mango 🥭

You yelp and jerk upright, immediately slamming the crown of your head into the shelf above you. Shocking pain explodes across your skull as you stumble backward, one hand flying to the throbbing spot on your head. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The unfamiliar voice is still going, apology after apology tumbling over itself as you blink through the stars in your vision. When your eyesight steadies, you turn towards the sound and a man is already pulling out a chair.

“Here,” he says, “Sit down.”

You follow the instructions easily, it's a sharp and startling kind of pain hitting your head, you think you’d do anything you're told until it dulls a little. The apologies don't stop coming as you try to pull yourself together. Seriously, he will not stop apologising.

You press your palm against your head and wait for the ache to dull while he hovers nearby looking increasingly distressed.

Once you’ve gathered yourself a little better, you chance a glance up at him, and immediately avert your eyes back to the floor. He’s staring at you with so much concern your stomach ties itself in knots. 

There's a couple of thoughts to sort through then. The first, how the hell didn't you hear him step into the room? He’s tall and broad and firm. You should've heard his footsteps for sure, maybe he moves like a cat or maybe you were too in your own head, it wouldn't be the first time. The second, that one revolves around how pretty he is. He is with no exaggeration maybe the handsomest man you’ve ever seen. Glasses and curly hair and bright big eyes.

“S’okay,” you find your voice, staring at the floor. “I’m okay, I'm fine.” 

You hear him release a sigh of relief, it makes your face warm.

“Okay, that's good.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I thought you’d hear me come in, but–”

He cuts himself off and you chance another look at him. The sheepish smile on his face somehow makes him even prettier.

“Gosh. Sorry. I’m being rude. I’m Clark.”

You give him a soft smile, which he returns and you murmur your name in reply. 

Clark can't believe it when you tell him, he’s heard from the others how slow and reluctant you've been to warm to anyone at all since you started and now he’s done this. He might've ruined everyone’s chance, not just his own, of getting to know you. He could kick himself. Nice going, Kent. 

“Nice to meet you,” he gestures toward the refrigerator, “what were you looking for?”

His question makes embarrassment flare up in you all over again. Clark watches as you dip your head away from him again, he has to fight the urge to reach out a hand to your shoulder to comfort you. He doesn't think he's met someone quite so shy before. 

“I, uh, just my soda,” you give a helpless little smile while your fingers worry at your cuticles. “It's fine though, it doesn't matter.”

Clark can feel his heart clench as you dismiss it. It's your soda! You should have it!

“Was it cherry?”

“Uh, yeah?” 

“Theres a cherry soda thief, I haven't figured out who it is yet though,” he puts a hand on his hip and points at you with an open hand. “Stay there a sec, okay?”

You watch open mouthed as he rushes out of the room. It's shameful to admit, even to yourself, but you'd probably do whatever Clark told you to despite having only just met him. Something is clearly wrong with you.

When he comes back into the room it's with a bit of a crash and a new can of soda in his hand from the vending machine. How strange. Then he's murmuring a Here you go and holding it out towards you. You can't come up with a cohesive response, your mind goes blank because this is really so strange.

It’s simple to Clark, he’s just making up for scaring you out of your skin. To you there's nothing to make up for, accidents just happen. That's life.

Still you reach out. What you’re sure of then is that as your finger tips brush taking the can from him, the touch fucking burns.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Week three

Your easy routine – get up, go to work, go home, maybe go for a walk before settling in for the night, all without really speaking to anyone – has been slightly tweaked.

Every morning, Clark goes out of his way to stop by your desk and talk to you.

At first, you were convinced he was doing it out of pity. (Clark would be devastated to know you thought that.) Then you decided he must just enjoy the sound of his own voice. (He'd be equally horrified to hear that conclusion.) After all, you rarely give him anything more than a one-word response. Neither explanation feels quite right, but you can’t figure out what else it could be.

Little do you know that in Clark's mind his one and only mission currently is to befriend you. He wants to know more, curiosity piqued by the pretty shy thing that lingers around.

Lately, your walks home have been plagued with thoughts of him. How kind he’s been. The slope of his nose. His dark hair and cute glasses.

 As if you’ve summoned him with thoughts alone you hear your name called from somewhere behind you. You turn and sure enough Clark’s impossible to miss.

He’s a head taller than almost everyone around him, weaving apologetically through the crowd with one hand raised so you won’t lose sight of him. As if you could. His bag bounces against his side as he finally catches up. Stopping beside you with an easy smile on his face while you frown at him in confusion.

 “Where’re you heading?” he asks, dipping his head down closer to you.

Clark likes asking odd questions but this one really throws you for a loop.

“Home?” you answer with a tilted head and scrunched brow.

He nods once, like that's exactly what he expected. You wonder if you’re so predictable that having no plans on a Friday night is just a given to other people. He adjusts the strap of the bag on his shoulder and nudges his head towards the sidewalk.

“Can I walk you home?”

What is going on?

“Uhh… sure.” you agree, taking a step in the right direction. “If you want to.”

You start walking and he falls easily into step beside you, matching your pace.

For someone who never seems to run out of things to say at work, Clark is surprisingly comfortable with silence. You half expected him to chatter the entire walk, but you suppose you can scratch likes his own voice off of your list of reasons he might talk to you.

The evening sky has melted into streaks of pink and orange, casting everything in a warm night. As you sneak glances over at Clark he almost doesn't look real.

It all makes your shoulders tense and curl forwards. You don't understand how someone can move through the world the way Clark does, so confident without seeming arrogant, so open, so completely unafraid to ask for what he wants. He talks to everyone like they're already his friend.

And he's walking you home from work. It's weird. He has friends, cool friends but he’s spending his time with you. You're… just you.

What you don't know is that Clark has spent the time between your first meeting and now trying to figure out how to become your friend without scaring you off. He hasn’t figured it out yet. Still, in for a penny, he supposes.

“What, uh…” He clears his throat, scratching the back of his neck before turning his head towards you. Somewhere during the walk he’s drifted closer without noticing, his shoulder almost brushing yours now. “What’re you doing this weekend?”

“Oh…” your mouth opens and closes as you try to come up with a lie that makes you sound less lame, it doesn't work. “Nothing, I guess.”

“Really?”

“Well,” you shrug, “I need to do my laundry, I guess. And clean my apartment.” 

Clark hums, nodding absently, “You’re not hanging out with your friends?” 

He knows it's the wrong thing to ask as soon as it leaves his mouth, he feels like he’s missed the last step as he watches you curl in on yourself again, embarrassed. 

“...I don’t really have any.” you whisper, timid.

Clark's brain seems to misfire and he can’t formulate words because how can sweet lovely, albeit quiet you, not have any friends. His silence stretches too long and you quickly take it for judgement.

“I haven’t had time to make any, okay?” You say quickly, voice sharper than you intend.

It’s maybe the most assertive Clark has ever heard you. Hell, it's probably the most assertive you've heard yourself. But you don't need Clark knowing you're a bigger loser than you probably already are in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” He blurts, shaking his head, “I didn't mean it in, like, a bad way or anything.” He sighs like he's all disappointed in himself before murmuring under his breath. “I’m such an idiot.”

You're not supposed to hear it, but you do, and it pulls a giggle from your lips before you can stifle it. Clark's head whips towards you at the sound with a great beaming smile on his face delighted by the noise. Reflexively, you smile back, the biggest one he's been on the receiving end of.

You can see your building moving closer in the distance now and it disappoints you. You don't want this walk home to end. The company is too nice.

“It’s not true anyway. You have at least one friend.”

You scrunch your face at that, maybe Clark really does have too much faith in your social skills outside of work or something, but he is dead wrong. When you turn your head to tell him as much, his upper body is angled towards you with a hand raised pointing to his face which is sporting a dopey grin. It takes a second to catch his meaning as you come to a stop outside your building. 

You feel your eyes start to sting, as wetness builds in your lashline. There's no threat of tears falling, it’s just so nice.

“Really?” you ask, sad eyes staring up at Clark. He can practically feel his heart break in his chest. 

“Yeah, I’m your friend.” he nods “if you’ll have me.” 

When you give a small nod, he reaches out a hand to your shoulder and rubs a steady back and forth to console you.

This touch is less of a burn and more of a sharp pinch.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Week five

The park is filled with people, it's a warm day with sunlight spilling over the grass in sheets of gold. Groups of friends lounge on the grass with their shoes kicked off, the basketball court is packed out and there's couples meandering along the path holding hands. It's all so nice, yet you find yourself worrying at your bottom lip as you cross the grass..

Is your outfit okay? Do you look nice enough? Is it obvious that you’ve rushed here because you left the apartment too late? 

Clark Kent, from what you can tell, is a genuine guy. Not a deceitful bone in his body, you'd bet. Really you shouldn't have been surprised that he meant it when he said he was your friend, but you were, and now he walks you home from work nearly every day and you can manage to speak more than two words at a time to him. You know, he probably won't care what you look like, but if he does, maybe a smile can win him over instead, proving he hasn’t made a mistake.

You seem to see Clark at the same moment he sees you. He’s already spread out the sweetest little picnic blanket beneath a tree that casts shadows across it. Beside him sit two grocery bags bulging with, if you had to guess, more food than two people could possibly eat at once. He's gone so over the top it hurries you forward. 

“Oh gosh,” your eyes are wide, they don't seem to settle on any one thing. “Am I late?”

“Nope,” he says easily, already getting to his feet. “I’m early. I wanted to get everything set up.”

As soon as you're standing in front of him, Clark reaches for your tote bag without seeming to think twice about it. He slips the strap from your shoulder and places the bag carefully beside the blanket. Thoughtless and sweet.

It's the first time you’ve seen him not in the slightly oversized suit he wears to work and somehow he looks more handsome. It's unfair. 

“You look really nice, honey.” 

That's even more unfair. Heat rushes to your cheeks so quickly you have to look away, hiding your pleased smile by lowering yourself onto the blanket instead.

“So do you, Clark.” you murmur.

Your quiet compliment seems to level the playing field a bit. His own smile turns unexpectedly bashful, the tips of his ears flushing pink beneath the dark curls that fall over them. To distract himself, Clark quickly kneels beside one of the grocery bags.

“I wasn’t sure what you liked,” he admits, beginning to unpack containers one after another. “So… I got a little of everything.”

“This is too much, you shouldn't have,” you giggle, shaking your head, smiling despite yourself. “You’re too nice to me.”

As he lays out the variety of picnic food, you can't help but notice how close your knee is to his. How close they are to bumping together. You wonder if that closeness is intentional or not. 

Clark shrugs, before leaning closer to you. Maybe that answers your question. “Theres no part of me that could be mean to you,” He says, earnestly. His blue eyes meet yours without hesitation. “It’s easy to be nice to you.”

There's no time to digest what that means beyond the way it makes your stomach flip and your head feel lighter before he's offering you a punnet of strawberries, like what he said was simple and easy. When you reach for one you give Clark the sweetest smile you can muster which makes his stomach flip in return.

It's hard to believe how lucky you’ve got. How the hell have you ended up sitting in the sunshine, making a life here, inches away from Clark Kent the kindest man you’ve ever met. Sharing strawberries and sandwiches while he smiles at you like spending time together is the easiest thing ever.

“I’ve never been very good with people,” you start. “And I moved here just for the job, I didn’t really think about… about all the other stuff and it's so tricky to make friends…” 

You trail off, losing steam in your confession. Your fingers find your cuticles automatically, picking absentmindedly at the skin as your nerves creep back in.

“What I’m trying to say, I guess, is thank you, for being patient with me.”

Clark’s expression changes immediately, his brows pulling together. There's something almost heartbroken in the way he looks at you, as though he's genuinely upset you’d ever think gratitude was necessary. “You don't have to thank me,” he says, quietly. “It’s my pleasure, really, honey.”

You try your best to internalise those words as soon as he’s said them, the corners of your lips lifting.

“And…” He pauses, until you look up at him, Clark wants to make sure you’re listening. “I get it, y’know.”

The words shock you so much that you let out an unattractive but entirely authentic snort. It’s so unbelieveable, you think that maybe Clark Kent is a liar after all. 

“Yeah, right.”

“No really,” he turns until he’s fully facing you, one leg tucked beneath him. “I grew up in Kansas, on a farm! All this was so overwhelming but you learn to love it, I promise.” Looking at Clark in the light, you think that, yeah maybe you are learning. 

By the time the sun begins to set, you’ve both packed everything away and Clark is walking you home. He has the picnic blanket rolled beneath one arm and a bag with food neither of you touched in that hand, leaving his other arm free to swing comfortably at his side as you both make the walk back.

It’s so sweet the effort he’s taken to make today nice, the thought of it makes your next words bubble up and out before you can stop them.

“Next time, I’ll bring the food.”

Clark's eyes widen, surprise flashing so openly across his face that your stomach immediately drops and you can't help but scold yourself mentally. Why would you just assume there would be a next time? You don’t notice his thrilled expression at you suggesting a next time until it bleeds into his voice. “Yes!” he says a little too quickly, almost laughing at himself before adding, softer, “Whatever you wanna do.” 

The enthusiasm in his voice catches you off guard. It's so genuine, so earnest. You can't stop yourself from grinning back and you're fairly certain the way you're looking at him now leaves every ounce of your affection written plainly across your face.

The rest of the walk passes quickly. Soon enough, you both come to a stop outside your building. You turn toward him, suddenly unsure what to do with your hands.

“Thank you.” you say quietly.

Clark shakes his head almost immediately.

“No, thank you.” His smile softens. “I had a really great time.”

Before you know it, Clark is pulling you in for a little side hug. Warm and solid and gentle. His arm draped across your shoulders in goodbye.

This feels like less of a pinch and more like pushing on a bruise.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Week seven

When did recipes become so hard to follow? How much salt is too much? How much isn't enough? The most important question really is, why would you offer to cook for Clark?

The answer to that, you do know. The number of nice things he’s done for you is innumerable now and somewhere along the way you figured you should return the favour. And maybe impress him a little. You always seem to want that, whether you admit it to yourself or not.

 It's easier now to not be so shy around him. Clark makes things easy. 

With two trays safely put into the oven all you need to do is set a timer and–

There's a steady knock on your door, obviously Clark being as punctual as ever. You stumble quickly through your apartment, nearly catching your foot on the corner of the rug, not wanting to keep him waiting on you now. 

You pull the door open. Clark stands there looking exactly how he always does, broad shouldered and gentle eyed with the light catching in his glasses. In his hands is a bouquet of flowers.

The arrangement is beautiful. Soft pink peonies together with pale lavender sweet peas. Somehow, despite how large the bouquet is, Clark still manages to dwarf it. The sight has you a little shocked, mouth opening and closing as you try to figure out what's going on.

“...For me?”

The corners of Clark’s mouth lift to an easy smile and a tiny furrow appears between his brows as though he's genuinely puzzled you had to ask.

“Of course they are,” he says. “My ma raised a gentleman, I couldn't show up empty handed.”

“You totally could’ve,” you shuffle to the side of the doorway, gesturing him in. “I invited you to treat you for a change, remember. They're beautiful.”

Clark gives a small shrug that suggests he doesn't entirely understand your logic.

“They made me think of you when I saw them.”

Heat rushes to your face but the instinct to duck your head away from him when he says nice things has all but disappeared. Instead you meet him head on now with a bashful but thankful smile.

Your apartment suddenly feels impossibly small as Clark follows you into the kitchen. It’s cramped enough with just one person moving around. With him leaning against the counter, close enough that you can feel the heat coming off of him, it’s tight but nice.

You crouch down, digging beneath the sink to find a vase you're sure you own. You find the slightly dusty glass vase. 

When you stand, head well away from anything you could bump it on, Clark speaks again. 

“What can I help with?” he asks, “Put me to work.”

You laugh softly as you begin trimming the flower stems.

“Nothing,” you point toward the tiny table. “you can sit and relax.”

Clark huffs, discontent with that and it prompts a faint laugh to fall from you once again. You can practically feel the energy coming off of him now. He doesn't do well sitting still, having no purpose while someone else works. He’s always in motion, a quirk of his you've learnt. 

“You’re so strange, Clark.” you drawl, arranging another stem into the vase. It's maybe the first time you’ve teased him properly, and from the wide smile and joy that basically radiates from him, you’d guess he likes it. “You can’t sit still, can you?”

“I can sit still.” he defends, though his tone wobbles, betraying the lie. 

When the flowers are finally arranged, they're even prettier than when they were wrapped in paper. Maybe it's because Clark Kent bought them for you. You place the vase carefully on the counter before leaning beside him.

“I don’t think I've seen you relax the whole time I've known you,” you say, shaking your head fondly, "You're always up to something, helping someone… helping me.”

His blue eyes flick away from you, almost shy. When they return to yours they’re softer, somehow. His face seems to filter through a number of emotions before simply settling on content.

“That is relaxing to me.”

“Yeah?” you snort, “Helping me unjam one of the printers while you had an article due was relaxing?.” 

“It was,” he replies, tone genuine. “Besides those printers are super fiddly, honey.” you roll your eyes, jovially. “I like looking out for the people I care about.”

Now that does make you duck your head away from him, too overwhelmed by him to look at him any more.

“People you care about…” you start, “Including me.” 

“Including you.”

All this vulnerability makes you fidgety where Clark stands tall finding it easy to be so open about all this. He smiles as he watches you fix your hair and brush away imaginary dirt from your clothes. The smile you wear is almost blinding, so pleased to have verbal confirmation that you mean as much to Clark as he does to you. It’s the nicest thing to hear.

The smell of fresh flowers gives way to the crisp scent of burning and both of your heads snap to look at the other alarm growing in both of you. 

“Oh no.”

You spring into action moving towards the oven but you don't get far as the handle before Clark is gently nudging you aside with your oven gloves already in hand. 

The blast of heat that escapes when he opens the oven carries the acrid scent with it. What he pulls out is beyond saving, everything blackened and charred. Your face crumples before you can stop it.

“Oh, no no no.” you groan, stepping forward like getting a better look might change it. “I forgot the timer,” You press a hand to your forehead. “I'm such an idiot, sorry.”

Clark sets the ruined trays aside and turns back to you, both hands raised, palm forward. This is such a disaster, a simple dinner you couldn’t get right. 

“Whoa,” he says gently, closing the distance until only a few inches separate you. “It’s fine, it's fine, sweetheart.” 

“No It’s not,” your voice comes out smaller than intended. “I wanted to do something nice for you.”

“You have!” he exclaims, looking over his shoulder and turning back to you. “It’s just a little… over done.” you swat at his bicep with a roll of your eyes at his teasing. “We could order takeout and pretend you made it.” 

It takes a second to think over that offer, and yes, clarks attitude is right and your evening isn't ruined.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” you nod, a sheepish smile tugging at your lips.

His face lights up. Without another word, Clark lets out an amused little laugh and closes the remaining distance in one easy step, wrapping both arms around you.

“Jeez,” you mumble, though there's no real complaint behind it.

The weight of his arms around you makes you stiffen. It feels awkward and unfamiliar and what are you supposed to do? Your arms hover awkwardly by your sides. 

One of Clark's big hands sweeps a smooth arc back and forth across your back and that's all you need to relax into his hold. You move to wrap your arms around him in return. Comfort and security in his arms.

It's nothing like pushing on a bruise, all you feel is warmth.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Week ten

Clark’s apartment is nice, it’s maybe the third time you've been here. The big windows are gorgeous, spilling the last of the evening light across the hard wood floors until the whole place sort of glows. You sink into his couch, soft enough that you’d happily stay here forever. You probably would, too, if it meant spending it with Clark.

He’s very quickly become your favourite person ever. His easy touches have become frequent and you've come to love them even if you don't initiate them.

You’ve noticed Clark tends to stomp around when he's tired. Most people wouldn't notice but learning about Clark has become a wonderful thing. There's no surprising you when he appears from his kitchen with a bowl of popcorn in hand.

“Here you go, pretty.” he murmurs as he drops down beside you, placing the bowl in your lap. He’s closer than he needs to be, but that just seems to be how Clark likes it now, you won't complain. 

Another thing that seems to have changed for him is the amount of pet names that fall from his lips. Honey, sweetheart, lovely, pretty and even a babe once or twice. It’s weird because when you think about it now, all signs seem to point to Clark Kent liking you. Like liking you. Romantically. 

You turn your head to look at him while he watches the screen. The movie reflects in his eyes, they're enchanting usually but it's tenfold now. Clark hands out caring touches like it's nothing and you’ve grown to crave them. Despite this, you can’t figure out why he hasn’t tried to kiss you yet.

Clark turns towards you with concern across his face, as he takes in the way you're looking at him.

“Whats wrong?” he asks.

It takes concerningly little deliberation for you to make up your mind. You know that Clark is nice enough that if you’ve got this wrong he’ll let you down gently. But you're pretty sure you haven't got this wrong.

“Why haven’t you kissed me?” there's no hesitation in your voice.

His relaxed slouch disappears as he sits upright, eyes widening behind his glasses.

“I…” He laughs once under his breath, more startled than amused. “I wasn’t sure you'd want me to.” His gaze drops, almost involuntarily, to your mouth before flicking back to your eyes. “I’ve wanted to.”

That's all you need, with a faint fuck it you surge forward to connect your lips. For a second, Clark doesn't move, not an inch, and heat floods your face as panic creeps in. He seems to be knocked out of his shocked reverie when you start to pull away.

Before you can get far, Clark raises his hands to frame your face. Large, impossibly gentle hands cradle your jaw as he draws you back towards him with obvious care. He kisses you, slowly.

There’s no urgency in it, you both have all the time in the world. His thumb brushes softly over your cheek as he smiles into the kiss. It's contagious, you feel your own smile widen until, with all the happiness, it's unclear whether you're still kissing with all the smiling going on.

you've known clark kent for a few months since you joined the daily planet as a journalist for their women's health section. separated by the plastic wheels squeaking as his bumps his chair into yours and the sweet cups of coffee he starts your mornings with, it wasn't long between your smiles at him became softer. you let yourself look at him a little longer, hanging on to whatever slivers of himself he'd let sneak past his usual charming and boyish front.

he returned those feelings pretty quickly too, through the holding of hands under the desks, him learning a little over your shoulder purposefully to read over your work, the intensity of his closeness throwing you off- how when he'd speak it was as if he had reserved a separate tone just for you- one that felt a little more breathless, thoughtful, pooling heat in your stomach instantaneously and laced with a feeling a lot like love.

it took him weeks to work himself up to ask you on a date. your first date, you mused. clark kent was clearly a man who did things by the book and you had hoped that after tonight, he'd finally meet you in the middle of this strange dance you're stuck in and kiss you silly already.

you'd imagined it in your head a million times; so often that you had once unintentionally started typing out the scene like a true novella; how he'd wine and dine you at the little italian place a few blocks over, dance with you in the dark on the walk home and kiss the remenants of sweet dessert off your lips on your doorstep- instead of filling the column with your recent musings on the importance of gut health in retaining a balanceful mood. you had never smashed the backspace so hard in your life- the angry crushing of keys and the rosy pink flushing the tips of your ears and neck drawing attention to your best friend, lois who stared at you amused.

"he's obsessed with you," she assured with you once, the very first time he looked your way and sent you spiralling. it was the same day he asked you out, a casual question for dinner and maybe it was your fault for overthinking this. he gave you one look and you went running straight into his heart, demanding entrance and free rent.

"hey this is clark! leave your message and i'll try and get back to you-" and you can imagine his obnoxiously gorgeous face, slight chirp in his voice and suddenly the alcohol buzzing war in your veins is giving you the confidence.

"you know clark, if you wanted to just embarrass me you didn't have to take me out to dinner to do that," you grit between your teeth, "oh wait, you didn't even take me out to dinner! call me NEVER." the breath of anger is hot on your phone, steaming the screen. the phone hangs on by a thin thread of misplaced hope and largely embarrassment as it sits between your collarbone and ear.

it's a contrast to the chill air of the apartment stairwell that bites at your bare skin. the off white slip you paired with a soft knit cardigan that was a sweet butter yellow seemed incredible in the moment but right now, only the breeze- bordering wind territory is getting a treat of it tonight. your kitten heels clatter on the stairs up because your friend's stupid elevators are out of service. like mystery man, lois lane had also not returned your calls tonight. you figured she was going through her usual work phases, her perfectionism and hyperfixated need for the chase of a story stealing most of her time. you let her do her thing, its what she loved and you loved supporting her.

when you first moved to the daily planet she was the first to show you around and became the sister you never had; an instantaneous friendship that made the world spin a little slower for you to keep up.

and that's why tonight: three sweaty flights of stairs and two more voicemails that ended with the escape of sniffles has you knocking on your friend's door- in need of an ear to lift this heavy burden of embarrassment of your shoulder.

"lois!" you don't even knock, just throw the entirety of your body weight at her door. your figure is slumped against it when she opens it just by the smallest of inches and maybe if you were intoxicated less, that could've been the first sign.

"he stood me up," the tears stream and before you know it you're sobbing in her hallway- loud wails that widen her eyes comically in fear you're going to wake up the whole neighbourhood.

"i waited," you throw your arms around miserably, like a toddler having a tantrum, "and he never showed."

something instantly freezes in her and what looks like guilt flashes over the sympathetic smile she sends your way before she crushes you into a bone-bending hug. "oh honey," she soothes into your skin and you let the tears soak up her tank top and then you pull back.

"can i come in now?" your voice quiet and lois decided she'd rather the earth swallow her whole.

"i'm a little busy," she winces, trying to close the door a little bit more behind her but you peer through nonetheless anyways, blood freezing cold at the sight of soft black curls you know from the memorisation of how they've felt under your fingers.

"clark," you breathe. its not exactly a question, more so a snot fuelled statement of betrayal as your eyes flicker between him and your friend. you don't know which one to settle on, shift all your focus and blame on because you're so tired and the alcohol is making you drowsier as the minutes tick by.

"honey," he gets up from his spot on the sofa and tries to meet you at the door but the wrinkle in your brow and fury laced in your frown tells him to stop exactly where he is.

"don't you dare come near me," shame rises in your throat and you feel flushed as hell. the heats on the back of your neck, tinging your cheeks in a rosy fire of embarrassment. "god, how could i have been so fucking wrong?" your voice stretches out with a strain and you take a step back in defeat, "i knew i was in over my head," and then you decide no. this is not a pity party for one, you will not take the blame. you were stood up!

"yeah!" you shout with a growl and the two of them look between themselves in concern, unsure of how to approach you.

"honey, wait," a warm and heavy wrist reaches out to grab your arm as you make a sharp turn on your heel- ready to end this night of drunken shame and theatrics.

"oh i did!" you fight the empty laugh with a scoff, "for a whole hour, no texts no calls, nothing," your voice gets quieter, thudding in clark's chest like warning signals blaring disasterously. this is all on him, he thinks. he's fucked up majorly.

you shrug yourself out of his hold, throwing your small purse in the direction of the two of them and hobble away in a huff. the stiletto heels swelling at your ankles as you shift the weight. the air is heavy as you leave it and face the chill of the outside air swimming around you.

the walk back to your apartment isn't far- you live pretty close to lois and when you reach your door, you sigh heavily. leaning your head onto the wooden frame, and as the tears start to well up all over again you bite them back down. in your fit, throwing your purse at the two traitors you forgot that you left your phone and your keys in there. however, sober you is smarter and you use your excellently hidden spare key to unlock the door and crash inside.

it's safer in your home- no one can reach you here, you think. the kitten heels are abandoned at the entryway, and your body collapses straight onto the sofa, not even making it to your bed before sleep chases you and claims to you a life that was kinder to you, where you ate donuts for breakfast and didn't gain a pound, wrote about things that interested you instead of the latest shopping trends and where you could fall asleep in the arms of someone who let you in all the way and just liked you back enough to choose you first.

...

he softly places your purse on your desk infront of you, shifting his weight back and forth, rocking gently on his feet as he waits behind your chair. at 6'4, his height looms over your area, like a cool of shade on a warm summer day, you normally welcome his presence instantly. usually you notice him in a second, with a soft sweet smile in which your nose scrunches a "good morning" and clark kent knows the day is going to be a good one.

instead, he's met with silence.

pure, heavy, lonely silence.

you were thirty four minutes late this morning- he was absolutely counting as he watched the door open and close, hoping it'd be who'd pass in. and when you did you were quieter than usual, hair tied in a messy knot at the back of your head, glasses perched on the bridge of your nose and the same damn yellow cardigan wraps around your frame. only today it sits on top of a black satin slip that sways in the breeze as you take the furthest seat from him. he's instantly tortured with the memories of last night, how undeserving he was to see you in such a fragile but gorgeous state and he blew it completely.

your eyes narrow in on the purse to the side of your computer.

he watches carefully as you poke your tongue in your cheek in thought and prays like hell that you'll just say anything. instead what he soaks up is your snail- like movements who takes all the time in the world to open your purse, not bother checking whether all your things are still there but unlocking your phone.

"i charged it," he has to clear his throat but the earnest rumble still peeks through. you nod slowly, switching it off within a moment and letting it clutter on your desk with a gentle thud- a careless offhanded movement and he winces.

he still waits, hoping you'll throw another crumb his way. he tries not to let the fact that you've not touched the cup of coffee he left steaming at your desk this morning sting his chest like you've poured gasoline over his heart and are just waiting to set it alight.

"not hungry?" he asks, fighting back a stutter. you look over to the muffin he left by the side of your mug and then back at him, a bored expression on your face and clark wishes he could make this whole thing right again. it was a misunderstanding- hard to explain to someone who's drunk- not that he'd ever blame you. it was his fault for getting caught up in his interview with lois he didn't realise the time. he planned this date, he knew about it, scheduled it weeks in advance and he had let it all go to shit because there was someone out there who knew him. and that changed everything, scared him more than anything.

but seeing you so detached, god that's got to top the list for sure.

"no thanks," you deliver flatly, turning your attention back to the screen. your fingers hover lazily over the keyboard and in the reflection of your glasses, clark can still see his reflection fading to the background.

"listen, about last night-" he starts the story he's practises over and over again with great precision but the nerves in his stomach threaten to rip him open still.

"i said no thanks," you repeat more firmly, "look i get it, you're not interested and it's my fault for dragging this on but for the love of god, please don't make this any more awkward for me i will actually die," you don't take your eyes off the screen once but your fingers are frozen. no words typed out but everything said in the open.

"that's so far from the truth-" he begins and you cut him off with a glare sent with pure edge. he stands firm and watches the ice melt with a softened stare. he thinks he has you for a moment and then all the light fades from his eyes when you give him a reassuring nod.

"clark, it's okay. please just go now," and just like that, your focus is taken back to your computer screen and clark is frozen behind you. he stands for a couple more seconds before jimmy places two hands at his broad shoulders and diverts him away.

"i don't know what you did kent, but it's best to wait this out maybe?" he suggests but clark's mind screams the opposite. he has to fix this and quick or the best thing to happen to his life is going to disappear- and he would've just let it all happen.

...

lois gives him a nod across the room and he delivers one exactly the same. at his side, jimmy crosses his fingers and says a prayer which clark thanks him quietly before getting up and walking with such stealth a few feet behind you.

it's lunch time- later than you usually take it but you've grabbed your work bag and have it slunched over your shoulder and make way to the elevator. clark keeps his steps purposefully measured- slower than yours but quick enough to keep up with your momentum. he stops at your side and presses the button to call for the elevator and feels you still beside him.

it's comical how statue-eque you've transformed that clark has to look extra closely to check the rise and fall of your chest to make sure you're breathing.

"hey, do you wanna grab a bite fro-" he can hardly get the question out before you've darted in the direction of the stairwell, taking off at such an incredible speed that clark has to beg for a few huffs of breaths to keep going.

"honey!" he calls out and growls lowly when you do not pause for a single second, jumping down the flights of stairs like each step is burnt straight from hell. clark uses the last of his strength and ounce of caffeine to pull through getting slighter ahead of you and knocks you against the wall.

his hand shoots out in a razor sharp reflex, cushioning your head from where it was moments from meeting the wall as the other pushes itself gently into your abdomen, holding you still.

"stop running from me please," his voice is dangerously low, a plead heavy in the subtle vibrations

"oh," you whisper stupidly at the hand placement, heating pooling in your stomach at the sudden proximity. you hate yourself for how easy it is for him to break your stony resolve. you planned to give him a whole day's worth of the silent treatment but had already broken your pact by charging your stupid phone like a nice human being. ugh.

he stumbles out an apology and pulls back gently, enough to give you some more room to breathe. his hand covering your stomach travels to the side of your hip instead and squeezes it gently in comfort.

"i'm sorry," he whispers, hanging his head low. "lois and i got paired for a new article and we just ran over time. it was my fault, i thought i'd make it to you on time but as we got deeper in the work i forgot to even call or text and," he breathes out slower, "i'm worried i've blown this all because i'm fucking stupid."

his breaths are heavy, slicing the air as it settles thicker with emotions and regrets of last night.

"so you and lois are not?" you can't get the words out and he shakes his head immediately.

"no," he firmly puts, "god, no," theres more emphasis this time, "she's amazing but she's not you. there's only ever been you- there will only ever be you and it fucking kills me that you thought i wasn't interested anymore. honey you hang the stars in my sky and rotate the damn earth, it could never not be you," he whispers again and you nod, staring straight into those gentle eyes.

"i got all pretty for you," your voice cracks, the shards worming its way and seeping through clark's heart. he watches how your eyes glass with a fresh batch of tears and he reaches out to catch the strays intimately, fingers cupping your jaw and he presses his forehead against yours.

"i know baby, and god i'll be sorry till i die,"

"bit dramatic," you ease to break the tension and he huffs out a laugh, "but i appreciate it nonetheless."

"let me make it up to you?" he asks hopeful and you bite your lip, the insecurity and fear of being left behind still making its way into your bones. he can feel that you're inside your own head and curses himself for making you feel this way.

"i don't know clark," you get out honestly, "i felt real stupid sitting there, you also owe me fifty bucks for all that wine," you face the floor, unable to keep eye contact.

he uses a finger to hook under your chin and lift your eyes to him, "i broke your trust," he speaks gently, as if being any louder might scare you away, "i'm so sorry for making you feel forgotten and alone last night, you are important to me more than anything and i'll show it to you. i'll prove it to you, i'm here," he pleads and you sigh, resting your head into his chest and he melts under your touch.

"one chance," your voice heats at his heart. "as long as you promise to delete all those voicemails- i went a little bit overboard," and you flush with sniffle of embarrassment once more. he promises with a chuckle and soft kiss to your temple, holding you in the stairwell for moments that stretch into an eternity.

you don't know that clark cried so hard to each voicemail, he threw his phone in anger, almost breaking it. that he followed you home last night from a distance to make sure you made it back home safe even though he was probably the last person you'd have wanted to see. you don't know that now as you stand in his arms, every bit of honour he has to fight and hang on to desperately when he wants nothing more than to lean down and kiss you stupidly.

he wants forever with you.

and he'll spend the rest of his life working towards it- one dinner, three glasses of wine and eight raging voicemails at a time.

You thought that you’re bad at this.

You’re not actually. You’re one of Sevika’s most celebrated athletes. The afternoon sun was beating down on the field, sweat ran down your back and made your shirt stick to your skin. You felt gross, sweaty and in desperate need for a shower.

But that could wait for now.

Sevika stood close by the lane, watching your form with her sharp silver eyes which only looked even more gorgeous under the sun. The sunlight glinted on her pretty eyes and highlighted the natural glow of her brown, sun-kissed skin.

“Focus.” You told yourself. “She’s your fucking coach, dude. Get a grip.”

Maybe it was because you were staring at Sevika too much, or thinking about her too much. Whichever it was— you got your karma for it.

CLANG!

You winced, trail leg clipping the hurdle.

“Pretend you didn’t see that!” You called over to Sevika and kept running.

Sevika rolled her eyes and sighed deeply, like you’d disappointed her ancestors.

“Again!” She barked the order out, sounding so intimidating when she did that you almost flinched.

“Yes, Coach…”

This time you thought you’d done it perfectly. You ran again, then made for the jump— oops. Too high?

“You’re trying to jump, not fly.” Sevika said as you made it back to the starting line.

“Sorry…”

“Where’s your head at?” She tossed a water bottle at you.

You grabbed it with both hands, giving her a grateful and apologetic smile, “dunno… just not in top form today, I guess.”

“You’re an athlete, one of my best. You don’t get to schedule days for whack performance. Every day should be a try to be better than the last.”

You quietly drank your water, cheeks flaming slightly with embarrassment. Of course, she’d say that.

Look at the muscles on her! She’d never have issues with either jumping too high or clipping the hurdle. Hell, if her leg clipped the hurdle, the thing would probably turn to ash while she ran on!

Her words pulled you back from your train of thoughts—

“Again.”

You wanted to roll your eyes but you obeyed— you knew she was just trying to look out for you. But how the hell were you supposed to focus when Sevika’s biceps looked as delicious as they did?

“Focus.” You told yourself.

Run. The moment you get close, this time you slow down a little— maybe because you were trying to figure out the right bit of jump, the right bit of momentum— Sevika’s voice almost gives you a heart attack.

“Stop slowing down!”

Your eyes widened slightly, you gathered speed again and then— you did it.

A perfect hurdle.

Sevika smiled, “alright, great. Now give me six reps.”

Way to shatter your joy and pride.

Despite what you thought, you dragged your feet to the starting line, and did just as Sevika asked. By the time you were done, most other athletes had already cleared out of the field. Sweat ran down your temple which you wiped with the back of your hand hastily.

“Y’did good.” Sevika finally said, walking up to you, “but you’ve made mistakes today that you don’t make normally. That’s made us lose a lot of time.”

“Yeah… I know.”

“Knowing isn’t gonna solve the issue at hand.” She put one hand on your shoulder.

Fuck, her hand was large in comparison to you. You swallowed thickly and looked at her. Her silver eyes laced with concern looked back at you.

“Get whatever it is you’ve got going on together. Tomorrow we’ll do both hurdles and long jumps, and we can’t waste time like this. Conference championship’s comin’ up.”

You nodded, “understood.”

“Good.” She let go of your shoulder. “Get home safe, kiddo. And make sure t’eat and I better see you doin’ your best tomorrow.”

You smiled, “will do, Coach!”

Sevika offered you the slightest of a friendly smile and a final nod before she turned. You let out a deep breath you hadn’t realised you’d been holding and walked towards the locker room to change up.

She could really be scary sometimes when she was coaching but you knew she had your best interests at heart. You’d never thought you’d get so tangled into sports before, but Sevika’s always made you feel like you belonged there.

And she was sweet when situation demanded it.

As you changed into clean clothes, you noticed it— a dark bruise blooming on your ankle.

“Shit. That’s gonna be a bitch tomorrow.” You murmured, not bothering to look at it twice when you pulled your socks over and wore your shoes.

-

The next day your performance was flawless. Every jump, every hurdle— you tackled it all until you were left sweaty, water bottle in hand, hair slightly dishevelled, but you had a big smile on your face. Sevika did too.

Which was honestly the biggest win of the day.

“You’ve done a great job today,” she finally said after a pause, “I can tell you’ve taken this seriously.”

“I’ve just— y’know— put my head in the game,” you said awkwardly punching the air.

Why did you feel so lame now that she was finally having a decent conversation with you? Fuck. Sevika chuckled, shifting one hand on her hip.

“If your performance goes on like this, there ain’t no doubt you’ll win the conference championship.”

“That’s… reassuring.” you said quietly, “is there… anything else I should be? I wanna make sure I’ve got this in the bag.”

Sevika’s eyes warmed slightly. Just to see that you care about the championship just as much as she does, it was refreshing.

Sevika nodded with a smile, “I’ll text you a list later, okay?”

“Yeah, okay, thank you, Coach.”

Sevika just nodded, the smile still on her face before she picked up her bag, and swung it over her shoulder.

“Get home safe, kiddo.”

“Y— you too!”

Just before Sevika turned— she saw it. You flinched as you pulled your sock down to check on the bruise on your ankle. It had been throbbing all afternoon— the fabric of your sock rubbing against the already bruised skin hadn’t helped especially under the heat of the sun.

Sevika’s eyebrows furrowed, eyes searching for the cause of pain on your face— the moment she saw the bruise on your ankle, she was marching up to you in only a few long strides.

“What the hell’s that?”

“It’s nothing! Just a little bruising when I hit the—”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” She demanded.

“I didn’t think it was a big deal! I— it doesn’t even hurt—!”

“It is SO a big deal!”

Sevika looked genuinely angry. Not really at you. But in fact, you got hurt during one of her coaching sessions and she never knew.

You stared at her expression, your mouth opening and closing a few times before you finally mastered the courage to mumble;

“I’m sorry.”

Sevika didn’t respond to your apology. She dropped to one knee and guided your foot to rest on her knee. “Let me see,” she murmured.

Gentle hands pried your sock down to reveal the dark bruise and the angry swell around the ankle. She didn’t prod too hard, she simply observed the state of the injury.

“You’re not fit to be walking.” She said instantly and slowly guided your foot back down, “I’m takin’ y’to the nurse.”

“There’s no need for—!”

“I need to know if you’re even cleared for training.”

You sighed softly, “okay, I can limp there—”

Before you even finished saying that, Sevika’s hand was around the back of your knees and your back. She swept you right off your feet, carrying you bridal style towards the infirmary.

Your face burnt. You were so close you could smell her— sweat, skin and the faint smell of her cologne.

You had to fight the grin off your face or she’d probably drop you on the field right there.

The nurse’s office smelled faintly of disinfectant and comfort. There were a couple beds separated by thin curtains and a nurse behind the desk who seemed to be writing a prescription to another student.

Sevika slowly placed you on one of the beds, and stayed close by, staring at the nurse so intensely the poor woman started writing faster. She ripped the page off and handed it to the student with a little smile. The student thanked her and walked out.

The woman walked towards you, “what seems to be the issue, dear?”

Before you could speak, Sevika did.

“We’ve been practicing since yesterday and this one got a bruise on her ankle, and thought it wasn’t a big deal, now she’s wincing, and it’s swollen up and bruised.”

The nurse blinked. “Okay… let me see the ankle, dear.”

You pulled your sock down and tossed your shoe down on the floor so the nurse could have a look. By the look of her face, it didn’t seem very good.

“Can you put pressure on it?”

You moved your leg down, trying to shift your weight down on your foot. “Yeah. It doesn’t really hurt when I move. The pain’s outside, not really inside.”

“Alright, that’s good,” the nurse said, “let me see,” she gently guided your foot back in her hands, rotating it to make sure you didn’t twist your ankle.

Once she was sure you could bear weight down on the foot and flex the joint without being in pain, she nodded to herself and straightened.

“Don’t worry, Sevika, it’s just a little bruising that needs ice.”

Sevika exhaled deeply, relieved.

You were now biting the inside of your cheek, trying not to break into a fit of giggles.

Sevika was just so hot.

Later, she ensured you were safely dropped off home before she returned home herself. You were giggly even after you got home, you could smell a faint hint of her cologne on your clothes now.

Oh, you’d never wash this shirt.

-

The day of the championship hit you like a truck. You’d practiced your ass for this day but you were a nervous wreck.

Sevika texted you multiple times before you showed up, making sure you were eating enough— not too much, not too less. Every five minutes, she was asking you “y’good?” In a low voice that suggested nothing but raw care.

You hadn’t ever seen this side of hers.

But even if you were a sucker for your super hot coach, right now you were sweating cold sweat.

You weren’t exactly nervous. You were afraid. Afraid of doing so bad that you disappoint everyone around yourself. But not even that scared you all that much. Disappointing yourself did.

That was your worst fear right now.

“Hey,” Sevika sat down next to you in the locker room, “you gotta keep your head fresh, okay? Winning’s not your goal right now. Keeping your head in the game is.”

You smiled faintly. “I know.” A pause. “Hey, Coach. Are you gonna be mad if I don’t win?”

Sevika opened her mouth to answer that, but then thought against it.

“Hmm… what do you think?”

You shyly looked up.

“I think if I lose, you won’t ever wanna see my face again.”

Sevika barked a short laugh, “you’re ridiculous, y’know?”

Your cheeks flushed more. Sevika turned to fully face you.

“How about instead of worryin’ about whether I wanna see your face or not, you worry about doin’ all those hurdles and jumps right, okay?”

“That doesn’t answer my question…” you mumbled stubbornly.

Sevika sighed and got up.

“You ask too many questions anyway.”

A moment of silence as she stares into nothingness silently.

“I’m not gonna be mad.”

You grinned.

“That doesn’t mean you’re gonna flunk this shit.”

You giggled. “Don’t worry, Coach, I got this!”

-

You did exactly as you had trained the past few weeks. Your lungs burnt, your muscles ached but you pushed yourself to your absolute limits. So when the weight of the medal around your neck settled, you looked.

You looked for Sevika.

“You clipped the seventh hurdle.” She said, walking towards you slowly.

“I did not!”

She laughed and tossed a bottle of water at you. You caught it, but didn’t drink from it.

“Are you… proud of me?”

Sevika shoved her hands in her pockets, staring at you with an expression that said “you really gonna make me say that out loud?” Then with a pained groan, she murmured;

“Yeah. M’proud of you, kiddo.”

You smiled, wide and bright.

You wanted to thank her but the words didn’t come so instead, you flung yourself into her arms in a tight hug.

Sevika— entirely caught off guard— stumbled a little but didn’t push you off. Instead, you felt her arms wrapping around you in a loose embrace. She rubbed her hand down your back soothingly, it almost made you shiver.

“Thank you… for everything.” You mumbled into her shoulder.

She grunted in response.

For a few seconds, there was just comfortable silence between you both before you eventually parted yourself from the hug. You wanted to cry in happiness, your face hurt from how much you had been smiling but you were genuinely just so content.

“Do you remember Coach had promised a treat if even one of us gets a medal?” One of your track friends said.

Your eyes twinkled with mischievous amusement. “Yes! Oh, we have to ask her!”

That’s how you ended up there— sitting in a half-full restaurant with your friends. Sevika sat on the opposite side, watching your friends diving head first into gossip.

“So, what are you doing after this?” Sevika asked you.

You looked up, slightly shocked she initiated the conversation, “nothing, I honestly didn’t think I’d win, I’m just really shocked, I guess.”

“That’s valid. So, you’re tellin’ me you’re my star athlete and winning wasn’t even on your roster for the future?”

“Yeah…”

“You’re one oddball, alright.”

You laughed softly, a red hue developing on your cheeks.

“Yeah, I get that a lot. I don’t know if I wanna approach athletics as a profession. I love doing what I do, but… I’m not sure.”

“Okay, that’s understandable. You do have talent but if that’s not what you’re willing to do, then you should simply do whatever y’wanna really do.”

“Mhm, I’ve been leaning more towards art.”

“Art?”

“Yeah, I know. A bit of a shocker. None of my friends really care to listen but I actually love—”

“—sketching. I know.”

You stared at her. Sevika, realising she’d just given herself away, quickly tried to come up with an excuse, but only could stammer. She could get so cute when she was flustered.

“How did you know about that?” You smiled faintly.

“I’ve seen the— y’know— pencil smudges on your hand. Those aren’t normal pencils. That’s charcoal pencil smudges.”

“You noticed…”

“I’m your coach, noticing’s kinda part of the job.”

“Well, you were my coach.”

“Yeah… were.”

Awkward silence swallowed the air. Sevika checked her phone quietly. You bit the inside of your cheeks and bounced your leg.

Then, you asked, “can I ask you a personal question?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you ever… dated a student after they graduated?”

“That’s a very weird question to ask.”

“I just—”

“That also right when you’re graduating.”

Your cheeks went bright red. Sevika smirked slightly.

“This isn’t the appropriate place to have that talk.”

“But—”

Sevika nodded very subtly towards your friends who were busy in their own chatter. You nodded a “yes”.

But she didn’t downright reject you… that must count towards something, right?

After Sevika very generously treated you and the entire track team, they all eventually started leaving. Right after the last track team member left, you looked at Sevika.

She got up without even looking at you. “My car.” She said, simply.

You got up, too and followed her out and into the car. She sat at the driver’s side, quietly pulling the seatbelt over her chest. You watched her quietly before she revved out of the parking spot.

What were you even supposed to say?

“So…” you began.

“So?”

Your brain blanked.

“So you never answered my question.”

“You have really weird questions.” Sevika deflected.

“... That’s still not an answer.”

She looked like she wanted to disappear. Not in a bad way. In an awkward way.

“Hey,” you turned a little to look at her. “If you wanna reject me, you can, I’m not gonna—”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well, you’re not saying the opposite either!”

“What is the opposite?”

“... Ummm,” you didn’t know how to phrase it.

In your head, it sounded bold— you like me, so we date. But in reality, it was harder to say.

“Umm?”

“Just—! Tell me how you feel,” you managed out.

“How I feel…?”

Sevika fell silent. Not because she didn’t have feelings for you. But because in a very, very long time someone was asking her about her feelings and the idea of that struck a deep, raw part in her that no one night stand ever did.

She stared ahead at the road, refusing to let herself get emotional over something so trivial. She needed to think her response through carefully.

“I feel a lot of things.”

You wanted to facepalm. “I’m aware.”

The car came to a halt as Sevika parked it by the side of the road. She looked at you.

“You really wanna make me say the most ridiculous things ever.”

Your lips twitched in a smile.

“Do those words include “I like you too”?”

Sevika stared at you quietly, her face was an evident answer— yes.

“C’mere.”

She kissed you.

It was sweet. She leaned over the middle and kissed you, her hand holding the side of your face to support your face as she deepened the kiss. You kissed back, holding her face with both hands. Your hands were cold with nervousness, her face was warm.

You both parted for a second.

“You’ve wanted this for a while, haven’t you?” Sevika asked.

“Just a little…”

“I know.”

“But—”

“You gawked at me like you’d never seen a woman before.”

“You’re just hot.”

That got Sevika to blush. She looked away, “pfft, ridiculous shit.”

“But you are!”

Sevika didn’t say anything, but you saw the way she resisted a smile, and continued the drive back home.

-

Sevika was supposed to drop you off. That’s it. When the car parked, you looked over at her. None of the two of you were ready to say goodbye.

“So…” you murmured, the awkwardness filling the air with suffocating silence.

“Yeah…”

“I’m gonna— uh— go inside…”

Sevika nodded quietly. You grabbed the door handle and opened it, stepping outside but the moment one of your feet landed on the concrete— Sevika grabbed your other hand and tugged lightly.

“Don’t… go yet.”

You looked at her, confusion and subtle shock in your eyes, then closed the door. You looked at her.

“Are you gonna do something?”

“Hold on, I’m… nervous.”

Your eyebrows rose so high they were at risk of disappearing into your hairline, “you? Nervous?”

“Yeah, fuck off, I’m allowed to feel nervous!” She said, face flushing.

“Yeah, of course. Never said you weren’t. I just never saw you being nervous. On the field, you’re always so confident. You know what you’re doing and—”

“Well, this ain’t the field, is it?”

You gulped.

“Mhm… so there are no rules. No professionalism.”

A moment of silence.

“Do you wanna kiss me again?”

“Fuck yeah.” She replied immediately and pulled you in for another kiss.

This time she pulled you over her lap. You climbed over the middle and settled on her thick thighs, making yourself comfortable as your lips remained linked with hers.

Sevika’s hand moved in your hair, securing your place against her mouth. Her eyes opened for a second as she drank in the sight of you there on her lap with your lips pressed against her. Things were so intimate and to think a couple months ago the only relationship you both had was settled in training schedules.

“You’re good at this.” you mumbled when you both parted for air.

Sevika raised a brow. “I’m older.”

“That too.”

“That a problem?”

“No, ma’am.” You smiled. “Quite the opposite.”

“Yeah? You prefer older?” Sevika’s lip twitched in a smirk. Devious almost.

“I prefer… mature.”

“Sure, princess.”

Need swelled between you both. There was little to no distance between you and her. That wasn’t even the best part. The best part was the way she looked at you. All this time you’d both spent on the field, she only looked at you how a coach should look at their team player.

But now she looked at you differently.

She looked at you like you meant something.

Like your were something precious she wants to hold forever and never let go. Like you were the greatest gift from God.

She saw how your thighs squeezed together.

“Needy girl.” She mumbled, grabbing the side of your thighs with one hand and giving it a little squeeze.

You couldn’t help the squeak-like sound that escaped you, eyes wide, face red.

“Sevika…”

Sevika’s smirk warmed in a way you hadn’t ever seen before, as if just calling her by her name was enough to melt something in her heart.

“There you go, I like my name on your tongue.”

“You like it…?”

“Yeah, don’t ever stop.”

“I won’t,” you wrapped your arms around her, pressing your forehead against hers, “unless you decide to coach me again…” you joked.

She rolled her eyes. “Never again.”

“Hey, I was a solid runner.”

“Maybe.” Sevika let her nose brush against yours. “But you’re horrible at keeping it in your pants.”

“Hey—!” You swatted her playfully.

“Oh, you wound me!” Sevika said dramatically, clutching her heart.

You laughed heartily.

Who would have thought things would take such a pleasant turn?

Your hand rested against the middle of her chest. “So what are we now?”

“I guess we can still figure that out.” Sevika murmured, “let’s not jump to conclusions overnight.”

“Yeah…” you looked at her through your lashes, shy almost, “I’d like that.”

Vi’s eyes widen in exaggerated offense. She presses a hand to her chest and shakes her head, laughing without sound. You can’t help but smile.

“I deserve that,” she mouths slowly so you can read her lips. “But I promise I’ll get better.”

She points at your phone.

“May I?”

You nod and type your order. She reads it carefully, nods several times, and walks away, glancing back at you once more before turning around.

From that day on, Vi always serves you.

Sometimes with little notes.

Coffee with milk or black today?

With milk. Thanks.

Sometimes with her phone.

It’s quiet today.

Are you staying for a while?

She starts sitting with you when there are no customers. She rests her elbows on the table, watching you type as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world.

“You talk fast,” she comments one day. “Well, you type fast.”

You shrug.

It’s easier than signing.

Vi nods. She watches you closely, like she’s trying to understand you beyond words.

The next day she approaches you nervously.

She sits across from you and places her phone on the table. On the screen, a paused video reads: “Sign Language — Basic Level.”

“I’ve been practicing,” she says, articulating gently.

She lifts her hands.

HELLO. YOU.

It’s not right. Not quite.

You laugh, covering your mouth.

“Hey,” she says, smiling. “Don’t laugh… okay, laugh. But help me.”

From then on, some afternoons are just that: Vi practicing signs with you, frowning, repeating them over and over.

“Like this?” she asks, moving her hands.

You shake your head.

“Like this?”

You shake your head again.

She sighs.

“I’m going to learn. I promise.”

And you believe her.

You start going out together.

Long walks where Vi speaks slowly so you can read her lips. Endless messages when you get home. Simple dates: coffee, takeout, sitting together without needing noise.

One night, after the café has closed, you’re alone at your usual table. The lights are low. Vi plays with a napkin, folding and unfolding it.

She looks at you.

“I want to tell you something,” she mouths.

She raises her hands. This time they don’t shake. Her movements are slow, deliberate.

CAN I…

She hesitates, but continues.

…KISS YOU?

Your chest tightens.

You smile and nod.

Vi leans in slowly, as if afraid of startling you. She stops a centimeter from your lips, searching your eyes one last time. When you lean toward her, the kiss happens.

It’s soft. Careful. Her lips are warm, slightly trembling. Vi doesn’t move right away, she waits, giving you space. When you respond, she exhales against your mouth and kisses you again, a little firmer, a little more confident.

There’s no rush. Just the way her hands rest carefully at your sides, as if you’re something fragile and precious at the same time. When she pulls back, she rests her forehead against yours, breathing deeply.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

And she says it in sign language too.

THANK YOU.

This time, perfectly.

And you know, without needing to hear anything, that Vi learned a whole new language just to find you.

And that she has no intention of leaving.

“How are you? Good?” he asks, tilting his masked head at you to show that he’s asking a question. Conversations with someone who doesn’t speak the same language as you are very hard without facial cues, Peter has come to learn. He hopes to rectify that today.

“Good,” you say. He’s not sure if you mean that or if you’re just repeating the last word he said, but he takes it.

“Okay, good! Good to go up? Up.” He emphasizes his words with a finger pointing skyward. Your brows furrow and you look up at the bridge he’s currently suspended from with a healthy amount of suspicion. Your response is merely a wary hum. 

You ask him something in your own language, gesturing at his suit and mask and web before wrapping your arms around yourself protectively. 

“It’ll be okay,” he tells you, “I’m very strong, and I don’t even mean that as a brag. I won’t let anything happen to you. We’ll be safe; both of us.” 

No one will be able to see either of you from one of the platforms under the bridge. 

Something about his tone must convince you, though, because you shift ever closer to him in the water.

Peter lowers himself up to the waist in the water and fights against the urge to squeal like a child at the temperature as he encourages you towards him.

“Okay? You’re okay. Hang on here.” He positions your arms one at a time around his neck. “Tight, okay? Tight.” 

After he demonstrates holding tight by squeezing your waist, he’s zipping the two of you up towards the underbelly of Brooklyn Bridge. 

You see…Peter Parker has found a mermaid. Like…an actual aquatic creature with humanoid features! 

One night – well, early morning, really – when he was on patrol, he heard shouting. He was headed towards the boardwalk when he found a group of guys running in the opposite direction he was headed. 

That’s where he found you, leaning on the edge of the walkway by your elbows, cooing over a pitifully wet looking kitten as it ate some kind of minnows or something from the wooden planks beneath it. 

“Hey! Are you okay?” He asked, hurrying towards what appeared to be a girl who had fallen off of the boardwalk. “Come on, I’ll help you out.”

All he managed to do, though, was startle both you and the kitten; the soggy little thing took off into a few bushes near the Fulton Ferry picnic grove, and you sank beneath the surface of the water. So did Peter’s stomach.

Certain you were drowning, Peter dove in after you.

He nearly drowned, though, and you had to save him; pushing him back above the water and towards the boardwalk where he ripped the water-logged mask depriving him of air from his face.

“What the fuck!?” he asked breathlessly once he had a firm grasp of the rung of a ladder.

You shied away from him again; wearing a contrite expression as you murmured what sounded like an apology in a language Peter didn’t understand. 

“What are you doing in the water?” 

You looked down at the river; you knew the word water. 

“Did you fall?” 

You looked at him like he was dumb, expression screaming no, you just fell. 

“Land,” you said, pointing at the boardwalk. “Go.” This time, you pointed at his legs. 

“Yeah… I…go on land. Do you…not go on land?” 

You said something else that Peter didn’t catch before you lifted your bottom half up, poking a knee joint and a fin out of the water.

You were a fucking scientific curiosity, and Peter has since managed to split his time between college, patrolling, helping out Aunt May, and hanging out with you.

Today, hanging is sort of literal.

You’re very displeased with him, clinging to the beams of the bridge with a white knuckled grip as you glare at the man who put you there.

He laughs at you. “What?” 

You don’t answer, leaning your head back and looking up at the bottom of the roadway as you work to control your breathing. Peter takes pity on you and secures you to the architecture with some webbing before laying a few of the throw blankets he’d packed over your frame and tucking them in underneath you. 

“Okay?” 

Your eyes flit uncertainly between his hands as they work and his face. “Okay…”

He laughs again. “Don’t sound so certain.” 

You grumble something at him in your own language. 

Peter has learned a number of things about you in the time since the two of you met. 

Those men had thrown the kitten into the East River. Fortunately for the kitten and unfortunately for those men, you were there, which saw the group getting rocks from the river bed flung at them and a very agitated aquatic creature shouting mermish profanities. Served them right. 

You tend to hang around the ferry terminal and a few office buildings which means you’ve picked up some English. Very New York English, but enough that Peter has managed to befriend you. 

Peter has also learned that the way to a mermaid girl’s heart is the same as the way to get to a human girl’s heart; food. 

He pulls out a bag of Cheetos from his bag and gives it a shake, and whatever beef you had with him about heights and the bottom of the Brooklyn Bridge are forgotten when you make grabby hands and excited trilling sounds. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he laughs, tossing them to you. He pulls off his mask and covers his now damp bottom half with a blanket of his own as he pulls out his flash cards. 

“What?” You ask around a mouthful of cheese dust. He looks up to find you peering at the cards in his hands. 

“This?” he asks, holding them up. You nod eagerly. “This is how I’m going to convince you to let me take you home.” 

Your brows furrow. “Home?” 

Peter takes a moment to sift through his flashcards before pulling out the one he was looking for; a picture of a house. 

“House,” he explains. “Home.” 

You repeat the words back to him before popping another chip in your mouth. 

He doesn’t bother explaining that it would involve putting you in his bathtub until he completes his desired measurements and examinations before he pulls out a different flashcard; one with a picture of a mermaid. You gasp excitedly, pointing at yourself. 

“Yeah! That’s you!” he laughs, watching your fin twitch in a way he imagines might be you wiggling your toes at him. 

You say what he believes might be mermaid in your language. 

“Mermaid.”

“Mermaid,” you murmur back at him, eyes shy until Peter praises you, and then they brighten. 

Then you point at him.

“Me?”

“You,” you try, gesturing to his legs and then to his mask and then to the webs he’s secured you in, “son of a bitch?”

That’s what Peter means when he says you have a very New Yorker understanding of English. Apparently, listening to taxi drivers shout get off the road you son of a bitch has led you to believe that humans are simply called son-of-a-bitches. You can clearly see that Peter is not a regular son of a bitch, though. His smart girl. 

Peter hums thoughtfully as he sifts through his cards. “I’m not sure there’s a good explanation for me, lovely.” 

“Lovely,” you murmur, forcing Peter’s eyes to return to you as he smiles.

“You are lovely,” he tells you honestly, if only because you don’t really know what he’s saying. 

Peter pulls out two cards; one of a man and one of a spider. He puts the two together like a compound-word-turned-image. 

“Spider,” he says, pointing at the arachnid, “Man,” he adds, pointing at the human male. 

“Spider-Man,” he explains, holding up his mask. 

“Oh.”

“But-” he shows you the mask and then shoves it behind his back, showing you his now empty hands “-no mask means Peter.” 

“Peter.”

“Yes!” He congratulates. “I am Peter.” 

“Am Peter,” you repeat.

“Who are you?”

“Me?” 

He beams at you. “Yeah,”

You hum thoughtfully, “Lovely?” 

Peter’s laugh echoes off of the bridge. “Yes, you’re lovely. Very lovely. But what’s your name?” 

He points at his own chest again, “name, Peter.” 

Your face lights up in recognition. “Name! Name, Y/N.” 

He repeats it back to you and you bounce in your seat in response, happily helping yourself to more chips. 

“Lovely,” you tell him again.

“You can be lovely. Do you want me to call you lovely?” 

“Yeah.” Another New Yorkerism you picked up. “Thanks.” 

Peter laughs. “You’re very welcome, lovely.”

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀volleyballer satoru is instantly captivated by you — the team's outside hitter who seems to have a massive fire burning deep inside you. you're incredibly aggressive, nothing like he's ever seen before（even daring to give sukuna, their libero, a run for his money!）each time you spike, the ball hits the ground with a thud that echoes across the whole court, so loud that he swears he can feel the vibrations from the impact inside his body.

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀𓏲ּꪆ ࿐ throughout the rest of the match, he only has eyes for you. watching the way you smash the ball on the court with such ferocity and screaming so boisterously at every win; the way you're hyping up all your teammates with this aggressiveness that comes off as intimidating to the opponents but not to your team who are just as riled up as you are; the way your eyes are blazing with this fire that can even be felt all the way from the stands where he sits. he is so taken with you from that day forward.

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀volleyballer satoru keeps sneaking peeks of you in practice. and you are just as much of a beast in practice as you are in a match. he found out that you're the captain just like he is and despite your aggressive playing style, you are an incredibly supportive leader. sure, you scold them when they make a mistake or if someone is slacking off but it's always followed up with advice and constructive feedback. he just feels himself admiring you more and more with each passing day.

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀volleyballer satoru finally plucks up the courage one day to talk to you after your practice. he's been peeking for so long, he's practically got your team's routine and practice timings memorised. he waits until you walk out of the gym, waving goodbye to your friends and so he thinks this is the perfect time to approach you！

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀𓏲ּꪆ ࿐ "hiya." he greets you with that sweet smile of his. and honestly, he'd been preparing himself for you to be rather boyish or brash with him, considering your playing style on the court. but this wasn't at all what he was expecting . .

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀𓏲ּꪆ ࿐ your eyes go slightly wide as he stands in front of you, like a deer in headlights. he sees you clutching on to your bag a little bit tigher as you say in a soft voice, "hiya."

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀volleyballer satoru feels his heart flutter upon hearing your voice — so soft, so shy, and so sweet. nothing like he'd expected. a sweet girl like you that looks like she's going to massacre her opponents on the court? who spikes the ball so hard, there is a possibility it could explode from the sheer impact? yeah . . he wasn't expecting this at all but he just feels himself falling for you tenfold.

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀𓏲ּꪆ ࿐ "i saw your match the other day." he leans against the pillar, trying to act all cool and sauve though it's just a rouse to hide the fact that he feels like his knees feel like jello right now. "i thought you were super cool. you're a scary player . . in a good way, of course!" he mentally face palms himself at that.

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀𓏲ּꪆ ࿐ "oh, thank you." you smile at him, so cute and so kind. he prays his legs don't give out on him. "well . ." he clears his throat as he tries to find the proper words. "i think you're really cool. super pretty too," his cheeks flush when he says that, now avoiding eye contact with you. "so i was hoping if it'd be alright with you if we hung out sometime."

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀𓏲ּꪆ ࿐ you're quiet for a few moments, blinking up at him in shock. like he'd said something utterly ridiculous. oh gosh, he feels like a total idiot now — maybe you were already dating someone! i mean, how could you not be? or maybe you think he's a total creep for coming up to you like this? maybe he should have done this differently? before he lets his thoughts consume him, you reply softly, ". . like a date?"

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀𓏲ּꪆ ࿐ you're batting your lashes at him so prettily, a shy expression on your face. he clutches his shirt in an attempts to slow down his beating heart, but that's impossible when you look so cute! "if that's okay with you." he says, holding out his phone for you so that you can put your number in. and you take it, putting in your number and saving yourself in his contacts with a cute ">__<" besides your name.

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀volleyballer satoru does his best to keep his composure as you walk away, waving at him shyly as you go and reunite with your friends who seem to have been watching the whole thing unfold. he hears you giggling along with them, catching one more look at him before you leave with them. he finally lets him fall to the ground, clutching his heart as his face flushes a bright pink. oh man, you were already making him feel so giddy!

You were not Gotham’s lesson. You were its contradiction.

You walked into the lives of heroes with no cape, no crest, no ancestral oath or alien sun burning beneath your skin. You arrived with steady hands, tired eyes, and a reputation that made even gods go quiet.

You could heal anything. That was what everyone said.

The Justice League said it with reverence. The Titans said it with relief. The Outlaws said it with reckless gratitude. Young Justice said it like they had discovered a cheat code and decided not to read the terms of service.

Jon said you were “basically a miracle.”

Damian said miracles were unreliable.

You had smiled at him when he said it. Amused.

“Good thing I’m not a miracle, then,” you had replied.

He had disliked you immediately.

Not because you were wrong.

Because he wanted you to be.

The first time Damian let you heal him, he was twenty-one and old enough to know better.

It was not a serious injury. That was what he told himself. A fractured wrist after a fight with a metahuman trafficking cell near the docks. He had taken the hit redirecting a collapsing beam away from a child. The child survived. His wrist did not.

A favourable exchange.

You found him on a rooftop afterwards, attempting to secure a splint one-handed with the grim concentration of a man personally offended by gauze. You stood in front of him for five seconds before saying, “That wrap is a hate crime.”

Damian did not look up. “It is functional.”

“It is shaped like unresolved childhood trauma.”

His eyes lifted. You smiled mildly.

He stared. “You are bold for someone within throwing distance.”

“You’re injured.”

“You believe that protects you?”

“No. I believe your wrist is broken and your left-handed aim with medical tape is probably worse than you think.”

Damian’s jaw tightened. The worst part was that you were correct.

You stepped closer but did not reach for him.

That was unusual. Most people reached. Medics, especially. Even kind ones often forgot that kindness could still become an invasion if delivered without permission.

You held your hands at your sides.

“I can heal it,” you said.

“No.”

“Okay.”

He paused.

You did not argue. No persuasive speech. No moral lecture. No “you don’t have to be tough with me,” which was a phrase Damian loathed almost as much as “calm down.”

You simply accepted his answer and leaned against the roof access door.

Damian narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting.”

“For what?”

“To make sure you don’t pass out from pain while continuing your one-man war against compression bandages.”

“I will not pass out.”

“Great. Then this will be boring.”

The silence that followed should have annoyed him.

It did. But not only.

You watched the skyline instead of watching him. You gave him privacy without leaving him alone. It was a surprisingly difficult balance, and Damian hated that you managed it.

Eventually, his splint slipped. You did not comment.

His wrist throbbed hard enough that his vision flashed white at the edges. You still did not comment.

He exhaled sharply through his nose.

“Fine,” he said. You looked over. “I will permit your assistance.”

“Assistance with the splint or healing?”

He paused. You waited.

Damian looked at your hands. They were steady. Scarred in small places, though no injuries lingered long on you. He knew that much. Everyone knew that. You healed quickly. You healed others faster.

A miracle, Jon had called you. A risk, Damian thought.

“To heal,” he said finally.

You stepped toward him. Slowly. “May I touch your wrist?”

“Yes.”

Your fingers settled around the fracture. Warmth bloomed beneath your palm.

Damian prepared for pain. There was none.

The ache vanished. The bone slid back into place with a painless shift that should have been impossible. Swelling disappeared. Torn tissue knitted itself whole. His fingers, stiff seconds before, flexed freely.

He stared at his hand. There should have been consequences. There were always consequences.

You released him and took half a step back. Your own fingers curled briefly against your palm.

A twitch. Almost nothing.

Damian saw it. “What was that?”

You blinked. “What was what?”

“Your hand.”

“My hand exists. Very observant.”

He frowned.

You smiled. It was a practised smile.

He would understand that later.

At the time, he only knew that he disliked it.

Trust came slowly.

Damian preferred it that way. Trust that arrived too quickly was either foolishness or manipulation. Real trust was built like a fortress: stone by stone, inspected from every angle, reinforced after every storm.

You never rushed him. That was the first stone.

You respected every no. That was the second.

You remembered details he did not expect anyone to notice: that he preferred tea without sugar, that he hated being touched from behind, that Titus became restless during thunderstorms, that Damian’s right shoulder tightened before he admitted exhaustion.

You learned the names of his animals before you learned the gossip about his family. That was several stones at once.

“You brought treats,” Damian said the first time you visited the Manor, and Titus abandoned dignity to shove his massive head into your hands.

“For Titus.”

“I can see that.”

“You sound offended.”

“You have bribed my dog.”

“I have respected his interests.”

Titus wagged his tail with shameless enthusiasm.

Damian crossed his arms. “He has betrayed me.”

“You love him anyway.”

“Unfortunately.”

You smiled down at Titus. “Good boy.”

Damian watched the way your hands scratched behind the dog’s ears. Gentle, sure, absent of fear. Titus leaned against you like a creature who knew exactly where kindness lived.

Damian did not realise he was staring until you glanced up.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Your smile became suspicious. “Was that almost fondness?”

“No.”

“It looked like almost fondness.”

“You are mistaken.”

“I’m choosing to believe otherwise.”

“Your delusions are your own burden.”

You laughed. Damian looked away too late.

After that, you became a regular presence.

Not constant. Damian would not have tolerated constant.

Familiar.

You appeared in the Cave after League missions, carrying medical supplies and the quiet authority of someone who had seen heroes at their worst and remained unimpressed by theatrics. You patched Grayson while he told a story with too many hand gestures and not enough respect for his own cracked ribs. You argued with Todd about antibiotics until he took them out of spite. You confiscated Drake’s coffee once and survived.

Damian had been impressed. Not that he said so.

Jon noticed, because Jon noticed everything Damian wished he would not.

“You like them,” Jon said one evening on a rooftop patrol.

Damian did not stumble. Barely.

“I tolerate them.”

Jon floated beside him, cape moving in the wind. “You gave them one of your sketches.”

“It was a medical diagram.”

“It was a drawing of their hands.”

“Hands are medically relevant.”

“You wrote ‘rest’ under it.”

“They do not rest.”

Jon’s grin widened. “You are so down bad.” Damian turned slowly. Jon backed up in the air. “I say that with love.”

“I will remove you from the sky.”

“You can’t fly.”

“I will improvise.”

Jon laughed.

Damian resumed walking. His ears were warm.

Jon landed beside him, quieter now. “They look at you differently, too.”

Damian’s step faltered. “They do not.”

“They do.”

“Kryptonian hearing does not make you an expert on human emotion.”

“No, but hearing their heartbeat change when you walk in is pretty compelling evidence.” Damian stopped. Jon also stopped, expression immediately apologetic. “I didn’t mean to—”

“You listen to their heart?”

“Not intentionally! It’s just loud when they see you.”

Damian’s own heart became deeply undisciplined.

Jon smiled softly. “You should tell them.”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Damian glanced at him, suspicious. “You concede too easily.”

“No, I just know you’ll do it eventually and pretend it was your idea.”

Damian glared. Jon grinned.

Two nights later, you found another drawing tucked into your medical bag. This one was of Titus asleep with his head on your knee. Beneath it, in Damian’s precise handwriting, was one sentence: He trusts you. This reflects well on your character.

You found Damian in the garden.

It was raining, because Gotham apparently believed subtlety was for lesser cities. He stood beneath a stone archway, pretending not to wait.

You approached with the sketch held carefully against your chest.

“This is beautiful,” you said.

“It is accurate.”

“It’s kind.”

“That is debatable.”

“No.” You smiled. “It isn’t.”

Damian looked away.

You stepped under the arch beside him. Rain whispered over ivy. The Manor glowed behind you both, all old stone and golden windows.

“Thank you,” you said.

He nodded stiffly.

There was a silence.

Not uncomfortable. That had become dangerous.

You looked at him, and Damian could feel the moment opening like a door.

“You’re allowed to want things,” you said quietly.

His jaw tightened. It was not fair, how gently you said it. As if the words were not a blade sliding between armour plates. “I am aware.”

“You know it intellectually.”

He looked at you sharply. Your smile was sad.

“What do you want, Damian?”

Many answers came to him.

Peace. Purpose. His father’s approval, though he had outgrown needing it and somehow not outgrown wanting it. A world where children were not trained into weapons. A self that did not sometimes still hear his grandfather’s voice and mistake it for his own.

But those truths were too large for the rain. So he chose the smaller one. The braver one.

“You,” he said.

Your breath caught.

Damian did not look away. Your face changed in a way he did not have language for. Softened, yes, but not with pity. With wonder. With wanting so open, it made his chest hurt.

“You have me,” you whispered.

He should have asked if you were certain. He should have warned you that he did not love gently by instinct, that his devotion had teeth, that he was still learning how to hold without gripping too tightly.

Instead, he leaned in.

You met him halfway.

The first kiss was rain-cold and mouth-warm, hesitant for only the first breath. Then your hand rose to his cheek, and Damian let himself lean into it.

Let himself want. Let himself be wanted.

Later, Jon would claim he heard Damian’s heartbeat “attempt to achieve escape velocity.”

Damian would threaten him. Several times.

But in the rain, beneath ivy, you kissed him like there was nothing in him that needed to be earned back from violence.

And Damian, foolishly perhaps, believed you.

He should have known the past would come for him with a blade. 

The League of Assassins rarely wasted poetry.

When the case began, it looked like a string of metahuman disappearances. Three teenagers taken from Metropolis. Two from Gotham. One from Blüdhaven. All newly powered. All young enough to be frightened by what their bodies had become and old enough for someone cruel to turn that fear into compliance.

Oracle connected the disappearances to an abandoned hospital outside Gotham registered under six false companies, two shell organisations, and one name Damian had not heard spoken aloud in years.

A minor League sect. Old blood. New methods.

His father stood at the Cave computer, grim and silent. Grayson’s usual warmth had sharpened into focus. Drake’s fingers flew across keys. Todd checked and rechecked his weapons with quiet, murderous care. Jon stood beside Damian, tension radiating off him like sunlight behind storm clouds.

You stood near the medbay entrance. Damian saw you before anyone spoke.

“No,” he said.

Your eyes moved to him. “Excuse me?”

“You are not coming.”

Todd muttered, “Smooth, brat.”

Damian ignored him.

You stepped closer. “They’ll have injured kids inside.”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t want a healer there?”

“I do not want you there.”

The room went still.

Your face did not change, but Damian saw the hurt land. He regretted the phrasing instantly.

Not the meaning. The wound.

You folded your arms. “Because it’s dangerous?”

“Because it is League.”

Your expression softened, which was worse than anger. “Dami.”

“No.”

“You can’t keep me away from every shadow in your past.”

“I can keep you away from this one.”

“That isn’t your choice.”

“It is if I refuse to allow you through the Zeta-tube.”

Drake winced.

Grayson said, “Dami.”

You stared at him.

For a moment, he thought you would argue. Part of him wanted you to. Part of him wanted you angry enough that the fear in his chest had somewhere to go.

Instead, you nodded once. “Fine.”

Damian hated the word.

You looked at Bruce. “I’ll coordinate med support from here.”

Bruce’s gaze shifted between you and Damian.

Then he nodded. “Accepted.”

You did not look at Damian again.

Good, he told himself. He had protected you.

It felt like losing.

The facility beneath the hospital was exactly what Damian expected. That made it worse.

Stone corridors beneath sterile tile. Modern restraints bolted into old walls. Hidden sigils carved under steel plates. The League had always understood the value of layering cruelty beneath cleanliness.

The team split. Batman and Nightwing cleared the upper labs. Red Hood secured the escape route with a level of aggression that suggested several assassins would later require reconstructive dentistry. Red Robin disabled surveillance from the Cave with you beside him on medical coordination. Damian and Jon moved through the lower chambers.

They found the first two teenagers in a containment room.

Bruised. Dehydrated. Alive. One had burns from power-dampening cuffs. The other had a dislocated shoulder and a split lip. Damian’s jaw tightened as Jon broke the cuffs with careful rage.

Your voice came through comms. “Status?”

“Two recovered,” Damian replied. “Nonfatal injuries. Burns, dislocation, dehydration.”

A short pause. “Can they move?”

“Yes.”

“Get them to extraction. I’ll have medics ready.”

Damian heard it in your voice. The restraint.

You wanted to be there. You wanted to put your hands over the burns and make them vanish.

Instead, you gave orders.

He was proud. He was afraid. Both feelings sat together in him like badly behaved animals.

They moved deeper.

The final chamber was beneath the old surgical wing. It had once been an operating theatre. The League had turned it into something worse. Six teenagers were strapped to tilted metal tables arranged in a circle around a machine pulsing with stolen metahuman energy. Their powers fed into the device through cables bright with unstable light.

In the centre stood a man in black armour with a white sash marked in old League script.

Damian knew the title.

Not the man. That hardly mattered. The League was full of replaceable monsters wearing inherited arrogance.

“Blood heir,” the man said.

Jon’s eyes burned red. “I hate when they call you that.”

“As do I,” Damian said.

Then the fight began. Assassins dropped from the rafters. Red solar emitters ignited in the walls, flooding the room in pulses designed to weaken Jon without fully stripping him. Power-dampening fields snapped on around the captives. Blades flashed.

Damian moved.

He had been raised in rooms like this. He knew their rhythm. Strike before the second attacker lands. Never follow the obvious opening. The left wall hides a second blade. The floor sigil is not decorative. The man with the shorter sword is the true threat.

He fought like memory given teeth. Jon fought beside him, weakened but furious, each hit controlled enough to avoid collapsing the chamber on the children.

“Red Robin,” Damian snapped over comms. “Disable the solar emitters.”

“Working,” Tim replied. “They’re layered into the medical grid.”

Todd’s voice cut in, breathless and violent. “I can blow the grid.”

“Do not blow the grid,” Tim and Bruce said at once.

Todd scoffed. “No one appreciates vision.”

Your voice came through, tight. “Damian, behind you.”

He turned before the blade reached his spine.

An assassin fell.

Damian’s pulse sharpened. You were watching through hacked security feeds.

Good. Bad. You were seeing too much.

The lead assassin smiled.

“Still guided by softer hands,” he said.

Damian lunged.

Mistake.

Not fatal. Almost.

The floor beneath him flared with old script. Chains of black light erupted around his right arm and shoulder, locking him mid-strike. Jon shouted and tried to reach him, but two assassins drove him back beneath red solar pulses.

Damian twisted. The chains tightened.

The lead assassin drew a curved blade.

Not toward Damian’s heart. Toward his arm.

Damian understood at once. Maiming, not killing. A message. A punishment. A ritual humiliation. The blood heir made less whole.

He fought the chains with everything he had.

Not enough.

The blade came down. Pain went white.

For one suspended heartbeat, there was nothing.

Then sound returned.

Jon screaming his name. The teenagers crying out. The wet sound of blood hitting tile.

Damian looked down. His right arm was nearly severed below the elbow. Attached by ruined flesh, fractured bone, and a stubbornness his body had apparently inherited from him.

The sight was clinical in its horror.

He knew what losing the arm would mean.

Not death. Worse, in some ways.

Relearning everything. Sword forms. Drawing. Writing. Touch. Balance. The language of his body rewritten by another person’s blade.

Pain struck next, vast and blinding.

Damian dropped to his knees. His left hand clamped above the wound. Blood surged between his fingers.

“Robin!” Bruce’s voice cracked over comms.

That, more than the injury, frightened him. His father sounded afraid.

Jon hit the lead assassin so hard that the man flew into the far wall.

The solar emitters died.

Tim’s voice, “Grid down.”

Todd, “I still think explosions would’ve been faster.”

Your voice came next. Not steady. Not anymore.

“Damian?”

He clenched his teeth. Could not answer.

Jon dropped beside him, face white. He pressed both hands over Damian’s arm, trying to stem the bleeding without making it worse.

“Oh God,” Jon breathed. “Dami, stay with me.”

“I am… here,” Damian forced out.

“You’re losing too much blood.”

“I noticed.”

“Stop being sarcastic while actively bleeding out!”

Your voice came again. “Jon. Status.”

Jon looked at the comm on Damian’s collar, horrified.

“It’s his arm,” Jon said. “It’s—it’s almost gone.”

Silence. The kind that took all air with it.

Then the sound Damian dreaded most. The Zeta-tube activating in the chamber beyond.

“No,” Damian rasped.

Jon looked at him. “Damian—”

“No.”

He tried to push himself upright. Failed.

The chamber doors opened. Batman entered first, cape like a storm, medkit in hand.

You came behind him.

Your eyes found Damian. Everything in your face stopped.

No. That was his first thought.

Not relief. Not love.

No.

Because he knew you. He knew what you were seeing. Not only the blood. Not only the limb hanging by torn flesh. Not only the future unravelling in one brutal line.

You were seeing something you could fix.

“Do not,” he said.

Your face crumpled. You crossed the room anyway.

Bruce knelt at Damian’s other side, taking over pressure from Jon with controlled, terrible efficiency.

“Tourniquet,” Bruce said.

Jon was already moving.

You knelt in front of Damian.

“Hi,” you whispered.

Absurd. He loved you so fiercely in that moment that it frightened him more than the blood loss.

“No,” he said again.

Your hands hovered over his arm. Shaking now. The tremor was visible. He hated that.

“I can save it,” you said.

His vision blurred. “No.”

“You could lose your hand.”

“I know.”

“Your arm.”

“I know.”

“Damian.”

He looked at you. Your eyes were full of tears, but beneath the fear was something harder.

Resolve. The same resolve he had seen in you a hundred times when someone was hurt. When pain became a problem and your body became the answer.

“No,” he whispered.

You touched his face with one blood-slick hand.

He should have turned away. He did not.

“I’m sorry,” you said.

His heart stopped. “No.”

“I can’t let them take this from you.”

“No.”

“You draw with this hand.” His throat closed. “You hold your sword with it,” you continued, voice breaking. “You hold Titus. You hold me.”

“Beloved—”

“I can help.”

“You will take the wound.”

“Not all of it.”

“You do not know that.”

“I know my body.” A desperate, broken smile flickered across your mouth. “It changes things. It softens the transfer sometimes. I probably won’t get it as bad.”

“Probably,” Damian spat.

You flinched. Good.

No. Not good. Nothing was good.

Bruce’s gaze snapped to you. “What does that mean?”

No one answered him. The entire chamber seemed to narrow around you and Damian.

Your hand was still on his face. His blood streaked your fingers.

“I can’t watch you lose part of yourself,” you whispered.

Rage and terror rose together in Damian’s chest. “You think my hand is myself?”

“No,” you said immediately. “No. That’s not what I mean.”

“That is what you said.”

“I mean they took enough from you. The League took enough. Your childhood, your choices, your body, your pain, your name before you even knew what names meant.” Your voice cracked. “I cannot sit here with the power to stop them from taking one more thing and choose not to.”

His breath hitched.

There it was. The blade under the kindness.

Not pity. Fury. You were angry for him. You were choosing him. You were choosing him over yourself.

He wanted to weep. He wanted to shout. He wanted to beg.

“Ask me,” he said.

Your face broke. “Damian—”

“Ask me.”

The words cost him more than blood.

You stared at him. “I can’t.”

Pain lanced through him.

Not from the arm. From you.

“You can,” he said. “You must.”

“If I ask, you’ll say no.”

“Yes.”

“And then I’ll have to let it happen.”

“You will have to honour my choice.”

Your tears spilled over. “I’m not strong enough for that.”

Damian’s heart shattered.

Bruce went very still beside him. Jon made a small, broken sound.

You leaned closer.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered again.

And then your hands closed around Damian’s ruined arm.

The transfer hit like lightning.

Damian screamed. So did you. For one second, pain filled everything. Not leaving him gently, not fading like mercy. It ripped out of him, dragging fire and nerve and blood with it.

Then his arm healed. Bone snapped into alignment. Flesh knitted. Tendons reconnected. Skin sealed beneath your palms. Feeling surged down to his fingertips in a brutal rush.

His hand flexed. Whole. His.

Then you collapsed.

Your right arm buckled beneath you.

Not severed. Not as bad. You had been right. Somehow, impossibly, terribly right.

But the damage still tore through you. A jagged wound split from your forearm toward your wrist, deep enough to expose blood and white flashes of bone beneath muscle. Your fingers curled uselessly. Blood poured down your hand, splattering onto the tile. Your shoulder hit the floor, and your breath broke on a sound Damian would hear forever.

For half a second, he stared at his healed hand. Then at yours.

No.

No.

No.

He lunged toward you. His body, newly healed but blood-weakened, nearly failed him. Jon caught his shoulder. Damian shoved him away and dragged himself to you with both hands, both whole hands, which made it worse.

“Beloved,” he choked.

You were curled around your injured arm, face white with agony.

Bruce moved quickly, already applying pressure to your wound. You cried out. Damian flinched as if the sound had opened him.

“Do not touch them,” he snapped at Bruce.

Bruce’s eyes flashed. “They’re bleeding.”

Damian knew he was being irrational. He did not care.

“Damian,” you gasped.

His attention snapped to you.

You were looking at him. Not your arm.

Him.

Relief trembled through your expression.

Relief.

Because his arm was whole. Because you had succeeded.

Damian felt something inside him go cold and wild.

“How dare you,” he whispered.

Your eyes filled. “I’m sorry.”

“How dare you.”

“I couldn’t—”

“You could,” he said, voice shaking. “You chose not to.”

Your face crumpled.

He wanted to take the words back. He wanted to sharpen them. He wanted to kiss you until your pain disappeared. He wanted your blood off the floor. He wanted his wound back.

“You chose me,” he said.

Your lips trembled. “Yes.”

“Over yourself.”

“Yes.”

The honesty was a killing blow.

Damian’s breath left him.

Bruce tightened the pressure bandage around your arm. You whimpered, trying to stay still. Jon knelt nearby, crying openly now. Damian barely saw him.

“You were right,” you whispered. His heart stopped. “It’s not as bad.”

Damian stared at you.

Then laughed once. A terrible sound.

“You think that matters?” Your eyes searched his, confused through pain and shock. “You think because the wound is smaller, the violation is smaller?”

You flinched.

Bruce’s expression tightened.

Jon whispered, “Dami…”

“No,” Damian snapped. “Do not.”

Your breathing hitched.

Damian’s hands shook. His right hand, whole and healed, shook.

That made him angrier. That made him love you more. That made him hate everything.

“You did not save my arm,” he said, voice breaking. “You made it yours.”

Your face went slack.

There. Good.

No. Not good.

Truth. Necessary and brutal.

You looked at your wounded arm as if seeing it for the first time. Blood soaked the bandage beneath Bruce’s hands.

Your mouth opened. No sound came out.

Then the pain took you. Your eyes rolled back.

Damian caught you before your head hit the floor. “Beloved?”

No response.

“Beloved.”

Bruce pressed two fingers to your throat. “Pulse is weak. We need extraction now.”

Damian held you against him, his healed hand cradling your head.

His arm worked perfectly. He had never hated his own body more.

The Watchtower medbay smelled like antiseptic and fear. Damian sat outside the surgical suite with blood on his clothes.

Yours. His. Both.

He had refused to change.

Todd had said nothing, which was how Damian knew the situation had reached an unnatural level of horror. Jon sat on the floor across from him, knees drawn up, cape wrapped around his shoulders. He had cried himself quiet twenty minutes earlier. Bruce stood near the observation window like a statue carved by grief. Grayson paced. Drake typed furiously on one tablet, then another, then stopped as if realising no amount of data would make time move faster.

Todd leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, helmet off, face pale and furious.

“This is bullshit,” Jason said finally. No one answered. “This whole damn thing is bullshit.”

“Jason,” Dick said softly.

“No. They should’ve told us.”

Damian’s eyes lifted.

Todd looked at him.

Not accusing. Not pitying.

Understanding.

It was unbearable.

“They should’ve told us what healing cost,” Jason said. “Before any of us let them touch us.”

Damian looked down at his right hand.

He flexed his fingers. Whole. Obedient. Yours now, some treacherous part of him thought.

No.

No.

He dug his nails into his palm. Pain answered.

His pain. At least that remained.

“They knew I would refuse,” Damian said.

His voice was calm. Too calm.

Everyone looked at him.

“They knew,” he repeated. “So they did not ask.”

Jon’s face crumpled again.

Bruce said, quietly, “They thought they were saving you.”

Damian’s gaze snapped to his father. “They were.”

Silence.

Damian stood. His body swayed.

Jon scrambled up, but Damian lifted a hand. Jon stopped.

Damian looked at Bruce. “That is the problem.”

Bruce’s face tightened.

“I know,” he said.

Of course he did. Bruce Wayne understood being saved against his will. Understood surviving at a cost someone else paid. Understood the rage that followed gratitude so closely they became nearly impossible to separate.

Damian hated that he understood.

The surgical doors opened. Dr Mid-Nite emerged, expression grave but not hopeless. Damian was in front of him immediately.

“They’re alive,” the doctor said.

Damian nearly collapsed.

He did not. But Jon did, a little, against the wall.

“The transferred injury was severe,” Dr Mid-Nite continued. “Less catastrophic than yours would have been, but still serious. The arm is salvageable. There’s nerve trauma, tendon damage, blood loss. Their accelerated healing is responding, but slowly.”

“Will they regain function?” Damian asked.

“Likely, with treatment and time.”

Likely. Damian hated likely. Likely was probably wearing a white coat.

He wanted certainty. He got none.

“Can I see them?”

The doctor hesitated. Damian’s eyes narrowed.

Bruce stepped closer. “He won’t interfere.”

Dr Mid-Nite looked at Damian. Damian lifted his chin.

“I will not interfere,” he said.

He did not know if it was true. But he meant to make it so.

The doctor nodded.

You looked too small in the bed. Damian hated that thought. You were not small. You were not fragile. You were not a wounded bird cupped in his hands.

You were the person who had looked at the League’s attempt to maim him and said, No more. You were the person who had made yourself the answer.

You were terrible. You were brave. You were unconscious beneath white sheets, right arm wrapped from shoulder to wrist and elevated in a brace.

Damian approached slowly. Machines hummed. Your face was pale with pain even in sleep.

He stopped beside the bed. For a long time, he did nothing.

Then he reached out with his right hand. The healed one.

His fingers hovered over your bandaged arm.

He did not touch. He could not.

It felt obscene.

“Why?” he whispered.

You did not answer. The monitors did.

Steady beep. Alive.

Damian sat. He folded his hands in his lap. His right hand looked unchanged. Same calluses. Same scars. Same fine ink stain near his thumb from sketching two days earlier. Same knuckles bruised from training. Same fingers that had held yours in the garden.

It should have been a relief.

It was. That was the cruelty.

He was relieved.

He loved his hand. He loved what it allowed him to do. Draw. Fight. touch. Feed Titus scraps when Alfred was not looking. Hold his sword. Hold you.

He had not wanted to lose it. He had been prepared to.

You had seen the part of him that feared the loss, the part he would have hidden beneath pride, and you had chosen that frightened part over your own safety.

Damian hated you for it. Damian loved you for it. Both truths wrapped around his throat until breathing became difficult.

“You should have asked,” he said. His voice shook. “You should have asked me and allowed me to refuse. You should have trusted me to survive less than wholeness.” His eyes burned. “You should not have loved me like the League.”

The words entered the room and stayed. He regretted them immediately.

No. He did not.

Yes. Both. Always both with you now.

You stirred. Damian sat forward sharply. Your eyelids fluttered.

“Beloved?”

Your eyes opened slowly. Unfocused.

Then they found him.

Relief. Again.

Damian closed his eyes. When he opened them, you were trying to smile.

“Arm?” you rasped.

His jaw tightened. “Yours or mine?”

Your smile vanished.

Good. No. He was tired of good. Tired of bad. Tired of feeling everything.

“Damian,” you whispered.

He took the cup from beside the bed and held the straw to your lips. His right hand did not tremble this time.

You drank. Only a little. He set the cup down.

“My arm is whole,” he said.

Your eyes closed. “Good.”

The word struck him like a slap. He stood so quickly the chair scraped back.

Your eyes opened, startled.

“No,” he said.

Your face twisted with pain and confusion. “No?”

“No. You do not get to say good.”

Your throat bobbed. “I saved it.”

“You took it.”

“I saved it.”

“At the cost of your own.”

“It isn’t as bad.”

He stared at you. You seemed to hear yourself then. Your face faltered.

“It isn’t,” you said, quieter. “I knew it wouldn’t be as bad.”

“You did not know.”

“I was pretty sure.”

“Pretty sure,” he repeated.

Your eyes filled.

His hands curled into fists. Both hands. “You gambled with your body.”

“I gambled to keep yours.”

“I did not ask you to.”

“I know.”

“You did not let me refuse.”

“I know.”

“You did not trust me.”

That hurt you. Your mouth trembled. “I did trust you.”

“No.” Damian shook his head once. “You trusted that I would survive. You did not trust that I had the right to choose what survival looked like.”

Tears slipped down your temples.

“I couldn’t bear it,” you whispered.

“What?”

“The thought of you losing it.” Your gaze flicked to his right hand. “Your hand. Your arm. Your art. Your sword. The way you touch everything like you’re still learning you’re allowed to be gentle.”

Damian went still.

Your voice broke. “I couldn’t bear knowing I could help and choosing not to. I couldn’t bear seeing another piece of you taken by them.”

He looked away. The room blurred.

Damn you. Damn you for knowing that. Damn you for seeing the child beneath the blade, the boy raised by people who called ownership love, the man still trying to make his body his own. Damn you for choosing him. Damn you for being right that part of him was glad.

“I would have learned,” he said. You sobbed once. “I would have adapted.”

“I know.”

“I am more than my sword hand.”

“I know,” you said, crying harder now. “I know, Damian. I swear I know. I didn’t do it because I thought you’d be less. I did it because I love all of you, and I couldn’t watch you be forced to lose something when I had a chance to stop it.”

His anger fractured. Love rushed in through the crack.

Unwelcome. Unstoppable.

He sat down again, slower this time. “You chose me over yourself.”

Your eyes held his. “Yes.”

The honesty hurt worse than any lie could have.

Damian lowered his head. For a moment, he was back in the chamber. Your hand on his face. Your eyes full of tears. Your voice saying sorry because you already knew you were about to betray him for love.

He hated that he understood. He hated that if it had been you on the floor with your arm nearly severed, he did not know if he would have done better.

That thought humbled him. Humiliation would have been easier. This was grief.

“I love you,” he said.

Your breath caught. He looked at you.

“I love you for choosing me,” he continued, voice rough. “For looking at the worst thing the League tried to make me and refusing to let them take more. I love you for your fury. For your tenderness. For wanting me whole even when I was prepared not to be.”

Your face crumpled.

“And I hate you for choosing me over yourself.”

You closed your eyes. “I know.”

“No,” he said. “Listen.”

Your eyes opened again.

“I hate that you decided my wholeness was worth your damage. I hate that I am relieved. I hate that part of me wants to thank you while another part wants to never let you touch me again.”

A tear slid down your cheek. Damian reached for it.

Stopped.

“May I?” he asked.

Your face broke all over again. “Yes.”

He wiped the tear away with his right thumb. His healed thumb.

You leaned into the touch. He nearly broke.

“I am angry,” he whispered.

“I know.”

“I will be angry for some time.”

“I know.”

“I may not forgive you quickly.”

Your lips trembled. “Okay.”

“But I am staying.”

A sob caught in your throat. Damian leaned closer.

“I am staying,” he repeated. “Because love is not leaving when one has been wounded. Even by the beloved.”

You cried then.

Not quietly. Not beautifully. You cried like something in you had finally stopped bracing for abandonment.

Damian rested his forehead against yours, careful of the tubes, the bandages, the injured arm held between you like a third presence.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

His eyes closed. “I know.”

A faint, watery laugh escaped you. “Arrogant.”

“Yes.”

“Say it back anyway?”

His mouth softened. “I love you.”

Your breath shuddered.

“I love you,” he said again, because the words seemed to hurt you in a healing way, and Damian was beginning to understand that not all pain was harm. “I love you, and you were wrong.”

You laughed and sobbed at the same time. “That is very you.”

“I am consistent.”

“You are.”

His hand remained on your face. Your uninjured hand lifted slowly and covered his.

For a moment, neither of you spoke. The monitor kept counting proof of your survival. Damian listened like it was scripture.

Recovery was not gentle. Yours rarely was.

The wound had not taken your arm, but it had changed it. Nerves misfired beneath the skin. Your fingers trembled. Grip strength came and went like a moody ghost. Some days, your hand curled stiffly and refused to open without coaxing. Some nights, the pain climbed from wrist to shoulder and left you pale, sweating, biting back sounds Damian wished he could tear from the world.

He did not offer to have you heal yourself. He had learned enough by then. You could accelerate your recovery only in fragments, carefully, at the cost of exhaustion that frightened everyone.

So you healed slowly. Humanly.

Damian stayed. Angrily. Devotedly.

He brought tea and corrected your posture with surgical precision. He read aloud when the pain made focusing difficult. He chose poetry at first because he thought it might soothe you. Then he chose murder mysteries because you criticised everyone’s investigative technique so fiercely that even Drake listened from the doorway with reluctant approval.

He brushed your hair when your arm hurt too much.

The first time, you cried. He pretended not to notice until you said, “You can notice.”

So he did.

“You are crying,” Damian said.

You laughed wetly. “Thanks.”

“I am uncertain what response is appropriate.”

“Just keep going.”

He did. His fingers moved through your hair with grave concentration.

Todd walked in, saw the scene, and immediately walked back out muttering, “Nope, too intimate, I’m emotionally allergic.”

You laughed so hard that Damian threatened him through the door.

Some days, Damian’s anger sharpened unexpectedly.

A dropped cup. Your wince while trying to flex your fingers. The sight of you struggling to button a shirt. Each small reminder of what you had taken from him and made yours.

One afternoon, you caught him staring at your hand as you failed to hold a pen.

“Say it,” you said.

Damian looked up. “What?”

“Whatever you’re thinking.”

“I am thinking many things.”

“The angry one.”

His jaw tightened.

You waited. Always waiting, even now.

He exhaled. “I am thinking that I should be the one unable to hold a pen.”

Your face softened with pain.

“I am thinking that you stole a consequence from me.”

“Yes.”

“I am thinking that I am grateful.”

Your eyes filled.

His voice hardened. “And that gratitude disgusts me.”

You set the pen down. “Damian.”

“No. You asked.”

“I did.”

He stood, restless, anger moving through him like a blade seeking a target. “I look at my hand and I am relieved. I draw and I am relieved. I hold my sword and I am relieved. I touch you and I am relieved.”

Your mouth trembled.

He looked at you, furious and wrecked. “Then I look at your hand.”

You said nothing.

“I do not know where to put the relief,” he confessed.

Your expression crumpled.

Oh. There it was. The truth under the anger.

He did not know how to be grateful for something that had hurt you. He did not know how to love the saved part of himself without feeling like he was betraying the wounded part of you.

You rose carefully from the chair. He stiffened. You came close but did not touch.

“I don’t need you to be only grateful,” you said softly. His throat tightened. “I don’t even need you to be grateful at all.”

“I am.”

“I know.”

“I despise it.”

“I know.”

Your injured hand hung between you, bandaged, trembling slightly.

Damian looked at it. Then, slowly, he held out his right hand. His healed hand.

You stared.

“May I?” he asked.

Your eyes filled. “Yes.”

He took your injured hand with unbearable care. The bandages were soft beneath his fingers.

Your hand trembled in his. He lifted it and pressed his mouth to your knuckles. You inhaled sharply.

“I am angry,” he said against your skin. “I am grateful.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

Your eyes closed. “I know,” you whispered.

He looked up.

“And I hate,” he said, voice rough, “that those truths do not cancel each other out.”

You opened your eyes. “They don’t have to.”

“No.” He held your hand between both of his. “No,” he repeated. “They do not.”

It was not forgiveness. Not yet.

But it was contact. It was honest. It was enough for that moment.

Jon came often. He was terrible at pretending he was not checking on both of you. He brought snacks, flowers, terrible jokes, and one stuffed cow wearing a tiny Robin cape.

Damian stared at it. You stared at it.

Jon held it out with both hands. “For emotional support.”

Damian said, “Leave.”

You laughed immediately.

Jon brightened. “See? It helped.”

“It offended me.”

“That’s your love language.”

“I will make you eat the cow.”

“It has a name.”

“No.”

“Moo-bin.”

Damian closed his eyes. You laughed so hard you had to clutch your injured arm, which made Damian glare at Jon with genuine threat.

Jon winced. “Sorry. Sorry. Medium laughter only.”

You wheezed, “Moo-bin.”

Damian looked at you.

Betrayal. Absolute betrayal.

Jon smiled, then sobered. “Can I talk to Damian for a sec?”

You looked between them.

Damian stiffened. “If this is another emotional intervention—”

“It is.”

“No.”

“Dami.”

You touched Damian’s wrist gently. “Go,” you said.

He frowned. “I’m fine.”

“That word is banned.”

“I am stable, medicated, and entertained by Moo-bin.”

Jon looked delighted. Damian looked betrayed again. Still, he followed Jon into the hallway.

For several seconds, Jon said nothing.

Damian crossed his arms. “Speak.”

Jon looked toward the medbay door. Then back at Damian. “You’re allowed to be glad.”

Damian went still.

Jon’s face was open and earnest and far too difficult to dismiss.

“That your arm is okay,” Jon said. “You’re allowed to be glad.”

Damian looked away. 

“They would want you to be.”

“That is part of the problem.”

“I know.”

“You do not.”

Jon’s jaw tightened.

“I watched them do it,” he said.

Damian looked back.

Jon’s eyes shone. “I watched you say no. I watched them do it anyway. I watched you heal and them drop. I’m angry too.”

Damian’s throat closed.

Jon stepped closer. “But I also heard your heartbeat when you saw your hand move again.”

Damian flinched.

“Sorry,” Jon said quickly. “I know. Accidental perceiving. Bad habit.”

Damian did not respond.

Jon continued anyway. “It sounded like hope.”

The words struck too deep. Damian turned away.

Jon’s voice softened. “I don’t think that makes you bad.”

Damian’s jaw clenched.

“The League made you think every gift is a debt,” Jon said. “But this isn’t that.”

“It feels like that.”

“I know.”

“They paid in blood.”

“Yeah.”

“For me.”

“Yes.”

“How is that not debt?”

Jon was quiet. Then he said, “Because they’re not asking you to repay it.” Damian shut his eyes. “They’re asking you to stay.”

Damian hated how simple Jon made things. How gentle. How impossible to refute.

“I do not know if staying is enough,” Damian said.

Jon stepped beside him. “Maybe not every day. But it’s a start.”

The hallway remained silent.

Then Damian said, “Moo-bin is a terrible name.”

Jon laughed, startled. “Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“You keeping him?”

Damian looked toward the medbay door.

Through the small window, he could see you holding the cow in your lap, smiling faintly at its ridiculous cape.

“Yes,” Damian said.

Jon wisely did not comment.

The first time you returned to the garden, your hand was still bandaged. The rain had stopped earlier, leaving the paths dark and shining beneath the evening lights. Titus wandered ahead, sniffing at wet leaves. The Manor windows glowed gold behind you.

Damian walked beside you. Close enough that your sleeves brushed.

You stopped beneath the same ivy arch where he had first told you he wanted you. The memory sat between you.

Soft. Cruel. Yours.

You looked at him. “I’m scared you’ll never look at me the same.”

Damian’s chest tightened.

He considered lying.

No. No more soft lies.

“I do not look at you the same.”

Your face fell.

He turned toward you fully. “I know more now.”

You swallowed. “That sounds ominous.”

“It is honest.”

Your mouth trembled.

He reached for your injured hand. Paused. You nodded.

He took it carefully. “I know you are capable of betraying my choice to preserve my body.”

You closed your eyes.

“I know you are reckless when afraid.”

A tear slipped down your cheek.

“I know you love me with a ferocity that does not always ask permission.”

“I’m sorry,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“I’ll keep saying it.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know how to make it right.”

Damian looked down at your joined hands.

His whole one. Your wounded one.

“There is no undoing it.”

Your breath caught.

He looked back at you.

“There is only what comes next.”

You opened your eyes. “What comes next?”

He brushed his thumb lightly over the edge of your bandage. “You tell me when you are in pain.” You nodded. “You do not minimise it because it is less than what I would have suffered.” Another tear fell. “You let me be angry without deciding I no longer love you.” Your face crumpled. “And I,” he continued, voice roughening, “will learn to feel relief without turning it into shame.”

You stared at him.

The rain began again, soft at first. Gotham had timing. Terrible, dramatic timing.

You laughed through tears.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re negotiating emotional terms in the rain.”

“It is a serious matter.”

“It’s very romantic.”

“It is practical.”

“It can be both.”

He considered this. Then nodded once. “Fine.”

Your smile was small. “Fine?”

“It can be both.”

You stepped closer. “Can I kiss you?”

Damian’s heart moved painfully.

Even after everything. Especially after everything. You asked.

“Yes,” he said.

You kissed him gently. Too gently. As if afraid he would break beneath the weight of what you had done.

Damian’s left hand rose to your face. His right rested against your waist, whole and steady and unbearable.

He deepened the kiss. You made a soft sound against his mouth. He held you there beneath the ivy while rain gathered in your hair.

When he pulled back, your eyes were closed.

“You are not forgiven yet,” he whispered.

Your eyes opened. “I know.”

“But you are loved.”

Your face broke open with relief so bright it nearly hurt to see. 

He continued before the words could fail him. “You are loved while I am angry. You are loved while I am grateful. You are loved while I do not understand how to carry either.”

Your injured hand rose slowly and touched his chest. Over his heart.

“I can live with that,” you whispered.

“You must.”

A faint smile. “Bossy.”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

His throat tightened. “I know.”

You gave him a look.

He let the smallest smile touch his mouth. “I love you too.”

Titus barked from somewhere near the fountain, apparently offended that no one was paying attention to him.

You laughed.

Damian’s right hand flexed at your waist. He felt the motion. Felt every tendon obey. Felt relief. Felt guilt. Felt your warmth beneath his palm.

This time, he did not push any of it away. He held it. All of it. The anger. The gratitude. The love. The wound. The choice stolen and the life preserved. The hand he kept and the hand you injured to keep it for him.

Pain had gone somewhere. So had love.

Not cleanly. Not without consequence. But here, in the rain, with your hand over his heart and his over your bandages, Damian understood something he had never been taught in the League.

A gift paid in blood could still be wrong. A wrong thing could still come from love. Love could wound and remain love. And healing, real healing, was not the absence of scars. It was the choice to stay and learn the shape of them.

Damian pressed his forehead to yours.

“I will draw again,” he said quietly. Your breath caught. “And when I do, you will sit for me.”

You smiled through fresh tears. “What will you draw?”

He looked at your face. Your wet hair. Your tired eyes. Your stubborn, devastating tenderness. Then your bandaged hand. Then his own.

“Hands,” he said.

You laughed softly. “Again?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Damian lifted your injured hand and kissed the bandages. “Because they tell the truth.”

You looked at him like he had given you something fragile.

Maybe he had. Maybe he was learning. Maybe both of you were.

The rain fell harder, silvering the garden.

Inside the Manor, his family waited with tea, lectures, jokes, and the unbearable relief of people who had almost lost too much and were now determined to hover about it.

Out here, there was only you. Only him. Only the wound between you, no longer hidden.

Damian held your hand. You held his. Neither of you were whole in the way you had been before.

But you were here.

Loved. Angry. Alive.

Damian, who was prone to being harsh with his words, but had never gone out of his way to hurt you on purpose. You had even considered it a charm of his, because there had always been something tender laced within his actions, that always spoke louder than his words.

When he quietly swapped his plate with yours, a quiet consideration without ever once looking up, having memorised your allergies without you realising.

When he subtly placed his hand behind your back in galas, chasing off vultures who aimed for your status, with a silent glare that places you under his direct protection.

When he carried you all the way to his bedroom after a bad sprain on your ankle from a bad fall down the stairs in his manor, with biting remarks and a tender caress over your swollen skin as he applied an ice-pack, worry creased into his brow.

Was it all a ruse?

The wound is only inflicting on itself with every memory torn apart and searched for any evidence, any signs for his dislike. You trusted Damian, which is why it hurt so much to hear him talk about you this way. As if those small moments were all mere inconveniences for him, that burdened him. You had assumed he at least reciprocated your friendship, but now… if only he had faced you instead, with an honest willingness to express how uncomfortable he was.

If it was space Damian wanted, he should have communicated it with you. Instead of mouthing it to his brothers behind your back, without allowing for your voice of input to clarify on the boundaries he wanted.

You don’t notice time passing, standing in the corner of the hallway, your heels digging into the soles of your feet—till you felt a heavy hand on your shoulder. You flinch, brushing the sudden grip off only to find Damian in your swarmed vision. Concern flickers in the green flecks of his eyes… or was it annoyance? The ability to read through his mask, it feels as if it’s been an illusion all along.

“Spaced out?” Damian taunts, one brow cocked at your strange behaviour. "I told you not to come."

I told you not to come. You’re not sure what is the appropriate response, not when you feel a clog in the back of your throat. You never had to think twice on your words before, not in front of him.

“Tired.” You admit, because at the very least, that word carried a semblance of truth. You’ve never felt more exhausted in your life, and the culprit was standing in front of you, completely unfazed. “I think I should head home.”

His eyes widen imperceptibly, not expecting you to take his words so literally. You were never one to skip out on a dance before a gala has ended, no matter how boring the event was. Often, you’d drag him by the arm as your partner, only because the look on his face was easily the best memory of the night. At least, it should’ve been.

His lips part, ready to form his signature 'I told you so', but your ghastly expression makes him hesitate. He clears his throat, offering his hand and slotting himself by your side. “Very well. I’ll escort you.”

“No.” It blurts out quick, desperate.

His surprise slips through his impassive expression. His hand still outstretched—freezes, doubt etched into the crease of his mouth.

“You should be with your family.” You reply, straining a smile. “I won’t take up more of your time.”

It was meant to sound considerate, but the quickness of your tongue made it sound like a solemn promise.

His eyes narrow in puzzlement but you’ve already turned, moving out of his reach towards the exit. He doesn’t make an attempt to stop you, and it hurts that maybe, part of you still hoped he would. To prove his statement wrong, that you mattered more than being a nuisance.

You’ll give him what he wants. Space. Maybe you needed it too, to understand the emotions weighing on you. This hurt—betrayal—shock, you needed time to process it. To reevaluate what Damian Wayne really means to you.

Damian hasn’t heard from you in two days. In the past forty-eight hours, he has tracked your location to ensure you weren’t kidnapped, or lost your phone. Both suspicions were refuted, and the only anomaly that remains is your uncharacteristic silence ever since that night at the gala.

His gaze flickers back to the opened message channel, where his text ‘Have you arrived?’ remains unread. Running a hand through his locks, this may be Damian's first—for his conclusions to come up empty. His text was a mere front, an opening to ask about your wellbeing. His confidence in your reply was absolute, and he never once considered ending up in this standstill. Despite being apart from your constant presence, he finds that you’re somehow occupying more of his mental capacity.

He should’ve went after you the moment he saw that strange, desolate expression on your face when he found you, hidden alone in the corner. Your solemn attitude rang caution bells, concern—which is why he offered to bring you back. It was instinctive, natural. He never expected your rejection. The sting caught him off-guard, words of concern trapped in his throat. He didn’t master the skill of comfort as easily as you did, with sweet, honey words easily coming to your forefront.

He’s overthinking the situation, analysing it till the details have gone runny in his hands—blurry aside from the clear vision of your back turned towards him. Still, there was something about your goodbye… that left him strangely unsettled.

"There you go again." He hears your teasing voice, already memorised in his mind—a poke of your finger against his cheek. "Overanalysing the situation. Just ask me, Dami."

He shakes his head, trying to dissuade the many possibilities that ended in zero conclusions. It’s not a big matter. Today was one of the rare occurrences where his biology classes coincided with yours, leaving a lunch break where he could demand for answers. He’s sure that once he sees your usual, brightened expression—the discomfort in his chest will disappear.

Damian waits with strained patience outside your lecture hall. Various eyes are casted onto him—a rare, Gotham Times worthy sight of a lone Wayne waiting for some mysterious figure, but the attention is none of his concern. His eyes are locked on you instead, watching you pack your bag through the open gap of the door, the AC blasting a cold breeze against his nose bridge.

You’re laughing at some unheard joke from this distance, and it should soothe his worries—to see you refreshed compared to your exhaustion two days ago. He understands better than anyone how exhausting those galas are, which is why he tried to dissuade you from attending in the first place. Still, you had insisted on accompanying him, much to his chagrin. He at least hoped you didn't flunk your midterms today by overexerting yourself, despite his previous warnings, or else he really wouldn't be able to restrain himself from saying I told you so.

All fleeting thoughts of teasing you are discarded at the sight of an unknown blond male, chatting you up and making you laugh as hard as you did. His foot taps in a repeating manner, discomfort swarming in his chest the longer he watched, before catching his own fretting and forcing himself to stay still. This unknown variable is not a problem. Once you spot him, you'll come to his side instead—naturally.

This reassurance paces his impatience, waiting for you to notice him as you made it towards the door. His chest rises, anticipation creeping in as your head raises—and meets his gaze.

You smile, like you always do, and it has the same application of a soothing balm over the minor migraine he's formed from over-checking your coordinates. Waiting for you to come to him, his lips part with a ready excuse for why he came to find you instead of meeting at your usual lunch spot.

Only for you to walk right past him.

He blinks, unable to process what just happened. Impossibly in a single moment, he became invisible to your eye. His mind works in overdrive, unable to piece the facts together that you just walked past him. The probabilities calculated don't align with reality, but his body reacts faster. His hand reaches out, grabbing onto your wrist impulsively—right as you made your turn towards the hallway.

You stumble, gaze flickering down to his grip in surprise. “...Damian?” You blink as if stunned, like you hadn’t just walked past him like he was a ghost.

“You haven’t responded to my messages.” He blurts out with almost immediate regret. Now, his position comes off as a confrontation, and that blond is staring at him with vague amusement. Pathetic, he feels shame burn in the back of his throat. This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

You stare at him unblinkingly, before your mouth parts in acknowledgment. “Ah, that. Tim should've updated you, did he not?”

Tim. A heated frustration arises in his chest, but he can’t figure out what exactly is stoking the fire. The realisation that you prioritised Tim's messages over his, or your strange nonchalance to his concern. “You’ve been conversing with Drake?”

“I needed his help with finding a new collection—he’s also a fan of the series.” You shrug. "With the midterms and his constant updates about the shipment from Japan, I must’ve missed yours."

“Your business with Drake isn’t my concern.” He spits out, harsher than intended. An uncomfortable slither of emotions is writhing in his chest, and the thought that you and Tim have been conversing in secret all along these past two days, bonding to something he wasn’t privy to... it was irritating.

Why had you gone to Tim instead? If you had asked him, he could've easily gotten you the collection.

“What is our relationship then?” You implore casually, eyeing his reaction. “If your concern is so situational."

Whatever he was expecting, he didn’t expect that. His lashes flutter, his composure all but ruined as his mind tries and fails to merge the you he knows, and the you in front of him. You don't seem angry. So, why was he beginning to feel a sense of dread?

“Weren’t you the one who always decided the labels for us?” He asks after a moment, his voice rough against the unexpected impact of your question.

Your expression finally flickers, disappointment slipping through the cracks of your smile. His response has displeased you, even he could read into that.

“I’ll let you answer for us this time.” You reply, and it’s distant—cold. Unlike you. “You can choose whichever you deem fit.”

“Wait.” His rushed voice sounds desperate even to his own ears. The sight of your back turned towards him is something he never wanted to see again. His gaze flickers between you and the blond, questioning. “Are we not supposed to have lunch together?”

You turn back, staring at him with an unreadable expression. Your smile reappears, but it doesn’t reach your eyes. “I’m having lunch with Lawrence, so it’s okay. You don’t need to accompany me.”

Damian views the world akin to a battlefield. There are allies, enemies, changes in fronts and positions. He has fought hard to feel deserving of every position in his life, whether it had been his grandfather's heir, his father's blood son, or Robin. Right now, he feels as if his position beside you has been ripped out of his hands. Accompany? Is that how you saw it, like some sort of duty imposed on him that you could dismiss him of whenever you pleased?

"See you around, Dami." Even his nickname given by you comes off flat from your tongue. As if you were going through the motions, interacting with him from behind a wall that's suddenly been constructed without his notice.

You weren't completely ignoring him like he suspected, but this distance... feels much worse.

There was something, very obviously wrong.

You aren’t sitting beside him. In the seat reserved for you, that’s meant for you.

It had been set from the very start, maybe initially because the two of you were the only children ever-present during family business dinners... and later, with your constant chattering that the adults found had an amusing effect on him.

He's gotten used to exchanging cuts of his meals with yours, or swapping his glass if his had more ice cubes in them, because you liked your beverages freezing cold. Used to you whispering unrelated stories and jokes into his ear when his father talks business with your father, and he has to resist a quirk up his lips because it would mean that you won in your little game to crack his exterior. Now, it's as if an entire routine has been disrupted, and Damian was a man of routine.

He watches you, eyes like a hawk over your every movement, trying to detect any pause in this unreachable mask of yours. You slice your steak without fault, placing your cut between your lips as you nod along to your father's words, seated at his right hand. You don't blink an eye in his direction, and he's tempted to walk right over and drag you out of that very chair.

To corner you in a space without prying eyes, and... what? He swallows dryly, forcing himself to look back down at his untouched meal. What could he say without sounding like a lunatic?

That he suspects that he's done something wrong merely because you've switched seats today? Or that you've been skipping out on lunches with him. Or all the way back to that cursed gala, when you had refused his hand to escort you back home.

Another troubled ‘Tt’ slips past his gritted teeth, and that finally reaches your ears.

When he meets your curious gaze, a silly gust of hope appears so quickly in his chest at the luck that he's finally caught your attention. He raises a brow, a silent question, gesturing to head to a private room with the tilt of his head. You've always understood his silent words better than anyone else did.

Which is why it shocks him when you merely cast your gaze back to your father, leaving his question unanswered. He wasn't deluding himself in this occasion. You're clearly rejecting his gesture, pretending as if you never saw it.

His grip tightens, crumpling into the table cloth, shame colouring his features. He has to put an end to this. Regardless of your coy act, he knows you. Maybe you had a bet with one of his brothers—who knows what schemes they've configured after their constant interrogations during the gala, successfully running a fuse on his temper.

Or maybe, he’s displeased you with an inadequate response. You had mentioned it before, the term 'labels'. Honestly, he never once considered trapping you in something so jarringly concrete. Bonds, human connections—they were always needlessly complicated.

What you meant to him, it expanded beyond the limitations of languages. You, who saw past his sharp exterior and pushed him beyond his limits, and him, who found himself staying despite every rational thought pleading him not to expose his weakness so easily out in the open.

It was simply natural from the moment he met you, instinctive to remain by your side just as you always found a place to slot beside his. Terrifyingly easy, that he refused to let anyone see the softness you evoked out of him. It was meant for you, and only you. Now, the strike of your absence, despite being only a few feet away from him, is running a deeper cut into his conscience, tracing back to the questions that's been bombarded on him by his siblings.

But—what does she mean to you, Dames?

What would your life look like without her?

In a desperate attempt to brush off questions that aroused a panic he had never felt before, he came up with quick, venom-filled words to dissuade his brothers. Oddly enough, he never wished to reveal what you meant to him, not aloud.

It made it feel too real, too vulnerable. As if the world could swallow you whole if he admitted just how irreplaceable you were, that he couldn't envision a life without you by his side. His grandfather had made it so—that any weaknesses should be removed from its roots.

He did not want to remove you from his life, so you are not his weakness.

He's tempted to curse his brothers to oblivion. If only they hadn't sprung such obnoxious questions, then these thoughts wouldn't be invading him, and the universe wouldn't have punished him for it.

He had already felt the brimming inevitability of something bound to go wrong the moment he was faced with vulnerability. If it had been anyone else, he would have retreated in a similar manner as he always had. To not show weakness, to prove that he was above silly affections and attachments to others—but it's you.

He has to fix this. Whatever it is that's wrong. If only you would look at him, then maybe you'd see his desperation too and let him in.

Damian doesn't receive an opening till the next gala. A cruel twist of fate the universe has decided to play on him, as if openly mocking his distress, to end up right back where the entire fiasco started.

He's barely kept himself sane. In these past two weeks, you've only responded to his messages—horrible attempts of reconnection, with mere one word replies, and visited the manor to hang out with his other siblings. When he had caught you lounging on Tim's bed, ranting about the new series you both were so invested in, he nearly tore the door straight off its hinges.

He craves for your silly rants during lunches. Your presence dipping the corner of his bed as you sketched doodles of his family in their vigilante costumes. Your warm laughter that soothes a long night of patrol.

He misses you... terribly.

It doesn't help that you're a vision tonight, only worsening the trembling ache in his chest. Dressed in your favourite colour that make you so strikingly vivid, already seared into his mind as he stares unblinkingly, he doesn't realise he's been holding his breath till your heels click with an ever-increasing volume towards him. Your nearing approach is what finally snaps him out of his daze, and his hand immediately shifts. Out of mere habit, for you to hold onto his arm as always.

Your hand doesn't lift to meet his, remaining stuck to your side. It pushes him off balance, and he has to force himself to respond when you greet him.

"You...look beautiful." He admits, his voice a weakened imitation of itself. He hates this, and you look—you are beautiful. So much so that it hurts. Even if he tried to reach his hand out for you, he has the suspicions that you’ll only back away from his touch.

"Thank you." You smile politely, and the tone of your voice, practiced and composed, stings.

His lips part, ready to pull you aside and ask what he has done wrong. He is ready to do whatever you ask, to plead for forgiveness so long as that look in your eyes finally fades, anything to get you back. The real you, not hidden behind cruel distance and polite masks.

A familiar, dreadful face cuts in before he can. Damian’s gaze hardens, trained on the blond that's been trailing after you since two weeks ago, who currently has his hand outstretched for you. His scowl falters, panic swarming his instincts—when your own hand reaches out to take the stranger's invitation.

He utters your name, a weak pulse forming a lump in his throat.

You turn back, casting him a quick glance like his existence was an after-thought. "Lawrence offered to dance with me earlier. We'll catch up later, Dami."

His chest seizes completely. He doesn't process the alteration of his own steps, only finding your wrist captured between his fingers, his shoe stepped in between the gap of you and your dancing partner, functioning as an opposing barrier.

“I’m afraid—” His voice cuts in, deadly calm. “—she already has a partner for tonight.”

Your head whips around, unable to hide your shock. His jaw clenches, eyes narrowed at the suitor who's dared to try for your hand. Perhaps it's his building paranoia stemming from your continued absence, but the sight of someone taking you away by your willing hand is truly driving him mad.

It doesn't take long before Lawrence registers the message Damian sends with a single, warning glare. Hands off.

Finally able to breathe once the bastard's been chased off, he turns back to meet your gaze and is surprised to find the barely concealed anger in your eyes. You've never looked at him this way before.

That same discomfort that's plagued him constantly for the past two weeks builds in his chest at the thought that you even entertained the possibility of dancing with Lawrence. Damian had always been your dancing partner, no matter how much he claimed to dislike partaking in galas like these. If anyone was going to deal with sore feet from the accidental missteps of your heels, it will always be him.

“Is that the label you’ve decided on?” You ask, the first words uttered without that strange, distant tone you've used before. “Partners?”

“Does it displease you?” He presses, trying to gauge your reaction. “I will change it to whatever you prefer.”

You purse your lips, conflict arising in your gaze. “I don’t understand you.”

He exhales lowly. “I should say the same for you. You are the one who’s—” His jaw twitches, desperation slipping past his façade. “—drifting away.” From me, why are you acting as if I don’t matter—as if this doesn’t matter?

He shouldn't have drank all that wine from earlier.

Alcohol doesn’t affect him, not with its supposed dizzying sensation and loss of control when recklessly consumed, but it did make him bolder, his tongue sharper. Yet, seeing you trying to evade him—out of his reach, he found himself doing something he sworn to never do—being impulsive.

At the lack of your response, his hand still wrapped around your wrist tugs gently, a quiet plea for you to say something. He feels useless, small—and you're the only thing he desperately needs. To help him make sense of the chaos that's consumed his every waking thought, that's plunged and follow him into his dreams.

Eventually, you sigh. "We should talk."

A small hope reignites at this chance you've given him. It's automatic, already mapped out in his head as he guides you to an empty room on the second floor. You don't rip away from his hold at the very least, but from your strained steps, you're not ecstatic to be with him either.

Shielded from prying eyes once he shuts the door, you're quick to pull your hand out of his hold. His own mask fractures at the loss of your warmth—but when he forces his gaze away from your disconnected hands, he finally sees you shed your own to reveal your honest expression. You look tired, a mirrored reflection of the agony that’s been inflicted on him these past two weeks.

You settle at the loveseat, head resting on your palm as if the very weight of your unreadable thoughts have consumed you, leaving you exhausted. If only he could reach in and unravel them himself, to understand the change in you.

“Drifting away?” Your voice muses at his words, and it lands like a punch. Do you truly not understand what you've done to him? “You’ve seen me the entire week.”

He shakes his head adamantly, coming to stand before you, neck craned down to face your averting gaze. “I won't be easily fooled. You’re avoiding me. Standing in places you’re not supposed to be.”

It sounds childish. God, he was being driven insane the longer you stood there, finally in his sights and he just couldn’t stop drinking you in.

“Opting for the furthest seat. Skipping lunch breaks. Accepting another dance partner. Ignoring my messages. Not being by my side.” It pours out without stopping, even as he feels warmth burn at the back of his neck, reaching his ears. “Your behaviour has changed. Even when you're close, you’re out of reach.”

“And you say I’m the clingy one?” Your expression flickers, a mix of hurt and solemn amusement.

His brow creases. “When have I ever—”

His own voice echoes in his mind, in a taunting afterthought. “She’s clingy.”

The gala. The interrogations. Your sudden change in behaviour. You overheard his callous comment. His reckless mistake.

He calls out your name weakly. The gravity of his mistake—it feels as if the entire universe is collapsing onto him.

You let out a sigh, and the acceptance in it terrifies him. As if you’ve already prepared yourself in these past two weeks, to fully be out of his life.

“I overheard you at the charity gala.” Your admission coincides with his guess, and your unwavering gaze leaves him stripped of all his defenses.

It's dawning on him in quickening alarm, with how each passing day, you must've lost hope in him. That his careless words must've wounded you deeply, leaving you to rightfully pull away. That he is a complete and utter idiot, who has hurt the one person he swore to protect.

"Do you feel less smothered? After all, wasn’t space what you wanted?” You ask, and there is no anger in your voice—only apathy. "It was what I needed."

The admission silences him. His heart is thudding so hard that he hears the rush of blood in his eardrums.

No. It wasn’t what he wanted. Your absence has ruined him, and it wasn’t the faults of his brothers, or revealing his vulnerability. It was all on him.

“Isn’t it better for us both, if we kept our distance?” You propose. “Since we’ve gone past the line of hurting each other. It’ll be convenient for the both of us, and less burdensome for you.”

Your calm demeanour is a bigger slap to his face than you shouting at him, demanding for him to apologise or to make things right. In the face of your acceptance, it’s as if you expected that this was the outcome he wanted.

He has a paralysing realisation, that if he doesn't beg for your forgiveness, you'll never come and seek for his repentance ever again. With every passing second, he feels time running out of his hands as your expression closes at the lack of his response, ready to abandon the room. Abandon him.

Desperation strips Damian bare of his pride when his knees hit the ground, landing harshly before you in the lowest form of begging. He doesn't give you time to process what he’s done before his fingers gently wrap around yours, caressing them with a firm grip.

“Damian!" Your expression warps in shock, meeting the intensity seared in gaze. "What are you doing? Get up—"

“I was wrong.” He admits without hesitation. “All the words I said, not a single one of them holds the truth.”

Your shock dampens, and he sees the barest hurt displayed on your expression. It pushes him to strain past his walls, to keep speaking if it meant not seeing your back turned towards him.

“You asked me to define us once, by labels.” He recalls. “I am not good with words. It has always been—difficult. To understand when to push further and when to fall back. To not act as if every situation is a death sentence if I bared my vulnerabilities out in the open, but—I know that my faults are not an excuse for my actions."

"I have broken your trust and left you feeling unsure of your position in my life, and I must correct it. You are not clingy, or a burden. You are the most important person in my life."

“The lies were nothing more than a cover... my brothers had caught onto my attachment and wouldn't give up on their interrogations.” He admits through the grit of his teeth. “They were always more observant of what I tried to push down, and my behaviour around you—it was obvious that you had an effect on me. It's as if you are the center that I gravitate towards, pulling me in towards your every whim and desire.”

“They tried to help me make sense of it, and I panicked. Selfishly, I wanted to keep my weakness a secret only known to the promises I've made for you in my mind. My fondness for you felt like a curse if I revealed it.” He whispers. “I had always assumed that what you held closest to your heart is what you should guard the most."

“I uttered those foolish words because I had assumed that if only I knew the extent of my devotion towards you, you would be safe. That we could continue as we always had, without declaring a target on your back, so that the world wouldn’t rip you away so easily.”

“I was a coward.” He murmurs, pleading in earnest. “I have mistreated you and taken you for granted. I tried to convince myself that lies were better than revealing the truth, which is that I have always coveted to by your side."

"I am deeply sorry. For ever making you feel that you're anything less than.” He breaks. "That couldn't be further from the extent to which I adore you. To which I need you. I can’t imagine a life without you, so—"

"Please—" He's never been taught to beg, but he can't lose you. Even if it takes him years, decades to regain your trust, it doesn't matter. "—it is selfish of me to beg for your forgiveness, but I will do anything. I will explain the full truth to my family. I will take on any punishment but—I can’t lose you. These past two weeks have been torture, and... I miss you."

Finally, after his chest is heaving with the burn of his confessions and a lack of oxygen, does he quiet. In the face of your coming judgement, he has never been more nervous in his life.

"Damian." You mutter. "I have not forgiven you."

His breath hitches, and despite all he's done to expect this outcome, he couldn't have been more unprepared for the impact of the blow. His hands falter around yours, and his knees have gone weak.

"W—What do you want me to change?" He can barely hear his own voice over his rapturing heartbeat. "Is it something I said? My behaviour, my actions—I can improve. I can fix this."

You give him a look that signals that you're not done. He forces himself to quiet, lips pursed as he slowly—painfully waits.

"In these past two weeks..." You admit. "I really tried to reevaluate what you mean to me."

"I understand you, more than anyone else has because you've let me in." You answer. "But just because I see you—and I know that's a vulnerability you don't easily show to people—doesn't mean that you get an easier way out."

"You did hurt me. I'm acknowledging that, and because I care about you, it hurts even worse." You reveal. "It wasn’t fair that you brought up such harsh words to describe me behind my back, and it’s not going to be something I can brush over easily, no matter the reason. I don't think we can fully go back to how it was before, not without moments where I will feel doubt. That's a trust you have to rebuild, not just with one big apology, but through your words and actions, every single day."

He nods, hanging onto every word you're willing to give him, even as your vocal admission of him hurting you feels like a vicious whip.

"But I am willing to give you that chance—to heal the hurt you've caused me, to prove that you won't pull away when you're scared I'm getting too close." You declare. "I'm giving you a chance to fix your mistake, because I know you, Dami. I know you'll keep your promises, and that you have a heart. One that's willing to change."

He lets out a shaking breath, and he finds your fingers caressing over his in a gentle touch. Not forgiving him completely, but reassuring in its warmth.

"I—" Left bare after pouring his heart out, the adrenaline rush that came from his full vulnerability has finally left his chaos-ensued mind blank.

From the very moment you had entered his life, it was an undeniable fact he had only grown to understand, to not fear—and it was that he loved you. The same distant concept he once viewed through the multiple perspectives of others, now existing right there in his beating heart. Yet, it didn't feel right in this moment. Not when you were giving him this chance to rebuild the trust he has broken. He will wait, for as long as you'll let him, he will cherish anything you'll give him.

"I know." You whisper, silently reading what he’s trying to convey through a single glance. "We'll figure us out together."

He sighs, head falling against your lap, lips brushing over your intertwined fingers—a soft, imperceptible kiss to your knuckles. It's natural, instinctive, everything he could ever want. To rest in your presence that’s finally allowed him to breathe again, surrounded by your warmth and voice.

"I thought you hated dancing." You muse.

"Not when it's with you." He admits quietly. "I haven't trained myself to bear the crushing of your heels, just for someone to take my place."

"I can't believe you called me the clingy one." Your amusement doesn't displease him, not in the slightest.

"Perhaps I shall reinstate our relationship to my brothers then." He murmurs. "I'm sure they'll have a field day once I admit that I'm the one who can't bear to be without you."

Finally, he hears the familiarity of your laugh. He has missed that.

"I'd like to see that."

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dc masterlist -> damian + other dc works

The upside down is nothing like you’d expected. It’s simultaneously worse and better than you’d expected.

It smells damp, the air is thick like smog, and you can’t bring yourself to look down to where you’re walking, the sound of your converse dragging through the sludge is enough to have you feeling nauseous.

Everyone else seems to be handling it much better than you—probably because they’ve done this before. It’s hard not to feel somewhat resentful that Steve had only brought all of this up to you by pure chance.

You knew he’d been hiding something. He was secretive, holding that goddamn walkie-talkie with him like it was the second coming of Christ and most obviously, never let you meet his friends.

Besides Robin, you liked Robin. Though it had been practically unbearable to sit politely and smile as they both regaled you of stories of Dustin, or any of the rest of The Party. It all festered underneath your skin, why did he never bring you around them?

Until the night you’d just happened to be over at his house when Dustin had attempted to recruit Steve to help find Eddie Munson. Eddie, drug dealer Eddie, who was now accused of murder.

“Steve he didn’t do it, it’s the upside down—” Dustin babbles incoherently, you can barely keep up. None of the words coming out of his mouth make sense to you.

The upside down?

“Steve?” you whisper to your boyfriend, who’s staring at the highschooler before you in dawning horror and grim acceptance.

“I’ll drive. Get in the car—I have to—” Steve waves over to you in a vague gesture and Dustin’s eyes grow wide as his jaw slackens.

“You haven’t told her?” He sounds horrified by the idea of it. Told you what.

“Car Henderson. Now.” Steve states firmly, throwing the curly haired teen his keys as he turns to you with a solemn expression.

˚₊‧꒰ა ✦ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

You’d like to think you’d taken the news of a sadistic other-worldly demonic creature hellbent on killing pretty well, considering the fact that you were currently in his…world? Plain? Planet?

You had been rightfully angry with Steve for not telling you but given that there were bigger stakes than your feelings involved, you’d decided to lay your argument to rest.

Only for you to subsequently discover that Nancy Wheeler knew. Nancy Wheeler that Steve had fallen in love with. The same Nancy you watched Steve grow glassy eyed when talking about.

The same Nancy you tried to measure yourself up against and fell short on all aspects no matter how hard you seemed to try. You watched him with her, as much as it pained you.

He looked so happy, like the fate of the world wasn’t resting on his shoulders. Granted, Nancy was in a relationship, that was a point of contention amongst the two. You assumed some sort of shared history.

Nancy was sweet to you, checking in on you, asking if you needed anything. You couldn’t fault her for your own feelings. Hell, if you were in Steve shoes, you’d probably also have fallen in love with her.

You heard them talking in the van on the drive back from the hardware store, huddled in the back with Eddie and Dustin. It doesn’t feel like a conversation you should be listening in on, but you can’t help it.

“It’s—it’s silly but I—I’ve actually um—I always had this dream that I’d always have this really big family. I’m talkin like full brood of Harringtons, like 5, 6 kids” Steve confesses, laughing alongside her.

Your heart thumps louder in your chest. He’s never told you that. Why wouldn’t he tell you that? It’s not like you’ve been dating long enough for that to have been a conversation but—just why wouldn’t he have said something to you?

Why would you have to listen to this from the backseat of a stolen van as he confesses his hopes and dreams to a girl who he claims he “used” to love?

“Six?” Nancy asks incredulously. You crack a smile; you can’t help it. She’s funny, you think to yourself. Funnier than you’ve ever been.

“Yeah, six little nuggets. Three girls—” you drown out Steve’s voice as you watch their silhouettes.

They would make pretty babies, you think. Beautiful babies, full of Nancy’s intelligence and Steve’s smile. They’d play basketball or do ballet. Steve would be their coach—and Nancy would be working at some big corporate office and they’d be—they’d be so happy.

Bile rises in your throat. You can’t even compete with her. She’s perfect, pretty, smart, witty—what do you have? You have the boy, plus one for that—but what good does that do when he looks at a her like she’s hung the moon and the stars.

You wonder if he’s ever looked at you like that.

You think you might be better off not knowing.

˚₊‧꒰ა ✦ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

You’re embarrassed to admit that overhearing their conversation makes you distance yourself from the both of them.

You find yourself flocking to Eddie’s side,  joking and laughing with each other.

“You’re a good guy Munson.” You murmur softly as you both watch as Dustin and Mike duel with fake swords and shields, yelping each time they catch each other.

“You’d be the first to think so.” Eddie replies to your left, humour masking the insecurity in his tone.

“I highly doubt that.” You contest, smiling up at the older boy. “Dustin certainly thinks so.”

“Yeah well the munchkin’s biased,” He scoffs with a smirk, leaning back against the stump of wood behind the both of you.

You snort, “He thinks you’re the greatest. He talks about you all the time.” You insist.

Eddie’s expression melts softly, something adoring taking place of what was once anxiety and manufactured aloofness. “He’s a good kid. Don’t know why he likes me so much, but I’m lucky to have him.” He admits.

“You treat him like he’s a person. He’s always going on about how you ask him about his opinion, how you actually listen.”

Eddie blows out a breath, nodding slowly as he digests your words. He turns to you slightly, “You’re a sweet girl,” he tells you seriously and you look up at him in slight shock.

“Don’t lose that, would be a damn shame if we didn’t have you around.” He smiles, slinging an arm over your shoulder as he calls out for Dustin to fix his posture.

You snort with a smile, leaning into him.

˚₊‧꒰ა ✦ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

Steve watches the two of you from higher on the hill with a scowl on his face.

“Scared Munson’s gonna steal your girl?” Robin teases, huffing as she tugs a rope from the backdoor of the van.

Steve scoffs, irritation bleeding into his tone. “No,” he replies shortly “Munson wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Robin hums suspiciously high, “Seems to me like he’s doing pretty well for himself.” She mentions, gesturing back over to the two of you.

Steve’s glare grows as he catches sight of Eddie’s arm slung over your shoulder. His irritation rising as he spins to glower at Robin, “Who’s side are you on?” he growls.

Robin holds her hand up in surrender, “Just saying. You two haven’t spoken since you arrived—you’ve spent more time with me and Nancy than you have with her.” She says conversationally.

Steve frowns. Has he actually? Sure, he’s been pretty focused on getting things ready to go into the upside down, so he didn’t really have the time to be checking in on you.

It was purely coincidence that he, Robin and Nancy ended up working together considering they were carrying the bulk of the ammunition and knew how to work them.

“She’s fine.” Steve mutters uncertainly. “We’ll talk after.” He insists.

Robin frowns, saying nothing but glances between the two of you in concern.

˚₊‧꒰ა ✦ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

The tension between you and Steve as you enter the upside down is undeniable. The growing distance seemingly seems to stretch between the two of you the longer that you walk.

You’re side by side, walking in silence as Nancy, Jonathan and Robin walk slightly ahead of everyone whilst Eddie and Dustin remain slightly behind.

“Okay,” Nancy starts firmly, stopping in front of the group in a small expanse of land. The small group forms a circle in front of her, all watching her in rapt attention.

“You all know the plan yes? No deviations, we can’t take any risk that this doesn’t work.” 

You’re all nodding, you listen as she goes over the plan for Max to bait Vecna, the Creel House and the demobats. It’s perfectly planned out, Nancy Wheeler style.

When you all break off, you grab hold of Steve’s arm, who turns to look at you in confusion, “I uh—I’m going to go with Dustin and Eddie alright?” you say softly, avoiding eye contact with him.

Steve frowns, watching your face closely before scoffing, making you look towards him in perplexion, “Yeah, sure. Fine.” He says sarcastically, shrugging your arm off of him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Steve’s voice is hard and angry, “It means that if you wanna go run off with Munson while the rest of us are trying to save the world—be my guest.”

You blink, staring at Steve with your mouth agape, “You think—Eddie?”

Steve snorts, rolling his eyes, “Yes, Eddie. I see the way the two of you have been…canoodling,” he offers weakly.

You scoff, “Real mature Steve.”

Nancy and Robin stop in front of the two of you when the notice you’ve both stopped following them. They’re far away enough to not being able to hear but close enough to notice the start of an argument between you both.

“What? You have a problem?”

Your expression morphs into hurt, “Six little nuggets?” you ask him accusingly as he stares at you, unflinching.

“You weren’t supposed to hear that.”

It’s the weakest argument you’ve heard from him yet, “Why?” you push. “Because it involved Nancy, that it? I didn’t fit into your white picket fence suburban dream?”

Steve flinches, his expression turning uncertain and dread fills your very being.

He doesn’t see you there.

“Can we—can we not do this now?” he asks, pleadingly.

You shake your head, “No, Steve. I want to know.”

“Know what?” He argues, throwing his arms up in the air.

“If you love me Steve!” you burst out, your voice echoing lightly through the vast expanse of the Upside Down.

“Guys—” Eddie calls hesitantly, but you both pay him no mind.

You shove your finger into Steve’s chest hard enough to make him flinch, “I want to know if you see a future with me! Do you? Do you see me in that big old family picture? Because—” your voice breaks, tugging at Steve’s heart strings.

“Because I love you, and if you don’t—if you don’t see that future with me, then maybe we’re not meant to be together,” you whimper, lifting your hand to your mouth to try and muffle your cries.

Steve slumps in shock, looking as if you’ve just torn his heart out from his chest.

“You’re breaking up with me?” he whispers desperately, scanning your face like he’s searching for something, anything.

You shake your head, your teary gaze meeting his shocked one. “I’m asking you if you’d choose me Steve, if given the chance.” You whisper.

“Baby, of course I—"

“You can’t even say you love me Steve.” You scoff with a laugh, self-deprecation coating your tone.

He stands in shock, like he’s not sure what to do.

“Steve!” Nancy calls from the back, frustration in her voice from being held up.

Steve watches you pleadingly as you school your expression, taking a step back when he turns to look back at her.

Always her, you think bitterly.

“I—” Steve pleads, panic in his tone.

“Just go Steve.” You reply tonelessly, turning to walk towards Eddie and Dustin who have been watching the both of you in concern.

“Baby—” You hear him call after you, desperation in his voice as you walk away. You shake your head, sniffling before looking towards the two boys in front of you.

“Are you okay?—” Dustin asks hesitantly.

You force a smile, “Fine.”

˚₊‧꒰ა ✦ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

If you thought you knew pain before, the sting of walking away from Steve was worse. Every bone if your body wants to turn around and run back into his arms, but you refuse to subject yourself to any more humiliation.

You walk with Eddie and Dustin in silence, setting up the amp and Eddie’s guitar with little fanfare.

When the time comes, Eddie plays like a man possessed. You think he was made for this, a true metal rockstar. He looks almost godlike in view.

The bats swarm the trailer with almost no time to spare. Eddie, Dustin and you rush into the trailer as it rocks with the force and sound of flapping wings.

You almost think you’ve done it before they start flooding in. One after another they come through the vents, met with your handcrafted weaponry.

Dustin grabs the rope leading back into the real world, but when you catch Eddie’s gaze watching him, you already know what’s going to happen. What’s more rockstar than saving the world.

He looks at you and then back to the bedsheets, offering you a way out. You see the determined look on his face, and with a shared nod, he cuts the rope.

“What are you doing?!” Dustin screams to the both of you, watching as you both grab your weapons and Eddie’s shield.

“Buying more time.” The two of you chorus, launching yourselves out of the trailer in tandem as Eddie rides the bike with you running behind him.

The bats follow you like a moth to a flame, swarming around the two of you within minutes. You feel it before you see it, the sound of your flesh tearing and ripping open as the bats latch onto your skin.

You feel the warmth of your blood pool around you as you swing and crush the bats that fly towards you. You find Eddie doing the same in your peripheral vision. You watch as the bats sink their teeth into him, drawing a guttural scream from his chest.

Your wounds start to get the better of you as you stagger on your feet, slumping over onto the ground as you crash to your knees. You can hear Eddie calling your name and you turn to see him slumped a few meters behind you.

You crawl over to him, mindless of the bats still latched to the two of you. Your eyes meet and you share a bloody smile.

It’s then that you notice the silence, the bats that fall around the two of you. “They did it,” you croak, blood bubbling through your throat.

Eddie groans, “We did good,” he affirms, turning his head to look at you.

You hear footsteps rushing your way, and a small part of you hopes that its Steve. The curly hair however in unmistakable.

“Henderson,” Eddie coos, coughing slightly as blood stains his lips.

“Eddie—Y/N, no no no.” he chants, falling to his knees.

“Hey,” you whisper dazedly. “We’re okay,” you reassure him.

“You’re bleeding—” he chokes out.

“Can either of you stand?” he asks Eddie abruptly, turning to look at him. Eddie frowns, looking down on his leg before looking at you, “Dustin, buddy you can’t take both of us—"

“I don’t care,” he bursts out. “I need to know if you can stand, if I can get you back to the trailer, we can alert the rest of them that Y/N is down and—” he babbles.

“I—” Eddie blows out a breath, looking hesitant. You both knew when you’d left that trailer than you’d had no intention of coming back, it was a suicide mission.

“Please,” Dustin begs. Eddie hesitates before nodding abruptly, “Okay,” he concedes. “Okay—we’re coming back.” He tells you seriously.

You smile, nodding softly. Your clothes are starting to stick to your skin with the amount of blood pooling from your wounds.

It’s too dark for them to see, they can’t possibly know how bad your injuries are. Eddie looks by far worse than you, his wounds uncovered by his clothes.

“Okay,” you say.

They leave, Eddie hobbling beside Dustin as they walk towards the trailer. You’re not sure how long you spend staring at the sky before rushing footsteps are coming back to you.

You think you might already be dead when you see Steve rushing to your side instead of Dustin. “St’ve?” you slur, your eyelids drooping from exhaustion.

“Oh baby,” he moans desperately as he drops down next to you, his hands hovering uncertainly as if he’s too scared to touch you.

I’m sorry. I don’t mean to scare you.

“You’re gonna be okay, you’re gonna be okay,” he chants to himself as he lifts you into his arms despite your loud groaning in complaint of being jostled.

“You gotta keep your eyes open for me honey, c’mon look at me—look at me baby.” He pleads with you, rushing towards the trailer as yo9ur blood starts to soak his own clothes.

“I’m getting’ y’u d’rty.” You complain breathlessly as your head lolls to the side. Steve whimpers, reply wetly, “That’s okay baby—I—I don’t mind, I’ll put it in the wash when we get home okay?” he says consolingly, sounding panicked.

“’kay,” you agree mindlessly, your eyes drooping.

“Think ‘m gonna sleep now—”

Steve shakes you awake, making you cough as the feeling of the liquid filling your throat.

“Sorry—sorry honey, you can’t—fuck, baby you can’t sleep. Haven’t even got to tell you how much I love you yet sweetheart, you don’t even know,” He says, simultaneously awestruck and horrified.

“You don’t even know how much I love you baby, God, I—I was so dumb earlier, I shoulda run after you, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—never gonna make that mistake again. But you’ve gotta stay awake for me okay? Because I’ve got a lot of making up to do huh?” He chokes up, muffling his sobs.

“Cause you can’t die—I, we have so many things left to do—can’t leave me alone—I can’t do this alone, you—you have to stay,” he sobs.

He almost chokes on the relief he feels when he sees the trailer, stumbling as he runs as fast as his feet can carry him towards the silver home.

Your breathing is shallow in his arms, and he would think you were already dead if not for the slow rise of your chest.

“Please,” he chokes out the paramedic he sees when he gets back to the real world. He holds you out, begging for them to take you. “You—you have to help her. She—she’s lost so much blood—oh god, please help her.” He begs desperately, succumbing to his own tears.

They take you immediately, transferring you to a stretcher as they rush you to an ambulance whilst Steve follows behind them, refusing to let you out of his sight for another second.

Whilst they load you, Steve pleads with them, “Please let me go with her—I’m the only one she knows, she’ll be so scared I need to be there—”

“You can ride with her, but we need to go now.” The paramedic rushes him in, letting him take the seat next to you as the strap you to a heart rate monitor and place a breathing mask over you.

He clenches his hands around your own as you blink slowly at him, “Hey,” he whispers into the silence of the ambulance, the paramedic watching the two of you in concern.

“I love you,” he blurts out again, frantically hoping you hear him. Your small smile calms a small portion of his fear, and he feels you shakily trace a pattern on his palm.

Then you came along.

And suddenly, Steve couldn’t go five minutes without feeling some part of you touching him. Your fingers curled into his sleeves to keep a tight hold on him, your head tucked beneath his chin whenever he sat down, your legs draped across his lap during movie night with the party. Half the time Steve couldn’t move around your place without you trailing after him like a shadow.

“Baby,” he laughed under his breath one late night, glancing back to catch you following him. “You know I’m just getting a glass of water, right? Go back to bed.”

You only rubbed your bleary eyes with a pout, wrapping your arms around his waist. “I can’t.” You mumbled into his soft sleep shirt.

“Why not?” Steve asked, furrowing his brows.

“Because the beds cold without you, and I already missed you.”

Steve nearly dropped the glass in his hand. Every single time. Every damn time you said something like that—a simple yet effective soft confession, his chest did this stupid aching thing.

No one ever looked at him like he held the whole world in his hands.

“Jesus, sweetheart.” He sighed affectionately, turning in your arms to pull you against him properly. “C’mere, baby.”

You smiled immediately, burying your face into his chest as you cocooned yourself soundly, Steve lifting you up to carry you back to the bedroom.

And the way you relaxed the second he touched you? It was a huge difference to people that recoiled away from him, like your body trusted him completely.

“Needy girl,” he teased affectionately, rubbing his hands up and down your back in slow motions.

The nickname stuck after that—his needy girl, and you loved it more than anything. Because you wanted to be his needy girl, to show him that you loved him deep enough for your heart to hurt.

“Needy girl, move over.”

“I love you even more, needy girl.”

“You tired, needy girl?”

And the party had no trouble noticing it immediately, especially Dustin.

“This is actually disgusting.” Dustin looked at you two curled up on the wheelers basement couch with a grimace. “You guys are attached at the hip like some kind of parasite from the upside down.”

Steve didn’t even look up from where he was absentmindedly playing with your fingers, rubbing featherlight touches over your knuckles.

“She likes me.”

Dustin rolled his eyes, groaning. “You’re literally holding her hands while she’s asleep.”

“She can’t sleep when she’s alone.” Steve responded, keeping his gaze on you. Your cheek was smudged against his chest as your hand remained clutched in his own.

“Do you hear how you sound right now? That’s crazy!” Dustin pointed out with disbelief.

“Don’t call my girl crazy.” Steve said almost threateningly, finally glancing upwards to glare at the younger boy.

If there was one thing Steve wouldn’t stand for, it was for anyone who shamed your relationship. There was nothing wrong with being attached to him, the truth was—he loved showing you off like this.

Loved when you sought him out first in a room.

Loved when you automatically climbed into his lap like that was your designated seat.

Loved when your hand reached for his without looking.

He loved that you depended on him. Not because you couldn’t do it yourself, but because you chose him constantly. And he used to be a man who felt replaceable every second of his life, but with you, he only knew what feeling permanent meant.

When the party left that night, you were still half asleep while he lazily stroked your hair.

“Stevie?” You asked.

“Hm?”

“Do you care that I’m clingy?”

Steve stared at you for a moment like the answer was the most obvious one in the world. Then he leaned down, pressing the softest of kisses to your forehead.

“Sweetheart,” he murmured against your skin. “You could cling to me forever and I still wouldn’t get tired of it.”

Your face flushed instantly, but his response sounded so genuine, relaxing you until your shoulders sagged.