Jay

FICS:

[ COMPLETE ] ⟡

[ ONGOING ] 𖤐

[ DISCONTINUED ] ◈

DC FILE #032 — The Incident.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「00」「01」「02」「?」𖤐

DC FILE #883 — The Cost Of Loving You.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「OneShot」

DC FILE #388 — A Fracture In Fate.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「OneShot」

DC FILE #338 — Counting Down To You.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「OneShot」

DC FILE #648 — Here, Kitty.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「01」「02」「03」⟡

DC FILE #044 — Your Secrets Are Ours, Kid.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「01」「02」「03」「04」「05」「06」「07」「08」「09」「10」◈

DC FILE #981 — Shallow.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「01」「02」「?」𖤐

HP FILE #257 — Ghosts.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「OneShot」⟡

HP FILE #627 — Deceptively Charming.

STATUS: [ DARK CONTENT ]

「OneShot」⟡

POSTS:

▌Escapism 𓆝

▌Stance on ai 𓆞

▌Advice to all writers 𓆟

▌Rules on gender-specific requests 𓆝

▌Plus-Sized Reader 𓆞

▌Yandere Batboys「01」「02」

▌Hybrid Readers「01」「02」「03」「04」「05」「06」「07」「08」「09」「10」

▌Professional Player Reader「01」「02」

FIC-RELATED ASKS:

[ YSAOK ]「01」「02」

[ HK ]「01」「02」「03」「04」「05」「06」「07」「08」「09」「10」「?」「11」「12」

[ S ]「01」

[ TI ]「01」

[ Soulmates ]「01」

FILE INFORMATION:

This archive contains fictional yandere content only.

Hate will be processed emotionally instead of professionally.

「Requests Open」

AVAILABLE FILES:

[ DC ]

Dick Grayson

Jason Todd

Tim Drake

Damian Wayne

Bruce Wayne

Clark Kent

Lois Lane

Conner Kon Kent

Jon Kent

[ MARVEL ]

Peter Parker

[ HP ]

Mattheo Riddle

Theodore Nott

Lorenzo Berkshire

Tom Riddle

Regulus Black

REQUEST PROTOCOL:

Specify which character(s) you’d like the fic to focus on.

Available files can be negotiated. (Eg. MJ as a yandere w Peter or the Teen Titans group.)

Give a general overview of the plot or dynamic you want explored.

Please do not send heavily detailed OC reader requests.

Updates and requests may take time.

Request spam = denied access.

FANART:

「Jason holding up Cat Reader」

「Cat Reader on Bruce’s shoulder」

「Knocking coffee onto an important document」

「Cat reader w Damian」

「Cat Reader on Jason’s bike」

「Sad Kitten Reader」

「No context Kitten Reader」

「Raccoon Reader meeting Alfred」

「Merfolk Reader」

「Cat Reader Denied Pizza」

「Ponyo Reader」

「Cat Reader found a gun」

「Taking Cat Reader’s claws」

「Cat Reader moping」

「Just a normal day for Cat Reader and Tim」

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Leave a comment on any chapter of the work you’d like to follow (Shallow, Here Kitty, etc.) and I’ll add you to its taglist.

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For Bruce, that meant a simple promise written beneath his skin.

When it reached zero, he would meet the person destined for him.

As a boy, he had imagined it the same way every child did.

His soulmate would appear one day. They would laugh together. Grow old together. Build a life together.

A future.

The sort of future his parents had possessed.

The sort of future that had died alongside them in an alley behind the Monarch Theater.

After that night, the timer became little more than background noise.

The glowing numbers continued their steady descent while Bruce attended funerals, inherited a fortune he never wanted, and watched Gotham consume itself one crime at a time. They ticked downward while Alfred patiently pieced together the shattered remains of a grieving child. They ticked downward while Bruce buried himself in studies, martial arts, criminology, forensics, and every discipline that might one day help him wage war against the city that had taken everything from him.

Years passed.

The timer remained a constant. Unchanging. Always moving. Always counting.

Sometimes he caught himself staring at it during long flights between countries. During sleepless nights spent training until his knuckles split. During lonely evenings in unfamiliar cities where he could almost pretend he was just another wealthy young man wandering the world in search of purpose.

The numbers never stopped.

And despite everything, a small part of him still wondered.

Who were they?

Who was waiting at the end of that countdown?

The thought felt dangerous.

Hope always did.

By the time he returned to Gotham and donned the cowl for the first time, Bruce had long since convinced himself that soulmates were a luxury he could not afford.

Batman had no place for dreams. No room for futures. And he certainly had no room for someone he might one day love.

The city came first.

It always would.

Gotham demanded sacrifice, and Bruce had made his choice years ago.

If his soulmate existed, then they deserved better than what remained of him.

So he stopped thinking about it.

Or at least he tried to.

The timer continued to count.

Days.

Months.

Years.

Seconds.

Its steady descent accompanied him through every chapter of his life.

It was there when Dick Grayson crashed into his world beneath a circus tent, a furious and heartbroken child whose pain mirrored Bruce’s own in ways neither of them fully understood. It remained when Dick became Robin, when he became family, and when Bruce made the selfish decision to love someone enough to let them stay.

The numbers continued falling.

They were there when Jason Todd stole the tires off the Batmobile, and somehow stole a place in Bruce’s heart soon afterward. They ticked downward through every argument, every proud moment, every hard-earned smile.

And they’d kept counting when Jason died.

Bruce remembered that night with painful clarity.

The rage. The guilt. Helplessness. The suffocating certainty that he had failed.

Even then, amidst grief so profound it threatened to hollow him out completely, the timer continued. As though fate cared little for the tragedies of ordinary men.

Years later came Tim.

Then Damian.

A family assembled from broken pieces and impossible odds. One that Bruce never intended to build and could not imagine living without.

The countdown remained through it all. A quiet presence beneath his skin. Easy to ignore, impossible to forget. Even whilst hidden from sight beneath the bulky steel of his jaeger-lecoultre reverso.

Sometimes, on particularly difficult nights, he found himself fiddling with the watch strap just enough to see the edges of it.

Not because he expected anything or believed he deserved whatever waited at the end, but because the idea lingered. A tiny, stubborn thing buried beneath decades of grief and responsibility.

The possibility that somewhere out there existed a person uniquely his.

Someone who might understand. Who might see every ugly, fractured piece of him and choose to stay.

Someone who might look beyond Batman.

Beyond the billionaire mask. Beyond the failures. And simply see Bruce.

It was a foolish thought. An indulgent one, really. The sort of fantasy he rarely allowed himself to entertain.

Yet it persisted all the same.

Perhaps because he had spent so much of his life alone. Not physically. Never physically. The Manor was full. The Batcave was full. His life overflowed with people he loved.

But loneliness and solitude were not the same thing.

Bruce had learned that lesson long ago.

For most of his life, every meaningful relationship had begun with loss.

Dick had lost his parents. Jason had lost everything. Tim had nearly lost himself trying to save Batman from his own grief. Damian had been raised as a weapon before he was ever allowed to be a child.

Every person Bruce ever loved carried scars.

All because they had stepped into his world.

And if fate truly intended to place another person in his life… What then? What kind of future could he possibly offer them?

Late nights spent waiting for him to return home alive? Hospital visits? Funerals? The constant threat of becoming a target simply because they mattered to Bruce Wayne?

No.

His soulmate deserved better.

Deserved normal.

Far away from Gotham and everything it touched.

A sensible conclusion. A logical conclusion. One he repeated to himself countless times.

The problem was that logic had never succeeded in silencing the small traitorous part of him that still watched the countdown.

Nobody truly knew him. Not completely. Not the way a soulmate supposedly could. The way destiny promised.

So the timer remained tucked away in the back of his mind.

A breath caught before it could fully form. A dream he never allowed himself to finish imagining.

And still it counted.

Drawing closer with every passing day to a future Bruce Wayne had stopped believing would ever matter.

Until the day it finally reached zero.

The countdown on your wrist had never inspired the same fascination it seemed to in everyone else.

As a child, you remembered classmates comparing bruises during recess, eagerly conspiring about how old they’d be when they finally met the person fate had chosen for them. Entire conversations revolved around it. Predictions. Theories. Daydreams.

You had participated, of course.

Mostly because everyone else did.

But even then, you never quite understood the obsession.

Perhaps it was because your bond felt so distant.

Unlike those who shared pain with their soulmates or dreamed through another person’s eyes, your countdown offered nothing tangible. No connection. No glimpses into another life. No indication of who your soulmate might be beyond the vague promise that one day, eventually, you would meet them.

It was difficult to become attached to someone who felt entirely theoretical.

The numbers counted downward. Life continued.

School became university. University became work. Friendships came and went. Apartments changed. Jobs changed. Entire years disappeared before you even noticed them passing.

The timer remained, steadily ticking away in the background.

Yet strangely unimportant.

Not because you disliked the idea of soulmates. Quite the opposite.

You supposed it was comforting to think there was someone out there destined specifically for you. Someone whose life would one day intersect with your own in a way no one else’s ever could.

But you had never been particularly fond of building your future around things you couldn’t control.

If your soulmate appeared tomorrow, wonderful. If they appeared twenty years from now, that was fine too.

Either way, life would continue.

You had plans. Goals. Responsibilities. A future that existed independently of whoever happened to be waiting at the end of that countdown.

Which was probably why you never developed the habit of checking it.

Weeks sometimes passed without you looking at the numbers.

Months, if life became particularly busy.

Your friends found that strange.

Most people tracked their bonds religiously.

You couldn’t remember the last time you had cared enough to calculate how much time remained.

Not that it mattered. Fate would arrive whether you watched the clock or not.

The thought made you smile slightly as you adjusted the sleeve of your outfit.

The invitation resting on your kitchen counter immediately drew your attention once more. Embossed gold lettering gleamed beneath the overhead light.

You had considered declining several times already.

Charity galas were not your thing.

Neither were crowds of wealthy socialites, politicians, celebrities, and Gotham’s elite pretending to enjoy one another’s company while discussing donations over champagne.

Unfortunately, declining wasn’t really an option. Your company had spent the past month preparing for the event.

Attendance was expected. Mandatory, according to your supervisor.

The memory earned a quiet sigh.

Tomorrow evening.

Wayne Foundation Annual Renewal Gala.

You stared at the familiar name printed across the card. Wayne.

One of the most recognisable names in the country. Perhaps even the world.

Bruce Wayne’s name seemed to exist everywhere in Gotham. On buildings, hospitals, scholarships, charities.

A billionaire philanthropist.

A notorious playboy.

A man whose face appeared so frequently in magazines that most of Gotham could probably identify him from memory.

You had never met him. Never expected to. Tomorrow would likely be no different.

You would attend the gala, smile politely, make small talk, and stay for the required amount of time.

Then return home and forget the entire evening ever happened.

The gala was exactly as exhausting as you had expected.

By the end of the first hour, your cheeks already ached from smiling.

The grand ballroom of Wayne Tower glittered beneath enormous crystal chandeliers, every surface polished to a shine so perfect it almost felt artificial. Waiters drifted through the crowd carrying silver trays loaded with champagne flutes and carefully arranged hors d’oeuvres. Laughter rose and fell throughout the room, blending into the soft music drifting from somewhere near the stage.

The entire event felt less like a fundraiser and more like a carefully choreographed performance.

Not that anyone seemed to mind.

Around you, Gotham’s elite mingled effortlessly. Politicians exchanged handshakes. Business executives traded stories. Reporters circulated like sharks scenting blood in the water.

You had spent most of the evening attached to a cluster of coworkers, nodding politely through conversations that ranged from quarterly profits to real estate investments and subjects you suspected nobody genuinely cared about.

You smiled. Shook hands. Made pleasant conversation. Repeated the process.

By the time you escaped toward the refreshment table, you were fairly certain your social battery had died an hour ago.

“Not enjoying yourself?”

You glanced toward the voice. One of your coworkers smirked knowingly.

You laughed. “I think I’ve had enough networking to last the rest of my life.”

“Careful. That’s practically blasphemy at events like this.”

“Then pretend I said something about synergy and market growth.”

The resulting laugh eased some of the tension in your shoulders.

Around you, the crowd continued to swell as more guests arrived. And inevitably, conversation shifted toward the man hosting the event.

Bruce Wayne.

The name surfaced repeatedly throughout the evening. Sometimes with admiration. Sometimes amusement. Occasionally frustration.

Everyone seemed to have a story.

A charitable donation. An embarrassing tabloid headline. A disastrous date. A surprise act of generosity.

The more stories you heard, the more curious you became. You had never met Bruce Wayne before.

Nobody in your social circles had.

People like him existed in an entirely different world.

The sort of world most people only glimpsed through magazine covers and news broadcasts.

Yet somehow, despite his wealth, despite his status, despite his reputation for arriving late and disappearing early, people genuinely seemed to like him.

It was strange. Most billionaires inspired resentment. Bruce Wayne inspired affection.

You found yourself wondering what he was actually like. The real version. Not the carefully polished public image. Not the headlines. Just the man.

Your gaze drifted toward the entrance more than once throughout the evening.

The subtle change spread through the crowd like a ripple through water. Conversations paused. Heads turned. Attention redirected.

You didn’t need anyone to tell you why.

Bruce Wayne had arrived.

The realisation swept through the ballroom almost instantly.

You found yourself looking too. Just like everyone else.

Oh. For a moment, you understood the fascination.

Photos had never quite captured him properly. Perhaps because photographs couldn’t capture presence.

Bruce moved through the crowd with effortless confidence, greeting donors and board members with easy smiles. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Impossibly handsome in a way that felt almost unfair.

The sort of face people built careers around. One that belonged on magazine covers. Yet none of that was what held your attention.

It was the way he carried himself. Comfortable. Natural. As though the attention of hundreds of people barely registered.

You felt oddly nervous.

Which was ridiculous. You weren’t even planning on speaking to him.

You simply found yourself watching from across the room.

Then your hand drifted unconsciously toward your wrist. Your thumb brushed the skin hidden beneath your sleeve. The countdown.

A habit more than anything.

You weren’t even sure why you checked.

Maybe because events like this always sparked conversations about soulmates. Or because seeing Gotham’s most famous bachelor had stirred old childhood fantasies you’d long since outgrown.

Whatever the reason, your fingers lingered there.

Tracing the familiar shape beneath the fabric. Feeling the steady pulse of your own heartbeat.

You smiled faintly to yourself. Foolish.

Then Bruce Wayne turned, and looked directly at you.

Everything stopped.

Your breath caught. Heart stumbled. Because beneath your fingertips.. The countdown had reached its end. 00:00:00:00.

The familiar sensation disappeared so suddenly that for a terrifying second you thought you had imagined it.

Your eyes widened.

Across the ballroom, Bruce Wayne was still looking in your direction.

No. Not your direction.

At you.

For a moment, neither of you moved.

The countdown had stopped.

Your fingers remained pressed against your wrist, your pulse hammering so violently that you could barely feel the skin beneath them.

And for one impossible, terrifying second, the rest of the gala disappeared.

The music faded. The conversations blurred. Everything narrowed to those blue eyes. To the man standing twenty feet away. To the realization crashing through your chest with enough force to steal the air from your lungs.

Him.

Every second. Every minute. Every year. All of it had led here.

You couldn’t stop smiling.

A laugh escaped before you could catch it.

You felt ridiculous.

You felt ecstatic.

You felt fourteen years old again, lying awake at night and wondering who waited at the end of your countdown.

Your soulmate.

Bruce Wayne was your soulmate.

The thought was absurd.

Wonderful.

Terrifying.

And before you could think better of it, your feet were already carrying you forward.

You barely remembered crossing the ballroom. Only that one moment he was across the room.

The next you were standing in front of him. Close enough to speak. Close enough to see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes. Close enough to finally meet the person fate had spent your entire life leading you toward.

“Mr Wayne-” You stopped yourself. God, that sounded stupid.

You laughed nervously. “Sorry. Bruce. I just-”

The words tangled together. There were too many of them. How exactly were you supposed to tell someone they’d just become the most important person in your life?

How did anyone start a conversation like this?

“Hi. We belong together.”

“Hi. Fate says you’re mine.”

“Hi. I’ve waited my entire life to meet you.”

The absurdity almost made you laugh again. Instead, you found yourself smiling. A genuine one. The kind that slipped free before you could stop it.

“I think-”

Bruce looked at you. His eyes flickering over your face, your clothes, the event badge hanging around your neck.

Recognition never appeared.

Nothing softened.

Nothing changed.

It was the look people gave strangers who had interrupted them in public. Nothing more.

His gaze shifted immediately beyond your shoulder. Toward someone else.

Someone important.

Someone he actually wanted to speak to.

“I’m sorry.” The words were automatic. Polite. The sort of apology people gave when they weren’t sorry at all.

“I don’t have time right now.”

For a second you simply stared.

Still smiling.

Still trying to catch up.

“Oh.”

Bruce nodded once. Already moving.

Already done.

“If you’ll excuse me.” And then he brushed past you.

There was no cruelty. No emotion whatsoever. You hadn’t mattered enough for that.

The crowd swallowed him almost immediately.

One moment he was there and the next he was gone. Laughing with donors. Shaking hands. Moving through the room as though nothing had happened.

As though you had never existed.

As though the most important moment of your life had been a forgettable inconvenience in his evening.

You remained where you were. Frozen. The smile slowly slipping from your face.

Around you, the gala continued.

A waiter passed carrying champagne. Someone laughed nearby. Music drifted through the ballroom. Normal. Everything was painfully, horribly normal.

Your stomach twisted.

The excitement that had filled your chest moments ago curdled into something ugly. Something embarrassing.

Heat crept up your neck.

God. How stupid. How unbelievably fucking stupid.

Your hand rose to your wrist again. To the skin where the countdown had sat for your entire life.

Where it no longer moved.

You stared at it, waiting for the joy to return. For the excitement. For the certainty that this meant something.

Instead you felt sick. Because for one awful moment, you’d believed it.

You had looked at Bruce Wayne and allowed yourself to hope. Allowed yourself to think fate had chosen you.

That maybe all those stories people told were true.

Instead you’d received the same polite dismissal he would have given any stranger who got in his way.

Your throat tightened. Fuck, you felt like you were about to cry.

The hurt wasn’t coming from Bruce. Not really.

It was coming from yourself.

From the realisation that some small part of you had still believed after all these years, after all your indifference, all your insistence that fate didn’t matter, a part of you had still secretly hoped there would be magic in this moment. Something special. Worth waiting for.

And now that part of you was dying. Right there in the middle of a crowded ballroom.

The countdown had reached zero.

And for the first time in your life, you wished it hadn’t.

Two and a half months later.

The night had offered nothing unusual.

The Batcave settled into its familiar rhythm as everyone returned. Dick had claimed a corner of Tim's workstation and was ignoring increasingly pointed requests to move. Jason, having appeared midway through patrol without warning or invitation, was drinking Alfred's coffee. Damian sat nearby with a stack of reports, making notes in the margins.

Bruce stood near the medical station, removing the Batsuit piece by piece. The cowl came first, then the cape. He set the gauntlets aside and reached for the fastening at his wrist.

"Father."

Bruce glanced up.

Damian was looking at him with a faint frown. “You never informed us that your countdown had ended.”

He’d barely reacted. “What are you talking about?”

Damian looked mildly annoyed, like Bruce had forgotten something obvious.

“Your soulmate.”

Dick straightened immediately. Tim turned away from his monitor. Jason gave a short laugh.

"Wait. Seriously? You found them?”

Their Dad frowned. “What?”

Damian pointed.

Bruce followed the gesture to the inside of his wrist. The timer had stopped.

For a second, he simply stared.

Beside him, Dick grinned. “So that’s why you’ve been weirdly private.”

Jason scoffed. “Please. Like he’d tell us.”

“I assumed you were waiting until the relationship became serious,” Damian said matter-of-factly.

Tim nodded. “I figured you already had a file on them.”

A few years ago, Bruce might have responded. Might have denied it. Instead, he continued staring at his wrist.

00:00:00:00

The timer wasn’t moving.

It should have been.

For as long as he could remember, it had always been moving. Always counting. Now it sat completely still.

A strange feeling settled low in his stomach.

“When did this happen?” The words escaped before he could stop them.

The cave went silent.

Bruce looked up. Every member of his family was staring at him.

Dick’s smile vanished first.

Tim slowly lowered his tablet.

Jason blinked.

Damian narrowed his eyes.

A long moment passed. Then, “what do you mean, when did it happen?”

Bruce’s jaw tightened. His gaze dropped back to the timer. “When did it reach zero?”

Nobody answered immediately. Because the question itself was wrong.

Dick stared at him blankly. “…You don’t know?”

Tim sat up, picking at the cuticles on his hands. “When was the last time you checked it?”

Bruce opened his mouth. The answer should have come easily.

Instead, nothing.

Weeks? Months? Years?

A knot formed in his stomach. He couldn’t remember. At some point, the countdown had become part of the scenery. Like a scar. Like an old piece of furniture. Something so familiar that he no longer saw it.

Damian rose from his chair. "How is that possible?"

There wasn’t accusation in the question. Only bewilderment.

Bruce understood it.

If anyone else had presented him with a mystery this significant and admitted they had ignored it for years, he would have found it equally incomprehensible.

A soulmate was information.

Information mattered.

Yet somehow he had allowed this particular fact to drift past unnoticed.

Dick dragged a hand through his hair. "Okay. So if it's been at zero for a while..." He trailed off.

Nobody finished the thought. Bruce didn't need them to.

The timer had stopped.

Which meant they had already met.

Somewhere, buried beneath years of galas, investigations, crime scenes, interviews, witnesses, victims, allies, and strangers, there was a person connected to him in a way he had never bothered to investigate.

The thought irritated him immediately. Annoyed by his own oversight.

Bruce Wayne missed very little. Batman missed even less.

And yet he had apparently overlooked something that had been written on his own skin.

His gaze returned to the frozen digits.

Who?

The question settled into place with uncomfortable ease.

Who had it been?

A civilian? A witness? Someone from a charity board? A doctor? A journalist? A stranger he had passed on the street and forgotten by the next morning?

His mind was already moving through possibilities, assembling timelines, searching for patterns.

The investigation had begun before he consciously decided to start it.

And long after the others had gone upstairs, long after the cave had emptied, he’d remained alone before the Batcomputer.

His wrist rested against the desk, the countdown sat motionless beneath the glow of the monitor.

For decades, he had convinced himself the timer didn’t matter. That soulmates were irrelevant. That whatever waited at the end of the countdown belonged to a future he would never allow himself to have.

Now, for the first time in his life, the future wasn’t theoretical. It was real. It had been real for years. And somehow, impossibly, he’d missed it.

He stared at the timer, jaw clenched. Then opened a new search window and began looking.

Bruce had always believed that every mystery possessed an answer.

The answer might be buried beneath layers of deception. It might require months of investigation, thousands of hours of work, or sacrifices most people would never willingly make. But it existed.

Every crime scene told a story.

Every missing person left traces.

Every lie fractured under enough pressure.

Answers existed. The challenge was finding them.

Which was why the frozen numbers on the inside of his wrist irritated him more than they should have.

A lifetime reduced to eight zeroes.

For decades it had been counting.

Now it wasn’t.

Entire criminal organisations had collapsed because of details other people overlooked. Murders had been solved because Bruce noticed a footprint half a millimeter deeper than it should have been. He built contingency plans for gods.

And yet somehow he had allowed this to happen.

Somewhere, at some point, his soulmate had entered his life. And he had failed to notice.

The oversight bothered him in a way he struggled to articulate. Not because he had spent years longing for his soulmate. He hadn’t. Or because he suddenly believed fate held some profound importance. He didn’t.

But because he had missed something.

Something connected to him. That should have been obvious.

His gaze drifted back toward the timer. A person.

For most of his life, the soulmate waiting at the end of the countdown had existed as an abstraction. A hypothetical future. A distant possibility.

Now they existed beyond the realm of his mind on particularly needy nights.

Living somewhere in Gotham. Or perhaps outside it. Going to work. Paying bills. Existing. Breathing.

Perhaps completely unaware that Bruce Wayne had finally noticed them.

The idea settled heavily in his chest.

Because that wasn’t entirely true, was it?

If the countdown had stopped, then they already knew.

The moment one timer reached zero, so did the other. Meaning somewhere out there was a person who had already experienced that moment. A person who had looked at their wrist and realised they had found the person fate intended for them.

Bruce’s fingers stilled against the keyboard. A strange feeling moved through him. Difficult to define.

Because unlike him, that person would have noticed.

Normal people would have probably watched their countdowns. Would have known exactly how much time remained. Anticipated the day it would finally happen.

He imagined someone checking their wrist. Watching the final seconds disappear. Feeling the weight of a lifetime’s anticipation finally come to an end. And then what?

Had they looked around for him?

Had they searched the crowd?

Had they recognised him immediately?

The questions arrived uninvited. More troublingly, they refused to leave.

Bruce leaned back in his chair. The cave hummed softly around him. Banks of monitors cast pale light across the stone walls.

Above him, thousands of tons of earth separated the cave from the sleeping Manor. None of it held his attention.

For perhaps the first time since Damian had pointed out the frozen timer, Bruce found himself thinking not about the investigation. But about the person.

Who were they? What kind of life did they live? What had they thought when they realised? Had they been happy? Afraid? Disappointed?

The last possibility lingered.

Bruce frowned. Disappointed. The word shouldn’t have bothered him. Yet it did.

Because he knew exactly what the public thought of Bruce Wayne. The billionaire. The celebrity. The perpetual tabloid fixture.

To some people, finding out Bruce was their soulmate would be exciting. To others it would be a nightmare.

A lifetime of reporters. Paparazzi. Public scrutiny. Danger. Every enemy Batman had ever made.

Bruce knew better than anyone that proximity to him carried consequences.

The evidence sat framed across the Manor.

The thought darkened his expression. Whoever they were, they deserved better than that.

And then Bruce paused. His eyes slowly narrowed. Because that thought implied something else. Something he hadn’t consciously acknowledged until now.

It didn't matter.

That lie was what kept you going after the gala. It wasn’t grief. Grief implied loss, implied that you had possessed something to begin with.

You hadn't. Bruce Wayne had never been yours.

And yet, something inside of you had still died that night.

You still went to work. Still paid your bills. Still answered texts. Still laughed when friends made jokes.

From the outside, nothing had changed.

Inside, however, there was a deep hole where something important used to live.

Hope, perhaps.

Or whatever foolish thing had survived all those years beneath your indifference.

You had spent your entire life insisting that the countdown didn't matter. That fate didn't matter. That your soulmate was merely a possibility waiting somewhere in the distance and not the center of your universe.

Then the timer reached zero.

And you discovered exactly how much you had been lying to yourself.

Because if it truly hadn't mattered, then seeing Bruce Wayne across that ballroom wouldn't have hurt the way it did.

If it truly hadn't mattered, then his face wouldn't still appear in your nightmares. The sight of his name wouldn't make your stomach twist like someone had reached into your chest and grabbed hold of your ribs.

Yet it did. Every time, without fail.

Three days after the gala, you stopped in front of a coffee shop on your way to work.

A newspaper sat in the display window.

BRUCE WAYNE ANNOUNCES THE EXPANSION OF FOUNDATION PROGRAMMES.

The headline wasn't even particularly large, just another article among dozens. A perfectly ordinary thing.

Yet the moment your eyes landed on it, nausea rolled through you so violently that you nearly turned aroun and walked home.

You stood frozen on the sidewalk, just staring blankly. You hated yourself for pausing.

Because there he was.

Photographed beneath bright camera flashes. Smiling. Beautiful.

Shit, he was beautiful.

It would have been easier if he wasn't. Easier if fate had chosen some ordinary man. Someone forgettable, whose face wouldn't follow you everywhere.

But Bruce looked like something sculpted rather than born.

Like whoever had created him had started with every impossible standard of beauty and decided they still weren't enough.

Even frozen in grainy newsprint, he seemed unreal.

Dark hair falling perfectly despite the cameras. Strong jaw, sharp cheekbones, those impossible blue eyes. The kind of watercolour people wrote poetry about. The kind that belonged to summer skies and oceans and things too beautiful to touch.

You remembered looking into those eyes across the ballroom. Remembered your heart stopping. Thinking, absurdly, that of course fate had chosen someone beautiful.

Soulmates were supposed to be extraordinary. And Bruce Wayne was sure as hell extraordinary.

Broad shoulders beneath perfectly tailored suits. Strong hands. Easy smiles. A laugh that seemed capable of convincing entire rooms to laugh with him. Not merely attractive. Handsome. Beautiful in the way ancient gods were described. The sort of beauty that made people stare before they realised they were staring.

He carried himself with the effortless confidence of someone who had spent his entire life being admired. Someone who had never needed to wonder if people found him desirable because the answer had always been obvious.

And somehow fate had looked at him, then looked at you, and declared that you belonged together.

You left the coffee shop without buying anything.

After that, you started noticing him everywhere.

It felt cruel. As though the universe had developed a sense of humor specifically to torment you.

Wayne Enterprises logos decorated entire buildings. Wayne Foundation advertisements appeared on buses. Charity campaigns featured his photograph. Magazine covers displayed his face near checkout counters. Televisions in waiting rooms played interviews. Articles appeared online. Photographs surfaced endlessly. Everywhere you looked, Bruce Wayne existed.

You couldn't escape him. Couldn't erase him.

The worst part was that everyone else saw those images and reacted normally.

Nobody understood what you saw. Nobody knew what it felt like.

Your coworkers saw Gotham's favourite billionaire. Your friends saw a celebrity. Strangers saw a philanthropist. You saw your soulmate.

You saw the man whose timer had stopped when yours did. The man who had looked directly at you, then dismissed you.

Sometimes you found yourself staring at the pics longer than you meant to.

Your eyes refused to look away. Despite everything, some awful traitorous primal part of you still recognise d him. Still instinctually saw him as yours.

The slight curve of his smile. The shadows beneath his eyes. The way his expensive suits felt designed to emphasise the width of his shoulders. The way his presence somehow dominated photographs even when surrounded by dozens of other people.

You hated that you noticed. Hated that your heart still reacted. That attraction remained long after hope had died.

Because Bruce Wayne was beautiful. Painfully, unfairly, devastatingly beautiful.

The kind that made the stinging rejection feel worse.

If he had been cruel, you could have hated him. If he had mocked you, anger could have replaced the hurt. But he hadn't done either.

He’d made living unbearable.

Bruce hadn't rejected you because he disliked you. He hadn't rejected you because you were unworthy. He hadn't even rejected you at all.

To reject someone required acknowledgment.

Bruce Wayne simply hadn't cared enough to notice. You had been forgettable. An interruption. A stranger in a crowded room.

It was fucking humiliating.

To everyone else, your countdown had finally reached zero. A happy occasion. A miracle. A dream-come-true.

People congratulated you. Asked questions. Smiled knowingly.

You learned to lie.

"Oh, I haven't met them yet." "Maybe we crossed paths without realizing." "I'm not really focused on it."

Easy answers. No one ever suspected the truth.

Didn’t know that every mention of soulmates felt like someone digging a knife into an already sore bruise.

That fate itself had started feeling so incredibly cruel.

No one knew that your countdown had ended beside crystal chandeliers and champagne glasses and the most beautiful man you'd ever seen.

Hw could you explain to anyone that he had walked away?

How could you describe the experience of finding the person the universe created specifically for you, only to discover that your existence wasn’t even important enough to remember?

There weren't words for that.

Every morning you woke up, and every day Bruce Wayne's name appeared somewhere.

On buildings. Headlines. TVscreens. Charity banners. A constant reminder. A monument to something you desperately wished you could forget.

You never admitted how much it affected you. Not even to yourself.

Instead you learned to look away. To change channels. To scroll past articles. To cross the street rather than walk beneath buildings bearing his name.

Small, pathetic things.

Yet necessary.

Because every glimpse felt like reopening a wound that refused to heal.

And somewhere deep down, beneath the humiliation and hurt and anger and disappointment, existed a truth you hated even more.

You still thought he was so disgustingly beautiful. Remembered the moment he looked at you. Could still feel the countdown reaching zero.

And no matter how hard you tried, some part of you still mourned the future that had died before it ever had the chance to begin.

Finding you should have taken longer.

Bruce expected months. Years, maybe. The list of possibilities was absurd.

A countdown bond narrowed the search considerably compared to shared pain or dreams, but it was still thousands of people. Tens of thousands, depending on the timeframe. Every person he'd spoken to. Every person he'd stood beside. Every handshake. Every conversation. Every fleeting interaction that had seemed insignificant at the time.

Ordinarily, that would have made the investigation difficult.

Instead, it became embarrassingly simple.

Because unlike other soul bonds, a countdown created a very specific moment. A beginning.

Bruce only needed to determine when his timer had stopped. Then identify everyone he'd interacted with during that period. The rest was elimination.

He discovered quickly that he had a significant advantage.

Over the past five months, Bruce had only personally interacted with nine people who possessed countdown bonds.

Nine.

One was a long-time business partner whose timer still had three years remaining.

Two were married.

Another had met their soulmate publicly several weeks prior.

The remaining names disappeared one by one beneath scrutiny.

Until only one remained.

You.

The file sat open on the Batcomputer. Bruce stared at it for a long time.

Name.

Age.

Employment history.

Education.

Address.

Nothing remarkable. Nothing that should have caused his pulse to stumble the way it did. Yet it did.

Because beside your photograph sat a timestamp. Wayne Foundation Annual Renewal Gala.

Two and a half months ago.

Bruce went still. The gala.

He couldn’t remember you at all.

He remembered the event. The schedule. The donor meetings. The practiced speeches. The endless boring conversations. The uncomfortable sensation that accompanied the recollection made his stomach tighten.

Because if the countdown had ended that night, then you had been there. Somewhere inside that ballroom.

His soulmate had stood within arm's reach, and he hadn't known.

Bruce leaned back slowly.

The photograph remained illuminated on the monitor.

You looked ordinary. Not in a bad way. Just real. A person.

His person.

The thought appeared uninvited.

His gaze lingered longer than necessary. Memorising details.

The shape of your smile in the employee photograph attached to the company website. The slight tilt of your head. The way your eyes seemed brighter in candid images than posed ones.

Ridiculous, meaningless observations.

Yet he continued looking.

Eventually, Bruce opened the gala guest registry. Cross-referenced attendance records.

Security footage. Photographs. Anything.

Everything.

He found you four hours later.

Camera seventeen. Ballroom east entrance. Timestamped twelve minutes before the countdown likely reached zero.

The footage was silent.

You stood speaking with coworkers. Laughing at something. So… bright.

Unaware that he even existed beyond headlines and magazine covers.

He watched the clip so many times that domething uncomfortable settled beneath his ribs.

He knew what was about to happen.

Your timer was about to reach zero. His timer was about to reach zero.

You found him.

You’d crossed the room.

And he walked away.

Hell, he hadn’t even properly looked at you.

Bruce stared at the paused frame.

For the first time since beginning the investigation, a deep nausea rolled through him.

He remembered that interaction vaguely now.

A stranger approaching. A voice trying to get his attention. A laugh. An interruption between meetings.

Nothing important or memorable. Nothing-

His jaw clenenched.

No.

Not nothing.

You.

It had been you.

His soulmate.

The person fate had spent decades leading toward him.

The person whose existence he had secretly imagined during sleepless nights and lonely flights and moments of weakness he never admitted to anyone.

Bruce rose from his chair.

The cave remained silent around him. Cold. Empty without his boys.

The monitor focused on your face. He couldn’t pull his eyes away.

For two and a half months, you had known.

You'd known exactly who he was.

And if Bruce understood people half as well as he believed he did, then you had probably interpreted that encounter exactly the way anyone would.

You thought he'd rejected you.

Bruce found himself imagining it despite having no desire to.

You walking across that ballroom. Excited. Hopeful. Nervous. Only to be brushed aside.

His stomach twisted.

You had spent your entire life moving toward him. And he'd made you feel unwanted.

A muscle jumped in his jaw. No. Unacceptable.

You belonged to him.

Bruce had spent most of his life convincing himself he could survive without a soulmate.

Now he found himself staring at your photograph at three in the morning, unable to look away. Unable to stop imagining your reaction when you learned the truth. To stop thinking about the hurt he had unknowingly caused. And most concerning of all, unable to stop wanting.

Not merely to meet you.

To keep you close.

Safe.

Where nothing could take you away before he had the chance to make this right.

You were halfway through answering emails when your manager appeared beside your desk.

"Got a minute?"

You looked up. "Sure."

"We've had a request come through."

That wasn't unusual. The company received requests constantly.

You nodded for them to continue.

"They specifically asked for you."

That was unusual.

Your brow furrowed. "Me?"

"Apparently." Your manager sounded just as confused.

You accepted the folder they handed over, then immediately wished you hadn't. The logo printed across the front was impossible to miss.

Wayne Foundation.

Your stomach dropped.

For a moment, neither of you spoke.

Your manager misread your expression immediately. "Good news, actually."

Good. Right.

You’d almost forgotten that normal people didn't feel like they were on the verge of breaking down every time they saw that name.

You forced a smile. "What's the project?"

"A community outreach initiative. They've been reviewing applicants from several companies."

It was like the name seemed determined to follow you everywhere.

"Apparently someone on their end requested you specifically."

The confusion in your manager's voice mirrored your own.

"Have you worked with them before?"

"No." The answer came too quickly. You cleared your throat. "Not personally."

Your manager nodded. "Well, whoever reviewed your profile liked something."

Maybe. Or maybe fate simply wasn't finished laughing at you yet.

You waited until they left before opening the folder.

The proposal itself looked normal. Professional. Routine. Yet a strange feeling settled low in your stomach.

Because your name appeared throughout the documentation.

You stared at the pages for several seconds then shook your head. Paranoia. Nothing more.

Bruce Wayne didn't know who you were. The Wayne Foundation employed thousands of people. This was coincidence. It had to be.

Yet later that evening, as you prepared to leave work, you found yourself looking at the folder again.

Reading your name.

And wondering why the uneasy feeling refused to disappear.

←↓→↑

The project itself was harmless. Boring, even.

Several meetings. A handful of planning sessions. Far too many emails. Just.. normal stuff.

And yet you found yourself running into the same problem repeatedly.

People always seemed to know who you were.

Not coworkers or clients, it would probably hurt your feelings if they didn’t know your name.

But Wayne employees.

The first time it happened, you ignored it. The second time, you thought about it for a bit before shaking it off. The third time, it became impossible not to think about.

A woman stood beside the refreshments table wearing a Wayne Foundation identification badge, smiling like she knew you as she called out your name.

You glanced up from your coffee, offering a polite smile. "Yeah?"

Her expression brightened immediately. "Oh good."

Good?

You waited.

Instead, she simply smiled. "Sorry. I've heard nice things."

Before you could ask from whom, someone called her name from across the room.

The conversation ended there. Leaving you standing alone holding a paper cup and feeling vaguely unsettled.

She'd heard nice things.

From who?

About what?

Then you’d received an email. Then another. And another.

Nothing inappropriate or personal. Just opportunities. Projects. Invitations. Networking events. Requests.

All connected to Wayne Enterprises or one of its countless subsidiaries.

The attention made no sense. You weren't exceptionally qualified. You weren't particularly influential. There were hundreds of people with better resumes. Thousands.

Yet somehow your name kept appearing.

Each coincidence felt harmless on its own.

Together, they felt deliberate.

There was only one explanation your brain kept returning to, and it was ridiculous.

Bruce Wayne didn't know who you were.

Bruce Wayne had never known who you were.

The memory still hurt. Less than before, but enough.

You shoved the thought away and focused on work. Unfortunately, work wasn't cooperating.

"There's a gala next month."

You nearly choked on your drink.

Your coworker blinked. "...You okay?"

"No."

You set the glass down.

"Sorry. What?"

"A gala."

Absolutely not.

The immediate response rose so quickly that you nearly said it aloud.

Your coworker laughed.

"That's about the reaction I expected."

"No."

"That's not even what I asked."

"No anyway."

The laugh grew louder. "It's mandatory."

Of course it was. You dropped your forehead onto the table.

Somewhere above you, your coworker continued speaking.

Words blurred together.

You caught Wayne Foundation. Charity initiative. Attendance expected.

Absolutely wonderful.

You closed your eyes. The universe hated you. That was the only reasonable explanation.

Because apparently surviving one Wayne gala hadn't been enough.

Now fate had scheduled a sequel.

That should have been funny. Instead, dread settled heavily in your chest.

Bruce Wayne probably wouldn't even be there.

And if he was?

He wouldn't recognise you. Wouldn't remember you. You would simply become another face in another crowd. Again.

The familiar ache returned. Duller now. Older, but still present.

You hated that even after everything, some pathetic part of you still cared.

Wondering about what could have happened if things had gone differently.

If he had looked at you. If he'd smiled. If he'd given fate even a single chance.

The thought followed you all the way home. Followed you into the shower. Followed you into bed.

And somewhere across Gotham, entirely unaware of the damage he was causing, Bruce Wayne was doing exactly the same thing.

Thinking about you.

Constantly.

Obsessively.

Unable to stop.

While you lay awake staring at the ceiling, Bruce sat alone in his study surrounded by photographs, reports, schedules, and information he absolutely should not possess.

The file on his desk had grown significantly over the past two weeks.

The silence of the study was suffocating, broken only by the rhythmic, heavy thrum of Bruce’s own heartbeat. It was a sound he usually controlled with meditative precision, but tonight, his pulse was erratic, driven by a hunger that felt less like desire and more like a fever.

His fingers, scarred and calloused from years of a life lived in the shadows, trembled slightly as they hovered over the glossy surface of the most recebt photograph.

In the light of the single desk lamp, your laughter looked almost tactile. He wanted to reach through the paper, to catch the warmth of your skin, to feel the vibration of that laugh against his own chest.

He didn't just want to see you. He wanted to own the air you breathed.

A low, jagged exhale escaped his throat as he reached for the fastening of his trousers. The silk of his shirt felt abrasive against his skin. He wasn't a man of whims, he was a man of purpose.

As he freed himself, his gaze never left your eyes in the photo.

He began to move, his hand wrapping around his length with a grip almost a little too tight, a little too desperate. He wasn't looking for a gentle release, he was looking for a way to drown out the ache of your absence. He hadn’t even met you properly yet.

Every slide of his palm was a silent prayer, a demand whispered into the empty room.

You, he thought, his eyes darkening until the blue was almost black. Only you.

He closed his eyes for a second, and the darkness behind his eyelids was filled with the phantom sensation of you. He imagined your hands replacing his own.

He imagined the way you would look at him if you knew. If you knew that he had mapped out your entire existence, that he knew the number of alarms you needed to wake up, the drinks you preferred, the way your eyes crinkled when you were truly happy.

A groan, deep and primal, tore from his throat as he increased the pace. The friction was intense, bordering on a delicious sort of pain. He pictured you in this very room, stripped of your defences, looking at him with that same devastating smile. He imagined pinning you to this very desk, marking you so thoroughly that the world would know you belonged to the Batman, to Bruce, to him.

"Mine," he rasped, the word a vow and a command. "You have to be mine."

He was spiraling, losing his composure to the sheer, unadulterated need to possess the person in the photograph.

As the tension coiled in his gut, he leaned forward, pressing his forehead against the edge of the desk, his breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches. He wasn't just chasing a climax, he was chasing the ghost of you. And as he finally broke, his body shuddering with a violent, lonely release, the only thing he could think about was how much longer he could stand being a stranger to the only person outside of his family who truly mattered.

He stared at the splotches of his own mess, his eyes settling back on your frozen, laughing face.

His patience was running out. And soon, he wouldn't just be looking at pictures. He would be looking at you.

The morning of the gala arrived faster than expected.

You spent most of it trying not to think about where you were going later. Work helped.

Emails needed answering. Reports needed reviewing. Deadlines continued existing regardless of personal problems.

By six o'clock, however, distractions became harder to find.

The Foundation building stood illuminated against Gotham's skyline when your taxi pulled up outside.

For a moment you remained seated. Watching people enter through the front doors. Watching security direct arrivals. Watching expensive cars arrive one after another.

The driver glanced at you through the mirror.

"You getting out?"

You sighed. "Unfortunately."

The lobby was already busy.

Employees moved through the space carrying folders, tablets, and the sort of purposeful expressions people adopted when responsible for coordinating large events.

You followed the signs toward registration.

The man at the desk smiled immediately.

"Good evening."

"Hi."

You offered your name.

Something flickered across his expression. "There you are." The words slipped out so naturally that he didn't seem to realise he'd said them.

Your brow furrowed. "What?"

His smile widened. "Nothing. Sorry."

He handed over your badge.

"Conference hall B. Someone will show you where to go."

The interaction lingered in your mind as you crossed the lobby.

There wasn't anything strange about it.

You reached the elevators just as a man wearing a Foundation lanyard stepped out.

His eyes landed on your badge. Muttering your name under his breath.

You stopped. "Yeah?"

His expression brightened. "Right this way."

You stared at him.

The conference hall was directly ahead. Visible from where you stood. So was the sign. So was every other person entering without assistance. Apparently, you were the only one receiving a personal escort. The thought made you irrationally suspicious.

"Thanks."

The man spent the walk making polite conversation.

The conference hall occupied most of the floor.

Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked downtown Gotham. Round tables filled the space beneath hanging lights. Staff moved between displays making final adjustments while attendees gradually filtered inside.

You recognise d a few people from previous meetings and wandered over.

Conversation came easily enough.

Work topics. Office gossip. Complaints about deadlines. The familiar rhythm settled some of your nerves.

Eventually, someone handed you a drink. Someone else told a story about the mate documentary they were watching the night before. Laughter spread around the table.

For the first time all evening, you found yourself relaxing.

Maybe this wouldn't be so bad.

You could survive a few hours, shake a few hands, then disappear before anything unpleasant happened.

A movement near the entrance drew your attention.

The change happened gradually. A few heads turned. Then a few more.

You knew who it was before you looked.

For a brief moment, you considered keeping your eyes fixed firmly on the table.

But curiosity won.

It always did.

Bruce Wayne stood near the entrance speaking with several board members.

The sight of him harder than expected.

Four months had passed, yet he remained exactly as you remembered.

Tall. Confident. Effortlessly composed. The kind of person who never seemed out of place regardless of where he happened to be standing.

You watched him laugh at something one of the board members said. Watched him rest a hand briefly against someone's shoulder. Watched him move through the crowd with practiced ease.

The memory arrived before you could stop it.

Crystal chandeliers. Champagne glasses. The countdown reaching zero beneath your fingertips.

Your gaze dropped immediately. Heat crawled uncomfortably up the back of your neck.

This had been a mistake.

All you could think about was how little had changed for him.

Somewhere between the gala and now, Bruce Wayne had probably attended dozens of events just like this one.

Met hundreds of people.

Forgotten hundreds more.

Meanwhile, you still couldn't walk into a Foundation building without remembering the worst conversation of your life.

The thought was embarrassing enough to make you take a long drink.

Across the room, entirely unaware that you had already looked away, Bruce Wayne finally spotted you.

↑→↓←

You forced yourself to look anywhere else.

The city beyond the windows. The drink in your hand. The conversation happening beside you. Anything except him.

It felt childish.

Embarrassing, honestly.

You were an adult. Bruce Wayne wasn't some ex you were desperately trying to avoid at a party. He was a stranger.

A stranger who happened to be your soulmate.

Someone who happened to have accidentally shattered every stupid childhood fantasy you'd ever had about fate.

"So then the guy spends hours explaining how the patterns along his wrist connected-"

"What?"

Your coworker laughed. "The documentary."

"Oh." You blinked.

Right. The documentary.

Apparently the conversation had continued without you.

You offered what you hoped looked like a convincing smile.

No one seemed to notice.

People drifted between groups. More guests arrived. Staff circulated carrying trays of drinks and appetizers.

The event settled into a comfortable rhythm.

Exactly the sort of evening you'd expected.

Which was probably why it took you a moment to notice something was wrong.

The conversation around your table had started stuttering. Small pauses appearing where they hadn't before. People glancing toward something behind you.

You ignored it initially.

Then someone stopped speaking halfway through a sentence.

"...Oh."

You frowned. "What?"

Nobody answered immediately. Slowly, unease crept up your spine.

You knew that feeling.

The awful certainty that something embarrassing was happening and you simply hadn't caught up yet.

Your grip tightened around the glass.

Please don't be me.

Please don't somehow be me.

Carefully, you turned. And nearly dropped your drink.

Bruce Wayne was walking toward your table.

The room seemed to tilt.

No. That wasn't right. There were other people here. Important people. Board members. Executives. Foundation staff.

Bruce Wayne had absolutely no reason to be approaching you.

Yet each step brought him closer, your pulse hammered painfully. Maybe he wasn't.. Maybe-

Then Bruce smiled. Carefully. Almost hesitant.

"Hi."

→←↑↓

Your pulse thundered traitorously.

After spotting him near the entrance, you had gone out of your way to avoid him. And apparently, he'd made no effort to stop you.

He talked briefly with the accountant at your table before passing.

You felt stupid all over again.

You knew better than to expect anything.

No shit he wasn’t coming over to talk to you.

By the time the evening finally began winding down, your social battery had been thoroughly exhausted. Guests filtered toward the exits in small groups while staff quietly began dismantling displays around the edges of the room.

You offered your goodbyes, accepted a few last-minute business cards you would probably never use, and escaped.

Or tried to.

Halfway down the hallway toward the elevators, you changed direction.

Bathroom first.

Then home.

The corridor was blissfully empty compared to the crowded ballroom behind you. Soft lighting reflected off polished marble floors. The distant murmur of conversation faded with every step.

You were almost done. Almost free.

"Leaving already?"

You stopped so abruptly your feet nearly slipped against the floor.

The voice came from behind you. Low and warm.

Dangerously familiar.

Your stomach dropped.

Slowly, you turned.

Bruce Wayne stood at the opposite end of the hallway. Alone.

For a second, neither of you moved.

Gone was the effortless social charm he'd worn all evening. Without the crowd surrounding him, he seemed larger somehow. Broader. More imposing.

His eyes were fixed entirely on you. Watching. Like he'd finally found something he'd been searching for.

A strange tension settled between your shoulders.

"Mr. Wayne."

His expression tightened immediately.

"Bruce," he corrected softly.

The familiarity felt inappropriate.

You swallowed. "Bruce."

Something in his gaze darkened at the sound of his name on your lips.

Satisfaction.

The hallway suddenly felt much smaller.

You forced a polite smile. "I didn't realise you were still here."

"I was looking for someone."

Your heart stumbled. The answer came too quickly. Too directly. And for one awful second, hope tried to rear its ugly head again.

You crushed it immediately. "You found them then?"

The words were meant as a joke.

Bruce didn't laugh. Instead, his gaze softened.

"Yes."

The answer landed with uncomfortable weight.

The air felt thick.

You shifted your weight, suddenly aware of every inch separating you. Or rather, how little distance there actually was.

"You wanted something?" you asked carefully.

Bruce stared at you.

It was unnerving. Most people glanced away eventually. They blinked. Looked around. Got distracted.

Bruce seemed incapable of doing any of those things.

His eyes moved slowly across your face as if committing every detail to memory.

Four months ago, he couldn't spare you two seconds. Now he was looking at you like he couldn't bear to look away. It didn't make sense.

Nothing about this made sense.

"I owe you an apology." The words caught you completely off guard.

You blinked. "What?"

"The first gala."

Your breath stopped. Every muscle in your body locked.

Bruce's jaw tightened. "You approached me."

The memory flashed through your mind with brutal clarity.

The countdown.

The humiliation.

"I remember." It was a lie.

You knew it was a lie. You could hear it. He hadn't remembered. You'd seen his face that night. Seen the complete absence of recognition.

But he looked genuinely upset now.

"I handled it badly."

A laugh escaped before you could stop it. Small. Bitter.

Bruce's eyes narrowed.

"You don't need to apologize."

"Yes." His answer was immediate. "I do."

Something sharp flickered across his expression. Self-directed anger. Regret. Maybe even guilt.

You didn't understand it at all.

"You didn't know me." Your voice came out quieter than intended. The admission hurt. Even now.

"You didn't owe me anything."

Bruce went completely still. The silence that followed felt wrong. Dangerous.

His gaze dropped briefly to your wrist before returning to your face. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

Then he took a step forward.

Yet your pulse reacted like he'd crossed the entire hallway.

"I should have known you." The words came out rough. Almost painful.

Something shifted beneath the surface of his composure. You could feel it. Like cracks forming beneath ice.

And for the first time all evening, genuine unease curled through your stomach.

Because suddenly it felt less like Bruce Wayne had happened to stop you in a hallway. And more like Bruce Wayne had been waiting there. Waiting specifically for you. Waiting for the moment you would be alone. When there would be no audience. No escape.

A shiver ran down your spine.

Bruce's eyes immediately tracked the movement.

His expression softened. Like even that tiny movement meant something precious to him.

And somehow that frightened you far more than if he'd looked angry.

"Can I walk you to your car?" he asked quietly.

The question sounded harmless. Polite.

But there was something underneath it. Something hungry. Something that made it feel less like a request and more like a man trying very, very hard not to demand.

When you hesitated, Bruce's gaze darkened harshly.

You got the overwhelming impression that Bruce Wayne was not accustomed to hearing no.

And that whatever was looking at you from behind those impossibly blue eyes had already decided how this interaction would end.

The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. You looked at him, searching for the playboy you had seen on the news, but he wasn't there. In his place stood a man whose very presence felt like a gravitational pull, heavy and inescapable.

Your heart was a frantic thing in your chest, caught between the instinct to run and the soulmate bond that hummed under your skin, screaming that this was where you were supposed to be.

"I... I can manage, Bruce," you said, trying to inject a note of independence into your voice. You didn't want to be another person he was simply 'handling' or 'managing.' You wanted to be seen as an equal, not a charity project or a fleeting interest.

"It’s a long walk to the valet, and you have guests to attend to."

You made a move to step around him, but you didn't get far.

Before you could even clear his shadow, Bruce’s hand shot out. He didn't grab you roughly, but his fingers curled around your upper arm with a terrifying, singular purpose. It wasn't a casual touch, it was a tether. His palm was hot, even through the fabric of your clothes, and the sheer strength in his grip made your breath hitch.

"The guests are gone," he said. His voice had lost its social lilt. It was now a low, gravelly command that seemed to vibrate in the very marrow of your bones.

"They don't matter. Nothing in that room matters but this."

He stepped into your space, forcing you to tilt your head to maintain eye contact. The hallway felt like it was shrinking, the walls closing in until the only thing left in the universe was the scent of him, like the coming of a storm.

"You think you can just walk away?" he murmured, his eyes searching yours with a desperation that bordered on the frantic.

You frowned, your confusion overriding your unease. "After everything? Bruce, we haven't even spoken for more than five minutes.”

You let out a quiet broken laugh. “You don't even know me."

A dark, humorless sound escaped his throat, one that sounded more like a growl. "That is where you are wrong."

His grip tightened, making it clear he wasn't letting go.

His gaze dropped to your lips, then back to your eyes, his pupils blown wide until the blue was just a thin, electric ring.

"I know the way you tilt your head when you're thinking," he whispered, leaning so his breath fanned across your cheek.

"I know the exact shade your eyes turn when you're startled. I know the schedule of your life better than you do. I have spent every waking moment since that night trying to find a way to apologise for a sin I didn't even know I had committed."

Your heart hammered against your ribs.

How? How could he know these things? The sheer impossibility of his words should have made you laugh, or call for security, but the soulmate bond was reacting to his intensity, pulling you toward him like a moth to a flame.

It was a terrifying, beautiful pull.

A part of you wanted to demand answers, to push him away for his madness, but another part, the part that had been lonely and aching for months, wanted to collapse into him and let him devour you.

"You... you're obsessed," you breathed, the words slipping out before you could think them through.

Bruce didn't flinch. He didn't deny it. Instead, he leaned closer, his forehead touching yours, his expression one of raw, unadulterated devotion.

"I am," he confessed, the admission sounding like a vow.

"I am completely, utterly undone by you. And if you walk out of this hallway tonight without letting me make it right, I think the world might actually end."

He looked at you then, not as a billionaire looking at a guest, but as a man looking at his entire world, his eyes burning with a terrifying, beautiful hunger.

"Please," he pleaded, the word a jagged edge of vulnerability.

"Don't make me watch you walk away again. Let me take you home. Let me show you that you were never just a face in a crowd. You are the only thing that has ever been real."

He wasn't asking anymore. He was begging, and as he stood there, looming against you with a possessiveness that felt like a honeyed trap, you realised with a jolt of both fear and exhilaration that you didn't want to say no.

In the months that followed that night at the gala, the "coincidences" had stopped being coincidences and had become a reality.

You no longer had to wonder why a certain restaurant always had your favourite table reserved, or why your career seemed to accelerate with a sudden, inexplicable momentum.

You knew. You knew that every promotion, every unexpected gift, and every "chance" encounter was a thread in the web Bruce had woven around you.

And the most frightening part was how easily you had let yourself be caught.

The initial shock of his obsession, the way he looked at you as if you were a miracle he was afraid might vanish if he blinked hard enough, had slowly melted into a deep, intoxicating security. You were no longer a face in the crowd. You were the center of his universe.

You sat on the edge of the massive, silk draped bed in the master suite of Wayne Manor, watching the moonlight spill across the floor.

The room was silent, save for the distant, rhythmic sound of the Gotham rain against the glass.

A door clicked shut. Heavy, purposeful footsteps crossed the rug.

You didn't need to turn around to know it was him. You could feel him. The soulmate bond, once a source of lonely longing, was now a constant, thrumming connection that acted like a second pulse.

Bruce stepped into the light. He had shed the armor of his tuxedo, wearing only a dark shirt left partially unbuttoned.

He looked less like a billionaire and more like the man you had met in the hallway.

He approached you, his presence filling the room until there was no air left that didn't belong to him.

He sank onto the bed behind you, his large, warm hands sliding around your waist to pull you back against his chest. He buried his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling deeply. A low, contented sound vibrating against your skin.

"You're thinking again," he murmured, his voice a deep, velvet caress. "I can feel it."

"Just thinking about how much has changed," you whispered, leaning your head back against his shoulder.

You reached up, lacing your fingers with his. "How much you've changed."

Bruce tightened his hold, his arms circling you like a fortress. "I haven't changed. I've simply finally found the right reason to exist."

He turned you in his arms, forcing you to face him. His eyes were dark, swirling with that familiar, beautiful madness. Devotion so absolute it felt like a physical weight.

"Do you still feel like you're in a trap?"

You looked up at him, searching the face of the man who had studied your every breath, the man who had turned his entire life into a pursuit of you.

You thought of the fear you had felt, the unease at his intensity, and the way he had practically begged for a chance to belong to you.

Then, you thought of the way he held you now as if you were the most precious thing in existence, as if your very survival depended on his touch.

A slow, knowing smile touched your lips. You reached up, cupping his jaw, your thumb tracing the line of his lip.

"No," you admitted softly, the truth settling comfortably in your chest. "It feels like home."

Bruce’s expression broke, a flash of pure, unadulterated relief crossing his features before it was replaced by a hunger that made your breath hitch.

He leaned in, his lips hovering just a fraction from yours.

"Good," he rasped, his gaze dropping to your mouth. "Because there is no going back. You are mine. And I am never, ever letting you go again."

As he pulled you into a kiss that tasted of desperation and promise, you realised that the universe hadn't hated you after all.

It had simply been waiting for the moment that you finally stopped running and let the storm claim you.

Please comment and reblog! :)

11K+ Words, 69K+ Characters, 1K+ Sentences, 900+ Paragraphs, 42 Minute average reading time, 1 hour and 6 minute average speaking time.

Read Dick Grayson’s part here.

↑←↓→

The most common bond was pain resonance.

One soulmate scraped their knee, the other felt sting. One broke a bone, the other suffered for it too.

Entire support groups existed for those unfortunate enough to be paired with athletes, construction workers, and adrenaline junkies.

Other bonds were rarer.

Dreamers could meet one another in sleep.

Some soulmates heard each other’s thoughts.

Others carried first words on their skin.

There were even people who saw flashes of each other’s lives through mirrors.

Every bond was different. Every bond was special.

Yours was a mark.

A simple symbol resting against your hip.

You’d spent most of your childhood believing it was a birthmark.

It resembled a bird frozen mid-flight. Two elegant wings spread wide across the dip in your skin.

When you were younger, you’d trace it absent-mindedly after baths, wondering why it looked so different from everyone else’s.

Your mother had laughed when you asked. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

At six years old, that answer had been deeply unsatisfying.

At ten, you’d become convinced your soulmate was secretly an angel.

At eleven, you’d grown embarrassed by the entire theory.

At fifteen..

The mark disappeared.

Not faded. Not lightened. Disappeared.

You remembered staring at your reflection for nearly an hour.

The skin was smooth. Unmarked. Empty.

The shape that had existed your entire life was simply gone.

Nobody knew what that meant.

There were stories, of course. There were always stories.

Old forums. Urban legends. Half-remembered articles. A bond breaking. The universe making mistakes.

None of them were verified. None of them made sense.

You tried not to think about it. ‘Tried’ being the important word.

Because something else happened that day. Something far worse.

You woke up feeling wrong.

Not sick. Or injured.

Wrong.

Like someone had reached inside your chest and scooped out everything that made you feel human.

Getting out of bed felt impossible. Breathing felt exhausting. Your limbs weighed twice what they should. Food tasted like nothing, and music sounded distant.

Your parents took you to a hospital.

The doctors couldn’t find anything. Blood tests came back normal. Brain scans came back normal. Everything came back normal.

And yet it felt as though something sharp had carved straight through the center of you and left a hollow space behind.

Weeks passed.

Then months.

The feeling never truly left.

It might have dulled. Became manageable. But every morning you woke with the same strange emptiness sitting beneath your ribs, like grief.

Except you weren’t grieving anyone.

You couldn’t. You hadn’t lost anything.

Had you?

Six months later, the mark returned.

You found it after stepping out of the shower. For several seconds, you simply stared.

Because it was there.

Those familiar wings.

The soul mark, back where it belonged.

Except.. It wasn’t exactly the same. The shape had changed. Only slightly, but enough that you almost missed it.

The elegant curve of the wings remained. But now thin fractures cut through the design, like cracks spreading through glass. Like something had shattered and been forced back together.

The mark looked older. Wounded. Broken and repaired.

You remembered touching it with trembling fingers. Remembered the overwhelming relief that nearly brought tears to your eyes.

Your soulmate was alive.

That was the only explanation that mattered.

Alive.

Somewhere.

Breathing beneath the same sky. Walking the same earth. Waiting.

The thought stayed with you through every year that followed.

Even after moving to Gotham. After learning just how cruel fate could be. Even then, some stubborn part of you couldn’t help believing.

Because soulmates were supposed to be the one good thing the universe gave people. The one person who would understand you completely. Who would never hurt you. Who would always choose you.

You didn’t know it yet, but somewhere in Gotham, your soulmate looked at the matching mark on his own body and believed exactly the same thing.

Moving to Gotham had taught you two things very quickly.

The first was that every story people told about the city was true.

The second was that nobody ever told the whole story.

The news focused on the murders. The riots. The Arkham breakouts. The masked lunatics who seemed determined to turn every holiday into a hostage situation. Every article painted Gotham as a city perpetually teetering on the edge of collapse.

What they didn’t talk about were the people.

The old woman who ran the corner store and slipped free candy to local kids when she thought nobody was looking. The mechanic who fixed single mothers’ cars for half price. The teenagers who organised food drives after winter storms. The apartment residents who pooled money together whenever somebody fell behind on rent.

Gotham survived because the people refused to die with it.

Your apartment building was no different.

The first person to welcome you was Arthur.

Arthur lived next door and seemed to possess the unique ability to start conversations with absolutely anyone. Within twenty-four hours of moving in, you’d learned about his late wife, his chronic dislike of modern television, and the fact that he’d somehow managed to get banned from three separate community centers over the course of his seventy-three years.

You still weren’t entirely sure whether that last story had been a joke.

The retired soldiers upstairs adopted you shortly afterwards. Every evening they gathered on the rooftop with cheap coffee and folding chairs, spending hours arguing over topics nobody else cared about. Weather patterns. Baseball statistics. Whether Gotham’s pizza quality had declined over the past decade.

According to them, it had.

The children living on the lower floors were worse.

Far worse.

Because children had an alarming ability to decide they liked someone and then never leave them alone again.

You made the mistake of helping one of them carry a backpack. That was all it took.

Within a week they knew your schedule, your favorite snacks, and which apartment belonged to you.

You’d accepted your fate shortly after.

The women above you remained unpleasant.

Some people simply seemed determined to be unhappy.

You’d received two separate complaints because your television had apparently been “too loud.”

You didn’t own a television.

The rest of the building ignored them. It was easier.

Then there was Jason Todd.

At first, Jason seemed normal enough. A little intimidating, maybe.

He was a large man. Not merely tall but solid in a way that suggested years of hard living rather than careful gym routines. Broad shoulders stretched the fabric of most shirts. Old scars disappeared beneath his collar and reappeared across his knuckles. There was a heaviness to him sometimes, filled with tension that never seemed to fully leave his body.

You’d caught glimpses of it occasionally.

The way he favored his left leg. The faint stiffness in his shoulders. The exhausted shadows beneath his eyes. Like someone who carried more weight than they knew what to do with.

Still, he was polite. Helpful. Generally liked by everyone in the building.

Arthur adored him. The children followed him around like ducklings. Even the veterans upstairs occasionally invited him to join their rooftop arguments.

Jason never stayed long, vut he always listened.

There was something strangely lonely about him. Not that you thought about it much.. At least not initially.

The first real conversation you’d had happened three weeks after moving in.

Arthur’s front door had jammed. Again.

The old man was muttering increasingly creative insults toward the lock when you’d returned from work.

Being a decent person, you’d offered assistance.

Being Gotham property, the door immediately declared war.

You eventually managed to force the stubborn thing open by bracing yourself against the frame and reaching up on you tippy toes for leverage.

The door finally gave way with a loud crack.

Arthur nearly fell backward.

You nearly fell forward.

And somewhere behind you, a man forgot how to breathe.

You never noticed.

Never noticed the apartment door opening across the hallway. Or blue-green eyes locking onto the sliver of skin exposed above your waistband. To the soulmate mark. The familiar black wings. The fractured lines running through them.

Jason did.

For one terrible second the world stopped. The hallway vanished. Arthur vanished. The city vanished. All that remained was the mark. His mark.

The same impossible shape he’d stared at in mirrors since childhood.

You.

The realisation hit harder than any bullet ever had.

You.

His soulmate.

Living directly across the hall. Close enough to hear through the walls. Close enough to touch. Close enough to lose.

The thought followed immediately after. Unwanted. Bloody terrifying.

Jason hated it.

Because suddenly every nightmare he’d ever had felt possible.

You could leave. You could move. You could disappear. You could die.

The Pit had returned his life, but it had never given him peace.

Now the universe had handed him something precious and expected him not to panic.

As if that had ever been one of Jason Todd’s strengths.

By the time you straightened, your shirt had fallen back into place. The mark vanished. The moment ended.

Nobody seemed to notice anything had happened. Nobody except Jason.

After that, things became strange.

Not immediately.

Jason tried very hard for them not to. He told himself he would act normal.

Normal neighbors talked. Normal neighbors said hello. Normal neighbors occasionally helped carry groceries. There was absolutely nothing strange about any of that.

The problem was that Jason had absolutely no idea what normal looked like anymore.

So he started noticing things.

You always carried exact change for the vending machines downstairs. You preferred reading digitally to hard books. You bought the same coffee every Tuesday morning. You tapped your fingers whenever you were concentrating. You hummed under your breath while checking your mail. Tiny things. Meaningless things. The kind of details most people forgot. Jason remembered all of them.

Which became increasingly difficult to explain.

You’d mention something once and he’d bring it up weeks later. You’d complain about work and somehow he’d remember every coworker’s name. You’d mention being tired and he’d somehow know exactly when your schedule changed.

The worst part was that none of it seemed intentional. Jason genuinely looked confused whenever you stared at him suspiciously.

As though he couldn’t understand why remembering things about you would be considered unusual.

Then one evening you discovered his weakness. Or perhaps he discovered yours.

You were checking the mail when he wandered into the lobby carrying a grocery bag.

“Red Hood got into another fight with Penguin’s people last night.”

You looked up immediately. The reaction was automatic.

Jason saw it.

The slight shift in posture. The sudden attention. The way your eyes actually focused on him for once.

A slow smile tugged at his mouth. “Oh,” he said. “So that’s the secret.”

You narrowed your eyes. “What secret?”

“The only way to get you to willingly hold a conversation.”

You scoffed, but you didn’t walk away.

Jason noticed that too.

Unfortunately.

From that day onward, discussions about Red Hood became alarmingly common.

You should have found it strange.

Most civilians didn’t spend this much time discussing vigilantes.

Jason always had opinions. Always had arguments. Information.

Somehow.

The conversations became routine. Comfortable, even.

And occasionally, very rarely, Jason would laugh. Not the dry, sarcastic thing he usually did. Not the sharp bark of amusement he used around strangers. A real laugh. Unexpected and bright.

For just a second it stripped years from him.

You’d catch a glimpse of someone younger beneath the scars and exhaustion. Someone who looked like they should have existed a long time ago.

Then it would disappear.

The walls would go back up. The tiredness would return.

And Jason Todd would once again look like a man carrying the weight of something nobody else could see.

You never understood why those moments stayed with you.

Across the hallway, Jason understood perfectly.

Because every time you smiled at one of them, he spent the rest of the day thinking about it.

You’d simply made the mistake of staying late at work and taking a shortcut home.

The Narrows looked different after dark.

The streets became quieter. The crowds thinned. Storefront lights reflected off rain-slick pavement while distant sirens echoed between buildings.

Most nights nothing happened.

Unfortunately, Gotham’s definition of “most” left a lot to be desired.

You were halfway down an alley when the shouting started.

Three men. Maybe four.

Members of the False Face Society if the masks were anything to go by.

They’d cornered somebody further ahead.

A teenager. Couldn’t have been older than sixteen.

The kid looked terrified.

One of the men shoved him hard enough that he nearly hit the ground. The others laughed.

You stopped.

For one stupid second, you actually considered intervening.

Then common sense returned.

You weren’t a vigilante. You weren’t bulletproof. You were just some idiot trying to get home.

You reached for your phone instead.

A mistake.

The screen lit up.

One of the masked men noticed. His head turned.

Your stomach dropped.

“Hey.” Suddenly four pairs of eyes were looking at you.

The teenager ran. Nobody stopped him. Because now their attention had shifted elsewhere. To you.

There was a very specific kind of fear that only this city could produce. The kind that arrived all at once. Immediate & primal. You felt it settle deep into your bones as one of the men stepped forward.

The alley suddenly felt much smaller.

Your fingers tightened around your phone.

Someone laughed.

Someone else told you to relax.

You took a step backward. Calculating escape routes. The odds. All of them terrible.

One of the men reached for you, and a gunshot cracked through the night.

Everything stopped. The sound echoed between brick walls. A flock of birds exploded from a nearby rooftop.

Silence followed.

Then a body hit the ground hard.

The man who’d been reaching for you collapsed unconscious. The others barely had time to react.

A dark figure dropped from above. Fast. Violent.

The first criminal went down immediately. The second lasted perhaps three seconds longer. The third tried running.

That mistake earned him a boot to the chest powerful enough to send him crashing into a dumpster.

The entire fight ended in under thirty seconds.

You’d seen videos before. Hell, everybody had.

Footage online. Security recordings. News broadcasts. None of them captured the reality of it. The sheer speed. The overwhelming physicality.

The way Red Hood moved like someone who had spent years surviving things most people couldn’t imagine.

When the final criminal hit the pavement, silence settled once more.

The vigilante straightened. The red helmet reflected nearby streetlights. Smoke curled from the barrel of a pistol.

For a moment, nobody moved. Then he turned toward you.

Your heart immediately forgot how to function.

Because it was him.

Not a photograph or old news report. Not some distant figure standing on a rooftop.

Red-fucking-Hood.

Close enough to touch. Close enough to hear breathing through the modulator.

You’d spent years reading articles. Watching footage. Defending him during arguments. None of that had prepared you.

“You’re bleeding.” The voice emerged distorted through the helmet.

Only then did you notice the sting.

Your arm.

One of the men must have grabbed you harder than you’d realised.

A shallow cut. Nothing serious.

Before you could answer, Red Hood stepped forward. His gloved hand closed around your wrist to inspect the injury.

You’d think about the touch for months.

“You’re fine.” The words sounded almost disappointed. As though he’d expected worse.

Then his attention shifted.

Already elsewhere.

Already moving.

A woman further down the street was crying. The teenager from earlier had apparently found police.

Somewhere in the distance another fight was breaking out.

Red Hood released your arm.

And just like that, the moment ended.

No dramatic goodbye. No lingering conversation. No special attention. No acknowledgement that you existed beyond confirming you weren’t seriously injured. He was already walking away. Already focused on somebody else.

Because the night never stopped needing him.

You stood there watching until he disappeared.

Continued to long after there was nothing left to see.

The obsession that followed was embarrassing. Truly embarrassing. You knew it. The rational part of your brain knew it. Unfortunately, the rational part had very little authority.

For the next week, every thought somehow led back to the Vigilante.

You replayed the encounter endlessly. The sound of his voice, the weight of his hand around your wrist, the effortless way he’d dismantled four armed criminals, and the fact that he’d barely even looked at you.

Arthur listened to your retelling twice before banning the topic entirely.

Eventually life moved on.

Work remained work. Bills remained bills. The city continued spinning. The memory dulled. Not vanished. Just settled into a quieter place. Something pleasant to revisit whenever your thoughts wandered.

Then two weeks later Gotham exploded.

Not literally for once.

The headline appeared online first. Then newspapers. Then on every Gothamites TV. Then every social media platform in existence.

RED HOOD’S SOULMATE? EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS SPARK CITY-WIDE DEBATE

You nearly dropped your phone.

The article contained several photographs from a confrontation between Red Hood and Black Mask’s men.

Most were blurry. Poorly timed. Worthless.

One wasn’t.

The image had captured him mid-fight. Armor damaged. The side of his tactical jacket torn open. And there, visible for the entire world to see, was a soulmate mark.

You forgot how to breathe.

The photograph filled your screen, the shape unmistakable.

Black wings. Thin lightning-like fractures running through the design. Like shattered glass repaired imperfectly. Exactly like yours.

Exactly.

The article itself became meaningless.

You couldn’t read it. Couldn’t focus. Couldn’t fucking think.

That was Your mark.

For a long time, you simply stared.

Then slowly, almost disbelievingly, your hand drifted toward your hip. Toward the soulmark hidden beneath your clothes. To the wings you’d carried your entire life.

The same wings currently displayed across every news station in Gotham.

Your soulmate.

The realisation felt surreal. Terrifying.

.. Wonderful.

Somewhere beneath the panic, excitement bloomed. Warm. Impossible to suppress.

Because after years of wondering, desperately hoping, of believing your soulmate existed somewhere beyond reach, you finally knew.

And unfortunately for your future peace of mind,

Your soulmate was Red Hood.

You groaned, dropping your face into your hands. This was ridiculous.

You'd exchanged approximately six words. Six.

You didn't know his favorite colour. Didn't know his age. Didn't know what music he liked. You didn't even know what his face looked like.

Yet your heart had apparently decided none of those details were particularly important.

A knock sounded against your apartment door.

You nearly jumped.

The article disappeared from your screen immediately. As though hiding it somehow made you less embarrassing.

The knocking came again, four sharp taps.

You already knew who it was. Nobody else knocked like that.

Opening the door revealed Jason standing in the hallway. A grocery bag hung from one hand.

His expression was unreadable. Tired. More so than usual.

You frowned immediately. "Jesus."

Jason blinked. "What?"

"You look awful."

A strange look crossed his face. Gone before you could properly identify it.

Then he scoffed quietly. "Thanks."

"You know what I mean."

"Do I?"

"You look like you haven't slept."

Something flickered in his eyes.

For a moment his gaze shifted past you. Into your apartment. Toward the phone still sitting on the kitchen counter. Then back again. "You hear the news?"

You stared.

Jason stared back.

Neither of you said anything.

Then simultaneously: "Red Hood." The words left both of your mouths at the same time.

Jason rubbed a hand across his face.

You pointed accusingly. "See? This is exactly what I'm talking about."

"What?"

"You are weird."

His eyebrows lifted. "You brought him up too."

"That's different."

"It literally isn't."

"It is."

Jason looked seconds away from arguing.

Then something changed.

The fight left him. His shoulders sagged slightly, exhaustion settled across his features. The expression aged him. Like someone carrying old wounds nobody else could see.

You suddenly remembered all those nights hearing his apartment door open at absurd hours. The bruises he occasionally showed up with. The limp. The scars. The perpetual exhaustion.

For the first time, a thought occurred to you.

Jason always looked like he was surviving something.

You weren't entirely sure what. Only that the feeling never really left.

"You okay?"

The question slipped out before you could stop it.

Jason froze.

You immediately regretted asking.

Not because it was rude, but cause of the look he gave you. Caught completely off guard. As though nobody had asked him that in a very long time.

Then he smiled. Small, genuine, and unexpectedly soft.

"Yeah," Jason said quietly. "Yeah.. I'm okay." The smile lingered. Just for a moment.

Then the walls returned. And suddenly he was Jason again.

Your strange neighbor.

The man who remembered everything. The man who somehow always appeared at exactly the wrong moment. The man standing in front of you while your soulmate's photograph sat open on your kitchen counter.

Jason shifted the grocery bag toward you. "Arthur asked me to bring these over."

You accepted it automatically. "Thanks."

"No problem."

His gaze raked over you for a moment longer, jaw clenching as he holds back from speaking up again.

Then he stepped backwards. Retreating towards his own apartment.

His gaze lingered on you for a fraction too long, almost imperceptible. The sort of thing most people wouldn't notice.

You did.

You always did.

Weirdo. The thought followed you as he disappeared across the hallway.

The door shut behind him.

A minute later you reopened the article, the familiar photograph greeted you immediately.

The wings.

The impossible certainty.

Your soulmate.

Across the hall, Jason sat alone on his couch staring at the exact same photograph.

Only his reasons were very different.

Because while Gotham was busy trying to discover the identity of Red Hood's soulmate, Jason already knew.

And for the first time since finding you, the rest of the world was looking too.

The grocery run had been an excuse.

Arthur had asked him to bring the bag over, Jason had just.. volunteered before the old man finished speaking.

An increasingly common occurrence these days.

His gaze remained fixed on the wall separating your apartments.

Thin drywall. Cheap insulation. A handful of feet. That was all. You were right there. Close enough that he could hear the occasional creak of floorboards. Close enough that he sometimes caught the muffled sound of whatever new show you were half-watching on your laptop through the wall. Close enough to know exactly when you got home from work.

Jason dragged a hand across his face. Exhaustion settled heavily behind his eyes.

He hadn’t slept. Not really. The article had been published thirty-six hours ago.

Since then he’d spent every waking moment putting out fires.

Some literal, some not.

The Bats had questions. Villains had questions. Reporters had questions.

The entire city suddenly seemed obsessed with the possibility of Red Hood having a soulmate.

As though the revelation somehow made him easier to understand. Like a soulmate transformed him into something less dangerous.

Idiots.

Jason leaned back against the couch.

His apartment was dark. Quiet. The television remained muted. Half a dozen news articles sat open across his laptop screen. Every one of them made him angrier.

Relationship experts discussing his future. Psychologists debating soulmate bonds. Random strangers speculating about the identity of someone they’d never met.

Your identity.

His jaw tightened.

One article had suggested that Red Hood’s soulmate was probably safer remaining anonymous.

Another had argued the opposite.

Apparently Gotham had collectively decided that your existence was public property now.

The thought made something ugly twist in his chest. Fear.

Jason hated admitting it. Even to himself. Especially to himself.

Fear was harder to fight than anger.

Anger was simple. Useful. Anger could be aimed at something.

Fear just sat there. Growing.

The photograph appeared on his laptop screen again.

The damaged armor. The exposed mark. His mistake. A stupid one.

He should have replaced the plating weeks earlier. Should have noticed the weakness. Should have-

The self-recrimination stopped.

It was pointless.

The picture existed. The damage was done.

Jason’s gaze drifted toward the opposite wall. Toward your apartment.

The memory of your soulmark surfaced immediately.

Arthur’s door.

The glimpse of skin.

The feeling that had followed.

For years he had imagined meeting his soulmate.

Not often. Not even consciously. But sometimes. Late at night, during patrol. On anniversaries he’d rather forget.

He’d wondered whether they were alive. Whether they were happy. If they hated Gotham.

.. if they thought about him too.

Mostly though, he’d thought about how they deserved better.

Jason Todd wasn’t stupid. He knew exactly what he was.

A resurrected crime lord with anger issues.

A vigilante who carried guns.

A man stitched together with skin he no longer recognised as his own.

Not exactly soulmate material.

Then he’d met you.

And somehow everything had become worse.

Because now you weren’t hypothetical. You were real.

You smiled at Arthur’s stories. You carried extra snacks for the kids downstairs. You argued passionately about things you cared about. You made faces while reading articles on your phone. You laughed with your whole body. You existed.

And Jason had become terrifyingly aware of how fragile that made you.

Not because you were weak, but because Gotham wasn’t fair.

Good people died here every day. Disappeared. Became leverage. Targets. Victims. The city took things.

That was what Gotham did.

A sharp knock interrupted the silence.

Jason’s head lifted instantly.

The pistol hidden beneath the coffee table was in his hand before the second knock arrived.

Old habits.

The peephole revealed a familiar face.

Dick.

Jason opened the door. “What?”

Dick took one look at him. Winced. “You look terrible.”

“Get out.”

“Bruce sent me.”

“Tell him I said no.”

“You don’t know what he asked yet.”

“I don’t need to.”

Dick sighed heavily, stepping inside anyway.

Jason considered throwing him back into the hallway.

“You’ve seen the articles.”

Jason barked out a humorless laugh. “Hard to miss.”

Dick studied him carefully.

Years of experience had taught the younger brother that particular look usually preceded unwanted emotional conversations.

Sure enough, “are they okay?”

Jason froze. The room suddenly felt very still.

Dick’s expression softened. There was no judgment there. No accusation. Just concern.

Which somehow made it worse. Because Dick already knew the answer. The family had figured it out months ago.

Jason hadn’t told them. He hadn’t needed to.

The Batcomputer had eventually connected enough dots.

They knew.

Not your name. Not where you lived. Not who you were. But they knew Jason had found you. And they knew he hadn’t introduced himself.

“..They’re fine.”

Dick waited.

Jason hated when he did that. Just sat there patiently until people talked. An infuriating habit. “They’re safe.”

Another pause.

“…Jason.” The warning sat unspoken between them.

Jason looked away first. His gaze drifted toward the apartment wall. Toward the space beyond it. Toward you.

Completely unaware of the storm currently gathering around your existence.

His grip tightened around the edge of the couch. Barely noticeable.

He wasn’t like Dick. Didn’t gush over his mate like they made stars. He kept them close, private.

To himself.

But he was beginning to realise that may not be enough anymore.

Jason swallowed hard. Then finally said the thing neither of them wanted to acknowledge.

“The whole city’s looking now.”

Silence followed. Heavy. Understanding.

Jason Todd had never trusted Gotham with things he cared about, so he wasn’t about to start now.

Sleep proved impossible.

You blamed the article. And Arthur for somehow managing to bring Red Hood into every conversation despite supposedly banning the topic.

Mostly, though, you blamed yourself.

→↓←↑

Eventually, the walls of your apartment began to feel too small. Too warm. Too crowded with your own thoughts.

So shortly after midnight, you pulled on a jacket and went for a walk.

The city never truly slept. Even at this hour, Gotham breathed around you.

Distant traffic rolled through the streets. Neon signs flickered overhead. Somewhere several blocks away, a siren wailed briefly before fading into the night.

The air was cold.

It helped. At least a little.

You wandered without much direction. Past closed storefronts. Past graffiti-covered brick walls. Past the small twenty-four-hour deli one of the kids downstairs swore had the best coffee in Gotham.

Eventually you found yourself standing beside the waterfront. The black water reflected fractured city lights.

For several minutes you simply stood there. Trying very hard not to think.

“You should be home.” The voice emerged from the darkness behind you.

Your heart stopped.

Then immediately attempted to beat its way out of your chest.

Slowly, almost afraid the illusion would disappear if you moved too quickly, you turned.

A figure stood atop a nearby shipping container. Red helmet. Dark armor. Broad shoulders silhouetted against Gotham’s skyline. Red Hood.

For a moment neither of you spoke.

You weren’t entirely convinced your brain was functioning.

“You’ve got a terrible habit of appearing out of nowhere.” The words left your mouth before you could stop them.

A surprised huff escaped the modulator. Almost a laugh.

“Occupational hazard.”

Your stomach performed an embarrassing number of flips. “So that’s your official excuse?”

“It usually works.”

“You need a better one.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

The conversation felt absurdly normal.

This was Red Hood. Standing ten feet away. Talking to you. Like this happened every day.

The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable. Just strange.

Heavy with things neither of you knew how to say.

His helmet tilted slightly, studying you. You wondered if he was doing the same thing you’d been doing for weeks.

Trying to fit reality beside expectation.

“You really should be home.” There was something quieter in his voice this time. Something that sounded suspiciously like concern.

You crossed your arms. “Funny. That’s exactly what my neighbor says.”

Another pause.

“..Smart guy.”

You snorted. The sound echoed softly across the water.

For a second you could have sworn Red Hood relaxed. As though hearing you laugh had eased something inside him.

The white lenses reflected distant lights.

“Get home safe.” Simple words.

Nothing special nor dramatic. Yet they settled somewhere beneath your ribs all the same.

Before you could answer, he stepped backward.

Already disappearing into the darkness he’d emerged from.

“Wait.” The word escaped fast, internally cringing at how desperate you sounded.

He paused.

You swallowed. Suddenly aware that there were a thousand things you wanted to ask and no idea where to begin.

In the end, only one managed to make it out.

“…Are you okay?” The question hung between you.

As though you’d somehow asked the last thing he’d expected to hear.

When he finally answered, his voice sounded different. Lower. Rougher. Human.

“Yeah.”

A pause.

“Yeah. I’m okay.” The answer felt suspiciously familiar. Heavy and tasting of salt from the nearby harbor. Like you’d heard it before.

The words were a hollow sentiment, a mask worn by a man who clearly knew the architecture of a lie far too well.

You watched him, your heart hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs. There was a gravity to him, a pull that felt less like curiosity and more like a physical tether snapping taut.

You didn't know that he had been watching you for weeks. Didn’t know that he even knew that you were his soulmate.

Didn't know that he had gone through your balcony window far too many times to count just to smell the clothes you leave out across the floor or side of your couch, a starving man finding the only source of light in a dark world. To you, he was a legend. To him, you were the only reason to keep breathing.

"You don't sound okay," you whispered, the coolness of the night air emboldening you.

The silence that followed was deafening. The vigilante didn't move, but the atmosphere shifted. The air grew thick, charged with a sudden, violent electricity. He didn't disappear this time. Instead, he descended.

He moved with a predatory grace, leaping from the container to the pavement with a silent, heavy thud that made the ground vibrate beneath your boots. Before you could even draw a breath to gasp, he was there. He was towering, a wall of leather and pure heat.

He didn't stop until he was inches away, forcing you to meet the white lenses of his helmet. The scent of him hit you hard. A deep musk that made your knees feel dangerously weak.

"You shouldn't ask questions you aren't prepared to hear the answers to." The modulator was off. His gloved fingers catching the edge of the crimson plating.

With a soft, mechanical hiss, he lifted the helmet just enough. He didn't take it off just yet, just freeing his mouth.

Your breath hitched. You were staring at a face that was all sharp lines and bruised shadows, eyes that burned through the helmet with a hunger so primal it felt like it could consume the entire city. He looked like a man who had been wandering a desert and had finally found water.

And then, he leaned in.

The kiss wasn't gentle. It was a collision. It was the desperate, starving act of a hunter finally catching his prize.

His lips were firm, warm, and tasted of something dark and metallic. It was a claim. He tasted you like he was trying to memorise your very essence, his tongue sweeping against yours with a possessive rhythm that sent a jolt straight to your core.

You let out a muffled whimper, your hands instinctively finding the hard, muscular planes of his chest.

He didn't care about the shadows of the alleyway or the distant sound of a passing car. He didn't care that the Red Hood was supposed to be a symbol of justice, not a man driven to madness by a single touch. He only cared about the way you melted against him.

He’d dreamt of this.

His hands, large and calloused, slid down your sides. Gripping your hips with a strength that bordered on bruising. He forced you back against the cool brick of the building, the contrast of the cold stone and his searing heat making your head spin.

He broke the kiss, his breath coming in ragged, uneven hitches. His eyes searched yours, still hidden behind the mask. Frantic and obsessed, looking for the recognition that the bond was screaming in your blood too.

You didn't understand it yet, but you felt it. A deep, aching need to be undone by him.

He dropped to his knees.

It was an act of worship and a display of dominance all at once. The great Red Hood, the terror of the underworld, kneeling in the dirt of a dark alleyway at your feet.

His hands moved frantically, tugging at your clothes, baring you to the midnight air. He didn't wait.

He didn't even ask. He simply descended.

When his mouth found you, the world vanishd.

The sensation was overwhelming. The heat of his breath, the rough texture of his tongue, and the sheer, unyielding intensity of his focus.

He ate you with a desperation that was terrifying, his tongue swirling and probing, seeking out every nerve ending as if he were trying to find the very center of your soul. His jaw aching from the stretch. He was relentless, a hunter who had found the most precious treasure and refused to let a single drop of sensation go unharvested.

You arched your back, your fingers tangling in the collar of his jacket, a choked cry escaping your throat. You were unanchored, drifting in a sea of pleasure. Every lick, every suction, every flick of his tongue was a brand, marking you as his in the most intimate way possible.

He looked up at you for a fleeting second, his eyes dark with a terrifying, beautiful madness, before burying his face in you again. He wasn't just pleasuring you, he was consuming you. And as the tension coiled tighter and tighter in your gut, you realised with a dizzying sense of awe that you didn't want to be saved from him. You wanted to drown in him.

his hands slid from your hips to your thighs, spreading you wider, anchoring you to the brick so you couldn't drift away.

He was greedy. He swallowed your gasps, he drank in the sounds you made, as if he were trying to ingest the very proof of your pleasure. The rough texture of his tongue was a beautiful friction against your most sensitive skin, a rhythmic, punishing, perfect pressure that sent white hot sparks dancing behind your eyelids.

"Please," you choked out, though you didn't even know what you were asking for. More. Stop. Don't ever let go.

You hadn’t ever felt anything this intensely since you were fifteen and it felt like you’d lost everything.

He responded by surging forward. The sensation was too much. Like a tidal wave. A sudden, violent fracturing of your senses. You felt the tension coil in your gut, tighter and tighter, a spring wound to the point of breaking, until finally, the dam burst.

You cried out, your voice lost to the shadows of the alley, as your body shuddered in the throes of a release so powerful it felt like a seizure.

You clung to him, your fingers digging into his shoulders, your head lulling back against the wall as waves of liquid crashed through you.

He didn't pull away when you came. He stayed with you, his mouth still pressed to you, drinking in the aftershocks, his breath hot and ragged against your skin. Gulping as he attempted to swallow it all down.

He stayed there until the tremors subsided, until you were left limp and breathless, trembling in the sudden silence of the night.

Slowly, he rose. He didn't stand up fully at first, lingering in the space between your legs, his eyes looking up at you from the darkness. The white lenses of his helmet were gone, replaced by the raw, unfiltered gaze of the man beneath. He looked wrecked. You couldn’t recognise him in the darkness.

He looked like he had just survived a war, or perhaps, like he had finally come home from one.

He reached up, his gloved thumb brushing a stray tear or perhaps just sweat from your cheek, his touch unexpectedly tender for a man so violent in his passion.

"Don't ever look at anyone else like that," he whispered, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that promised both protection and imprisonment. "Do you hear me? Just me."

You couldn't answer. You could barely breathe. You could only stare at him, realising with a sinking, exhilarating dread that the man you had been idolising from afar hadn't just found you.

He had hunted you down. And he had no intention of ever letting you go.

To anyone else, the apartment was just a quiet, dimly lit space in a safe corner of Gotham. To Jason, the silence was loud. Deafening.

It was a constant, rhythmic thrumming that echoed the frantic beating of his own heart every time he thought of you.

He sat on the edge of his bed, the shadows of the room clinging to his broad shoulders like a shroud. He was stripped down to his joggers, his skin still humming with the phantom sensation of your warmth. It had been weeks since that night in the alley. Weeks since he had tasted you, since he had felt the way you shuddered under his touch and the hunger had only grown.

It wasn't a hunger for food or sleep. It was a hollow, aching void in his chest that only your presence could fill.

He closed his eyes, but that was a mistake.

The moment his eyelids fell, you were there. He could see the curve of your neck, the way your eyes had widened in the dark, the way you had looked so beautifully, helplessly undone by him.

His jaw clenched, a muscle jumping in his cheek. He hated how much power you had over him. He was a man who had stared down death and spat in its face, yet here he was, a prisoner to the memory of a person who didn't even know the half of what he was thinking.

He stood up abruptly, the sudden movement sending a jolt of restless energy through his limbs. He paced the small expanse of the room like a caged predator, his footsteps heavy and deliberate.

His gaze drifted to the door.

The door was a thin, pathetic barrier. Just a few inches of wood and metal separating him from the world. And just twenty feet away, you were sleeping in a bed that wasn't his. You were breathing air that he wasn't providing.

The thought was intolerable. It felt like a physical wound, a fracture in his soul that refused to knit back together.

He wanted to tear the door off its hinges. He wanted to storm through the halls and break down your door until he could wrap his arms around you and never, ever let go. He wanted to mark you so thoroughly that the world would know you belonged to him by the very scent of your skin.

A low, frustrated growl escaped his throat. He reached for his waistband, his movements frantic, driven by a need that was as much about desperation as it was about lust.

As his hand closed around himself, he groaned, his head falling back. He wasn't just imagining the sensation of your hands or the heat of your mouth; he was visualising the way you would look if he finally claimed you properly. He imagined you pinned beneath him, your eyes searching his, seeing the madness there and choosing to stay anyway.

He closed his eyes tight, his breath hitching as he moved. You, he thought. A silent, prayer like chant in the dark. It has to be you. Has to be mine.

Every stroke was a frantic attempt to bridge the distance. He pictured your face, the way you had looked at him with that mixture of awe and terror. He wanted to protect that look, to be the only thing you ever saw, the only thing you ever felt.

He wanted to be your savior, but more than that, he wanted to be your entire world.

When the release finally came, it wasn't peaceful. It was a violent, shuddering explosion that left him gasping, his body tensing as if he were fighting an invisible enemy. He slumped back against the bed, his chest heaving, the sweat cooling on his skin.

The silence returned, heavier than before.

He stared at the ceiling, his eyes dark and predatory. The hunger hadn't faded; it had only sharpened. The "hunter" in him was tired of the chase. He was done watching from the shadows. He was done being the ghost in your periphery. Done playing the annoying neighbour.

He was going to bring you home. And once he had you, he would make sure you never had a reason to look for anyone else ever again.

The decision settled over him with terrifying clarity.

For months, Jason had told himself he was being patient.

While he learned your routines. While he watched Gotham become more dangerous by the day. While reporters dug through every corner of the city looking for Red Hood’s soulmate. Patient while criminals, mercenaries, and psychopaths searched for weaknesses they could exploit.

Patient while the universe dangled you in front of him and expected him to trust fate to keep you safe.

He was done being patient.

Jason rose from the bed.

The apartment felt suffocating. Too small. Empty.

Too far away from you.

His jaw tightened.

People always talked about soulmates as though they were something soft. Romantic. Gentle.

They never talked about what happened when a man like Jason Todd found his.

Nobody wanted to acknowledge that fate had teeth.

The universe hadn’t given him a lover. It had given him a reason. A purpose. Something precious enough to protect at any cost.

And Jason had never been particularly good at respecting limits.

He crossed the room and stopped beside the window. Gotham stretched endlessly below. A city of predators. A city that took and took and took.

His city.

For years it had stolen everything from him.

His childhood. His family. His life.

It wasn’t taking you too.

The thought settled into his bones like concrete. Absolute.

A slow breath left him.

Then another.

The panic that had haunted him since the article disappeared.

The uncertainty disappeared with it.

Because for the first time since finding you, Jason finally understood what he needed to do. Not watch. Not wait. Definitely not hope.

Act.

The realisation settled like relief.

People would worry. People always worried.

Then life would continue.

He’d experienced it firsthand.

It always did.

Nobody would know that somewhere far from Gotham’s noise sat a small house hidden among thick forests and winding roads.

A place with reinforced doors. A stocked kitchen. Bookshelves filled with things you’d enjoy. Fresh fruit by the windowsill. A home prepared long before Jason admitted why he’d prepared it.

A home waiting for its rightful occupant.

Waiting for you.

His soulmate.

His future.

His.

Jason rested his forehead against the cool glass.

For a brief moment, he imagined the future.

You arguing with him over breakfast. Rolling your eyes at his terrible jokes. Curled against him on quiet evenings. Safe. Always safe.

You’d fight him at first.

He knew that.

He’d try his best to remember not to take it personally.

You’d be angry. Terrified. Confused. But eventually you’d understand. Eventually you’d realise nobody would ever love you the way he did. Nobody would ever sacrifice what he would sacrifice. Nobody would ever protect you so completely.

You were made for him for a purpose, after all.

The soulmate bond had survived death itself. Survived shattered souls and broken destinies.

The universe had torn you two apart once. It would never get the chance to do so again.

A smile touched his mouth. Small.

Outside, Gotham continued to roar.

Inside, Jason finally felt at peace. Because the hunt was over.

He had found what belonged to him.

And this time, Jason Todd wasn’t ever letting go.

Gang I tried really hard & researched what others have done to write gender neutral smut. I’ve read it over like a quadrillion times and genuinely can’t tell if it even makes sense anymore😩

8K+ Words, 48K+ Characters, 1K+ Sentences, 647 paragraphs, 24 minute average reading time, 39 minute average speaking time.

Read Dick Grayson’s part here

Read Bruce Wayne’s part here

There will be a yandere soulmate series for all of the bats.

If Dick shares his pain with you… I wonder what the rest will share.

"Maybe they were climbing a mountain."

His mother's lips twitched. "A mountain?"

"Or a castle."

"A castle is much more likely."

"I think so too." Dick nodded solemnly. A castle explained the scrape much better than simply falling over.

Castles had stone staircases and secret passageways. Castles had dragons and villains and daring escapes.

His soulmate was probably off on an adventure.

His mother finished securing the bandage before pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

"Your soulmate must be having quite the day."

The thought filled him with excitement.

For the rest of the afternoon, Dick imagined another child racing through hidden corridors, ducking beneath traps and escaping dragons by the skin of their teeth.

The possibility that they had simply tripped over their own feet never even crossed his mind.

←↓→↑

When he was seven, he spent two days complaining about a toothache.

The pain settled deep in his jaw, throbbing every time he tried to smile.

By the third day, it disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived.

His father explained that soulmate resonance sometimes worked that way.

That his soulmate had probably gone to the dentist.

Dick immediately sat upright. "What if they were scared?"

"I'm sure they were brave."

"What if nobody held their hand?"

John looked up from the costume he was repairing. "Dick."

"What?"

"They're not stranded on a deserted island."

"You don't know that."

His mother laughed so hard from the other side of the trailer that she nearly dropped her equipment.

Dick didn't see what was so funny.

His soulmate was out there somewhere.

They might be scared of dentists. Or hated needles.

The thoughts lingered with him long after the conversation ended.

Sometimes, late at night, Dick would stare at the ceiling and wonder if they ever thought about him too.

Whether they looked at the strange injuries that appeared on their skin and imagined a boy they'd never met.

He didn't know it then, but that question would follow him for years.

↑→↓←

Dick had developed a habit of asking questions nobody could answer.

What was their favourite colour?

Did they like animals?

Could they do cartwheels?

Did they live nearby?

Did they know about him?

Did they ever wonder the same things?

His parents always answered as though the questions mattered. With interest. As though his curiosity wasn't silly.

As though wondering about the person connected to him was the most natural thing in the world.

Maybe that was where it started.

Not the soulmate bond itself, the encouragement. The way nobody ever told him to stop asking. The quiet certainty with which his parents treated his soulmate's existence.

They never spoke about them as a possibility. They spoke about them as a certainty.

That somewhere in the world, there was a person who was completely his.

→←↓↑

At night, after the performances ended and the circus grounds settled into a comfortable hush, Mary often read to him before bed.

Dick's favourite stories weren't fairy tales.

They were stories about connected souls.

The old book lived beside the couch in their trailer, its spine cracked and softened with age. The pages had been turned so many times that the corners curled.

Inside were dosens of accounts collected from all over the world.

Stories about soulmates separated by oceans, soulmates born years apart, soulmates who searched for decades, or who stumbled into one another entirely by accident.

Dick never grew tired of hearing them.

He already knew most of the endings by heart. But that wasn't the point. The point was that every story promised the same thing.

No matter how long it took, how far apart they started, or how impossible it seemed, the soulmates always found each other.

Every single time.

The certainty of it settled somewhere deep inside him. A truth as unquestionable as gravity. As natural as the rising sun.

His soulmate was out there. And one day, they would be his.

By the time Mary finished reading, Dick would already be staring out the trailer window.

Wondering how they would meet. What they looked like. If they laughed loudly or quietly.

If they liked the circus.

Wondering if they were looking at the same stars scattered across the night sky. If they ever touched the marks that appeared on their skin and thought about him.

The thoughts comforted him.

No matter how large the world felt, where he went or how many cities the circus travelled through, there was always someone in it who belonged to him.

Someone he hadn't met yet.

A person he was already learning how to love.

↑→↓←

When he was eight, before the fall, he started keeping things.

Not intentionally at first.

A postcard from a city the circus had passed through. A photograph he liked. A joke that made him laugh. A story he thought someone else would enjoy.

Small things.

The kind of things most children forgot about by the following week.

Dick didn't.

Because whenever he found something special, he caught himself thinking the same thing.

I should tell my soulmate about this someday.

The thought came so naturally he never stopped to question it.

Why would he?

His soulmate was part of his future. Everyone said so.

Some days, he imagined finally meeting them and emptying years of collected memories into their hands.

Showing them every postcard.

Telling them every story.

Introducing them to every place he'd loved.

As though all the little pieces of his life were simply waiting for the right person to share them with.

As though he'd been saving a seat beside him all along.

Years later, after Gotham, after Robin, after everything that came afterward, Dick would still remember those moments.

The scrape on his knee.

The toothache.

The bedtime stories.

His parent's laughter.

The quiet certainty in their voices whenever they spoke about soulmates.

People often assumed his faith in destiny came from the bond itself.

They were wrong.

The bond only connected him to another person.

His parents were the ones who taught him to care. To wonder and to wait.

They were the ones who taught him that somewhere in the world there was a person meant for him.

Someone important who was worth searching for. Someone worth believing in.

Long before he knew anything about them at all.

He loved the idea of them first. Everything else came later.

Before he ever even had a reason to.

Most people loved talking about destiny.

Adults spoke about soulmates with the same certainty they reserved for death and taxes. Teachers smiled when the topic came up in class. Grandparents reminisced over holiday dinners. Entire television networks built reality shows around reunions.

It was impossible to escape.

Not that anyone seemed interested in trying.

Soulmates were proof that the universe cared. Proof that nobody was truly alone. That somewhere out there existed a person created specifically for you.

People loved that idea.

You hated it. Not the concept itself, just yours.

When you were younger, you'd thought soulmate injuries sounded romantic.

A sore wrist because they spent too long writing or a tiny burn from touching a hot pan.

The sort of stories people laughed about.

"My soulmate tripped over again."

"Mine wears his rings on too tight."

"I love when she bites her lip when she’s nervous."

Everyone always sounded so fond when they talked about it. As though every ache was a love letter. Like pain somehow became sweeter when it belonged to someone else.

Bonds manifested differently depending on the pair.

Some people shared emotions, some met each other in dreams. A small percentage could hear each other's thoughts during moments of intense stress. The most common bond, however, was physical resonance.

If your soulmate got hurt, so did you.

Not the injury itself, the consequences. A broken bone wouldn't suddenly appear in your arm, but the pain would. The ache, tenderness, and limitations.

If they twisted an ankle, you'd spend the next few weeks limping around on a perfectly healthy leg.

If they got a migraine, you got one too.

Most people only experienced minor inconveniences.

Nothing life-altering. Nothing that interfered with daily life. At least, not often.

You were not most people.

You stopped finding it romantic at twelve.

Because scraped knees and accidental burns were one thing. Waking up unable to feel your left arm was another.

The pain hit without warning. One second you were asleep, the next you were on your bedroom floor screaming.

Your parents rushed you to the hospital.

The doctors found nothing wrong.

No fracture. No dislocation. No nerve damage. Physically, your arm was perfectly healthy.

Unfortunately, your soulmate's wasn't. Apparently they'd shattered theirs.

Badly.

The pain lingered for nearly two months.

Everyone acted excited.

Your soulmate survived.

Isn't that wonderful?

You received congratulations.

Congratulations.

As though being unable to lift a backpack was somehow a milestone worth celebrating.

The years that followed only got worse.

Your soulmate got shot.

They got stabbed.

Sometimes they manage both within the same week.

You developed a concerning familiarity with painkillers. The nurses at your local urgent care knew you by name. One doctor suggested keeping a journal to track symptoms.

You filled three notebooks.

Looking back through them felt less like medical records and more like a crime scene timeline.

Gunshot wounds. Broken knuckles. Dislocated shoulder. Concussion. Concussion. Another concussion.

You had spent years trying to imagine what kind of person accumulated this many injuries.

At first you'd pictured an athlete.

Then a firefighter.

Maybe a soldier.

Eventually, you'd settled on a simpler explanation.

Your soulmate was an idiot.

At the time, it felt like the only reasonable explanation.

Years later, you would discover that the truth was significantly worse.

But for now, all you knew was that somewhere out there existed a complete stranger whose self-preservation instincts had apparently been beaten to death in an alley.

And for reasons you would never understand, the universe had decided that person belonged to you.

←↓→↑

The first time you missed a school excursion because your soulmate had managed to break something important, everyone treated it like an unfortunate coincidence.

The second time, they called it bad luck.

By the third, people had started joking that your soulmate had a personal grudge against your social life.

You laughed along because it was easier than admitting how much it bothered you.

Most people, hell, everyone romanticised soulmates.

Talked about fate and destiny and finding the missing piece of yourself.

Most soul pairs experienced a handful of major injuries throughout their lives.

Yours seemed determined to collect them.

You remembered when your soulmate somehow got stabbed before your final exams. The pain had hit so suddenly you nearly collapsed in the middle of class.

Your friends had thought you were having some kind of medical emergency.

In hindsight, they weren't entirely wrong.

You sat the exam anyway.

You failed it.

The examiner wasn't interested in hearing that somebody else's knife wound had ruined your concentration.

Life kept moving regardless.

Teachers didn't extend deadlines because your soulmate had been hospitalised.

Employers didn't care that you were limping because someone you'd never met had twisted their ankle chasing God-knows-what.

The world expected you to adapt,

So you did.

You learned how to function through headaches. How to smile through pain. How to swallow frustration before it became bitterness.

You learned exactly how many over-the-counter painkillers you could safely take.

You learned how to fake being fine.

But most importantly, you learned how to stop hoping.

Because every time you wondered if maybe things would get easier, your soulmate proved you wrong.

At first you'd worried about them.

What kind of life were they living? Were they sick? Were they trapped in dangerous circumstances? Did they need help?

That concern lasted until the fourth broken bone.

Then the sixth.

Then the first gunshot wound.

The shot had been a turning point. Because normal people did not get shot. Normal people definitely didn't get shot more than once.

You remembered lying awake in bed afterward, staring at the ceiling while pain radiated through your shoulder.

What the hell is wrong with this person?

The question never really went away.

As the years passed the injuries kept coming. Sometimes there would be weeks of peace.

Then suddenly your soulmate would decide to throw themselves off a building.

Or through a window.

Or into traffic.

At least that's what it felt like.

You didn't know who they were. Didn't know their name. Didn't know where they lived. But you knew they had absolutely no regard for their own safety. No fucking regard for your safety either.

And eventually, concern became irritation. Irritation became anger. Anger became resentment.

Not because of the pain. Not even because of the injuries. Because of what they stole from you.

Your freedom. Choices. The ability to plan a normal life. Every decision came with a silent question.

What if my soulmate gets hurt that day?

You missed birthdays. Missed opportunities. Cancelled plans. Skipped events.

Not because you wanted to.

Because experience had taught you that sooner or later another injury would arrive.

Meanwhile your soulmate remained a stranger. A ghost. A burden you carried without ever being asked if you wanted to.

It always did.

It made you angry.

Not the broken bones. Not the scars. Not even the countless nights spent curled around pain that didn't belong to you.

The fact that someone you'd never met had become one of the most important influences on your life.

Without your permission, your consent, and without ever even saying sorry.

Somewhere out there, your soulmate was choosing to live their life this way.

And every time they did, you paid the price.

You wondered if they ever thought about you. If they ever felt guilty.

If they even cared.

Or if, wherever they were, they simply got back up after every injury and ran headfirst into the next disaster.

Unaware that somewhere across the country, someone was beginning to hate them.

Dick found the post three weeks later.

If anyone asked, it had been an accident. A coincidence.

The sort of thing that happened when someone spent too much time scrolling through soulmate forums at two in the morning.

Nobody asked. That was probably for the best. Dick knew himself well enough to recognise a lie when he told one.

There had never been anything accidental about the way he searched for traces of his soulmate.

The post appeared halfway down a discussion thread titled:

What's the worst injury you've ever shared with your soulmate?

Most of the replies were harmless.

Broken wrists.

Appendectomies.

A woman whose soulmate had somehow fractured their nose trying to impress someone with a skateboard.

Dick smiled despite himself.

Then he kept scrolling.

The smile disappeared.

←↑→↓

I've had more concussions than some professional athletes.

At this point, I'm convinced my soulmate has a death wish.

If I ever meet them, my first question is going to be what the hell is wrong with them.

The post went into concerning details about their injuries dating from over ten years.

Dick stared at the screen.

Read the post again.

Then a third time.

The amusement slowly drained from his face.

Because the timeline matched. Not approximately. Not close enough to be concerning. Exactly.

The gun wounds, the stabbings, concussions, fractures. The endless collection of injuries that had become so commonplace to him he rarely thought about them anymore.

His stomach twisted.

For a long moment, he simply sat there. Laptop balanced on his knees. Apartment fading into the background.

The words blurred.

Not because he couldn't read them. Because he couldn't stop.

Every sentence felt heavier than the last. Not the complaints.

Those made sense.

God, they made sense.

What hurt was everything beneath them.

The frustration. The years of accumulated resentment packed into a handful of sentences.

Not anger born from a single bad day. The kind that settled in after years of disappointment.

His chest tightened.

He scrolled further.

The account wasn't anonymous. There was a username. Years of history.

Dick clicked on it before he could talk himself out of it.

The oldest post was five years old.

The next mentioned another concussion.

A missed birthday.

A cancelled trip.

A broken rib.

An emergency room visit.

Each entry felt like another weight settling onto his shoulders.

Dick had spent years accepting pain as part of his life.

Bruises, bones and cuts all healed.

It had never occurred to him that somebody else had been dragged through it alongside him.

A stranger.

Someone who had never agreed to any of it.

Someone who had spent years waking up with injuries they couldn't explain.

Dick closed the laptop.

Immediately opened it again.

His jaw tightened. He rubbed a hand over his face.

For twenty years, he'd wondered about his soulmate. Wondered who they were. What they were like. Whether they ever thought about him the way he’d always thought about them.

A quiet curiosity that surfaced in the spaces between missions and late-night patrols.

He'd imagined meeting them someday.

Not because soulmates guaranteed a happy ending. Life had taught him better than that.

But because they'd always been there.

Every broken bone. Every near miss. Every moment he'd walked away from something that should have killed him.

They'd felt it too.

Somewhere.

Somehow.

The idea of them had become a constant. A second shadow stretching alongside his own.

And now, for the first time, he was seeing things from the other side.

The reality of it. The cost.

His throat felt tight.

tBecausehey weren't waiting for him.

They weren't searching.

If anything, they sounded exhausted by the idea of him.

And for the first time, Dick found himself wondering whether meeting him would be the last thing they wanted.

The thought hurt far more than it should have.

Dick had managed to stay away from the profile for three days.

He told himself it was respect.

Privacy.

Common decency.

They had spent years dealing with consequences they never asked for, the least he could do was leave them alone.

Three days lasted longer than he expected.

Not nearly as long as he'd hoped.

On the fourth night, he opened the page again.

Just for a minute.

Just to look.

That was the excuse, anyway.

One minute became an hour. Then two. Then the rest of the night.

He read everything.

Posts. Comments. Replies buried in forgotten threads.

Tiny fragments of a life scattered across years of internet history.

Favorite movies, music recommendations, complaints about work.

A rant about a terrible landlord. An argument over whether pineapple belonged on pizza.

Meaningless details.

Except they weren't meaningless. Not to him.

Every new discovery felt strangely precious. Like hearing a voice through a wall after years of silence.

For the first time, his soulmate wasn't an abstract possibility.

They were becoming real.

And Dick found himself wanting more.

What did their laugh sound like? What expression did they make when they were annoyed? Did they drink coffee in the morning? Did they still sleep curled up on the same side of the bed they'd mentioned three years ago?

The questions multiplied faster than he could answer them.

By sunrise, he knew more about them than he'd ever thought possible.

By sunrise, he also knew that it wasn't enough.

↑→↓←

The more Dick learned, the more impossible it became to ignore the distance between you.

You were real.

A real person living somewhere beyond his reach.

A real person carrying scars that belonged to both of them.

And once he knew that, how was he supposed to walk away? How was he supposed to forget? Keep waiting?

Dick spent years helping strangers.

Pulling people out of collapsing buildings. Talking frightened kids off ledges. Running toward people who needed help. Doing nothing had never been one of his strengths.

The realisation should have worried him.

Instead, it felt reasonable. Natural.

Almost inevitable.

By the end of the week, he found himself revisiting old comments. Looking closer.

A mention of weather. A complaint about public transit. A local restaurant.

Tiny details.

Nothing significant on their own, but what became patterns when placed together.

The detective in him noticed before the rest of him did.

A city narrowed to a suburb. A suburb narrowed to three possibilities. Three possibilities narrowed to one.

Dick stared at the screen. His pulse quickened.

A line had been crossed somewhere.

He wasn't entirely sure when.

Only that he should probably stop.

Instead, he opened another tab. Then another.

His fingers hovered over the keyboard. Long enough for hesitation to appear. Not long enough for it to matter.

Because you were out there, and you were hurting.

The first search took less than ten seconds.

The second took even less.

And when the first genuine piece of information appeared on his screen, Dick felt his heartbeat stumble.

For the first time in twenty years, his soulmate wasn't a dream.

You were becoming a person.

And Dick Grayson had never been very good at letting go of the people he loved.

The next morning began the same way most mornings did.

Pain.

You woke before your alarm, blinking groggily at the ceiling while a dull ache settled somewhere between your shoulder blades. Not terrible. Not even particularly surprising. Just another reminder that your soulmate was still out there making questionable decisions.

At least nothing felt broken.

That was practically a victory.

You lay there for another minute before forcing yourself upright. The soreness protested immediately, but years of experience had taught you how to judge the difference between annoying and hospital-worthy.

This fell firmly into the first category. Which meant work.

Lucky you.

By the time you arrived at the coffee shop, Gotham was already awake.

Rush hour traffic crawled through the streets outside. The sidewalks overflowed with exhausted office workers, students, tourists and people who looked like they hadn’t slept in three days.

Which, in this city, narrowed nothing down.

The familiar smell of coffee beans wrapped around you the moment you stepped behind the counter.

Honestly, it was one of the few things you genuinely liked about your job.

The customers were a different story.

By eleven o’clock, you’d already been yelled at twice.

Once because a man believed waiting three minutes for coffee constituted a personal attack.

The second because somebody thought you controlled the weather.

“Rough morning?”

You glanced up, the question knocking you out of your haze.

Your coworker was already grinning.

You sighed. “When isn’t it?”

“Fair.”

The lunch rush arrived shortly after.

Orders piled up. Names blurred together. Your feet hurt. Someone dropped their drink. Another person complained because their coffee was too hot.

You resisted the urge to suggest that coffee was generally known for that.

Then the bell above the door chimed.

Normally, you wouldn't have looked up.

Lunch was a bloody nightmare. There were six drinks waiting to be made, three customers already staring holes into the back of your head, and somebody was arguing over oat milk. You had better things to do.

Yet somehow your eyes lifted anyway.

The man who stepped through the door looked like trouble. Not due to anything he was doing, but because nobody should have looked like that.

For a second, your brain simply failed to process him properly.

Dark hair. Blue eyes. Tall enough to stand out without seeming imposing. Broad shoulders hidden beneath an ordinary jacket that somehow wasn't ordinary anymore because he was wearing it.

The details registered one at a time.

Like your mind was struggling to decide where to look first.

It wasn't just that he was handsome. Handsome was too simple a word. Too ordinary.

Handsome was the guy on a billboard, the actor in a movie, the model in a magazine. This felt different. More annoying.

Like somebody had reached into your head, extracted every preference you'd ever had, and assembled a person around them.

You immediately disliked him for it.

Unfortunately, that didn't make him any less attractive.

His smile appeared as he spoke to the customer in front of him. It transformed his entire face. Softened it.

Made him look approachable in a way beautiful people rarely managed.

The kind of smile that made strangers smile back. The kind that suggested he remembered names. Held doors open. Helped old ladies carry groceries.

He looked like someone that got people into trouble because they assumed nobody that nice-looking could possibly be dangerous.

You tore your eyes away.

Absolutely not.

You were not doing this today.

He was just a customer. A stupidly attractive customer. Nothing more.

Several minutes later, he stepped up to the register.

Up close was a mistake. You realised that immediately.

Most attractive people benefited from distance.

A few feet between you and them gave reality time to point out imperfections.

The lighting changed. The angles shifted. Something human emerged.

Not him.

If anything, proximity made things worse.

His eyes were brighter than you'd thought. Not just blue, more like a deep ocean colour that caught light. The kind that made direct eye contact feel strangely unfair.

There was a faint scar near his eyebrow. Another disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt.

Tiny imperfections that should have made him look less attractive.

Instead they only made him look real.

"Hi." His voice wrapped around the single syllable with effortless warmth.

He sounded so fucking pleased to be talking to you.

"What can I get for you?"

For a moment, he simply looked at you. Like he'd forgotten whatever he'd originally intended to say.

Then he smiled.

And suddenly it felt difficult to remember how to breathe.

"I'll take a large flat white."

Of course.

Of course the voice matched the face.

Why wouldn't it?

You entered the order before your brain could embarrass you.

The register beeped.

He handed over his card.

His fingers brushed yours for half a second.

It was nothing, really. Barely contact at all. Yet something strange tightened beneath your ribs.

Gone before you could identify it.

You frowned. Weird.

"Name?"

"Dick."

You blinked.

He looked entirely too pleased by your reaction.

"You serious?"

His eyes crinkled at the corners as his grin widened. The bastard somehow became even prettier. "I get that a lot."

A laugh escaped before you could stop it.

Hd let out a deep shaky breath, like he'd been hoping for it. Waiting for it.

As though making you laugh had accomplished something important. Like a strangers happiness mattered.

The look vanished so quickly you almost missed it.

For a brief, inexplicable moment, it felt less like meeting a stranger.

And more like being recognised.

The city belonged to him at night.

Not officially. Gotham belonged to no one. It clawed at anyone foolish enough to try and claim it.

But Dick knew its rhythms better than most.

He knew which rooftops held the best sightlines. Which alleyways concealed drug deals. Which fire escapes groaned beneath a person's weight. Which apartment windows stayed lit long after midnight because the people inside couldn't slep.

And he knew yours.

Perched on a neighboring rooftop, Dick lowered his binoculars slightly.

Your bedroom light had turned on twenty-three minutes before your alarm.

Again.

His jaw tightened.

The bond was never subtle.

He rubbed the back of his neck, the strain from yesterday's patrol still lingered. A bruised shoulder. A pulled muscle. Nothing serious.

Yet the thought of you waking up sore because of him left an uncomfortable weight in his chest.

You sat on the edge of your bed for several moments before standing. Slow and careful. Judging whether the pain was worth worrying about.

Dick recognised the routine.

You'd done it countless times.

The first time he'd seen it, he'd nearly broken a criminal's jaw.

It was then that he'd truly realised what years of sharing injuries with a vigilante must have been like.

You'd learned to evaluate pain before breakfast.

His fingers tightened around the binoculars.

You deserved answers.

You deserved him.

The thought arrived as naturally as breathing.

Dangerous. Wrong. Impossible to stop.

Dick watched you leave for work.

Then he followed.

He knew how surveillance worked. Knew exactly how easy it was to make someone feel watched.

So he stayed distant. A block behind, sometimes two.

Just another face in Gotham's endless crowd.

The irony wasn't lost on him.

Nightwing could disappear from sight whenever he wanted. Dick Grayson found excuses to linger near coffee shops.

By eleven, he was seated across the street with a newspaper he hadn't read once.

His attention remained fixed elsewhere.

On the way you tucked loose strands of hair behind your ear when concentrating. On the tiny crease that appeared between your eyebrows whenever customers irritated you. On the exhausted smile you gave coworkers despite clearly wanting to go home.

His chest ached.

He hated seeing you tired.

Hated seeing people take advantage of your kindness.

Hated that he couldn't simply walk inside and tell everyone to be careful with you.

Because you were important.

Because you mattered.

Because.. No.

Dick shut the thought down before it could finish.

This wasn't about ownership.

It couldn't be.

The soulmate bond wasn't ownership. It was connection.

Destiny.

A promise written into both of them before either had been born.

At least that was what he told himself whenever the possessive thoughts became harder to ignore.

By lunchtime, the crowd had thickened.

Good.

That made entering easier. Less noticeable.

The bell above the café door chimed as he stepped inside.

Immediately, he saw you.

The sight struck him with embarrassing force.

Every single time.

He'd spent months watching.

Months learning your routines.

Listening to your laugh from across rooms.

And somehow the impact never lessened.

You stood behind the register looking exhausted. A little annoyed. Ethereal.

Dick looked away before anyone could notice he'd been staring.

The line moved forward.

One customer. Two. Three. His pulse accelerated.

Ridiculous.

He'd fought assassins without flinching. Faced alien invasions. Stood against enemies capable of leveling cities. Yet somehow speaking to you felt more intimidating than any of them.

Because this mattered. Because you mattered.

The customer ahead of him finally left. And then it was his turn.

For a moment, neither of you spoke.

Your eyes lifted to meet his. Everything else disappeared. The noise. The conversations. The espresso machines. All of the buzzing was gone, just for a second.

Just long enough for Dick to feel the strange, impossible certainty he'd been carrying since the first moment he'd seen you.

There you are.

His soulmate.

His.

"Hi." The word came out softer than intended.

Your gaze remained fixed on him. Trying very hard not to stare.

Dick nearly smiled.

You had no idea.

No idea how many nights he'd spent imagining this conversation.

How many times he'd rehearsed introducing himself.

How often he'd wondered whether the bond would feel different when you finally met.

Instead, you asked professionally, "What can I get for you?"

For one disastrous second, Dick forgot the answer. Forgot he'd ordered the same thing repeatedly for weeks specifically because it was easy to remember. How human conversation worked.

You looked even better up close.

God, your eyes. Your voice. The tiny signs of exhaustion. The familiar shape of someone he'd spent months studying from a distance. Real.

You were finally real.

"I'll take a large flat white."

Smooth.

Very smooth.

Dick internally cringed.

You entered the order.

The register beeped.

He handed over his card.

Your fingers brushed his. The contact lasted less than a heartbeat. Lightning shot through him anyway.

The first touch.

The first real touch.

Dick forced himself not to react. Years of training saved him. Barely.

Then you asked the question he'd secretly been waiting for.

"Name?"

His mouth twitched. "Dick."

The blink you gave him was immediate.

Perfect.

Dick couldn't help smiling.

For the first time all day, genuine amusement broke through the tension knotting his chest.

"You serious?"

A laugh threatened to escape him.

God, he loved your voice already. Far too much.

"I get that a lot."

Then you laughed.

His breath caught.

Don't.

Don't do this.

Don't build a future out of a single laugh.

Yet he couldn't stop.

For a brief moment, your eyes met his again. Confusion flickered there. Recognition without understanding. A pull neither of you could explain.

And for the first time since entering the café, Dick wondered if you felt it too.

If you could physically feel that he was someone who looked at you and saw the center of his world.

You frowned slightly.

Dick’s smile was warm. Harmless.

The same smile that convinced criminals he was merciful and civilians he was safe.

"Thanks," he said.

Then he stepped aside to wait for his coffee.

And for the first time in months, waiting didn't feel difficult. Because now you knew he existed.

Dick returned three days later.

Then again the day after that.

Soon, the visits became a part of his routine so deeply ingrained that he no longer questioned it.

Patrol.

Sleep.

Reports.

Coffee.

You.

The order never changed.

He learned your schedule without meaning to. Or maybe he had meant to. Dick wasn't entirely sure where the line had disappeared.

At some point, knowing things about you had stopped feeling like gathering information and started feeling lke breathing.

He knew which coworker made you laugh.

Which customer always left you irritated.

Which days exhaustion sat heavier on your shoulders.

He knew the difference between your real smiles and the fake ones. The difference between a smile that reached your eyes and one offered out of politeness. The difference mattered.

Everything about you mattered.

Sometimes guilt still surfaced. Usually late at night. During the quiet moments after patrol, when Gotham finally stopped screaming for a few hours and left him alone with his thoughts.

That was when he remembered the forum posts.

The complaints.

The frustration.

The resentment.

Years of it.

You didn't want a soulmate. Not one who left you waking up sore after fights. Or one whose life seemed determined to get itself stabbed, shot, electrocuted, and thrown off rooftops.

The thought should have hurt.

Instead, Dick found himself staring at the ceiling and feeling strangely calm.

Because you didn't hate him.

You hated the idea of him.

The unknown. The stranger connected to your life.

You hated the inconvenience.

The pain. Uncertainty.

But him?

You didn't know him yet.

How could you hate someone you didn't know?

You didn't know about the nights he spent bleeding through cracked armor because civilians needed help. About the disasters he'd prevented. The people he'd saved. The promises he'd kept.

You didn't know how many times he'd nearly told you the truth.

How many times he'd stood outside your apartment building and wondered if tonight should be the night. How often he thought about you. How he worried.

You didn't know.

But you would.

Eventually.

Dick believed that with absolute certainty.

Because every day gave him something. A conversation. A smile. A joke.

Tiny, worthless things.

Things nobody else would notice.

By the second week, you knew his order.

By the third, you smiled when he walked through the door.

The first time it happened, the entire day felt brighter.

Ridiculously embarrassing of him, he knew that.

Yet the memory replayed in his head for hours.

The way your face lit up with recognition. How you'd greeted him before he even reached the counter.

Like you were happy to see him.

Like he'd become part of your day too.

A crack in the wall.

A tiny one. But cracks spread. Eventually walls collapse.

Dick was patient enough to wait. To let things unfold naturally.

Most of the time.

You still didn't know the truth.

Didn't know that he could identify your footsteps.

Could find your apartment window from almost anywhere in the neighborhood.

Didn't know he'd memorised the route you walked home.

The backup routes too.

The places where the streetlights didn't work. The alleys he disliked.

The intersections with the highest crime rates.

Important information. Necessary information.

Someone had to know those things. Someone had to keep you safe.

The city certainly wasn't going to.

Dick smiled to himself as he watched you lock the café doors one evening.

The sun had already disappeared. Streetlights painted gold across the pavement.

You looked tired. A little cold.

Still breathtaking.

Always so fucking ethereal.

His chest tightened with pure unfiltered need.

The overwhelming, consuming need to make sure nothing bad ever touched you again. To stand between you and every ugly thing Gotham could throw your way. To erase every danger before it reached you. To make the world safe enough that you'd never have to worry.

Hell, even the need to just push you down and capture your mouth in a kiss so intimate that you’d never want to let go.

The feeling had become stronger lately. Harder to ignore.

Before, you had been a concept. A hopeful possibility.

Now you were you.

You had a face. A laugh. A favorite drink. A life.

And every day made the thought of losing you more unbearable.

You disappeared around the corner.

Dick waited.

Five seconds. Ten. Then he rose from his seat. Following. Never too close. Never enough to be noticed. Just enough.

To intervene if something happened.

Making sure you got home safely.

Just enough to reassure the restless part of himself that always seemed to whisper what if?

What if someone followed you first?

What if someone hurt you?

What if someone took you away?

The thoughts were irrational. Dick knew they were.

Most people walked home every day without incident. But most people weren't you.

His jaw tightened.

That was the difference.

People talked about soulmates as though finding them was the end of the story. Like destiny did all the work.

As if fate guaranteed a happy ending.

Dick knew better.

Finding you wasn't the difficult part. Keeping you safe was. Protecting you was. Making sure the universe didn't decide to take back the greatest thing it had ever given him was.

His gaze remained fixed on your retreating figure. Unwavering.

The possessiveness no longer startled him.

That battle had ended weeks ago.

Every justification had been exhausted. Every argument dismantled.

The truth remained.

You were woven through his life. Through his thoughts. Through every future he could imagine.

His soulmate.

His person.

The one thing in this city he couldn't lose.

And somewhere along the way, the distinction between wanting you and needing you had quietly disappeared.

Dick watched you disappear into your apartment building. Only then did the tension leave his shoulders.

Safe.

The word settled warmly inside his chest.

Safe for another night.

His eyes lingered on the illuminated window that he knew belonged to you.

Terrifyingly devoted.

The universe had tied your lives together years ago.

And Dick had no plans on fighting fate.

And if the day ever came when something, or someone, tried to take you away from him, Gotham would learn exactly how dangerous Nightwing could be when the only thing he loved was threatened.

The first time you noticed something was wrong, it didn't feel important. Just strange.

"Wait."

Your friend blinked across the table. "What?"

"You got offered a job in Blüdhaven?"

"Yeah?"

You frowned. "When?"

"A few months ago."

A few months ago.

That couldn't be right.

You'd applied for that same position. Gone through three interviews. Spent weeks waiting for a response.

And then nothing.

No rejection.

No acceptance.

Nothing.

"I never heard back."

"Really?" they said. "That's weird."

It was weird. You'd checked your emails obsessively at the time.

Nothing.

Not even spam.

Eventually you'd assumed they'd gone with another candidate.

The conversation moved on.

You didn't.

↓→←↑

Then another thing happened. And another.

"..You never told me your landlord sold the building."

Dick looked up from where he was cooking. "What?"

"The building."

You leaned against the counter. "The landlord was apparently trying to sell it last year."

Something flashed across his face.

"Huh."

"He said he couldn't find a buyer."

Dick hummed. "Guess it wasn't the right time."

You frowned.

That wasn't what the landlord had said. The exact words had been: "Every buyer that showed interest pulled out at the last minute."

←→↓↑

Then there was your ex.

Not an ex, technically. Just someone you'd gone on a few dates with before Dick.

Someone who suddenly moved overseas without warning.

You only found out because you bumped into one of their friends.

"Yeah, he was furious."

"What?"

"They withdrew the visa investigation thing eventually, but by then he'd already accepted another position."

You blinked. "The what?"

The friend frowned. "You didn't know?"

No.

No, you definitely hadn't known.

↓←→↑

The pieces don't fit together immediately.

Not until one late night, sitting on Dick's couch.

When his phone lit up.

You hadn’t even meant to look, the flash just caught your attention. The “image of the day” was a photograph.

Your photograph.

Not a recent one. Not one you’d sent him.

A candid picture.

Taken months before you met.

You were standing outside of your apartment.

"..Dick."

His entire body goes still at your tone.

Like prey hearing a gun click.

Slowly, he looks up.

You hold out the phone.

The photograph staring back at both of you.

Your pulse begins to hammer. "When did you take this?"

Nothing.

For a second, Dick just looks at you.

Then at the photo.

Then back.

“…Before we met."

Your stomach drops. "What?"

"I took it before we met." His voice is calm. Too gentle. The same voice he uses when you're upset.

Like he was expecting to tell you that everything was okay.

"I found you before the café."

The room suddenly feels too small. "How long?"

"A while."

"Dick."

"A few months."

The answer hits like a truck.

Months.

Your laugh comes out strained. Unsteady. "You're joking."

"No." He doesn't look ashamed.

If he looked guilty, maybe this would make sense. Instead, he looks concerned.

Concerned about you.

Like you're the one having a difficult time.

"Dick, that's stalking."

His jaw tightens immediately. Hurt.

Like you've accused him of something unfair.

"I was making sure you were safe."

"No." You stand. "Dick-"

Your heart is racing now. Too fast. "What the fuck do you mean you were watching me?"

And for the first time since you've known him, Dick looks frustrated.

Not because he got caught. Because you're not understanding.

"You lived alone."

"Dick-"

"You walked home after dark."

"Listen to me!"

"There were three muggings within four blocks of your apartment." His voice rises. Emotion breaking through.

"And I knew what Gotham was like."

You freeze. He sounds desperate. Terrified.

"I couldn't just leave you there." His eyes are shining now. Raw.

Honest.

The truth finally spilling out.

"You think I wanted to scare you?" His voice cracks.

"I spent twenty years looking for you."

You take a step backward.

Dick notices immediately. The devastation that crosses his face is instantaneous.

He actually believes that he's innocent. That every line he crossed was reasonable.

Because every choice was made for the same reason.

Love.

And suddenly all those little coincidences don't feel like coincidences anymore.

The failed job.

The vanished opportunities.

The relationships that somehow never worked out.

The people who drifted away.

The life that kept shrinking until Dick occupied most of it.

The door slammed hard enough to rattle the frame. For a second, neither of uni moved.

You stood frozen in the hallway outside Dick's apartment, one hand still wrapped around the doorknob, your pulse pounding so hard it made your ears ring. The argument replayed itself in fragments. Accusations, denials, half-finished explanations. None of it felt real.

Behind the door, you heard Dick's footsteps. Part of you expected the handle to turn. Expected him to come after you. To stop you before you left. To grab your wrist, block the doorway, force the conversation to continue.

Instead, the footsteps stopped. You could picture him standing there on the other side of the door. Not chasing you. Not arguing. Just... standing there. Devastated.

If he'd gotten angry, maybe this would have been easier. If he'd yelled, if he'd lied, if he'd given you a reason to hate him, maybe the hollow ache opening inside your chest wouldn't have felt so unbearable.

Instead, he'd looked heartbroken. Like he was the victim. Like you were the one tearing something precious apart.

The walk home passed in a blur. You barely remembered unlocking your apartment. The second the door shut behind you, instinct took over. Deadbolt. Chain. The secondary lock.

You checked the windows twice. Then a third time.

Only when every entrance was secured did you allow yourself to breathe.

Your phone vibrated. The screen lit up. Dick.

You stared at the name. The call rang until it stopped. A second call appeared almost immediately. Then a third. The messages started after that.

Can we talk? Please answer. I just want to know you're okay.

For a dangerous second, your thumb hovered over the screen. Then you blocked him.

The number disappeared. You blocked his social media. His email. His Spotify. Every account you could think of. Anything connected to him. Anything that could give him a way back in.

When you finally finished, the apartment felt unnaturally quiet. You'd wanted silence.

Hadn't you?

So why did it feel like something was missing? Why did the absence feel so loud? Sleep never came. Every time you closed your eyes, another memory surfaced.

The internship opportunity that had vanished after months of promising interviews. The friendship that had somehow dissolved without explanation. The coworkers who'd grown distant. The photograph.

At four in the morning, you found yourself sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket, staring into the darkness. The city lights beyond your apartment window painted faint reflections across the floor.

You couldn't stop thinking. Every memory felt poisoned now. Every coincidence felt deliberate. How much of your life had actually been yours?

How many choices had been choices at all?

You didn't notice yourself drifting into a shallow sleep until your alarm exploded beside your head. You jolted awake.

Immediately regretted it. Pain tore through your leg so violently that for a split second you genuinely thought something had exploded. A scream ripped from your throat. White-hot agony shot from your shin to your hip.

The room tilted. Your knee gave out. You hit the floor hard enough to knock the breath from your lungs. The impact barely registered. All you could feel was the pain. It burned. Throbbed. Pulsed with every heartbeat.

You curled instinctively around your leg, gasping for air through clenched teeth. "What the fuck!" The words dissolved into another strangled cry.

Minutes passed. Or maybe longer.

Time became difficult to measure when every movement felt like driving a knife through bone.

Eventually you managed to drag yourself onto the couch. Sweat clung to your skin. Your stomach churned. The pain wasn't normal. It wasn't a cramp. Wasn't a pulled muscle. It felt broken. A fresh fracture.

Then a bitter laugh escaped your throat. Of fucking course.

You’d barely survived the worst night of your life and apparently your soulmate had decided now was the perfect time to break something. Again.

The bitter laugh that escaped you sounded almost hysterical. The empty apartment offered no response. Not that you expected one.

Your soulmate had never apologised before.

Several hours later, three sharp knocks echoed through the apartment. You froze.

The sound cut through the silence like a gunshot.

Another knock followed.

Then a familiar voice. Every muscle in your body locked. You remained motionless.

Maybe he'd leave.

Another knock sounded, softer this time. Almost hesitant. "…Please open the door." The concern in his voice made your stomach twist.

You hated that it still affected you. Hated that some part of you still wanted to believe him.

Then came the sentence that made your blood turn to ice. "You shouldn't be standing."

Everything stopped. Your breathing. Your thoughts. Your heartbeat. Slowly, very slowly, you turned toward the door. The apartment suddenly felt too small. Too quiet.

"Dick?" A pause.

Then: "I brought groceries." His voice sounded tired. Careful. Like he was approaching a wounded animal. "I also got pain medication."

You stared at the door. A sick feeling began unfurling in your stomach.

"Can you let me in?" No. No, no, no. Maybe coincidence. Maybe a lucky guess. Maybe-

"You need to stay off that leg." The world seemed to tilt. Your pulse thundered.

How? You hadn't told anyone. You hadn't gone to the hospital. You hadn't even texted anyone. There was no way he could know. Unless-

The thought hit so hard it felt physical. You forced yourself upright and limped toward the door. Each step sent another wave of pain through your leg.

By the time you reached it, your hands were shaking. You opened the door only a few inches.

Dick stood on the other side. One arm loaded with grocery bags. Takeout containers balanced in the other hand. A bottle of painkillers tucked beneath his elbow.

The second the door opened, his gaze dropped.Straight to your injured leg.

"There it is." The words slipped out before he could stop them. His expression tightened immediately. "You really shouldn't be putting weight on-"

"How do you know?"

Silence.The question landed between them like a blade. Dick froze.

You felt your heartbeat climbing higher and higher. "How do you know my leg is injured?"

For the first time since you'd met him, Dick looked caught off guard. Not angry. Not defensive. Caught.

Something that looked dangerously close to guilt crossed his face. And suddenly you understood enough to make your blood run cold.

The fracture hadn't happened to your soulmate. It had happened because of them.

Dick's expression changed immediately. Not much, most people probably wouldn't have noticed, but you'd spent months learning the subtle shifts in his face. The slight tightening around his eyes. The way his shoulders stiffened.

"Angel-"

You took another step backward on instinct. Pain shot through your injured leg. A sharp hiss escaped you before you could swallow it.

Dick flinched. The reaction was instantaneous. His hand jerked forward as though he meant to catch you before he stopped himself. The concern that flashed across his face was so immediate, so visceral, that it made your stomach turn.

For a horrible second, you couldn't stop thinking about it. The way he'd known. The way he'd looked directly at your leg. The medication tucked under his arm. The certainty in his voice when he'd told you not to stand.

Maybe he really had felt it. Maybe every pulse of pain that had left you curled up on the floor this morning had reached him too.

"You knew." The accusation hung between you.

Dick's jaw tightened. You stared at him. Stared at the man standing in your doorway carrying groceries and painkillers like some devoted boyfriend stopping by to take care of you after a bad day.

"You knew you were my soulmate." For a second, one stupid, desperate second, you hoped he'd deny it.

Maybe there was another explanation. Maybe you were wrong. Maybe this entire nightmare had gotten out of control.

Dick looked down. "...Yeah."

Every injury. Every unexplained ache. Every ruined plan because somebody you had never met couldn't stop getting themselves hurt.

You remembered sitting in emergency rooms as a teenager, trying to explain symptoms doctors couldn't understand. Missing school because you'd woken up unable to walk on an ankle you'd never injured. The migraines. The broken fingers. The bruises.

The soulmate bond had shaped your life whether you'd wanted it to or not. And all this time, it had been him.

Not a stranger. Not some faceless person halfway across the world. Dick. Your Dick.

The man who knew how you took your coffee. The man who remembered insignificant details about conversations you'd forgotten having.

The man you'd trusted enough to love.

Your hand found the wall beside you before you even realised you were reaching for support.

Dick took a step forward automatically.

You recoiled.

The look that crossed his face was immediate and devastating.

He stopped moving at once. "Angel..."

"How long?" Your voice sounded strange. Thin. Distant. "How long have you known?"

For the first time since arriving, Dick looked genuinely uncomfortable. Ashamed.

His gaze dropped briefly to the floor. "Eight months."

"Eight months?"

"Angel, I know how bad that sounds-"

"You knew for eight months." Every word came out sharper than the last. "You knew and you didn't tell me."

"I wanted to." The answer came immediately. Too quickly. Like he'd rehearsed this argument a hundred times. "I did. God, I wanted to tell you from the beginning."

"Then why didn't you?"

Dick looked away. That was answer enough.

Because he'd been watching. Learning. Getting closer. Fitting himself into your life before you knew what he was.

"You let me hate them."

Something flickered across his face. A strange sadness. Not guilt exactly. Something closer to regret. "I never wanted that."

"You let me spend years hating my soulmate." His expression tightened. "I know."

"You let me blame them for everything."

"I know." The quiet sincerity of the response only made you angrier. He wasn't denying it. Wasn't making excuses. He understood exactly what he'd done. And somehow, he still thought he'd been right.

The apartment fell silent.

Dick stood near the door surrounded by grocery bags and takeout containers. The sight would have been almost domestic under different circumstances. Ordinary.

Something in his expression softened. "You don't have to do this anymore."

You frowned. "What are you talking about?"

Dick hesitated. For the first time since arriving, he seemed unsure of how to explain himself. "..You've spent your entire life paying for things that weren't your fault."

The words were quiet. Measured. His gaze dropped briefly to your injured leg before returning to your face. "I know every hospital visit."

A chill crawled down your spine.

His voice grew softer. "I know every surgery. Every cast. Every time you had to cancel plans because I did something reckless." The guilt in his expression looked genuine. "I know what it cost you."

"Dick."

"I do." His voice cracked slightly. The sound startled you.

"I know exactly what I've put you through."

For a moment neither of you spoke. Then Dick slowly set the groceries on the floor. "You shouldn't have had to deal with any of it alone."

Something about the direction of the conversation suddenly felt wrong. Dangerous. "Dick..." "I mean it." His eyes never left yours.

"You shouldn't have had to worry about medical bills because I got shot. You shouldn't have had to miss work because I decided jumping off rooftops sounded like a good idea. You shouldn't have had to build your life around my mistakes."

A humorless laugh escaped him. "You definitely shouldn't have had to spend years wondering who was responsible." The guilt in his voice was so real it almost hurt to listen to.

And somehow that made what came next even worse. "But you don't have to do that anymore."

The knot in your stomach tightened. "What does that mean?"

Dick looked genuinely confused by the question. As though the answer was obvious. "As long as I'm here, you're not dealing with any of it alone."

"You don't need to worry about rent." The words landed heavily.

You stared at him, dumbfounded. "What?"

"I'll take care of it." "No."

"You don't have to keep working two jobs." "No."

"You don't have to stress about groceries or bills or whether you can afford physical therapy."

"Dick!"

His voice remained calm. Patient. Like he was trying to explain something simple. Something reasonable. "I can handle all of that."

"You can't just decide that." "Why not?" The question came out so naturally that it stopped you cold.

Dick frowned slightly, confused. "As far as I'm concerned, taking care of you is my responsibility."

Your heart dropped. The conviction in his voice was absolute. Not possessive in the way you'd expected. Like he wasn't describing what he wanted. He was describing reality.

"You don't owe me anything," he continued quietly. "You don't have to love me back. You don't even have to forgive me. But I'm not going to stand there and keep watching you suffer because of things I've done."

His gaze held yours. Steady. Intense. Terrifyingly sincere. "You've carried this alone for long enough."

The apartment suddenly felt too small. Too warm. Too difficult to breathe in. Because you finally understood. Dick wasn't asking for a relationship. He wasn't asking for forgiveness. He wasn't even asking for another chance.

He was asking you to hand him control.

The first escape attempt had been almost gentle. A mistake, in hindsight. You’d underestimated him. Underestimated his understanding of you.

By the time you reached the outer perimeter, your leg had already started to fail in ways that didn’t make sense at first. Pain bloomed without warning, sharp, targeted, precise, as if your body had been waiting for permission to collapse.

It was him. Dick Grayson had already noticed you leaving. Already made his choice.

He carried you back without comment when he found you kneeling in the rain like you’d simply run out of endurance. Like your body had just… stopped cooperating. Like he couldn’t even feel his own pain shooting through him.

For three days after that, he barely spoke. Not anger. Not even punishment. Adjustment. Because he was learning how far he could push the bond, and how far he could push himself.

The second attempt cost you more. Not because he was harsher, because he was faster. You barely remember leaving the room. You remember waking up in a different one. Reinforced, seamless, wrong in ways your instincts couldn’t map.

Dick sat beside the bed like he’d never moved. Like time had folded around him. “You dislocated your shoulder,” he said calmly, as though that explained everything.

You tried to sit up. Your body refused. His hand rested on your wrist before you could test it further. “You pushed too hard,” he added. “I had to stabilise it.” “I didn’t-”

“Yes,” he interrupted, still calm. “You did.” But what he didn’t say, what you only began to understand later, was that he had done the same thing to himself at the exact moment you tried to leave.

The third time you tried, there was no hallway. Just motion that died halfway through becoming action. Your body locking down in controlled, precise waves of agony. Like a switch had been thrown. And somewhere behind you, his voice. “I told you not to do that again.”

When you woke, your ankle was wrapped. Your phone was gone. The doors had changed again.

That was when you understood the rule. You could try. He would let you try. Not because he expected you to succeed, but because every attempt gave him data. Every spike of your pain told him what the bond could tolerate. And every time you pushed too far, he matched you. By breaking himself just enough that the connection snapped you both back into place.

Now, in what he liked to call the living room, too controlled to feel like a home, you listened to him in the kitchen. Normal sounds. Water running. A cup set down carefully. Like nothing was wrong.

You swallowed. Your voice weak from disuse. “..I want to leave.”

“You don’t want that,” he mumbled, not looking up from the pan.

“I do.”

“No,” he said gently. “You want the version of it that doesn’t hurt.” He walked patiently over to you. His hand lifted, hovered near your shoulder, then settled. Warm. Certain.

“.. I won’t let it get that far.”

Your throat tightened. “You’re hurting me.”

This time, he didn’t deny it immediately.

He just looked at you for a long moment. Then, “No,” he said quietly. “I’m stopping you from breaking past the point where there’s no coming back.”

“You don’t get to leave anymore,” he said at last. “Not like that.” Not a threat. A conclusion.

“And you won’t try again,” he added, softer.

“Because I won’t let either of us survive what happens when you do.”

Then he turned back toward the kitchen. As if the decision had already been made. As if your life together had always been structured this way.

And in a sense, it had.

10K+ Words, 61K+ Characters, 1K+ sentences, 36 min average reading time, 58 min average speaking time.

Please comment and reblog!! :)

Read Jason’s part here.

Sleep never came.

The manor had long since fallen silent. Every light extinguished. Every hallway empty.

Grandfather clocks echoed softly through the estate, their distant chimes marking the slow crawl of the night.

Dick remained awake through all of them.

Flat on his back. Then on his side. Then sprawled across tangled sheets that had long since surrendered to his restlessness.

The pillows were a disaster. One trapped beneath his chest, the other abandoned somewhere on the floor after another frustrated turn.

Still awake. Still thinking.

Moonlight poured through the towering windows of his room, washing everything in silver.

The pale glow traced every line of his body with merciless precision.

Dick Grayson had always been unfairly beautiful.

Not handsome. Not merely attractive. Beautiful.

The kind of beauty that stole attention without trying. The kind that lingered in people's minds long after he'd left the room.

Years of training had sculpted him into something that seemed almost impossible. Lean muscle flowed beneath smooth skin, every movement graceful even in exhaustion. His shoulders were broad without heaviness. His waist tapered naturally. Every line of him seemed designed for motion, for flight, for impossible leaps through Gotham's skyline.

Even injured, he looked like something carved rather than born.

Moonlight caught along the elegant curve of his throat. The sharp line of his jaw. The faint hollow beneath it.

His dark hair was still damp from his shower, falling in soft, unruly curls across his forehead. Strands brushed against lashes so ridiculously long they looked almost unfair on him.

The same lashes countless Gotham socialites had spent years shamelessly swooning over.

Not that Dick ever noticed.

Or cared.

The same bright blue eyes that somehow managed to look warm even when he was exhausted.

Right now those eyes stared endlessly toward the ceiling.

Restless. Haunted. Beautiful and completely miserable.

A sigh escaped him. His hand dragged down his face before disappearing beneath the hem of his shirt.

His fingers settled over the place where the wound should have been.

The knife.

The blood.

The agony.

The sensation of his life slipping through his fingers.

He remembered all of it.

Yet when his fingertips brushed over the skin there was nothing but smooth flesh.

Faintly pink and freshly healed. It should have been impossible.

Dick frowned, lifting the shirt higher. Moonlight slid across his chest as he examined the spot again.

Nothing.

No stitches. No scar. No explanation. Just skin. As if the injury belonged to another life. As though the injury had happened weeks ago instead of mere hours.

Down in the cave, Tim was still running tests.

Still analysing whatever strange substance had been packed into the wound.

Dick barely cared.

Because every time he closed his eyes, he saw you.

Not the wound. Not the blood. You.

A flash of violet beneath black water. Bioluminescent markings glowing softly through the darkness.

Wide, terrified eyes.

Not frightened of him. Frightened for him.

The memory settled deep inside his chest and stayed there. Warm. Frustratingly persistent.

Dick groaned and rolled onto his side, pulling the nearest pillow against him.

His fingers tightened unconsciously around the fabric. As though he could somehow hold onto a memory. Hold onto you.

"This is ridiculous," he muttered.

The room remained silent.

You were a stranger. A mystery. Something that shouldn't even exist.

Yet somehow every thought circled back to you.

To webbed fingers gripping his shoulders. To your voice. To the panic in your eyes when you thought he wasn't breathing.

To the way you'd looked at him.

Outside, Gotham glittered beneath the night sky. Far beyond the city. Far beyond Wayne Manor. Beneath miles of cold, dark water.. You existed.

And somewhere between his racing thoughts and another sleepless hour, Dick found himself wishing he could see you again.

It wasn't just plain curiosity anymore. And judging by the fact sleep still refused to come,

You weren't leaving his thoughts anytime soon.

The cave was quiet save for the endless hum of machinery.

Tim hadn’t moved from his chair in hours.

Several monitors illuminated his face in varying shades of blue and white. Empty coffee cups occupied every available inch of desk space, abandoned as quickly as they had been consumed.

Hours in front of the computer had left shadows beneath his eyes, dark against the sharp planes of his face. Exhaustion lingered there, but it hadn't dulled the intensity in his gaze. If anything, it made it sharper.

Normally Bruce would’ve ordered him upstairs hours ago.

Tonight he didn’t.

Because Bruce himself hadn’t left either.

The bridge footage continued to play across the largest monitor.

Again.

And again.

And again.

The grainy recording showed little more than dark water and fractured moonlight. Occasionally a flash of movement appeared beneath the river’s surface before disappearing entirely.

Nothing that could be useful.

Nothing that should have warranted this much attention.

Yet neither of them looked away.

“It doesn’t make sense.” Tim’s voice broke the silence.

His fingers moved across the keyboard again. Reaching for it, he pushed his sleeves farther up his forearms without seeming to notice. The motion tightened the muscles beneath pale skin, subtle veins tracing along his wrists before disappearing beneath the rolled fabric.

Bruce glanced toward him.

The younger vigilante was frowning at a collection of scans displayed across three separate screens.

Chemical analyses.

Biological breakdowns.

Tissue comparisons.

Every test they possessed had been run against the strange substance recovered from Dick’s injury.

Every single one had failed to identify it.

“It accelerated tissue regeneration,” Tim continued, scrolling through another report. “Not theoretically. Not potentially. It actually did.”

Bruce’s gaze shifted toward the medical file currently displayed beside it.

Nightwing.

Severe abdominal trauma. Expected recovery time: weeks.

Physical recovery time: hours.

His jaw tightened. Because Tim was right. It didn’t make sense. Nothing about this situation made sense. The creature itself was impossible enough. The healing compound only complicated matters further.

Bruce folded his arms across his chest. “Gotham Harbor is monitored.”

Tim laughed once. A short, humourless sound. He leaned back, rubbing a hand across his face before immediately returning to the screens. Even exhausted, there was an almost relentless focus to him, dark eyes fixed on the data as if he could force the answers to reveal themselves through sheer determination.

“Extensively.”

Wayne Enterprises monitored shipping lanes. The city monitored cargo routes. The Batcomputer monitored everything else.

Thermal scans.

Sonar systems.

Surveillance satellites.

Motion tracking.

Bruce had spent decades building a network capable of observing every inch of Gotham.

Yet somehow an entirely unknown species had existed beneath their feet without detection. The fact irritated him more than he cared to admit.

Tim opened another file.

Then another.

Then another.

Old newspaper archives replaced scientific reports.

Missing persons cases, maritime accidents, sightings dismissed as hoaxes, urban legends.

Anything remotely connected to Gotham’s waterways.

Bruce recognised the pattern immediately.

Tim was no longer investigating the bridge. He was investigating history. Trying to determine how long you had existed. How long you’d been there.

Whether anyone else had ever seen you.

Whether anyone else had known.

It should have concerned him. Instead, Bruce found himself pulling another chair closer to the computer.

Tim didn’t comment.

Hours passed. The cave’s clocks drifted steadily toward dawn. Neither noticed.

A single image remained frozen on the central monitor.

A blurry frame extracted from the bridge footage.

The quality was poor. Far too poor to identify any meaningful details.

Yet two things remained visible.

A faint bioluminescent glow, and a pair of eyes staring upward from the darkness.

Tim’s fingers paused over the keyboard. “You think it’s alone?”

Bruce’s eyes lingered on the image.

The question itself was interesting.

Not what are they.

Not where did they come from.

Are they alone.

As though Tim had already accepted your existence.

Bruce considered the question carefully.

A species required a population. A population required territory. Food. Shelter. Infrastructure.

The implications only multiplied from there.

His gaze settled once more on the river maps scattered across adjacent monitors.

For the first time since the encounter, he found himself wondering something beyond the mystery.

Not what you were.

But how long you had survived there.

Hidden beneath polluted waters, surrounded by criminal activity, entirely unseen.

His expression darkened.

If the creature that saved Dick had truly been living in Gotham all this time, then one fact remained unavoidable.

Something had been sharing his city for years.

And nobody had been protecting it.

Jason’s apartment was dark, which wasn’t unusual.

Most nights he preferred it that way.

The city lights filtering through the windows provided more than enough illumination, casting long shadows across the sparse living room and the collection of weapons currently spread across the coffee table.

His helmet sat abandoned beside the couch. His jacket draped over the armrest.

Yet neither had been touched in nearly forty minutes.

Jason remained seated.

His broad frame sank into the old leather cushions as one hand rolled a strip of torn fabric between rough fingers.

Nightwing’s suit.

Or what remained of it.

The material had been shredded where Tim had grabbed him. A desperate attempt to stop Dick from falling.

Jason turned the fabric over again.

The motion was absentminded. Distracted.

A sliver of city light spilled through the apartment window, catching against the sharp angle of his jaw. It traced the faint white streak near his temple before disappearing into shadow again.

Normally he would’ve been asleep hours ago.

Or out on patrol.

Or finding literally anything productive to do.

Instead he found himself staring at a ruined piece of spandex.

Thinking.

The bridge replayed itself endlessly behind his eyes.

Dick falling.

Tim screaming.

The water below.

And then you.

Jason’s jaw tightened.

Whatever the hell he’d seen.

That’s what kept bothering him.

Not that a creature existed. Not even that it had saved Dick. It was the way it had looked at them.

The memory remained frustratingly clear. Those eyes emerging from the darkness, aert and curious.

Not the eyes of an animal nor predator, but a person.

The realisation unsettled him.

Because people were complicated.

People lied.

People hid things.

People got hurt.

Jason tossed the fabric onto the table. His hand dragged across his face.

He should’ve left it alone. Should’ve gone to sleep. Should’ve trusted Bruce and Tim to spend the next month drowning in reports and surveillance footage.

Instead he found himself standing.

The decision made before he’d consciously reached it.

A low curse left him. “.. Goddammit.”

An hour later, Red Hood stood overlooking Gotham Harbor.

The city stretched endlessly behind him.

Neon lights reflected across black water.

The cold wind rolled off the river, tugging at the edges of his jacket.

Jason barely noticed. His attention fixed on the water below.

Feeling vaguely ridiculous.

The logical part of his brain knew this was stupid. You could’ve been anywhere.

Miles away by now.

Hidden beneath countless waterways connected to Gotham.

The chances of simply stumbling across you again were practically nonexistent.

Yet here he stood anyway.

His gloved hands rested against the railing.

The position drew his shoulders forward slightly, leather pulling taut across his back. Beneath the jacket, muscle shifted with easy, practiced strength. The kind earned through years of violence, survival, and relentless training.

The movement pulled at the fabric stretched across his shoulders.

Built less like an acrobat and more like a wrecking ball.

Years ago, Dick had been trained to fly.

Jason had been trained to survive.

He wasn't built for Dick's effortless grace.

Where Nightwing moved like a blade through the air, Jason was something heavier. Broader. A force rather than a flourish.

The difference showed.

In the width of his shoulders. The powerful line of his chest. The scars hidden beneath armor and clothing. The hands that looked just as comfortable wrapped around a motorcycle throttle as they did a weapon.

Even standing still, there was something restless about him.

Like violence lived just beneath the surface.

His dark hair stirred in the wind. Moonlight caught briefly on the exposed edge of his jaw before slipping lower, illuminating eyes that remained fixed on the water.

Far more observant than most people gave him credit for.

Searching.

The same way Dick had searched from the bridge.

Though Jason would deny the comparison if anyone pointed it out.

Minutes passed. Then more.

Nothing.

Only the river moving steadily beneath him.

The sound of distant traffic.

The occasional cry of gulls somewhere overhead.

Jason exhaled sharply through his nose.

This was stupid. Absolutely stupid.

He was standing alone on a dock in the middle of the night because he couldn’t stop thinking about a pair of eyes.

A pair of eyes attached to a creature he technically wasn’t even sure existed.

Yet even as the thought crossed his mind, his gaze drifted back toward the water.

Toward the place where he’d last seen you.

The moon reflected across the surface in fractured pieces.

Silver dancing across black.

For a moment, just a tiny moment, Jason thought he saw something move.

His body reacted instantly.

Straightening. Every muscle tensing. His heartbeat kicked once against his ribs.

The disturbance vanished almost immediately.

Nothing more than a ripple.

Yet Jason remained frozen.

And for the first time since leaving the bridge, a faint smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth.

Because whether you were real or not, whether he’d imagined the whole damn thing or not, he knew one thing. He wasn’t done looking.

Not yet.

Not until he got a look at you properly.

Damian had endured exactly thirty two hours of this nonsense.

Nearly two days of Grayson staring into space.

Nearly two days of Drake monopolising the Batcomputer.

Nearly two days of Father and Drake discussing an unidentified aquatic creature as though Gotham hadn’t presented far stranger problems before.

Frankly, he was tired of hearing about it.

The manor was unusually quiet as he made his way downstairs.

Early morning sunlight filtered through the enormous windows lining the eastern hallways, painting pale gold across polished floors.

Most of the household remained asleep.

Damian preferred it that way. Silence was far more tolerable than conversation. Especially when the conversation inevitably circled back to the same topic.

The creature.

The creature.

The bloody creature.

As though the entire family had collectively lost their minds.

A faint scowl settled across his features.

He pushed open the door leading into the cave. Immediately he was greeted by the glow of computer screens.

Drake remained exactly where Damian had left him hours ago.

Predictable.

The older boy was slumped over the keyboard, several empty coffee cups scattered around him like casualties of war.

Father sat nearby reviewing reports.

Neither acknowledged Damian’s arrival. That alone was enough to pique his curiosity.

Damian approached silently. His gaze drifted toward the largest monitor.

The bridge footage.

Again.

Still the same recording.

For a brief moment, all he saw was darkness. Black water. Static.

Then movement.

A faint glow emerged beneath the surface.

The footage blurred. Pixelated. Distorted. Yet even through the poor quality, he could make out the shape.

Long.

Graceful.

Powerful.

The tail appeared first. Then a shoulder.

Then the footage froze.

Damian frowned.

Drake had paused the recording.

“Continue.”

Tim glanced up, dark circles worse than before lingered beneath his eyes.

“You interested now?”

“No.” A lie.

Tim smirked.

Which immediately irritated him.

The recording resumed.

Only a few frames passed before the image sharpened slightly. Not enough for identification. Not enough for certainty.

But enough.

Enough for Damian to see the eyes.

His expression stilled.

The cave seemed unusually quiet.

For a moment, he forgot about Drake entirely. Forgot about the reports. Forgot about Grayson.

The image remained frozen. The creature stared upward from beneath dark water.

His fingers tightened slightly at his sides. “That is the frame you’ve been studying?”

Drake nodded.

Damian didn’t respond.

He found himself stepping closer instead.

The image quality was terrible. Objectively terrible. Yet his gaze remained fixed on the screen. Studying every visible detail.

The shape of the face. The faint bioluminescence. Both the familiar and unfamiliar anatomy.

Something ancient stirred in the back of his memory.

The sort of stories that the League would’ve dismissed as myths, yet here it was.

Documented.

Real.

Damian’s expression darkened.

Fools.

Every one of them.

Allowing themselves to become distracted by a mystery. Becoming emotionally invested before they possessed all the facts.

It was sloppy.

Irrational.

Unworthy of them.

His gaze returned to the screen.

… Curious.

The thought surfaced before he could stop it. Damian immediately scowled. Then looked at the image again. Just once more. Only to verify a detail he’d missed.

Nothing more.

Yet several minutes later he was still standing there.

Studying the creature hidden beneath Gotham’s waters.

“You’re staring at me again.”

Lorenzo didn’t bother denying it.

One arm rested along the back of the couch behind you, fingers tapping lazily against the leather while the common room buzzed around him. Loud, warm, crowded shoulder-to-shoulder after the Quidditch win.

He looked perfectly at home in it.

Hair still damp from the shower. Tie hanging loose around his neck. A fading bruise shadowing the sharp line of his jaw.

People gravitated toward Lorenzo Berkshire naturally. You’d noticed that weeks ago.

Girls smiled at him a second too long. Boys laughed too hard at his jokes. He flirted with almost everyone and committed to absolutely no one.

The sort of person professors claimed to dislike while letting him get away with murder.

Right now, though, his attention rested entirely on you.

Heavy enough to feel.

“You’ve been following me around all week,” you pointed out, eyes still fixed on your book.

“Mhm.”

“You’re not denying it?”

“Should I?”

The couch dipped slightly as he leaned closer.

Close enough for the sharp scent of maple and expensive conditioner to settle around you.

“You’re tense again,” he murmured.

You snapped your book shut. “You say that like you’re my healer.”

“No,” Lorenzo said easily. “If I were your healer, you’d actually listen to me.”

His fingers brushed briefly against your wrist.

Not enough to look intimate to anyone else, but more than enough for you to notice.

“You worry too much,” he continued quietly. “It’s irritating.”

“That’s rich coming from you.”

A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “The difference is,” he said, “I’m usually right.”

Across the room, Mattheo yelled out something toward him, drawing laughter from those around.

Lorenzo ignored them.

Which was honestly stranger than if he hadn’t.

Normally, he thrived on attention. Moved through crowds like he belonged at the center of them.

But lately, all of his attention had been you.

“You skipped the afterparty for this?” you asked flatly.

“I skipped the afterparty because Avery kept trying to sit on my lap.”

“You say that like it’s a problem.”

“It was irritating.”

You blinked at him.

Because Lorenzo Berkshire had never once seemed irritated by attention before.

If anything, he invited it.

But now he was watching you with something quieter in his expression. Less performative. Still confident, still maddeningly self-assured, but focused in a way that made something in your chest tighten uncomfortably.

Like you’d become a habit he never intended to form.

“You know what your problem is?” he asked suddenly.

“I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

“You think people deserve access to you just because they ask for it.”

Your brows pulled together. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“It does to me.”

There was something unreadable in his tone. Something that made you look at him properly for the first time that evening.

And instantly regret it.

Because Lorenzo was already watching you like he knew you would.

Like he’d been waiting for you to finally look back.

“You should make people earn you,” he said softly.

Then, after a brief pause,

“Some of them don’t deserve the privilege.”

“You look awful,” Lorenzo remarked, dropping into the seat beside you in Potions.

You didn’t glance up from your notes. “Good morning to you too.”

“It’s becoming concerning, honestly.” His knee bumped yours beneath the table. “Have you considered sleeping occasionally?”

“I hate this class.”

“You hate every class.”

“Not true.”

“Mhm.” Lorenzo leaned back in his chair, spinning his wand lazily between his fingers. “You complain differently depending on the subject.”

“You pay too much attention to me.”

His mouth curved slightly at that. Like you’d said exactly what he wanted to hear.

Around you, students shuffled into their seats while Professor Slughorn rearranged ingredients at the front of the classroom. The dungeon smelled like herbs, smoke, and something unpleasantly metallic.

You rubbed tiredly at your eyes.

The past week had been brutal. Exams. Quidditch matches. Barely any sleep. Most of yesterday had been spent trying not to snap at people for speaking too loudly.

Lorenzo watched you for a moment too long before reaching into the pocket of his robes.

“Here.”

Something silver landed beside your hand with a soft clink.

A ring.

You stared at it.

Plain silver. Heavy-looking. Dark green lettering etched into the underside.

“You giving me jewelry now?”

“You should sound more grateful when people buy you expensive things.”

“I didn’t ask you to buy me anything.”

“No,” Lorenzo agreed easily. “You usually don’t ask for things. That’s half your problem.”

You picked the ring up carefully, turning it between your fingers.

The metal already felt warm.

“Why?”

“Because,” he said lightly, “you’ve been having terrible luck lately.”

You huffed a quiet laugh. “So your solution was accessories?”

“My solution,” Lorenzo corrected, “was fixing it.”

You looked at him then.

There it was again. That certainty.

Not arrogance exactly, though he had plenty of that too. Something steadier. More dangerous. Like once he decided something, the rest of the world simply had to catch up.

It was part of why people followed him so easily.

On the Quidditch pitch. At parties. In crowded hallways.

Lorenzo Berkshire moved through Hogwarts like the castle belonged to him.

And somehow, you’d ended up caught in his orbit too.

“You’re staring again,” he murmured.

“You say weird things.”

“I say accurate things.”

You rolled your eyes and moved to hand the ring back.

His fingers closed around your wrist before you could. Not rough, but not gentle either.

Just firm enough to stop you.

“Keep it on today,” Lorenzo said quietly.

Your eyes flicked toward him.

Something unreadable lingered beneath the amusement on his face now. Intent.

“For luck?” you asked dryly.

His thumb brushed against the inside of your wrist before he let go.

“For me.”

Before you could respond, Slughorn began speaking from the front of the room, and the class shifted into motion around you.

Lorenzo leaned back like nothing had happened.

Like his hand hadn’t lingered against your skin a second too long. Like he hadn’t looked at you with that unsettlingly focused expression again.

You should’ve given the ring back.

Instead, without really thinking about it, you slid it onto your finger.

╰┈➤

By the end of the day, three things had gone strangely right.

First, Professor Flitwick delayed the essay due tomorrow.

Then, your missing Astronomy notes mysteriously reappeared on your bed after being gone nearly a week.

And finally, Daphne Greengrass and Evan Rosier stopped bothering you.

Completely.

Which was strange, considering yesterday they’d cornered you outside Charms to mock your last Quidditch loss and get a reaction out of you.

Today, Greengrass wouldn’t even look at you.

You noticed it during class. She sat as far away as possible, avoiding your gaze so obviously it bordered on awkward.

Then at dinner, the second you sat across from Evan at the Slytherin table, he went still before abruptly standing.

His tray nearly tipped in the process.

Malfoy laughed farther down the table. “Rosier, where the fuck are you going?”

“Forgot something.”

“You’re literally holding your dinner.”

Evan ignored him and left.

You frowned after him slightly.

Beside you, Lorenzo looked entirely unsurprised. Actually, he looked amused.

“You’re smiling.”

“Might just be happy to see you.” He shot back, nudging into your side.

“That’s never reassuring.”

His grin widened.

Across the table, one of the sixth-year girls leaned toward her friend and whispered something while glancing between the two of you.

Lorenzo noticed too.

He looked pleased by it.

“You know,” he mused lazily, reaching over to steal a piece of meat from your plate, “people are starting to think you belong to me.”

You scoffed. “People think that you belong to everyone.”

A few nearby students laughed quietly at that.

Lorenzo didn’t.

His gaze stayed fixed on you.

Steady.

“You say that,” he said softly, “like it’s the same thing.”

Then Lorenzo smiled again. Easy, effortless, beautiful enough to make people stupid.

And just like that, the moment disappeared.

“You kept the ring on,” he noted.

Without thinking, your hand curled slightly against the table.

Lorenzo’s eyes dropped to the movement immediately. Tiny. Instinctive.

You still noticed him catch it.

“See?” he murmured. “Already getting luckier.”

You started noticing him everywhere after that.

Outside classrooms, leaning against stone walls with his tie hanging loose around his neck. Across the Great Hall, surrounded by people while his attention stayed fixed on you anyway. Stretched across the Slytherin common room like he owned the place.

Maybe he always had.

Maybe you just hadn’t noticed before.

“Berkshire’s gotten weirdly attached to you lately.”

You glanced up from your textbook.

Theodore Nott sat across from you in the library, looking deeply unimpressed as he flipped another page in his book.

“That’s a strong word.”

Theo huffed softly. “Is it?”

You sighed, absently turning the ring on your finger. “You and him are becoming insufferable.”

That earned the faintest twitch of amusement from him.

Across the room, Lorenzo leaned against one of the bookshelves, talking to a group of Ravenclaw girls.

Or more accurately, letting them talk to him.

You watched one of them touch his arm while laughing at something he said.

Lorenzo smiled easily in return. Charming. Relaxed. Completely in his element.

Then his gaze drifted lazily across the library and landed on you.

Immediately.

Like he’d been aware of where you were the entire time.

The smile on his face shifted slightly.

Subtle enough that most people wouldn’t notice.

The Ravenclaw girl was still talking when Lorenzo pushed away from the bookshelf without warning and walked off mid-conversation.

Straight toward you.

Theo noticed too.

The chair beside you scraped loudly against the floor as Lorenzo dropped into it a second later.

“You look busy,” he remarked, glancing toward your parchment.

“I am.”

“That explains the attitude.”

Theo snorted quietly without looking up from his book.

Lorenzo ignored him entirely.

His attention settled instead on your hand resting against the table. Specifically the ring.

Something pleased flickered across his expression.

“You kept it..” He said softly.

“You’re observant today.”

“I’m observant every day.”

That was true. Painfully true. Lorenzo noticed everything about you.

When you skipped meals. When you slept badly. The subtle shifts in your mood. Which people irritated you. Which subjects stressed you out.

Sometimes it felt less like attention and more like being studied.

“You’ve worn it all week,” he murmured.

You shrugged lightly. “Guess your magic luck ring works.”

“It does.”

“You’re very confident in that.”

“I’m very confident about most things.”

That much was obvious.

Enzo moved through life like failure simply wasn’t something that happened to him.

Even on the Quidditch pitch, he played like the world should move out of his way.

And somehow, annoyingly, it usually did.

“You know,” you said slowly, “people are starting to think you like me.”

Lorenzo looked up immediately.

Not surprised. Suddenly very interested in the conversation.

“Starting to?”

“You have a reputation, Berkshire.”

“Do I?” He tilted his head owlishly.

“You’ve hooked up with half the school.”

A lazy smile spread across his face, completely unashamed. “..Jealous?”

“Repulsed, actually.”

“Liar.” His voice dipped slightly when he said it. Still playful.

He leaned his elbow against the table, watching you in that unbearable way he always did lately. Like he was trying to memorize your reactions before you even had them.

“We have a match this weekend, right?” Theo asked suddenly, cutting through the tension.

Your expression soured instantly. “Don’t remind me.”

Lorenzo leaned back in his chair beside you, one arm sliding along the back of it.

“You’ll be fine.”

“You say that every time.”

“And I’m always right.”

“You literally lost your last game.”

“We lost our last game,” Lorenzo corrected.

“You nearly started a fight with the Hufflepuff captain afterward.”

“He insulted you.”

Theo finally looked up at that. “So that’s why that happened.”

Lorenzo looked entirely unapologetic. “He was irritating.”

You sighed. “It was regular house banter.”

“That’s not the point,” Lorenzo retorted immediately.

The blunt certainty in his tone sent heat creeping unpleasantly up the back of your neck.

Because he still sounded annoyed by it. Over an offhand comment from weeks ago.

Theo studied Lorenzo for a long moment.

Then you.

Slowly, he closed his book.