Ferbie Writes Fanfics

Not because you remembered losing your own parents. There had never been anyone for you to remember. No faces blurred soft by time, no voices you could almost hear in dreams, no treasured story about where you came from that anyone had been able to give back to you. Your life began, as far as anyone at Haly’s could tell, in a basket left near the performers’ entrance before dawn, wrapped in a blanket too thin for the weather and tucked beneath the faded canvas awning like whoever had left you there hoped the circus might know what to do with unwanted things.

The circus had.

Haly’s had taken you in the way a traveling circus took in anything strange, broken, useful, or lost. Not neatly. Not legally at first. Not with the clean lines adults liked to draw around family. You were passed between trailers and arms, fed from chipped bowls, tucked into spare bunks, watched by whoever was not performing, repairing, rehearsing, or sleeping. The roustabouts taught you knots. The clowns taught you how to make people look where you wanted them to look. The animal handlers taught you patience. Mary Grayson taught you how to braid your hair so it stayed out of your face. John Grayson taught you how to fall without breaking your wrists.

Dick taught you how to be a child.

He had been born into the circus, bright and laughing and fearless, with a last name that meant applause and parents who caught him whenever he leaped. For a while, you thought that made him different from you in some permanent, untouchable way. He belonged to people. He belonged to the air. He belonged to the story everyone told when the lights went up, and the Flying Graysons climbed toward the rigging.

Then he caught you stealing sugared almonds from a vendor’s crate when you were six years old and immediately asked why you had not taken more.

“You’re supposed to tell,” you said, clutching the paper bag to your chest.

Dick looked offended by the idea. “I’m supposed to get half.”

That was the beginning of everything.

By the time you were old enough to understand that the Graysons were not yours in any official way, it no longer mattered. Mary still checked whether you had eaten before shows. John still lifted you onto his shoulders when the crowds got too thick. Dick still came looking for you first whenever he had something funny, stupid, or dangerous to do. You were not a Grayson on paper, but you knew the rhythm of their trailer at night. You knew the smell of Mary’s perfume and rosin. You knew John’s laugh from across the lot. You knew Dick’s hand in the dark without needing to look.

They were still the first people who made you understand what parents were supposed to feel like.

The night they died, the air smelled like sawdust and rain.

You remembered that more clearly than you wanted to. The damp edge of the tent canvas. The crowd murmuring with that restless, eager hunger that came before the big act. The yellow-white glare of the lights. Dick’s shoulder pressed against yours backstage as he bounced on his toes, pretending not to be nervous. He was wearing red, green, and gold, the colors bright enough that he looked almost impossible to hurt.

Mary kissed his forehead before she climbed.

John winked at you.

“Watch closely, little sparrow,” he said. “You’ll miss the best part.”

You did watch.

For years afterward, you wished you had looked away.

There was a particular kind of silence that came after the ropes snapped, a silence too large for the tent, too large for the crowd, too large for your body. It opened like a wound. For one suspended moment, everyone seemed to believe that gravity could still change its mind.

Then Mary and John Grayson hit the ground.

Dick screamed.

You did not remember moving, but you remembered reaching him. He was fighting every adult hand that tried to hold him back, his small body twisting with a violence that made men twice his size flinch. You wrapped both arms around him from behind and held on because you knew he would try to run to them if you let go, and some desperate, practical part of you understood that if he got close enough to see everything, something inside him would never come back.

He elbowed you hard in the ribs. You did not let go.

“Let me go,” he choked.

You pressed your face into his shoulder and held tighter. “I can’t.”

“They’re my parents.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know.”

The words tore out of him before he could think better of them, and the second they were in the air, you felt him go still. Even in the middle of the worst moment of his life, Dick Grayson knew when he had cut too deep.

You closed your eyes. Your chest hurt where he had hit you. It hurt worse where he had not meant to.

“They were mine too,” you whispered.

Dick broke then. Not neatly. Not quietly. His knees buckled, and you went down with him in the sawdust, your arms still locked around his shaking body while the circus collapsed into shouts and footsteps and sobs around you.

You sat beside him on the narrow cot in the back of the medical tent and held his hand while the circus packed itself into whispers around you. Someone had wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. It kept sliding down one side because he would not release you long enough to fix it.

Bruce Wayne arrived in an expensive coat with a face like carved stone and eyes that looked too familiar for a stranger’s. He spoke to the police first, then to Mr. Haly, then to a woman from social services who kept glancing at Dick as if he might shatter if she looked directly at him for too long.

Finally, Bruce came to the cot.

He crouched instead of standing over Dick. That was the first thing you noticed about him. He was rich enough to own the ground beneath his feet, probably, but he crouched in the dirt and mud of the circus lot so Dick would not have to look up.

“Dick,” he said gently. “My name is Bruce Wayne.”

Dick stared at him.

“I knew your parents,” Bruce continued. “Not well, but enough to know they loved you.”

Dick’s fingers tightened around yours until your knuckles ached. You did not pull away.

Bruce’s gaze flicked briefly to your joined hands. “I want to help.”

It was the sort of thing adults said when they had already decided what help meant. You knew that too, though not because you remembered being left. You knew because you had grown up with the knowledge of it sitting under your skin like an old splinter. Adults said help and meant papers. They said help and meant moving. They said “help” and meant a bed in a room that smelled wrong, and a life chosen by strangers who got to go home afterward.

Dick knew it from you.

He had watched you grow up with the vocabulary of being left behind. He had seen the way you went quiet whenever inspectors came too close, whenever someone asked who was responsible for you, whenever an adult with a clipboard looked at you like a problem that had learned to walk and speak. He had followed you around until you either had to talk to him or throw something at him, and when you had chosen to throw something, he had only ducked, grinned, and declared that your aim needed work.

He knew what happened to children who belonged nowhere.

So when Bruce Wayne said, “You can come with me,” Dick did not ask where.

He looked at you.

The woman from social services shifted. “Mr. Grayson—”

“No,” Dick said.

It was the first word he had spoken in hours. His voice was raw and small and still somehow absolute.

Bruce did not move. “No?”

Dick lifted his chin. His eyes were red, but dry. “I’m not going without her.”

The woman started to say your name, then stopped because she had only read it off a file and did not know how to make it sound like it belonged to you.

Bruce looked at you again. Not with pity, exactly. With calculation, maybe, but not the cold kind. His face changed by degrees as he understood that this was not a child asking to bring along a favorite toy or a familiar blanket.

This was Dick Grayson drawing a line around the last piece of home he had left.

“I see,” Bruce said.

“You don’t,” Dick snapped.

You flinched at the sharpness of it, but Bruce did not.

“No,” Bruce agreed quietly. “Probably not.”

Dick looked ready to hate him for that too. He looked ready to hate anything that required less effort than falling apart. Then his hand trembled in yours, just once, and his face twisted before he managed to force it still again.

You leaned closer until your shoulder touched his.

Bruce saw that too.

The argument lasted longer than it should have, though most of it happened above your heads and around corners. There were phone calls. There were questions about guardianship, placement, emergency petitions, and temporary arrangements. You heard the phrase “not related” at least four times, always in the tones adults used when they thought blood was the only thing that made a family hard to separate.

In the end, Bruce Wayne did what rich men in Gotham did best.

He made the impossible bureaucratically inconvenient enough that people stopped telling him no.

You left the circus in the back seat of his car with Dick pressed against your side and both of your lives packed into two bags in the trunk. Wayne Manor rose out of the dark like something from a ghost story, too large to be real and too silent to be kind.

Alfred Pennyworth met you at the door.

He took one look at Dick, then at you, then at the way neither of you had released the other’s hand.

“Master Dick,” he said, as if Dick had always been expected. Then, turning to you, he added your name with the same grave courtesy. “Welcome home.”

You did not believe him.

But Dick breathed for the first time since the circus lot, and because Dick breathed, you tried.

Wayne Manor did not become home quickly.

The manor was too large. That was your first thought, and it remained your strongest impression for weeks. Too many rooms. Too many staircases. Too many windows looking out over grounds that did not pack up and leave at sunrise. The quiet was not peaceful. It pressed against your ears until you missed the generators, the animals, the distant laughter, the familiar arguments over equipment and laundry and pay.

Dick hated it more openly than you did.

He ran through the halls like speed could make the walls less solid. He climbed banisters, chandeliers, bookshelves, anything that allowed him to get his feet off the ground. He argued with Bruce, with Alfred, with tutors, with anyone who tried to tell him what he was allowed to feel. At night, when he thought you were asleep, he left his room and sat on the floor outside yours.

You started leaving the door open.

Neither of you talked about why.

Bruce tried. You would give him that later, when you were old enough to understand the shape of his failure. He cared clumsily, intensely, with the panic of a man who had never learned how to help a grieving child except by giving him a mission. Dick was angry. Bruce had a place to put his anger. That was how Robin was born.

Dick told you the first night. Of course he did. He came to your room before patrol, still pulling at the gloves, trying to look brave and failing because he kept checking your face.

“Bruce says it’s training,” he said.

“Is it?”

Dick looked down at the bright colors beneath his jacket. “It’s something.”

Three weeks later, he came through your window at two in the morning with a split lip, bruised knuckles, and no chance of pretending it was only training anymore.

You stared at him from your bed.

He stared back.

Then you threw a pillow at his head.

“Ow.”

“You’re wearing traffic-light colors.”

Dick, who had clearly expected fear, anger, or betrayal, looked down at himself. “They’re not that bad.”

“You look like Christmas got into a fight.”

He pressed a hand to his mouth, trying not to smile because his lip was bleeding. “Don’t tell Bruce how bad it looks.”

“Bruce was there.”

“Then don’t tell Alfred.”

“Alfred definitely knows.”

Dick sighed and leaned back against the wall beneath your window. His face changed when the joke faded. In the moonlight, he looked younger than he had all day.

“I can do something now,” he said.

You sat up slowly. “Does it help?”

He looked at his hands. “Sometimes.”

That was the first night you cleaned blood from his face.

You did not know what you were doing then. You used too much antiseptic and made him hiss. Your hands shook. Dick sat on the edge of your bed and let you work, his knee bouncing until you slapped it still. He watched you with those huge blue eyes that had once reflected spotlights and now carried rooftops.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said.

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

Because Mary was not there to check him. Because John was not there to teach him how to fall. Because Bruce was turning him into something sharp, and Alfred could not be everywhere, and you had already lost too much to sit still while Dick came apart in pieces.

Because he had said she’s with me, and you had never stopped being grateful.

You dabbed at his lip more gently. “Because you’d do it wrong.”

Dick smiled, small and real. “Probably.”

So it began.

Robin came home bleeding, and you learned. Alfred taught you first aid with the weary resignation of a man who knew forbidding you would only make you sneakier. You learned how to clean cuts, how to wrap ribs, how to spot a concussion, how to tell when Dick was joking to hide pain and when he was joking because he was genuinely pleased with himself. You learned that Bruce went quiet when he was worried, that Alfred used sarcasm as a pressure valve, that the Cave was colder than any place under a home should be.

You did not become a vigilante.

Dick asked once, carefully, after you had thrown a practice knife so hard it stuck in the training mat beside his head.

“You could,” he said.

You looked at him. He was fourteen then, all elbows and restless guilt, still growing into his grief. “Could what?”

“Train. Come out with me.”

“No.”

“You didn’t even think about it.”

“I did. No.”

His shoulders dropped, though he tried to hide it. “Why?”

“Because someone has to be here when you come back.”

That shut him up.

You were proud of that for almost two whole days.

Years passed the way they did in Gotham, measured less by birthdays and more by scars. Dick grew taller. His voice changed. His smile became something people followed without knowing why. Robin became a name whispered by criminals and children alike, bright enough to make Batman’s shadow seem survivable.

People started noticing him before either of you knew what to do with it. Girls at school first, then women at galas, then everyone. It was impossible not to. 

Dick Grayson had a way of making attention feel accidental, as if he had only smiled because he could not help it, as if the warmth in his voice belonged entirely to whoever stood in front of him. He could lean against a doorway, flash that grin, and make strangers feel as if they had been chosen. He flirted the same way he fought, quick and graceful and half a step ahead, leaving people blinking after him as if he had taken the light with him when he moved on.

You learned to look away. 

Not all the time. Not enough for anyone to notice. Just when someone laughed too brightly at something he said, or when his hand lingered at a waist during a gala dance, or when he came back from patrol with lipstick on his cheek and blood on his knuckles, grinning like both had been equally harmless.

You told yourself it did not matter. 

You had known him before the charm fit right. Before the smile became practiced. Before Robin turned him into Gotham’s golden boy. You had known the child outside your bedroom door, knees drawn to his chest, too proud to cry where anyone could see.

Somehow, that made it worse.

You watched from the Cave, from the Manor, from the edge of his life where you had always stood, with bandages in one hand and your heart in the other.

Then Dick began to outgrow Robin.

Or Bruce began to outgrow the idea that Robin could belong to anyone who questioned him. Or Gotham asked too much of a name that had been built for a grieving boy in bright colors. Maybe all of it happened at once.

At first, it happened quietly. A costume worn with impatience. A name that no longer fit cleanly in his mouth. Arguments with Bruce that ended with doors closing too carefully, because slamming them would have admitted too much. Dick had spent years turning Robin into something bright enough to survive Batman’s shadow, only to realize brightness could become its own kind of cage.

And you, selfishly, missed the cage.

Not because you wanted him trapped. Never that. But Robin had been the part of him that still came home to the Cave, still climbed through your window, still bled where you could reach him. Whatever came next would belong to the world even more than he already did.

You hated yourself a little for knowing that before he said it aloud.

Their fights got worse before they got quieter. That was how you knew it was serious. Dick and Bruce shouting was unpleasant, but familiar. Silence between them felt like a door closing.

By the time Dick chose Nightwing, it no longer felt like a costume change. It felt like an escape route.

He came home in black and blue for the first time with blood on his jaw and something fragile beneath his smile, as if he had expected the new colors to make him feel free all at once and had been disappointed to discover that becoming yourself still hurt. You stood in the Cave with gauze in one hand and antiseptic in the other, looking at the winged symbol across his chest.

He looked older. Not because of the suit, though the suit helped. Not because of the blood, either; you had seen too much of that for it to mean what it should have. He looked older because, for the first time, he seemed to be standing outside the life Bruce had built for him and deciding whether to come back in. 

“Nightwing,” he said, like he was testing whether the name would hold.

You looked up at him. “That’s what you’re calling yourself now?”

His smile flickered. “You hate it?”

You hated that you didn’t.

You hated that it suited him. The dark, the blue, the clean break of it. You hated that Robin had looked like a boy trying to survive grief, and Nightwing looked like someone who might actually outrun it.

“No,” you said, softer than you meant to. “I don’t hate it.”

Something in his shoulders loosened. Not much. Just enough to hurt.

He stepped closer, holding still while you pressed gauze to the cut along his jaw. “Bruce does.”

“Bruce hates anything he didn’t build himself.”

Dick laughed under his breath, but it did not last. His eyes dropped to your hands. “Do you?”

You knew what he was really asking. Not whether you hated the name. Not whether you hated the suit. Whether you hated that he had chosen a door and walked through it without you.

“No,” you said again.

This time, it cost more.

He sat on the edge of the med table and let you clean the cut along his jaw. For once, he did not fill the silence with jokes. He watched your hands instead, his eyes following the familiar motions like they were the only part of the night he trusted.

“Does it look stupid?” he asked eventually.

You glanced up.

There were a dozen easy answers. You could have teased him about the collar, the symbol, the dramatic little wings. You could have told him the suit was impractical in at least three places and that he still needed better armor around his ribs because, apparently, every criminal in Gotham had decided his torso was a community punching bag.

Instead, you looked at him properly.

He was older than Robin had ever been allowed to become. Not fully grown, not fully free, but closer to himself than he had looked in months.

“No,” you said. “It looks like you.”

Dick went very still.

Then he looked away, blinking too quickly. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He breathed out, and for a moment the Cave did not feel quite so cold.

Then Jason came.

He arrived all elbows and suspicion, a street kid with quick hands, quicker teeth, and the wary look of someone who expected every kindness to come with a bill. Bruce brought him into the manor with that familiar grim certainty he wore whenever he had already decided a child needed saving and had not yet considered whether the child wanted to be saved by him.

Dick did not take it well.

He was older by then, old enough to know that a lonely child deserved food, shelter, training, and someone willing to stand between him and the city. He was also young enough for it to hurt when Bruce looked at another dark-haired boy with bruised knuckles and saw a mission. The manor shifted around Jason the way it had once shifted around Dick, and Dick smiled too brightly through it, which meant he was angry enough to be careful.

Jason noticed, of course. Jason noticed everything. He noticed the Cave, the rules, the silences, the way Bruce gave orders instead of comfort, the way Dick’s name still lived in the walls even after he had started spending more nights away than home. He noticed you too, hovering near the med bay with gauze in your hands and an expression that probably looked too much like pity for his taste.

“I don’t need a nurse,” he snapped the first time Bruce brought him back bleeding.

“Good,” you said, snapping on gloves. “I’m not one.”

Jason eyed you. “Then what are you?”

“Tired.”

Dick laughed from the other side of the Cave, sharp and surprised, and Jason looked deeply offended that anyone had found the exchange funny.

You liked him immediately.

Not because he was easy. Jason was not easy. He bit at every soft thing offered to him and then looked startled when people did not take it back. He argued with Alfred, hoarded food as if he would not be fed again, read books as if he expected someone to confiscate them, and pretended not to lean into the warmth of the manor, even as it slowly sank into his skin.

He was not Dick.

That should have made things simpler. It did not.

Because Jason eventually put on the Robin colors, and the first time you saw him in them, your stomach twisted before you could stop it. The suit had been altered, fitted to a different body, a different stance, a different kind of anger, but the colors were the same. Red, green, yellow. Bright enough to dare the dark to look away.

Dick went very quiet that night.

Jason noticed that too.

“You got a problem?” he demanded, chin lifted like he was ready to swing first and find out why later.

Dick’s smile was pleasant in the way storms looked peaceful from far away. “No.”

“Liar.”

“Jason,” Bruce warned.

“No, he’s been looking at me like I stole something.”

Dick’s face changed.

You saw it happen and stepped forward before Bruce could make it worse. “Jason.”

“What?”

“You’re bleeding on the floor.”

That distracted him for exactly half a second. “So?”

“So Alfred just mopped.”

Jason looked down at the small red drops near his boot, then back at you. “That’s what you’re worried about?”

“Yes.”

“You people are weird.”

“Deeply. Sit down.”

He sat, muttering, and you cleaned the cut across his forearm while Dick stood a little too far away and watched a boy who was not him wear the name he had not realized he still thought of as his.

After that, something in the manor changed again.

Jason became Robin loudly, defiantly, with less grace than Dick and more force. He argued with Batman in the field, swore when he thought Alfred could not hear him, and came to you with injuries he pretended were not bad until you raised an eyebrow and he folded under the weight of being known. Sometimes, when Dick came home, he found Jason in the med bay eating your snacks and insulting your bandaging technique. Sometimes he looked amused. Sometimes he looked like he had walked into his own past and found someone else living there.

You never asked if that hurt.

You knew it did.

Dick was not cruel to Jason. That almost made it worse. Cruelty would have been simple, and Dick had never been simple where lonely children were concerned. He taught Jason holds that Bruce had never bothered to explain gently. He showed him how to land on bad rooftops, how to listen for the difference between a scared witness and a lying one, how to talk Batman down when his silence started turning into something sharper. He complained afterward, of course. He told you Jason was reckless, stubborn, mouthy, impossible.

You always waited him out.

Eventually, Dick would sigh and add, “He’s good, though.”

And you would say, “I know.”

And Dick would look toward the Cave, where Jason’s laughter sometimes echoed too loudly because he had not yet learned that the manor punished joy by making it sound lonely.

“Bruce doesn’t know what to do with him,” Dick said once.

You pressed fresh gauze to the cut above his eyebrow. “Bruce doesn’t know what to do with anyone.”

Dick smiled faintly. “You do.”

“No. I just know where the bandages are.”

“That’s more than most people.”

The problem was not that Jason had taken Robin. Not exactly. Dick had already chosen Nightwing by then, had already stepped into black and blue and tried to tell himself that leaving the old colors behind meant they no longer had the power to hurt him. The problem was that Bruce had let the name move on more easily than he had let Dick move on. Robin could become someone else. Dick was still expected to remain within reach, still expected to answer when Bruce called, still expected to translate silence into need and orders into love.

It wore at him.

Their fights changed shape. They were no longer only about patrol routes, curfews, training, or whether Dick had disobeyed an order in the field. They became fights about who Dick was allowed to be when he was not standing beside Batman. They became fights about distance, independence, loyalty, and the ugly little question Bruce never asked plainly: if Dick was not Robin, if he was not a boy in need of saving, if he was not Batman’s partner first, then what was he to him?

The shouting was unpleasant, but familiar.

The silence after was worse.

When Dick told you he was leaving, he did it on the roof of the manor.

He had always liked heights when he had something difficult to say. You found him sitting near the edge, knees drawn up, the city spread below him in glittering black and gold. He was older than his parents had ever gotten to see him become. That thought hit you sometimes without warning and made you want to sit down.

“Blüdhaven,” he said.

You lowered yourself beside him. “That’s a city, not an explanation.”

“It needs help.”

“So does Gotham.”

“Gotham has Batman.”

“Gotham has you.”

He looked at you then, and there was something tired beneath the familiar warmth. “That’s the problem.”

You did not answer right away. The wind pulled at your hair. Far below, the grounds of Wayne Manor stretched dark and endless, a place that had sheltered you without ever fully becoming yours.

“When?” you asked.

“Soon.”

“Apartment?”

“Crappy.”

“Dangerous neighborhood?”

“Probably.”

“Elevator?”

He winced. “Sometimes.”

You nodded. “I’ll pack light.”

Dick’s head snapped toward you. “No.”

You raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“I’m not asking you to come with me.”

“Good thing I didn’t wait for you to ask.”

“I’m serious.” He turned fully now, one knee tucked beneath him, hands moving the way they always did when he wanted to reach for you and thought better of it. “This isn’t like before. I’m not a kid telling Bruce I won’t go without you.”

“No,” you said. “You’re an adult trying to make my decisions for me. Very different.”

His mouth tightened. “Blüdhaven is dangerous.”

“So is Gotham.”

“I’ll be doing this alone.”

“No, you won’t.”

He stared at you, and for a second, he was twelve again, sitting on the steps of a trailer with your sleeve twisted in his fist.

“You have a life here,” he said.

You softened despite yourself. “Dick.”

“You do.”

“I have a room here. I have work here. I have Alfred threatening me with tea every time I skip breakfast. I have Bruce pretending not to care whether I’m home before midnight. I have all of that because you brought me here.”

His face shifted.

You reached over and took his hand. His fingers closed around yours automatically. They always had.

“You didn’t leave me behind,” you said. “Don’t insult me by thinking I’d do it to you.”

For once, Dick Grayson had nothing clever to say.

The apartment in Blüdhaven was, as promised, crappy.

The heat worked when it felt appreciated. The shower made a sound like a dying animal. The kitchen cabinets had been painted an optimistic yellow by someone who had clearly given up halfway through. The bedroom situation was awkward for exactly fourteen seconds, because there was one actual bedroom and one narrow living room with a couch that looked personally offended by the idea of sleep.

“You take the room,” Dick said.

You dropped a box of medical supplies on the counter. “We’ll switch.”

“No.”

“Then I’ll take the couch.”

“No.”

“Then we’ll both sleep standing up in the hallway.”

He dragged a hand down his face. “Why are you like this?”

“Circus-raised. Poorly socialized. Deeply charming.”

“You forgot stubborn.”

“I assumed that was implied.”

You took the bedroom. Dick took the couch. Two weeks later, after you found him asleep half on the floor with one leg bent at an angle that made your spine ache in sympathy, you bought a secondhand bed frame and shoved it into the bedroom while he was out. He came home through the window at three in the morning, bleeding from the shoulder and halfway through a complaint about someone named Torque, only to stop dead in the doorway.

“Why are there two beds in here?”

“Because your spine is going to turn into modern art.”

He looked from the beds to you.

You pointed at the bathroom. “Shower. Then stitches.”

“You moved furniture by yourself?”

“I had help.”

“From who?”

“The terrifying woman downstairs who smokes on the fire escape and calls you Pretty Boy.”

Dick blinked. “Mrs. Alvarez?”

“She likes me.”

“Everyone likes you.”

“That is demonstrably untrue. Shower.”

Domesticity arrived without either of you inviting it.

It came in the form of grocery lists stuck to the fridge beneath a pineapple-shaped magnet. It came in arguments over whether cereal counted as dinner. It came in Dick leaving escrima sticks on the coffee table and you threatening to hide them in the freezer. It came in your scrubs in the laundry with his compression shirts, your medical textbooks stacked beside his case files, your shampoo in the shower next to the cheap body wash he bought because it had been on sale.

It came in windows left unlocked.

Nightwing was different from Robin. You saw it before anyone else did, maybe because you had known Dick before the masks. Robin had been defiance in bright colors, a child refusing to let grief be the last thing his parents gave him. Nightwing was something else. A choice. A declaration. A man stepping out of Batman’s shadow and building his own silhouette against the skyline.

Blüdhaven did not teach you that Dick was beautiful. You had learned that lesson years ago and suffered through the review often enough. Blüdhaven only removed the distance.

In Gotham, wanting Dick had been something you could fold away between patrols, galas, and all the other people drawn into his orbit. There had always been space if you needed it: the Cave, the Manor, the long hallways, the easy excuse of being busy. Blüdhaven took all of that away.

It put him across from you at breakfast, sleep-warm and shirtless, reaching around you for coffee with his chin nearly brushing your shoulder. It put his laundry with yours, his bruises under your hands, his laughter in the next room, his body in your peripheral vision until looking away became less of a choice and more of a survival skill.

Survival, unfortunately, required practice.

He came out of the shower with towels low on his hips and water running down the lines of his back. He cooked shirtless when the apartment got too hot, which was both often and completely unnecessary. He stretched in the living room after patrol, all long limbs and controlled strength, while you stared aggressively at insurance paperwork and pretended not to notice the way his muscles moved beneath bruised skin.

Worse, he was affectionate.

Dick had always touched easily, but Blüdhaven sharpened it into a habit. A hand on your lower back when he passed behind you in the kitchen. His chin hooked over your shoulder while you stirred pasta. Fingers tugging gently at the end of your braid when he wanted your attention. His body collapsing beside yours on the couch after patrol, head landing in your lap like he had never once considered the possibility that it might be dangerous for your sanity.

“You smell like smoke,” you told him one night.

“Warehouse fire.”

“You were at the docks.”

“And there was a warehouse fire.”

“Convenient.”

“Not for the warehouse.”

You flicked his forehead. He smiled up at you, eyes half-lidded, hair mussed, one cheekbone blooming purple. Your hand was still in his hair because he had put it there ten minutes earlier and then made a pleased sound when you scratched lightly at his scalp.

Your heart did something foolish.

Dick noticed because he always noticed you, even when he missed the obvious thing sitting between you with a neon sign.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

“You did the thing.”

“What thing?”

“The quiet thing.”

“I’m quiet all the time.”

“No,” he said, and his voice gentled. “You get quiet when something hurts.”

That was the problem with being loved by someone who knew you before language had finished forming around your wounds. Dick had too much access. He knew how to read you by the breath, by the pause, by the angle of your hand on his shoulder. You could lie to anyone else. With him, the lie had to be built around the truth or he would see through it immediately.

“I’m tired,” you said.

That was true enough.

His hand found yours where it rested against the couch. “Go to bed. I’ll clean up.”

“You say that like your version of cleaning up doesn’t involve putting dishes in the sink and hoping they emotionally mature into being washed.”

“I’m giving them room to grow.”

“You’re a menace.”

“Your menace.”

He said it easily. Carelessly.

Your chest ached for the rest of the night.

The years did not stay kind enough to let Jason remain only a complication.

Jason died.

After that, the Manor became a mausoleum of everything no one had said in time. Bruce got quieter. Dick got worse at coming home. Alfred polished silver no one used and set places at tables no one could sit at without feeling the empty chair.

Then Tim came, clever and too young and carrying a camera, a theory, and the terrible conviction that Batman needed Robin to keep from becoming something worse. Bruce let the colors back into the Cave because grief had never stopped him from repeating himself.

By the time Jason came back, he was older than he should have been and crueler than death had any right to make him. 

You and Dick had been in Blüdhaven long enough by then for the apartment to smell like his shampoo, your coffee, and rain off the harbor, long enough for the city to become familiar enough to complain about, long enough for everyone except the two of you to notice what had been sitting in the room for years.

Barbara noticed first, because Barbara Gordon noticed everything and had the decency to pretend she did not until pretending became insulting.

“He’s in love with you,” she said one afternoon, not looking up from the tablet balanced on her knees.

You nearly dropped the mug you were washing. “Who?”

Barbara looked at you over her glasses.

You turned back to the sink. “No, he isn’t.”

“I didn’t say a name.”

“There are a limited number of people you could mean.”

“Mhm.”

“He’s Dick.”

“Yes. Tragically, I’ve met him.”

“He’s like that with everyone.”

Barbara’s expression softened, which was worse than teasing. “No, he performs with everyone.” A pause, brief enough to be mercy. “Some of us learn that the hard way. He rests with you.”

You hated that enough to remember it.

Jason noticed with less grace.

He was in Blüdhaven for reasons he refused to explain, which meant they were either criminal, personal, or both. You found out only because he came through the apartment window just after midnight, bleeding from the eyebrow and carrying a red helmet under one arm, as if proximity had made your kitchen an acceptable substitute for a med bay.

“No,” you said from the kitchen table.

Jason paused with one leg inside. “Wow. Rude.”

“The Cave has med kits.”

“The Cave has Bruce.” 

“You have safehouses.”

“Safehouses don’t have you.”

You blinked.

Jason looked annoyed that he had said it. “And the Cave has Alfred.”

“Alfred knows where the bandages are.”

“Alfred asks questions.”

“And I don’t?”

Jason swung the rest of the way inside and dropped into the chair across from you. “You ask meaner questions, but you don’t make me answer them.”

You stood slowly, already reaching for the kit under the sink. “That better not be arterial.”

“Do I look like I’d climb six floors with arterial bleeding?”

“You look like you’d do it out of spite.”

“Fair.”

You pulled the kit onto the table and looked at him properly. “Why me, Jason?”

His grin thinned into something almost honest. “Because you knew me before the helmet.”

You went still.

Jason looked away first, his jaw working once, as if he regretted saying even that much. “Before I died too,” he added, like he could make the words casual by saying them badly. “And you don’t do the thing.”

“What thing?”

Jason’s mouth tightened. “Look at me like you’re trying to figure out which parts came back wrong.”

For a moment, the kitchen went quiet.

Then he ruined it on purpose. “Also,” he added, “you have the good tape.”

You let him have the deflection because he had already given you more than he meant to. “It’s normal medical tape.”

“Yeah, but you don’t make it feel like a leash.”

That one landed closer to the bone than you expected.

“Jason.”

“What? I said you had good tape.”

You let the lie stand. “You came here because you’re bleeding on my floor.”

“It can be two things.”

You snapped on gloves and stepped between his knees, tilting his chin toward the light. 

Dick was still on patrol, and Jason had clearly counted on that too. Every masked man in your life had the self-preservation instincts of a moth near a porch light, but Jason was the only one petty enough to schedule his bleeding around Dick’s absence.

Jason watched you clean the cut for about thirty seconds before saying, “So, are you and Boy Wonder still doing the world’s saddest foreplay routine?”

You pressed gauze harder than necessary against his eyebrow.

“Ow.”

“Hold still.”

“Hit a nerve?”

“I’m holding antiseptic and you’re bleeding above the eye. Choose your next words carefully.”

Jason grinned. “That a yes?”

“It’s a no.”

“Sure. That’s why he calls you when he’s bleeding, smiles like an idiot when you yell at him, and keeps your favorite cereal on the top shelf where he thinks I won’t find it.”

“You went through my cabinets?”

“It was reconnaissance.”

“It was creepy.”

“It was educational.” His eyes flicked toward the window, then back to you. “He know?”

You did not pretend not to understand. Jason would only get more annoying. “There’s nothing to know.”

“Oh, this is worse than I thought.”

You taped gauze over the cut. “There. Try not to get punched in the same place for at least six hours.”

Jason stood, still grinning, and picked up his helmet. “You know, when he figures it out, he’s gonna be unbearable.”

“He’s already unbearable.”

“Yeah, but he’ll be happy unbearable. That’s worse.”

Tim noticed within three minutes of his first visit and said nothing, which was how you knew he was Bruce’s son in all the most unsettling ways.

Alfred noticed before anyone, probably before there was anything to notice, and handled it by sending care packages addressed to both of you with enough tea, suture thread, homemade biscuits, and pointed silence to qualify as emotional warfare.

Dick noticed nothing.

Or he noticed and chose not to name it.

There were women. Of course there were women. Dick Grayson did not set out to collect devotion, but he drew it the way bright things drew hands. You watched him date because you had watched him do everything. You gave opinions on shirts, traded shifts at the clinic when his dinner plans ran late, listened when things ended, and pretended not to feel relieved when they did.

It was not fair to resent people for wanting him.

You wanted him too.

That was the thing you folded carefully and hid beneath the guise of being useful. You were good at being useful. Useful had kept you fed as a child. Useful had earned you a place in spaces where no paperwork proved you belonged. Useful gave your hands something to do when Dick came home bleeding and your heart tried to climb out of your throat.

Then he came home one night with lipstick still smudged at the corner of his mouth.

It was a stupid thing to break you.

Not the bruises, not the danger, not the years of him smiling at other people. A faint red stain near his lower lip, half-wiped and still unmistakable, where someone else’s mouth had been. He was talking while he climbed through the window, breathless from patrol or maybe from whatever had happened after patrol, and you stood by the counter with a roll of bandages in your hand, staring like the world had narrowed to the shape of his mouth.

“Hey,” he said, slowing. “You okay?”

You looked up. “Fine.”

His brow furrowed. “You’re doing the thing again.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“Dick.”

“What happened?”

You laughed once, softly, and hated the sound. “Nothing happened.”

He stepped closer. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t want to.”

That stopped him more effectively than shouting would have. You rarely refused him directly. Not because you could not, but because the two of you had built your lives on being reachable to each other. Even when you fought, even when you were angry, there was always a door left open somewhere.

Dick looked at you as if he had just heard one close.

“Okay,” he said carefully. “That’s okay.”

It was not okay. You could see him trying to make it okay because he loved you as a friend, because he was kind, because he had no idea that his kindness was another hand around your throat.

You set the bandages down. “I think I should move out.”

The apartment went quiet.

Dick stared at you.

For a long second, he did not seem to understand the words. Then his face changed so quickly it hurt to watch.

“What?”

“I’ve been thinking about it.”

“No, you haven’t.”

Your temper sparked because he was right. “You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You don’t get to decide what I’ve been thinking.”

“I know when you’re lying to me.”

“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.”

It was cruel. You knew it as soon as you said it, but you were tired and jealous and ashamed, and the lipstick on his face was still there, small and red and damning.

Dick flinched.

You wanted to take it back. You wanted to walk into his arms. You wanted to be ten years old again, small enough to crawl into Mary Grayson’s lap and let someone else decide what happened next.

Instead, you folded your arms over your chest.

Dick’s voice dropped. “Do you want to leave?”

No.

The answer filled your mouth so completely you had to swallow around it.

“I think it would be better,” you said.

“For who?”

“For both of us.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Dick.”

“No.” His own anger showed then, not loud but bright enough to light his eyes. “Don’t do that. Don’t use the voice you use when you’re trying to get me to hold still for stitches.”

“I am trying to have a conversation.”

“You’re trying to leave without telling me why.”

“Because you don’t need me here forever.”

His mouth parted slightly.

The words kept coming because once you started bleeding, you had never known how to stop neatly.

“You don’t. You needed me when we were kids, and maybe you needed me when you left Bruce, but you have a life here now. You’re Nightwing. You have friends, and teams, and women who don’t spend their nights cataloging your injuries like that counts as intimacy.”

His expression shifted. Something in it sharpened with painful understanding.

You looked away too late.

“Oh,” he said.

You closed your eyes. “Don’t.”

He took one step closer. “Is that what this is?”

“No.”

“You’re upset because I kissed someone?”

“No.”

“No?”

You laughed once, softly and miserably. “I’m upset because you came home with her still on your mouth and asked me what was wrong.”

“Look at me.”

“No.”

“Please.”

That was worse. Dick rarely said “please” like that, careful and quiet, as if he knew he was asking for something you might not be ready to give.

You looked at him.

The red smear on his face was still there. His hair was windblown. There was a bruise forming beneath his jaw and a scratch near his temple. He was too familiar. Too beautiful. Too much the center of the life you had built around him without meaning to.

His voice softened. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

You laughed again, and this time it nearly broke. “Tell you what, Dick? That I get jealous when you date? That I can’t sleep until you come home? That sometimes you touch my back in the kitchen and I think about it for the rest of the day like I’m sixteen and pathetic? What exactly was I supposed to say?”

He stared at you as if you had put your hand through his chest and closed your fingers around his heart.

You wiped at your face angrily, even though you had not realized you were crying. “You’re my best friend.”

“I know.”

“You’re my family.”

“I know.”

“You’re the only permanent thing I’ve ever had.”

His face crumpled for half a second before he caught it. “I know.”

“So no, I didn’t tell you. Because wanting you like this feels selfish and dangerous, and I don’t know what happens to me if I ruin us.”

Dick moved then.

Not fast, not like Nightwing, not with the clean precision of a body trained for impact. He crossed the space between you carefully, as if approaching something wounded, and stopped close enough that you could see the unsteady rise of his chest.

“You think you could ruin us by loving me?”

The words hit so directly that you almost stepped back.

“You don’t have to say it like that.”

“How else am I supposed to say it?”

“Like it isn’t easy.”

“It’s not easy,” he said. “It’s just true.”

You went still.

Dick lifted his hand, then hesitated. That hesitation undid you more than the touch would have. He was asking. After years of casual closeness, after a lifetime of knowing your body in safe, familiar ways, he was asking permission to cross a line neither of you could uncross.

You nodded once.

His fingers touched your cheek.

“I didn’t know how to tell you either,” he said.

Your breath caught. “What?”

He smiled then, but it was a wrecked thing. “Yeah.”

“No.”

“Yeah.”

“Dick.”

“I know.” His thumb brushed beneath your eye. “I know, okay? I know I should’ve said something. I know I’m an idiot.”

“You dated other people.”

“I tried dating other people.”

“That is not better.”

“No,” he admitted. “It’s not. But every time I thought about telling you, I kept seeing you looking at me like I’d taken the only safe thing we had and made it complicated.”

“It is complicated.”

“Everything about us has always been complicated.”

You wanted to argue. You wanted to make him work for it. You wanted to hold on to the thin, miserable shield you had built out of practicality and fear.

Instead, you leaned into his hand.

Dick inhaled like it hurt.

“I don’t know when it changed,” he said quietly. “Maybe it didn’t. Maybe loving you was always there, and I just kept giving it different names because I was scared of wanting the one thing I couldn’t bear to lose.”

Your throat tightened.

“That’s not fair,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“You don’t get to say things like that with another woman’s lipstick on your lips.”

His eyes widened. For one absurd second, he looked almost panicked. Then he dragged the back of his hand over his lips and saw the red smear there.

“It was a goodbye kiss,” he said quickly. “After patrol. I ended it.”

“That is not better.”

“No,” he admitted. “It’s not. But she asked if there was someone else, and I said your name before I could think.”

Oh.

Your heart stumbled so hard it felt like falling.

“I ended it before I knew you felt this way,” he said. “I came home because I couldn’t keep pretending.”

Dick stepped closer, his hand sliding from your cheek to the side of your neck. “I came home to tell you.”

“You came home through the window.”

“I was nervous.”

“You’re Nightwing.”

“I’m still nervous.”

“You flirt with everyone.”

“Not like this.”

The room seemed smaller than it had been a few minutes ago. Warmer. The yellow cabinets, the stacked dishes, the half-open med kit on the counter, the city noise beyond the window. All the ordinary pieces of the life you had built together held their breath.

Dick’s eyes dropped to your mouth.

Your pulse jumped.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked.

You had imagined it before. Of course you had. Quietly, guiltily, in the dark, where wanting him could not hurt anyone but you. You had imagined smooth confidence, cinematic timing, some perfect version of yourself who knew exactly where to put her hands.

In reality, your voice shook.

“If you don’t, I’m going to be really embarrassed.”

Dick laughed, soft and breathless, and kissed you.

It was gentle for about two seconds.

Then your hand fisted in the front of his suit, and his restraint broke with a sound that went straight through you. He kissed like he had been starving for years. Like every almost had been stored somewhere under his skin and was now burning its way out. His mouth opened against yours, warm and desperate, and you made a helpless sound when his hand slid to your lower back and pulled you flush against him.

He froze instantly.

You almost cursed.

“Is this okay?” he asked, voice rough.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Dick, I swear to God—”

He kissed you again before you could finish, smiling into it, and you hated how much you loved that you could feel the smile. Your hands slid over the armored lines of his suit, the same ones you had repaired so many times from the outside, and he shivered as if this were the first time you had ever touched him at all. 

When your fingers slid beneath the collar, his eyes went half-lidded, all that careful restraint thinning under your hands.

“You touch me all the time,” he murmured against your mouth. “Why does it feel different?”

“Because this time we’re allowed to want more.”

His eyes went dark.

The next kiss was deeper, slower, less frantic, and somehow more devastating. Dick backed you toward the counter until your hips hit the edge, then lifted you onto it with an ease that made heat pool low in your stomach. He stepped between your knees, and the shape of him there, broad and warm and familiar in an entirely unfamiliar way, nearly stole your breath.

You touched his face.

He turned his head and kissed your palm.

It was so tender that it hurt.

“Don’t be sweet right now,” you whispered.

His mouth curved. “Bossy.”

“I mean it. I’ll cry.”

“Okay.” He kissed the inside of your wrist. “I won’t be sweet.”

“You’re being sweet.”

“I’m trying to stop.”

“You’re bad at it.”

“I’ve had complaints.”

You pulled him back by the collar and kissed him until the teasing dissolved. His hands gripped your thighs, thumbs pressing slow circles through the fabric of your sleep shorts. You had worn them without thinking, one of his T-shirts and shorts, nothing meant to seduce anyone, but Dick looked at you like he was watching a miracle unfold in bad apartment lighting.

His gaze dragged down your body and returned to your face with visible effort.

“You’re killing me,” he said.

You laughed unsteadily. “I’m wearing old pajamas.”

“I know.”

“You’ve seen me in these a hundred times.”

“I know.”

“Dick.”

He leaned in, mouth brushing your jaw. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve come home and seen you half-asleep in my shirts, or yelling at me with medical tape stuck to your hand, and had to remind myself not to do exactly this?”

His lips touched the side of your neck.

Your fingers tightened in his hair.

“Exactly what?”

He kissed beneath your ear. “Put my hands on you.”

Another kiss, lower.

“Take you apart.”

Your breath left you.

“Make you say my name like you’re not trying to hide it.”

“Dick.”

His grip flexed on your thighs. “Yeah. Like that.”

The room tilted. You had patched bullet grazes with steadier hands than you had now. Dick kissed down your throat with unbearable patience, and every place his mouth touched seemed to wake years of wanting beneath your skin. When his fingers slipped under the hem of your shirt, he paused again.

You pulled back enough to look at him. “I’ll tell you if I want to stop.”

His eyes searched yours. Whatever he saw there made his shoulders loosen.

“Okay.”

“And you’ll tell me.”

He nodded. “I’ll tell you.”

“Good.”

Then you lifted your arms.

Dick took your shirt off like he was trying to memorize the act. His eyes dropped, and for one vulnerable second, you almost crossed your arms over your chest. He caught the motion before you completed it, not by grabbing you, but by leaning down and pressing his mouth to the spot just above your heart.

Your hand settled in his hair.

“Beautiful,” he said against your skin.

You closed your eyes. “That sounds sweet.”

“Then I’m bad at following instructions.”

His mouth moved lower, and your laugh turned into a gasp.

Dick Grayson, as it turned out, applied the same focus to taking you apart that he applied to everything else he truly cared about. He learned quickly. Too quickly. His mouth found your breast, tongue circling your nipple before he sucked gently, and pleasure sparked so sharply through you that your knees tightened around his hips.

He groaned.

That sound changed something in you.

You reached for the closures of his suit with hands that only shook a little, and he helped you because he knew the damn thing better than you did, peeling it down from his shoulders and letting it gather at his waist. You had seen him shirtless more times than you could count. Injured. Tired. Fresh from the shower. Half-asleep at the stove. This was different because you were allowed to look, and because he was looking back.

There were bruises on him. There were always bruises.

You touched one near his ribs, and the old instinct rose immediately. “This is new.”

Dick looked down. “Pipe.”

“Pipe?”

“Bad guy had a pipe.”

“Descriptive.”

“I was distracted.”

“By the pipe?”

“By wanting to come home to you.”

Your fingers stilled.

He covered your hand with his. “Too sweet?”

“Dangerously.”

His smile softened, then faded when you leaned forward and kissed the bruise with featherlight care. His breathing changed. You kissed another mark, then another, mapping the evidence of violence with your mouth until his hand slid into your hair and held there without pushing.

“You’ve been doing this for years,” he said quietly.

“What?”

“Putting me back together.”

You looked up at him. “You always came back in pieces.”

“I always come back to you.”

The words settled between you, heavy and certain.

Then you kissed him again because there were some truths too large to answer any other way.

He carried you to the bedroom.

You were grateful for that, because your legs had become theoretical somewhere between the counter and his mouth on your neck. He lay you down on the bed you had forced him to share the room with, one knee sinking into the mattress beside your hip. For a second, you both looked at the other bed across the narrow space and laughed.

“This room is ridiculous,” you said.

“Our whole life is ridiculous.”

“You’re still half in the suit.”

“That seems fixable.”

It was. Barely. There was a deeply ungraceful moment involving one boot, a curse, and you nearly getting hit in the shin by a knee pad, but then Dick was in his briefs above you, laughing into your shoulder, and the last of your fear loosened its grip.

This was still Dick.

The man you wanted, yes, but also the boy who had stolen sugared almonds with you. The teenager who had bled on your bedspread. The man who forgot to buy dish soap and remembered the anniversary of every terrible thing without you having to say it aloud.

He kissed your shoulder. “Hi.”

You turned your face toward him. “Hi.”

“You still with me?”

“Unfortunately.”

He grinned. “There she is.”

You pushed at his chest, and he caught your hand, kissing your knuckles before pinning it gently beside your head. The shift was subtle, but your body noticed. Heat curled through you as he lowered himself over you, not resting his full weight, just enough to make you feel surrounded.

“You like that?” he asked.

Your face warmed.

His expression changed, not smug exactly, but attentive. Interested. “Oh.”

“Don’t sound so pleased.”

“I’m learning.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“I’ve also had complaints about that.”

You rolled your hips up, just slightly, and his words cut off.

That was satisfying.

Dick looked down at you, eyes dark and mouth parted, and then his hand slid down your body with purpose. Over your ribs, your waist, the soft give of your stomach, stopping at the waistband of your shorts.

He waited.

Your voice came out quieter than you intended. “Yes.”

He kissed you as he pulled them down, and you were glad for it because it gave you something to do with the sudden rush of vulnerability. His hand smoothed over your thigh. He murmured something against your mouth, not quite words, maybe your name, maybe a prayer, and then his fingers slipped between your legs.

You both went still.

You, because the first careful stroke through your wetness made your whole body tighten.

Dick because he felt it.

“Fuck,” he breathed.

You tried to laugh. It came out ruined. “Observant.”

“You’re wet.”

“Again. Observant.”

“For me?”

You opened your eyes. “Who else is in the room, Grayson?”

The look he gave you then was not sweet at all.

He lowered himself down your body, kissing a path over your stomach, your hip, the inside of your thigh. Your breath caught when he settled between your legs, broad shoulders spreading them wider. He looked up at you from there, hair falling over his forehead, mouth kiss-swollen, eyes so blue and intent that you nearly lost your nerve.

“We don’t have to,” he said.

“I know.”

“I want to.”

“I know.”

His hands held your thighs, thumbs stroking once. “Tell me I can.”

The words landed low and hot.

“You can.”

Dick kissed the inside of your thigh.

Then his mouth was on you.

Your head fell back against the pillow. It had been years of yearning, years of telling yourself that the ache was survivable because it had to be, and none of it prepared you for the reality of Dick between your legs, licking into you with a soft groan like he was the one being undone. His tongue moved slowly at first, exploratory, learning what made your breath hitch and your fingers twist in the sheets. Then he found your clit, and your hips jerked.

He made a pleased sound that vibrated through you.

“Dick.”

He looked up without stopping.

The sight of his blue eyes so dilated you could barely see the pretty color nearly finished you on its own.

One of your hands flew to his hair, and he leaned into the grip, eyes fluttering for half a second before his focus sharpened again. He slipped one hand from your thigh and pressed a finger inside you, careful and slow, watching your face as your mouth fell open.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He added his mouth again, and language became difficult.

Dick had always been a performer, but this was not performance. This was attention. This was devotion turned physical. He listened to every breath, every movement, every broken sound you tried to swallow. When he curled his finger and found the place that made your back arch, he did it again, then again, mouth working over your clit until pleasure gathered fast and bright beneath your skin.

You tugged his hair. “I’m close.”

His eyes lifted to yours.

He did not stop.

The orgasm broke over you hard enough to shock you, your body tightening around his finger as you gasped his name. He held you through it, mouth gentling but not leaving, drawing out the aftershocks until you had to push weakly at his shoulder.

He climbed back up your body with a look on his face that could have ruined your life in any context.

“You look proud of yourself,” you managed.

“I’m trying to be humble.”

“You’re failing.”

“I know.”

You kissed him and tasted yourself on his mouth, which should have embarrassed you more than it did. Instead, it made you want him with a sudden, aching intensity that left no room for fear.

Your hand slid down his stomach.

Dick’s breath caught when you palmed him through his briefs. He was hard, hot and heavy against your hand, and his hips pressed forward before he caught himself.

“Sorry,” he said roughly.

You kissed his jaw. “Don’t be.”

His forehead dropped to your shoulder. “I’m trying very hard to be good.”

Something tender and wicked moved through you.

“You are good.”

He shuddered.

“Oh,” you whispered. “You like that.”

He laughed into your skin, embarrassed and turned on and so painfully Dick that your heart squeezed. “Shut up.”

“You do.”

“I’m not above begging.”

Heat flooded you. “That was not the deterrent you thought it was.”

He lifted his head, and the humor between you stretched thin under the wanting. You pushed his briefs down as far as you could reach, and he finished the job with shaking hands. When he settled between your thighs again, bare this time, the feel of him against you stole the teasing from both of your mouths.

Dick kissed you once. Then again.

“We should use a condom,” he said, sounding like the words had physically pained him.

“I have an IUD.”

His eyes closed. “That information is going to kill me.”

“We can still use one.”

“No, I mean yes, if you want, obviously, but if you’re saying—”

“I’m saying I want to feel you.”

He made a sound you had never heard from him before.

Your hands slid up his back. “Is that okay?”

He looked at you, and all the humor, all the heat, all the years of almost seemed to settle into something frighteningly honest.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s okay.”

He reached between you, guiding himself against you, and paused with the head of his cock just barely pressing inside. Your fingers dug into his shoulders. He watched your face, jaw tight, holding himself back so carefully that you could feel the tremor in his arms.

“Breathe,” he whispered.

You laughed unsteadily. “That’s usually my line.”

“I learned from the best.”

Then he pushed in.

Slowly. Carefully. Inch by inch until the stretch of him filled every thought you had. Your eyes burned, not from pain exactly, though there was an edge of that, but from the sheer intimacy of it. Dick above you, inside you, his forehead pressed to yours, his breath shaking as badly as yours.

He stopped when his hips met yours.

For a moment, neither of you moved.

The city sounded distant beyond the window. A siren somewhere. A car passing below. The old pipes complaining in the walls. Ordinary things continuing while your whole life rearranged itself around the feeling of him buried inside you.

Dick’s voice was rough. “Tell me you’re okay.”

You turned your head and kissed his wrist where his hand braced beside you. “I’m okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He moved then, a slow drag out and back in that made your nails scrape down his back. His control faltered. You felt it in the way his hips stuttered, in the low sound he pressed into your neck.

“Sorry,” he gasped.

“If you apologize one more time, I’m kicking you out of bed.”

He laughed breathlessly. “That would be awkward.”

“You’re inside me. Everything is awkward.”

“Not everything.”

Then he moved again, and you had to concede the point.

It did not stay slow for long. Maybe it could not have, not with years behind it, not with both of you already stripped raw by confession before anyone took off their clothes. Dick found a rhythm that made your body arch into his, each thrust deep and deliberate, his mouth moving over every part of you he could reach. Your shoulder. Your throat. Your jaw. The corner of your mouth when you turned your face away because the pleasure was too much.

“No,” he murmured. “Don’t hide.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.” He kissed you, hips rolling into yours until your breath broke. “I want to hear you.”

You moaned before you could stop yourself.

Dick’s composure cracked.

“God,” he said, and then he was fucking you harder, one hand sliding beneath your thigh to hitch it higher against his hip. The new angle made you cry out, and he cursed, pressing his forehead into the pillow beside your head.

“Again,” he said.

You were not sure whether he meant the sound or the movement. It did not matter. You gave him both.

The second orgasm built slower than the first, deeper, tied to the drag of him inside you and the weight of his body over yours. You could feel him losing control by degrees, his breathing rough, his praise turning fragmented against your skin.

“Good,” he murmured. “You feel so good. You’re so good for me. Wanted this so long, you have no idea.”

Your body clenched around him.

His hips stuttered. “Fuck. Do that again.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I don’t care. Do it again. Please.”

You laughed, and the laugh became a moan when he slipped a hand between you and found your clit. The pleasure sharpened instantly, almost too much, and you grabbed his wrist.

“Dick.”

“I’ve got you.”

“You always say that.”

“I always mean it.”

That was what undid you.

You came with his name in your mouth, your body tightening around him as he thrust through it, face buried in your neck. He lasted another few seconds, and then he groaned, deep and helpless, and came inside you, his whole body shuddering with the force of it.

Afterward, he did not move for a long time.

You did not ask him to.

His weight was warm and grounding, his heartbeat racing against yours. Your fingers drifted up and down his spine, feeling the old scars, the new bruises, the sweat cooling on his skin. Eventually, he lifted his head enough to look at you.

His hair was a disaster. His eyes were soft.

Your heart hurt.

“Hi,” he said again, softer this time.

You smiled. “You keep saying that.”

“I keep finding you here.”

The words were quiet enough to pass for teasing if you let them.

You did not.

“I’m here,” you said.

His expression shifted. He kissed you once, gentle and lingering, then carefully eased out of you. You hissed softly, and he immediately looked alarmed.

“I’m okay,” you said.

“I’ll get a washcloth.”

“Dick.”

“And water.”

“Dick.”

“And maybe—”

You caught his hand before he could launch himself into post-sex triage like a man possessed. “In a minute.”

He looked down at you, then at your joined hands.

Some of the panic faded.

He lay beside you instead, gathering you in carefully, as if tenderness could bruise if handled incorrectly. You tucked your face against his chest. His hand moved over your hair, slow and reverent.

The other bed sat across the room, empty and ridiculous.

You laughed softly.

“What?” he asked.

“We should just get a bigger bed.”

His chest shook beneath your cheek. “Mrs. Alvarez will be thrilled.”

“She’ll say she knew this would happen.”

“She did know this would happen.”

“Everyone knew this would happen.”

Dick kissed the top of your head, still laughing. “Everyone, apparently, except us.”

You pinched his side. He yelped, then caught your hand and held it against his heart.

Quiet settled again.

Not the manor’s quiet. Not the stunned silence of a circus tent after tragedy. This quiet was smaller. Warmer. Chosen.

Dick’s fingers traced idle shapes over your wrist. “Were you really going to leave?”

You closed your eyes.

“No.”

His breath left him slowly.

“I thought about it,” you admitted. “For maybe five horrible minutes. I thought if I left first, then at least I’d be choosing it.”

His arm tightened around you.

“I don’t want to be another thing you feel responsible for,” you said.

“You’re not.”

“I know you say that.”

“No.” He shifted, making you look at him. “Listen to me. You are not here because I can’t survive without you.”

Your throat tightened despite yourself.

Dick brushed his thumb over your cheek. “I probably could. I’d be worse at it. Miserable. Badly fed. Much more concussed.”

“Obviously.”

“But I don’t love you because I need a medic. I don’t love you because you came with me from the circus, or because you know what it was like before, or because you stayed.”

You swallowed. “Then why?”

He smiled, small and certain.

“Because it’s you.”

The answer was too simple for how much it hurt.

You pressed your face into his chest before he could see everything it did to you. He held you through it anyway, because of course he did.

Dick had always caught you, even when neither of you knew who was falling.

Much later, after he had finally gotten the washcloth and water and fussed enough to satisfy whatever part of him needed to be useful, you ended up tangled together beneath the sheets. Your leg was hooked over his. His hand rested on your hip. The apartment was cooling around you, the city beyond the window still restless, still dangerous, still waiting.

Nothing was fixed.

Bruce would be insufferable in his silence. Alfred would know before anyone told him. Barbara would say something devastatingly mild. Jason would never let either of you live it down. Blüdhaven would still bruise Dick and send him home bleeding. You would still worry. He would still leap before looking. The past would still be there, stitched into both of you, old grief under new skin.

When you opened your eyes, Dick was looking at you like he had, after everything, still ended up exactly where he was supposed to be.

“You know,” he said, voice rough with exhaustion and mischief, “technically, I refused to leave you behind first.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Are you trying to claim credit for our entire relationship?”

“I’m just saying, I had good instincts when I refused to leave without you.”

“You were grieving and concussed.”

“Emotionally concussed, maybe.”

“You also thought your Robin costume was subtle.”

“It was iconic.”

“It was traffic-light cosplay.”

He gasped. “Take that back.”

“No.”

“You wound me.”

“I know how to patch you up.”

His smile softened until the joke became something else. He leaned in and kissed you, slow and sleepy and certain.

When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours.

“You’re my home,” he whispered.

You had been a child left at the edge of a circus with no name anyone could give you. You had been a girl in the sawdust, holding on to a boy whose grief matched yours closely enough to cut. You had been a shadow in Wayne Manor, a pair of hands in the Cave, a woman in a cramped Blüdhaven apartment pretending that waiting was not another word for love.

You had followed Dick Grayson through every version of himself.

Robin. Nightwing. Best friend. Roommate. The boy who refused to leave you. The man who came back to you.

You kissed him once, softly, and felt him breathe you in.

“Then stop leaving your suit on the bathroom floor,” you said.

Dick laughed, bright and helpless, and pulled you closer.

A pause. Then Hood, sounding annoyed in a way that meant he had probably practiced the line and hated that you had ruined it. “I have an infiltration job.”

“You need me to marry you for an infiltration job.”

“Fake marry me.”

“Oh, good. For a second there, I thought you were being impulsive.”

“Can you be serious for ten seconds?”

“I can. I just usually charge extra.”

A low sound came through the comm, almost a laugh, before he caught it and killed it. Red Hood had a habit of doing that, letting amusement slip halfway into his voice before remembering he was supposed to be terrifying. The criminals of Gotham still believed in the terrifying part. You believed in it too, mostly. You had seen him put a man’s head through drywall for threatening a kid. You had seen him walk through gunfire like pain was an inconvenience rather than a warning. Red Hood was not soft.

But he was funny when he forgot not to be.

That had been one of your first problems with him.

The second had been the way he trusted you at his back.

You leaned against the sink and pressed a clean cloth to your ribs. “What’s the job?”

“Masquerade tomorrow night. Private estate outside Bristol. Guest list is a who’s who of Gotham’s worst-dressed with too much money. Arms brokers, corrupt judges, traffickers, one Intergang accountant who’s either brave or stupid, and a host who calls himself Mr. Argent because apparently Gotham finally ran out of normal criminal names.”

“Argent,” you repeated. “Subtle.”

“He’s auctioning off a ledger.”

“You called me at two in the morning because of bookkeeping?”

“It’s a buyer list. Names, routes, shell companies, offshore accounts. Enough to gut a weapons pipeline running through the East End, the Narrows, and half of Blüdhaven.” Hood’s voice changed there, the humor thinning out into something harder. “Kids have been turning up with military-grade rifles in their backpacks because these assholes are selling like they’re moving party favors. I want the ledger.”

That sobered you fast.

You pulled the cloth away from your side and looked down. The bleeding had slowed. Good enough.

“What’s the catch?” you asked.

“No solo guests.”

You blinked. “Sorry?”

“The invitation admits married pairs only. Spouses. No exceptions. They verify rings at the door, cross-check the aliases, then keep paired guests together for most of the night. Argent’s paranoid about undercover cops and lone operatives. Thinks people are less likely to make a move if their partner can be used against them.”

“That is either deeply stupid or unfortunately insightful.”

“Both.”

“And you thought of me.”

The pause on the other end went a fraction too long.

You knew Red Hood in pieces, because that was how everyone knew each other in Gotham. You knew the red helmet, the leather jacket, the guns he carried like extensions of his hands. You knew the brutal efficiency of him in a fight, the dry commentary over comms, the way he always put himself between civilians and bullets before anyone could accuse him of caring. You knew Arsenal liked him enough to insult him creatively, Nightwing worried about him with the exhausted fondness of an older brother, and Oracle treated him like a migraine she would still guide home through a burning building.

You did not know his name.

He did not know yours.

That had always been safer.

“Yeah,” Hood said finally. “I thought of you.”

Your fingers tightened around the comm.

Outside the bathroom, your apartment was dark except for the neon wash bleeding through the blinds. Moxie had been a joke once. A stupid little word spat by men who thought it made you sound small, cute, harmless. You had been new to Gotham then, fresh from Star City with one duffel bag, two batons, seven knives, and Roy Harper’s warning that Gotham had teeth. You had kept the name because it annoyed people. Then, you had made it expensive to laugh at.

Red Hood had never laughed.

The first time you worked together, he had found you pinned behind a half-toppled bar with four rounds left, a dislocated shoulder, and a mouth still running badly enough to make three smugglers hesitate before rushing you. He had dropped through the skylight like divine punishment with a gun in each hand and said, “You always this chatty when you’re bleeding?”

You had said, “Only when I’m bored.”

He had trusted you after that. Slowly. In the grudging, suspicious way Gotham vigilantes trusted anyone, but it had counted. You had traded intel, patched wounds, covered escapes, and spent too many dawns sitting on rooftops while the city turned bruised and gold beneath you. Friendship had crept in under the armor. Attraction had followed like a bad idea wearing boots.

Neither of you had said anything.

“So,” you said, because your silence had begun to feel too revealing, “you need a wife.”

“I need a partner.”

“But the invitation says married pairs.”

“Yes.”

“Which makes me your wife.”

“Fake wife.”

“Still hearing wife.”

“Moxie.”

You smiled despite yourself. He only used that tone when he was trying not to react, which made it one of your favorites. “What, no other options? Arsenal busy?”

“He offered.”

“He offered to be your wife?”

“He offered to wear white and make it everyone’s problem.”

You laughed, and this time Hood did not quite hide the answering warmth in his voice.

“Nightwing?” you asked.

“Would spend the whole night making heart eyes at the security cameras so Oracle could laugh at me.”

“She’ll laugh at you anyway.”

“Probably.”

“You could ask one of the Bats.”

“I’m asking you.”

The room seemed to quiet around that.

You looked at yourself in the mirror. The mask was off, leaving only the tired face beneath it. A fading bruise shadowed your jaw. Rain had flattened your hair against your cheek. You did not look like anyone’s wife. You looked like someone who had kicked a gunman down a stairwell forty minutes earlier and still had glass dust in one sleeve.

“You trust me that much?” you asked, softer than you meant to.

Hood did not answer immediately. When he did, the modulator could not quite strip the honesty out of his voice.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

The stupid thing was, you trusted him too.

“All right,” you said. “Send me the details.”

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow at nine.”

You straightened. “Absolutely not.”

“It’s a married couple event. We have to arrive together.”

“You can meet me two blocks out like a normal person.”

“A normal fake husband.”

“You’re enjoying this too much already.”

“You’re the one who keeps saying husband.”

“You started this call with a proposal.”

“It was a mission brief.”

“It was a cry for help.”

This time, he did laugh, low and brief and rough around the edges. It slipped under your skin before you could stop it.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Nine. Formal. Mask. Minimal weapons.”

“Define minimal.”

“Enough to keep you alive. Not enough to start a war before dessert.”

“You take all the romance out of organized crime.”

“Wear something you can run in.”

“Wear something you can bleed on.”

“Always do.”

The line clicked off.

You stood there for a moment with the comm in your palm and rain tapping against the glass. Then you looked down at your half-bandaged ribs and sighed.

“Fake married,” you told your reflection.

By the next night, you had decided that if Gotham criminals insisted on being dramatic, you were at least going to make them regret inviting you to be attractive.

The dress was black because subtlety had its limits. It skimmed close where it needed to, moved where it had to, and hid more than one blade in the places people politely pretended not to look. The slit up one side gave your thigh holster room. The structured bodice concealed flexible armor. Your shoes had been modified by a woman in Blüdhaven who believed all formalwear should survive a rooftop chase and at least one attempted kidnapping.

Your mask was matte black, simple and sharp, covering enough of your face to preserve the fiction without interfering with your sightlines. It lacked the tactical comfort of your usual mask. It also made you feel less like Moxie and more like someone who had been invited into a room specifically designed to test whether she could lie prettily while armed.

You arrived two blocks from the estate at 8:56.

Red Hood was already there. He stood beside a sleek black car under the cover of an old stone archway, rain misting silver around him. He was not wearing the helmet. That was the first problem. The second was the suit.

You had seen Red Hood in body armor, leather, Kevlar, blood, soot, and once an ugly green hoodie he had stolen from a safehouse after taking a knife to the shoulder. You had never seen him in a black suit tailored so cleanly that it looked as if it had been built around the breadth of him. His shirt was dark red, open at the throat instead of strangled by a tie, and his masquerade mask covered the upper half of his face in black and oxblood leather. A white streak cut through his dark hair, which had been pushed back like he had fought it into submission and lost only once.

His mouth was visible.

That was unfair.

You stopped under the archway.

He looked up from adjusting his cuff and went still.

The rain filled the silence between you.

You lifted a brow behind your mask. “Problem?”

“No,” he said.

His voice was not modulated tonight. It was lower than you expected, rougher, human in a way that made something in your stomach tighten. You knew Red Hood’s voice through static and armor. You knew the shape of his threats, the cadence of his sarcasm, the way he said your name when he was warning you not to do something dangerous you were absolutely about to do.

This was different.

This was close enough to touch.

“You look…” He stopped, jaw working once. “You clean up nice, Mox.”

The nickname landed differently without the helmet.

You gave him a slow look from shoes to shoulders to mouth, because if he was going to make you feel off-balance, he could suffer too.

“You look expensive,” you said.

“Emergency tailoring.”

“Obviously.”

His mouth twitched. “That obvious?”

“You’re wearing a suit that actually fits, Hood. Either someone threatened you, or you threatened them first.”

“Little of both.”

“That sounds more believable than it should.”

His mouth curved. “You ready?”

“For the crime gala or the fake marriage?”

“Yes.”

You stepped closer, close enough to smell rain, leather, and something faintly smoky beneath his cologne. “Rules?”

He opened the car door but did not move out of your way. “We stay together. We get in, find the ledger, copy it if we can, and steal it if we have to. Argent’s people are running heat sensors at the door and wand checks inside, so anything metal better be hidden well.”

“It is.”

His eyes flicked down for half a second before he caught himself.

You smiled. “Professional, Hood.”

“You brought it up.”

“Are you going to be weird all night?”

“Probably.”

“At least you’re honest.”

Something shifted in his expression. The teasing stayed, but a different tension moved beneath it.

“Speaking of.” He reached into his jacket.

You tensed on instinct before you saw the small velvet box in his hand.

He noticed. Of course he noticed. Red Hood noticed everything, which was one of the most annoying things about having a crush on him.

“Relax,” he said. “If I were going to shoot you, I wouldn’t be standing out in the open like this.”

“You got a velvet ring box.”

“It’s part of the cover kit, Mox.”

“You have a cover kit with rings?”

“I have a lot of things.”

“That answer raises more questions than it resolves.”

He opened the box.

Inside were two rings. His was plain and dark, brushed black metal with a thin line of red through the center. Yours was simpler than you expected, a narrow gold band set with a small dark stone that caught the low light like it had a secret. It was not flashy enough to be ridiculous. It was not cheap enough to be meaningless.

For a mission prop, it looked dangerously thoughtful.

Your mouth went dry.

“Hood,” you said slowly.

“They verify at the door,” he said. “Needed to look real.”

“You bought rings.”

“I bought a cover.”

“You bought rings, Hood.”

His jaw shifted. “They verify at the door.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting.”

He took the smaller ring from the box. His hand was bare, no gloves, and the sight of it did something stupid to your pulse. Broad fingers, scarred knuckles, a pale line across the back of one hand that disappeared under his cuff. You had seen those hands reload guns, set bones, pull you out of an exploding warehouse by the back of your armor. You had not imagined one holding a wedding ring.

That was a lie.

You would never admit to imagining it.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

You should have made a joke. You usually had one ready, sharp and easy and useful for putting distance between yourself and anything that looked too much like vulnerability. But his voice had gone quiet, and the rain had softened the edges of the city, and there was no helmet between you tonight.

You gave him your hand.

He slid the ring onto your finger.

It fit.

You looked down at it.

Hood held your hand a second longer than necessary. His thumb brushed the base of your finger, barely there, and the carefulness of it landed worse than any joke he could have made. 

“How’d you know my size?” you asked.

“I’m observant.”

“That’s a creepy answer.”

“In Gotham, paying attention is the difference between getting home and getting buried.”

The joke caught in your throat before it could fully form, because there was nothing theatrical in his voice when he said it.

“Fair enough.”

You took his ring from the box before he could close it, because letting him have the upper hand for too long was bad for your health. His eyes narrowed slightly, but he gave you his hand.

His ring slid over his knuckle with a little resistance. You felt the scars there. You felt him watching you.

“There,” you said, because your voice needed somewhere to go. “Tragically wed.”

He flexed his hand once, looking at the ring as if it had personally betrayed him. “For the mission.”

“Obviously.”

“Nothing else.”

“Never even crossed my mind.”

The lie sat between you, wearing formalwear.

“Names?” you asked.

“Anders,” he said. “Daniel and Elise.”

“Elise?”

“You hate it?”

“I sound like I own silk robes and poison my husbands.”

“Useful energy for tonight.”

“How long have we been married?”

“Three years.”

“Too long. I would’ve killed you by then.”

“Two years.”

“Better.”

“We met in Star City. You hated me.”

“That part’s true enough.”

“Got married in Atlantic City after a job went sideways.”

You stared at him. “That is the least believable thing you’ve said tonight.”

“It’s memorable.”

“It’s tacky.”

“It’s criminal.”

“It’s grounds for divorce.”

His mouth curved. “Then sell it, Mrs. Anders.”

He opened the car door wider. “After you, darling.”

You almost tripped on your own dress.

He caught your elbow immediately, steadying you with infuriating ease.

You looked up at him. “Don’t call me that.”

His thumb rested against the inside of your arm. “Noted.”

“You’re going to call me that again, aren’t you?”

Every guest wore a mask.

It made the whole thing feel less like a party and more like a confession waiting to happen.

Hood stepped out first and came around to your side before the valet could reach you. He offered his hand with the smoothness of a man who had absolutely been taught manners at some point and had chosen violence anyway.

You took it.

His ring flashed dark against his hand.

“Smile,” he murmured.

“I am smiling.”

“That’s your I’m-going-to-bite-someone smile.”

“It’s versatile.”

His hand settled at the small of your back.

The contact was light. Polite, even. It still burned through the dress like he had pressed his palm to bare skin. You hated him a little for being able to do that. You hated yourself more for leaning into it just enough that his fingers flexed.

At the door, a woman in silver looked over your invitation with the blank expression of someone paid well enough not to blink at murderers.

“Mr. and Mrs. Anders,” she said.

Hood smiled. It was small, controlled, and completely fraudulent. “That’s us.”

Mrs. Anders. You were going to murder him before midnight.

The woman glanced at your rings. Then at your faces. Then at the security guard beside her, who lifted a scanner.

“Hands,” he said.

Hood went first. Calm. Unbothered. The scanner passed over his sleeves, chest, waist, and legs. It did not beep, which meant either he had actually obeyed the minimal-weapons rule or he had spent the afternoon sourcing enough ceramic, polymer, and carbon-fiber problems to make the scanner irrelevant.

When it was your turn, Hood’s hand shifted against your back.

A warning.

You relaxed your shoulders, lifted your arms, and let the guard scan you. He found nothing. He did not know about the ceramic blade along your thigh, the garrote sewn into your hem, the lockpicks disguised as hairpins, or the tiny flash drive tucked beneath the dark stone of your ring.

Oracle would have been proud.

The woman in silver gave you both a final look. “Enjoy the evening.”

“We intend to,” Hood said.

You waited until you were inside, past the first curtain of security and beneath a ceiling painted with golden saints, before you muttered, “Mr. and Mrs. Anders?”

“You don’t like it?”

“I sound like I run a suspiciously profitable antique store.”

“You do have the vibe.”

“I’m divorcing you.”

“We’ve been married for fifteen minutes.”

“Annulment, then.”

His hand moved slightly at your back, fingers pressing once as a masked couple passed too close on your left. You caught the movement of the man’s hand toward his jacket and shifted before Hood had to pull you, putting yourself just out of reach while looking like you had only turned to admire a vase.

Hood’s mouth twitched.

“Nice,” he murmured.

“I know.”

The ballroom was a glittering fever dream.

Chandeliers spilled gold across polished floors. A string quartet played something elegant and mournful in the corner. The guests drifted in pairs, all silk, velvet, diamonds, and concealed cruelty. Masks transformed familiar monsters into myth. You recognized a judge who had buried evidence in three trafficking cases, a shipping magnate whose warehouses had burned twice under suspicious circumstances, one of Penguin’s accountants, and a woman from Blüdhaven who had once tried to stab Roy Harper with an oyster knife.

Above it all, on a balcony overlooking the room, stood Mr. Argent.

He wore white. Of course he did. His mask was silver, shaped like a fox’s face, and his hair was slicked back so severely it looked lacquered. Two guards flanked him. He lifted a champagne flute as the room applauded, and you felt Hood go still beside you.

“That him?” you murmured.

“Yeah.”

“Punchable.”

“Very.”

“Later?”

“If you behave.”

“I never promised that.”

“No,” Hood said, looking down at you with an expression you did not know how to read. “You didn’t.”

For the next hour, you were married.

It was alarming how well you both lied.

Hood kept you close, his hand at your waist or your back or curled around your fingers whenever someone looked too long. You let yourself be guided without seeming guided, answered questions with a smile, and invented a marriage with him in pieces. You had met in Star City, according to him. Blüdhaven, according to you. You handled private acquisitions. He handled security consulting. You had been married for two years, unless someone asked Hood, in which case it became three because apparently your fake husband believed in committing to details without warning you first. You disliked his driving. He admired your temper. You preferred clean exits, and he preferred making sure no one followed. Somehow, that was the most believable part.

Every time he called you his wife, your body reacted before your brain could remind it to be professional.

“My wife has better instincts than I do,” he told a broker with a scar cutting through one eyebrow.

“That must be difficult for you,” the broker said.

“You have no idea,” you replied.

Hood’s fingers tightened on your hip.

The broker laughed like he thought you were charming.

Hood leaned close to your ear as the man turned away. “Careful.”

“You brought me because I’m charming.”

“I brought you because you’re dangerous.”

“You say the sweetest things.”

“I could say sweeter.”

Your breath caught.

He did not move away.

The room kept spinning around you, music rising and falling, glass chiming against glass. Hood’s mouth hovered close enough to your ear that you felt each word more than you heard it.

“For the cover,” he added.

You turned your face slightly toward his. “Coward.”

His gaze dropped to your mouth.

The moment stretched thin.

Then a bell chimed from the center of the room, and Mr. Argent descended the stairs with his hands spread as if he were welcoming guests to a wedding rather than a criminal auction.

“Friends,” he said, voice carrying. “Partners. Devoted halves of dangerous wholes. Welcome.”

You felt Hood’s irritation through the line of his body.

Argent spoke for several minutes, all polished charm and predator’s teeth. He praised loyalty. He praised discretion. He praised the beauty of masks, of chosen names, of the sacred privacy between spouses. It was all ridiculous and unpleasantly effective. This crowd liked being told their secrets were elegant rather than filthy.

The auction would begin at midnight.

Until then, there would be dancing.

“Of course there will,” you said under your breath.

Hood looked down at you. “You dance?”

“I fight people on rooftops in steel-toed boots. What do you think?”

“I think that wasn’t a no.”

“It should have been.”

The quartet shifted into a waltz.

Couples moved toward the center of the floor.

Argent watched from the stairs.

Hood held out his hand.

You stared at it. “You’re kidding.”

“He’s watching.”

“Let him.”

“Sweetheart.”

There was the mission voice again. The one that made you want to argue and obey at the same time, which was probably why you usually chose to argue.

You placed your hand in his. “If you step on my dress, I’m leaving you for Nightwing.”

“Like hell you are.”

“He has better posture.”

“He has worse taste.”

“He still claims you, so clearly.”

Hood pulled you into the dance before you could look too pleased with yourself.

You had expected competence. Red Hood was good at nearly everything physical, which was obnoxious but useful. You had not expected grace. He moved like he fought, controlled and deliberate, except here the violence had been translated into something almost beautiful. His hand settled at your waist, the other holding yours. He led without forcing, gave you space when you needed it, adjusted to your rhythm so quickly you almost forgot to be surprised.

Almost.

“Where the hell did you learn to dance?” you asked.

“Crime Alley community center.”

You looked up sharply.

His mouth curved. “You should see your face.”

“I am going to widow myself.”

“You ask a lot of questions for a woman with at least six hidden weapons at a no-weapons gala.”

“Seven.”

“Anklet?”

“Hair.”

“Nice.”

“You missed it.”

“Did I?”

His hand shifted at your waist, just enough for his thumb to skim the reinforced seam where one of your hairpins had been before you tucked it into place. Heat shot down your spine.

You narrowed your eyes. “Show-off.”

“Observant,” he corrected.

The dance turned you beneath one chandelier, light sliding across his mask. For a moment, with his face half-hidden and his mouth bare, you felt the strangeness of knowing him and not knowing him. Red Hood had carried you once when smoke inhalation made your knees buckle after a warehouse fire. He had sat beside you on a roof while you stitched his arm and complained about his inability to hold still. He had told you which safehouses had clean water and which clinics would not ask questions. He had never told you his name.

You had never told him yours.

Yet his hand fit at your waist like it had always been meant to find you.

“Why me?” you asked.

His steps did not falter, but his expression changed.

“I told you.”

“You said you trusted me.”

“I do.”

“That’s not all.”

Around you, masked couples turned and glittered. Argent’s people watched from the edges. There were cameras in the chandeliers, guards at each door, predators in every corner, and still the most dangerous thing in the room felt like the pause before Hood answered.

“You don’t flinch,” he said.

You could have made that a joke. You should have.

“I do,” you said. “Just not where people can see.”

His eyes stayed on yours.

You hated the mask for hiding their color from you. You hated it more for making you want to know.

“I know,” he said.

The words were quiet enough that no one else could have heard them. They landed with brutal precision anyway.

The dance ended. Applause rose politely around you.

Hood did not let go.

You did not pull away.

Then Oracle’s voice crackled faintly through the tiny comm hidden in your earring. “Argent’s private office just went active. East wing, second floor. You have maybe ten minutes before the auction staff transfers the ledger downstairs.” 

You stepped back first, mostly because someone had to.

Hood’s jaw tightened like he had been pulled out of a thought he did not appreciate. “Copy.”

“And try not to make the cameras work harder than they already are,” Oracle added.

“I make no promises,” you said.

Hood shot you a look.

He joined you inside thirty seconds later.

“Cheekbones?” you whispered as the door clicked shut behind him.

“They were very proud of them.”

“You’re mean when you’re jealous.”

“I wasn’t jealous.”

“They were looking at me.”

“I noticed.”

“That’s jealousy.”

“That’s situational awareness.”

“You’re very committed to being wrong.”

“Part of my charm.”

You grinned and headed for the stairs.

The office was exactly where Oracle said it would be, behind another locked door at the end of a corridor lined with bad portraits of dead men who had probably also committed tax fraud. Hood stood watch while you worked the lock. It took eighteen seconds, which was twelve seconds longer than it should have taken because he stood too close behind you and smelled too good.

“You’re hovering,” you whispered.

“I’m guarding.”

“You’re breathing on my neck.”

“Want me to stop?”

Your pick slipped.

Hood noticed.

You got the door open and shouldered your way inside before he could say anything smug enough to justify stabbing him.

Argent’s office was dark-paneled, overdecorated, and cold. A fire burned low in the hearth, more decorative than useful. The desk was massive. The safe behind the portrait was predictable. The pressure sensor beneath the rug was less predictable, but only because Argent had otherwise shown no taste.

“Left,” Hood said.

“I see it.”

“Camera above the bookcase.”

“I see that too.”

“Drawer’s wired.”

“You know,” you said, crouching beside the safe, “some husbands support their wives in silence.”

“You’d hate that.”

“You’re right. Keep talking.”

The safe took longer. Argent had invested money there, at least. You worked by feel while Hood disabled the camera feed through a device Oracle had given him with a warning not to break it. The room smelled like smoke and old paper. Music drifted faintly from the ballroom below.

When the safe opened, you found the ledger in a black case beside stacks of cash, passports, and a velvet pouch filled with diamonds.

“Bingo,” you said.

Hood came closer. “Can you copy it?”

You opened the case.

Inside was a slim encrypted drive and a paper ledger. Dramatic and paranoid. Gotham criminals really were exhausting.

“Copy the drive, photograph the paper,” you said. “Three minutes.”

“You have two.”

“You always say that.”

“You always take three.”

“And yet you keep asking me places.”

He stood beside you while you worked, close enough that his suit brushed your bare shoulder when he reached past you to shift the desk lamp. The contact made your skin prickle. You ignored it. Then his hand settled briefly over yours to steady the ledger page before it curled.

You stopped.

He stopped too.

For one suspended second, both of you looked at your hands. His ring. Your ring. Inked names of criminals between you.

Then footsteps sounded in the hall.

Hood moved first, crossing to the door with silent speed. He listened, shoulders going tense.

“Two guards,” he mouthed.

You closed the ledger, pocketed the drive, and grabbed the paper book because copying was suddenly less important than leaving.

The office door opened before you reached the safe.

Hood caught the first guard by the wrist and slammed him face-first into the doorframe. You threw the ledger case at the second guard’s throat, followed it with your elbow, and swept his legs when he choked. The fight was fast, ugly, and mostly quiet until the first guard got a hand on the panic button at his belt.

Red light flashed in the corridor.

“Well,” you said, breathing hard. “That’s unfortunate.”

Hood looked at the unconscious guard, then at you. “You said three minutes.”

“You said two. This marriage has communication issues.”

Shouting rose from downstairs.

Oracle’s voice cut in. “Alarm triggered. Multiple hostiles converging on the east wing. Also, Argent just noticed his ledger room is having a moment.”

Hood grabbed your hand. “Not the window.”

You glanced toward the glass. “I wasn’t going to suggest the window.”

“You were thinking it.”

“I was considering all exits.”

“You were thinking the window.”

“Fine. I was thinking the window.”

“Too exposed. Service corridor.”

He pulled the office door open just enough to check the hall, then drew you out after him. The alarm had not yet become a full lockdown, but the estate had shifted around you. Music still drifted from the ballroom, strained and elegant beneath the first signs of panic. Somewhere below, a guard barked orders into a radio. Somewhere closer, expensive shoes moved quickly over the polished floor.

You made it down one hall, then another, before voices rose ahead of you.

Hood stopped so abruptly you nearly collided with his back.

“Storage room?” you whispered.

“Locked.”

“Can you open it?”

“Not before they turn the corner.”

“Then what?”

He looked at you.

You had just enough time to understand before his hand slid to your waist and he walked you backward into the shadowed alcove beside a half-open terrace door. Rain breathed cold against your bare shoulders. His body covered yours, broad enough to block you from the hall, close enough to steal your balance. The ledger pressed between you.

The sensible thing would have been to wait until the footsteps faded completely, then slip away.

The less sensible thing was Hood looking down at your mouth.

“Careful,” you whispered.

His eyes lifted to yours. “With what?”

“You know what.”

“We’re still undercover,” he said.

“You say that like it explains why your hand is on my ass.”

He had the decency to look caught for half a second before the corner of his mouth tilted. “It’s a convincing cover.”

“We’re in the middle of an active alarm.”

“Gotham criminals love drama.”

“You are so full of shit.”

“Yeah,” he said, quieter. “Maybe.”

Then his mouth was on yours.

It was supposed to be a cover. You understood that. You understood it with the part of your brain still tracking footsteps, sightlines, cameras, and the weight of the stolen drive hidden beneath your ring. The guards were coming. You needed a reason to be tucked into a dark corner with his hands on you, and Gotham criminals were much more willing to believe in lust than competence.

Knowing that did nothing to save you.

Hood kissed like he had been waiting for permission and hated himself for needing it. His hand tightened at your waist, the other braced near your head, and when the first guard rounded the corner, you let yourself make a soft, irritated sound against his mouth as if being interrupted were the only crime happening.

“Hey,” the guard snapped.

Hood lifted his head slowly.

You had to give him credit. He looked exactly like a rich, dangerous husband being inconvenienced in the middle of something private.

His mouth was damp. His mask was slightly crooked. His hand tightened at your waist before the guard could decide whether to look embarrassed or afraid, and when his voice came, it was low enough to make the man rethink his life.

“You lost?”

The guard looked like he was seriously considering saying yes. His gaze flicked from Hood’s face to your hand fisted in his lapel, then to the ring on your finger.

“Restricted wing,” he said, but the authority had already leaked out of him.

You smiled from beneath Hood’s shoulder, breathless enough that it was not entirely acting. “We were looking for somewhere quiet.”

“This isn’t—”

“My wife gets bored at parties,” Hood said.

Your nails dug warningly into his jacket.

He did not even flinch.

The second guard muttered something into his radio. The first looked between you again, then made the obvious and incorrect calculation that two half-dressed socialites sneaking away from a masquerade were less urgent than the alarm coming from Argent’s office.

“Return to the ballroom,” he said.

“Eventually,” Hood said.

The guard looked like he wanted to argue. Then Hood smiled.

The guard chose life.

When they disappeared around the corner, neither of you moved.

The sensible thing would have been to break apart immediately and run.

Instead, Hood’s eyes dropped to your mouth.

“Convincing,” you said, but your voice had gone thin.

His thumb moved once against your waist. “Yeah.”

“For the cover?”

“That was the idea.”

“And now?”

His gaze lifted to yours.

The alarm wailed louder somewhere behind you. Your heart was worse.

“Now I’m waiting for you to tell me to back up,” he said.

You should have. The mission was still burning around you. Argent’s men were searching the estate, Oracle was probably developing a stress migraine, and you had a stolen ledger digging into your stomach.

Instead, you caught his lapel and pulled him down again.

The second kiss had no excuse at all.

Hood made a low sound against your mouth and crowded closer, one hand sliding from your waist to your back, the other cupping your jaw with surprising care. He kissed like he did everything else, with focus, hunger, and a barely leashed intensity that made your knees threaten to forget their job. You kissed him back just as hard, biting at his lower lip because you had wanted to know what he would do.

He groaned.

That sound nearly undid you.

“Fuck,” he muttered against your mouth. “You have any idea how long I’ve wanted to do that?”

Your laugh came out uneven. “I was hoping it wasn’t just tonight.”

His forehead touched yours. Rain slid down between you. “Not just tonight.”

The admission settled under your ribs, warm and terrifying.

Then Oracle said, with the precise exhaustion of a woman who regretted every friendship in her life, “I know this is a very meaningful moment for whatever emotionally constipated thing you two have going on, but the armed men are still armed.”

You closed your eyes. “Oracle.”

“East stairwell is blocked. West service corridor is clear for maybe ninety seconds. Also, Hood, if you get lipstick on that suit, Roy is going to know the emergency tailor trip was for a date, and I refuse to moderate that conversation.”

Hood froze.

You pulled back just enough to stare at him.

Roy.

The suit.

Hood’s mouth tightened.

Your brain, traitorous and quick, began putting pieces together. Arsenal’s teasing. Nightwing’s fondness. The way Hood moved through certain rooftops like he knew the Bat-routes and hated that he knew them. The way Roy had texted you earlier that week, complaining that getting his friend Jason into a tailor’s shop had required bribery, threats, and the promise of post-mission chili dogs.

Jason Todd, scowling in Roy’s kitchen three months ago with a beer he barely drank and a book tucked under one arm like a threat. Jason Todd at a crowded charity event Roy had dragged you to, wearing a suit with the stiff irritation of a man who understood formalwear but resented having to surrender to it. Jason Todd, who had once apparently threatened a tailor over sleeve mobility.

Oh.

Oh, no.

“You’re Jason,” you said.

Hood’s eyes narrowed. “We are being hunted.”

“You’re Jason Todd.”

“Moxie.”

“I made fun of your tie at Roy’s birthday.”

“It was an ugly tie.”

“You said you liked my boots.”

“They had knives in them.”

“You noticed?”

“I notice a lot of things.”

You stared at him, outrage and desire tangling so tightly you could barely separate them. “Did you know?”

His expression shifted, something almost helpless moving through it. “Not until tonight.”

“Tonight when?”

“At the door,” he said. “You smiled like you were about to rob the place and insult me for helping.”

“That is not specific. I smile like that often.”

“Yeah,” he said, voice dropping. “That was part of the problem.”

The shouting grew louder.

Oracle cleared her throat over the comm. “The identity crisis is very compelling, but your ninety seconds is down to thirty.”

Jason—because it was Jason, because of course it was Jason—looked down at you, rain bright on his mask and your lipstick smudged at the corner of his mouth.

“We’re finishing this conversation later,” he said.

“You showed up in a custom suit, called me your wife, and let me figure out you were Jason Todd during an active alarm. We’re finishing several conversations later.”

His mouth curved. “Looking forward to it.”

“Thirty seconds,” Oracle warned.

You tightened your grip on his lapel, outrage and desire still tangled somewhere behind your ribs. “Run, husband.”

His grin flashed, sharp and delighted.

You ran.

The next twenty minutes were chaos in formalwear.

You and Jason moved through the service corridors like you’d done it a hundred times before. He covered your left without needing to be asked. You ducked under his arm when he fired over your shoulder. You broke a man’s wrist with one hand and held the ledger against your chest with the other. Jason used a serving tray to knock a guard unconscious, which you appreciated as both violence and commentary.

At one point, you vaulted over a dessert cart, and he caught you by the waist on the other side because the floor was slick with spilled champagne.

“Careful, honey,” he said.

You elbowed him in the ribs.

He laughed as he shot out the lock on a service door behind you. The door swung hard enough to clip one of Argent’s men in the face, which was probably not intentional but still felt like a gift from the universe.

Argent made it as far as the conservatory before his sense of self-preservation failed him. He had two guards, a silver briefcase, and the deeply unfortunate confidence of a man who had never been tackled by Red Hood while wearing formal shoes.

Jason hit him beside the orchid display.

The fountain took both of them.

Water surged over the marble lip. Argent shouted. Jason came up soaked to the chest, one hand locked in the back of Argent’s expensive white jacket and the other already reaching for a zip tie.

You handled the guards.

By the time Nightwing arrived through the shattered glass roof with far too much acrobatic flair, Argent was bound to a marble cherub, Jason was dripping wet in a custom suit, and you were holding the ledger in one hand and one of your broken heels in the other.

Nightwing landed lightly beside you and took in the scene.

Then he looked at Jason.

Then at you.

Then at the rings.

“Oh,” he said, with terrible delight. “This explains so much.”

Jason pointed at him. “Say one word.”

Nightwing’s grin widened. “Mazel tov?”

You covered your mouth with your hand but couldn’t hide your laugh.

Jason looked betrayed. “You too?”

“You’re soaked in fountain water and wearing a wedding ring,” you said. “I’m only human.”

Nightwing pressed a hand to his chest. “I’m honored to have been here for the reception.”

Jason started toward him.

Nightwing wisely flipped backward onto the fountain edge, still grinning. “Oracle says police are six minutes out. Arsenal also says, and I quote, ‘Tell the happy couple I’m claiming visitation rights.’”

“I hate all of you,” Jason said.

“No, you don’t,” you said.

He looked at you.

For a second, the wreckage of the night narrowed to the space between you. Broken glass glittered on the conservatory floor. Rain poured through the ruined ceiling. Your mask was still in place, and so was his, but the fiction was gone. He knew you. You knew him. Not completely, not all at once, but enough to make the wanting feel less like a dangerous mistake and more like a door neither of you had realized was unlocked.

Nightwing’s expression softened, which made you want to throw the broken heel at him.

“I’ll take Argent,” he said. “You two should go before the cops arrive and ask why she has seven knives and a ledger full of people who are going to want her dead by morning.”

“Six knives,” Jason said automatically.

Nightwing stared at him.

You stared at him too.

Jason glanced at you. “You lost one in the east wing.”

“You counted?”

“I’m observant.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Yeah,” he said, and there was something warm under it. “You noticed.”

Nightwing made a sound that was suspiciously close to a laugh. “Go. Both of you. Before I start making a speech.”

“Don’t,” Jason said.

“Oh, I have several prepared.”

Not awkward, exactly. You and Jason had survived too many injuries together for silence to become fragile that easily. But this was different from your usual post-mission quiet. There was no helmet between his voice and your ears. No modulator to make his breathing sound distant. No way to pretend you had not kissed him in a dark alcove, learned his name while being hunted, and liked both too much.

The rings were still on.

You noticed every time his hand moved on the steering wheel.

He noticed you noticing, because of course he did.

“Say it,” he said eventually.

You looked out the rain-streaked window. “I’m deciding which thing.”

“That bad?”

“Oh, there are categories.”

His mouth twitched. The bruise along his jaw had darkened. There was still a faint smear of lipstick near the corner of his mouth, half washed away by rain and fountain water.

You reached over without thinking and rubbed at the mark with your thumb.

Jason went very still.

The car slowed at a red light on an empty street.

Your hand remained against his jaw. The stubble there rasped lightly beneath your thumb. His eyes flicked to yours behind the mask, and the air in the car changed so quickly it felt like a drop.

You withdrew your hand. “Lipstick.”

“Right.”

“Couldn’t let Roy win.”

Jason huffed a laugh, but his fingers tightened on the wheel.

Neither of you said anything for the rest of the block.

When he pulled into the alley two streets from your apartment, the rain had softened to a mist. He parked beneath a fire escape and cut the engine. The sudden quiet felt deliberate. You could hear the ticking of the car cooling, the distant hum of traffic, your own pulse refusing to calm down.

Jason removed his mask first.

You had seen his face before. That was the worst part. You had seen him across Roy’s kitchen, half-lit by the open fridge while he argued about takeout like it was a tactical decision. You had seen him at that charity event, bored and handsome and restless, as if all that polished wealth irritated his skin. You had not known then that he was the man who called you Mox over comms when he was worried. You had not known he was Red Hood.

Now the two versions slid together and made something sharper.

You took off your mask.

Jason stared.

Not like he was surprised, not exactly. More like the last remaining doubt had just been removed, and he had no armor ready for what came after.

“Hi,” you said, because apparently you had lost access to every clever line you had ever had.

His laugh was soft and almost disbelieving. “Hi.”

“That’s it? No dramatic comment?”

“I’m having a moment.”

“Should I wait?”

“Probably.”

You smiled, and his gaze dropped to your mouth again.

The car felt much smaller than it had a minute ago.

“We should talk,” you said.

“Yeah.”

“About identities.”

“Yeah.”

“And boundaries.”

“Definitely.”

“And the fact that you apparently knew my ring size.”

“I guessed.”

“You did not guess.”

“I made an informed estimate.”

“That’s worse.”

He dragged a hand through his damp hair. The ring flashed again, dark metal and red line catching briefly in the low light.

Your smile faded around the edges.

Slowly, you twisted your own ring. It slid halfway up your finger before Jason’s hand closed over yours.

“Don’t,” he said.

The word came out too raw for the joke he clearly meant to attach to it.

You looked down at his hand over yours. “Jason.”

His name felt new in your mouth. His fingers tightened.

“I know it was supposed to be a cover,” he said. “I know. But don’t take it off like it meant nothing.”

Your throat went tight.

There he was. The man beneath the helmet, beneath the suit, beneath all that practiced brutality. Not soft, exactly. Jason Todd would probably never be soft in any simple way. But honest, when cornered. Brave enough to bleed where you could see it, if not quite brave enough to ask.

You turned your hand beneath his, palm to palm.

“It didn’t mean nothing,” you said.

He exhaled as if something in him had braced for impact.

“But,” you continued, “you don’t get to fake marry me, kiss me in a hallway, let me find out you’re Jason Todd, and then look wounded when I try to return the prop.”

“I didn’t look wounded.”

“You looked extremely wounded.”

“I have a bruise.”

“Emotionally.”

He made a face. “That sounds like something Nightwing would say.”

“Nightwing is emotionally literate.”

“Don’t compliment him right now.”

“There’s the jealousy again.”

“Threat assessment.”

“Jason.”

He looked at you then, really looked, and all the banter thinned into something warmer and far more dangerous.

“I wanted it to be you,” he said. “Before I knew. The job, the partner, the whole stupid fake-married thing. I wanted you there. Then you showed up in that dress, and you were you, and I kept thinking…” He stopped, jaw working. “I kept thinking I was screwed either way.”

Your chest ached.

You had imagined, once or twice, what Red Hood might sound like if he ever admitted wanting something. You had imagined arrogance, maybe. A filthy grin. A hand around your wrist in an alley. You had not imagined this careful, frustrated honesty, as if desire were easier for him than hope.

“You could’ve said something,” you said.

“So could you.”

“I was being professional.”

He gave you a look.

“I was being emotionally avoidant,” you corrected.

“Yeah. Same.”

You laughed, quiet and helpless.

Jason’s thumb brushed your ring again. “You can take it off if you want.”

There was the out. Offered plainly, because whatever else he was, Jason had never once tried to trap you. He had asked you to trust him and then given you room to choose.

You looked at the ring. Something bought for cover. Something worn through gunfire. Something neither of you had meant to make real, except maybe that was not true. Maybe the wanting had been real for months, and the ring had only given it a shape.

You slid it off.

Jason’s expression closed before he could stop it.

Then you placed the ring in his palm and folded his fingers around it.

“Next time you want a date, ask me properly.”

He stared at you.

The silence lasted one breath. Two.

Then his mouth curved, slow and stunned and devastating.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t make me regret being romantic.”

“You’re calling that romantic?”

“I’m new at it.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

You rolled your eyes, but your face had gone warm. “You owe me explanations.”

“I know.”

“Real ones.”

“I know.”

“And dinner.”

His smile deepened. “Explanations, then dinner?”

“That order, yes.”

He leaned closer. “What about kissing?”

You pretended to consider it. “Depends.”

“On?”

“How convincing you are.”

Jason reached out and touched your cheek, giving you plenty of time to move away.

You did not.

The second kiss was nothing like the first. There was no alarm, no audience, no cover to excuse it. It was slower, deeper, and somehow more dangerous for being honest. His hand slid into your hair carefully, avoiding the pins he knew were weapons. Your hands found the front of his shirt, still damp from rain and fountain water, and pulled him closer until the console dug into your hip and neither of you cared.

He kissed you until your breath broke.

Then he murmured against your mouth, “Tell me to go, and I will.”

Your fingers tightened in his shirt.

The heat between you flared so fast it almost startled you. It was not as if you had not wanted him all night. You had wanted him at the door, in the ballroom, in the dark alcove, in every narrow space where his hand found your back and his voice dropped low near your ear. But here, with your mask off and his name still warm in your mouth, the wanting became something else.

Still, you pulled back enough to meet his eyes.

“Not because of the mission,” you said.

“No.”

“Not because of the cover.”

“No.”

“Not because we almost died and adrenaline makes people stupid.”

Jason’s thumb swept along your jaw. “I’m always stupid about you.”

That should not have worked on you.

It worked on you.

You kissed him again, harder this time, and felt him smile against your mouth for half a second before hunger took over.

By the time you reached your apartment, you had both forgotten at least three reasonable boundaries about elevators, hands, and the general decency owed to security cameras. Jason kept one hand at your waist, his body angled between you and the hallway, even now, even here, and something in your chest went painfully soft at the thought.

Inside, the door barely closed before he had you against it.

He stopped before pinning you there fully, breath rough, eyes searching your face. “Still good?”

You hooked two fingers into the open collar of his red shirt and pulled him down. “Jason.”

His name was answer enough.

He kissed you as if the sound had snapped the last of his restraint.

The dress that had survived knives, guards, and a criminal masquerade nearly lost its battle against Jason Todd’s patience. He found the hidden zipper with insulting speed, paused only long enough for your nod, and drew it down slowly while his mouth moved along your throat. You shivered when the cool air touched your back. He noticed that too, pressing a kiss beneath your jaw as if the reaction pleased him more than he wanted to admit.

“Still six knives?” he murmured.

“Five,” you said, breath catching when his teeth grazed your skin. “Lost another on the way out.”

“Careless.”

“I was distracted by my husband tackling a man into a fountain.”

His hands stilled at your waist.

You smiled against his cheek. “Too much?”

He lifted his head. His eyes were dark, intent, and stripped of every joke. “Say it again.”

Your pulse jumped.

“My husband,” you said softly.

Jason made a sound that was almost a groan and kissed you hard enough to make your spine arch against the door.

After that, things blurred into touch and heat and the shedding of every last defense. His jacket hit the floor. Your heels followed. The dress slipped down, and Jason followed it with his mouth, kissing each place the night had left a mark as if he could argue with every bruise. You pushed his shirt from his shoulders and found scars beneath, old and new, a map of violence written into him. He went still when your fingers traced one across his chest.

You kissed it.

The breath left him all at once.

“Baby,” he said, rough and warning and wrecked.

The endearment settled low in your stomach.

You looked up at him. “That one for the cover too?”

“No.” His hands tightened at your hips. “That one’s mine.”

You should have had a clever answer.

You had survived worse nights than this. You had talked your way out of locked rooms, gun barrels, bad dates, worse missions, and once, memorably, a hostage situation involving a chandelier and three men who had severely underestimated your patience. You should have had something sharp ready for him.

Instead, you caught Jason by the front of his shirt and pulled him with you toward the bedroom.

His laugh followed you, low and breathless, half disbelief and half surrender. It lasted until you stumbled backward through the doorway, and then he was on you again, one hand braced against the frame, the other sliding firm and careful around your waist.

“Impatient,” he murmured.

“You’re still talking.”

That did it.

Jason kissed you like the words had snapped the last thread of his restraint. He crowded you back with the heat of him, with the rain still clinging to his hair and the city still written in bruises across both of you. His mouth found yours hard enough to steal the next thing you meant to say, and you let him have it. Let him have the sound you made when his hand settled at the small of your back. Let him have the way your fingers dug into his shoulders. Let him have the moment your knees hit the edge of the bed and you pulled him down with you because distance suddenly felt offensive.

He caught himself before his full weight landed on you.

Of course he did.

Jason Todd, who had thrown men through glass tonight, who had tackled Argent into a fountain like subtlety was a language he had never bothered to learn, stopped himself with one hand planted beside your head and the other cupping your hip like you were something breakable.

The tenderness almost annoyed you.

Almost.

“You can touch me,” you said.

His eyes searched yours, dark and intent. “I am touching you.”

“You’re treating me like evidence.”

That surprised a laugh out of him, rough and quiet. “You are evidence.”

“Of what?”

“That I’ve lost my mind.”

You smiled despite yourself, and his gaze dropped to your mouth like the expression had done him personal harm.

Then he lowered himself over you.

The weight of him settled slowly, carefully, and your breath caught before you could stop it. He noticed. Of course he noticed. His attention sharpened immediately, that same devastating focus he brought to fights and locks and exits turning entirely on you. On the way your fingers tightened in his shirt. On the places you tried not to flinch. On the places you leaned closer.

“You okay?” he asked.

You nodded.

“Words.”

The command should have irritated you. Instead, it went through you like heat.

“Yes,” you said. “I’m okay.”

Only then did he kiss you again.

This kiss was different. Slower. Deeper. Less like a collision and more like a decision. His mouth moved over yours with the kind of patience that made your pulse kick in frustration, like he had all night, like there were no sirens waiting in the distance, no bruises blooming beneath your skin, no ledger full of enemies, no blood drying at the edge of his collar.

Just Jason, above you.

Jason, kissing you until your cleverness dissolved completely.

His jacket hit the floor first. You pushed it off his shoulders with more force than grace, and he let you, smiling against your mouth when it caught at one wrist.

“Bossy,” he murmured.

“You like it.”

His smile flashed against your skin. “Yeah.”

The honesty in it landed harder than the teasing had.

You pulled at his shirt next, impatient with buttons, fabric, anything that kept him from you. Jason helped only when your frustration became obvious, sitting back just long enough to drag it over his head. The movement bared him to you by degrees: the broad line of his shoulders, the hard planes of his chest, the scars.

Old ones. New ones. Some pale, some angry, some so familiar-looking in their violence that your throat tightened.

You reached before you thought better of it.

Your fingers traced a line across his chest, not the worst of them, not the newest, just the one closest to your hand. Jason went still.

Immediately, you stopped. “Sorry.”

He looked down at you, and something in his face shifted. Not away from you. Not quite toward you either. Inward, maybe. Somewhere you could not follow unless he let you.

Then his hand covered yours.

“Don’t be.”

His palm was warm over your knuckles. His heartbeat moved beneath your fingertips, steady and alive and too close to miraculous for either of you to joke about.

So you didn’t.

You lifted your head and kissed the scar instead.

Jason’s breath left him all at once.

For a second, he did not move. Then his hand slid into your hair, not pulling, just holding, like he needed somewhere to put the feeling before it broke loose. When you kissed another mark, lower this time, his fingers tightened.

“Careful,” he said, voice uneven.

You looked up at him. “You first.”

Something in his expression cracked open.

Then he was kissing you again, and this time, there was nothing careful about his mouth.

He was careful with the bruises. Less careful with your lips. You liked both. You liked the contradiction of him, the control and the hunger, the way his hands could disarm a man in three seconds but trembled once at the zipper of your dress. You liked the way he paused there, waiting, until you nodded. You liked that he needed the nod. You liked that he looked wrecked by it.

The dress slipped down by inches.

Jason followed it with his mouth.

He kissed your shoulder first, right where the strap had been, then lower, where the night had left a shadow on your skin. Each bruise earned a touch so gentle it made your chest ache. Each scrape got the brush of his lips, the warmth of his breath, the silent fury of a man trying to argue with every mark violence had put on you.

“Jason,” you whispered.

His name changed something.

You felt it in the way he paused against your skin, in the way his hand flexed at your waist, in the half-second when his control faltered before he gathered it again.

“Say that again,” he said.

You should have teased him.

You really should have.

Instead, you said his name again, softer this time, and felt him shudder.

His mouth found your collarbone. Your throat. The place beneath your ear that made your entire body go tense and then loose beneath him. Your hands slid into his hair, and he made a sound against your skin that you felt more than heard.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

Not smoothly. Not like a line. Like the words had been dragged out of him against his will.

It hurt more than it should have.

You pulled him down until his weight settled over you. “You’re overdressed.”

His smile returned, brief and dangerous. “Still bossy.”

“And yet you obey.”

That got you his laugh again, but it broke when your hands moved over him, learning him in return. The strength of him. The scars. The heat. The places where his breath caught. The places where he tried, unsuccessfully, to pretend it had not.

Outside, thunder rolled over the city.

Inside, Jason bent his head and said your name.

Not Moxie.

Your real name.

You barely remembered when he had started saying it like that. Somewhere between the hallway and the bedroom, maybe. It mattered anyway. It mattered when he said it against your mouth. It mattered when he pressed it into your shoulder. It mattered when he used it like a promise, like a confession, like something he had no right to keep and wanted anyway.

Everything after that softened and sharpened at once.

The night had been all alarms and violence, all running feet and broken glass and blood under your nails. This was slower. Hotter. More dangerous in a way you had not prepared for, because Jason did not just want you. He paid attention to you. He watched your face, listened to your breath, checked in with quiet words and searching hands until you were almost angry with how much it undid you.

“You still with me?” he asked.

You touched his jaw. “Yes.”

His eyes closed briefly, like that single word had gone straight through him.

Then he kissed you through the next breath, and the next, and the next, until the storm outside felt distant compared to the one he built under your skin. You answered with your hands, your mouth, the tilt of your hips, the helpless little sounds you would deny later if anyone had the nerve to ask. Jason learned each one with ruthless attention. Worse, he remembered. He returned to every place that made you gasp, every touch that made your fingers twist in the sheets, every kiss that turned his name into something unsteady on your tongue.

By the time he moved over you again, bare skin warm against bare skin, the teasing had burned down to something quieter.

He paused.

Of course he did.

His forearm braced beside your head. His hair fell forward, damp and dark, and his eyes moved over your face as if he were trying to memorize you before the world remembered it had claims on either of you.

You touched his cheek. “Jason.”

“I know,” he said.

But his voice shook slightly.

Your heart turned over.

“Just looking,” he admitted.

The tenderness of it nearly undid you more than the hunger had.

For once, you had no armor left. No mask. No joke sharp enough to save you. There was only the warmth of him, the weight of him, the impossible gentleness in his hands after a night that had given neither of you any reason to be gentle.

You wrapped your legs around his waist and pulled him closer.

“Look later.”

Jason lay beside you with one arm under your head and the other across your waist, holding you like he was trying to pretend he was not holding on. His hair was a mess. There was a scratch near his shoulder that you were fairly certain you had left there. The bruise at his jaw had darkened, and your lipstick was long gone.

Your ring sat on the nightstand beside his.

Two mission props in a pool of warm lamplight.

You reached for his hand beneath the sheets. His fingers laced through yours immediately.

“Still awake?” you asked.

“Yeah.”

“Thinking?”

“Dangerous habit.”

“About?”

He turned his head on the pillow to look at you. Without the mask, without the suit, without the red helmet or the ballroom or the gunfire, Jason looked younger and more tired and more beautiful than was fair.

“You,” he said.

Your chest warmed. “That’s vague.”

“I’m working up to poetic.”

“Take your time.”

His thumb moved over your knuckles. “I’m thinking I should’ve asked sooner.”

You looked at him for a long moment, then shifted closer until your forehead touched his shoulder.

“You did ask me to marry you.”

He huffed. “Fake marry me.”

“You should be more specific next time.”

“Next time?”

You smiled against his skin.

Jason went quiet.

Then he reached past you toward the nightstand. You watched as he picked up your ring, turning it between his fingers. It looked smaller in his hand than it had any right to, dark stone catching the lamp light.

He did not try to put it on you.

Instead, he held it out.

“Dinner,” he said. “Tomorrow night. No masks. No aliases. Explanations first, because I heard you the first three times. Then dinner.” 

You took the ring from him.

Your fingers closed around it. “That sounds dangerously like a date.”

“Yeah,” Jason said. His voice was rougher than it needed to be. “That’s the idea.”

“And if you completely screw it up?”

“I’ll ask for another one.”

“That confident?”

“No,” he said. “That stubborn.”

You laughed softly.

He smiled at you like he had won something he did not know how to hold.

You looked down at the ring in your palm, then slid it back onto your finger yourself.

His breath caught.

“For safekeeping,” you said.

“Right.”

“And because it’s pretty.”

“Obviously.”

“And because you look like you might pass out if I don’t.”

“I do not.”

“You absolutely do.”

Jason rolled toward you, pinning you gently beneath him with a look that promised retaliation and probably more bruises you would enjoy explaining to no one.

“Keep talking, wife.”

The word should have felt like a joke.

It did not.

You reached up, touched the bruise on his jaw, and smiled.

“Make me, husband.”

Jason kissed you again as Gotham rumbled beyond the windows, all rain and sirens and secrets.

On the nightstand, his ring waited beside your mask. In the morning, there would be explanations, consequences, teasing from every mutual friend with a pulse, and probably at least one lecture about professionalism.

For now, there was Jason’s mouth on yours, his hand over the bought-for-cover ring, and the dangerous, wonderful realization that some covers were only lies until someone chose to keep them.