you clapped your hands, delighted. “okay! we can go home!”

damian exhaled in relief so palpable the vendor at the next stall looked over, concerned. he took your hand, firmly, because you tended to wander, and began guiding you through the crowd. you were a lot. exhausting. irritating. distractible in a way that defied physics. but as you swung your joined hands happily, humming off-key, damian found — to his own horror — that he didn’t mind.

the manor came into view like a dark, brooding castle against the snowfall. you gasped again, you always gasped, as if you hadn’t seen it a hundred times already. “it looks like a big chocolate cake with snow frosting,” you whispered reverently.

damian closed his eyes for a full second. “it looks like a historical landmark.” he corrected, pulling you toward the door before you licked the railing “just to see if it tastes cold.”

inside, warmth hit you instantly, along with the low murmur of multiple voices. the wayne family was gathered like some kind of chaotic holiday constellation. dick was the first to spot you. “HEY! sparkles!” he beamed, using the nickname he’d given you on day one. he swooped in for a hug and you squealed, throwing your arms around him. damian’s eye twitched.

“you’re freezing,” dick said, rubbing your arms. “why didn’t demon spawn give you his jacket?”

“i gave her my scarf.” damian said, clipped, already regretting coming home at all.

“awww,” dick grinned, “look at you being thoughtful.”

damian turned away before anyone saw the betrayal of warmth on his face. steph popped up next, nearly knocking you over. “BABE, oh my god, your outfit. you’re like a peppermint bimbo dream.”

you gasped. “do you think i look like a candy cane?”

“yes,” she said solemnly. “but in a sexy way.”

damian muttered something that sounded like a vow of vengeance. jason leaned against a pillar, arms crossed, wearing that insufferable half-smirk. “barbie’s home.”

you waved enthusiastically. “hi jay!!”

he winked. damian glared so viciously jason only grinned harder. bruce looked up from a conversation with alfred, hands tucked behind his back. “welcome home,” he said, in that quiet, unreadable bruce-wayne-trying-to-be-approachable voice. he always sounded slightly startled when he spoke to you, like he hadn’t adjusted to your presence yet.

and then: alfred. alfred, who you adored. alfred, who adored you right back. you sprinted toward him like a toddler and he caught you with the reflexes of someone who’d been catching vigilantes his whole life. “miss,” he greeted warmly. “i see you’ve survived another outing with master damian.”

“barely,” you sighed dramatically. “he won’t let me buy important things.”

alfred raised a brow. “important things such as…?”

you lowered your voice. “a spoon.”

“i see.”

tim, on the other hand, lingered near the stairs. he nodded politely, said a quiet “hey,” and retreated upward with a mug of coffee. he didn’t dislike you. he was just… overwhelmed by you. which was fair. you overwhelmed most people, including yourself sometimes.

the rest of the family, though, stayed gathered in the living room, one of those rare nights where the manor felt less like a museum and more like… a home. the tree lights glowed warm gold, the fireplace crackled, and someone (probably dick) had put on a playlist of aggressively cheerful holiday music that clashed horribly with gotham’s usual mood.

you plopped down on the rug with zero grace, legs out, nearly knocking over a stack of presents. “careful.” jason said sharply from the armchair, leaning forward as if ready to catch whatever catastrophe you might accidentally summon.

“i am careful,” you insisted, immediately proving yourself a liar by elbowing a decorative nutcracker so hard its jaw snapped shut with a click.

damian lowered himself onto the sofa with the expression of someone bracing for incoming shrapnel. “try not to break anything else.”

“i didn’t break anything!” you said, horrified. “it just closed its mouth. maybe it’s shy.”

jason snorted. “yeah, that’s what it is. the nutcracker is shy.”

“don’t tease her.” dick scolded lightly, tossing a pillow at jason.

“i just think he closed it on purpose. maybe he’s, like, alive.”

bruce, who had been reading the newspaper and trying very hard to pretend his home wasn’t a sitcom, slowly lowered the pages. “the nutcracker,” he said evenly, “is not alive.”

“we don’t know that.” you whispered.

alfred passed through with a tray of hot cocoa, perfectly timed as always. “refreshments,” he announced. “and master richard, perhaps turning the music down two notches might save my hearing.”

“yes sir,” dick said, already adjusting the speaker. then he plopped down beside you on the rug, handing you a mug. “careful, sparkles. it’s hot.”

“that’s okay,” you chirped. “hot chocolate tastes better when it’s hot.”

jason choked on his drink. steph buried her face into a pillow to muffle her laughter. bruce closed his eyes like he was in pain. damian pinched the bridge of his nose. alfred, however, smiled with the serenity of a man who had survived decades of wayne-family chaos. “very astute observation.” he told you kindly, handing you a marshmallow like it was a medal of honor.

conversation resumed, steph teasing jason about his inability to drink like a normal person, jason threatening to “accidentally” drop a gingerbread house on her head, dick explaining some bizarre titans holiday tradition no one asked about, and bruce pretending the sports section of the newspaper was suddenly a riveting masterpiece of literature. you sat on the rug beside the couch with damian on the couch behind you, his arms crossed, expression unimpressed by everything except maybe you, though he would rather perish than admit it.

for a while, you stayed where you were, humming absently, nodding along to dick’s animated retelling of “the time starfire tried to cook a turkey using only solar energy.” but then you noticed it. damian. on the couch. without you. your lower lip jutted out immediately, a soft pout forming like a storm cloud gathering over a cartoon sun. you twisted around, peeking up at him. he didn’t look back—didn’t even pretend to notice your growing distress. he just sipped his tea like this wasn’t the emotional betrayal of the century. so you rose to your feet, brushing off imaginary dust like you were preparing for something noble.

you stepped behind the couch. damian didn’t turn. maybe he didn’t think you’d actually do it. but you did. you leaned down, looped your arms around the back of his neck, and draped yourself over him like he was the most comfortable office chair in existence. your cheek pressed to the top of his head. his hair was very soft. you made a content sound—something between a hum and a sigh, happy and unapologetically attached.

conversation stopped just for a second. just long enough for everyone to register the image of gotham’s most glaringly intense son sitting rigid and red-tipped and tragically resigned while his hyperactive, glitter-brained girlfriend clung to him. “aww,” dick said. loudly. too loudly. “she loves you.”

damian glared at him so hard dick should’ve combusted. “i was sitting alone,” you murmured into damian’s hair, like it was a tragic confession. “and you were up here. and i didn’t wanna be down there. without you.”

steph silently mouthed koala to jason, who nodded like this explained everything.

damian huffed, annoyed, increasingly embarrassed. “you are incapable of functioning without proximity, it seems.”

“that’s not true,” you said, tightening your arms around him. “i just like you.”

jason muttered, “simp.” behind his mug.

damian’s head snapped up, eyes murderous. “what was that?”

“i said ‘sip.’ this hot chocolate? amazing.”

bruce hid a smile behind his hand.

“we’re leaving.” damian announced abruptly, standing so fast your arms slipped from around him in a startled little flutter. his ears were red. his cheeks, too.

you blinked up at him, confused. “leaving? where?”

“my room,” he said, already taking your hand, already pulling you up from the floor with a rushed, awkward gentleness, as if he was trying very hard not to look like he was trying very hard. “we are going upstairs. now.”

jason smirked. “wow. didn’t even last ten minutes.”

“quiet,” damian snapped without turning around, posture stiff, every inch of him radiating tightly wound embarrassment. “both of you.”

dick waved cheerfully. “have fun, you two!”

steph added, “don’t do anything i wouldn’t do!”

“that leaves very little.” jason murmured.

you didn’t catch most of it, you were too busy trotting after damian, your smaller steps hurrying to keep up with his fast, purposeful stride. his grip on your hand was firm, determined, like if he let go for even a second the universe would see its chance and steal you. the manor’s main staircase curved upward in a grand sweep, damian practically marched up them, trying to retain some dignity, but his composure cracked every time he heard muffled laughter drifting from the living room.

you tried to keep close—closer than close—your free hand finding the back of his sweater as if you needed the extra anchor. he glanced over his shoulder, huffed, and tugged you along faster. “they’re so mean to you.” you whispered sympathetically.

“they’re insufferable,” damian corrected, though his voice wavered with residual fluster. “and your commentary is not helping.”

“i thought it was.”

“it wasn’t.”

you reached the landing. damian inhaled deeply, the kind of breath someone takes when they’re trying to reset their dignity. he released your hand, just to straighten his sweater, and immediately you reached for him again on instinct. he caught your wrist mid-grab. “wait.”

you froze. “wait?”

“stay here,” he ordered, pointing to a specific spot on the landing as if you were prone to drifting into the walls. “i’m going back down.”

you took half a step to follow him. he gently pressed a palm to your shoulder to keep you still. “no. stay.”

“but—”

“i am getting more hot chocolate,” he said, like you were a skittish deer and he knew any sudden movement would send you spiraling. “you don’t need to follow me everywhere.”

you blinked. “…but i like following you.”

“yes, I know,” he muttered, eyes briefly squeezing shut. “i am… acutely aware.” you leaned forward again. he immediately held up a hand. “stay.”

you pouted. “but—”

“i will return in less than two minutes.” his tone took on that strict, no-argument cadence that only partially worked on you. “you will be fine. stand here. do not go downstairs. do not wander. do not attempt to hug me while i’m on the steps.”

“but you’re warm.”

he inhaled sharply through his nose. “i will be warm upstairs,” he said tightly.

“will you be long?”

“no.”

“…are you sure?”

“yes.”

“…but what if you—”

he placed both hands on your shoulders. “if you follow me, todd will never let me hear the end of it.”

you gasped softly like he’d revealed a national secret. “oh. okay.” you nodded, suddenly solemn. “i’ll stay.”

damian exhaled, relieved. “good.”

he released you, took one cautious step down the stairs, then glanced back again just to make sure you were still in place. you were. standing exactly where he told you to. swaying slightly, humming, waiting.

for about… twelve seconds.

that was the absolute maximum amount of time your brain could focus on standing still before it started whispering intrusive thoughts like i wonder if my phone is downstairs, and maybe alfred made cookies, and i want to hug damian again.

you looked around. nothing to do. nowhere to sit. no sparkly things to stare at. you fidgeted. tapped your fingers together. shifted your weight from one foot to the other like a restless cartoon rabbit. then it hit you like a tragic revelation: your phone. you had left your phone.

damian said to stay. yes, but he also said two minutes. and it had probably been two minutes. or close. or approaching the general vicinity of two minutes.

so you took a quiet step down. then another. just enough to peek around the railing, scanning for the pink sparkle phone case you left —- and you froze. damian’s voice drifted up toward you, low and sharp in that way he only sounded when he was frustrated and trying not to be. “—exhausted,” you make out. “she drags me all over the city, asks the most ridiculous questions, wanders off every five seconds—i swear, i spend more time chasing after her than actually speaking to her.”

you blinked. damian complained all the time—he got grumpy, he lectured, he huffed and sighed and called everyone inept—but hearing it like this, when he thought you couldn’t hear him… it stung.

then jason’s voice cut in, louder, rougher, crueler in that careless way he didn’t always mean but absolutely could be. “please. you knew what you were signing up for. shes dumb as a bag of glitter and even clingier.” a snort. “she’s probably losing her mind right now being, what, sixty seconds away from you?”

your stomach dropped. like the floor disappeared under your feet for a second, leaving you suspended in the shock of it. you backed up—one careful, trembling step—then another, until the voices blurred into an indistinct hum beneath you. they kept talking, but it all blended together, washed out, meaningless, like your brain had hit some emergency switch that dimmed the world to static.

your hands lifted slowly. you stared at them. glittery nail polish, tiny rhinestones you’d spent an hour arranging, a smudge of hot chocolate on your thumb. they looked… wrong suddenly. too bright. too silly. like something made for a different kind of girl, one who knew where she fit, one who wasn’t just taking up space she didn’t deserve.

clingy.

dumb as a bag of glitter.

exhausted.

the words looped, sharp and quiet and far too convincing. you curled your fingers in, palms trembling. for a heartbeat, you actually felt monstrous. like some overly loud, overly bright creature someone had accidentally let into a place built for competent people. did they ever want you here?

you tried to breathe, but your chest tightened instead, squeezing the air you needed. you took another step back, spine brushing the wall, grounding and suffocating at the same time. your own boyfriend had to leave the room just to vent about you. that part hurt the worst.

it made something in your stomach twist. damian always looked tired after spending time with you—had you been misreading everything? all the little moments, all the soft touches, the tiny smiles he pretended weren’t real?

maybe he was just putting up with you.

you squeezed your eyes shut. the staircase felt too narrow now. the ceiling too low. the air too thick. you felt cornered and foolish and painfully aware of every inch of space you took up. they were all downstairs being… normal. competent. sharp-witted. capable. they fit each other.

you didn’t fit anything.

you pressed a hand to your chest and tried not to imagine what else they might’ve said once you stopped listening, but imagination didn’t need permission. it filled in the silence fast—too fast—spilling over with every insecure thought you’d ever tried to ignore.

you talk too much.

you never shut up.

you make him tired.

you’re only good for your looks.

you’re embarrassing.

you’re not smart enough to belong here.

you don’t know when to stop.

you make everything harder.

you make him miserable.

you knew you weren’t smart, not in the way they were. not in the strategic, clever way that made the whole family feel like a universe made of constellations you couldn’t read. you knew your thoughts came out tangled, loud, too bright. you knew you got excited about things no one else cared about. you knew you filled space you didn’t mean to fill. you weren’t stupid. you just… weren’t them, and suddenly that difference felt like a crack running through your whole body.

your chest tightened again, frustration building hot and prickling behind your eyes. you hated that you were upset. hated that you cared. hated that you were fighting three different internal battles when, moments ago, you’d been fine—happy, even. you didn’t want to cry. not here. not over this. not when crying would only prove you were exactly what they thought—overreactive, fragile, childish.

that’s when damian came back up the stairs. the first thing you saw was the tension in his shoulders, jaw tight, knuckles red like he’d scraped them on something. his eyes snapped to you, scanning your face like he needed to make sure you were still in one piece. “let’s go.” he said, hand flexing once before he reached for you. you pulled away.

damian froze.

you’d never pulled away from him. not once. not even when he was irritated, or short, or lecturing you about “awareness” and “basic survival instincts.” you were a limpet by nature—sticky, clingy, gravitational, so the tiny step you took back immediately raised his suspicion.

his brows pulled together. “what are you doing?” he asked quietly, like the words were foreign in his mouth.

you swallowed, forcing your face into something bright. something harmless. “i think i’m just—uh—gonna go,” you replied, voice wobbling in a way you desperately hoped he didn’t notice.

“go where?”

you gestured vaguely with both hands. “away. you know. like… elsewhere. in the world.”

damian stared at you like you were speaking a language he knew but couldn’t translate. “what are you talking about?”

“anyway!” you said, nodding too fast. “phone. downstairs.” you sidestepped him before he could reach for you again, before he noticed how your eyes were glassy or how your smile didn’t reach anywhere near your eyes. your footsteps were too light, like you were afraid the floor would creak loud enough to force him to follow.

the living room felt too bright when you crossed it. everyone looked up. your phone sat exactly where you left it. you grabbed it without slowing, no one said anything. jason wasn’t there anymore. you didn’t look at damian’s family. didn’t smile. didn’t trip into a conversation you didn’t belong in. for once, you were silent.

then you walked straight to the front door and stepped out before anyone could ask where you were going or why your hands were shaking so badly. the door shut behind you with a soft click. for the first time since you’d met damian wayne—you left without waiting for him to follow.

THAT WAS THREE WEEKS AGO.

three weeks of quiet, of measured distances, of self-imposed walls that hadn’t existed before. you had pulled back from damian, massively, and the change wasn’t subtle. the way you used to lean on him, hang from his arm, brush against him with every opportunity, had dwindled to nothing more than casual proximity, a few polite touches that didn’t linger. the energy you used to spill in torrents, in bubbles of laughter, tangles of words, and endless questions, was now trapped somewhere in your head, swirling in loops of overthinking and guilt.

you tried to talk less. you weren’t… cold, exactly. not frozen. just cautious, careful, distant. it was easier this way, you told yourself. easier to manage the way your chest would tighten whenever he looked at you too long, the way your stomach twisted when you remembered the words that had come out of jason and damian’s mouth, the way the heat of embarrassment and self-consciousness would settle into your bones.

your energy had shifted, rerouted. the bursts of color, the endless chatter, the way you used to loop damian into every tiny moment of your day, gone. replaced with shopping trips, coffee with friends, scrolling endlessly through things that sparkled or made your brain go soft and bubbly. you stopped including him. little things, first: a funny text that once would have gone to him, now sent to a friend instead. small selfies, small stories, small jokes. everything you had once handed him first now filtered through other people, other spaces, other worlds where the intensity wasn’t suffocating, wasn’t steeped in the weight of knowing him too well.

you loved him. absolutely. you didn’t stop loving him, you just thought you needed to be less. less clingy, less loud, less hyper, less distracting. damian had never asked you to shrink yourself, had never told you to dim, and maybe that was what made this worse: you assumed he preferred it. you assumed that by stepping back, by quieting yourself, you were giving him the room he needed, that the less obvious, less vibrant you was somehow easier for him to manage.

and yes, you missed him. some mornings you reached for your phone to tell him a dumb thing, and then stopped, realizing you were… stopping yourself. he hadn’t reached out. not to notice the change, not to prod, not to tease you back into yourself. he noticed, of course he did. the weight of your absence pressed in on him in subtle ways, the way he scanned a room and didn’t see your usual bright energy where he expected it, the way he thought of you mid-task and almost smiled before realizing you weren’t part of it anymore.

he brushed it off. called it temporary, a mood, a phase, maybe even a test, something he didn’t need to fuss over, but his chest tightened anyway. his thoughts lingered where you used to be. the absence of your voice, your laugh, the way you dragged him into ridiculous distractions—it left a hollow spot, and for the first time, he couldn’t just fix it by putting you in arm’s reach or side-eyeing the world into submission.

it had been three days since you’d last spoken. three days. three whole mornings, afternoons, and nights without damian. three weeks ago, this would’ve felt unbearable, but now you let it exist.

your phone buzzed. damian. the name made your chest twitch in ways you’d fought to ignore for days. you stared at the screen, fingers hovering, trying to gauge if this was courage or a trap. you finally swiped. “hello,” you greeted, voice careful, neutral. no enthusiastic hi, no giddy ‘i missed you’ that would’ve given him too much.

there was a pause. long enough that you could hear him breathing through the line, waiting for something—maybe the enthusiasm he always got from you, the little giddy inflections. you didn’t give them. “there is a gala tonight.” he said finally. “you will accompany me.”

you blinked, caught off guard. gala. fancy. sparkly. the very thought made your chest flutter before your brain scrambled to caution: he’s probably going to hate how much i distract him, everyone will stare, i’ll trip or say something dumb.

“probably… not.” you decline, voice small, careful, almost mumbling. the words sounded foreign even to you.

“excuse me?”

“i said… probably not.”

silence. you could almost hear him processing. “i was under the impression—” he started, measured, but there was an edge. “—that this would have been agreeable.”

you swallowed. you hated that your chest felt tight. “i just… maybe next time,” you said, hoping it sounded casual even though your stomach sank.

“you love these events,” he said, almost accusing. “what is the matter?”

you fumbled, scrambling for something—anything—sensible. “i think .. the cat might be mad at me?”

“that is… hardly a valid reason to refuse a gala. do you have another?”

you chewed your lip, wringing your hands together, flustered. “well… um… i… my… my shoes, they… they might be too sparkly. it could blind people.”

another pause. he was quiet for a moment, and you imagined the pinched line of his mouth, the narrowed eyes. “you are speaking nonsense,” he said finally. “yet i can hear—” he hesitated. “something. you are hiding something. tell me.”

you swallowed, wishing—like, really wishing—you were smart enough to conjure a reason that sounded real, that would satisfy him, that wouldn’t make you sound like a complete disaster. but your brain was doing that thing it always did: looping through sparkly shoes, cats, and ice cream flavors, none of which helped. “uh… okay, bye!” you blurted, voice a little too cheerful, and clicked the end call before he could ask anything else.

phew. you totally nailed that.

you flopped onto your couch, fuzzy pajamas tangling around your legs, grabbed the nearest pint of cookie dough ice cream, and dug in. you flipped through streaming apps with the emotional depth of a goldfish, settling on the first movie poster that had pretty colors. something with singing. something where no one looked like they were judging you from across a mansion living room.

the opening song started and you tucked yourself deeper into your couch cocoon, blanket shaped like a giant strawberry wrapped around your shoulders. ice cream: half-gone. brain: mercifully vacant. you weren’t wallowing—you refused to wallow—because wallowing required staying on one thought for longer than eleven seconds, and you simply weren’t built for that. you tried once, earlier, to reflect on the past few weeks, but halfway through thinking “maybe i am too much,” you saw a commercial for sparkly lip gloss and forgot what sadness was entirely.

so you watched your movie. you giggled when the prince tripped over the scenery, gasped dramatically at every plot twist even though it was a kids’ film, and kicked your feet when the heroine got her magical dress. for a while, it was easy to pretend the world was simple and that your heart wasn’t bruised in places you didn’t know how to fix. and then—

“you didn’t answer my texts.”

you screamed. not like a cute scream. like a full-body, weaponized shriek. your spoon flew upward, brandished like a dagger, cookie dough chunk poised for battle. “WHO—OH MY GOD—DAMIAN? WHY ARE YOU—THAT—YOU CAN’T JUST—TELEPORT!”

he did not look amused. or apologetic. or impressed by your ice-cream-based defense strategy. “i used the spare key,” he corrected, pinching the bridge of his nose. “and you clearly need instruction in self-defense. that was pathetic.”

you were still holding the spoon like it was a sword. “i—i could’ve blinded you.”

“with dessert?”

“it has chunks.”

he stared at you, long and defeated, and only then—only after your heart slowed and your lungs remembered their job—did you realize he was here. in your apartment. beside your couch. shoulders tense, breath steady in that controlled way he used when something was wrong. something he wasn’t willing to ignore anymore.

you froze. frozen like a marshmallow left out in the snow, like a popsicle that somehow knew it had to impress a god and didn’t stand a chance. normally you would’ve launched yourself at him—arms first, lips trailing kisses, a flurry of glittering enthusiasm that left him winded just from being near you. normally, you would’ve clung. right now, you were… decidedly not normal.

damian’s eyes narrowed. “well?” he prompted, voice flat but heavy with expectation, the kind of expectation that made you suddenly hyper-aware of every corner of your apartment. normally, this tone would’ve made your heart skip in excitement. now it made it do a weird little hiccup of anxiety.

“uh,” you mumbled. “i just thought maybe… maybe galas are, like… too fancy?” you added lamely, as if words themselves could distract from the gaping void of uncertainty settling in your chest.

“too fancy? for you?” his shoulders stiffened as if the very suggestion was a personal affront. usually he would have let you flail a little, let you stumble through a hundred excuses. now… his chest tightened, frustration bleeding into something heavier. you stumbled back a half-step, then another, blanket bunching under your hands, your stomach doing that weird tumble-your-insides thing that always showed up when damian looked at you like this. tall. looming. imposing. “enough,” he snapped, and it was tight, like he’d been holding it in so long that the words barely cleared his throat before they landed hard. “you won’t even let me touch you. what is the matter?”

you froze mid-step. your mind spun. normally, you would’ve fallen into his chest without thinking, melting into the warmth of his hands and the press of his body. now… now your instincts screamed no, and the resulting flush of guilt and embarrassment made your chest feel too tight. damian’s brow furrowed, and then the corners of his lips tugged down in that small pout that made him look younger and frustrated all at once. “do you understand,” he murmured, stepping closer, his presence filling every inch of the space around you, “how… difficult it is to… not feel you next to me?”

his chest rose and fell faster, not from exertion, but from the absence of contact, the starvation of closeness he’d been used to every time you had been your usual clingy, adorable self. the pout deepened as if the lack of your touch was physically weighing on him. he stepped closer again, unsure if you would flee or collapse into him. “i—” you started, voice trembling, then stopped. all your words felt stupid, worthless, inadequate. your brain short-circuited under the weight of his eyes and the sheer want radiating from him, and you pressed your lips together, biting the inside of your cheek, retreating another half-step despite every rational part of you screaming to just lean in.

you swallowed, words tripping out of you before you could stop them. “i just… don’t want to exhaust you. i don’t want to—” your voice faltered, a squeak barely audible, “—make things harder.”

damian froze mid-step, a slow inhale pulling the air into him as if he’d been holding it without realizing. his eyes widened slightly—not with anger, but with something more jagged: shock, confusion, and a flicker of… hurt. “what did you hear?” he asked, careful.

“i heard. what you said to jason. and… and what he said.”

the silence that followed was almost unbearable. the pout faded, replaced by a rigid line of restraint. you could feel it—the weight of all the emotion he’d been bottling for weeks. damian’s breath left him in a controlled exhale, the kind he used when he was forcing himself not to retreat behind pride or irritation. he lifted his chin a fraction, meeting your eyes head‑on, refusing to let you look away. “i won’t pretend i didn’t say those things,” he began. “i did. you do overwhelm me sometimes. you move fast, you talk fast, you feel fast—things i was not raised to understand.”

his hands flexed once, then stilled at his sides. “but that does not mean i don’t want you near me. it does not mean i’m… tired of you.” his jaw clenched for a moment before he forced it to ease. “i was frustrated. not with you— with myself. with not knowing how to keep up.” he took a step closer, the way he approached a frightened animal he didn’t want to spook. “but listen to me very clearly. i will never let anyone speak poorly of you.” another breath. “and when todd opened his mouth,” he continued, forming his words with visible disgust. “i struck him. immediately.”

your eyes widened, and he caught the flicker of shock before you could mask it. “i will not allow anyone—friend, brother, stranger—to demean you. even when i am frustrated. even when i am overwhelmed. especially then. you are…” he hesitated, searching for the correct word, something true. “you are too important.”

your mouth opened, closed, then opened again, nothing elegant, nothing clever, just a stunned scramble of breath. the words too important echoed through you like someone had rung a bell inside your ribs. warmth spread through your chest, an almost dizzy relief, ridiculous and overwhelming in the best possible way. “you… punched jason,” you said finally, voice disbelieving. “for me.”

damian’s expression barely shifted, but something in his eyes flickered—pride, irritation, stubborn protectiveness. “he deserved worse.” he mumbled.

you almost giggled. it was stupid, but the image of damian decking jason because of you made something in your stomach flip. of course damian would do that. of course he would. and yet knowing he actually had—that he hadn’t just stood there letting it happen—felt like someone had lifted a weight you didn’t know you’d been carrying. you swallowed, voice wobbling as your thoughts spilled out. “but… am i not embarrassing? i mean—maybe this is better, right? i thought giving you space would help. that you’d… appreciate it.” you fiddled with your sleeve. “i thought maybe you’d finally get a break from me.”

the sound damian made was halfway between a scoff and an incredulous breath. “a break,” he repeated, as if the word personally offended him.

“i just thought—”

“no,” he cut in. “if i wanted space, i would tell you. i never asked for this.”

you blinked at him, startled by how quickly he closed the gap between you—two steps, maybe three, but enough that you had to tilt your chin up, enough that you felt the heat of him, the intensity he never tried to soften. “you think this is better?” he asked, voice tight. “you think this—this distance—is something i want?”

your breath caught. he shook his head once, the movement irritated. his eyes met yours, almost pleading. “it’s maddening.”

“you don’t exhaust me,” he continued. “you… unsettle me. in ways i am still learning to navigate. but i do not want you far from me.” his voice softened, but only barely. “i need you close. this distance,” he added, gaze flicking down to your hands before snapping back to your face, “is the only thing that has exhausted me.”

the relief hit first. then the warmth. then the stupid, overwhelming, giddy joy that flooded through you so fast it made your knees weak. then you were moving. “oh my god—damiiiii,” you squeaked, and whatever distance had been between you shattered as you launched yourself forward, practically colliding with his chest. his hands flew up on instinct, catching you like he always did, prepared even when you weren’t.

you wrapped your arms around his neck, squeezing him so tight he let out a soft, startled grunt. “you need me close?” you beamed, already peppering his jaw with quick, excited kisses. “oh my god, i was dying—i missed you so much—you should’ve just said something, damian, i thought you hated me—and i wanted to go to the gala so bad—”

“beloved—” he tried, but you were already cupping his face, kissing him again, soft then messy then eager, like you were making up for every second you’d held back. his hands settled on your waist, grounding but firm, like he was afraid you’d vanish again. you felt him breathe out slowly against your mouth, tension draining inch by inch. “wait—” damian tried again, voice catching somewhere between stern and breathless, but you were already kissing him for the fourth—fifth?—sixth time, you’d lost count, your hands on his cheeks, then his jaw, then his collar, like you were trying to make up for three weeks of starvation all at once.

“i need—listen—”

another kiss.

“i’m trying to—”

another, this one landing on the corner of his mouth because you mis-aimed from excitement. “you are impossible—”

you kissed the complaint right off his lips.

he exhaled hard against your mouth, a shaky sound that betrayed how much he’d missed this. “i got you something,” he finally managed, pushing the words out between soft, stolen breaths.

you froze—dramatically, predictably—eyes wide, lips still brushing his because you had absolutely no spatial awareness when excited. “you didn’t,” you gasped.

he gave you a look that was half fond, half exasperated. “i did.”

you almost shrieked, clutching his shoulders. “what is it? oh my god—damian, did you—did you get me the spoon??”

he blinked. “no. not the spoon. i knew you wanted to go to the gala,” he murmured when you finally pulled back for air—only because you had to, not because you wanted to. his voice was that low, almost-raspy softness he only ever used with you. “i know you.”

you were grinning so hard it was embarrassing. “you do?” you asked, glowing, practically bouncing in his arms.

he huffed—fond, resigned, completely undone—in the way only someone hopelessly in love could sound. “yes,” he said simply. “which is why i bought you a new gown.”

you gasped like he’d just offered you oxygen after drowning. “AWWW.”

“do not yell,” he muttered, though his lips twitched like he was fighting a smile.

“damian wayne,” you clutched his shoulders, scandalized and delighted and unhinged. “you bought me a gown and you didn’t even tell me??”

“i attempted to.” he gave you a look. “you hung up on me.”

you took forever to get ready.

not ‘a little long,’ not ‘fashionably delayed’—no. this was a questline. a saga. a biblical-length journey of outfit changes, makeup crises, and one thirty-second meltdown where you thought your eyeliner betrayed you (it did not).

damian waited.

or rather: he stood behind you with his arms crossed, pacing once, sighing twice, and then finally submitting to holding your hair clips for you. but when you stepped out—sparkling, glowing, wearing the dress he bought you—his entire posture changed. his breath literally hitched.

and at the gala? he didn’t let you out of arm’s reach once. every time someone’s eyes lingered too long, damian’s hand slid to your waist. the kind of possessive that said: look all you want, she’s going home with me. he guided you through the crowd. kissed your temple once when you made him laugh, glared at at least six people for daring to compliment you, absolutely threatened one guy with eye contact alone.

you thrived. you sparkled. for the first time in weeks, you felt entirely, stupidly, loudly like yourself again.

when the night wound down, you walked out with your heels dangling from your fingers, damian’s jacket around your shoulders, his hand loosely holding yours like he still wasn’t convinced you wouldn’t disappear. “where are we going?” you asked, swinging your joined hands dramatically.

“a detour,” he said simply.

the detour was the winter market.

the spoon—your ridiculous, rhinestone-encrusted, princess-coded spoon—was in a display window. damian walked inside without a word, bought it, and handed it to you.

you stared at it, serious as death. “damian,” you whispered. “i will treasure this spoon more than i will treasure any of our hypothetical future children.”

“that is—”

he paused.

“…deeply concerning.”

you nodded solemnly. “they’ll understand.”

he pinched the bridge of his nose. you hugged the spoon. somewhere in the back of your head, one final thought sparked:

when i see jason, i’m gonna… i’m gonna… unplug his phone charger. so he wakes up with like… 4%.

a terrifying threat.

damian exhaled, half-laughing, half in love, tugging you against him, “please never change.”

A/N: HAIII thank you for the love girl u already know i was on this shit the second i got this request ive been obsessed with the idea of bimbo!reader for some reason lately 😭💕💕 i hope this was okayyy

STARTED 11.25.2025. POSTED 11.25.2025.

  ⸝⸝  masterlist  .ᐟ  𝜗𝜚

©️ latedeparture

WAYNE MEDICAL WING LIGHTS WERE TOO BRIGHT for someone who’d just stopped being technically unconscious, but damian surfaced like someone annoyed at being dragged from a nap he didn’t consent to, an insult so personal his eyelids twitched before they even opened. the brightness pressed through his skull like it was trying to etch itself directly into his brain. sterile white, the kind that had never once existed in a place he trusted. he cracked his eyes open anyway.

bad choice.

the ceiling came into focus in pieces: harsh tiles, vents humming cold air downward, a hairline crack near the corner he’d catalogued months ago during someone else’s medical emergency. except this time it wasn’t someone else lying flat on their back in a bed built for recovery and compliance. it was him. which meant something had already gone terribly wrong.

the sheets were tucked too tightly, pinning him with all the subtlety of a net trap. the IV line tugged whenever he moved his fingers. his throat tasted dry, surgical dryness, not dehydration, and every breath carried that over-sterile antiseptic scent that hospitals diffused like perfume. it stung in a way memory recognized before consciousness did.

he hated it. he hated it viscerally, instinctively, the way you hate an enemy you’ve fought before.

a chair creaked. dick. of course. no one else sat that way, half-slouched, half-alert, like a golden retriever trying to look responsible. “hey, baby bat,” dick welcomed softly, which was exactly the wrong volume. “back with us?”

damian squinted at him as if being spoken to was rude. his voice, when it came, sounded like someone had replaced his mouth with cement. “why,” he croaked, blinking slowly, “are you here.”

“you had surgery.”

damian paused like the word needed to be decoded. then his eyebrows knit together, slow, offended, gradually outraged. “i didn’t agree to that.”

dick huffed a tired laugh. “yeah, well… it was kind of an emergency. and you were unconscious. and also? you literally signed the consent form before the anesthesia.”

damian stared at him, long and unimpressed. “forged.”

“it wasn’t forged.”

“i do not sign things.”

“you sign things all the time.”

damian shut his eyes briefly, like acknowledging that was beneath him. then he opened them again, narrower, sharper, but the effect was ruined by how unfocused the pupils were, drifting like his thoughts kept hitting walls before reaching their destination. the air was too clean. the lights too white. the smell coiled into his chest and pulled memories he’d rather leave buried, metal tools, cold hands, the way the world looked when he was small and helpless and expected to endure instead of resist. nothing specific, just impressions. sensations. hospitals always woke old ghosts.

his jaw tightened. he wasn’t supposed to be the one in this bed. he didn’t get hurt. not enough to be downed like this. the last patrol replayed in flashes — a blade catching him off-balance, the impact hot, surprising. he remembered the pain, but not falling. not blacking out. that made his stomach twist.

failure. vulnerability. unacceptable.

dick watched him with that older-brother sensitivity that always made damian bristle, like being perceived was an attack. “before you say anything,” dick added, “you did not lose the fight. you didn’t mess up. you got blindsided by a meta with a strength boost and you still managed to take him down. you just… didn’t stay upright afterward.”

damian glared. “i don’t recall being horizontal.”

“because you passed out.”

another glare. this one personal. dick raised his hands. “don’t look at me like that. i didn’t make you lose consciousness.”

damian’s fingers twitched against the sheets. the fabric felt wrong, stiff, overwashed, hospital-issue. the kind meant for patients who stayed still. he hated being still. he shifted slightly, and something tugged sharply at the back of his hand. his gaze snapped downward.

an IV. taped in place. tubing snaked up to a bag overhead, dripping fluid into his bloodstream without permission. his entire expression went cold. “remove it.”

dick inhaled sharply. “damian—”

“remove it.”

“don’t— okay, don’t—” dick took two hurried steps forward as damian’s fingers curled around the line. “don’t you dare pull that out. i mean it. don’t.”

“i am not a lab specimen.”

“you’re not,” dick agreed. “you’re someone who needs fluids and pain meds because you were— what’s the word— oh yeah— stabbed.”

“it was minor.”

“it was internal.”

damian blinked at him, insulted. “i don’t want it.”

“too bad.”

there was tension in damian’s shoulders. that hyper-focused alertness from childhood, when beds were places you recovered because you weren’t allowed to move, not because someone cared. his muscles remembered even when he didn’t think about it. his back never fully pressed to the mattress, his hands never fully relaxed. his breath always came measured, as if steadying itself for violence. the medical wing amplified that tension. the smell. the lights. the machines. everything too reminiscent of control.

he’d been so busy cataloguing exits and shadows and the exact height of the IV stand that he hadn’t even noticed how his own body felt until—

oh.

there it was.

the meds hit him. that soft, warm fog rolling in, blurring everything he tried to focus on. his thoughts glitched, trying to line up in formation and instead tripping over themselves. “grayson,” he said, voice suspicious, “did you put something in my blood?”

dick, who’d been leaning on the side of the bed like a worried parent pretending not to be one, blinked back. “uh—no, bud. you were asleep during the operation, remember? anesthesia? pain meds?”

damian stared at him like dick had just recited a riddle in an unfamiliar dialect. “i was… asleep,” damian repeated. “you let them do that.”

“you needed them to do that.” dick corrected.

damian’s eyes narrowed, though the effect was ruined by how glazed they looked. “i do not need unconsciousness to survive.”

“you do when your insides are trying to become your outsides.” dick muttered.

damian ignored him entirely, still watching him with a narrowing-bandwidth intensity. “you allowed it.”

“you signed the form.”

“forged,” damian said, again, instantly, with the complete confidence of someone who barely remembered what a pen was. “i would not voluntarily be medically compromised.”

“it wasn’t forged,” dick sighed. “you filled it out. you even wrote your full name at the bottom—very neatly, might i add.”

damian frowned like he was conspiring against him. he opened his mouth to deny it… but then a wave of dizziness rolled through him, like someone had tipped the room on its axis. he went still. his eyes went a little wide. “i feel… peculiar.”

“that’s the painkillers.”

“i dislike them.”

“i can tell.”

damian shifted, which was a mistake, his brain lagged behind the movement by a full second, like his consciousness had to sprint to catch up with his body. “my head is—” he paused, searching the ceiling as if the correct vocabulary word was written there. “—float-adjacent.”

“you’re high, dami.”

“i am not—” damian began, then stopped mid-denial, staring at the wall with deep betrayal. “i am.”

“yep.”

“i dislike this.”

“we’ve got that part,” dick said gently. “but you’re safe. and you’re okay. and it’s temporary.”

damian’s eyes tracked dick’s face like it was the only stable object in a shifting landscape. his brow furrowed with an almost childlike confusion. “i… don’t remember agreeing,” he murmured. “or anything. i was… focused. then pain.” he paused, blinked. “…then nothing.”

“that’s normal.”

“…where’s—”

but the name got lost on damian’s tongue.

not forgotten, more like the conveyor belt of his brain jammed halfway through delivering it. he blinked, confused, mouth still slightly open like the word might tumble out if he waited long enough. dick straightened, alert. “where’s who, bud?”

damian stared back at him, unfocused. something flickered behind his eyes, something searching, reaching. but whatever it was refused to surface. his brows knit, annoyed at his own mind for failing him. “…i don’t—” he frowned, as if the thought had slipped between his fingers. “i knew it. i know it. i just… can’t… hold it.”

dick softened. “hey. it’s okay. you’re still coming out of anesthesia.”

“i dislike that.”

“i know.”

“it makes me stupid.”

dick smiled. “you’re not stupid.”

“i am,” damian insisted, deadly serious. “my brain is… delayed. treacherous.”

“you’re just drugged, kiddo.”

damian frowned. the door opened before dick could say anything else, tim walking in first, rubbing his eyes, followed by cass. tim raised his coffee cup. “look who’s conscious.”

cass tipped her head.

damian’s eyes snapped to them—well, halfway. they snapped, stalled, then drifted into their direction like his neurons were buffering. “you are loud,” damian announced.

tim blinked. “we… didn’t say anything.”

“your face is loud.”

tim nodded solemnly. “makes sense.”

cass stepped closer, tracking damian’s micro-movements with an ease that came from years of knowing how to read bodies better than minds. damian tried—tried—to push himself up. his arm trembled. his shoulder lifted a fraction. cass reached out with one finger and pressed it lightly to his sternum. damian went down like gravity had increased selectively on his body alone. his eyes went wide. “that is unfair.”

cass offered a tiny smile. “doctor’s orders.”

“i do not listen to orders.”

“you listened to hers.” tim added dryly.

damian glared at him. or tried to. the effect was softened by the fact his eyelids kept drooping like they were too heavy. “she cheated,” damian muttered.

cass watched the way damian’s eyes refused to work with him and smiled shyly. “you’re high.”

“i am not—” damian started, then hesitated, as if realizing halfway through the lie that he didn’t have the cognitive precision to pull it off. “i am… moderately under the influence.”

“that’s one way to put it.” tim mumbled.

damian’s head tilted back toward dick like his mind was circling back to unfinished business. “i was asking.”

“about who?” dick asked.

damian stared at him again. long, slow, pondering with the full force of a malfunctioning operating system. he opened his mouth, then closed it. frustration etched across his face. “…gone,” he said finally. “i lost it.”

“it’ll come back.”

“i hate this,” damian declared. “i hate hospitals. i hate beds. i hate drugs. i hate this room. i hate—”

“oh boy,” tim breathed. “here we go.”

damian lifted one hand. studied it. flexed his fingers—delayed, clumsy. he stared like his own hand had betrayed him. “my reaction speed is compromised. this is humiliating.”

“don’t worry,” tim said cheerfully. “we’re taking mental notes.”

damian shot him a bleary glare. “i will end you.”

“in your current state?” tim asked. “you couldn’t even end a game of tic-tac-toe.”

“i could,” damian insisted, leaning forward as if to intimidate him, except his torso only made it two inches up before cass’s finger sent him right back down again. damian let out a low, affronted noise. “stop that.” he told her.

she shook her head.

damian’s eyes narrowed, then drifted, then narrowed again as if the glare needed to be reinstalled every few seconds. he sighed, long and dramatic. “i should not be in this bed.”

“you were stabbed,” dick said gently.

“everyone gets stabbed.”

“not in the liver.” tim said, absolutely delighted to be here, absolutely delighted that damian wasn’t at full power to stop him.

damian blinked. “my liver?”

“yes.”

he frowned, deeply betrayed. “i use that.”

“not today you don’t.”

damian ignored him, attention wandering again, circling back toward the hole in his memory like a bee drawn repeatedly to the same window. tim rocked back on his heels, arms crossed, grin already sharpening. “so,” he began casually, “speaking of things you ‘use,’ want to talk about the stuff you were saying while you were unconscious?”

dick’s head snapped toward him. “tim. no.”

tim ignored him completely. “because wow. i didn’t know you had a romantic side. like—it was actually kind of sweet? a little embarrassing? honestly extremely embarrassing.”

damian’s face twisted. “what are you—”

“you kept saying,” tim continued, pitching his voice into a dreamy falsetto, “‘my beloved… come back… come here… where are you…’” he clutched his chest dramatically.

“I did not say that,” damian barked, though it came out slightly slurred, tragically soft, devastatingly unthreatening. “drake is lying.” damian announced to the ceiling, as if the ceiling could issue a rebuttal.

except —- then damian froze, not visibly, internally, like someone had pulled the emergency brake on his thoughts. the hazy warmth in his veins pulsed, rising like heat behind his ears. something in his chest tightened, memory stirring sluggishly but insistently. the drugs softened everything except that. that memory. that wanting.

the warmth in his bloodstream pulsed again, stronger, like a tide he couldn’t fight. he blinked slowly, vision blooming and fading at the edges, and in the middle of that blur, something clear rose to the surface. you.

your face. your voice. your hands brushing the hair off his forehead last week. your breath against his neck in the quiet hours. your laugh that he pretended didn’t undo him. he inhaled sharply, like the thought of you punched through the haze. tim, seeing the shift, took a step back. he knew this was no longer teasing territory, this was damian’s guard dissolving in real time. dick moved a little closer. “damian?”

damian blinked again. confusion, longing, frustration, and beneath all of it, a tenderness so raw it seemed to surprise even him. “where’s…” his voice wobbled, more breath than sound. “(y/n)?”

tim’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. cass’s head tilted, studying him. damian didn’t notice their reactions—didn’t even register that he’d slipped. the meds made the truth feel natural, inevitable, impossible to contain.

“i want her here.”

dick blinked rapidly. “her?”

“yes, her,” damian muttered like they were stupid for being confused, tone clipped but dreamy, like he was trying to be irritated through marshmallow fog. “she should be here.”

dick tried gently, “who—”

“(y/n).” damian snapped. “the one i— the one who—” he cut himself off, annoyed at how hard the words suddenly were. his tongue felt slow. his brain fuzzed.

everything except the wanting.

“i’d much rather be with her than you guys.”

damian pushed on, voice dipping into something warm and unrestrained and utterly unlike him. “she doesn’t talk so loudly,” he mumbled, glaring at tim for existing. “and she doesn’t hover.” a pointed look at dick. “and she’s gentle.” he added, a little dreamily, glancing at cass.

cass’s eyes softened. dick’s heart did a little somersault. tim opened and closed his mouth like a stunned goldfish. damian continued, because the drugs had him rambling, pouring out affection he’d buried so deep even he forgot it was there. “and she smells nice,” he said, brows furrowing like this was deeply important. “and she holds my hand when i’m hurt. why isn’t she here.”

“d,” dick said softly, “we… didn’t know she existed.”

“that’s not my problem.” damian glared at the wall. “she should be here.” he shifted, trying to sit up, but cass stopped him again. he slumped back instantly, blinking up at her like she’d just used dark magic. “i need to talk to her,” damian insisted. “she’s probably worried.”

damian’s face, already soft from the medication, creased in a way none of them had ever seen. not anger, not annoyance, something else. something gentler. unguarded. dangerously unguarded.

he frowned. a slow, heartbreakingly earnest frown. “…she should be here,” he murmured again, more wounded this time, as if the room’s failure to produce you was a insult.

tim whispered, “we’re in uncharted territory,” like a man narrating a nature documentary about a dangerous, delicate creature.

dick pulled a chair closer. “we’re not keeping her from you,” he said. “no one knew you wanted her here.”

damian scowled. “i always want her here.”

tim choked on a laugh. cass elbowed him. but damian wasn’t done—if anything the words were pouring out faster now, because every thought of you made the meds tug him deeper into that warm, floaty honesty. “she knows how to touch my hair the right way,” he admitted, cheeks flushing faintly. “you don’t just— you have to go with the grain, not against the—” he gestured vaguely at his head, missing by several inches. “she knows. why isn’t she here.”

“she doesn’t know you’re awake.”

“you should have told her,” damian argued, scandalized. “you should have— obviously you should have—” his breath stuttered, foggy frustration ripping through him. “i want her.” he repeated, smaller.

“okay,” dick said. “okay. we’ll get her. just… try to relax.”

damian tried to glare, but it melted halfway into a woozy pout. “i won’t relax until she’s here.”

dick exhaled, long-suffering but soft. “i’ll call her. just—stay in the bed. stay horizontal. stay… not ripping out your IV.”

damian made a grumpy sound that was supposed to be dignified and was absolutely not.

you arrived like someone who had run every red light between your apartment and the wayne medical wing. you hadn’t even finished tying your shoes when the call came—an unfamiliar number flashing on your screen, a clipped voice saying, “hi, uh, this is dick grayson—damian’s brother—please don’t panic, he’s okay, but he’s asking for you and we… think you should come.”

you barely remembered hanging up. or grabbing keys. or the elevator door almost closing on your shoulder. ten minutes, maybe eleven, but it felt like one long breath held in your chest. in those ten minutes, everything in your head spun: damian doesn’t get hurt. damian doesn’t call for anyone. damian doesn’t need.

so what could’ve happened for dick to sound like that? what could’ve happened for damian to ask for you?

the security staff let you through without question—dick must’ve put your name on some list, because no wayne employee is normally that chill about strangers sprinting through sterile hallways with fear in their eyes.

your boots echoed off polished floors. the medical wing always had that cold, expensive, unnecessarily white look—a place built to fix bodies, not calm nerves. you followed the signs, heart hammering, palms damp.

room 3B.

your hand hovered on the handle for half a second—half a breath—because you had no idea what version of damian you’d find on the other side of the door. injured damian? angry damian? scared damian?

you pushed the door open.

damian had not relaxed. if anything, he had stewed, curled miserably in a hospital bed that looked like it was offending his entire lineage by existing. his hair was a mess. his eyes were half-lidded and glassy. a deep, irritable crease sat between his brows.

when you stepped in, the room shifted. dick straightened in his chair, relief flooding him. tim blinked like he couldn’t believe you were a real person. cass smiled at you like she’d expected this all along. but damian—

damian’s eyes snapped open like someone had turned the sun directly toward him. the transformation was instant. his whole face softened and brightened all at once, surprise flickering into recognition, recognition melting into something warm and wreckingly tender. “beloved,” he breathed.

and it was so quiet.

then he tried—immediately, stupidly, disastrously—to sit up. “no—no, no,” dick sputtered, grabbing his shoulder, flattening him instantly.

damian blinked up at him, betrayed for the thirtieth time today.

but then his gaze dragged back to you, heavy, warm, intoxicated—not just by meds but by relief. “you’re here. finally.”

your heart dropped somewhere into your stomach. “of course i came,” you started, glancing wearily at everyone in the room but stepping closer. “you called for me.”

“i needed you,” he said, so matter-of-factly it felt like the room stopped breathing. “i told them. repeatedly. they were slow.”

“hey—”

dick shot tim a glare.

damian reached for you without hesitation, fingers outstretched, messy and uncoordinated but desperate. cass gently caught his wrist to keep him from yanking at his IV. “come here,” damian insisted, eyes locked on yours. “i hate this place. i hate all of them.” he gestured vaguely at his siblings. “i want you.”

your lungs forgot how to work. “dami,” you murmured, stepping to his bedside, taking his free hand carefully—careful because he was loopy, careful because he was fragile, careful because he was looking at you like you were the only real thing in a world made of fog.

he exhaled, shoulders sinking in relief the moment your skin touched his. “yes. that. stay.”

and suddenly you’re the idiot standing in a hospital room surrounded by the waynes. you don’t look at any of them. you can’t. eye contact feels like a trapdoor.

because this is the exact scenario damian spent months avoiding. the one he insisted would “complicate matters” or “invite unnecessary scrutiny” or “destroy our operational advantage,” which was his very dramatic way of saying he didn’t want his family to know he had feelings like a human being.

and now he’s clinging to your wrist like a toddler afraid you’ll evaporate. your voice tries to work but it comes out small. “uh… okay. i’m here. not going anywhere.”

dick makes a soft, amazed sound, like he’s watching a wild animal eat out of someone’s hand for the first time. tim is frozen in place, eyes narrowed like he’s trying to run a facial-recognition scan on the situation. cass just looks deeply entertained. damian doesn’t notice any of it. he’s too busy hauling your hand into his chest like he needs the pressure to stay anchored.

he nudges closer to you on the pillow—well, he attempts to, but he’s so high that the movement is less “smooth shift” and more “gentle toppling.” you catch him before he face-plants, hands awkward around his shoulders, and he… softens. actually softens. melts into your touch like he’s never heard of pride in his life. “don’t leave,” he mutters. “they’re awful. you’re the only tolerable one.”

his siblings watch this happen with the energy of people witnessing a natural disaster in slow motion. your heart does something inconvenient. “i’m not going anywhere,” you say again, softer.

he’s going to regret every single word of this when the pain meds wear off. damian relaxes immediately, head tipping toward you, completely unconcerned that half his family is witnessing this emotional striptease he’ll definitely deny later. then his hand paws clumsily at the air until it finds yours again. he drags it to his chest, then up toward his jaw, nudging, nudging, nudging like a disgruntled cat demanding to be held exactly the right way. you blink down at him. “what are you doing.”

“you know what i’m doing,” he mutters, pushing your palm against his cheek like he’s molding clay. “closer.”

“i am close.”

“not enough.” a pout forms soft lower lip pushed forward in wounded royalty. “you’re supposed to…” he gestures with his other hand, fingers fluttering like he’s trying to summon the word. “kiss me.”

your body goes rigid. “damian. your entire family is three feet away.”

tim chokes on spit. dick makes a strangled noise. cass is already covering her smile with her hand. dick, bless him, claps his hands together. “alright! great time to take a break. we’re gonna… uh… give you two some space.”

“a lot of space,” tim adds, sprinting for the door like the room is on fire.

cass pauses beside the doorway, gives you a thumbs-up, then closes the door behind them. immediately, muffled bickering erupts.

“you didn’t record that?”

“i’m not filming our brother in the hospital!”

“coward.”

“guys, shut up—”

“i can’t believe he said kiss me—”

“cass stop laughing—”

“OH my god—”

you drag a hand down your face. “this is mortifying.”

damian doesn’t care. damian cares zero percent. damian is busy guiding your hand back to his cheek and pressing into it like it’s a heat source keeping him alive. “they’re idiots,” he announces, voice thick with anesthesia and indignation. “loud. insufferable. invasive.” he blinks heavily, lashes brushing your wrist. “i’m glad they’re gone.”

“they’re right outside the door still arguing.”

“they’re always arguing,” he says, sleepy venom coating every syllable. “they argue about toast.”

you try not to smile. “and you don’t?”

“i argue with purpose.” he says this with the gravitas of a dying king. “they argue because they’re incompetent.” his fingers curl around your wrist and he tries to tug you closer again. “come here,” he murmurs, cheeks pink from more than medication. “you’re being difficult.”

“i’m being respectful.” you correct.

he frowns. actually frowns, like you’ve just informed him gravity is optional now. “disgusting.” he sighs like a martyr. “just kiss me.”

his fingers skate clumsily up your wrist, slipping twice before finally hooking behind your hand, dragging it back to his cheek with the determination of a drowning man reaching for a lifeline. his pulse flutters beneath your palm, fluttery in that way that tells you the meds are hitting harder. “i need one,” he murmurs, barely audible. “just—one.”

“damian—”

“please,” he whispers. he looks at you like you’re the single point of focus in a world that’s tilting. pupils blown, cheeks flushed with medication and emotion he can’t register enough to restrain. he’s trying so hard to keep his eyes open, to hold onto you, to stay with you in the haze.

the battle between logic and instinct lasts all of four seconds. maybe less. you lean in, careful, so he can pull back if he wants. he doesn’t. he meets you halfway, or at least tries to, except he misjudges the distance and bumps your chin first, blinking like the world betrayed him again. you soften. cup the side of his face, steady him, then you kiss him.

it’s gentle. warm. barely there at first, just the press of your mouth against his, letting him feel it, understand it. his breath catches, a soft inhale against your lips like he can’t believe he got what he asked for. then the tension melts out of him all at once. his shoulders sag. his hand slides up to clutch weakly at your shirt. he makes this tiny, involuntary sound—half sigh, half relief—like the kiss untied some knot inside him he didn’t know was choking him. he kisses you back clumsily, lazily, chasing the contact with unfocused devotion. the kind of kiss that says i’m not fully here, but what i feel for you is.

when you finally pull back—because he’s still recovering—his eyes remain closed for a moment, like reality hasn’t quite caught up. they open, glazed and adoring in a way he will absolutely deny to the grave. “that,” he murmurs, voice dropping like he’s drifting toward sleep. “better.”

you smooth his hair back gently. “yeah?”

he nods against your hand, eyelids lowering again. “you fixed the… everything.” his lips twitch like he wants to smile but doesn’t have the energy. “kiss me again later.”

you can’t help it. you laugh. “we’ll see.”

he hums—hums, like he’s some exhausted, medicated cat settling into sun-warm sheets instead of a post-surgery assassin with a reputation to maintain. for a few minutes, everything is strangely easy. soft. he drifts in and out, eyes half-lidded, expression mellow in a way that would terrify gotham’s criminal underground. he asks you three questions in a row (“what time is it… why does the ceiling breathe… can you make the bed stop tilting?”), only for his attention to wander halfway through the third answer.

you stroke his hair and he melts like warm wax, that stiffness he always carries dissolving like you’re seeing a piece of him that only exists under anesthesia and around you. “you should rest,” you observe.

“i am resting.” he sounds offended you’d suggest otherwise. “i’m the picture of—” he yawns without warning. “—discipline.”

“sure,” you say, hand smoothing down his cheek. “very disciplined.”

he narrows his eyes, but the effect is ruined by how heavy his eyelids are. “mockery is unbecoming.” he drifts again, fingers twitching once like he wants to pull you even closer but can’t muster the energy. ten more seconds pass before he murmurs, barely audible, “don’t be gone long.”

your chest folds in on itself. “i won’t.”

but you still have to go. he needs his siblings updated. you need to breathe something other than recycled medical-wing air. and—let’s be honest—you need to apologize for walking in and accidentally detonating a family-secret bomb.

you pry his hand gently off your shirt, not easy, because he makes a soft, grumpy noise at the loss, and settle it over his blanket. “i’ll be right back,” you whisper.

he scowls, soft and half-asleep. “you better.”

you slip out. the door clicks shut behind you, and immediately, the hallway noise stops. immediately. like a switch. one second there’s muffled arguing, sharp whispers, annoyed sighs, something that sounds suspiciously like tim saying “that’s not fair, cass, you can’t hit people in a debate—”

and the next? dead silent.

you step fully into the corridor. three faces turn to you at once, frozen mid-conflict like you just walked in on a crime scene. dick stands with his arms out like he was physically separating people. tim looks defensive, hands half-raised, mouth half-open. cass is calmly holding what looks like tim’s hoodie string, like she’s been yanking him back into line.

they all stare. you blink. “…hi,” you say. it comes out small. painfully polite. the kind of greeting you use when you’ve just barged into the batfamily’s private meltdown because your secret boyfriend couldn’t keep quiet on morphine.

dick straightens so fast you actually hear the click of his spine. “hi! hey! um. hi. wow. okay. you—you came out.”

tim elbows him. “of course she came out, she used the door—”

cass smacks the back of his head without looking.

“ow???”

you exhale slowly. “so… um. i guess i should say—sorry? for all of that? he’s… not usually like this.”

three pairs of eyes give you the exact same expression:

oh we know.

you swallow, fingers twisting together because suddenly you’re seventeen again and meeting someone’s parents in a too-small living room where everyone is staring. “right,” you say. “um. so. i’m—” the word lodges in your throat. girlfriend.

technically true. emotionally true. secretly true. publicly, though… this was supposed to come out months from now. carefully. intentionally. maybe after damian finished having a internal breakdown about letting anyone know he had feelings at all. definitely not in a fluorescent hallway with him high on enough pain meds to take down a rhinoceros.

you clear your throat. “i’m… his—”

they all lean in a fraction. like wolves scenting vulnerability.

“—girlfriend.”

silence. not the casual kind. not the “oh okay” kind. no. this is the thick, suffocating, batfamily kind of silence, where shock ricochets between them. you want to die.

“wow,” dick finally says, voice high and bright and absolutely panicked. “so you’re—uh—wow. okay.”

tim takes a step back from you like you’re a rare cryptid. “wait, wait. damian—our damian—has a secret girlfriend and he didn’t tell anyone?”

“it wasn’t—” you rub your face. “it wasn’t my idea to keep it secret.”

every head turns toward the door behind you. the door damian is behind. three simultaneous: “of course it wasn’t.”

you sigh. “he didn’t… want the attention. or the questions. or the—” you gesture vaguely at the cluster of energy in front of you “—this.”

dick nods so hard you’re briefly concerned for him. “yeah. okay. right.”

tim crosses his arms. “he trusts none of us with his personal life. unbelievable.”

cass tilts her head, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “he likes her,” she says simply.

everyone turns to her, startled by the rare verbal input. she shrugs. “i watch him.”

you’re still mortified.“i’m sorry,” you say again, because apologizing feels easier than existing in this moment.

“no, no,” dick insists. “don’t apologize. we’re just—processing.”

“poorly.” tim adds.

“yes, poorly.”

you glance at the door, then back to them. “he… didn’t mean to tell you. he’s just… really high.

tim snorts. “yeah, we noticed.”

but then—dick softens. visibly. his whole posture loosens. “we’re… glad you’re here. really.”

cass nods once. tim looks like he wants to be annoyed, but deep down, he’s already building a spreadsheet called damian’s girlfriend: things to investigate. you inhale, steadying yourself. this is fine. you’re here. damian’s safe. they’re… intimidating, but also weirdly welcoming in a way. dick takes a half-step toward the door. “he’s probably freaking out that you’re gone.”

you grimace. “…yeah. he’s not subtle right now.”

tim snorts. “understatement of the century.”

you all slip back into the room—well, you walk in, and the batfamily kind of fans in behind you like an unnecessarily dramatic procession—and immediately you’re met with a very specific sound: damian huffing.

he’s upright again, God knows how he managed it with stitches and sedation, blanket bunched around his waist, hair a complete disaster, eyes sharp but unfocused and dark with irritation. he looks like someone who’s been abandoned in a desert for hours, not eight minutes. the second he sees you, everything in him unclenches. the frown softens. the shoulders drop. the tension behind his eyes dissolves like sugar in tea. “finally.”

you take a slow breath. “i was gone for like ten minutes.”

“ten minutes,” he repeats, scandalized. “i could have died.”

dick, behind you, mouths jesus christ into his hands.

you step closer and damian instantly reaches for you, hands out, grabby, zero dignity, all instinct. he looks like he’s two seconds from climbing out of bed and onto you. “i told you,” he mutters, leaning toward you with the gravity of someone confessing state secrets, “i can’t sleep without you.”

your brain stalls. his siblings collectively short-circuit behind you. “you’ve… never said that.”

“i’m saying it now.” he tries to sit up even straighter, immediately winces, then stubbornly ignores the pain. “i hate it when you disappear. it’s—” he squints, trying to find the word in the fog of anesthetic swimming through him, “—unacceptable.”

“unacceptable,” tim echoes under his breath, shaking his head like this is the best day of his life.

damian hears it and snaps—not very effectively, because it’s slurred and soft and deeply non-threatening—“shut up, drake.” then he turns back to you, expression going gentle again so fast it’s whiplash. “come here,” he says, voice lower, sleepy, warm. “please.”

you move without thinking. “better,” he mumbles, leaning into your palm. Leaning. “i hate hospitals.”

“i know you do.”

“they smell like fear and bleach. drake smells like bleach too. it’s suspicious.”

tim throws both hands up. “what—why—what did i even do?!”

damian doesn’t answer, mostly because something else catches his attention. his gaze drifts back toward the IV taped to his hand like he’s just spotted an enemy combatant. “…it’s still there,” he mutters darkly.

you can practically hear dick’s soul leave his body. “damian—”

too late.

damian’s fingers curl, determined and clumsy, reaching for the line like he’s about to solve all his problems via self-sabotage “nope,” you say quickly, sliding your hand over his before he can yank. “don’t start with that.”

he blinks at you, startled. “but it’s in me.”

“yes,” you say calmly, “and it’s supposed to be. if you pull it out, it’s going to hurt, you’ll bleed everywhere, and dr. thompson will throw a fit.”

damian glowers at the IV like it personally betrayed him. “i do not consent to its presence.”

“tough,” you say softly. “leave it.”

and something miraculous happens.

he listens.

he actually stops. his fingers relax under yours, he gives one final deeply offended exhale, then slumps back against the pillow, letting you guide his hand away from the tubing entirely. dick stares at the exchange like he just watched a unicorn descend from the ceiling. “you’ve gotta be kidding me.”

tim narrows his eyes. “yeah, no, I want that in writing. he listened? willingly?”

damian doesn’t even look at them. his attention is fully back on you, as if he’s forgotten anyone else exists. “you’re better at giving orders,” he mumbles, voice slurred and honest.

your eyebrows shoot up. “i didn’t give an order.”

“yes you did,” he insists, even poutier now. “and i liked it.”

tim chokes. you press a hand over damian’s, trying not to laugh. “okay. well. thank you for listening.”

“i listen to you,” he says, like it’s obvious. “you make sense.”

and then—inevitably—damian’s gaze drifts, catches something on the wall-mounted TV across from the bed, and brightens in a way that is actually alarming. “tch. finally,” he mutters. “something decent.” it’s… an anime. some shonen fight scene paused on a commercial break. “they always have commercials on. americans have no discipline.”

“do you—watch that one?”

“i watch everything,” he says, as if this is another well-known fact. “i have criteria.”

“criteria,” tim echoes. “oh this I gotta hear.”

damian lifts a finger dramatically, like he’s addressing a senate hearing. “strong character arcs. accurate sword technique. no filler episodes.” he narrows his eyes like the concept personally offended him. “most of them… disgraceful.”

and then—god help you—he turns his head toward you and says, in a tone so earnest it almost knocks you over: “if i recommended shows to you, you would watch them. properly.”

tim inhales sharply. “are you ASKING her to watch anime with you? publicly? in front of witnesses?”

damian blinks once. twice. “yes?” he says, baffled that this is even a question. “why wouldn’t i? she listens.”

dick puts a hand over his heart. “this is the most emotion he’s displayed since he was born.”

damian ignores him completely because a new thought has struck him, and he must share it immediately or die.

“and she likes animals,” he says. “this matters.”

you look around. “…does it?”

“yes.” he nods, solemn. “people who don’t like animals are not to be trusted. it is… foundational.”

“i mean—true,” you mumble, trying not to laugh.

“she,” he says, pointing at you again, “lets titi sleep on her jacket. on purpose.”

tim freezes. “wait. the demon cat? on their clothes? and—no blood?”

you shrug awkwardly. “she’s actually very sweet—”

“HA,” damian cuts in, triumphant. “i told you.” then, with no transition at all: “titi likes her more than she likes you.”

this is addressed to the entire batfamily.

gasps. outrage. betrayal. you pat damian’s arm, trying to settle him down. he looks up at you instantly—immediate, instinctive. “don’t go again,” he says, like you abandoned him for years instead of stepping outside to apologize to his siblings.

“i’m right here,” you soothe.

he exhales, satisfied. “good. if you leave, they talk. they always talk.” his voice drops to a whisper, conspiratorial. “they gossip.”

“WE DO NOT.”

damian waves a dismissive hand. “yes you do. you gossip like… hens.”

“hens??”

“LOUD hens,” damian corrects, settling further into your side. “and idiotic.”

you choke on a laugh as all three brothers erupt in overlapping offended noises. and you’re just sitting there thinking—

yeah. he is absolutely, utterly, painfully doomed when he sobers up.

STARTED 11.22.2025. POSTED 11.24.2025.

  ⸝⸝  masterlist  .ᐟ  𝜗𝜚

©️ latedeparture

AO3 WRITERS (and their works)

⤹ SOTER (amazing tim drake fic, but if you love stephanie brown, they have quite a few that are amazing to read!!)

CIRCLE K (BACK TO YOU) - ✩ ✦ | I’LL BE THE DANGEROUS LEDGE (YOU BE THE PARACHUTE) - ✩ ✦ | I WANT YOUR HANDS, YOUR FUTURE PLANS (TO THE BITTER END) - ✩ | etc.

⤹ CELAMOON aka @crsssie (TONS of tim drake fics on their AO3, please check them out!! there’s some with less than 5k, or more than 5k words!! they’re absolutely amazing!!)

SAYING WE’RE JUST FRIENDS ( THINKING YOU’RE MY MAN) - ✩ | THOUSAND SOULS - angst w/ happy ending (read the tags) | I’LL GIVE YOU WHAT YOU NEED (TILL I’M LYING ON THE GROUND GOT ME PARALYZED) - angst w/ bittersweet or open ending | etc.

⤹ TIM DRAKE ROOMMATES AU - ✩, orphan_account

this one makes me sad, because it’s an orphan account, meaning I don’t know who the author is :( … im glad they didn’t delete their works and chose to orphan it, but oh man, I hope they’re lingering somewhere on my account if they ever are and know that I enjoyed their AU. It was really fun to read!!

⤹ DIFFICULTHEART

MAD DOG - ✩★✦ , fair warning to x reader lovers, this is an OC/tim drake, but it’s read in second pov! A bit confusing, but I genuinely enjoyed it— it still makes you feel immersed in the story. it’s not everyone’s cup of tea which is understandable! It’s not an x reader, but an OC. Honestly, give it a shot if you’re interested!!! just make sure to read the tags.

⤹ CHERRRYDRAGON (absolute sucker for unrequited but not actually unrequited love)

YOU NEED TO BE YOURSELF (LOVE SOMEONE FOR LOVING YOU INSTEAD OF SOMEONE REALLY COOL) - ✩ ✦

⤹ ATHENAGC94

SMOKE AND MIRRORS , this is an ongoing series— but i literally go back and read it from time to time. I swear they had an tumblr account, but I can’t find it ;-; , so if you’re reading this— just know that I enjoy your series and can’t wait to see where you take the story!!

MISC. READS THAT I THROUGHLY ENJOYED FROM OTHER PHENOMENAL WRITERS !! —

↷@navyhaze TECH DECK — ★

↷@moviecritc YEARNER TIM HCS — ✩ in fact, they have a whole masterlist of their tim drake works !!

↷ @tealovingdreamer (absolutely excited to see how this goes) THROUGH THE EYES OF OTHERS — ✩

↷@strawberry-nugget I’D LOVE TO SEE ME FROM YOUR POINT OF VIEW —✩

↷@hanimanny WIKIHOW: TO GET YOUR GIRLFRIEND BACK (FROM YOUR FAMILY) — ✩

tbc…