Good-ju-ju

And one day you're waking up at 5am and getting ready for the day so you can go make breakfast like always, and you look in the mirror at some point and just realise, holy fuck, when did you become a parent?

It's such a regular thing for kids to call you mom at that point, a knowing how so many of them have come from rough backgrounds, it makes you really happy to know they find comfort in you and will come find you if they need comforting.

And then there's Piotr. Big, strong, Piotr. Piotr who wakes up before dawn and does chores around the mansion in the early morning air. You can take the man out of the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the man. He does the lawn care, chops wood, takes care of whatever animals that might need feeding, replaces the feed in the bird feeder.

Piotr who makes sure to stop by the kitchen to share a small cup of coffee with you before he does chores. Piotr who hangs Hummingbird feeders right outside the kitchen windows because you mentioned you missed the ones your grandmother used to hang. Just Piotr, being strong and masculine and an absolute sweetheart.

He reminds me of that one quote that heard somewhere about masculinity being about protecting femininity, not rejecting it??? That one!!!

Kids call him dad all the time, and even though yall aren't even together, you become the parents of the school. Scott and Jean?? Love them, but they don't have that same kind of parent energy.

It's such a regular thing for kids to find the two of you interacting one way or another. Someone woke up way too early and enters the kitchen to find yall during your coffee, and there's a sweet moment with yall telling them to go back to bed, or offering to make them a quick breakfast. Maybe if they're really young Piotr will offer to tuck them in. He might be really blunt when telling them there are no monsters, but will be a little more gentle when you set a hand on his arm and give him a bit of a look.

The kiddo asks for both of you to tuck them in and you obviously aren't going to refuse them. Which leads to everyone wanting both of you to tuck them in and soon enough you two are doing curfew checks instead of the professor.

It's becomes so regular for the students to treat you two as their parents, and no one actually believes it when they find out that no, you're not a couple. So, they do what kids do and try to get you two together.

First it starts with making sure you two are sat together during everything they can get away with. Then it moves on to things like mistletoe (out of season, Piotr mistook it as an accidental bloom made by one of the agrokinesis kids and took it down) and then more mischievous plans like telling one of you that the other needed help with one thing or another, knowing that either one of you would help out at the drop of a hat. Sureee, they were lying, but you two didn't know that. (most of the time)

The kids just want to see their parents happy and in love. There's nothing wrong with that, is there? It's not like You and Piotr hadn't been helplessly pining for the other the entire time anyway.

You sigh deeply once you finally sneak out of the dorm room, Piotr right behind you. The tall man takes extra care to shut the door very gently, making sure it clicks in place just as silently.

"I thought we were never going to get her to sleep." You whisper to him. One of the youngest girls attending the school had a rather difficult time with night terrors, and would struggle to fall asleep without being tucked in. When you and Piotr were doing curfew checks tonight, she was the only kiddo still awake, and she had practically begged both of you to stay with her untill she finally did fall asleep. It couldn't be just one of you, It had to be both. No matter how many rooms you both had to check tonight, you would never have left her shaken up in such a state. You just hadn't expected it to take an hour.

"Illyana had similar dreams as a little one. It takes time for children to overcome it." Piotr whispers back as you begin to walk down the hallway to check the rest of the rooms. Even when he whispers, his voice is strong and hard to keep quiet. You know there's truth to what he says, and yet you can't help but wish you could do something more to help her with her nightmares. You rub some warmth into your arms anxiously as you think about it, surprised when you feel the warm weight of Piotr's hand settle in between your shoulder blades.

"You're worrying again." He states, frowning slightly when you look up at him. You send him a resigned smile, before it quickly falls as you look away.

"I can't help it. I worry about all of them, her especially. They just... deserve so much more than their lot in life." You say. Piotr hums in response, his thumb brushing idly against your back.

"Their life like us, you mean? Mutants?" His question makes you wince.

"No. Yes? I don't know. I just... I just wish that we could give them more than... this." You say, waving your hands to motion about the mansion. "The school might very well be the only safe space they have their entire life. The world hasn't been kind to them, and I'm not sure it ever will be." Your words begin to quiet down as you finish the sentence, lowing to a whisper that only he can hear. You'd never, ever want any of these kids hear a word of what you're saying. Knowing that hope is really all they have at their age, and you of all people refuse to be the one to destroy that beautiful childlike optimism.

"That is what we are working for as the X-men, yes? To change that?" Piotr asks you point blank, his hand moving up towards the back of your neck in a soothing manner that still gives you goosebumps, feeling the comforting heat of his hand even stronger than before.

"Yeah, but..."

"Then we are doing all we can." He finishes, a smile on his face that's so determined and confident that it very nearly changes your mind completely. Nonetheless, it's a reassuring smile that makes your chest feel warm and fuzzy. You smile back at him finally, and you swear you see fondness in his eyes.

It doesn't take long before the two of you are finally at your door. You give Piotr a short and sweet goodnight as you begin to step inside, but he stops you before you go, gently catching hold of your arm. For the first time, you think you've seen him debate on his words. His mouth opens, but he doesn't speak at first, and you swear you see a blush rising to his cheeks as he does so.

"You'd make a good mother." He says eventually, and it makes you smile widely.

"You'd make a good dad." You tell him. There's silence between you as he brushes a stray lock of hair away from your face in a fond and caring manner, and you swear you could trick yourself into believing that you and Piotr were already in domestic bliss if this moment goes on for any longer. The tall man leans in, and you find your mind short circuiting as he presses a kiss to your forehead. The simple action somehow leaving you beyond flustered.

On Wednesday you had, probably, the worst morning and afternoon of that whole month. It wasn’t a surprise when you started to cry as soon as you stopped in front of the Manor, crying and with your hair all messed up.

Your day at work was terrible, you let coffee spill on your favorite shirt and a headache was threatening to explode your head.

Alfred let you get in, even prepared some comfy clothes for you and prepared a sweet tea, trying to improve your mood. 

“Have you eaten something, Ma’am?” Alfred looked at you, worried. “You look pale. I can cook some-”

“I am not hungry, Alfred. Thank you.” You tried to smile, but you barely had the strength to.

Lies. You were starving, living that day with some biscuits and coffee. 

Bruce was still in the company, so he wouldn’t be at home until eight at least, and you fell asleep on his bed, with his blankets and pillows, his perfume, embracing you as you were dozing off.

A warm hand woke you up, and you were being admired by warm blue eyes and a small smile. “Bruce?” He hummed, still looking at you. 

“Alfred told me you didn’t eat.” When the words ‘I am not hungry’ were ready to come out of your lips, your stomach betrayed you, growling loudly. 

All your blood was suddenly coloring your cheeks and you covered your face when you heard him chuckling. “Come with me.”

“To where?” 

“I brought something for you to eat.” 

You tried to stay in bed, but he insisted.

And you just gave up trying to stay there.

Bruce held your arm gently, guiding you to the kitchen, where you could see lots of plastic bags on the table.

“What-”

“When Alfred called me and told me you haven’t eaten, and that you looked sad, I thought that some food could help a bit.” He observed you while you started to read the names in the bags. There were different foods from your favorite restaurants, some pastries from your favorite bakery and an ice cream box.

“You remembered my favorite restaurants…”

“Of course.” He answered like it was something obvious. “That’s why I always ask you the places you like and the things you want to eat.”

Your eyes found him. “Why?”

Bruce was confused, or amused, you didn’t really know, but his warm hands found the curve of your waist. “You need to eat. I worry about your wellbeing and I always want to know how I can help you. I am probably not the best with words, but-”

You didn’t let him finish.

You hugged him, hiding your face against his chest and inhaling his perfume. “This is even better than words, Bruce.” You murmured. “It means that you really listen to me, and you try to get to know me.” You stepped back just enough to see his eyes. “Thank you.”

His lips quickly pecked your forehead, then your cheek and lips. “No need to thank me, sweetheart. Just, please, let me take care of you.”

DICK GRAYSON - Your favorite singer

When your favorite singer released the new album and posted the tour dates, you were freaking out in your room, deciding between jumping around or throwing everything away.

It was the first time Dick ever saw you so excited since you two started dating, two months ago.

And okay, the singer would be in your country by the end of the year and the selling would start in three months but how could you not be excited? You really wanted to go to that show.

“You really like this singer?” Dick asked you the day the tour dates were posted.

You stopped, analyzing him. Your ex used to make fun of you because of your musical taste, but Dick asked like he really wanted to hear about it.

Just pure curiosity and awe in his eyes and voice.

So you told him, how this artist literally made you feel alive again, how you loved every single album and song and lyrics, because who doesn’t?

You just didn't give it importance, you were just telling your boyfriend about something that he would surely forget soon, right?

Wrong.

Oh, you were so wrong.

Because the day the ticket selling started, you couldn't buy it, too many people on that website, pure chaos.

When you finally clicked to buy it, guess what-

It didn't have the VIP ticket anymore.

“Fuck!” You whined, leaning against your chair.

You really tried to act like you weren't sad, you tried, but as soon as Dick arrived your apartment and asked you why you were with that “kicked puppy” expression.

“I tried to buy a ticket for a singer tour, but sold out.” You sniffed. “Nothing important, really…”

“You say these tickets?” Your chin almost fell when you saw your boyfriend holding two payment receipts with the name of the tour on it. Nah, those wasn't receipts.

They were the real tickets, and two of them.

“H-how…” your trembling hands reached the papers like they were made of gold. “I thought…”

“I have my secrets.” He winked, pulling you by the waist.

“Why two?” You let him embrace you, leaning your face under his chin when he answered.

“I am going with you, of course.”

Then you froze, looking at him for a heartbeat.

“But you never heard the songs…”

Dick scoffed, suddenly getting his cellphone from his pocket and showing you his Spotify playlist.

“I memorized all the songs that are in the set list.” He smiled, enjoying how surprised you were.

You didn't hold yourself back, jumping on him with a hug that made both of you fall on your bed, with him under you.

“Thank you.” You murmured against his chest. “This is really important to me…”

“I know, sweetheart.” He kissed your head. “I know.”

JASON TODD - Your favorite author

Jason wasn’t the type of man that was a so-called “loud romantic”. Or at least was what you thought at first.

He loved you, this was for sure and you would never doubt it, of course. He always did what he could to make you happy, sometimes even surprising you.

The thing is, even if he was not loud, he was observant. 

You loved to read, gosh, he gave you a collector’s edition as a gift on your first anniversary just because you talked about that book day and night.

But your new obsession right now was the historical book that your favorite author wrote, making you fall in love with the fancy balls, secretive gazes and shy touches.

Even the kiss between the main couple made you want to cry, and to recreate the scene with Jason because of course you would.

The best day of your life was when you woke up and opened the social media, discovering that your favorite author was coming to Gotham for a book signing event.

And of course you started giggling and kicking your feet on the bed, waking Jason up from his sleep.

“Babe… what are you doing…?”

You showed him your cellphone. “They are coming.” You smiled, big and bright. “They are really coming, oh my god, I need to go. Jason please, can we go?” You barely gave him time to register. “We can go wearing clothes like the main couple, we look like them! You look a lot like the male lead, and I look like the female lead as well, a perfect match!” You started to mumble how Jason would look in a frock coat, or a tuxedo, when you just remembered.

Jason hates suits, tuxedos and everything that looks like one.

‘They are uncomfortable.’ Is what he always says.

So that day you just stopped talking about it and started your day with him.

The day of the signing session came and you were almost ready to go when someone knocked at your door.

“Jason! I thought you would just come…” Your chin almost fell down when you opened the door. “What are you wearing?”

His cheeks were flushed, like always happens when he is flustered, his hair is combed back, neatly slicked back, but nothing too exaggerated. His clothes weren’t a frock coat, but he sure was wearing an old fashioned tuxedo that he probably stole from Bruce or asked Alfred for it.

You didn’t know if you wanted to kiss him or to faint.

“What are you wearing?” He raised an eyebrow, looking at your jeans and a sweater. “Gosh, you really want to see your favorite author like this?”

“I didn’t know Mr. Darcy would be the one coming to pick me up.” Jason smirked, walking through your apartment as you rushed to your bedroom, trying to think of whatever you have to match Jason. 

When you finally decide after throwing a sundress on your bed and a long skirt on your chair, you finally picked your favorite dress in your favorite color, then looked at Jason when he offered his hand to you.

“Shall we go?”

You accepted his hand.

“Yes, Mr. Todd.” You chuckled, walking towards him when he suddenly pulled you closer, making you gasp. “Jason, what-”

“You have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you,” The quote made your heart beat faster, you didn’t know if it was because of the words, of his eyes looking at you with adoration or his fresh smell, so different from the leather one.

“Are you really quoting the movie Pride and Prejudice right now…?”

“Maybe.” He smiled, fondly caressing your cheeks. “But I am being honest as well. I love you, and I can do whatever you want if it makes you happy, even looking like a penguin.”

“A handsome penguin.” You joked, receiving a peck on your lips.

“Shut up.”

TIM DRAKE - Your favorite series

“No way!” You yelled, laughing and giggling while jumping around and dancing in the middle of Tim's bedroom while he was working on an important case.

“What happened?” His lips opened in an amused smile, seeing how happy you are right now, and you just showed your cellphone to him.

“My favorite animated series will have a new movie. In the theaters!” You squeal, then start to laugh.

If you haven't told him the reason, Tim would probably ask you if you lost your mind.

But he didn't care about you messing his bed in pure happiness. He was happy just hearing your laugh as a background sound.

“I really wanted to go matching clothes and accessories with someone.” You mumble. “You know, like all those couples that go matching each other as Toothless and Light Fury.”

Tim hummed, and at first you thought he wasn’t paying attention to you.

But days later you discovered the opposite.

He called you that day to give you something you apparently forgot there, or was what he told you, but when you opened the door and saw the merch on his mattress, you barely held yourself before jumping on him with all your strength and hugging him.

Tim ordered matching shirts and bracelets that were perfectly still on his bed. Just as you told him. 

“Are you for real? You really want to wear this with me?” You looked at him, his blue eyes reflecting his own happiness: seeing you happy. “I thought you would find it embarrassing…”

“Nothing is embarrassing for me if it makes you happy, dear.” He kissed your cheek, caressing your soft skin after it. “Now… should we watch the movie together?”

“Are you sure you won’t feel ashamed and then just leave me there alone?” The question was made as if you were joking, but you were truly afraid.

Because all the ones that came before told you how embarrassed they were to have a girlfriend who liked geek things.

But Tim frowned. “Why would I ever feel ashamed about something that my girl likes?” He gently taps your head. “You overthink a lot sometimes, love. I am totally fine, I promise you. Now let’s get dressed, hm?”

DAMIAN WAYNE - Your favorite color

You met Damian during your art classes at the end of high school. And at first, you two worked together as partners when the professor gave activities, and it happened in the middle of a class.

“What is your favorite color?”

You looked at him, not quite expecting that question, but you answered anyway, not knowing why he asked that.

Until next week.

“For you.” He said, unbothered, but handed you a drawing pencil that had a cute and fluffy decoration in your favorite color. “You said that you lost your pencil, and this kinda matches your energy.”

“Oh, you remembered me?”

Damian rolled his eyes, ignoring your tease.

The next week was an eraser.

The other, a cute keychain in your favorite color.

Absolutely everything, all the things he gifted you, were in your favorite color.

It wasn’t a surprise for you when, during the break, he found you in the library, writing something in a notebook that… wasn’t in your favorite color?

Of course he would change that.

“You really like this notebook?” He asked you as soon as he sat by your side.

You just shrugged, not even looking at him while doing the homework.

“It’s an old notebook, I don’t really pay attention to that.”

And he didn’t ask you more than that, so you thought that was just his curiosity.

And well… you were wrong.

Really wrong.

Because the next day, as soon as you walked in the classroom, you saw it.

A new notebook on your desk.

And, of course, in your favorite color.

DUKE THOMAS - Your favorite drink

It wasn’t really something important, but Duke, since he knew you, always noticed that you asked for the same drink in the cafeteria you usually go to together.

You two met thanks to Steph, who is your best friend, but Duke and you grew closer quickly because of the many things you had in common.

It started in the cafeteria, but the first time he invited you to eat in a restaurant, just the two of you, he made sure that everything was perfect.

Because one, he was super nervous to spend time with the girl he likes and on a date, and two, it was his first date.

When you arrived there, you were gorgeous, absolutely stunning.

Enough to make Duke freeze for a second or two before walking towards you and offering his arm to guide you to the table.

When the waiter came closer to get your orders, you were still looking at the drink options when Duke asked for your favorite one.

And your hands just… stopped.

Your eyes found him and he noticed your gaze. “I did something wrong?” He asked, worried, but as soon as your shy smile appeared, his worry disappeared.

“How do you know my favorite drink, Duke?” You asked with a light tone, clearly joking, but his answer made your cheeks burn a bit. 

“You… always buy the same when we hang out together.” He answers, his ears a bit red and his eyes looking anywhere but you. “I just presumed it was your favorite.” 

“And you remembered something so silly?”

“It’s not silly if it is about you.” He answered quickly, eyes now glued on yours. “It’s not something silly, why would someone's favorite drink be silly? I mean… if it’s your favorite, it's important to you.”

His words made you stop for a moment, not expecting that.

But his words surely made your chest more… warm. Gosh, you were already falling for him, why did he need to be so perfect?

“So if I gave you a list with my favorite things, would you memorize it?”

“Absolutely.” No hesitation in his voice.

Not a single drop of doubt.

“Why?” You wanted to know, needed even, why was he trying to make your heart beat faster?

“Because I like you… a lot.” He murmured just for you to hear. “And for me, having the chance to know more about you is amazing. Because you are amazing.”

WALLY WEST - Your favorite snack

When you moved in to Central City and met Wally, he naturally wanted to know a lot about the girl who lived next door.

What were your hobbies? What kind of movies do you like? Your favorite colour?

Of course he wanted to know all of that, mainly when you two started to go on dates together, he was such a gentleman that you couldn’t help enjoying his proximity.

Still, Wally wanted to know one more thing.

“What is your favorite snack?” You looked at the ginger while both of you were cuddling during a movie night. 

“My what?”

“You know, your favorite snack. Like, your favorite potato chips or bag of candies, something like that.”

You stopped for a moment, uncertain on how to tell him this.

“You don’t have one?” He raised an eyebrow, but you just chuckled, looking at the TV again. 

“I have one, but it’s from my hometown. You don’t have this snack here.” 

The information was just something you imagined that Wally would let aside, but you added anyway. “I kinda miss it, it was my comfort food.” You told him what it was, telling him how you liked that snack since you were a child, buying it almost every exam day after school to bring you a bit of comfort.

One day you arrived at your apartment after work, tired and just wishing for a warm bath and your bed, and opened the door, seeing Wally holding a big box like an excited kid. 

“Babe? I thought you would be on patrol-”

“I brought something for you.” In a second you were in the hall, then suddenly you were sitting on the couch with the box on your lap. “Open it, please, please.”

His smile was big, eyes bright with energy and happiness. 

So you just opened the box and saw…

“Oh Wally-” You were the one smiling now. “You did not...” His eyes were glued on you, he couldn’t look at other things, just to you. 

“You told me how work was stressing you a lot these days, so I tried to surprise you.” He leaned his head on your shoulder, seeing you count how many bags of your favorite snack he put inside that box. 

“You really ran to my hometown just to buy this for me?” You couldn’t hold back your happiness when you looked at Wally. 

And he just shrugged, like it wasn’t something big.

But for you, that was the proof that Wally really pays attention to the things you tell him.

You let the box aside to hug him, arms embracing his neck while his hands found your waist, pulling you to a hug as well. “I love you.” You whisper against his skin. “Thank you so much, Wally.”

“Always here, my love.”

ROY HARPER - Your favorite flowers

When you first met Roy, it was just because you worked in the cafeteria nearby, the same place where they sell the colorful cake pops that Lian likes so much.

You were cute, of course, gorgeous even, but what would you probably want to do with a single dad that was also a vigilante?

“What is your name?” After two months of going to that cafeteria religiously every single Friday, Roy became one of your regular clients, and Lian, your favorite one. So when she asked you that, you told her your name. Roy was deciding between an Iced Americano or a Latte. “Daddy thinks you are beautiful.” The man almost let his wallet fall when his daughter told you that. He could swear his face was the same color of his hair, but yours weren’t too different as well.

The week later, Lian went again and told you everything about her school and how she loved cake pops and plushies.

When Roy was going to pay for the pastries, he looked at Lian and asked her to wait for him outside.

“She is really cute.” You told him, getting a smile from him.

“A little trouble, but she is a sweet girl.” He chuckled. “By the way, I am sorry if it’s a weird question, but do you have a favorite flower?”

The question surprised you, but you answered anyway what is your favorite flower.

In the next week they came again, but now Lian arrived holding your favorite flower to give it to you.

Every.

Single.

Friday.

You started to use them as a decoration on the counter, and Roy seemed pleased when he looked at the flowers.

Gentle smiles and soft touches on hand, or him fixing a strand of your hair behind your ear.

Until it stopped suddenly for a month.

Then for another month.

The visits and the flowers.

He was probably busy, of course. But you couldn't help feeling a bit… sad.

When your shift ended, you changed your uniform for your daily clothes and finished cleaning everything, before walking outside, ready to lock the door and go home when suddenly…

A flower. Your favorite flower. Lying on the ground in front of the cafeteria.

A small note under it written “find me” got your attention.

Another flower was next to it, and another, and one more, creating a trail that almost called your name.

If you walked a bit more, and turned right, you would see the park that was used as a meeting place for friends and couples.

You just turned right to follow another flower when you saw him. Roy, holding an enormous bouquet of your favorite flowers and wearing dark jeans that looked new and a black shirt.

God, he looked at you and his heart suddenly started to beat faster.

“Roy…?”

You walked towards him, your eyes following him, then looking at the flowers, then at him again.

“Hi, sweetheart.” He smiled sheepishly. “I know I disappeared for some time, but I swear I have a good reason.”

“That is?” He looked away, cheeks getting red as he tried to not look at you.

“My job is a bit… dangerous. And I was worried you could get caught in this big mess that is my life.” He murmured, now looking at you again. “But I couldn't take you out of my mind. Every day Lian would ask about you and I kept buying these flowers just to have a part of you closer to me.” He gently offered you the bouquet, praying that you would accept it from him. “I know I am an idiot for disappearing, but if you give me one more chance…”

You held the gift, making his eyes widen.

“Promise me that you will talk to me from now on?” You murmured, looking for honesty in his eyes.

“Is this… a chance?” He smiled, trying to hold back his hopes.

“Yes.” You chuckled, holding the flowers against your chest. “Yes it is.”

⋆⭒˚.⋆ Do NOT repost, copy, translate or use my texts on AI!

You did not call it fear. That was important. You called it preparedness. Risk assessment. Situational awareness. Intelligence. Survival. People liked those words better. They made your habits sound professional instead of haunted.

So you became professional. You became very good at entering rooms and knowing how to leave them. You became the person people wanted in crisis meetings, the calm voice, the cool head, the one who could say, “We need to account for secondary exits,” without sounding like you were really saying, I have been trapped before.

You worked as a security consultant now, mostly for nonprofits and public-sector programs that couldn’t afford Gotham’s private firms. Shelters. Clinics. Libraries. Community centres. Places full of people who had already been failed by locked doors and men with keys. You taught staff how to de-escalate violence. You mapped evacuation routes. You identified blind spots. You wrote reports with phrases like “hostile entry vulnerability” and “emergency response delay.”

You made fear useful. That was the trick. If fear could be useful, then maybe it was not eating you alive.

On the night you met Bruce Wayne, you were standing in the corner of a ballroom, counting exits. Six visible. Two staff only. One freight elevator behind the catering partition. Three security guards near the east entrance. Four near the stage. One pretending not to check their phone. Twenty-seven tables. Two hundred and thirteen guests. Fifteen waitstaff. Nine chandeliers. Too much glass.

Wayne Manor wore opulence like a costume it had grown tired of defending. Gold light spilled over polished floors. Music threaded through the air, elegant and expensive. Gotham’s wealthy moved in little constellations, laughing around champagne flutes while the city outside bled under rain.

The event was officially a fundraiser for the Gotham Resilience Initiative, a Wayne Foundation program meant to support trauma recovery after the recent uptick in fear toxin incidents. Unofficially, it was a room full of people congratulating themselves for caring. You had been invited because your firm had done risk planning for several Wayne-funded clinics. Lucius Fox had praised your work in an email with frightening sincerity. The Foundation wanted you there. Your boss had wanted the optics. You had wanted to stay home and reorganise your emergency supplies by expiration date.

So, naturally, you were wearing formal clothes that felt like a disguise and keeping your back to the wall.

“You look like you’re about to disarm the shrimp tower.” The voice came from your right. You did not jump. You were proud of that. You turned your head. Bruce Wayne stood beside you with a glass of champagne he had not touched.

He was taller than most people expected, which was funny, because most people expected him to be tall. There was just something different about seeing it up close. He occupied space like he had been trained not to waste any of it. The tuxedo fit him like wealth had signed a treaty with violence. His public face was softer than the rest of him. Charming mouth. Tired eyes. Polite expression. The kind of beauty that made cameras look expensive.

You glanced toward the shrimp tower. “It has structural weaknesses,” you said.

Bruce followed your gaze with grave attention. “Should I warn catering?”

“Only if you’re emotionally prepared for mass shellfish casualties.”

His mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. A controlled breach in a fortified wall.

“I’m Bruce,” he said, as if the room had not been orbiting him for the past hour.

“I know.”

“That usually gets a laugh.”

“Does it?”

“Sometimes.”

“From people who want a grant?”

This time, the smile landed. Small. Brief. Real enough to be dangerous. “Mostly,” he admitted.

You looked back at the room. “I’m not great at these things.”

“Galas?”

“Rooms full of people pretending not to look for leverage.”

Bruce was quiet for half a beat too long. Then he said, “That is a painfully accurate description of every gala I’ve ever attended.”

You studied him from the corner of your eye. He had positioned himself carefully. Not directly in front of you. Not blocking your view. Not close enough to make you step away. Most people would have closed distance without thinking, trying to force intimacy through proximity. Bruce Wayne, billionaire prince of Gotham, apparently knew better.

Or Batman did. The thought entered your mind uninvited and absurd. You dismissed it immediately. Everyone in Gotham had a Batman theory. Most of them were nonsense. Half the city thought he was a vampire. A deeply committed theatre kid. A curse. Three children stacked in armour. A government experiment. A ghost with a belt budget.

You did not have Batman theories. Theories got people killed. Evidence kept them breathing. Still. Bruce Wayne scanned rooms like you did. Not visibly. Not obviously. But you saw it. The tiny movements. His eyes caught on exits, security, balcony railings, the weight distribution of the crowd. The way he noticed the waiter with the shaking hand before anyone else did. The way his attention flickered to the west doors when thunder rattled the windows. A man did not learn to look like that from board meetings.

“You’re doing it too,” you said.

Bruce’s gaze returned to you. “Doing what?”

“Counting exits.”

He held your stare. There was an entire conversation in the silence. A warning. A question. A door almost opening. Then he looked toward the ballroom with smooth, practised ease. “Old habit.”

“Useful habit.”

“Depends on how often you need to use it.”

You gave a humourless smile. “This is Gotham.”

The music shifted. Something with strings, soft and mournful. A few couples moved toward the centre of the floor, glowing under chandelier light. Bruce’s attention lingered there, but not with longing. With distance. Like he was watching another species perform a ritual he had studied but never joined. You understood that too well.

“Do you dance?” he asked.

Your eyes narrowed. “Do you always ask strangers questions that sound like traps?”

“Only the interesting ones.”

“That does not make it less trap-shaped.”

Another almost-smile. Bruce Wayne, you decided, was trouble. Not in the ordinary billionaire way. Not because of power or money or all that polished grief wrapped in charm. He was trouble because he looked at you and did not dismiss what he saw. Most people looked at your stillness and assumed calm. Bruce looked at your stillness and recognised armour.

You hated that. You hated it immediately.

Before either of you could say anything else, the lights went out. The ballroom inhaled. Then the emergency lights snapped on, bathing everything in red. People murmured first. Not panic yet. Gothamites were hard to impress. Power outages, armed robberies, gas leaks, villain attacks—honestly, people here had learned to treat the first thirty seconds of disaster as an inconvenience until proven otherwise.

Bruce changed before your eyes. Not physically. Not enough for anyone else to notice. But the mask slipped. The charming softness vanished. His shoulders settled. His eyes sharpened. He was no longer standing beside you at a party. He was assessing a battlefield.

You felt your own body respond in kind. Breath steady. Hands loose. Weight balanced. Fear knocking politely from inside your ribs. Hello, old friend.

A sound hissed overhead. Your head snapped up. Yellow vapour slipped from the vents.

For one unreal second, nobody understood. Then someone screamed, and the room broke.

Fear toxin did not create fear from nothing. That was the common misconception. People talked about it like poison magic, like nightmares poured straight into the blood. But fear was already there. The toxin just opened every locked door. Guests began choking. A woman clawed at her necklace until pearls scattered across the floor like tiny bones. A man punched a waiter and screamed about rats under his skin. Someone toppled a table. Glass shattered.

Bruce grabbed your wrist. Every instinct in you detonated. You twisted out of his grip and nearly drove the heel of your palm into his throat before you stopped yourself. He released you instantly.

“Sorry,” he said. The apology was immediate. No ego. No confusion. No offended entitlement. That was worse. Monsters were easier when they acted like monsters. “We need to get people out,” he said.

You covered your mouth with your sleeve and scanned the room. “Main exits will jam. Staff corridor behind catering.”

“I’ll clear the east doors.”

“No. They’re moving toward them already. Crush risk. We open the service route and direct flow.”

Bruce looked at you. You were not sure whether anyone had ever told him no in a crisis and survived. Then he nodded.

The toxin burned through your sleeve, sweet and chemical, coating the back of your throat. You held your breath as long as possible, but panic made the room violent, and bodies slammed into bodies. Someone crashed into your side. You exhaled, inhaled on reflex.

The gas entered you like a key. The ballroom stretched. The red emergency lights deepened to arterial crimson. The walls bent inward. Every door grew teeth. Voices rose around you, but underneath them came another sound. Locks. Clicking. One after another after another.

Your hand closed around the small blade hidden in your sleeve. Formal wear had limitations. You compensated. The catering partition loomed ahead. A waiter appeared in front of you, face melting into someone else’s. Someone you did not think about. Someone you had trained yourself not to remember except in useful fragments: footstep pattern, voice volume, right-handed, liked to stand in doorways.

Your body froze. The hallucination smiled. You always think you’re prepared it said.

No. No, no, not here, not now.

You drove your shoulder into the figure. It vanished into yellow mist. You almost fell through it.

A real hand caught your arm. You spun, blade up. Bruce. His eyes flicked to the knife, then back to your face. He did not ask why you had it.

“Service door,” you rasped.

He nodded once. “Locked.”

“Move.” You pulled a slim tool from inside your cuff. Bruce’s eyebrows rose. “Old habit,” you snapped.

“Useful habit,” he returned. You would have laughed if breathing did not feel like swallowing broken glass.

The lock gave after six seconds. Bruce wrenched the door open, and cooler air rushed from the corridor beyond.

“Here!” you shouted, voice cutting through the room. “Staff exit! Move this way! Walk, don’t run!” Most people did not listen. Fear made people stupid. Not because they were weak. Because fear narrowed the world to one command: survive. You stepped onto a chair and raised your voice like a blade. “Move this way or stay in the gas!”

That worked better.

Bruce guided people toward you, his public mask flickering in and out with terrifying precision. One second, he was Gotham’s favourite useless billionaire, coughing dramatically and waving guests toward safety. The next, he was bracing a panicked man twice your size and redirecting his momentum without visible effort. You noticed. Of course, you noticed. You noticed everything.

A little girl crawled under a table, sobbing. Bruce saw her at the same time you did. So did the fire spreading along the drapes near the west wall. So did the crush forming near the main doors.

For the first time since the gas hit, Bruce hesitated. Half a second. No more. But fear lived in half-seconds.

“I’ve got her,” you said.

His gaze cut to you. You were already moving. The tablecloth snapped in your hand as you dropped to your knees. The girl’s eyes were huge, unfocused, lost in whatever nightmare the toxin had dragged out of her.

“Hey,” you said, soft but firm. “Look at me.” She screamed. You did not flinch. “You’re in Wayne Manor,” you said. “The floor is cold. The tablecloth is blue. My voice is real. The smoke is not. Can you count with me?”

Her small hands covered her ears. Behind you, the fire alarm began shrieking. Too much noise. Too much light. Too much smoke. Your own hallucinations crowded closer. Doors. Locks. Smiling mouths. Your apartment hallway stretching endlessly. A voice whispering, You let them in. You always let them in. You pressed one hand to the floor. Cold marble. Real.

“The floor is cold,” you repeated, for the girl and for yourself. “The tablecloth is blue. My voice is real.”

A shadow fell over you. Bruce lifted the table with one hand. Not enough to make a spectacle. Just enough to create space. His other hand extended toward the child, palm open.

“Hi,” he said gently. “I’m Bruce.”

The girl stared at him, trembling. “I know,” she whispered.

“Most people do,” he said, and somehow made it not sound vain. “Can you help me? I need you to hold onto my sleeve. This one. Good. Just like that.”

She obeyed. He did not grab her. He let her hold him. You wondered what kind of man understood the difference while everything burned.

Together, you got her out. By the time the last guest staggered through the service corridor, sprinklers had turned the ballroom into a glittering ruin. Security and emergency personnel flooded the manor. Somewhere in the chaos, Bruce disappeared.

You stood outside in the rain, shaking so badly you had to hide your hands in your pockets. You should have left. Instead, you looked up.

A dark shape moved across the manor roof. There and gone. The toxin surged again. The lawn vanished. You were in a hallway. Not the manor. Not your apartment. Somewhere older. Smaller. The walls too close. The air locked tight. A voice behind you said your name. Not your name now. The old one. The one said with ownership.

You turned with the knife already in your hand.

Nothing. Rain hit your face. Real. Lawn under your shoes. Real. Police sirens. Real. Your pulse would not listen.

You stumbled away from the crowd. The garden behind Wayne Manor was large enough to hide in if you knew how to move. You found a stone path, then a hedge, then a low wall overlooking dark trees.

You put your back to the wall and tried to breathe. Bad idea. The gas still lived in your lungs. The garden warped. Tree branches became reaching hands. Raindrops became tapping fingers. Every shadow had a mouth.

You heard movement before you saw him. Above. Behind.

You spun. Batman dropped from the wall like a piece of night that had finally given up pretending to be sky.

You threw your knife. He caught it. Because apparently, he could do that.

For a moment, the two of you stared at each other through the rain. He wore black armour and a cape that moved like smoke. White lenses. Cowl. Symbol. Myth made tactical. Fear screamed inside you. Your body read him as danger before your mind could intervene. Too big. Too close. Too silent.

He extended the knife handle toward you. You stared at it. Then at him.

“Most people duck,” he said. His voice was lower than Bruce’s. Rougher. Distorted. But fear was a key, and it had opened too many doors. You knew that cadence. You knew the shape of restraint.

“Most people don’t loom,” you said.

A beat. Then he said, “You’re exposed.”

“So are you.”

“I have counteragents.”

“Of course you do.”

He held out a small injector. You did not take it. The hallucinations whispered around you. Trap. Needle. Stranger. Mask. Don’t let him close.

Batman stayed still. Not patient. Patience implied ease. This was control. He was controlling every instinct that told him to move faster, push harder, end the threat, solve the problem. You recognised that too.

“What’s in it?” you asked.

“Atropine derivative. Benzodiazepine microdose. Experimental binding agent keyed to Crane’s recent formulas.”

“You always carry experimental drugs on first dates?”

The white lenses stared. Maybe he was annoyed. Maybe he was amused. With Batman, it was tragically hard to tell. “This is not a date.”

“You brought needles and wore a cape. Gotham standards are flexible.”

His mouth was hidden, but his silence had texture. Definitely annoyed. Possibly amused.

You took the injector. Your hand shook once before you stabbed it into your thigh. Batman looked away. Only slightly. Enough to give you the illusion of privacy.

The drug hit slowly, like someone turning down the volume on hell. The trees became trees again. The whispering faded to something bearable. Your ribs loosened. Batman injected himself after you. His hand did not shake. But his breathing changed. Just once. You noticed. He noticed you noticing.

“Side effects?” you asked.

“Residual hallucinations. Elevated paranoia. Emotional destabilisation.”

“Again, Gotham standards. That’s just brunch.”

Batman turned toward the manor. “This attack was coordinated.”

“Gas through the vents. Lockdown in the ballroom. Jammed comms?”

“Yes.”

“Fear Corps?” His head turned back to you. You shrugged. “The symbol on the canisters. Yellow ring painted over a crow skull. They’ve been hitting clinics. Shelters. Public buildings. Places where people already carry fear like a second spine.”

“You’ve seen them before.”

“I consult for some of the sites they hit.”

“You didn’t report the symbol.”

“I did. GCPD filed it under ‘Scarecrow copycat nonsense’ and then presumably used the report as a coaster.”

Batman’s silence agreed in fluent, exhausted vigilante. Thunder rolled over the trees. You wrapped your arms around yourself and immediately hated how defensive it looked.

Batman looked toward the manor again. “They targeted the fundraiser for access to donors and city officials.”

“No,” you said. He stilled. “That’s part of it, sure. Big room, high-profile victims, lots of cameras. But they called the Initiative’s guest list three days ago.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they asked for me. Someone claiming to be from Foundation logistics wanted to confirm I’d attend. Said there’d been a seating change.”

“Did you verify?”

Your eyes narrowed. Batman did not apologise. He didn’t need to. You knew what he was asking. Not blame. Procedure.

“Yes,” you said. “The number was spoofed. I checked with the Foundation. They had no record of the call.”

“And you still came.”

“I thought they were fishing for donor data. I didn’t think they were planning to crop-dust the one per cent with designer nightmare juice.”

His jaw shifted. You could see it now beneath the cowl, the only human part of the monster visible. Bruce had done that, too. Tiny tension. Teeth held behind restraint.

“Why you?” he asked.

You smiled without humour. “Because I’m fun at parties.”

“Why you?” There it was. Batman did not let doors stay closed just because they had locks. Unfortunately for him, neither did you.

“Why Bruce Wayne?” you returned.

Silence. Rain fell between you. Then Batman said, “We should get you to a secure location.”

“Hard pass.”

“You’re still under the effects of fear toxin.”

“And you’re dressed as a bat.” His head tilted. Barely. You pointed toward him. “Objectively, between us, I am not the one making the wildest choices tonight.”

“I have medical equipment.”

“I have an apartment.”

“They know where you live.”

The words landed clean and cold. You looked at him. Batman did not soften them. Good. You hated soft lies. Give you the sharp truth any day. At least you could use sharp things.

The hallucination flickered again at the edge of the garden. Your apartment door. Locks undone. A hand pushing inward.

Your stomach turned. Batman saw something change in your face. “Come with me."

“No.”

“They may have planted devices. They may be monitoring you. They may use you to reach the people connected to the attacked sites.”

“I said no.”

His cape shifted in the wind. “I’m not asking as a threat.”

“Then ask like a person.”

The rain seemed to pause. Batman looked at you for a long moment. Then, lower, quieter, Bruce under gravel and shadow, he said, “Please.”

Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous that one word could be more dangerous than the whole suit.

You looked away first. “Fine,” you said. “But if this secure location is a cave, I’m making jokes.”

Batman fired a grapple into the dark.

“It’s not a cave,” he said. Then, after half a second, “Technically.”

“Oh, fantastic.” He stepped closer and held out an arm. You stared. He stared back. “No,” you said.

“You’ll fall.”

“I’ll manage.”

“You’ve been poisoned.”

“You’re bossy for a cryptid.”

“You’re difficult for a civilian.”

“Civilian with a knife.”

“Multiple knives.”

You blinked. He said nothing. You sighed. “You scanned me?”

“You threw one at my head.”

“Fair.”

He waited. The manor lights glowed behind him. The city sprawled beyond the hill, soaked and glittering and full of teeth. Your apartment was compromised. Your lungs still tasted yellow. Somewhere out there, the Fear Corps had your file, your number, maybe your floor plan.

Fear built walls fast. It wanted you alone. It always did. Loneliness was easy to defend.

You stepped into Batman’s reach. “Drop me and I’ll haunt you.”

“I don’t drop people.”

“Statistically unlikely.”

His arm went around your waist. Careful. Firm. Impersonal in the way of someone trying very hard not to frighten a frightened person. The grapple fired, and the world vanished beneath you. You did not scream. You did, however, make a sound that your dignity would later classify as “wind-related.”

The Batmobile was hidden beyond the tree line, black and impossible and so aggressively itself that you almost laughed despite everything.

“You were serious,” you said.

Batman opened the passenger door. “About what?”

“The cave thing.”

He paused. Then said, “Technically.”

The drive was too fast and too silent. Gotham blurred past the tinted windows, yellow emergency broadcasts flashing on digital billboards. Fear Corps claims had already hit the news. A masked spokesperson declared that Gotham’s “so-called resilient” would be “liberated from the tyranny of denial.” You watched the broadcast with cold focus. The spokesperson wore a hood and a respirator shaped like an open beak. Behind them, a painted symbol: a crow skull inside a yellow ring.

Fear Corps. Scarecrow had always wanted fear to be science, sermon, and art installation. His disciples had apparently decided to add branding.

Batman turned the screen off.  “You need to rest your eyes.”

“I need information.”

“You need medical attention.”

“I need information more.”

“You’re concussed?”

“No.”

“Poisoned.”

“Semantics.”

His hands tightened on the wheel. You watched them. Gloved. Steady. Too steady.

“You do this a lot?” you asked.

“Drive?”

“Deflect.”

His jaw moved. There. Bruce. Briefly. “I could ask you the same thing."

“You could.”

“Would you answer?”

“Would you?”

The Batmobile roared into a hidden tunnel before he could respond. Stone swallowed the car. Your chest tightened immediately. No windows. No visible exit except behind you. Low tunnel. Moving too fast. Underground. Too enclosed. Your fingers found the door handle. Locked.

“Door releases after depressurisation,” Batman said. “Seven seconds.”

“Why is your car depressurised?”

“In case of toxin exposure.”

“You hear how insane that sounds?”

“Yes.” At least he was self-aware. Small blessings. Tiny emotional crumbs from Gotham’s haunted loaf.

The tunnel opened into the Cave. It was not a cave the way an ocean was not technically a puddle. Your first thought was: too big. Your second thought was: too many shadows. Your third thought was: he lives inside a wound.

The Batcave rose around you in dark stone and steel platforms, lit by blue-white monitors and the soft glow of equipment. Water dripped somewhere in the distance. Bats shifted high above. Vehicles sat like sleeping beasts along the lower level. Trophies, computers, medical bay, weapons, maps. Not chaos. A system. A city beneath the city. Fear, given unlimited funds and a tragic aesthetic.

You stepped out of the car too quickly, then regretted it when the floor tilted. Batman was beside you before you hit the ground. He did not touch you. His hand hovered. You hated how much that mattered.

“I’m fine,” you said.

“You’re swaying.”

“The floor is dramatic.”

“This way.”

A man in a waistcoat appeared near the medical bay with a tray in his hands. Apparently the Batcave came with butler service. His expression flicked from Batman to you to the state of your clothes, the rain, the toxin exposure, and the knives you were absolutely not concealing well enough anymore.

“Master Bruce,” he said calmly, “I see we are collecting strays with weapons tonight.”

You looked at Batman. Batman said nothing. You looked at the butler. The butler looked politely back. Batman turned toward the medical bay with the air of a man who had just remembered seventeen urgent tasks.

“Oh, that’s hilarious,” you said softly.

“Is it?” Batman asked.

“No. I’m actively furious. But it’s also hilarious.”

The butler’s mouth twitched. “Alfred Pennyworth.”

You gave him your name. His handshake was warm. Steady. Real.

“Please sit,” Alfred said. “Before you fall over and make Master Bruce even more brooding than usual.”

Batman made a sound. Not quite protest. More like compressed suffering.

You sat. The medical bay was cleaner than most hospitals you had seen and somehow more intimidating. Alfred checked your vitals with efficient care while Batman—Bruce, apparently, because sure, why not, Gotham’s cryptid was also the man whose shrimp tower you had insulted—stood nearby in full armour, pretending not to hover.

“You can take the cowl off,” you said.

“No.”

“You think I’m going to forget?”

“No.”

“You think the cowl helps?”

“Yes.”

“With what?”

He did not answer. Alfred glanced at him. Not pointedly. Somehow worse than pointedly.

Bruce exhaled through his nose and reached up. The cowl came off. It should not have changed the room as much as it did. But Batman without the cowl was not less frightening. He was more. Because now there was a face under the myth. A tired one. Rain-dark hair. Bruised cheekbone. The same blue eyes from the ballroom, stripped of playboy glaze and left raw with calculation.

Bruce Wayne stood in the Batcave in black armour, looking like a man who had built a god out of grief and then gotten trapped inside it.

“Oh,” you said before you could stop yourself.

His expression closed. “What?”

You looked away. “You look tired.”

That clearly was not what he expected. He blinked once. Alfred made a very small approving sound. Traitor, Bruce’s expression said.

Alfred drew your blood, administered another antidote dose, and asked questions you answered as clinically as possible. Symptoms. Exposure length. Hallucinations. Medical history. When he asked what you saw, you went still.

“Walls,” you said eventually. “Doors. People I don’t like remembering. And you?”

Alfred looked sharply at Bruce. Bruce’s gaze lifted to yours. “No,” he said. Not harshly. Not angrily. Just a door shutting.

You nod. That seemed to bother him more than if you had pushed. Good. Let him sit with being understood.

Alfred finished taping gauze over the puncture point at your arm. “You are not in immediate danger from the toxin, though I would strongly advise sleep.” You and Bruce both made the exact same expression. Alfred sighed like a man who had spent decades trying to teach raccoons table manners. “Yes,” he said. “I am aware that was optimistic.”

A chime came from the main computer. Bruce was gone before you could blink, cowl still in hand. Alfred gave you a blanket. You stared at it.

“It is not a trap,” he said.

“That’s what someone with a trap blanket would say.”

“I assure you, our trap blankets are kept in the west wing.”

You took it. Alfred Pennyworth was dangerous.

Bruce stood at the computer, reading through incoming data. His shoulders had settled into that awful controlled stillness again.

You slid off the medical bed. Alfred raised an eyebrow. “I’m not going far.”

You joined Bruce at the console. He did not look at you. “You should be resting.”

“You should be emotionally well-adjusted, but here we are.”

Alfred made a sound behind you that might have been a cough if one were feeling generous.

Bruce closed his eyes briefly. On the monitor, footage from the manor attack played alongside maps of previous Fear Corps incidents. Clinics. Shelters. Municipal buildings. A crisis hotline office. Two libraries. Places you knew. Places you had walked through, measured, defended. A list appeared in the corner. Names. Yours among them.

Your skin went cold. “What is that?”

Bruce’s voice dropped. “Potential targets.”

You leaned closer. Every name belonged to someone connected to trauma response work. Security planners. Therapists. first responders. organizers. Survivors turned advocates. People who had made themselves into walls for others. High-resilience individuals.

Your mouth went dry. “They’re not targeting officials,” you said. “They’re targeting people who help others manage fear.”

Bruce’s eyes sharpened. “To undermine recovery networks.”

“No. More theatrical than that.” You pointed to the files. “Look at their manifesto language. ‘Liberated from denial.’ ‘The resilient are liars.’ ‘Fear is truth.’ They don’t just want Gotham afraid. Gotham’s already afraid. They want to prove that everyone who claims to function through fear is one bad night away from becoming monstrous.”

Bruce went silent. You felt him understand. Too quickly. Too personally.

“They’re selecting people who weaponised fear,” you said. “People who turned it into work. Identity. Mission.”

Your gaze moved to the giant bat symbol glowing faintly across the platform. “Well, that’s awkward.”

Bruce did not laugh. He was staring at the list. His own name was not on it. Batman’s symbol was. Not Batman. A symbol. A black bat inside the yellow ring. You watched Bruce’s face shut down piece by piece. There was fear there, but not panic. Worse. Recognition.

“They want you,” you said.

“They attacked my home.”

“They attacked Bruce Wayne’s home to get to Batman.”

“Yes.”

“And me?”

His gaze shifted to your name. “They used you to test the toxin response."

“No.” You studied the list again. “They used me because they knew I’d come. They knew I’d notice patterns. Maybe they knew I’d survive exposure long enough to become interesting.”

Bruce looked at you. “Interesting is dangerous.”

“Being boring hasn’t saved anyone either.”

The computer chimed again. A video feed opened. The Fear Corps spokesperson filled the screen.

“Hello, little blade,” they crooned.

Every muscle in Bruce’s body went rigid. Your stomach turned.

The camera angle shifted. Your apartment appeared behind them. Your actual apartment. Your locks. Your door. Your carefully placed mirror by the entryway. Your wall of maps hidden behind a sliding panel that should have required a code. Someone had opened it. Someone had touched your fear.

The spokesperson trailed gloved fingers over your notes. “Such beautiful architecture,” they said. “Every line a prayer. Every lock a confession. You thought if you planned enough, nothing could touch you.”

Your pulse roared. Bruce stepped closer to the screen.

“Where are you?” he demanded.

The mask turned toward him. “Ah. There he is. The larger fortress. The grand design. Tell me, Batman, does the Cave feel safe tonight?”

Bruce’s face did not change, but the Cave changed around him. Every shadow seemed to lean closer.

The spokesperson laughed softly. “You both misunderstand fear. You make weapons of it, walls of it, alarms that never sleep. But fear does not protect you. Fear owns you. Every locked door is still a door fear told you to build.”

Your hands curled into fists.

The figure picked up one of your notebooks. You kept no diary. No emotional confessions. Nothing so breakable. But your security notes were worse. Because fear had written them in your handwriting.

“Tonight,” the spokesperson continued, “we begin the demonstration. Gotham will watch its strongest become its sharpest. They will see what survival really means.”

A new image appeared. A warehouse near the Narrows. Live feed. People bound to chairs. Ten, maybe twelve. Faces you recognised from the target list. Counselors. EMTs. The director of a youth shelter. A crisis operator who had once sent you a thank-you card. A canister hung above them. Yellow gas swirling inside.

Bruce’s voice went quiet and lethal. “Let them go.”

The spokesperson leaned close to the camera. “Bring us the Bat. Bring us the blade. Come afraid, or don’t come at all.”

The feed cut. For one second, the Cave was silent except for water dripping into the dark. Then Bruce moved. Fast. Violent. Efficient. He pulled up maps, traffic cams, satellite overlays. Alfred began issuing quiet updates from another terminal. The Cave became a machine around him.

You stood frozen. Your apartment. Your notes. Your locks undone. Fear surged so hard you tasted metal. You had known, abstractly, that your safety was fragile. Everyone’s was. That was the entire point. But knowing and seeing were different species of pain. They had touched everything. They had turned your walls into invitations. You reached for the edge of the console.

Bruce noticed. Even mid-crisis, even with hostages and enemies and strategy unfolding across the screens, he noticed.

“Sit down,” he said.

“Don’t.” His mouth closed. “Don’t order me around because you’re scared.”

His eyes flashed. “I’m not—”

You laughed once. It sounded awful. “Don’t insult both of us.”

Bruce turned fully toward you. The armour made him look larger than life. The face made him look human enough to hurt. “You were targeted,” he said. “Your home was compromised. You’ve been exposed to toxin. You are not going into the field.”

“There it is.”

“This is not negotiable.”

“Everything is negotiable. You’re just used to winning.” His jaw tightened. Fear spoke through him beautifully. Cleanly. In the language of control. You knew the dialect. “You don’t get to lock me away and call it protection."

“They want you there.”

“They want you there, too.”

“I’m trained.”

“So am I.”

“Not for this.”

You stepped closer. The Cave lights caught on the armour between you. “No one is trained for seeing their worst fear crawl out of the walls. You just have more expensive walls.” Bruce flinched. Tiny. Enough. You lowered your voice. “Those people are there because they did what I did. What you did. They learned the world was unsafe and decided to become useful anyway. The Fear Corps wants to turn that against them.”

“I know.”

“Then you know I can help.”

“I know you could die.”

The words hit the Cave floor and stayed there. Not tactical. Not strategic. Raw. Bruce seemed to realise what he had said a second too late.

You stared at him. There were easier answers. Colder ones. More Batman-shaped ones. He could have said you were a liability. He could have said civilians complicated operations. He could have said anything except the truth.

You could die. And he was afraid. For you. Stupid heart. Treacherous little organ.

You looked away first. “We all could,” you said. “That’s not an argument. That’s Gotham.”

Bruce’s eyes closed briefly. When he opened them again, Batman looked out. Not instead of Bruce. With him.

“You follow my lead,” he said. “No improvising.”

“I will improvise if necessary.”

His stare sharpened. You stared back.

“You wear armour.”

“Fine.”

“And a comm.”

“Fine.”

“And you do not engage unless—”

“If you finish that sentence with ‘necessary,’ I’ll start throwing scalpels.”

Alfred gently moved the tray of medical instruments farther away. Bruce’s mouth twitched. There. A crack in the wall.

“Fine,” he said.

The armour did not fit perfectly, but it fit well enough. Lightweight, black, reinforced across the chest and ribs. Bruce handed you gloves. Alfred handed you an earpiece and a small mask filter. You strapped knives into places Bruce pretended not to notice and definitely catalogued.

By the time you climbed into the Batmobile again, the fear had changed shape. It was still there. It always was. But now it had direction. A blade instead of a swarm.

The warehouse squatted near the Narrows waterfront, all rusted metal and broken windows, backed by black water. Yellow light pulsed from inside.

Batman parked two blocks away. “You stay behind me,” he said.

“Field lead, remember?”

“That is field lead.”

“That is field dictatorship.”

“That is also accurate.”

You hated that he was funny when he wasn’t trying.

The two of you moved through rain and shadow. Batman had already disabled exterior cameras remotely. You spotted two backup sensors he had not mentioned and one pressure plate near a side entrance.

He noticed you noticing. “You saw those quickly,” he said through the comm.

“I’m motivated.”

“You’re afraid.”

“Yes.” The honesty startled both of you. You kept moving. “Yes,” you repeated, quieter. “I’m afraid. I’m not useless.”

Batman’s silence changed. Softened, maybe.

No. Not softened. Made room.

“I know,” he said. Three words. No pity. No surprise.

Just belief.

You had not expected how much that would hurt.

Inside, the warehouse smelled like rust, saltwater, and chemicals. The hostages were arranged in a circle beneath the suspended toxin canister. Each chair had restraints. Each person had a heart monitor strapped to their chest.

Screens ringed the room, each displaying biometric readings.

Fear made measurable. Fear made spectacle.

A dozen Fear Corps members patrolled the upper walkways. More moved near the hostages. Their masks were crow-like, yellow lenses shining.

At the far end of the warehouse stood the spokesperson. No hood now. A long yellow coat. Respirator. Gloves. A harness of toxin vials across their chest.

They lifted their head before either of you moved.

“Welcome,” they called. “You came together. How tender.”

Batman’s hand lifted slightly. Wait.

This time, you did. Barely.

The spokesperson spread their arms. “Look at them. Gotham’s brave ones. Counselors. Responders. Advocates. Survivors. All so proud of what they’ve made from terror.”

One of the hostages sobbed behind their gag.

The spokesperson turned toward them. “But fear is honest. Fear tells us who we are before morality edits the script.”

Batman’s voice cut through the warehouse. “Let them go.”

“Still pretending you negotiate with fear? Oh, Batman.” The mask tilted. “You obey it every night.”

Your comm clicked softly. Batman’s voice, private: “Ten guards, upper level. Six lower. Canister rigged to biometric triggers.”

“Hostages’ heart rates?”

“Yes.”

Of course. You understood too quickly. “If they panic too hard, it drops?”

“Toxin releases.”

“And if we attack openly, everyone panics.”

“Yes.”

A terrible little puzzle box.

The spokesperson looked toward your hiding place.

“You especially,” they said. “Little blade. Would you like to know why we chose you?”

Your stomach tightened. Batman’s gaze flicked to you.

You stepped from the shadow.

“Honestly?” you called. “I was hoping it was my sparkling personality.”

Several Fear Corps members raised weapons.

Batman remained hidden. Good. Let them look at you. You knew how to be looked at by monsters.

The spokesperson laughed. “There it is. Humour like a locked gate.”

“Better than monologuing like a community theatre scarecrow.”

Their head tilted. “You think mockery is courage?”

“No. I think your branding needs work.”

Behind them, Batman moved. Silent. Dark. Almost impossible.

You kept the spokesperson’s attention.

“You studied us,” you said. “Right? Everybody in those chairs. Me. Batman. You made your little murder scrapbook and decided fear was the purest truth because that sounds deep if nobody in the room has had therapy.”

A few hostages looked toward you. Their breathing shifted. Not calm. But focused.

The spokesperson’s gloved hand hovered near a detonator.

“You are all alike,” they said. “You mistake function for healing.”

You smiled. It felt sharp enough to bleed. “And you mistake pain for insight.”

Batman reached the first guard. Dropped them silently. One.

“You think because fear revealed something ugly in you, it must reveal the truth in everyone else,” you continued. “But fear lies. Constantly. That’s literally its whole toxic little hobby.”

Two more guards down. Three.

The spokesperson’s posture changed. They sensed something. You moved closer. Every step said: look at me.

“I’ll tell you what fear told me tonight,” you said. “It told me I was safer alone. It told me every person who reached for me was a threat. It told me walls were the same thing as home.” Your voice steadied. “But fear built those walls with stolen tools. It used old pain and called it wisdom. It used survival and called it identity.”

The hostages were listening now. So were the guards.

Bruce moved like a shadow with purpose. Four. Five.

The spokesperson ripped the detonator from their belt. Batman dropped from above.

Chaos erupted. A guard fired. You moved before fear could freeze you, throwing a knife into the weapon’s mechanism. The gun sparked and jammed. Batman slammed into two guards at once, cape flaring like a black wave.

The hostages screamed. Heart monitors spiked. The canister beeped.

“Breathe!” you shouted. “Everyone, look at me!”

A counsellor near the front was hyperventilating so hard their monitor shrieked.

You dropped to your knees in front of them, ripping off their gag.

“Name five things you can see,” you said. They sobbed. “Five things,” you repeated. “Now.”

“Lights,” they gasped. “You. Chair. Water. Batman.”

“Good. Four things you can feel.”

Behind you, a Fear Corps member charged. You pivoted and drove your elbow into their stomach, then slammed your palm into the side of their mask. They hit the floor.

“Four things,” you repeated.

The counsellor stared at you like you were insane. “Rope. Floor. My shoes. My—my hands.”

“Good.”

Around the circle, other hostages began copying you. Grounding each other. Voices shook, but they spoke. Fear had momentum. So did care.

Batman reached the canister control panel. The spokesperson attacked him with a blade coated in yellow residue.

“Batman!” you warned.

He turned too late. The blade cut across the side of his neck, shallow but enough. His whole body seized.

The toxin hit him directly.

The spokesperson leaned close. “There you are.”

Batman staggered. Not much. Enough. You saw his fear take him. His gaze locked on something that was not there. His breath caught. His hand lifted, reaching.

The warehouse lights flickered.

For one impossible second, you saw it too. Not clearly. A child in bright colours. Blood on concrete. Pearls falling in an alley. A gunshot that kept echoing.

Bruce made a sound that did not belong to Batman.

The spokesperson whispered, “What is a hero but a frightened child with better weapons?”

Batman dropped to one knee. The canister timer accelerated.

You moved.

The spokesperson turned, but you were already within their reach. Your shoulder hit their chest. Both of you slammed into the control platform. They were stronger than they looked, manic with toxin and purpose. A gloved hand closed around your throat.

The world flashed yellow. Your apartment. Your hallway. Your old fear. A locked door. A hand over your mouth.

The spokesperson’s mask became another face.

“You can’t save anyone,” they hissed. “You can only build better cages.”

Your knife was gone. Your breath was gone. Panic opened under you like a pit.

Then Bruce’s voice crackled through the comm.

Not Batman. Bruce.

Your name. He said it like an anchor.

You slammed your head into the spokesperson’s mask. Pain burst white behind your eyes. Their grip loosened. You drove your knee up, grabbed the toxin vial from their harness, and smashed it against the side of their respirator.

Yellow gas burst inward.

They screamed. You fell back, coughing. Batman was still on one knee, fighting ghosts.

The canister timer hit twenty seconds.

You crawled to him. “B.”

No response.

You grabbed his face with both hands. The cowl lenses stared through you, blank and terrible. “Bruce.”

His breath shuddered.

“It isn’t real,” you said.

His voice broke around something silent. “I know.”

“No. You don’t. So believe me instead.”

The words returned from the night before, or from the garden, or from whatever strange place between fear and trust they had first been born.

His gloved hand closed over your wrist. Hard. Desperate.

“Floor is metal,” you said. “Air tastes like rust. My voice is real. Your fear is lying.”

The timer screamed. Ten seconds.

“Batman!” you snapped. “Canister!”

His head jerked toward it.

He moved. Not smoothly. Not perfectly. But fast. You followed, reading the wires as his hands tore into the panel.

“Secondary trigger on the left,” you said.

“Decoy.”

“Pressure loop under the valve.”

“I see it.”

“Do you?”

His mouth tightened. “Yes.”

Five. Four.

“Blue wire,” he said.

“No, yellow.”

His hand paused. You saw the circuit in one terrible whole.

Fear made details sharp.

“Yellow,” you said. “Trust me.”

Three.

Bruce cut the yellow wire.

The timer died. The canister went silent. For one breath, nobody moved.

Then the hostages began crying. Not panic now. Release.

Police sirens approached in the distance.

Batman slumped against the platform, one hand braced on the metal, breathing hard. You sat beside him because your legs had given up on the concept of dignity. The spokesperson lay unconscious nearby, mask cracked, toxin leaking from ruined filters. Their followers were down or fleeing into the waiting arms of the GCPD perimeter Bruce had no doubt arranged five steps ago while hallucinating trauma, because apparently, multitasking was his toxic trait.

“You listened to me,” you said, staring at the dead timer.

Bruce’s voice was hoarse. “You were right.”

“Say it again. I want witnesses.”

His head turned slightly. Even through the cowl, you felt the look. You smiled weakly. It trembled at the edges.

Then the adrenaline cracked.

Your hands began to shake. Not a little. Not politely. Your whole body shook with delayed terror, toxin, exhaustion, violation, too much trust too quickly and not enough air to process it.

Bruce sat up. You flinched when he moved.

He stopped instantly. That made it worse.

Your throat tightened. “I hate this,” you whispered.

His voice was low. “I know.”

“I hate that they got in.”

“I know.”

“I hate that you saw.”

A pause. Then Bruce said, “I hate that you saw that too.”

You looked at him. The cowl hid too much. Not enough.

Sirens grew louder.

The warehouse doors burst open. Gordon’s voice barked commands. Officers and paramedics rushed in. The hostages were freed. The Fear Corps members were cuffed. The spokesperson was dragged away under heavy guard, still laughing weakly until someone removed the broken respirator.

Batman rose before the police could reach him. Of course. Myth did not stay for paperwork.

He offered you his hand. You stared at it. Then took it. His grip was warm through the glove.

He pulled you to your feet. Carefully. Like your dignity was something he had been entrusted with and was determined not to drop.

“Come on,” he said.

“Back to the technically-not-a-cave?”

“You need another antidote dose.”

“You need twelve years of sleep.”

“I’ll settle for four hours.”

“Ambitious.”

He looked at you. The corner of his mouth moved beneath the cowl. “Two,” he said.

You almost smiled. Almost.

The Batmobile ride back was quieter. Not empty. Just quieter. Your fear had stopped screaming and started pacing. That was manageable. You knew pacing. You knew restless things.

Bruce drove with one hand for part of the trip, the other pressed briefly to the cut at his neck. Blood darkened the edge of his collar.

“You’re bleeding,” you said.

“It’s shallow.”

“Classic man who needs stitches behaviour.”

“I don’t need stitches.”

“Alfred will decide.”

His silence was deeply betrayed.

You leaned back against the seat and closed your eyes.

Bad idea. The warehouse returned. Your apartment returned. The hand around your throat returned.

Your eyes snapped open. Bruce noticed.

“Look at the dashboard,” he said.

“I’m not—”

“Three green indicators. One red. Clock reads 3:42. Rain on the windshield. My voice is real.”

You swallowed. The dashboard glowed. Three green indicators. One red. 3:42. Rain. Bruce’s voice. Real.

You hated needing help. You hated more that he gave it well.

“Thanks,” you said.

He nodded once.

The Cave welcomed you back with cold stone and low light. Alfred was waiting with medical supplies and the grim expression of a man about to win several arguments.

“Master Bruce,” he said. “You appear to have been stabbed.”

“Cut.”

“Ah. My mistake. The bleeding is decorative, then.”

You sat on the medical bed and watched Alfred bully Batman into a chair with surgical precision. It was, frankly, inspiring.

Bruce removed the cowl again. His hair was damp with sweat and rain. Without the white lenses, the exhaustion in his eyes was almost indecent.

Alfred cleaned the cut on his neck.

Bruce stared forward. Not at you. Not at anything.

You knew that stare. It was the place people went when pain was easier than memory.

“You saw them,” you said quietly.

Alfred’s hands paused. Bruce did not move. You regretted it immediately.

“Sorry,” you said. “That was—”

“My parents,” Bruce said.

The Cave seemed to hold its breath.

You looked at him.

His voice was flat in the way ice was flat over deep water. “And Jason.”

A name like a grave.

You did not ask. You knew enough about Gotham to know the dead gathered around Batman like weather.

“I’m sorry,” you said.

Bruce’s jaw tightened. Not because the words were wrong. Because they were kind. Kindness was harder to defend against.

Alfred resumed cleaning the wound with hands that were steady but gentler now.

“I know what fear says to me,” Bruce said after a long moment. “That I failed them. That everything I do is an excuse to keep failing them in more elaborate ways.”

You were very still. “And what do you say back?”

His mouth curved without humour. “Usually? Nothing useful.”

That surprised a laugh out of you. Small. Broken. Real.

Bruce looked over. For a second, his face changed. Like your laugh had opened a window in a room he forgot had air.

“I’m sorry,” you said, still half-laughing. “That wasn’t funny.”

“It was a little funny.”

“Darkly.”

“This is a cave.”

“Technically.”

Alfred’s mouth twitched. Bruce looked almost peaceful for three whole seconds. Then Alfred put a bandage over the cut and ruined the moment by saying, “Now both of you will sleep.”

You and Bruce answered at once. “No.”

Alfred looked heavenward. “I am surrounded by traumatised owls.”

Bruce stood. “I need to analyse the recovered toxin.”

“You need rest.”

“The Fear Corps leader escaped full interrogation. There may be other cells.”

“And if you collapse into the computer, I shall label your forehead ‘evidence’ and leave you there.”

You watched Bruce consider arguing. Actually consider it.

Then he glanced at you. You were still shaking faintly under Alfred’s blanket. His expression shifted.

“I’ll work upstairs,” he said.

Alfred closed his eyes in pain. “That is not what rest means, Master Bruce.”

But Bruce was looking at you. “There are guest rooms,” he said. “You don’t have to stay in the Cave.”

A door. Not an order.

You rubbed your thumb along the blanket’s edge. Your apartment was not safe. The idea of a guest room in Wayne Manor felt equally impossible. Too large. Too unknown. Too many doors you had not checked yourself.

But the Cave was all shadows and weapons and the echo of bats overhead.

“Windows?” you asked.

Bruce nodded. “Several.”

“Locks?”

“Yes.”

“Interior access points?”

“Two.”

“Can they be secured?”

“Yes.”

Bruce did not look impatient. He looked like a man memorising a language.

“Fine,” you said.

Bruce led you upstairs through a hidden passage because apparently Wayne Manor was less house and more gothic escape room. The guest room was ridiculous. Huge bed. Dark wood. Heavy curtains. Fireplace. Rain tapping against tall windows. It smelled faintly of cedar and clean linen. Too elegant. Too quiet.

You stood in the doorway and immediately identified every way someone could enter. Bruce stood behind you, not crowding.

“The windows lock from the inside,” he said. “There’s a manual security panel beside the bed. No cameras in private rooms. The door has a deadbolt. The adjoining sitting room can be locked from this side.”

You looked at him. He met your gaze. No embarrassment. No pity. Just information.

“You knew I’d ask,” you said.

“I would.”

Your chest ached. “That’s not normal, is it?” you asked.

“No.”

The answer was gentle. The honesty was not.

You entered the room. Bruce remained in the hall.

“If you need anything,” he said, then stopped.

You turned back. His hand rested against the doorframe. Not gripping. Just touching. Grounding himself, maybe.

He looked suddenly uncertain. Bruce Wayne, uncertain in his own house.

“What?” you asked.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said. The admission was quiet enough that rain nearly swallowed it.

You leaned against the inside of the doorway. “Do what?”

“Not make it worse.”

The words slipped under your armour. Neat as a blade between ribs. You wanted to make a joke. You almost did. Humour rose on instinct, another lock, another wall. But he was looking at you like he had set down a weapon and did not know what to do with his hands.

So you told the truth. “Me neither.”

The space between you changed. Not healed. Not safe. But honest.

Bruce nodded once. “Goodnight,” he said.

“Bruce.”

He paused. You should not have said his name. It felt too intimate without the cowl. Too human. Your fingers tightened around the door.

“Thank you,” you said.

His face did something complicated. “You saved me, too.”

Then he left.

You locked the door. Then checked the windows. Then checked the sitting room. Then checked the door again. Then stood in the middle of the room, shaking because there were no more locks to check and therefore nothing left to do with your fear.

Eventually, you sat on the floor beside the bed instead of on it. Beds were vulnerable. The floor was honest.

You wrapped yourself in Alfred’s blanket and watched dawn bruise the windows gray.

Sleep came badly. When it did, it came with doors. So many doors. All of them opening.

You woke with a knife in your hand and Bruce Wayne kneeling three feet away, both hands visible.

The room was gold with morning. Your heart tried to claw out of your chest.

“Hey,” Bruce said softly.

You pressed your back against the bedframe. “How did you get in?”

“You didn’t answer Alfred’s knock.”

“So you picked the lock?”

“No.”

You stared. Bruce glanced toward the sitting room door. “Secret passage?”

“No.”

Your stare sharpened. His mouth twitched despite himself. “I have a key.”

“That is somehow worse.”

“I knocked first.”

“I was asleep.”

“I know.”

“That’s when knocking is least useful.”

The words came too fast, too sharp. Panic still had its hands in you. Bruce did not react. He stayed where he was.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Alfred heard movement. Thought you might be in distress. I should have waited outside.”

You looked down. Your hand was white-knuckled around the knife. Slowly, you lowered it.

“You brought breakfast?” you asked, because if you addressed the emotion directly, you might die. A tray sat near the door. Coffee. Tea. Toast. Fruit. Eggs. Enough food for three people or one emotionally repressed vigilante’s apology.

“Alfred did.”

“Coward.”

“Yes.”

That pulled a laugh from you.

Bruce’s shoulders eased. He stood slowly. “I can leave.”

You should say yes. You should reset the locks, rebuild the distance, and return to familiar ground. Instead, you looked at the tray.

“Coffee first,” you said.

Bruce picked it up and brought it closer, then retreated to the chair near the window without being asked.

You accepted the mug. Your hands were still unsteady. He pretended not to notice.

“Did you sleep?” you asked.

“No.”

“Liar.” He blinked. “You’re too fast with the no,” you said. “Means technically false. You slept twelve minutes and hated it.”

Bruce looked offended. Not because you were wrong. Because you had read him.

“Twenty-three,” he said.

“Wow. Practically a wellness influencer.”

He looked out the window. Morning softened him in strange ways. Without the armour, he wore a dark sweater and slacks, hair still damp from a shower, jaw shadowed with exhaustion. He looked less like Batman’s secret identity and more like a man who had forgotten where he ended and the mission began.

“Your apartment is being processed,” he said. “No explosives. Multiple surveillance devices. They accessed your notes.”

You nodded. Your stomach twisted, but you kept your face still.

“They didn’t take anything personal,” he added.

You huffed. “My security notes are personal.”

“Yes,” he said. “I know.”

Something in your throat tightened.

You sipped coffee. Alfred’s coffee was unfairly good. Of course. Even the caffeine in this house had generational wealth.

“What happens now?” you asked.

“The Fear Corps members are in custody. Their leader’s name is Dr Evan Vogal. Former psychologist at Arkham. He worked briefly under Crane before being dismissed.”

“Too unstable for the fear toxin guy?”

Bruce’s mouth flattened. “Apparently.”

“Gotham hiring committees remain undefeated.”

He almost smiled. Almost.

“He’s not the only leader,” Bruce continued. “The network is larger. Last night’s cell was meant to generate footage. Proof that high-resilience targets could be destabilised.”

“But we didn’t break.”

Bruce looked at you. “No,” he said. “We didn’t.”

The words should have felt victorious.

They didn’t. They felt heavy. Because you had almost broken. So had he. Maybe the difference between breaking and not breaking was not strength, but the hand that found yours before the floor gave way. You hated how sentimental that sounded. Your brain needed to stop writing trauma poetry before breakfast.

“Do you have somewhere safe to stay?” Bruce asked. You raised an eyebrow. He exhaled. “I’m aware of how that sounds.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Because it sounds like you’re about to offer me a wing of your haunted mansion.”

“A room.”

“Wow. Modest.”

“For a few days,” he said. “Until your apartment is secured. Or longer, if needed.”

The offer hung in the air. Too big. Too intimate. Too practical to dismiss.

Fear immediately began drafting objections. You barely know him. He is dangerous. He is Batman. He is Bruce Wayne. He has secret passages and emotional damage with a trust fund. You are safer alone. You are always safer alone.

But fear had said that last part in the warehouse, too. And fear had lied.

“I don’t like owing people,” you said.

“You wouldn’t.”

“That is objectively untrue. Housing is a resource. Security is a resource. You’d be giving me both.”

Bruce leaned forward slightly. “Then consult,” he said. “Help me map the Fear Corps network. Review targets. Improve response protocols. Stay here as a professional collaborator.”

You stared at him. “That is the most emotionally constipated way anyone has ever offered help.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“Unfortunately.”

There it was again. That almost-smile. You looked into your coffee. “I’ll stay until my apartment is safe.”

Bruce nodded.

“Professional collaborator,” you added.

“Of course.”

“No hovering.” His eyes betrayed him. “Bruce.”

“I’ll try.”

“Try like a normal person or try like a man who has contingency plans for the moon exploding?”

A pause.

“Normal person,” he said, with the tone of someone agreeing to operate heavy machinery without training.

You smiled despite yourself.

The next three days were strange. Not bad. Strange.

Wayne Manor was too big for one man and one butler and all the ghosts pretending not to take up space. It creaked at night. Rain whispered against glass. The halls seemed designed for secrets, all long shadows and old portraits, like the house itself was watching to see what kind of grief you carried.

You hated it. You liked it.vBoth things were true, which was deeply inconvenient.

Bruce gave you space. An absurd amount of space. So much space it became suspicious. He did not enter rooms without knocking. He did not stand too close. He did not ask questions unless they were relevant to the case. He did not tell you to rest again after the third time you threatened to colour-code his bruises by severity.

But he was always there.  Not hovering. Present. There was a difference.

You found him in the Cave at odd hours, hunched over data, dark circles under his eyes, moving through exhaustion like it was weather. You brought coffee once. He looked at it like it was a bomb.

“Alfred sent it,” you lied.

“No, he didn’t.”

“Fine. I sent it. Drink before your organs unionise.”

He took it.

The next night, he left a stack of your sanitised case files on the library table with annotations in precise handwriting. Not corrections. Questions. The respectful kind. The kind that assumed your expertise was real.

You hated how attractive competence was.

On the third night, fear found you in the library. You had been reviewing footage from your apartment, jaw clenched so tightly it ached. The Fear Corps intruder moved through your space with obscene familiarity, opening drawers, photographing walls, touching the mirror by the door. Your sanctuary reduced to evidence.

Something inside you went quiet. Not calm. Quiet like a power outage.

You closed the laptop. Then opened it again. Then closed it.

Your hands began to shake. You stood too quickly and knocked over the chair.

Bruce appeared in the doorway.

“Don’t,” you said.

He stopped.

You could not breathe. The library walls were too close. The shelves loomed. Every book looked like a hiding place. Every shadow had intent.

“I can’t go back there,” you said, and hated yourself for saying it aloud.

Bruce’s face changed. He stepped inside slowly. “You don’t have to decide tonight.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No.”

“I built that place. Every inch of it. I made it safe.”

“I know.”

“They walked through it like it was nothing.”

Bruce’s voice dropped. “It wasn’t nothing.”

You laughed, sharp and wet. “You didn’t see it.”

“I did.” You looked at him. He moved to the table, opened the laptop, and turned it away from both of you. “I saw someone spend years learning how to survive. I saw systems. Intelligence. Adaptation. I saw someone who made a dangerous world less dangerous through sheer refusal.”

Your eyes burned.

“I saw them violate that,” he continued. “But I didn’t see nothing.”

The words hit too deep.

You turned away, furious with your face for wanting to break.

Bruce stayed silent. Not leaving. Not pressing. Present.

“I don’t know who I am without the walls,” you whispered.

The confession felt worse than blood.

Behind you, Bruce inhaled slowly. “I do,” he said.

You turned. He looked almost afraid of what he had said. But he did not take it back. “You barely know me."

“I know enough.”

“No, you know the crisis version. The knives. The exits. The jokes. The person who doesn’t fall apart until it’s strategically inconvenient.”

Bruce’s expression hurt. You wished it didn’t. “That is not all I know."

Your throat tightened. “Then what else?”

He looked at you with those impossible blue eyes, grief-lit and steady. “You talk frightened people down like you’re handing them rope,” he said. “You use humour when honesty costs too much. You notice what others need and resent needing anything yourself. You are angry when people are careless with pain. You are gentle when it matters and furious when gentleness fails.”

Your breath caught. His voice softened. “And you are not the walls. You are the person who built them.”

The library blurred. You looked down fast. Too late. The first tear fell. Then another.

You hated crying. It made your face hot and your throat close and your body feel like an unlocked door.

Bruce took one step. Then stopped.

“Can I?” he asked.

You almost said no. Not because you wanted him gone. Because yes felt dangerous. Because yes meant your fear was no longer driving alone.

You nodded once. Bruce crossed the room carefully, like approaching a live wire. He did not pull you into his arms. He just offered his hand.

A door.

You took it. His fingers closed around yours, warm and steady.

You cried silently because your body was still committed to being difficult. Bruce did not comment. He held your hand in the library while rain moved across the windows and the laptop sat closed on the table like a contained wound.

After a while, you said, “This is a terrible professional boundary.”

“Yes,” Bruce said.

“You’re my weird vigilante landlord now.”

“Please never say that again.”

A broken laugh escaped you.

His thumb moved once over your knuckles. You both noticed. Neither of you moved away.

The thing between you did not arrive like lightning. It arrived like a lock turning. Quiet. Exact. Terrifying.

Over the next week, the Fear Corps network unravelled thread by thread. Bruce worked with Gordon. You worked with Bruce. Alfred worked on both of you with tea, food, and surgical emotional ambushes.

You identified patterns in the target selection. Bruce traced chemical shipments. Together, you found three more safehouses, two planned attacks, and a list of future subjects.

The more you worked together, the more dangerous the partnership became.

Not because of the case. Because Bruce listened. 

That was the problem. He listened with his whole frightening mind. He remembered details. He adjusted. He stopped saying “you should rest” and started saying “I am taking a break; join me if that would help,” which was manipulative in a therapeutically informed way and therefore difficult to refuse.

You learned things, too. Bruce did not like sleeping because waking was worse. He drank coffee until Alfred switched it out for tea and dared him to notice. He kept files on everyone he failed, as if memory were a courtroom and he could win the case if only he gathered enough evidence against himself. He was kinder than he wanted anyone to know.

That was the worst part. The kindness. Batman was terrifying. Bruce Wayne was charming when required. But the man underneath both masks was quiet with children and respectful of fear, and so careful with your boundaries it made your chest hurt.

You wanted him. Which was inconvenient because wanting was basically fear wearing perfume.

The final Fear Corps attack came eight nights after the gala. By then, Gotham had mostly convinced itself that the worst was over. Gotham loved doing that. It saw a lull and called it peace, the same way someone might see a bandage and call it healing.

The target was the old Mercy Bridge crisis centre, closed after flooding but still used as an emergency supply depot. According to the files you and Bruce recovered, Voss’s remaining followers planned to disperse aerosolised toxin through the Narrows ventilation tunnels.

Not enough to kill. Enough to make a district eat itself alive.

Bruce suited up in silence. You strapped on your armour beside him. He looked over.

“You don’t have to come,” he said. You looked at him flatly. “I know,” he added.

“Growth.”

His mouth twitched.

The Cave lights gleamed along the sharp lines of his suit. Your reflection in the glass showed someone different from the person who had arrived there shaking and poisoned.

Not healed. No. But different.

A wall with a door in it.

Bruce came closer. Slowly. Always slowly now, unless the world was ending.

“You know the plan,” he said.

“Disable ventilation override, secure toxin payload, don’t get emotionally vivisected by fear cultists.”

“Good.”

“Try not to get stabbed by anyone with a bird mask.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Your best includes getting stabbed a lot.”

He looked offended again.

You loved that look.

Oh. Oh, that was unfortunate.

The realisation landed without ceremony. No swelling music. No dramatic thunder. Just Bruce standing under Cave lights, armoured and exhausted and looking at you like your safety was not a problem to solve but a truth he had chosen to carry.

You loved him. Maybe not fully. Not safely. Not in the clean, uncomplicated way stories promised. But something had rooted in you. Something green through concrete.

Bruce seemed to notice your expression change. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Not nothing.”

“Focus, Batman.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, but he let it go.

The mission went wrong immediately. Naturally.

Mercy Bridge crisis centre was already flooded with low-grade toxin when you arrived. Not enough to hallucinate fully through the masks, but enough to drag old fears close to the surface. Fear Corps members moved through the building, fewer than expected. Too few.

A trap, then. Batman knew. You knew.

You went in anyway.

The ventilation control room was in the basement, because apparently Gotham architecture was designed by people who looked at worst-case scenarios and said, “But can we add water damage?”

The lower level was narrow, concrete, flickering lights. Your least favorite genre of room. Bruce moved ahead, cape brushing the damp floor.

“You okay?” he asked through the comm.

“No.” He paused. You added, “Functional.”

He nodded and kept moving.

That was love, maybe. Not making fear disappear. Not demanding bravery perform prettily. Just hearing no and trusting functional.

The control room door was sealed. You worked the panel while Bruce covered the hall. Halfway through bypassing the lock, every light went out.

Your breath stopped.

The dark was complete. Then emergency yellow lights pulsed on. A speaker crackled overhead.

Vogal’s voice filled the hall. “Batman. Little blade. Did you miss me?”

Bruce’s jaw set. You returned to the panel.

“Keep talking,” you muttered. “Villains are constitutionally incapable of shutting up.”

Vogal laughed. “Still joking. Still cutting. Tell me, does the blade know what happens when it has nothing left to defend?”

The lock clicked. The door opened. Inside, the ventilation controls glowed beneath a web of wires and toxin canisters. Too easy.

Bruce’s hand caught your shoulder before you entered. Not gripping. Warning.

You looked. Thin wires crossed the doorway at ankle height, chest height, throat height.

You exhaled. “Cute.”

“Stay here,” Bruce said.

“Absolutely not.”

He gave you a look. You gave it back. He crouched and began disabling the wires.

Vogal’s voice softened over the speaker. “I have been thinking about you both. Such devotion to control. Such romance in mutual paranoia.”

You froze. Bruce did not. But his shoulders changed.

Vogal noticed. Of course he did. “Oh, yes. It is obvious. Fear recognises fear. Hunger recognises hunger.”

“Ignore him,” Bruce said.

“I am,” you lied.

Vogal sighed. “Do you love them, Batman? Or do you merely love that they understand the cage?”

Bruce cut a wire. Another. His voice was controlled. “He wants us distracted.”

“Yeah, well, I want him to develop a personality outside of psychological torture, but we work with what we have.”

A third wire released. You slipped inside. The ventilation panel showed a countdown. Six minutes. You began shutting down the toxin feed. Bruce worked beside you.

For a minute, there was only the sound of tools and breath. Then the door slammed shut. Locks engaged. Steel shutters dropped over the tiny basement windows.

Your whole body went cold.

Bruce was at the door instantly. Sealed. The air vents opened. Yellow gas poured in.

Vogal’s voice returned, intimate and delighted. “No audience this time. No hostages. No city to save in this room. Only you, your fear, and the question underneath every wall.”

Your mask filter whined. Bruce’s did too. The gas concentration climbed.

“Can we override?” you asked.

“Working on it.”

Your hands flew over the panel. The countdown continued. Five minutes.

The toxin reached your lungs despite the filter. The room shifted. Walls closer. Door sealed. Air thinning. Your vision tunneled.

Not now.

Bruce was at the door controls, trying to force them open. His movements became sharper. Less controlled. The toxin was hitting him too.

Vogal whispered, “What are you without fear?”

The room answered for you. Nothing.

The hallucination bloomed. You were back in your apartment, but the walls were gone. No locks. No alarms. No blades. Every door stood open. Every window shattered. People moved through your space, faceless and laughing, touching everything, taking everything.

You looked down. Your hands were empty. No weapons. No plans. No walls.

A voice behind you said, “There you are. Nothing underneath.”

You gasped. Real room. Control panel. Bruce. He had stopped moving. His hand was pressed to the sealed door.

“B,” you said.

He did not respond. His hallucination had him, too. His face was uncovered in your vision, though the cowl was still on. Somehow you could see the child in him, standing in an alley with blood and pearls and a grief too big for one body. Then another child. Another failure. More graves. More names.

Bruce whispered, “I can’t.”

The words broke something open inside you. You crossed the room and took his hand.

He flinched. You held on. “Bruce.”

His head turned toward you. The white lenses were blank, but you knew he was in there.

“You are not in the alley,” you said. His breathing hitched. “You are not too late. You are not twelve. You are not the gun. You are not the grave.”

The toxin burned your throat. The room pressed inward. Your own hallucination screamed. Doors open. No walls. Nothing underneath. Bruce’s hand tightened around yours.

“What if I am?” he rasped.

You understood the question beneath it. What if fear was not lying? What if the worst thing inside him was true? What if every wall fell and there was only the monster?

You stepped closer. “Then I’m here,” you said.

His hand trembled. Just once. The countdown hit three minutes.

Vogal’s voice circled the room. “And what if they see you, little blade? Without the knives, without the clever mouth, without the architecture? What if there is nothing there worth staying for?”

Bruce moved then. Not toward the door. Toward you. His hands rose slowly, giving you time to refuse, and settled at your shoulders. Grounding. Warm. Real.

“You are here,” he said. Your breath caught. “You are not the locks. You are not what happened when they failed. You are not less because you’re afraid.”

The room blurred. The hallucination snarled. Bruce’s voice cut through it. “You are the person who kept building anyway.”

A sob punched out of your chest. Bruce’s hands stayed steady. The countdown hit two minutes.

“Panel,” you choked.

Together, you turned back. Fear still clawed at you. The walls still breathed. The door still looked like it would never open. But Bruce was beside you.

Not in front. Not behind. Beside.

Your vision doubled. Wires became snakes. Buttons became eyes. You forced yourself to see through it.

“Main feed is locked,” you said.

“Manual purge?”

“Requires two access points.”

Bruce found one under the panel. “Here.”

You searched for the second. The hallucination kept dragging your gaze toward the door, toward the open apartment in your mind, toward every place safety had failed.

Bruce said your name. You looked at him. He pointed. There. Second access point behind the canister housing. You shoved your hand through the narrow gap and found the switch.

“On three,” Bruce said.

“No dramatic countdown,” you gasped. “Just do it.”

You both turned the switches. The system screamed. Vents reversed. Yellow gas sucked upward. The toxin feed shut down with a violent hiss. The door locks released. Fresh air hit the room.

You staggered. Bruce caught you. This time, you let him.

The door opened to reveal Vogal standing in the hall with a small detonator. His mask was gone. His face was pale and sharp, eyes bright with toxin madness.

“Beautiful,” he whispered. “Even now. Holding each other inside the cage.”

Batman moved, but Vogal raised the detonator. “Ah-ah. The Narrows payload still waits.”

Your eyes flicked to the device. Not a detonator. Remote trigger. Modified. Range-limited. He needed proximity. Which meant the payload was in the building, not the tunnels. You saw Bruce realise it a heartbeat later.

Vogal smiled. “Fear always wins.”

“No,” you said. He looked at you. You were so tired. So afraid. So done. “Fear talks too much.”

You threw your last knife. Not at Vogal. At the sprinkler pipe above him.

The blade struck true. Water burst down over the hall. Vogal startled.

Batman crossed the distance in one breath.

The detonator hit the floor. You dove for it, ripping the casing open as Bruce slammed Vogal into the wall. Wires. Battery. Trigger.

Your hands shook. Fear screamed. You cut the power line with the tiny blade hidden in your glove.

The trigger died.

Vogal laughed even as Batman cuffed him. “You think this ends it?” he rasped. “Fear is older than you. Bigger than you.”

Bruce hauled him upright. “Yes,” he said. His voice was pure Batman. Cold. Certain. Night with a pulse. “But so are we.”

Vogal went silent.

Honestly? Hot. Deeply inconvenient timing, but still.

Later, after police flooded the crisis centre and the toxin payload was secured, after Gordon gave Batman one of those exhausted looks that said he knew better than to ask why a civilian consultant was wearing armour, after Alfred’s voice over comms confirmed the Narrows was safe, you found yourself on the roof with Bruce. Still in armour. Still breathing hard. Still alive. The city stretched below you, wet and silver under the first thin line of dawn.

Gotham looked almost gentle from above. A scam, obviously. But a pretty one.

Bruce stood beside you, cowl off, hair wind-tossed, face bruised. There was toxin residue at his collar and exhaustion in every line of him.

You sat on the ledge. He frowned. “You’re too close to the edge.”

“You jump off buildings for foreplay.”

His head turned. You froze.

“I meant patrol,” you said.

Bruce’s mouth curved. Small. Devastating. “You said foreplay.”

“I was poisoned.”

“Currently?”

“Emotionally.”

He actually smiled. Not the almost version. Not the controlled gala version. A real smile, brief and tired and bright as a match in the dark.

Oh, you were in trouble. Catastrophic. Historic. Put it on a plaque.

The smile faded into something quieter. “You could have left,” he said.

“So could you.”

“I don’t leave.”

“I know.”

“That wasn’t meant as a virtue.”

You looked at him. The wind lifted the edge of his cape. “I know."

Bruce sat beside you on the ledge, leaving careful space between your bodies. For a while, neither of you spoke. Below, sirens moved away. Dawn spread over the Narrows. Somewhere, people woke up not knowing how close the night had come to opening under them. That was the work, you supposed. Saving people from nightmares they would never have to name.

Bruce’s hand rested on the ledge between you. Not offered. Just there.

You stared at it. He noticed, because of course he did, and began to withdraw.

You caught his fingers. His hand stilled. The contact was small. Ridiculously small.

A hand on a rooftop. And yet fear rose up immediately, loyal and loud. Too close. Too much. He will see you. You will need him. He will leave. You will lose. Open doors become wounds.

Bruce’s thumb brushed yours. He was afraid, too. You knew it in the tension of his fingers, the way he did not turn toward you too quickly, the careful stillness of a man who had lost so much he treated wanting like a live explosive.

Two fortresses. Two blades. Two alarm systems screaming at a handhold.

It should have been funny. It was, a little.

“What are we doing?” you asked.

Bruce looked out over the city. “I don’t know.”

“Honest. Terrifying. Hate it.”

He huffed softly. “I know what I want,” he said.

Your heart became a stupid, fragile animal. “What?”

He turned his hand under yours, palm to palm. “To try."

The word was so simple it hurt. Try. Not promise. Not fix. Not forever carved into stone by two people who knew stone could crack. Try.

A door in the wall.

Your throat tightened. “I’m difficult.”

“I noticed.”

“I don’t trust easily.”

“I noticed.”

“I carry knives to formal events.”

“I definitely noticed.”

You laughed, and it trembled.

Bruce’s face softened. “I’m not easy either,” he said.

“No kidding.”

“I disappear. I shut down. I prioritise the mission when I’m afraid of everything else. I have contingency plans for people I love.”

“I assumed.”

“I may not know how to do this without making mistakes.”

You looked at him. He looked back like the truth cost him and he was paying anyway.

“Same,” you said.

His fingers tightened. “Okay."

“Okay.”

The sun rose higher. Neither of you moved.

Eventually, Bruce said, “Alfred will be angry if we don’t return soon.”

“Because of injuries?”

“Because breakfast is at seven.”

You checked the sky like it might contain mercy. “What time is it?”

“Seven-twelve.”

“Oh, we’re dead.”

But still, you stayed another minute. Because the city was gold. Because fear was quiet. Because Bruce’s hand was warm in yours. Because for once, the edge did not feel like a threat.

It felt like a place to watch morning arrive.

Your apartment took two weeks to restore. Bruce offered to have Wayne security replace everything. You refused the first three times out of principle, then accepted on the condition that you approved every change.

He agreed. You expected him to take over. He didn’t. He walked through the apartment with you after it was cleared, hands in his coat pockets, expression carefully neutral. The space looked both familiar and ruined. New locks waited in boxes. The walls had been repainted where forensic chemicals marked them. Your mirror had been replaced.

You stood in the entryway and felt nothing. Then too much.

Bruce stood beside you. Not touching. Present.

“The old system failed,” you said.

“Yes.”

Your chest tightened. “I thought if I made it perfect, I’d be safe.”

Bruce’s voice was quiet. “I know.”

You looked around. The apartment was smaller than Wayne Manor. Less haunted, maybe. Or haunted by ghosts that knew your name.

“I don’t want to rebuild it the same way,” you said. Bruce turned toward you. You swallowed. “I still want locks. I still want alarms. I’m not becoming a whimsical cottagecore idiot with open windows and trust issues in remission.”

His mouth twitched.

“But maybe,” you continued, “not every wall needs teeth.”

Bruce’s gaze warmed.

“Maybe a door can just be a door,” you said.

The words felt fragile. You expected fear to protest. It did. But softer now.

Bruce reached for your hand. Paused. Asked without asking.

You took it. His shoulders eased.

“You could keep a room at the manor,” he said, too carefully. You looked at him. “For emergencies,” he added.

“Professional emergencies?”

“And personal ones.”

Your heart turned over. “Bruce Wayne, are you asking me to keep a toothbrush at your haunted mansion?”

He looked pained. “Yes.”

“Wow.”

“I regret the phrasing.”

“You should. It was intimate and unhinged.”

“I was trying to be practical.”

“You were trying to be romantic in Batman.”

He looked away. His ears went pink.

“Are you blushing?”

“No.”

“You are.”

“I’m not.”

“Bruce.”

He turned back, visibly composing himself like a man facing an international tribunal. “I would like,” he said, each word chosen with catastrophic precision, “for you to feel welcome in my home. Not only because of danger. Not only because of work.”

Your teasing softened. His hand remained in yours.

“I would like,” he continued, quieter now, “to see you when the world is not ending.”

There it was. No armour. No cowl. No mission. Just Bruce, standing in your wounded apartment, asking for something terrifyingly ordinary.

You stepped closer. His eyes dropped to your mouth, then back up. Careful. Always careful.

“Bruce,” you said. His breath changed. “Can I kiss you?”

His answer was immediate. “Yes.”

You rose onto your toes, and he met you halfway.

The kiss was gentle at first. Almost unbearably so. A question. A promise not to take. His hand lifted to your face slowly enough that you could stop him, and when you didn’t, his fingers settled along your jaw like you were something precious and armed.

You kissed him again. Less gently. Bruce made a low sound in his throat, surprised and restrained, and you smiled against his mouth because, of course, even his desire had security protocols.

His other hand came to your waist, not pulling. Asking. You stepped closer in answer. The kiss deepened.

Fear stirred, but it did not become a blade. It watched. It waited.  It learned the shape of his hands.

When you pulled back, Bruce rested his forehead against yours. His eyes were closed. You had never seen him look more vulnerable. Or more dangerous.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” you whispered. “You?”

He opened his eyes. “Yeah.”

The word sounded new in his mouth. You smiled.

“Look at us,” you said. “Emotionally processing. Disgusting.”

He laughed. Actually laughed. Soft and startled, like it had escaped containment. You wanted to keep the sound somewhere safe.

Not locked away. Just safe.

Months later, Gotham would call the Fear Corps incident a victory. The news would say Batman dismantled a terrorist network. The Foundation would expand trauma services across the city. Wayne Manor would host another fundraiser, because Gotham’s wealthy had the collective survival instinct of moths near a haunted lamp. You would attend. You would wear formal clothes and carry only two knives, which was basically personal growth.

Bruce would find you near the wall again, but this time, he would offer his hand. Not to pull. Not to rescue. Just to ask.

“Dance?” he would say.

And you would look at the ballroom. Six visible exits. Two staff only. One freight elevator behind catering. Security better than last time. Shrimp tower reinforced. Still too much glass. Still Gotham. Still terrifying.

Then you would look at Bruce. He would be afraid, too. Not of the room. Of the asking. Of being seen wanting something he could not punch, solve, or contingency-plan into obedience.

You would take his hand. “Fine,” you would say. “But if the shrimp tower falls, I’m blaming you.”

“I’ll accept responsibility.”

He would lead you onto the floor. People would stare. Cameras would flash. Gotham would gossip itself into a small electrical fire. Bruce’s hand would rest at your waist. Your hand would settle on his shoulder. The music would begin. And fear, old companion, old architect, would rise in you as it always did. It would note the exits. The angles. The crowd. The danger.

You would let it. Then you would let Bruce turn you beneath the chandelier light. Because healing, you had learned, was not demolishing the walls. Some walls existed for good reason.

Healing was building doors where there had only been barricades. Windows where there had only been stone. It was learning that an alarm could ring without becoming a commandment. That a blade could be set down and picked up later. That hands could reach without taking.

Fear had made you careful. Fear had made Bruce relentless. Fear had built you both into fortresses and called it safety. But love, strange and stubborn, had done something fear never understood.

It had not torn the walls down. It had knocked.

When he looked back, you watched the recognition drain out of his face like blood from a wound.

His shoulders squared. His expression closed. His hand drifted, subtle and controlled, toward the cufflink that probably concealed some kind of panic signal.

“Who are you?” he asked.

There it was.

The sentence that had followed you your whole life.

You had heard it in classrooms, hospitals, police stations, shelters, grocery stores, subway platforms. From foster parents who had signed forms swearing they would care for you. From teachers who had graded your papers and forgotten your name by lunch. From doctors who walked out of the room to get test results and returned with security.

Who are you?

Not rude. Not cruel.

Just empty.

You swallowed and forced a small smile, because if you did not smile, you might break open right there on the polished floor of Wayne Manor.

“My name is…” You stopped.

Names were dangerous things. Not because they held power, like in old fairy stories, but because they begged to be remembered.

And nobody remembered yours.

“I’m nobody,” you said softly. “Sorry. I’ll leave.”

Bruce’s gaze narrowed. “Wait.”

You laughed once. It sounded ugly. “Don’t look away, Mr. Wayne.”

His eyes sharpened. “What?”

“If you look away,” you said, backing toward the door, “you’ll forget I was ever here.”

A normal person would have looked away immediately. Out of disbelief, discomfort, reflex. People always did. They glanced aside when you said impossible things, and then the impossible thing took you from them.

Bruce Wayne did not look away.

For three full seconds, he stared at you like you were a case file, a crime scene, a bomb under a nursery.

Then Alfred stepped into the doorway behind him.

“Master Bruce, Commissioner Gordon is on the—”

Bruce turned.

Only half an inch.

Enough.

When his gaze returned to the empty space where you had stood, you were already gone.

And Bruce Wayne forgot you.

But not completely.

That was how it began.

Not with love.

With a missing second.

With a blank space in the shape of you.

You learned young that the world was full of doors, and none of them stayed open for you.

Your mother forgot you in a supermarket when you were five.

Not lost you. Forgot you.

She turned around to compare the price of cereal, and by the time she looked back, her face had gone soft and strange.

“Are you looking for your parents, sweetheart?”

You had cried then. Screamed, actually. Clung to her sleeve. Called her Mom, Mom, Mom until she looked frightened enough that a store manager came over.

By the end of the day, there was no missing child report. No frantic search. No relieved reunion.

Just a little kid with no one who could remember she belonged somewhere.

You survived by becoming very good at not needing to belong.

You stole when you had to, which was always. Slept where you could. Learned the rhythm of attention: how long people looked, when they blinked, when they turned away, when they reached for phones, bags, keys, memories.

Mirrors did not help. Cameras recorded you, but people who watched the footage forgot what they had seen as soon as they glanced away from the screen. Photographs became meaningless. Documents misplaced themselves in the minds of clerks. Your fingerprints existed, your face existed, your name existed—until someone stopped perceiving you.

Then you became smoke.

Gotham, in a cruel way, was perfect for someone like you.

Nobody looked at anyone for too long here. The city trained its people to keep their heads down.

You drifted through its shadows like a ghost with a pulse.

And then, because Gotham had a sense of humour sharp enough to cut bone, you got caught by Batman.

Well. Almost.

You were lifting medical supplies from a private clinic that had more money than compassion when he dropped from the ceiling like judgment with a cape.

You froze.

He froze too.

For one strange, suspended moment, Batman looked directly at you.

You hated how seen you felt.

“Put it down,” he said.

His voice was low. Controlled. The kind of voice people obeyed because it sounded like it had already survived every possible argument.

You held the bag tighter. “I need it.”

“For what?”

You almost laughed. Batman was asking follow-up questions. Most people didn’t make it that far.

“For someone who’ll die without it.”

His eyes—white lenses, unreadable—stayed on you. “That doesn’t make theft acceptable.”

“No,” you said. “It makes it necessary.”

Somewhere outside, tyres screamed. A crash shattered the night.

Batman’s head turned.

You felt it happen.

That old familiar snap in the air, silent and total.

When he looked back, he did not know you.

But Batman was different from everyone else.

He noticed the bag in your hands. Noticed his own stance. Noticed the open cabinet. Noticed the shape of the conversation even after the memory vanished.

He did not ask, Who are you?

Instead, he said, slower this time, “Don’t move.”

You did, obviously.

You ran.

He chased you for six blocks before losing sight of you in an alley full of laundry lines and broken fire escapes.

The next night, you found a sealed package on the roof where you usually slept.

Inside were antibiotics, bandages, antiseptic, two protein bars, and a small black recorder.

A note was taped to the top.

Press play.

You did.

Batman’s voice emerged, rough with static.

“If you are hearing this, I found evidence of your presence, but may not retain memory of you. I don’t know your situation. I don’t know your abilities. I don’t know if you are dangerous. But you stole medical supplies for someone else. That matters.”

A pause.

Then, quieter:

“I want to help. Find a way to contact me.”

You stared at the recorder until your vision blurred.

Then you threw it as hard as you could into the dark.

Because hope was a trap. Because kindness forgotten hurt worse than cruelty remembered.

Because Batman would look away eventually.

Everyone did.

Bruce built systems around you before he understood you.

That was such a Bruce Wayne thing to do.

You learned his name long before he learned yours and kept it. Batman. Bruce. The Prince of Gotham. The man who adopted strays like the city kept daring him to stop.

He left devices in places you frequented.

Recorders. Notes. Cameras with motion sensors. Tiny screens programmed to flash messages at him when your image appeared.

SUBJECT PRESENT. DO NOT LOOK AWAY.

You hated being called subject.

You hated more that it worked.

Sometimes.

The first time Batman managed a full conversation with you, he had locked his cowl into some kind of visual fixation mode. His lenses tracked you with mechanical precision, refusing to let his gaze drift.

“Creepy,” you told him.

“Necessary,” he replied.

“You always this charming?”

“No.”

“At least you’re self-aware.”

His mouth twitched. Barely. Almost not at all.

It wrecked you.

People did not smile at you. Not for real. Not with memory behind it.

“What do you want?” you asked.

“To understand what’s happening to you.”

“Cute.”

“I’m serious.”

“That’s worse.”

He studied you. The lenses made it impossible to know what he was thinking, but somehow you felt the weight of it anyway.

“How long has this been happening?”

You looked past him toward the city lights. “Always.”

“Since birth?”

“Since before memory, apparently. Funny, right?”

“No.”

“No,” you agreed. “It’s not.”

The wind dragged cold fingers over the rooftop. Below, sirens rose and fell like Gotham breathing in pain.

Batman did not look away.

You wanted him to.

You wanted him to forget so you could stop standing there with your chest cracked open.

“My mother forgot me,” you said, and hated yourself for saying it. “When I was little. She turned around in a supermarket and forgot she had a kid.”

Batman went very still. “Your father?”

“Don’t know. Maybe he forgot first.”

His jaw tightened.

You shrugged, because otherwise you would cry, and you had learned that tears made people kind for exactly as long as they remembered why.

“Social services?”

“Couldn’t keep a file active. Teachers forgot I was enrolled. Foster placements forgot to pick me up. Police forgot what they were investigating. I became… paperwork static.”

“That’s not possible.”

“And yet.” You gave a little bow. “Here I am. Until you blink.”

He did not blink.

Not for a long time.

Then he said, “What’s your name?”

You almost told him.

God help you, you almost did.

Instead, you smiled. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ll lose it.”

“I’ll record it.”

“You’ll look at the recording and feel like it belongs to someone else.”

“I’ll make backups.”

“You’ll forget why.”

“I’ll leave instructions.”

“You’ll distrust them.”

He said nothing.

You stepped closer, just enough to see your faint reflection in the black of his armour.

“People don’t just forget my face. They forget the fact of me. Their minds stitch the world closed behind me. Like I was never there.”

Bruce—Batman—looked at you like that physically hurt him.

“Then I’ll unstitch it,” he said.

You laughed, but it came out broken. “You can’t punch this, Batman.”

“No,” he said. “But I can fight it.”

And because you were lonely, because you were tired, because the night was cold and he was still looking at you—

You believed him.

Just a little.

That was your first mistake.

Bruce Wayne met you officially at a gala.

You were there because rich people never looked at the help, and being invisible-adjacent made stealing from them almost embarrassingly easy.

Not jewels. Not cash.

Information.

A pharmaceutical CEO with a private security detail and a smile like polished bone had been buying abandoned apartment buildings and evicting tenants to make room for “urban renewal.” You had names. Dates. Bribes. Enough to ruin him if the right person remembered long enough to publish it.

You were slipping a drive from his jacket when a hand caught your wrist.

You looked up.

Bruce Wayne smiled at you.

Not Batman’s almost-smile. Not a maskless version of the same grim line.

A real billionaire smile, bright and devastating and fake enough to have a body count.

“Careful,” he murmured. “People might think you’re robbing him.”

You stared.

He did not let go.

“You remember me?”

His smile flickered.

“No,” he said honestly. “But I wrote myself a note.”

Of course he did.

Of course Bruce Wayne had left himself a note on his own skin.

You saw it when his cuff shifted.

Black ink on his wrist, stark against his pulse:

If you see someone no one else notices, don’t look away. Trust them.

Your throat tightened.

“That’s insane,” you whispered.

“Usually,” Bruce said, still smiling for the room, “people say that after knowing me longer.”

“You don’t know me at all.”

His eyes held yours. “I know I wanted to.”

Oh.

That was unfair. That was cruel. That was the kind of sentence that built a home in your ribs and refused to pay rent.

“You shouldn’t,” you said.

“Probably not.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

Across the ballroom, someone called Bruce’s name. He did not turn.

A woman in diamonds waved. A senator lifted his glass. Cameras flashed. Gotham’s elite orbited Bruce Wayne like he was their favourite sun, and he ignored all of them to look at you.

Nobody had ever chosen you over a room before.

“You’re making a scene,” you said.

“I’m famous. Breathing makes a scene.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is.”

For one second, you saw past the charm. Past the money, the tuxedo, the easy performance. You saw the tired man underneath. The man who understood, maybe more than anyone, what it meant to live as a symbol first and a person second.

“You should go,” you said.

“I won’t remember you if I do.”

“No.”

His fingers loosened on your wrist but did not fall away. “What happens if I stay?”

The room glittered around you. Gold lights. Crystal glasses. A string quartet playing something soft and expensive. Bruce Wayne watching you like forgetting was a crime he refused to commit.

Your voice came out very small. “Eventually, you’ll have to look away.”

His expression changed.

Not much.

Enough.

“Then give me something to come back to.”

You wanted to tell him there was no coming back. Not really. Every return was a new beginning. Every conversation a wound reopened. Every hello a tiny funeral for the last one.

Instead, you reached into your pocket and gave him the flash drive.

“Start with this.”

His fingers closed around it. “What is it?”

“A reason.”

His gaze dropped.

Just for a heartbeat.

To the drive in his palm.

When he looked back up, you were already gone.

And Bruce forgot you.

But later that night, in the Cave, he found the drive clenched in his hand and a message written on his wrist beneath the first.

Not his handwriting.

Yours.

You looked away. But you came close.

Bruce stared at the words for a long time.

Then he opened a new case file.

He titled it:

FORGET-ME-NOT.

The name stuck.

Forget-Me-Not.

It was better than subject. Better than ghost. Better than anomaly.

You pretended you hated it. Bruce pretended to believe you.

By then, you had learned how to haunt Wayne Manor.

Alfred adapted first, because Alfred Pennyworth was either the most unflappable man alive or secretly an ancient god of hospitality.

The first time he forgot you mid-tea, he paused with the teapot in hand, looked at the second cup on the tray, then at the chair opposite him.

“I appear,” he said calmly, “to have been entertaining a guest.”

You sat very still.

He consulted a small card from his waistcoat pocket.

Then he looked directly at you and smiled.

“Ah. Welcome back.”

You cried in the bathroom for twelve minutes.

After that, Alfred kept cards everywhere.

If there is an extra cup, pour tea.

If Master Bruce is staring intensely at empty space, do not interrupt.

If food disappears from the kitchen, prepare another plate. Our guest is likely hungry.

The kids were harder.

Dick tried. He really did. He filled his phone with reminders and alarms labelled things like DO NOT FORGET THE COOL GHOST FRIEND and LOOK AT THE PERSON, DUMBASS.

He forgot anyway.

Jason distrusted you every single time, which would have been annoying if it weren’t so consistent it became almost comforting.

Tim built an app. It crashed twelve times, accidentally locked Bruce out of the Batcomputer, and once sent a push notification to the entire family reading:

MYSTERY PERSON DETECTED. ACT NORMAL.

No one acted normal. Not even slightly.

Damian claimed he would simply overcome your ability through superior discipline.

He lasted forty-three seconds before Titus barked, Damian glanced away, and he immediately drew a sword on you.

After that, you avoided Damian unless Bruce was there.

Bruce was always the best at remembering you.

Not because the power spared him. It didn’t. Every time he looked away, you vanished from his mind.

But Bruce Wayne had built himself out of grief and stubbornness. His whole life was a monument to refusing the mercy of forgetting. His mind might erase you, but his body learned you.

He started leaving notes everywhere.

On his gloves. On mirrors. On the steering wheel of the Batmobile. On the back of his hand, in ink that smeared across his knuckles during patrol:

Her favourite tea is lavender.

They hate being called a ghost.

They steal blankets when sad. Let them.

Do not say “who are you.” Say “there you are.”

The first time he did, it destroyed you.

You had been standing in the Cave, watching him work. He was injured, because of course he was. A cut along his brow. Bruises like storm clouds beneath his skin.

You told him he needed stitches. He told you he was fine.

You told him that was rich-man nonsense with a cape. He almost smiled.

Then a monitor beeped.

He looked away.

You closed your eyes.

Waited.

The silence stretched.

When he turned back, confusion crossed his face. Brief. Painful. Familiar.

Then his gaze dropped to the note taped to the edge of the console.

He read it. Looked at you. And said, very softly, “There you are.”

The world stopped.

You hated him a little for that. For finding a phrase that made being remembered feel almost real.

“Don’t,” you whispered.

Bruce’s face shifted.

“Don’t what?”

“Make this bearable.”

His eyes did not leave yours. “Why not?”

“Because then I’ll want it.”

“Good.”

You shook your head. “No. Bruce—”

It was the first time you said his name without armour between you.

He heard it.

You watched him hear it.

“You don’t get it,” you said. “You get to rediscover me. That’s sad, sure, very tragic, very gothic, on-brand for you. But I remember every time. Every first meeting. Every reset. Every time your face goes blank. Every time you stop loving me before you’ve even started.”

The word hung there.

Loving.

You had not meant to say it.

Bruce went still.

You stepped back. “Forget I said that.”

His mouth tightened. “I might.”

The honesty hit harder than comfort would have.

You looked away first.

Not because you had power over him.

Because you could not survive his gaze.

“I know,” you said.

Bruce did not kiss you until he had forgotten you three hundred and twelve times.

You knew because he kept count.

Of course he kept count. The tally lived in a leather notebook he carried against his heart. Every page began with a description of you, written in his precise, disciplined hand.

Not your appearance.

Never just that.

Things. Real things.

They hum when they think no one can hear.

They look at exits first, windows second.

They pretend not to like the blue blanket. They like the blue blanket.

They smile when Alfred insults me.

They are lonely in a way that makes the room colder.

I am angry on their behalf.

I trust them.

Later pages changed.

I missed them before I knew who I missed.

I think some part of me remembers. Not memory. Instinct. Gravity.

When I forget them, something in me reaches.

This is not enough. It has to become enough.

Then:

I love them. If I am reading this after forgetting, believe me. You love them. Look up. Find them. Say it again.

You found that page by accident.

Or maybe Bruce left it where you could. With him, it was always hard to tell.

He was upstairs at some Wayne Foundation meeting, surrounded by people who would remember him for all the wrong reasons. You sat alone in his study with the notebook in your lap, fingers trembling over the ink.

You read the sentence again and again until the words became blurry.

You love them.

Not loved. Not might love.

Love.

Present tense, even across absence.

When Bruce returned, he found you crying.

He stopped in the doorway.

You saw the moment his brain tried to make sense of you.

A stranger in his study. His private notebook open. Tears on her face.

His hand shifted.

Then his eyes dropped to the note taped to the doorframe.

If they are crying, you probably caused it. Don’t be defensive.

A laugh broke out of you, wet and helpless.

Bruce looked mildly offended at past-Bruce.

Then he crossed the room slowly, never taking his eyes off you.

“What did I do?”

You held up the notebook.

He glanced at it.

No.

You grabbed his wrist before he could look down fully. “Don’t.”

He stilled.

“You wrote something.”

His gaze stayed on yours. “What?”

You swallowed. “I love them.”

Bruce’s face changed.

Not surprise.

Recognition. Like the words were not new, only returned.

“Yes,” he said.

Your breath caught. “You don’t even remember writing it.”

“No.”

“You don’t remember the first time you realised.”

“No.”

“You might forget this conversation in five minutes.”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t scare you?”

Bruce’s eyes were very blue. Human, without the cowl. Tired, without the mask. Gentle in a way Gotham had no idea what to do with.

“It terrifies me,” he said. “But losing you and not knowing what I lost scares me more.”

You shook your head. “This isn’t fair to you.”

“No.”

“It isn’t fair to me.”

“I know.”

“You’ll keep hurting me.”

His voice went rough. “I know.”

“You can’t promise forever.”

Bruce stepped closer.

“No,” he said. “But I can promise effort. Again and again. As many times as it takes.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is.”

You laughed through the tears.

His mouth softened. “May I?”

You knew what he was asking.

Bruce Wayne, who lived in a world of forced entry and broken glass, asked permission like it was sacred.

You nodded.

He touched your face with careful fingers, like you were something precious and easily startled. Like you were not a haunting. Not a glitch. Not a person the universe kept trying to misplace.

Just someone.

His eyes stayed on yours as he leaned in.

The kiss was soft. Devastatingly soft. A promise made by a man who knew promises were not magic and made them anyway.

You kissed him back like you could teach his mouth memory.

For a while, it almost worked.

There were good days.

That was the terrible thing.

There were days when Bruce remembered fast enough that forgetting became only a stumble. Days when he woke with your name written across his palm and smiled before the confusion finished forming. Days when you sat beside him in the Cave, your knee pressed against his, and he kept one hand loosely around your wrist while working, as if touch could anchor what sight could not.

It helped. A little.

Not because touch made him remember.

It didn’t. But sometimes when he looked away and forgot, his fingers would tighten on yours before his mind caught up.

His body saying: stay.

His mind saying: who?

His heart, stubborn bastard, saying: mine.

There were bad days, too. Days when he was hurt and disoriented, when the notes didn’t work because pain made him paranoid. Days when Batman looked at you like an intruder. Days when Bruce forgot you during breakfast and called security in his own house.

He always apologised after. You always forgave him.

You hated that too.

Love made you generous in ways loneliness had never allowed.

The worst day came in winter.

Snow fell over Gotham, rare and dirty and beautiful for about ten minutes before the city turned it grey. You and Bruce were on a rooftop after patrol, standing shoulder to shoulder beneath a billboard for some luxury perfume neither of you would ever wear.

You had been quiet all night.

Bruce noticed. He always noticed until he didn’t.

“What is it?” he asked.

You watched snow collect on the edge of the roof. “I’m tired.”

He said nothing.

Not because he didn’t care.

Because he did.

Because he knew what kind of tired you meant.

“I keep thinking,” you said, “one day you’ll stop trying.”

“No.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You’re human, Bruce.”

His mouth twisted. “Debatable, according to my children.”

You smiled despite yourself.

Then it faded.

“You’ll get tired. Or busy. Or hurt. Or old. Or maybe you’ll just have one bad day where the notes don’t matter, and the alarms don’t work, and you decide the empty spaces are easier empty.”

Bruce turned fully toward you. Snow caught in his hair. “I won’t.”

“You can’t know.”

“I can.”

“How?”

“Because I’ve already lost people,” he said. “I know what absence feels like. Yours has a shape. Even when I don’t remember you, I know something is missing.”

Your chest hurt. “That’s not the same as loving me.”

“No,” Bruce said. “But it’s where I find the trail.”

You looked at him then.

Really looked.

At the man who had made a map of his own forgetting. Who had turned longing into evidence. Who had built rituals around your existence because memory had failed, and he refused to let failure be the final word.

“You deserve someone easier,” you whispered.

“So do you.”

That made you laugh.

It made you cry.

Bruce reached for you, then stopped, waiting.

You stepped into him.

He wrapped his arms around you and looked over your shoulder at the city.

You felt it happen.

His gaze shifted. Just slightly.

Away from your face.

His body stiffened.

For one breath, he forgot. His arms remained around you.

You felt the confusion ripple through him, the sudden tension of a man holding someone he did not know.

You started to pull back.

Bruce’s arms tightened.

He looked down at the note sewn into the inside of his glove.

You had never seen that one before.

He read it.

Then he closed his eyes.

A mistake. A dangerous one.

“Bruce,” you whispered.

He opened them. Found your face.

“There you are,” he said, voice breaking.

You pressed your forehead to his chest. “I’m here.”

“I know.”

“You don’t.”

His hand moved to the back of your head.

“No,” he said. “But I believe myself when I tell me.”

God, that was such a ridiculous sentence.

So Bruce.

So impossible.

So enough that night.

In spring, he gave you forget-me-nots.

Actual ones.

Tiny blue flowers in a clay pot, placed on the kitchen table at Wayne Manor like the universe had decided subtlety was for cowards.

You stared at them.

Bruce stood beside you, looking deeply uncomfortable.

Alfred passed through the kitchen, took one look, and said, “A touch literal, Master Bruce.”

Bruce sighed.

You bit your lip. “Did you grow these?”

“No.”

“Did you buy them?”

“Yes.”

“Did you threaten a florist?”

“No.”

Alfred cleared his throat.

Bruce’s silence was incriminating.

You laughed.

It startled all three of you. A real laugh. Bright enough to make Alfred smile. Soft enough to make Bruce stare like he wanted to memorise the sound and knew he couldn’t.

You touched one small blue petal.

“Forget-me-not,” you murmured.

Bruce’s shoulder brushed yours. “I know it doesn’t fix anything.”

“No,” you said. “It doesn’t.”

The flower trembled under your fingertip.

“But?”

You leaned into him. “But it’s sweet.”

His hand found yours.

Warm. Careful.

“Your standards are concerningly low.”

“I fell in love with a man who dresses as a bat and argues with teenagers in Kevlar.”

“That’s fair.”

You smiled.

Bruce looked at you like daylight was something he had never trusted until it touched your face.

Then Damian shouted from down the hall, “Father! Todd has placed googly eyes on the Batmobile again!”

Jason yelled, “Allegedly!”

Bruce closed his eyes.

“Don’t,” you warned.

His eyes snapped open and locked on yours.

For one perfect second, you both froze.

Then you started laughing so hard you had to grip the table.

Bruce watched you, helpless. “What?”

“You almost forgot me because Jason vandalised the Batmobile.”

He looked pained. “It’s a serious offence.”

“You’re in love with me.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s your biggest concern?”

His mouth twitched. “My life contains multitudes.”

You laughed again.

This time, when Bruce smiled, it stayed.

You never got cured.

Not by magic. Not by science. Not by Zatanna, who cried after the third failed spell and forgot why her mascara was running. Not by Constantine, who remembered you only in the way drunks remember dreams: sideways, bitterly, with a cigarette burning low between his fingers.

“Some curses don’t break,” he told Bruce, reading from a note he had written on his own forearm. “Some are stitched too deep.”

Bruce hated him for that.

You didn’t.

You had known.

Some things did not break. Some things had to be carried.

So you carried it.

But not alone. Never completely alone again.

Bruce still forgot you. Every day. Many times.

He forgot you when Alfred called him from another room. Forgot you when the Cave alarms blared. Forgot you when nightmares jerked him awake, and he reached for a weapon before he reached for memory.

But he always came back.

Sometimes through notes. Sometimes through recordings. Sometimes through nothing but instinct, his gaze searching the room with a frown, his hand pressed over his heart like it hurt.

And when he found you, he said it.

Every time.

“There you are.”

Like a greeting. Like an apology.

Like a vow.

Years later, Gotham would know Batman as a myth, Bruce Wayne as a prince, and you as no one at all.

No statues would bear your face. No headlines would hold your name. No charity wing would be dedicated in your honour because the donors would forget why they were writing checks.

But in Wayne Manor, there were signs of you everywhere.

A blue blanket in Bruce’s study. A second mug on his desk. A chair no one moved. Forget-me-nots blooming stubbornly in the garden, tended by Alfred with the solemnity of holy work.

And Bruce—

Bruce, who forgot birthdays sometimes but never the anniversaries.

Bruce, who made grief into architecture.

Bruce, who could lose you every hour and still choose to search.

He loved you like a man lighting candles in a storm.

Not because the flame would last.

Because darkness was not allowed to win uncontested.

One night, you found him asleep at his desk, head bowed over case files. The Cave hummed around him. Gotham waited beyond the stone.

You stepped close and saw your name written on the page beneath his hand.

Not Forget-Me-Not. Not subject. Not unknown.

Your name.

Written hundreds of times. Again and again and again.

As if repetition could carve you into the world.

As if ink could become memory.

As if love, stubborn and mortal and wildly insufficient, could still stand before the impossible and say No.

You brushed a lock of hair from his forehead.

Bruce stirred.

His eyes opened.

For a moment, there was no recognition. Only a man waking in the dark to find someone watching over him.

Then his gaze dropped to the page.

He read. Looked up. Found you.

His face softened.

“There you are,” he whispered.

You smiled, aching and whole.

He doesn’t make it in the elevator with you but seeing that you got there with no issue calms him a bit. 

He’s pretty sure he can feel you glowering at him through the doors of the elevator as they slide shut in front of him. He’s worried about you. 

You? Oh you could kill him. 

You’re going to kill him until he dies and then you’re going to bring him back so well it becomes some sort of medical marvel that they name after you, and then you’re going to kill him. 

You step out into the ground floor, immediately making a beeline for the locker room where you can shove your bag and calm down enough to start your shift. Thankfully you and Carter aren’t usually paired on cases much while you’re both interns - he goes with Benton and you go with Lewis. Carter’s a surgical resident, you’re an EM resident; your paths cross but you don’t usually work together. 

You’re not even meant to be hanging around her so much now that you’re an intern - especially since Susan’s leaving in a few weeks, but it’s nice to have someone around. You had thought maybe that person could be Carter, but you’re so angry with him right now that you would call in sick if he wouldn’t have to be the one to drive you home. 

Carter watches you leave right as he gets to his locker, sighing to himself. 

Carol materialises at his elbow. “What’d you do to the poor girl?”

Carter flinches, both at the words and their suddenness. The two of you have only been roommates for about three months but that hasn’t stopped word from spreading to seemingly the entire department. Carter doesn’t mind it but he knows you loathe the attention. 

“I don’t even know,” he says, already exhausted. He’s only working a twelve hour shift and he’s already ready to throw in the towel. Maybe they’ll let him crash in an on-call room and you can take his car home, he can leave you to stew until you’re ready to tell him what he did wrong. “She just seems so angry with me lately.”

“Have you asked?” Carol prods as they reach the nurse’s station. He rolls his eyes at her stark tone. Carter likes Carol, and he knows she likes him as well. He also knows that for you she’d drop him in the amount of time it takes to blink.

He snarks, grabbing his case assignments from the desk. “No,” his cheeks pink as he admits it. “But she’s not exactly speaking to me right now.”

Carol raises her eyebrows. “Silent treatment? You’re done for. You guys never shut up.”

She’s not wrong. The two of you, despite being professionally separated by nature of your jobs, always seem to find each other in the halls. Whether it’s arguing about what takeout to order once you get home or arguing over a differing diagnosis, there’s rarely a quiet moment between you. 

As annoyed as you get with Carter, you really and genuinely like being around him. He hadn’t been your first choice for a roommate when you’d put up a flyer on the bulletin board behind central, hadn’t even been your fifth choice (he’d been somewhat offended when you’d admitted that, and then you’d had to point out that you had only worked at the hospital for a few months and he was a man you barely knew (that had made him feel a little bad about ripping down the flier right after he’d seen you put it up, he couldn’t lie)). You’d been hoping for one of the nurses, most of them closer to your age. You’d even heard one of them confiding in another about how her lease was up at the end of the week and she still hadn’t found a new place. Carter had been the only one to ask you about the room. 

On the bad days, you forget you’re friends. On the good days, you think you might love him.

Over the next ten hours, Carter somehow sees you too much and also desperately not enough. He catches enough of a glimpse of you; kneeling to speak to a young boy, snickering from behind a file with Lydia and Wendy, even wrist deep in a woman’s throat mid-crike. He sees you enough to kill him, but not enough to bring him back to life. 

Then he gets brought in to do an emergency surgery with Morgenstern and suddenly he’s an hour late to drive you home. 

He insisted on car-pooling, it saves you both gas, and it’s nice to have someone there after the really bad shifts. It also means that you have to sit on the hood of his stupid Jeep waiting for him. 

He’s out of breath by the time he reaches you, like he’d run straight from surgery. He had but he wasn’t going to tell you that. 

“What are you still doing here?” He pants, digging for his keys in his bag. His spare hand comes to take yours without even asking. Carter shrugs it onto his shoulder and keeps an arm up so you can hold onto something while you slide off the car. All done without looking at you, all like he didn’t even realise. 

“You’re my ride,” you say obviously, resisting the urge to tack an idiot on the end. 

He unlocks the car and starts for your side. You step in front of him so he can’t open the door for you, already feeling like he’s done enough for you without even grovelling. You can’t really stay cross with him for very long. Your longest record was 16 hours. 

“You’re mad at me,” he says once you’re both in the car, the radio off even though his fingers itch to turn it on, desperate to fill the silence. You hate the crackling. 

You slump in your chair. “What gave it away? The part where you forgot me or the part where you ate my sandwich.”

Carter blinks, resisting the urge to let his head snap towards you while doing sixty. You regularly make him sandwiches. You meal prep in bulk and will make a couple extra for him in exchange for him waking you up with a coffee most mornings. He’d do it even without the sandwich, but he knows you’d also do it without the coffee. 

“What sandwich?”

“The one you took yesterday!” You frown at him, and if you didn’t live so close he’d honestly pull over. He wants to see your face, first and foremost. He wants to see the way you’re speaking. “It was mine! I was looking forward to it. It had the good cheese.”

It’s stupid, you’re aware, to be so cranky with him over a sandwich. But it did have the good cheese. You had a twenty-four hour shift on Saturday, and you’d made the sandwich in preparation for that. Then, yesterday, you’d stumbled to the fridge at nine, one of the rare days you were off all by yourself, and noticed it missing. 

“The sandwich,” he mutters, more talking to himself than you. Doesn’t change the fact that you can hear it though. “She’s mad about the sandwich.”

“Yes she is!” You insist. 

“I thought it was mine!” He says, voice peaking as he turns onto your street. You’re dreading having to walk up all the stairs and wonder, selfishly, if Carter will still carry your bag even though you’ve snapped at him. “It’s got all the usual stuff you put on them.”

You wait for him to pull into his designated space beside your car before you speak, unclipping your seatbelt angrily and shuffling to face him. “Yes, but I always mark the ones that are for you,” you point out. “The rest are mine. You don’t just get to take your pick of my shit because I sometimes do something nice for you.”

Carter feels his face flush even more. He remembers the sandwich now, it had been slightly nicer than the ones he’d usually take. “I thought…”

You watch him flounder for a bit before rolling your eyes and turning to get out of the car. This time he doesn’t let you get far, coming to stop in front of you before you can even make it five steps. “You thought what? You can just take stuff that doesn’t belong to you?”

“I thought you did mark it,” he admits. He brings a hand up to scratch the back of his neck, and he curses his early morning self for being so goddamn foolish. Of course that’s what it was. “You… You drew…” he coughs, too stunned and humiliated to get the words out. You know what he’s planning on saying though. 

You’d drawn a heart over it to mark it as the nice one. He’d thought it had been for him. 

It wouldn’t have been out of the norm. Carter, honey, can you grab me that jar? Oh you brought me my coat? You’re a sweetheart. Here, baby, eat something, you’ll feel better. 

You’re loving, you’re affectionate, you’re kind, and he’d thought - stupidly - that meant you liked him the way he’d liked you for almost half a year. 

You can’t do anything but stare at him. Because, rather suddenly, you’re not angry - you’re mortified. Something warm and sick and tender curls in your throat all at once. “The heart,” you sound softer than you’d want. 

Carter flinches. “I- I mean, yeah. You do that sometimes. Cute stuff,” he gestures vaguely at nothing. “For me.”

You hate that the blush crawling up his neck makes him look even more endearing, your anger well and truly dissipated. You press the heels of your palms into your eyes so hard you start seeing things. “Oh, my god.”

“I wasn’t trying to take something that wasn’t mine- or just, like, assume you were doing something nice for me for no reason. I just,” the words fall out of his mouth without him meaning to. He can’t see your eyes and that worries him. As embarrassing as it is to admit to you, Carter knows he’d rather you think him lovesick and presumptuous than malicious. “I don’t know what I thought, but I guess I just- I hoped maybe-” he falters. 

He can’t even look at you, which is a shame. He loves looking at you. 

You seem to understand anyway, dropping your hands to let your eyes meet his. His gaze is locked somewhere above your head, but you keep yours trained right on his eyes until they join. 

“Carter…”

“No,” his voice sounds strange even in his own ears. “I’m sorry. I never meant to-”

He thinks maybe you’re not angry with him anymore. “It’s just a sandwich.”

Carter’s face crumples and his heart follows suit, constricting around nothing but hurt and the earth you’ve just brought him back down to. The blue of him and the green of you. Surgery and Emergency. “I know.”

You take a step towards him, rocking awkwardly on your shoes. “No, I mean- It’s just a sandwich. It’s okay.”

He doesn’t quite believe you’ve forgiven him. The sandwich, sure, whatever. Him thinking you liked him? He’s going to have to move out. 

“Can you just tell me if you want me to start sleeping on the couch?” He breathes out. He has no idea where he’s supposed to live now. He’s never really been apartment hunting. 

You crack a smile and he feels deep in his chest that it might be the last time he ever sees you like this so close. “I’d never do that to you, our couch sucks.”

You push off where you’re leaning against the door of the car. His bag is in your hand. You hadn’t even realised you weren’t holding it. You make it all the way up two flights and into the kitchen before you’re speaking again. The walk had given you plenty of time to think, and yet. “ You’d thought he hadn’t cared, that he’d thought your efforts so insignificant he could just do things to upset you. The idea that maybe he’d internalised all of the softness you showed him and finally felt like he’d deserved it made your stomach churn. In a good way, like when you go on a rollercoaster. 

“I’ll make you another sandwich,” he offers. 

You’re shaking your head, folding yourself up on the kitchen counter. He comes to stand directly in front of you despite all the room. He pulls your shoelaces out of their knots without even looking from your face. “We’re out of the good cheese.”

“There’s a 24-Stop like a block away, I can-”

“Carter,” you’re looking right at him. Falling into an argument as easy as breathing. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

He rolls his eyes. “Well, excuse me for trying to do something nice for you.” He’s smiling wider and closer than you’ve ever seen him. 

You like him so much you think it’s made you a little stupid. 

“Good,” it comes out in a whisper. “You should stop.”

He can feel your pinky finger ghosting the backs of his palms as he pulls your shoes off so you can sit cross-legged on the kitchen bench. You’re so lovely, and he thinks you might be flirting with him, and he knows you both have tomorrow off, and he knows he’s not going to be able to take the closeness without everything else after this. 

“Does that mean I can’t kiss you?”

You yank him forward by the hem of his scrub top. He laughs into your mouth, soft as anything against his own. Carter goes to pull away, undoubtedly to say something witty about you clearly not liking him that much if a kiss from him isn’t considered a nice thing. You barely let him catch his breath before you’re kissing him again. 

He’s going to go out tonight after you fall asleep and buy a whole fridge worth of that stupid expensive cheese you like, and then he’s going to make you the best damn sandwich you’ve ever eaten. 

Sun spilled through the window, catching on the steam from the coffee maker. You were perched on the counter in his Metropolis Meteors tee, bare legs swinging, phone in hand, half awake and half scrolling.

Clark moved around on autopilot. Mug down. Filter in. Sugar, cream. Dress shirt tucked, tie hanging loose around his collar, hair still a little damp from his morning shower. He hummed under his breath, easy, carefree. and stupidly handsome.

“Oh, come on,” you muttered at your screen. “This is ridiculous.”

Clark glanced over, thumb hooking his glasses back up his nose while he waited for the machine to start dripping. “What is?”

You turned your phone toward him: an actress at some red carpet, eyes bright, icy blue, further accented by her dark hair. Perfect lighting, perfect angle. 

“Her eyes. Everyone with blue eyes looks so ethereal. It’s not fair.”

He stilled. You didn’t see it at first, too busy zooming in on the photo. But his hand hovered over the coffee tin, fingers twitching like he’d brushed a hot pan.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” he asked after a moment, with a tightness underneath you weren’t used to hearing.

You shrugged, half joking, half not. “Blue eyes get all the love. Poems, songs, all that ‘like the ocean’ stuff. Brown eyes get… dirt. Coffee, if we’re lucky.” 

You flicked to another photo, still talking. “I like my eyes fine, but it’d be nice if they were a little more dramatic.”

You meant it lightly, the way you always did when it came to yourself: self-deprecating, easy to brush off. A moment later, your phone was gently plucked from your hands and set face-down on the counter next to your thigh.

“Hey!” you protested, flexing where your phone was moments ago. “I was doom-scrolling.”

“That’s the problem,” Clark countered lightly. When you reached for it, his hand got there first, gentle but firm.

You blinked at him. His glasses had slid down his nose just enough that you could see his whole gaze over the frames—blue, focused, serious.

You suddenly felt shy under his undivided attention. “Baby, I’m just messing around. I’m not fishing for compliments.”

“I know,” he assured, patting your thigh and rubbing little circles along the inside of your knee. “And I know when you’re saying something as a joke because you kind of mean it.”

You tucked your head down, crossing your arms and chewing the inside of your cheek.

Clark stepped between your knees then, his big frame filling your field of view. The faint scent of clean soap from his morning shower and coffee grounds lingered. His fingers slid under your chin, thumb resting just under your bottom lip, tilting your face toward his.

“Let me look at you for a second, sweetheart,” he murmured. 

You tried for a joke. “You see me every day.”

“Humor me, ‘kay?” 

His gaze moved from one eye to the other, lingering, cataloguing. It wasn’t the quick check he gave you for bruises after a long night. It was slow and intent, like he had all the time in the world.

“You know what I see when I look at your eyes?

You turned away from his gaze, suddenly flushed and embarrassed. His hand coaxed you back, rubbing your bottom lip.

“Clark—”

“Warmth,” he murmured. “Like fresh hot chocolate and that color wheat turns right before harvest back at Ma and Pa’s.” His mouth tugged up at one corner. “I see the first thing when I wake up. What I look for when I walk into a room.”

Heat prickled up your neck. “Baby, you don’t have to—”

“I’m not saying it because I have to. ” His thumb brushed your cheekbone, slow. “Blue is fine. But yours? Yours are the ones that actually matter to me.”

Your chest flipped over. “You’re a big ol’ mush, baby.”

“Your big ol’ mush,” he shrugged with a lopsided grin.

He leaned in and kissed your left eyelid. Soft, steady. Then the right. Then your lips. It was the kind of kiss that made your shoulders drop and your back relax against the cabinet.

When Clark drew back, his forehead rested against yours. “Blue’s got nothing on you, sweetheart. Nothing.”

You swallowed, fingers curling in the front of his fresh dress-shirt. “You know you can’t just say stuff like that before work.”

He smiled against your lips, “I think I just did.”

You kissed him again, more fierce than the last time, and he kissed you back like it was the most natural thing in the universe. 

When you both finally pulled away to actually pour coffee, and get started dressing for work, you were the one staring now—at Clark’s hands, his mouth, the soft concentration on his face—not your phone.

The actress was long forgotten.

.

Days later, the comment came back to bite you in a different way.

The bullpen hummed with the usual chaos: looping news reels, clacking keyboards, Perry’s voice sparking across the floor like distant thunder. You and Clark shared a desk for the afternoon, shoulder to shoulder, sorting through the latest batch of photos on Jimmy’s camera.

“These ones of you are actually insane,” you whispered, flicking through shots of Clark in the suit mid-rescue. “Your eyes are out of this world. I mean, okay, technically you’re an alien, but still.”

He flushed, giving you a helpless, sideways look. “Sweetheart, we’ve talked about this.”

“I know, buuut,” your voice raised an octave, your elbow nudging his as you zoomed in. “You got those  ocean-deep, glowing, ‘Don’t panic ma'am, I’ve got you’ eyes.”

He hummed noncommittally and leaned in closer, his shoulder brushing yours. The contact sent a little static up your arm.

“See?” you made a vague gesture at another image: him looking past the camera at something only he could see, sunlight hitting the blue just right, “The lighting hits and boom—instant fall-to-my-knees Shakespeare sonnet material.”

Then, without warning, Clark's hand came over yours on the camera, large and steady, guiding your thumb to the side button.

“Hang on,” he murmured. “Go back.”

“To which one?”

“Riiiiight…” he drawled as he navigated through a few flicks. “There. That one.”

A tap, and suddenly you were looking at yourself on the tiny screen.

It was a candid from earlier that morning, before you’d noticed Jimmy lurking with his camera—you off to the side of the bullpen, laughing at something Clark said, head tipped back, dark hair a little messy. Sunlight from the tall windows cut across your face, catching in your irises.

“Oh,” you blinked, shocked, “I didn’t even know he got that.”

“Yeah,” Clark replied, but his tone had changed—gone soft and distant, like he’d slipped into some private orbit. His thumb hovered over the zoom, but he didn’t press it. He didn’t need to. He was already memorizing it.

Your instinct kicked in first. “My hair looks—”

“Perfect,” he cut in automatically.

You rolled your eyes. “Messy. I was going to say messy. I look like I’m about to sneeze, and my—”

“Sweetheart, your eyes,” he corrected gently, finally dragging his gaze from the screen to you. “Look at them.”

You did. And for a second, you forgot how to form a coherent complaint.

The light had turned your usually dark brown into something else entirely—warm amber, flecks of gold shimmering near your pupils, darker rings at the edges. Your lids were crinkled from laughing. You looked… open. Soft. Happy.

You shifted, uncomfortable with how much it felt like seeing yourself through someone else’s view.

“Your eyes look like you’re lit from inside,” he added, tone dropping. “This is you when you’re happy and you don’t care who’s watching. That’s my favorite version of you. So beautiful.”

The back of your neck warmed. “You’re laying it on thick, Mr. Romance.”

“Not thick enough,” he mused. A small furrow formed between his brows as he gazed at the photo. “Remind me to get a print of this.”

You tilted your head, tucking hair behind your ear. “A print?”

“Yeah.” He swallowed, gaze flicking from the screen back to your real-life face. His thumb brushed the edge of the camera where your brown eyes were frozen in pixels. “I want it on my desk.”

Heat crawled up from your chest to your ears. “You already have photos up on your desk.”

“Of us,” he agreed. “I want one of just you. Like this. So when you’re not here, I can still see the way you look at me when you’re laughing.”

You opened your mouth to fire back some joke—to say you’re so sappy or that’s too much, baby—but the words got stuck. Because he meant it. It was all over his face.

The bullpen noise dimmed a little around you. Phones still rang. Lois still argued with Perry. Somewhere, Cat was telling Steve to “use his brain, not his thumbs.” But all you could hear clearly was your heartbeat and the way Clark’s breath hitched when you didn’t look away.

“You really like them that much?” you asked quietly.

He held your gaze, like it was a choice he’d make every time.

“I love them,” he confessed unashamed. “I love you, and they’re… part of that. When I’m up there—” his eyes flicked briefly toward the windows towards the sky on the other side, “…when it’s loud and bright and too much, I think about coming home and seeing this again. These eyes, looking at me like I’m just… yours. Not a headline, not a symbol. Just… Clark.”

Your lungs forgot how to function for a second. He felt your hand twitch under his and started to pull back, giving you room. “Sorry,” he murmured. “That was—”

“Perfect,” you assured, catching his fingers and putting them right back where they’d been. “Clark, that was perfect.”

Something shifted between you, subtle but definite. You both felt it. The photos were suddenly irrelevant. The bullpen felt too public. You gently pried the camera from Clark’s hands and placed it on your desk.

“Come with me to the break room?” you suggested, your mouth moving before your brain caught up.

His lashes fluttered. “Uh, yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

.

The break room was mercifully empty, everyone else still tangled in deadlines. The hum of the old fridge filled the silence, the fluorescent light overhead flickering just enough to be annoying.

Before you could say anything else, Clark’s hands found your waist, big and warm, tugging you in until you bumped the cabinet behind you.

“You okay?” he asked first. Of course. Always. His forehead tipped to yours, a little clumsy with how fast he’d moved. “We can just talk if you want. I didn’t mean to dump all that on you in the middle of—”

“Clark,” your fingers curled tight in his tie, pulling him down that last inch. “Kiss me.”

His breath left him in a small, surprised sound that went straight through you. Then his mouth was on yours. It started caste, careful, and then not once got on your toes and kissed him back like you’d been wanting this all day.

You parted your lips on a startled inhale; he read it instantly as permission, deepening the kiss, one hand sliding to the small of your back, pressing you flush against him. The other cupped your jaw, thumb brushing just below your eye like muscle memory.

His lips left yours for a moment, trailing up the curve of your cheek, over your temple, along the edge of your brow. “I meant it,” he murmured against your skin as you pressed yourself closer. “Every word.”

“You,” you whispered, fingers playing with the buttons of his shirt. “Are going to make me cry.”

His chuckle came out short and breathless. “I've been doing that a lot lately, m'sorry honey.”

You nudged your nose against his, half laughing, half flustered. “No, don't say sorry.”

“Not sorry then,” he admitted, then stole another kiss because he couldn’t help himself.

You broke away just enough to press your face into his chest, breathing him in, his heartbeat steady and strong under your ear. He held you there, big hand smoothing up and down your back.

.

You unfortunately had to stay late to fix a draft that came back bleeding red. Clark kissed your forhead before he gone ahead, leaving with a muttered “something came up” (code for Superman duties).

By the time you made it home, the sky was dark and the city outside your windows glowed in billboards and streetlights. You kicked your shoes off by the door and dropped your bag on the little bench.

It wasn’t even five minutes later when Clark came come, shrugging out of his jacket, tossing his heavy satchel over the back of the couch. The door snicked softly shut behind him, sealing you both in your own little pocket of quiet.

You were turning to ask if he wanted pasta or tacos for dinner when you saw it: a framed photo in his hand. The photo.

“That was fast,” you breathed, stepping closer, “You already got it printed?”

“I might’ve, uh… run a quick errand,” he admitted, sheepish, pushing his glasses up.

You reached out, and Clark let you take the frame from him. Up close, the image hit harder. Jimmy captured you mid-laugh, hands out of frame, dark hair slightly wild.  Your eyes were glowing, all the different browns and ambers he’d talked about. You looked happy. Loved. 

You heard Clark come up behind you before you felt him. The heat at your back, the tentative brush of his palm at your hip, fingers curling gently into your slacks.

“See what I mean?” he asked near your ear.

You shivered. “I just see… me.”

“I see the person I come home for,” he countered gently. “I see the woman whose eyes check if I’m actually okay every time I say I am. The one who looks at me like I’m worth the trouble”

You turned, the frame still in hand.

His blue eyes were on your face, but not lingering on your mouth. They were locked on your eyes, as if he really could live off of just looking at them.

His gaze dipped briefly to the photo, then back to you. “I think about how they go almost black when you’re mad at me, and how they pick up gold when you’re laughing in the sun. They’re not just brown. They’re every good, warm thing I miss when I’m too far away.

“Clark,” you breathed, a grin tugging at your mouth.  “You’re really… really obsessed with my eyes, huh?”

He laughed quietly, a sound that made your knees want to give out. “I’m in love,” he simply. “If I get to be obsessed with anything, it’s going to be you.”

The frame suddenly felt hot in your hands. You carefully placed the frame on  the console table, fingers lingering on the edge. Then you grabbed his shirt, bunching the fabric, and pulled him down.

He came eagerly. The first kiss was slow, sweet. The second had teeth. By the third, his glasses were crooked; you reached up blindly and pushed them off, dropping them safely in his breast pocket by habit.

His hands mapped the familiar curve of your sides, your waist, the small of your back, tugging you up until you were flush against him. You could feel exactly how much he meant obsessed pressed against you, the delicious heat radiating through both your clothes.

He walked you back a step, then another, until the backs of your legs hit his couch. You laughed into his mouth, breathless. “Careful, baby, you’re going to break something.”

“Not you,” he murmured, lips ghosting along your jaw, finding that spot under your ear that made your knees buckle. “Never you.”

Your fingers sliding into his dark hair, nails scraping gently against his scalp.

“You have any idea what you do to me just by looking at me?” he asked, voice rough, words pressed against your pulse.

“Maybe,” you managed, dizzy. “Tell me anyway.”

He groaned, the sound vibrating against your throat. “You look at me with those eyes,” he said, kissing the corner of one, then the other, “and my knees go weak. Doesn’t matter if I’m in a suit or a cape. Doesn’t matter if I’ve just held up a building. One look from you and I’m done.”

Your breath hitched, your body arching instinctively as his hands slipped under the hem of your shirt, palms hot against bare skin.

He guided you down to the couch, the cushions catching you as he followed, bracing most of his weight on his forearms so he didn’t crush you. His thighs slotted between yours; your knees bent, calves brushing the backs of his legs, pulling him closer.

His mouth found yours again, then moved—your cheek, your jaw, the line of your throat. Every few seconds, he hovered, eyes lifting to meet yours like he needed the confirmation you were still right there with him.

“Eyes on me,” he murmured, thumb smoothing just beneath one eye as his other hand explored the newly bared skin of your waist. “Let me see you.”

You did. You held his eyes, even when his touch made your breath hitch, even when your body pressed up into his, silently begging for more. You watched the way his expression crumpled with tenderness and want, the way his mouth parted on your name like a prayer.

“My beautiful girl,” he whispered, kissing the corner of your eye, the bridge of your nose, the smile he’d put there. “My beautiful brown-eyed girl.”

You huffed out a breathless laugh, a little dizzy, a little high on him. “Careful,” you teased, fingers sliding into his hair. “You’re gonna make me think you like them or something.”

“I love them,” he corrected, almost fierce about it. “I love you so much.”

Your heart did a full somersault as he kissed you again. Maybe it was self-defense. Maybe it was instinct. Either way, you couldn’t help it—you started to hum.

Soft at first, right against his mouth: “Sha-la-la-la-la-la—”

He froze for half a second, then pulled back just enough to look at you, incredulous. “Are you—” His eyes narrowed in mock outrage even as his pupils were blown wide, heat and laughter warring. “Really, sweetheart?”

You hummed another bar, just to be cheeky. “You’re the one calling me your brown-eyed girl, Kent.”

He dropped his forehead to your shoulder, his booming laugh puffing warm against your skin. His hands tightened on your waist, very aware, very appreciative. “Okay,” he rasped. “ Okay, yeah. Should've expected. That’s… that’s definitely my song now.”

Your fingers tightened in his hair, tugging him back down to you. “Yours,” you breathed against his lips. “Always yours.”

The rest of the night blurred into warmth and the steady anchor of his gaze on yours. When things grew too intense, when you felt like you might float away, he was there, pulling you back with a thumb under your eye, with a steady, “Eyes on me, sweetheart. There you go. That’s it.”

More than once, when your breath hitched and your lashes fluttered closed at his ministrations, he’d grin adoringly, “My brown-eyed girl,” like the song, the nickname, and you were all tangled into the same blessing.

Later, you were both stretched out on the couch, half under a blanket the TV playing something you weren’t really watching. Your head rested on his chest, while his hand traced slow circles on your hip, keeping time with your breathing.

From where you lay, you could see the framed photo on the console table, propped at an angle that caught the city lights. Your own eyes looked back at you from across the room, frozen in that split-second Jimmy had caught—open, bright, a lot in love.

Maybe brown eyes didn’t get all the poems.

But you had a man who wrote them in the way he watched you, in the way he came home to you, in the way he said mine like it was an everyday miracle.

You decided you didn’t need sonnets.

You just needed Clark looking at you the way he did.

That felt like more than enough.

.