Your hand closed around the pommel of your sword so hard that the leather beneath your glove creaked.

Five years vanished with a cruelty no blade could have matched. You were fourteen again, standing barefoot in the training yard while a dark-haired boy laughed at the wooden sword he had knocked from your hand. Seventeen, crouched beside him behind the chapel after he had split his knuckles against a stone wall rather than admit the king’s words had hurt him. Twenty-two, pressed against the armory door with Jason’s mouth at your throat and his promise breathed against your skin.

When I leave, you come with me.

Anywhere, you had told him.

The man walking toward the throne had the same mouth, though a scar cut through one corner now. His hair was longer than court fashion allowed, swept back from a pale streak at his temple. The boy you had loved had carried every emotion openly when he trusted you enough to show it. This man gave the court nothing.

He stopped at the foot of the dais.

No one announced him. No one seemed capable of finding breath enough to try.

King Bruce rose slowly from the throne.

Jason looked up at the father who had buried an empty coffin for him and smiled without warmth.

“Your Majesty.”

The king’s face changed so little that anyone who had not grown up watching him would have missed it. His fingers tightened once around the carved arm of the throne. Beside him, Prince Richard had gone completely still.

Sionis was the first to speak.

“This is impossible.”

Jason turned his head.

Lord Roman Sionis had stood three paces from you when the royal party returned from Blackwater Pass without its second prince. He had placed one consoling hand on your shoulder while you were still wearing Jason’s blood across your surcoat. He had testified that the ambush had been the work of border raiders, that no prisoners had been taken, and that the ravine fire had left nothing worth recovering.

Jason drew something from beneath his cloak and tossed it onto the floor.

A gold signet rolled across the stone and came to rest against Sionis’s shoe.

The black mask carved into its face was unmistakable.

“I thought you might want that back,” Jason said. “Your man dropped it while he was explaining how much you paid him to change my escort route.”

The court erupted.

Voices collided beneath the vaulted ceiling. Sionis kicked the ring away as though it had burned him, shouting about forgery and foreign plots. Richard descended one step from the dais before stopping himself. The king did not move at all.

Neither did you.

Jason’s gaze crossed the hall through the confusion and found you beside the throne.

For five years, you had imagined this moment in a hundred impossible forms. Jason wounded at the city gates. Jason waiting in the old orchard where the two of you had hidden as children. Jason appearing at the foot of your bed in the hour before dawn, smiling because death had been some elaborate mistake the gods had finally chosen to correct.

You had never imagined him looking at you as though you were another weapon pointed in his direction.

“Commander,” he said.

The title struck harder than accusation. He had called you little knight when you were children, a name that followed you even after you had grown into your armor and learned how to put him flat on his back despite barely reaching his shoulder. Later, when the court could not hear, he had called you love. On the last night before Blackwater Pass, he had rested his forehead against yours and whispered “my knight” with such fierce certainty that the words had felt more binding than anything spoken before an altar.

Now you were Commander of the King’s Guard, and Jason made it sound like a verdict.

You stepped down from the dais.

Protocol demanded that you kneel before a prince of the realm. Your body remembered the motion for entirely different reasons.

Your right knee touched the stone.

Jason’s jaw tightened.

“My prince,” you said.

A tremor passed through the hall. Sionis stopped shouting. Richard looked between the two of you with an understanding that came several years too late, and the king’s expression hardened into something unreadable.

Jason stared at you for one long moment.

Then he looked back at the throne.

“I have brought records from three fortresses, testimony from two surviving guards, and the name of every noble who profited from my death,” he said. “I also have twelve hundred soldiers camped north of your walls. They answer to me, and they have been instructed to remain there unless someone in this room does something stupid.”

Sionis went pale.

King Bruce descended from the dais. “You came with an army.”

“I came with my army.”

The distinction moved through the court like a drawn blade.

Jason’s gaze never left the king. “They are prisoners I freed, soldiers their lords abandoned, and people whose villages your council decided were too distant to defend. They did not belong to another crown before they followed me, and they do not belong to one now.”

“You could have sent word.”

“I did.” Jason’s smile sharpened. “Your chancellor burned it.”

Every eye in the room shifted toward Sionis.

You remained kneeling until Jason glanced down at you again.

“Stand, Commander.”

You obeyed.

His gaze dropped briefly to the sword at your hip. It was not the blade you had carried at Blackwater Pass; that sword lay broken inside Jason’s tomb beneath the royal chapel. The red cord tied around the pommel, however, had once fastened his cloak.

Something moved behind his expression and vanished.

The king ordered the throne room cleared.

Sionis was seized before he made it halfway to the eastern door. The court scattered in a storm of rumors, each noble carrying a slightly different version of Jason’s resurrection into the corridors. Richard remained long enough to embrace his brother, only to receive no embrace in return. Alfred came down from his place near the council table with tears bright in his eyes, and Jason allowed the old steward to touch his face as though confirming he was real.

You waited beside the throne because that was where duty had placed you.

Jason did not look at you again.

By sunset, the eastern guest chambers had been prepared for him.

The rooms had belonged to visiting princes for generations, though no visitor had ever arrived with twelve hundred soldiers and evidence that half the royal council had conspired to murder him. Guards were posted at every stairwell. Jason’s six officers occupied the adjoining rooms, and three clerks carried sealed chests of documents into the king’s private study beneath Alfred’s supervision.

You stood before Bruce’s desk while evening light turned the windows to sheets of bronze.

“He will not accept one of my guards,” the king said.

“He accepted six of his own.”

Bruce’s mouth flattened. “He was held for nearly two years in a fortress beyond the northern border. He escaped with fewer than twenty prisoners and took the fortress before the garrison realized he was free. Afterward, he began gathering the people the border lords had abandoned—discharged soldiers, displaced families, escaped prisoners, and villages forced to defend themselves without support from the capital.”

You kept your face still. Every fact entered the space where five years of uncertainty had lived, each one creating a new image you did not want and could not prevent. Jason in chains. Jason beneath foreign walls. Jason discovering that the kingdom—his kingdom, his home, his family—had stopped searching, and building something of his own from everyone else it had failed.

“He commands a force twelve hundred strong now,” Bruce continued. “Not because a duke appointed him or another king armed him. They chose him. He has taken control of the northern passes, destroyed three raiding companies, and forced every lord in the region to negotiate on his terms.”

“Then he does not need your throne.”

“No,” Bruce said. “That may be what concerns the court most.”

“Did you know?” you asked.

“That he lived? No.” Bruce’s answer came immediately. “That Sionis had altered the route? I suspected it after the inquiry was closed.”

“And you left him on the council.”

“To watch who continued meeting with him.”

Your laugh held no humor. “Five years of watching.”

The king accepted the blow because he knew better than to defend himself.

You had remained in his service for the same reason. Sionis had controlled the royal roads, the prison records, and the flow of correspondence across the border. Resigning your commission would have cost you access to every archive where the truth might be buried. You had spent years collecting fragments while the court mistook your silence for grief disciplined into obedience.

Perhaps Jason had made the same mistake.

Bruce pushed a sealed order across the desk.

“You will take command of the guard outside his rooms.”

You looked at the wax but did not touch it.

“And report whether he intends to take the throne?”

“Report whether he intends to start a war inside the capital.”

“He told you his soldiers would remain outside the walls.”

“He also told me members of my council sold him to an enemy kingdom.” Bruce’s voice lowered. “He has reason to hate every person under this roof.”

“Some more than others.”

The king’s gaze shifted toward the red cord at your sword.

“He will speak to you.”

“You do not know that.”

“I know my son.”

You finally picked up the order. “You buried him without a body.”

Pain crossed Bruce’s face, quick and controlled. “I know what I failed to do.”

The answer should have softened you. It did not.

You turned toward the door.

“Commander.”

You paused.

“If he asks you to leave with him,” Bruce said, “what will you do?”

Five years ago, there had been no hesitation.

There was none now.

“I will decide whether he is asking me to follow him—or testing whether I still would.”

The guards outside the eastern chambers saluted when you approached. You dismissed all but two to the lower stairwell, then took your position beside the carved doors. Through the wood came the murmur of unfamiliar voices, the clink of armor being removed, and once, unmistakably, Jason’s laugh.

The sound nearly undid you.

It was rougher than you remembered, but it was his. For an instant you were back in the stables with hay caught in your hair while Jason tried to convince you that stealing the crown prince’s horse did not count as theft if the horse preferred him. You had been eleven. He had been twelve and already furious at any rule he had not personally approved.

You had met when you were six years old and your father brought you to court after accepting a position under the master-at-arms. Jason had found you hiding behind the practice targets with a bruised cheek and demanded to know who had struck you. When you refused to answer, he challenged all three boys who had done it and lost with spectacular enthusiasm.

You had helped him back to his rooms afterward.

That was the beginning of everything.

He taught you how to climb the western tower without being seen. You taught him how to fall from a horse without breaking his wrist. He smuggled books out of the royal library for you, and you lied to Alfred about where the kitchen tarts had gone. When your father died during a winter campaign, Jason sat outside your chamber door until morning because grief had made you unable to bear another person’s touch.

At sixteen, you were appointed to his household guard.

At eighteen, he kissed you in the armory after you defeated him in front of the entire training company.

At twenty, he learned how you liked to kneel.

At twenty-two, he left for Blackwater Pass with your promise in his mouth.

The door opened.

One of Jason’s officers stepped into the corridor. She was broad-shouldered, silver-haired, and looked at the sword in your hand before she looked at your face.

“He wants you inside,” she said.

You did not ask whether she knew who you were. Her expression suggested everyone in Jason’s army had heard some version of the story.

The chamber doors closed behind you.

Jason stood near the open windows with his back turned. The heavy plate was gone, leaving him in dark trousers, boots, and a black linen shirt unlaced at the throat. His sword rested within reach on the table. A pitcher of wine sat untouched beside it.

He waited until the latch settled.

“Did he tell you to count the knives?”

You looked around the room. “Seven that I can see.”

“Eight.”

“You still keep one in your boot.”

Jason turned.

For the first time since he entered the throne room, there was no audience between you—no king, no court, and no officers bearing witness to the person he had become or the authority he had built for himself. The distance across the chamber felt greater than the five years that had separated you. The men and women beyond the door did not follow him because of his birth. They followed because somewhere beyond Gotham’s reach, Jason had become the person who freed them, protected them, and gave them something worth defending.

His gaze moved over your armor. You wore the formal half-plate of the king’s guard, polished steel over black leather, with a short cloak fastened at one shoulder. Jason had once complained that the uniform hid everything he liked best about you.

The memory entered his expression at the same moment it entered yours.

He reached for the wine and poured a cup.

“So,” he said. “Commander.”

“My prince.”

“Still doing that.”

“You are still a prince.”

“Am I?” He drank without looking away from you. “No one seemed certain this afternoon.”

“The kingdom has believed you dead for five years.”

“The kingdom.” Jason set the cup down. “Is that what we are calling you now?”

You absorbed the bitterness because you had expected it from the moment he looked at you across the throne room.

“What would you prefer to call me?”

“I had several names for you once.”

“You did.”

“None of them wore the king’s crest.”

Your hand tightened at your side. “Say what you brought me here to hear.”

Jason laughed softly. “Still impatient.”

“Still trying to make anger do the work of honesty.”

His expression hardened.

There he was. The boy beneath the commander, the wounded prince who would rather draw blood than admit where he had already been cut.

You knew him too well. Perhaps that was why he hated you most.

Jason walked toward you.

He had grown broader during the missing years, heavier through the shoulders, and he carried himself with the controlled balance of someone who had learned to fight in places where armor could not be trusted. You had once known every scar on his body. Now there were pale lines at his jaw, his throat, and across the backs of his hands.

He stopped close enough that you could feel the heat of him through your armor.

“What did he order you to report?”

“Whether you intend to begin a war inside the capital.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think if you wanted the throne, you would not have left your army outside the walls.”

“Maybe I wanted him comfortable.”

“You have never cared enough about comfort to use it as a weapon.”

His mouth twitched before he suppressed it.

“You remember me, then.”

The words were quieter than anything else he had said.

You looked at the scar cutting through his lip. “Every day.”

Jason stepped back as though you had struck him.

The movement made anger rise in you at last—not because he doubted you, but because some part of him had decided he alone was entitled to the pain of the last five years.

“You do not get to return from the grave and speak to me as though I placed you there.”

“I sent letters.”

“I never received them.”

“You stopped searching.”

“The king stopped the official search.”

“And you continued wearing his crest.”

“Yes.”

His eyes flashed. “Of course you did.”

You crossed the room before caution could stop you.

“Sionis controlled the border archives,” you said. “He controlled the road ledgers, the prison transfers, and every messenger who crossed the northern gate. I stayed because leaving would have surrendered every path that might lead to you.”

“You expect me to believe Bruce let you investigate his council for five years?”

“I did not ask his permission.”

Jason’s gaze sharpened.

“I bribed clerks. I threatened caravan masters. I rode to Blackwater Pass every spring after the snow melted and searched the ravine myself.” Your voice broke, and you hated it for doing so. “I found three buckles, part of a saddle, and enough bone to bury six men. None of it was yours.”

He said nothing.

“I knew Sionis lied. I knew the route had been changed from inside the palace. I stayed close enough to prove it.”

“And when you could not?”

“I kept looking.”

“For five years.”

“I would have for the rest of my life, if necessary.”

Jason stared at you.

The chamber had become too quiet. Beyond the open window, the city bells marked the hour, each note spreading across rooftops that had mourned him and then learned to live without him.

His gaze dropped to the red cord tied around your sword.

“That was mine.”

“Yes.”

“You wore it into the throne room.”

“I have worn it every day since Blackwater.”

His mouth tightened. “A strip of cloth makes a poor memorial.”

“It was not a memorial.”

“What was it?”

“A promise.”

Jason’s laugh came out harsh. “You knelt to Bruce with my promise on your sword.”

“I knelt to the throne because I was on duty.”

“You always did know how to make obedience sound noble.”

“And you always knew how to make cruelty sound like wit.”

The silence after that was immediate.

Jason moved closer. “Careful.”

“Or what?”

“Your king ordered you to guard me. I doubt he intended you to provoke me.”

“He knows you.”

“No,” Jason said. “He knows the son he lost. You are the one who thinks you know what came back.”

You looked at him—at the unfamiliar scars, the weight he carried through every movement, the fury sharpened into discipline—and understood what he wanted. He wanted you to recoil. He wanted proof that he had become too altered to love, because that would hurt less than believing you had loved him all this time and he had been wrong to hate you.

You reached for the laces at your throat.

Jason caught your wrist.

The movement was fast enough that another person might have reached for a weapon. Your pulse jumped for an entirely different reason.

His hand closed around the leather guard at your wrist, thumb pressing over the point where your heartbeat raced beneath it.

“What are you doing?”

“Showing you.”

His grip tightened. “Showing me what?”

You pulled your cloak clasp loose with your free hand. The black fabric slid from your shoulder and fell across the floor.

Jason’s gaze followed it.

Then you unfastened the top buckle of your breastplate.

Understanding entered his face, followed so quickly by hunger that it left you breathless.

“You should stop me,” you said.

“Do you want me to?”

“No.”

His eyes lifted to yours.

The old question stood between you, familiar as prayer.

“What stops me?” he asked.

“Winter.”

“And if you cannot speak?”

You tapped three times against the inside of his wrist.

Jason closed his eyes.

For one suspended moment, his grip trembled.

Then he released you.

“Take off the sword.”

The command settled low in your body.

You unbuckled the belt and laid the weapon across the table beside his. Jason watched every movement. His anger had not disappeared, but it had changed shape, mixing with five years of want until the air between you felt dangerously thin.

“The dagger.”

You drew it from the sheath at your back and placed it beside the sword.

“The other one.”

You raised a brow.

His mouth curved. “You taught me that trick.”

You bent, pulled the narrow blade from your left boot, and set it on the table.

Jason stepped behind you.

His fingers found the buckles of your breastplate. He did not hurry. Each fastening came loose with a soft scrape of leather through metal, the sound unbearably intimate after years in which no one else had been permitted to help you out of your armor.

The weight lifted from your shoulders.

Jason set the breastplate aside and stood close enough that his chest brushed your back. His breath moved against the side of your neck.

“You let anyone else do this?”

“No.”

“Anyone else touch what was mine?”

The possessiveness should have angered you. Instead, heat gathered between your thighs.

“You were dead,” you said.

His hand came around your throat.

He did not squeeze, only held you there, palm warm against your skin and fingers spanning the line of your jaw. Your body remembered him before your mind could catch up. Your head tipped back against his shoulder. Your breath slowed because he liked to feel you surrender it deliberately.

“I asked you a question.”

“And I answered it.”

“Poorly.”

“No one else touched me.”

Jason’s mouth brushed your ear. “No one?”

“No one.”

His fingers tightened slightly.

You swallowed against his palm.

“Why?” he asked.

The question held no arrogance now. It was raw enough that you could have turned and ended the argument with a kiss, but Jason had spent five years doubting the answer. He needed to hear it in the language the two of you had built before death interrupted you.

“Because I was waiting for you.”

His breath caught.

Jason released your throat and moved in front of you.

“Kneel.”

The stone floor was hard beneath your knees. You lowered yourself without looking away from him, settling with the same straight-backed discipline you had once used in the privacy of his old rooms. The first time he had asked this of you, both of you had been nervous enough to laugh. Jason had touched your face as though your obedience frightened him more than any refusal could have done.

Now he looked down at you with hunger and grief carved into every line of him.

“Why are you kneeling?”

“Because you told me to.”

His hand closed in your hair near the nape, not pulling yet. “That is not what I asked.”

“Because I want to.”

“Is this because Bruce ordered you to keep me calm?”

“No.”

“Because you pity what came back?”

“No.”

His thumb moved along your jaw. “Then tell me.”

The words lodged behind your ribs. You had spoken them in empty chapels and over winter graves. You had whispered them into the red cord while tying it around your sword each morning. Saying them to Jason should have been easier.

It was not.

“Because I’m still yours.”

Something in his face broke.

He bent and kissed you.

There was nothing gentle in the first touch of his mouth. Jason took the back of your neck in one hand and held you where he wanted you, kissing you with five years of fury behind it. The scar at his lip was unfamiliar beneath yours. Everything else was devastatingly the same—the way he tilted your head, the rough sound he made when your mouth opened, the brief press of his teeth when he wanted more than you could give quickly enough.

You clutched his thighs to steady yourself.

Jason pulled back only far enough to look at you.

“You should hate me,” he said.

“For surviving?”

“For coming back like this.”

“You came back alive.”

His grip tightened in your hair. “You do not know what I did to stay that way.”

“Then tell me when you can.”

“And until then?”

You turned your face and kissed the inside of his wrist. “Let me remember you.”

Jason stared at your mouth against his skin.

Then his expression sharpened into something familiar and commanding.

“Open my trousers.”

Heat spread through you so quickly that your fingers nearly fumbled the fastening. Jason noticed. He always noticed.

“Five years,” he murmured. “And my perfect knight still loses all that discipline on her knees.”

“You always talked too much.”

His hand tightened in your hair and pulled your head back.

“Careful, love.”

The name struck deeper than any command.

You looked up at him, breathing hard.

Jason’s thumb traced your lower lip. “I wondered if you would still look at me like that.”

You opened his trousers and freed him. He was already hard, heavy in your hand, and the first stroke drew a rough breath from him. The sound made your body ache. You had remembered this too many nights with your own hand between your thighs, chasing a ghost through sensations that never quite became real.

Jason brushed your hand away.

“Use your mouth.”

You leaned forward and licked slowly along the underside of his cock.

His head tipped back.

The reaction sent a fierce satisfaction through you. Jason had returned with an army he had built himself and enough power to make the king’s council tremble. Hundreds of people waited beyond the walls because he had earned their loyalty without a crown, a title, or the family name that had once failed to protect him.

Here, in the privacy of his bedchamber, you could still make his breath break with the same deliberate sweep of your tongue. 

You took him into your mouth.

His hand settled against the back of your head. At first he let you choose the pace, watching as you drew him deeper, your lips closing around him while your tongue worked beneath the head. The taste of him filled your mouth. You moaned softly, and Jason’s hips jerked before he caught himself.

“Still like this?” he asked.

You looked up at him.

“Taking me on your knees where anyone could knock on the door.” His thumb stroked the hinge of your jaw. “Did you think about it while you stood outside pretending to be loyal to the crown?”

You drew back enough to answer. “I thought about it while I stood beside your grave.”

The cruelty left his face.

You regretted the words at once, but Jason did not release you. He touched your cheek with a tenderness that made your throat tighten.

“I am sorry,” he said.

It was the first apology either of you had offered.

You turned your face into his palm. “I know.”

Then you took him into your mouth again because neither of you was ready for everything the apology contained.

Jason let you set the rhythm for only a few breaths before the hand in your hair became firmer. He guided you down, slowly enough that you could stop him, until the head of his cock pressed deep and your throat tightened around him.

“Good,” he murmured. “That’s my good knight.”

The praise went through you like an arrow.

Your fingers dug into his thighs. Jason held you there for one heartbeat, then eased you back and let you breathe. Tears pricked your eyes. He wiped one away with his thumb before guiding you down again.

The pace remained controlled, each movement measured against your breath. You took him deeper every time, jaw aching pleasantly, the wet sounds obscene in the quiet room. Jason watched you with the focus he had once reserved for battle plans and your body beneath his hands.

“Look at you,” he said. “All that polished armor, all those men following your orders, and this is still where you want to be.”

You moaned around him.

“That is what I thought.”

He pulled you off before he could finish.

You gasped for air, lips swollen, a line of saliva connecting your mouth to the head of his cock until Jason wiped it away with his thumb. He pushed that thumb between your lips.

“Suck.”

You obeyed.

His gaze darkened.

“Up.”

Jason caught your arm and drew you to your feet. Your knees protested after the stone, but he gave you no time to recover. His mouth found yours again as he backed you toward the table. Maps and correspondence scattered when he swept one arm across the surface. His sword remained beside yours, the two blades touching at the guards.

He lifted you onto the table.

The mail beneath your leather tunic scraped against the wood. Jason cursed under his breath and reached for the side fastenings.

“Too many layers.”

“You used to say that about ceremonial gowns.”

“I was right then too.”

He stripped the leather jerkin from you, then dragged the mail shirt up and over your head. Your linen undertunic followed, leaving you bare from the waist up in the cool evening air.

Jason stopped.

You had scars he did not know either. A narrow line crossed your ribs from a training accident two winters after his death. Another marked your shoulder where an assassin’s arrow had found the gap above your breastplate. Jason touched that one first.

“Who?”

“Sionis hired someone after I began asking about the changed route.”

His expression went still in the way that had terrified the court earlier.

“He will not survive the trial.”

“That is for the king to decide.”

Jason’s fingers closed around your waist. “You are in my rooms, half naked on my table, and still defending Bruce’s authority.”

“I am reminding you that murdering Sionis before he speaks would be inconvenient.”

A reluctant laugh escaped him. “There is my little knight.”

He bent and put his mouth over the scar.

Your breath shuddered.

Jason kissed along the pale line, then lower, his hands spreading over your ribs as though relearning their shape. He reached your breast and took one nipple between his lips. The first pull made you arch toward him.

He had always known how sensitive you were there. Time had not changed it. Jason’s tongue circled the hardened peak before his teeth closed with just enough pressure to make you gasp. His other hand cupped your breast, thumb moving in slow strokes that left you trembling.

“You kept this from everyone too?” he asked against your skin.

“Yes.”

“All of you?”

“Yes.”

“For me?”

You took his face in both hands and forced him to look at you. “Do not ask questions when you already know the answer.”

Jason’s eyes searched yours.

“I need to hear it.”

The admission softened something inside you.

“All of me,” you said. “For you.”

He kissed you more slowly this time.

The tenderness lasted until your legs opened around his hips. Jason made a low sound, grabbed the back of your neck, and kissed you hard enough to bruise. His free hand found the fastening of your trousers.

“You know exactly what you are doing.”

“I have not done anything.”

“You opened your legs for me.”

“You were standing between them.”

“And that was enough?”

“You already knew it would be.”

His mouth curved against yours as he pulled your trousers down to your knees and dropped into a crouch before you.

You braced your hands on the table.

Jason dragged one boot from your foot, then the other, and stripped away the remaining leather with deliberate efficiency. He left you bare on the edge of the table while he remained mostly dressed, the imbalance calculated and familiar.

His gaze moved between your thighs.

“Wet already.”

“You put your hand around my throat.”

“That was all it took?”

“You also told me to kneel.”

Jason’s mouth curved. “Honest at last.”

He spread your knees wider.

The exposure made heat rise through you, but you did not look away. Jason had always loved that—your willingness to meet his gaze even while giving him control.

He ran one finger through your wetness.

Your hips jerked.

“Sensitive,” he said.

“It has been five years.”

His expression darkened at the reminder. “Then I have been neglecting my duties.”

Before you could answer, he lowered his mouth to you.

The first stroke of his tongue pulled a broken sound from your throat. Jason gripped your thighs and held them apart while he licked you slowly, learning what time had changed and what it had not. He remembered the pressure you liked, the way you needed his tongue flatter at first, the brief teasing circles that made your legs tense before he focused directly on your clit.

You reached for his hair.

Jason caught your wrist and pressed your hand flat against the table.

“Stay still.”

“You know I cannot.”

“Then disappoint yourself trying.”

He returned to your cunt before you could insult him.

Your head fell back. The carved ceiling blurred above you as Jason worked you open with his mouth, his tongue pressing inside before dragging upward through your wetness. When he closed his lips around your clit and sucked, your body lifted from the table.

Jason held you down with one forearm across your hips.

“Still cannot follow one simple order,” he murmured.

“You chose the order knowing that.”

He bit the inside of your thigh.

You cried out.

“That was for arguing.”

“You missed me arguing.”

His eyes lifted to yours from between your legs. “More than I missed breathing.”

The answer stole every clever response you might have made.

Jason pushed two fingers inside you.

You clenched around them immediately. He groaned against your thigh, then began to move them in slow, firm strokes while his thumb circled your clit. Your hands gripped the edge of the table. The stretch was almost enough and nowhere near enough, pleasure building too quickly after years with no one but yourself.

“That is it,” he said. “Let me feel you.”

You tried to hold his gaze. Jason curled his fingers, found the place that made your vision flash white, and watched your control break.

“Jason.”

His name left you without title or restraint.

He went still.

You had spoken it a thousand times since his death, but this was the first time he had heard you.

“Again,” he said.

You breathed his name.

Jason kissed your inner thigh and thrust his fingers deeper.

“Again.”

You gave it to him until the name became a plea. He worked you relentlessly, mouth returning to your clit while his fingers moved inside you. The pressure gathered low and tight, every stroke pulling it closer. Your thighs shook around his shoulders.

“Come for me,” he ordered.

You broke with a cry.

Pleasure tore through you hard enough to arch your back from the table. Jason held you down and kept his mouth on you, drawing out every pulse until your legs trembled and your breath came in helpless gasps.

He did not stop when the first wave passed.

You twisted beneath his arm. “Jason.”

“You waited five years.” His fingers slid inside you again. “You can give me another.”

“It is too much.”

“Winter?”

The word grounded you.

“No.”

His eyes sharpened. “Then take it.”

He sucked your clit again.

The overstimulation burned at the edge of pleasure, intense enough that your hands searched blindly for something to hold. You found his shoulder. Jason let you grip him this time, fingers digging into the linen of his shirt while he drove you toward another climax.

The second came quicker and rougher. Your body clenched around his fingers, thighs closing despite his grip, and Jason groaned against you as though your pleasure belonged to him.

When he finally rose, his mouth shone with you.

He wiped it with the back of his hand and looked entirely too pleased with himself.

“You are insufferable,” you managed.

“You missed that too.”

“I missed parts of you.”

Jason stepped between your legs. “Which parts?”

You reached for his shirt.

He caught both your wrists.

“No.”

The refusal came too fast.

You looked at him properly. Hunger remained in his face, but beneath it was fear—small, well-hidden, and familiar from nights long ago when he had believed every kindness might be withdrawn without warning.

“Take off the shirt,” you said.

Jason’s grip tightened. “You are in no position to give orders.”

“Then consider it a condition.”

His expression closed.

You pulled against his hands. “You do not get all of me while hiding half of yourself.”

“You said you were still mine.”

“I am. That does not make me blind.”

The space between you changed.

Jason released your wrists and stepped back.

For a moment, you thought he would order you out. Instead, he reached for the hem of his shirt and dragged it over his head.

The scars began at his ribs.

Some were narrow and clean, left by blades. Others crossed his skin in pale, uneven ridges that spoke of restraints, burns, and wounds left too long without care. One thick mark curved beneath his collarbone. Another disappeared around his side toward his back.

You slid from the table.

Jason stood rigid while you approached him.

“Do not,” he said.

You stopped with your hand inches from his chest. “Do you want me to stop?”

His breath moved unevenly.

“No.”

You touched the scar beneath his collarbone.

Jason flinched.

The reaction was so slight another person would have missed it. You laid your palm flat against his chest and waited until the tension eased beneath your hand.

“You are alive,” you whispered.

“Barely, for a while.”

“But you are here.”

“I came back wrong.”

Anger tightened your throat. “Do not tell me what I am allowed to love.”

Jason looked at you.

You traced the scar around his ribs, then bent and pressed your lips to it. His hands hovered at your shoulders as though uncertain whether to push you away or drag you closer. You kissed another mark, then another, not trying to erase what had happened or turn his survival into something beautiful. You only wanted his body to learn that touch could reach those places without pain.

When you reached the thick scar at his side, Jason’s hand settled in your hair.

“They made me dig the grave first,” he said.

You went still.

“For the men who survived the ravine.” His voice sounded distant. “Sionis’s buyers wanted the prince alive until they knew whether Bruce would pay. When no message came, they stopped keeping the others useful.”

You pressed your forehead against his stomach.

“I am sorry.”

“I hated you.”

“I know.”

“I told myself you had chosen him. That you had put on the crest and forgotten every promise you made me.”

“I know.”

Jason’s fingers tightened in your hair. “Why are you not angry?”

“I am furious.” You looked up. “But I understand why you needed to believe it.”

He stared down at you.

“You always were too merciful.”

“No. I simply know you.”

Jason drew you to your feet and kissed you with both hands on your face.

The kiss was different from the others. It still held hunger, but the anger no longer stood between you as a weapon. He kissed you like the boy who had hidden beneath your window after nightmares and the man who had crossed half a kingdom because some part of him still remembered home.

You wrapped your arms around his neck.

Jason lifted you.

Your legs closed around his waist as he carried you toward the bed. He laid you down against the heavy coverlet, then stood over you while he stripped off his boots and trousers. The sight of him bare made your breath catch for reasons beyond desire. There were scars along his thighs too, more evidence of years you had not witnessed.

He noticed where you were looking.

“Later,” he said.

You nodded.

Jason climbed over you and settled between your legs. His cock pressed hot against your stomach. He lowered himself onto one forearm and touched your face with the other hand.

“Tell me again.”

“That I am yours?”

“That you waited.”

You cupped the back of his neck. “Every day.”

His eyes closed.

“I hated you most days,” he confessed.

“I loved you through it all.”

Jason kissed you once, almost gently.

Then he reached between your bodies and guided himself to your entrance.

The first push stretched you slowly. Your body resisted after so long, and Jason stopped the instant your breath changed.

“Too much?”

“No.” You tightened your legs around him. “Don’t you dare stop.”

He pressed deeper.

The stretch burned, then softened into fullness as your body opened around him. Jason watched your face with fierce concentration, inching forward until his hips met yours and he was buried completely inside you.

Neither of you moved.

The moment was too large for motion. Five years collapsed into the place where your bodies joined, every remembered touch becoming real again beneath the weight of him.

Jason lowered his forehead to yours.

“You feel the same,” he said roughly.

“You do not.”

Pain flickered across his face.

You ran your hands down his back, over muscle and scars you had not known. “You feel alive.”

His breath broke against your mouth.

Then he began to move.

The first strokes were slow, almost careful, Jason drawing back and pressing into you with enough control that every inch registered. Your body adjusted quickly, wetness easing the drag. Pleasure built with each deep thrust, the angle pressing him against places your fingers had never reached.

You held his shoulders and watched him lose some of that control.

Jason’s mouth found your throat. He kissed the pulse there, then bit hard enough to leave a mark. Your cunt clenched around him.

He groaned.

“You like that.”

“You know I do.”

“I knew who you were.” His hips drove forward more sharply. “I do not know who you became.”

“Then learn.”

Jason rose onto his hands and thrust harder.

The bed struck the wall with each movement. Your breasts moved beneath him, your legs spread wide around his hips, and Jason watched as though determined to memorize every response. He changed the angle, pulling one of your knees higher, and the next thrust made you cry out.

“There.” His voice was thick with satisfaction. “Still there.”

You dug your nails into his back.

Jason hissed and caught your wrist. He pinned it above your head, then the other, holding both in one hand.

“On you?”

You pulled once against his grip. “Let me leave mine too.”

Something fierce entered his face.

Jason released one of your wrists and guided your hand to his shoulder before driving into you harder.

He drove into you harder.

Pleasure climbed again, rough and relentless. Jason’s free hand closed around your throat, pressure firm at the sides rather than the center. Your breath shortened. The controlled restriction sent heat racing through you, sharpening every thrust until your body trembled beneath him.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

You forced your eyes open.

“Whose knight are you?”

The question held years of doubt.

“Yours.”

“Who do you kneel for?”

“You.”

“Who were you waiting for?”

Your chest tightened.

“You.”

Jason’s expression twisted.

He released your throat at once and bent over you, pressing his face into the curve of your neck. His hips did not stop, but the rhythm broke, becoming desperate rather than punishing.

“I’m sorry,” he said against your skin. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

You freed one hand from his loosened grip and held the back of his head.

“Come home,” you whispered.

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

He drove into you with renewed force, one arm sliding beneath your back to hold you against him. The position pressed your bodies together from chest to thigh, each thrust grinding the base of his cock against your clit. Your next climax gathered too quickly to resist.

“Jason, I’m—”

“I know.” His mouth covered yours. “Give it to me.”

You came around him.

Your cunt clenched in hard pulses, dragging a curse from him. Jason kept moving through it, thrusting deep while your body shook beneath him. The pleasure blurred into overstimulation, but you held him tighter, wanting every second of the proof that he was here.

His rhythm became uneven.

Jason pulled out with a broken groan and spilled across your stomach. His hand tightened around your hip as his body shuddered. For a moment he remained above you, breathing hard, his face turned away as though even now he could hide the force of what had happened.

You touched his cheek.

He looked at you.

There was no prince in his expression then, no commander of the army waiting beyond the walls and no dead boy haunting the court. There was only Jason, exhausted and alive and terrified that the moment would end if either of you moved.

“Stay,” he said.

You had once promised to follow him anywhere.

This request was smaller and somehow more difficult.

“I’m here.”

Jason lowered himself beside you.

He pulled a cloth from the washstand and cleaned your stomach with careful hands. The tenderness after roughness had always affected you more than any command. When he finished, he drew the coverlet over both of you and settled on his side facing you.

For a while, neither of you spoke.

You traced the scar at the corner of his mouth. Jason let you. His hand rested on your hip, thumb moving in slow, absent strokes.

“Bruce asked what I would do if you told me to leave with you,” you said.

Jason’s hand stopped.

“What did you tell him?”

“That I would decide whether you were asking me to follow you—or testing whether I still would.”

His mouth curved faintly. “And if I ask as myself?”

“I would ask where we are going.”

The answer did not please him as much as you expected.

Jason looked toward the windows. Night had settled over the city, the lamps below turning the streets into lines of gold.

“I did not come to stay,” he said.

You had known. The certainty had lived beneath every accusation, every test, every desperate touch. Jason had returned for justice, not reconciliation. He had brought his own soldiers because he no longer trusted Gotham to protect him and because they trusted him to return to them. Once Sionis and the others were exposed, he intended to leave before the court could decide whether to welcome him as a prince, fear him as a rival, or claim authority over what he had built without them.

“You command the northern passes,” you said.

“I command my people.”

There was a difference, and Jason clearly expected you to understand it.

“They chose me,” he continued. “Not because I was Bruce’s son. Most of them did not know who I was until months after they began following me.”

“So did I.”

Jason looked back at you.

“I came here prepared to find you married,” he admitted. “Or loyal enough to Bruce that you would put a sword through me if he asked.”

“He would never ask.”

“You did not answer the important part.”

“I am not married.”

“I noticed.” His fingers moved over your bare hip. “Eventually.”

You caught his hand. “I did not stay untouched because I believed you would return.”

Jason’s expression became guarded.

“I stayed untouched because loving you did not stop when hope did.”

He looked down at your joined hands.

“You deserved a life.”

“I had one.”

“Waiting beside a grave?”

“Searching for the truth. Protecting Richard. Keeping Sionis close enough to watch. Becoming someone who could stand in that throne room when you came back with an army and not draw a sword because everyone else was afraid.”

Jason’s thumb moved across your knuckles.

“I almost wanted you to draw it.”

“I know.”

“I thought if you fought me, at least I would know where we stood.”

“You have always preferred a wound you can see.”

He gave a quiet laugh. “And you have always preferred healing things that bite you.”

“You were very small when we met.”

“I was seven.”

“You were feral.”

“I was charming.”

“You threw a practice sword at Edmund Davis because he called me a stable rat.”

“He deserved worse.”

“You missed him and broke a window.”

Jason smiled properly.

The sight hurt more than his anger had.

You moved closer and rested your head against his chest. His arm came around you after only a moment’s hesitation.

“I cannot be the boy you lost,” he said into your hair.

“I am not the girl who lost you.”

“What does that leave us?”

You lifted your head. “Two people who still know how to annoy each other.”

“Promising foundation.”

“And an oath.”

Jason’s expression changed.

You slipped from the bed before he could stop you.

Your legs were unsteady, and the chill of the room raised gooseflesh along your skin. Jason watched as you crossed to the discarded armor. You knelt beside the table, took up your sword, and pulled the red cord free from its pommel.

The cloth had faded over five years. One end was stained dark from Blackwater Pass, though you had washed it until your hands cracked.

You returned to the bed.

Jason sat up against the carved headboard, the coverlet low around his waist. You placed the cord in his palm.

“You gave me this the night before you left,” you said.

“I remember.”

“You said we would go north after the treaty was signed. You would surrender your place in the succession, and I would resign my commission.”

“I was young.”

“You were certain.”

“I was wrong about what waited at Blackwater.”

“Not about us.”

Jason closed his fingers around the cloth.

You lowered yourself to one knee beside the bed.

His gaze sharpened. “What are you doing?”

“What I should have done in the throne room.”

“You were following protocol.”

“This is not protocol.”

You drew your sword and laid it across your palms.

The words of a formal knight’s oath rose easily to mind. You had spoken them before the king at eighteen, promising service to the crown, defense of the realm, and obedience to the laws that bound them both. Those words had made you a knight.

The promise you made Jason had never needed witnesses.

“My sword was yours before the king placed his crest on it,” you said. “My loyalty remained yours when the court called you dead. I cannot return what I never surrendered, but I can offer it again.”

Jason stared at you, the red cord caught in his fist.

“I am not asking you to kneel,” he said.

“I know.”

“I may never forgive Bruce.”

“I am not asking you to.”

“I will leave the capital when this is finished.”

“Then I will go with you.”

His throat moved.

“You command the king’s guard.”

“Someone else can learn to stand beside a throne.”

“My people will not follow you because you wear polished armor.”

“I would be concerned if they did.”

“They are loyal to me.”

“So am I.”

Jason studied you, searching for hesitation.

You raised your sword until the flat rested against your shoulder.

“I am not asking them to accept me as your commander,” you said. “I am asking to stand beside you while I earn my place among them.”

Jason laughed once, unsteady and disbelieving.

“That sounds less like devotion and more like a threat.”

“You always liked both.”

He leaned forward and wrapped the red cord around your wrist.

His fingers were careful as he tied it, the same way he had fastened it to your sword five years earlier. When he finished, he lifted your hand and pressed his mouth to the knot.

“My knight,” he said.

The words settled into the oldest part of you.

You sheathed the sword and climbed back into bed.

Jason pulled you against him before your head reached the pillow. His arms closed around you with an urgency he no longer tried to disguise, and you held him just as tightly.

Outside the chamber, the guard changed at midnight. Somewhere below, clerks continued sorting evidence that would bring down half the council. Beyond the northern wall, twelve hundred soldiers waited for the man who had freed them, armed them, and taught them that loyalty could be given rather than inherited.

They belonged to no kingdom waiting to reclaim them.

They were Jason’s people because they had chosen him, and he was theirs because he had chosen them in return.

For one night, their commander slept with his face against your throat and his hand wrapped around your wrist, fingers resting over the faded red promise tied there.

By morning, the palace knew you had spent the night in Jason’s chambers.

No one was foolish enough to mention it when you entered the king’s study wearing yesterday’s uniform, your armor properly fastened and Jason’s red cord tied openly around your wrist.

Bruce stood behind his desk. Richard occupied the chair near the fire, attempting and failing to hide his interest. Alfred placed a cup of tea in front of you without comment, though the corner of his mouth suggested he had already reached several conclusions.

Jason came in behind you wearing black armor and no cloak.

The king’s gaze moved from him to the cord at your wrist.

“You were ordered to observe him,” Bruce said.

“I did.”

“And what does he intend?”

Jason leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, watching you.

You thought of Blackwater Pass, an empty coffin, and five years spent carrying a promise everyone else believed had died. You thought of Jason on his knees before no one, surviving through spite and fury until he could return to the place that had failed him. You thought of the road north and the army waiting beyond the walls.

“He intends to see Sionis tried,” you said. “He intends to expose every person involved in the attack. After that, he will return to his people.”

Bruce’s face tightened. “And you?”

You rested one hand on the pommel of your sword.

“I renewed my oath.”

Richard exhaled a quiet laugh. Alfred looked down at the tea tray.

The king held your gaze for a long moment, then looked at his son.

Jason did not ask permission.

Neither did you.

When he left the study, you followed him into the corridor, matching your stride to his as naturally as you had when you were children racing toward the training yard.

At the turn of the stairs, Jason glanced at you.

“Anywhere?” he asked.

This time, there was no court to hide from and no grave waiting between the promise and its answer.

“Anywhere.”

The locket in between your fingers feels warm from how much you’ve gripped it. Just like your father has instructed, you must comport yourself, so you have, bravely so, even when you could still feel Jason’s warmth ebbing from him. It’s unfortunate, feeling this way, like a blushing maiden. At least now you have an inkling on what your husband could look like, if he’s anything like his brother, you’ll truly consider yourself lucky.

The sound of the trunks getting loaded into your room thumps down the loud thrumming of your pulse whilst lighting strikes at the sea, followed by a booming thunder. You already miss the sunshine.

“That’ll be all.” Thena tells the servants to take their leave.

The moment the chamber doors click close, you take your eyes off the sea and walk towards the large bed that’s draped in furs and the Wayne’s house colors of navy blue and black. It’ll be your bed now— your marital bed, just the thought of it makes your head swirl as you plop down on the softness with your arms spread open and landing face down onto the covers. Gods, you truly are a blushing maiden.

Thena clicks her tongue at you as you bury your head into the goose feather pillow. It smells of lavender and citrus, a warm welcoming scent that’s a contrast to the scent of petrichor and wet stone that clings inside the keep.

“Why are you wallowing?”

“Just exhausted, Thena.” You say, voice muffled as your fingers knead at the soft silky covers beside you.

She sighs, and you could hear her boots clack against the floor, moving closer to you as the fire roars from the fireplace. You thought for a moment that you’d be safe from her pestering, but then a pillow softly lands right on your back.

Your handmaiden just threw a pillow at the realm’s princess, that should count for an assassination attempt if you’re cruel and vain. “I’ve known you before you could even walk, princess, you’re not trying to suffocate yourself because you’re tired.”

“Leave me alone.” You utter once again, like a petulant child.

“Is it because your husband didn’t welcome you? He’s returning from the battlefield as we speak, he’s not tarrying.” The bed dips as she sits beside you. You could practically feel her squinted eyes aimed right at the back of your head. “Or is it because you thought that Lord Jason was your husband?”

Gasping, offended, your face lifts off the pillow as you perch yourself up on the bed by your elbows. “How dare—” she simply raises a brow. “Yes, you’re right.” You bend like a twig in front of her.

“Well, he is quite handsome.”

“You’re not helping, Thena.”

“And gods, have you seen his arms? It’s as big as the boar he brought in.”

“Thena—”

“And those eyes,” she lets out a teasing longing breath. “As green as the great grass field, almost glowing—” a pillow lands right on her face, and yet she doesn’t stop. “I wouldn’t mind if he was my husband either.”

“Gods, Thena!” You’re now fully sitting up, huffing, cheeks aflame.

“Careful now, your grace, don’t sully your vows.” Brows wiggling, you didn’t even consider that yourself, now she has planted the seed in your mind.

“Technically I wasn’t the one saying those vows.” There’s a pout on your lips as you clamber off the bed and towards one of the trunks to busy yourself by finding something warmer to wear. “When I wasn’t there for my own wedding.”

“It’s no fault of yours when your father commanded a proxy to stand in your stead.” Her voice softens as you feel her eyes on your back. “The wedding needed to happen quickly for the alliance.”

“Yes, well, I would’ve liked to be there myself and possibly meet my own husband.” You utter with a bite on your tongue.

Just like when the betrothal happened without you having a say in it, even at your own wedding you didn’t have a voice, no one even considered asking you. Your great aunt could only give you an apologetic smile, and your mother gave you poison as a wedding gift, you don’t have the best outlook in this marriage so far. Especially when you haven’t met your supposed husband, whom you supposedly have vowed to love and obey.

All you wanted was to be there in a pretty gown you chose, hold his hand and look into his eyes. And yet you weren’t even given that choice.

“Now you’re mad at the marriage because you weren’t in it when you were just sorrowful about it.” She sighs, “oh the woes of my princess.”

Taking a deep breath, feeling the chill down your bones, your eyes roam around the expansive room they set you in, whilst biting your cheek, resisting the urge to say something dreadful to her that you will regret sorrowfully. The room is beautiful, ancient, and almost there is something primeval about it. All stone and steel with tapestries that depict battles from a hundred years ago. Some bear the banner of your house beside sigils that has gone extinct, ones you’ve only seen in the history tomes. A few of the battles depict your lord husband’s ancestors, rallying beside their bannermen with a bloodied sword in hand.

Sharp weapons decorate the whole chamber, battle axes with golden hilts, a dagger carved with herons and sea snakes, a battle worn shield with house Wayne’s sigil, and a handful of swords in different make. One was even as black as the night sky, possibly made from a fallen star. You know it well when your older brother had one, it was always his favorite, he once said that it sings whenever he swings it. That sword never came back home, just like him.

Even with all the carved spires laden with gargoyles and bats around the walls, their eyes seemingly following your movements, you can’t help but see the beauty of the chamber. It truly shows how ancient their house is, and now you’ll be a part of it as well. Mayhaps your face will be carved along the hallways just like your lord husband’s ancestors when the time comes. It’s somewhat comforting to know that you won’t simply be a footnote in history books, that you’ll be etched in stone, forever remembered.

But then you remember that you actually have to be a part of the family to be carved alongside them. That you have to bear him an heir for this marriage to be worthwhile for both houses. That whatever comes out of you could be the heir to the throne if the war ends your brothers. The thought brings you more grief.

“The marriage should’ve been nulled and void when I wasn’t there.” You grit your teeth, as your hand drags along a simple gown of silver and dark blue, embroidered with feathers and flowers using silver thread. The exact one that was supposed to be your wedding gown.

“It is legally binding, your grace, you know that.” Thena sighs from behind, brows furrowed as her gaze snags onto the dress in your hand. “You signed the parchment yourself, you might’ve not been there, but in the eyes of the gods, you were there. Perhaps a less prettier version of yourself, but you were there.”

“You’re hilarious, you should’ve been a jester.” Looking over your shoulder, she crosses the small distance with a gentle smile that you’re familiar with.

“He might not be your Richard, but he’s still family. Your brother by law.” She doesn’t need to say his name for you to understand. “You can look all you want, but do not surrender to your heart.” Taking the gown, she unfurls it and peeks over the hem, a smile remaining on her lips.

“I know.” You inhale deeply. “I shan’t forget it. I am a woman grown, it was just a moment of…weakness. It will not happen again.”

“So you must—”

“Comport myself, I know.” Your father always told you those exact words that always lingers under your skin, it might as well be your house’s words. “He is handsome, but he’s not mine to call my own.” Thena recognizes your girlhood rearing its head from your words, you still remember the teasing she gave you when she found out that you had fallen head over heels for one of your brother’s friends. Burying the thoughts of Jason, your heavy eyes rake over the dress. “This was mother’s, a gift from grandmother before she wed. I was supposed to wear it on my wedding day.”

“Aye,” she places the gown atop your form with a grin. “Now it’s yours. And if the gods are good it’ll be your daughter’s too. She could wear it to her wedding.”

“A son.” The word sticks to your throat. “I’d want to give him a son first, do my duty.” With a hand on the fabric, tracing along a feather, your eyes swirl with apprehension. “Just one, and I would be done with it.”

“Your mother had more—”

“I won’t have seven children.” Your solemn eyes turn something ferocious, a hint of your own older brother’s fire, the only thing he left for you. “One is enough, two perhaps if he’s sickly but no more. I won’t be a broodmare.”

You know that her heart is in the right place, that she’s older, raised by tradition, but at the same time you can’t help but feel alone from her words. Your mother did her duty, but your father wanted more, taking parts of her soul with every child she bore. Her screams on the birthing bed still ring out in your ears whenever you shut your eyes. If the maesters didn’t advise that the next one would put her in the arms of the stranger, your father would’ve made her squeeze out more. At least he has given her that kindness. You’ve promised yourself that you won’t become like her, that you won’t be pliant around your husband, bending to his will, bending over to his will.

Or he’ll taste nightshade with his wine.

“Shall we get dressed then?” Thena feels the shift in the air, clearing her throat as she steps back, hiding behind a simple green dress with golden thread, as if remembering who she’s addressing.

“Not that one, I’ll wear the red one.”

—

You didn’t join what’s left of the Waynes for supper. There wasn’t much missed anyway when you heard from one of their servants that the only remaining lord in the castle was Jason and the youngest of them, while the rest were off to war, a war that your father started.

So you settled with eating in your solar, sipping on rabbit stew that’s garnished generously, partnered with mulled wine that settles in your stomach like stone.

Thena of course urged you to come break bread with them when refusing their invitation would be seen as discourteous, but you insisted on staying, citing the tiring journey out to their home. The fire in you has subsided, leaving only burnt ash as you lay beside the fire, eyes wide open, sleep refusing to take you. You should’ve gone to eat with them, but your nerves have left you solemn and fatigued. The anxiety of meeting your husband eats at you, you merely wish to just get it over with, meet with him and do your duty.

You only hope that he’ll be kind to you.

You curl around a pillow as you rest upon a bear’s fur, it brushes along your cheek, soft and comfortable and yet you lay awake as the storm pounds outside. You don’t blame the storm for keeping you awake, it’s your head that’s keeping you up, filling you with hundreds of thoughts, gnawing at your insides as it rattles your bones with every booming thunder. The questions blooms in your mind, heavy and chaotic as it keeps your eyes wide open towards the fire. How are your siblings faring without you? Especially the little ones. Are they questioning father of your whereabouts? Or do they not notice your absence? You wonder if your mother is well, that her worry isn’t making her feel worse. Are they winning the war? Is the end of your house imminent?

With a sigh, you sit up when the flames in the fireplace started to beckon you over enticingly. Stretching your neck and limbs, you stand up, knees cracking from the prolonged knotted position as you glance at the window. It’s completely dark outside with the clouds covering the moon, plunging the whole mountainside into darkness.

It’s eerie, when you’re so used to the sound of the capital wafting through your opened windows as you lay in your own bed that smells of apples and roses.

There’s nothing to do around the castle, you could write a letter to your family back home but you can’t find it in yourself to come up with words when you have too many things in mind. Or you could read by the fire, that usually calms you down, but the only books around the chamber are books about past wars and battle strategies, you’ve had enough of both to last you a lifetime. The bed is comfortable enough, perhaps you could lay and wait for sleep to envelope you there, but you can’t help but think that you’ll soon share this bed with another.

Despite your better judgement, you take an oil lamp with you and head outside your chamber.

The halls were much more welcoming before in the sunlight, now it feels as though you stepped into a space where you don’t belong, that it’ll spit you right out after it has gnawed at you and tasted that you are not from their bloodline.

You shudder at the thought, as your hand leaves the cold doorknob of your chamber, your footsteps are quiet against the cool stone. Your red dress drags along the floor, like blood smeared all over the grey halls. The carved faces of your husband’s ancestors look upon you through their lifeless eyes, whilst the glow from the lamp shines right on their stone expressions.

You trudge along the silent corridors, almost getting lost until you finally reach your intended destination, the library. You passed by it on your way to your chamber whilst Alfred guided you through the winding halls, for once, you’re glad you listened to an old man’s rambling.

The double doors are ornate, almost out of place from all the bats and faces on the walls. This one has summer flowers embellished on the wood, finely carved on white wood, a breath of fresh air from the drab grey stone.

Your palm connects with the cold door, right on a daisy as you push it open.

Bats awaken from the inside, fluttering past you in angry squeaks as you duck, shut your eyes and shield your face.

Breathing quickly, you watch as they fly further away into the corridors. You must’ve given them quite a scare.

Heart beating loudly, you enter the dark library.

It’s not as expansive as the great hall, but the chamber is massive, possibly just as large as the royal library back home that your great great grandmother prided herself for building.

The windows are grand, stained glass windows depicting the wonders of the realm instead of the gods, stretched from floor to ceiling to receive as much light as possible. There are two levels of the library, filled with books that you couldn’t possibly count even if you have a thousand lifetimes for it. It’s all oaken wood, a more welcoming sight than of the stone and steel in your chambers. There are carved animals along the bannisters and chairs, all woodland creatures, stags, does, rabbits, and more flowers than a garden could provide. It’s beautiful, calming, as if you stepped into a different castle. It’s the closest place that reminds you of home.

Your gaze lingers around the bookshelves lined with leather tomes in different sizes. The collection must’ve taken years to build up, something you don’t take lightly as you brush your knuckle gently along the spine of a book on your right. It fascinates you, the amount of books inside, when you have thought of the house weren’t much for reading except for the occasional battle strategy written by some old sod from a hundred years ago.

There’s a smile on your face as you see the numerous scattered books on the tables, from the seats down to the floor, as if someone was burning the midnight oil and hastily left the books there for the morrow to continue. It’s completely dark inside, giving the library a more ethereal feel to it. Save for the soft low light of your lamp, you’re left feeling around lest you fall flat on your face.

You gently place the lamp on the table, careful that it doesn’t touch any of the pages lest you accidentally set ablaze to the library. A blue tome catches your eye, gilded around its spine as a large ship is embossed right on the cover.

“Already trying to unearth family secrets, princess?” A voice startles you, and you almost drop the book right onto your toes.

“My lord?” Eyes squinting, you try to make out his features in the dark, sharpened by the shadows as he stands right in between bookshelves. “I wasn’t, I couldn’t find sleep.”

“And you thought that you’d find it here?” There’s amusement in his tone.

“No, but books bring me comfort when sleep evades me.” Pressing the book in your heaving chest, you cling to it like a babe to her doll. “Are you here to read too, my lord?”

“Jason.” He simply says in his usual steady tone. “Please call me Jason, we’re family now.”

“Jason.” You test his name on your tongue, sweetened like ambrosia, falling from your lips as he smiles while the shred of moonlight shines on his face, illuminating the scars that mar his features. “Yes, of course.”

Jason moves closer, not invading your space, or making you uncomfortable from his presence, just trying to get a glance of the book in your hands as his viridescent eyes look upon it briefly before returning to your face. “That’s a good book you’ve chosen.”

“Have you read it?”

“I have.” He takes a breath, long fingers taking another book from the pile. “It’s about a pirate and his lady love, it’s full of twists and turns. I wouldn’t spoil you much. It’s quite a long read if you prefer reading the sequel to it too.” Taking a step closer, he hands you the book that’s embossed with the same ship, only this one is decorated in silver instead of gold. It’s just now that you notice a sharp scar right under his eye. “It’s quite good.”

“Thank you for the recommendation.”

He hums, blinking at the sight of you. You find that you can’t read him, and you wonder what lies underneath the ocean of green in his eyes.

“Do you like reading, princess?”

“I do.”

“Good,” Jason says almost breathlessly, as if he was hoping that you answered differently. His eyes turn away from you in favour of gazing at a book on top of the pile. “My brother doesn’t read as much, but maybe you could remedy that. I’ve been trying to for years.”

The statement brings a smile on your lips. “Perhaps I could.”

Humming once again, he flips the cover, as if busying himself. “I didn’t see you at supper today. Damian wanted to meet you.”

“Who’s Damian, my lord— Jason?”

With a grin that warms your chest, Jason takes a large pile of books and brings it down to the floor. Showing you a lump on the table. “This is Damian.”

Sleeping right on the table is a boy with a thick head of raven hair, sleeping soundly above his crossed arms. Your eyes widen when you realize that you were never alone with Jason, you want to bury yourself in your pillows once again.

“Oh gods.” You mutter quietly as Jason gazes at you with amusement. “I’m terribly sorry, I—”

“You needn’t apologize.” His eyes crinkle in the corners, smiling and chortling. “He sleeps like the dead after reading for hours on end.” Rounding the corner, he gently swoops the boy in his arms effortlessly. “I was here to bring him to bed. He’s been…restless recently.” Glancing down at his brother’s sleeping face, there’s a subtle furrow on Jason’s brows.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” you cling to the books tighter, nails digging into its leather spine. “It seems that restlessness has plagued all of us recently.”

“Yes, I believe it has.” His tone lowers, before squaring his shoulders as he looks back at you. “If he was an assassin you’d be dead by now, princess.” The teasing cadence returns as he goes around the table once again, cradling the little lordling.

“A sleeping assassin wouldn’t do me much harm.” You feel the air grow lighter. “And please, call me by my name, we’re family now.”

“As you command, princess.” His eyes are glinting with mirth, the white streak in his hair is more prominent under the dim lights.

“I didn’t command it,” smiling, it just feels right to smile in his presence. “I’m simply asking as you had.”

A smile mirrors your own, stretching across his handsome face as the moonlight shines on his green eyes, and on his dark tresses, making it glow. For a moment, you thought that he’d refuse to call you by your given name, but as he looks at you, really gazes into your eyes, you feel warmth spreading from your fingers to your chest.

Your name falls from his lips, testing the sound of it on his tongue, unsure what to make of it, green eyes swirling as he immediately surrenders with a chuckle. “Right,” Jason nods, fixing his hold on Damian. “Good night, princess.” The jape flies by you as you both chuckle in the night.

Nodding, you watch him leave without a lamp, so accustomed to the dark just like the bats that have found their home inside the great keep.

“Wait.” You call back, and he looks over his shoulder, green eyes aglow. “Are there any family secrets to unearth?”

Jason senses the curiosity within you, using a jape as your shield to get a truthful answer from him. “Every house has its secrets, you just have to dig enough to find it.”

“Oh, I shall dig, my lord.” Your brave comment makes his eyes shimmer.

“Until you strike gold, princess.” Jason takes his leave, and with him your confidence too as your legs weaken and fall back into a plush seat with a sigh.

You blink again, still a little delirious, and lean your head back into the crook of his arm. You feel a shaky breath against the top of your hair. Feel his lips press against the crown of your head.

Your hand feels warm. When you look down, you see Adrian again.

“You’re sleeping.” You mumble, still trying to blink away the fog.

“It’s not me.” He kisses the top of your head again, inhaling deeply in that way that is so familiar it doesn’t even register as weird or creepy anymore, and his arm twitches like he wants to pull you closer but he’s worried about moving you at all. “It’s the other me.”

“Other you.” You repeat, a little absentmindedly. His head is resting next to your joined hands. His eyes are closed like he might have fallen asleep watching you. He doesn’t look peaceful, but his features are relaxed. He looks…

“Pretty.” You murmur, and wonder if you said that out loud.

“Thank you.” Your Adrian says, and his fingers skate restlessly over your arm. “I mean, I’ll say thank you. He looks like me. We have the same face. It’s still weird to look at him. Kinda cool, though.”

You turn your head up to look at him again. You like that he’s holding you. His bicep is beneath your cheek, and the fabric of his sweatshirt smells like him and feels nicer than any pillow you’ve ever laid your head on.

“Hi.” You say, and smile.

He looks like he’s going to cry. He’s definitely been crying. You don’t like that at all.

“You’re on a whole bunch of painkillers.” He explains, and his smile looks so relieved and loving and still holds too many traces of fear. You try to reach for him with your free hand, and he stops you, warm fingers wrapping gently around your wrist and pushing it back down to the mattress.

“Don’t move. You’ve got an IV. They’ll kick me out if the bed beeps again. And then I can’t hold you anymore.”

Well, you don’t want that. “Okay.” You hum, and nuzzle your nose into his arm. He smells good. Like laundry detergent and that cheap cologne he likes and just a little bit of gunpowder and bleach. “You look scared. Did I scare you?”

“Yeah.” He breathes, and there’s a hoarseness to his voice makes him sound painfully vulnerable. “I watched you die.”

“I didn’t die.” You didn’t. You’re here now, right? Unless you’re in heaven. This might be heaven. Adrian is here and he’s warm and he feels nice. Like home.

“You got so cold.” He sounds a little distant, and when you look up at him you see something familiar creeping into his eyes. Something that doesn’t fit this version of him, but that you’ve seen too many times on his alternate self. “You stopped breathing. I keep listening to you breathe, now. I can’t sleep unless I feel it.” His hand moves up from your arm, and touches your cheek. Soft. Gentle. A hesitant, barely there little caress like anything harder might hurt you. “Please don’t stop breathing again. Ever.”

You lean your face into his touch, smiling again, and you see the corners of his eyes glisten as he looks down at you.

“Okay, I won’t.” And you won’t. If it makes him happy, and if it makes those tears go away, you’ll keep breathing until the universe itself crumbles to dust.

You feel the Other Adrian twitch. Feel his hand flex in your own. You look down at him, brow furrowing.

“I should wake him up.” You think you’d like to hear him speak. To look into his eyes. You want to see if that darkness is still there so you can try to soothe it away. He must have been scared, too.

Your Adrian smoothes your hair back. Kisses your temple. “Can I keep you, right now?” He asks, tone so much more tired and gentle than you’re used to. “Can I just hold you for a while and listen to you breathe? He gets pissed when I get in the bed, too.”

You don’t want him to leave the bed, so you nod. “Okay, weirdo.”

For a moment, you just lay there. Maybe it’s the painkillers, but this is definitely the best feeling in the world. Your body still aches, and you’re still very tired, but Adrian’s chest is rising and falling in a steady rhythm. He smells familiar. He feels familiar. He’s the best thing in the entire world. You love him so much you think it hurts.

“Hey.” You murmur after a few minutes of silence, voice muffled by his arm.

“Mhm?” He’s still quiet. His fingers are still combing through your hair.

“Will you marry me?”

His laugh is absolutely wonderful. Short and sharp and just a little choked, but genuine and filled with a love sweeter than honey. He doesn’t even answer in words, just an emphatic little nod as he pulls back to look at you. Oh man, those are tears again.

“Stop crying, please.” You try to reach up to wipe his tears away, and he catches your hand again.

“IV.” He reminds you, pressing a little kiss to your nose. “But I’ll stop crying.” He shifts his grip on your hand, locking his pinky with yours. “Pinky swear.”

“Thank you.” You lean up, and kiss his nose right back. He scrunches it up, smiling again, and the tears seem to have stopped for now. “Wanna tell me some owl facts?”

His smile grows, and he tucks you closer to his chest with one final sniffle. You hum, snuggling as close as all the damn wires and the tiny little bed with allow. “Yeah. Did you know owls have two stomachs?”

“Yeah?” Even in your current state, you’re pretty sure that’s not right.

“Yeah, it’s how they hoot so loud. And how they eat whole mouse skeletons.”

You fall asleep like that. To the familiar cadence of his voice. The feeling of his breath against your skin, his arms holding you as close as possible. It’s warm. Comfortable. Home.

Home.

-

When your eyes creak open again, it’s still night. You’re still wrapped up in Adrian’s arms, his nose pressed so tightly against your hair you can feel the rims of his glasses digging into your skin.

“Does he always do that?”

You look up, shifting your head at the sound of your boyfriend’s voice, coming from too far down the bed to belong to the man holding you.

“Do what?” You ask, and Other Adrian is still holding your hand, sitting exactly where he was before. His eyes are open now, looking at you, and his thumb is brushing absentmindedly over your knuckles.

“Talk in his sleep.”

As if to emphasize the point, Adrian pulls you a little closer and mumbles some kind of nonsense into your hair. You smile, unable to help yourself. “Yeah. He snores too.”

“Oh, I know.” Other Adrian smiles back, and his hand squeezes yours like you’re sharing a secret. “He won’t stop getting in your hospital bed. The nurses fucking hate him.”

“I love him.” You breathe, and there’s no malice behind it. No ‘I love him and not you’ to the statement. No point to be proven. You’re just stating a fact, plain and simple, and you feel Adrian’s arms tighten a little fitfully around you, like he just might hear you even through the barrier of sleep. A surge of affection swells in your heart, and you almost roll over to cuddle closer to him, wires and beeping hospital beds be damned. “There’s always so much going on in his head. I love that he always wants to share it with me. Even when he’s sleeping.” Or when he’s in the middle of a shift at work. Or when you’re trying to stealthily break into a building. There is no barrier in the world that can stop Adrian Chase from telling you what’s on his mind, and none that can stop you from listening.

The Other Adrian doesn’t seem too bothered by your words. In fact, he smiles a little. It’s sad, and you can see the lingering hint of jealousy in his eyes, feel it in the way he squeezes your hand like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, but there’s no anger. No intense possessiveness. Just…acceptance. Maybe a little bit of longing. Maybe a lot.

“Where are we?”

His smile falters a little, like he knew this line of questioning was coming, but he still hasn’t fully prepared himself to respond. “Hospital.”

“Yeah, I figured that part.”

“In your dimension.”

“…Oh.”

“ARGUS has the portal.” He says, and the explanation sounds like a confession. You understand his meaning right away. He’s stuck here, now. Because he wouldn’t leave you. Not when he thought you were dying. “Your Chris Smith is in prison, too. He won’t let anyone see him.”

“Shit.” You mumble, and your first thought is of how much worse that has to have made everything for Adrian. Once again, you fight the urge to roll over, kiss him and hold him and tell him everything is gonna be okay because you’ll be damned if you don’t fucking make it that way.

But you can do that later. You will do that later. For now, you just squeeze Other Adrian’s hand.

And you look at him. Really look at him. He looks just as tired as the Adrian holding you now, but there’s something so much more…quiet about it. About him. Something reserved and injured and, if you had to put a name to it, fucking traumatized. You wonder if he’s let go of your hand since you got here. He’s still tracing his thumb over your knuckles like he’s trying to anchor himself to the warmth of your skin.

You’re still learning his eyes. The levels of darkness and clarity that come and go. There’s no darkness there, now. Just exhaustion. Worry. Pain. You have to stop yourself from pulling him to you. From trying to soothe that pain by kissing it away.

“You look weird without your glasses.”

He smiles, and it’s sad and relieved and filled with so much love all at the same time. He raises your hand to his lips, kissing the back of it and threading his fingers through yours. The way he tilts his head, cheek still pressed against your joined hands as he smiles at you, is so boyish and sweet that it thins the line between him and the Adrian you know until your heart aches. “I know.”

“You saved my life, didn’t you?”

His smile stutters, and he squeezes your hand once more before he pulls his head back, looking to your Adrian before shifting his gaze back to you. “We both did.” He lowers your joined hands back to the bed, searching for words as memories fill his eyes. “I learned how…after…”

A deep breath. A pull back to clarity. “I  knew how to slow the bleeding.” His eyes move back to your Adrian, who, as if he can sense the conversation happening beside him, nuzzles his nose restlessly into your hair again and mumbles something about crows. “I lost it, a little, when you…” you don’t think you’ve ever seen either of them at a loss for words before. Even this Adrian, who is so different from yours in so many ways, always has something to say. Even if whatever it is will infuriate you.

He takes another deep breath, eyes dropping to your still-joined hands. “He got you to the ambulance. They brought you back. They say it’s a medical miracle you lived.”

You sit there with that information for a moment. Let the weight of what happened sink into you.

“I think I met the other me.” You say, and his eyes snap right back to your face. “Or I hallucinated her or something. I don’t know. But she uh…kicked me.”

His brows twitch, and he looks at you like he’s trying to figure out if they upped your dose of painkillers. “What?”

His hand is warm in yours, calloused in all the same places as your Adrian’s. You look down at it, and now you brush your thumb over his knuckles. Soft. Gentle. The gesture makes something catch in his throat. “She asked me to take care of you, and then she kicked me through a door. And now I’m here” You try to explain, and it sounds so ridiculous when you say it out loud that you really do wonder if it had all been some kind of near-death dream.

He blinks, something like shock passing over his face. Then doubt. Then…hope. Grief. Love. All pulled together to twist his features into the saddest smile you think you’ve ever seen. He doesn’t let go of your hand, but his free hand comes up to wipe at his eyes. “Sounds about right.”

“Sorry for dying again.”

A sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob breaks from him, and he shakes his head before running his hand through his hair. “I forgive you. Just…don’t do it again, okay?”

“Okay.”

He leans over you, and you feel the warm press of his lips against your forehead. It’s nice. Very nice. You close your eyes, and barely notice your own contented hum.

“Go back to sleep.” He murmurs, breath soft against your skin. “I’ll be right here.”

-

You’re pulled back to consciousness by the feeling of Adrian’s lips against your own. Soft, familiar, and questioning. You’ve always loved how he wakes you with kisses. The way he always smiles when you stir, pressing closer like you’re giving him some sort of gift by returning his affection.

You do so now, and earn yourself that smile. He pulls back with one more gentle peck, and you only have a moment to look into his eyes, see the hunger and intention there, before he’s leaning back down and trailing his lips over your jaw.

“Be nice and quiet, okay?” He murmurs, voice low and gentle in that familiar way that is always saved for your most intimate moments. “I’m gonna make you feel good.”

You make a noise of confusion, and he answers the wordless question with a hum and a little nip to a particularly sensitive spot beneath your ear, fingers sliding along your thigh to push up the hem of your hospital gown.

“Adrian…” you murmur, even as your body instinctively relaxes beneath his. It’s late, and the room is quiet, but you’re pretty sure that if he isn’t allowed in the bed with you then you’re definitely not allowed to do this.

“Shh.” He shifts beside you, tracing a teasing pattern along the inside of your thigh, slow and lazy and calculated. He pulls back just far enough to press a kiss to your cheek. Then your nose. Your other cheek. “Gotta be quiet. Don’t wanna bring any of the nurses in here.”

His lips are back on your neck, warm and soft and intoxicating, and you can’t help but tilt your head back a little to allow him more access.

Fingers glide through your hair, and your gaze snaps to…Adrian. The other Adrian, looking down at you with eyes clouded over with lust as your own Adrian bites gently at your throat. You make a soft noise, opening your mouth to say something, but your Adrian moves up to silence you with another kiss.

“Shh.” He murmurs again, hand trailing higher, breath mingling with your own as he speaks. “It’s okay. It’s okay to want it.”

Adrian’s hand reaches the apex of your thighs, and your gasp is muffled by his mouth as his fingers begin to move in a steady, practiced rhythm, sending a wave of sparks straight to your core. He breaks away after a few moments, only to trail his lips back down to your ear. When he speaks again, his voice is lower, strained with desire and a hunger so deep you nearly moan from his tone alone. “I’m gonna show him how good I can make you feel. Do you want that?”

You open your mouth to speak, but another movement of Adrian’s fingers makes you choke on a whimper instead, hand flying up to muffle the noise with your hand. You nod, and feel him smile as he catches the lobe of your ear between his teeth and curls his fingers so deep, so deliciously, that you swear your vision blurs. You thank every star in the fucking sky for Adrian’s obsessive personality. For the time he took when you first got together to learn your body like a personal project. To figure out every movement, every touch that makes you fall apart.

The Other Adrian’s fingers wrap around your wrist, guiding your hand away from your mouth as he leans forward until your lips brush. The touch is soft, barely there, and he watches like a damn predator as Adrian curls his fingers again and you squirm.

“Stay still, baby.” He whispers, nose brushing against yours, lips hovering over your own. You lean up to kiss him, and he pulls back a little, thumb brushing over your cheek as he watches you, laser focused on every shallow breath. Every twitch in your expression.

When you gasp again, something in him seems to snap, and he kisses you so hungrily that you forget where you are. Your hand tangles in his hair, back arching off of the bed and sending a jolt of pain through your injuries. His hand pushes you back down, gentle but firm, and the noise that escapes him is so low and feral that it pushes every thought out of your head.

Your Adrian speeds up the movements of his fingers, biting down at the hollow of your throat hard enough to leave a mark, and you would fucking writhe if you weren’t held down by the other Adrian’s hands.

“That’s it.” He coos, as another crook of your Adrian’s fingers makes you grip his hair so tightly you would worry you’d pull it out by the fucking root if you could think straight. He groans, pressing closer, and you think you can feel his body shaking with restraint. “Fuck, look at you.”

“So fucking perfect.” Your Adrian whispers, breath hot on your neck as the other Adrian kisses you again, rougher now. Hungrier. “So fucking tight. Fuck, I love you so much. Louder.”

You moan against the Other Adrian’s mouth, and he growls in response as his hand tightens on your waist, fingers digging deep into your skin. Your Adrian nudges him to the side, crushing his mouth to yours and biting down hard on your lip. You whine, desperation clawing at you as you feel his near-manic grin against your mouth.

It feels good. So, so fucking good. Heat builds in your core, toes curling against the crisp hospital sheets as you grasp at whatever part of either of them you can reach. The pain is forgotten, pressure building fast as you-

You wake with a gasp, a jolt of pain shooting through you as you nearly bolt upright. The room is still dark, the soft glow of early morning sunlight trickling in through the window.

And both Adrian’s are awake. And both of them are watching you.

Your Adrian’s arm is still beneath your head, bicep acting as a makeshift pillow. His alternate watches you from the side of the bed, still in the same chair.

“Which one of us was that about?” He asks, the corner of his mouth twitching up in a knowing little smirk. His gaze is burning into you so deeply that it takes actual effort not to hide yourself from it. To keep your thighs from clenching together as you try to breathe through the lingering memories of the dream.

“One time she had a sex dream about the hamburglar.” Your Adrian says, like he’s being helpful, and you blink in surprise as your cheeks begin to heat with embarrassment. “I mean, I tried to tell her it’s not that weird. But he is a criminal, which is a little fucked up in my opinion. She said she didn’t want me to dress up like him for sex, though-“

“She said our name, dumbass.”

“I know.” He snaps, defensive, and he nuzzles the side of your head with almost absentminded affection. “Maybe she was dreaming about me in the hamburglar costume.”

“Okay, I wasn’t.” You turn your eyes to the other Adrian, frowning despite what must be a very bright shade of red staining your cheeks. “And don’t call him dumbass.”

“Would be hot, though.” Your Adrian says, resting his chin on your shoulder.

“What would?”

“Me in a hamburglar costume. You’d think that was hot.”

He’s not gonna move past the hamburglar thing until you acknowledge it, apparently. So, as you always do when he finds something to lock in on, you give it the moment of thought he clearly believes it deserves. At the very least, it’ll draw attention away from the dream you were actually having.

You turn to him, look him up and down as best you can in your current position. “Hm…I think you could pull it off.”

“Fuck yeah. You’re such a perv.”

“You’re the one who asked.”

“And he’s a criminal. We kill criminals. That’s like, triple perverted.”

“You’re such a weirdo.”

“Rabble rabble.”

“What?”

“Oh my God, you totally blushed. I bet it’s like Niagara Falls in your panties right now.”

“Adrian.” You’re trying so hard, so valiantly, not to laugh. But that’s the thing about Adrian, and one of the things you love so much about him. He isn’t even really fucking with you right now. He just sees the spark in your eyes, the hint of laughter building up after so much pain and hurt, and he’s pushing at it. So many people, even your closest friends, might get annoyed with him quickly, but you never have. You don’t think you ever will. No matter how goofy, unhinged, or just plain weird he can be.

When you first met, you laughed at a joke he made. It wasn’t really even that funny - just said at the right time in the right tone to throw you off guard and pull a giggle from you. He made that same joke every day for the next week, always turning to you the moment he said it. It took you three days of confusion to realize that he was just trying to make you laugh again. Trying to get you to giggle again. That’s why you love him. Your sweet, earnest, obsessive weirdo.

It’s when you turn to Other Adrian, as yours continues to chase your laughter with more teasing, that the giggle now rising in your throat is cut off by a rush of heat.

His eyes are dark. He’s still smirking, but there’s something cocky and very knowing in the expression that sends your thoughts right the fuck back into your dream. When you meet his gaze, his smile widens.

I know. That look says, that cockiness and confidence still so strange to see on Adrian’s face. You can’t hide from me.

You might be fucked.

-

Eventually, they release you from the hospital, and there’s not much left to do but go home.

Living with Adrian Chase is never boring. Living with two Adrians is…interesting. Healing from a mortal wound with two insanely protective versions of Adrian is…

Fucking annoying.

“Get. Off. The. Chair.”

“No.”

“I think I can grab her by the legs without hurting her.” Your Adrian says, standing on the opposite side of where his alternate self has his arms crossed over his chest, narrowed eyes fixed on you.

“Ade, if you try it, I will bite you.”

“Yeah?”

“Stop smiling like that.”

“Why? It sounds hot.” He flexes his fingers, a subtle twitch he has before he jumps into action, and you don’t need to know him as well as you do to know that he’s about to pounce on you.

“Look, I can fix a damn lightbulb. I was stabbed. I didn’t lose my legs.”

“You bled out.” Other Adrian says, and that stern expression still looks so strange, especially when you have your own Adrian nearly vibrating with energy and grinning like a maniac on your other side. “If you fall and reopen the wound you could-“

“It’s been two weeks. I won’t reopen the-“

Your argument is cut off by a squeak of surprise as your legs are swept out from beneath you, and you suddenly find yourself wrapped in your Adrian’s arms as he swings you off of the chair so swiftly and carefully that it barely makes the all-too-familiar pain in your stomach flare up. Still, you struggle and curse on principle as he lowers you to the ground, arms wrapping around you tightly enough to keep you still as his lips press against the side of your head with an exaggerated little ‘mwah!’. You would find the gesture cute on a regular day, but after two weeks of barely being allowed to sneeze without one of them freaking out that your wound will reopen, you’re getting pretty close to wringing his neck.

“You’re so fucking overprotective.” You grouch, and he pecks the side of your head again like you just gave him a compliment. “I wasn’t nearly this annoying back when you got shot.”

“You’re grumpy today.”

“I’m not grumpy. I’m pissed. And capable of changing a fucking lightbulb.”

“She’s just hard up.” Other Adrian says, blunt and confident, and you nearly growl with irritation at the smirk you can hear in his voice. That irritation grows when your Adrian pulls back, grinning wide and leaning close enough that he goes a little cross-eyed trying to look into your eyes.

“Yeah? Are you all pissy because the doctor said no sex until you’re better?”

“I’m not pissy.”

“Aww, you’re so pissy.” He kisses your cheek, still smiling. “Don’t worry. Once you can take the bandages off we’re gonna fuck like bunny rabbits. You know they have sex like, a hundred times a day?”

“There’s no way they do that.”

“They do, and we’re gonna. Other me can even watch, since he’s living here too and he’s me.”

“Oh my God,” you grumble, thunking your head against his shoulder. “This is so fucking weird. I swear, every day you both make it weirder.”

“You saying you want me to fuck you instead?” The Other Adrian is goading you, and you bristle even as both of their words make traitorous heat rise to your cheeks.

“Shut up.” You grouch, and Your Adrian misunderstands your reaction right fucking away.

“Don’t worry.” He hums, distracting himself with pressing slow kisses along the side of your neck. Despite yourself, you melt against him, and you’re pretty sure he must be feeling as pent up as you are, if the way he immediately pulls you flush against him is any indication. “You’re mine. All mine.” He nips at the hollow of your throat, and there’s a hint of a possessive growl in his voice when he adds. “Just mine.”

The Other Adrian clears his throat, and when you turn to him, you can see the hunger in his eyes. His gaze is locked on you.

You turn your attention back to the Adrian currently pressed against you.

“Hey, weirdo.” You pull back a little, catching his face in your hands and pulling it back from your neck. And there it is. That little twinge of darkness that’s lingered since your injury, coming and going along with his own special brand of manic excitement. He’s started losing himself sometimes, just a little, though it’s easily soothed away with a touch and firm reminder to focus. “Look at me, okay?”

He does, but the darkness just creeps in a little more. His hand comes up, gripping your chin and angling your head so he can kiss you so deeply your knees threaten to buckle. His tongue slides into your mouth, rough and claiming, and his other hand snakes around your waist.

“Mine.” He mumbles against your lips again, pulling you even closer to him. “All fucking-“

When a hand pulls him back, you have to blink a few times to orient yourself.

“You’re gonna rip her stitches.” The Other Adrian’s voice is low. His eyes are on you. Your Adrian’s hands haven’t left you.

The darkness in his eyes, and in the eyes of his alternate, makes you wonder, vaguely, if it’s mirrored in your own. A dangerous, violent thing, shared by the three of you like a lit fuse, building day by day and preparing to drag all of you down into it.

His gaze drops to your lips. Your Adrian’s fingers tighten on your waist, hand sliding from your jaw up to your hair like he might yank you close and kiss you again before the other version of him has a chance to even think about doing so himself. The tension in the room feels heavy. It’s suddenly difficult to breathe.

And then the door opens.

“We brought- oh, fuck! I told you we’d walk in on a threesome! You owe me twenty bucks!”

“Aw man, gross.” Leots’s voice sounds right behind Chris’s, and you pull away from both versions of your boyfriend as your cheeks burn with a combination of lust and embarrassment.

“We’re not having a threesome.” You say, defensive, and when you move to take another step back you feel Adrian’s hands tighten on you. Hard. Only for a moment, only long enough for you to catch sight of him blinking a few times, like he’s having a little more trouble breaking free of the spell than you are.

He releases you, and whatever was on his face is replaced with his usual, easy smile.

“Nope. No threesomes. She’s alllll mine.” He hums, pressing a quick peck to your nose. When you look up at him, his smile is sharp enough to send a shiver down your spine.

-

“Any updates?”

“Ems and Economos are still looking, but they’re both pretty sure we’re not gonna be getting access to that portal any time soon.” Leota’s tone is apologetic as she takes a sip of her beer, eyes moving from your face to the two Adrian’s sitting on either side of you. It’s Chris’s gaze, however, that catches your attention.

“Dude, can you stop staring at Adrian like that?”

“What?” Chris raises his eyebrows, defensive. “It’s just weird to see him so quiet, you know? He’s creepy.” His voice drops a little, and he leans toward you with a conspiratorial tone that you would mistake for a joke if he didn’t sound completely genuine. “He looks at me like he can read my fuckin’ mind or something.”

“I can.” Other Adrian says, just as serious, and your Adrian laughs. Loud.

“Wait, seriously? Can you?” He sits up a little, looking around like he’s trying to see if he should be in on a joke.

“No, he can’t.” You provide, shooting a glare towards the Other Adrian. B-drian? After all of this time, you wonder if you should give him a nickname or something.

“Okay, good. Because we haven’t had sex in forever, and like, ninety five percent of my thoughts are about fucking you now. I still feel like it would be fucked up if he saw that in his minds eye or-“

“Dude.” Leota makes a face. Adrian, of course, misunderstands it.

“No, seriously. The doctor says no sex or ‘vigorous activities’ until the bandages are off, but the other day she made this whimpering noise when she bumped against the counter and hurt her stomach and it sounded exactly like the noise she makes when I-“

Your hand flies up to cover his mouth. He scrunches his eyebrows in confusion, and licks your palm. You pull it back, and fail to hide your smile as you wipe your hand on the sleeve of his shirt. You honestly can’t count how many times you’ve done that before. Overshare. Cover mouth. Get palm licked. Like clockwork.

“Well hey, at least Evil Adrian doesn’t overshare about your sex life all the damn time.” Leota mumbles, cringing.

“Trust me, I’m familiar with the whimpering noise.” He says, leaning back a little more against the couch with a shit-eating grin. “Actually, I know how to make it a screaming noise if I-“

Your other palm covers his mouth, now. His grin only widens, and he bites it.

“Ow.” You grouch, shaking off your hand as you pull it back.

“Oh great, there are two of them now.”

“Wait, what did I say?” Your Adrian asks as you wipe your stinging palm on your pant leg.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. Just overshared a little again.” Easy explanation, and he gets it immediately. He doesn’t really see what’s wrong with it, sure. You can tell that from his expression alone. You’re pretty sure he would tell a drive through employee about every sex position you’ve ever attempted together if the thought crossed his mind. But he still smiles at you like he does get it, and it makes you love him even more. “You, on the other hand,” and you turn to glare at the other version of him, eyes narrowed, “know exactly what you did. And it’s not funny.”

“What?” He says, eyes widening with exaggerated innocence. “I don’t get it, either.”

“Shut up.”

“Should I demonstrate?”

“Shut up.”

“Yeah, shut up.” Your Adrian’s arm wraps around you, and he tugs you a little closer to him. “I get to demonstrate. Not you.”

“That’s not the- oh my God. Okay.” You look to your friends for help, but they both seem too invested - and disturbed - by the conversation happening before them.

“Oh man, there really are two of them.” Chris says, eyes darting between them, and you offer him a wide smile.

“Pick your favorite. I’m five minutes away from killing one of them.”

“She’s pent up because we haven’t had sex in a while.” Your Adrian supplies, and the innocent honesty in his tone is completely genuine.

“Four minutes.”

“You know, because of the bandages. But when they come off-“

“Three minutes.” You try to nudge him, but his hand just sneaks up beneath your shirt to brush a gentle touch over the bandages around your waist. He does that a lot, lately. Like he’s reminding himself that you’re patched up and alive. You don’t think he even notices that he’s doing it anymore.

“Shit. We’re totally gonna have another van incident.”

You groan. Adrian grins. Other Adrian cocks his head to the side in that subtle, observant way he has, looking to you with a single questioning eyebrow raised.

“We um…didn’t know the comms were on.”

“Neither did Economos. And he walked in right at the best part.” Adrian’s voice pipes up by your ear, and you feel a flush rising to your cheeks as Ads cringes again and Chris laughs. As usual, he doesn’t notice, switching his attention to his alternate self and barreling on. “Hey, did your version of her make that noise, by the way? You know, the cute little high pitched sound like right before she-“

“You got liquor?” Chris asks, already rising to his feet. “I think we need shots.”

“I think I need a vodka IV.” Leota adds, and stands with him.

Other Adrian stands too, but his eyes remain locked on you. “Yup.” He says, and it sounds like he’s agreeing with them, but you know what he means. Your Adrian does, too.

“That’s so cool. We should-“

“We should go take shots.” You pat his hand, rising to your feet.

This, you decide then and there, might just be a very long night.

-

Hours, and many beers later, you find yourselves on the roof. Adebayo sits beside you, and the two of you watch in comfortable silence as your Adrian tries to show his ‘famous butt dance’ to Chris and his alternate self.

“You know,” you finally say, fiddling with your beer bottle as you watch him, “he read something about birds seducing other birds with dancing a while back.”

“Is that why he did that dance at you at the bar for like, twenty minutes that one time?”

You snort, and nod. Ads laughs, the sound as bright and genuine as ever.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe that worked. You know his mom brought that up when we were looking for you? Did you know about the picture thing?” And when you nod again, she laughs even harder.

“He’s so fucking weird.” And it might be the alcohol, and it might be the comfort of having your friends and Chris back, but you feel a little lovesick watching him now. Like you might just love him so much it’s going to overflow from your pores and drown you in this sweet, sappy feeling.

“Sooo,” and that sounds like Leota’s ‘we’re about to talk about the elephant in the room’ tone. You don’t like that tone. Especially when you’re a few beers deep and feeling more comfortable and happy than you have in what feels like forever. “What are you gonna do?”

Your eyes shift to the Other Adrian. He’s watching you. He’s usually watching you.

You realize now, as your eyes connect across the dimly lit roof, that you haven’t seen him buzzed before. Or maybe you just haven’t seen him this relaxed. His cheeks are a little flushed, and the smile he offers you isn’t dark or mischievous or knowing. It’s…genuine. Open. It lacks the little hint of mania ever-present in your Adrian’s smile, but everything else is so similar. If it weren’t for his lack of glasses or his fitted t-shirt, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

That smile.

It’s changed, since the first time you saw it. There was sadness in it before. An aching sort of longing. A devotion that crossed the boundaries of universes and fixed itself on you.

Now it’s…different. And you realize, as you smile back at him, that the sadness isn’t there anymore. You’re not quite sure when it happened, but he’s stopped looking at you like you’re a ghost. Like you’re the resurrected love of his life. Now, when he looks at you, it feels like… it feels like he’s really looking at you. That longing and adoration isn’t meant for a long dead version of you anymore. It’s for you.

You don’t know if that’s better or worse.

“I don’t know.” You finally answer, eyes moving from Other Adrian and back to your own. He’s grinning at you too, wide and open and familiar. The ache in your stomach, still lingering as your wound heals, seems to have moved higher, clenching around your heart and making it difficult to breathe. “I really, really don’t know.”

-

You wake to muffled sounds from the living room. 

It’s soft, at first. So soft, in fact, that you’re able to brush it off and snuggle a little deeper into Adrian’s embrace, chasing sleep with a heavy sigh. He curls a bit more around you, cuddly as ever, and…

And then you hear something like quiet begging. A muffled sob that sounds a little too familiar, and much too far away to belong to the man currently holding you in his arms.

A nightmare. The Other Adrian is having a nightmare.

You can feel your Adrian wake beside you, light sleepers that both of you are. His arms tighten instinctively around you, breath stilling along with yours.

“Hi.” You whisper, the silence of the room seeming to amplify the familiar little word.

“Hi.” He whispers back.

“I have to go to him.” You do. The knowledge feels more like an instinct than a decision. All the weirdness and kidnapping and infuriating bullshit aside, you need to go into that room and stop his pain more urgently than you need to take your next breath.

Adrian’s arms tighten a little more. He takes a moment, nuzzling his nose into your temple, before nodding and loosening his hold.

When you begin to wiggle out of bed, however, his hand catches your arm. He pulls you back to him, still half awake, and presses his lips to yours. One sweet, reassuring little kiss. A moment of acceptance. Understanding.

You smile. Your heart swells. You squeeze his hand once in a silent reassurance of your own before you make your way to the couch.

The other Adrian is shaking. You see tears on his cheeks. His fists grip the couch cushions so tightly that you can see the muscles in his arm straining with the force of it.

You reach out, not an ounce of the hesitation that should be there present in this moment. Your hand meets his shoulder, and his eyes fly open as his hand moves faster than should be humanly possible to catch your wrist.

And then his eyes focus, and you watch clarity return to them like the glowing light of dawn as his grip softens.

“Baby?” He whispers, the petname hanging in the silence of the room. When you first met him, you didn’t think it sounded right. That it didn’t fit you. Because not even a month ago, you would have been able to confidently say that Adrian Chase doesn’t call you that. The last time he did was forever ago, when you came into his work and he introduced you to a coworker as ‘Her? Oh, that’s my girl. My baby. The apple-pie-of-my-eye.’

Now, with all that strange and unfamiliar weight behind it, it sounds…not exactly right. Not yet. It’s still too new. Too strange. But it’s…something.

“No.” You whisper, and tug at your hand a little. He loosens his hold a little more, and you surprise yourself when you don’t pull away, instead sliding your fingers into his. “Not uh…it’s me. The other one, I guess.”

To your surprise, he smiles a little, tears still drying on his cheeks and fear lingering in his eyes. But there’s no realization there. No moment of him differentiating you from his you, like you expected.

“I know.” He says, soft and low, and you have no doubt in your mind that he does. He knew it was you the whole time. Since before you pulled him back to consciousness. Maybe even before that.

The realization makes you still, something heavy crackling in the air between the two of you. Something warm and strange and new. He looks at you like he feels it too, careful fingers releasing your hand and moving slowly up to your side. You remain locked in place as he pushes your shirt up, and brushes a featherlight touch over the bandaged wound on your stomach.

“You were…” you pause, suddenly unsure of yourself. It feels so odd, standing above him like this. The silence is so heavy you can hear the hum of the refrigerator in the next room. The fan creaking above you. His eyes are still on your bandages, thumb sweeping featherlight over the sensitive skin at the edges. “You were having a nightmare.”

His eyes meet yours again, filled with so many emotions you wouldn’t be able to pin down a single one of them if you tried. When you still don’t move, he slides his hand a little further around your waist, pulling you forward so gently you may not even feel the touch if you weren’t so hyperaware of every movement. Every breath.

It’s as if your body moves of its own accord, guided by that same unnameable force that’s keeping your eyes locked. Your knees hit the couch on either side of his thighs. In turn, his arms wrap around you, forehead resting gently against your own and thumb tracing soothing little circles against your waist.

Your throat feels dry. This moment feels too fragile.

“You were having a nightmare.” You repeat, and he nods a little. He doesn’t try for anything else. Doesn’t try to kiss you, or touch you any more than he already is, or ask you to admit your feelings for him. He just holds you, like he’s savoring the moment. Like he’s trying to absorb every second before you pull away from him again.

Your fingers come up to comb through his hair. It’s so soft, just like your Adrian’s. He smells the same. Gunpowder and laundry detergent and a little bit of bleach.

“Does he have nightmares too?” He asks, the words so soft. So, so soft.

“Yes.” It comes out as a breath. A memory of the last couple of weeks, when you woke to his arms tightening around you and a sharp breath against your hair. He usually talks to you when he wakes up like that. Usually goes into some odd mode of self preservation and tries to distract himself from what must have been some truly awful dream where you didn’t wake up. Where you lost too much blood and stayed gone. He’ll feel you rouse with him, hold you so tightly you can feel your stitches strain a little, and ask if you want to quiz him about the first animal that comes to mind. And you do. Every time. Because his voice cracks a little when he asks and it makes you want to cry with so much love and guilt that it hurts.

“You’re different.” This Adrian says, turning his face into your cheek so his breath brushes over your skin. There’s an intimacy to the gesture that hits deep enough to shake you to your core. The tension isn’t sexual, now. Not like those times in his dimension where he pushed your buttons until that taut string connecting the two of you was ready to snap. It’s heavy. Raw. Unnamable. “You’re softer. Kinder. You have…a light, I guess. Like she did, but it’s different.”

His thumb keeps tracing circles over your skin. You hold your breath, afraid that any movement might break this moment.

“I watched that light go out. Back in the library. It killed me all over again.”

“I’m sorry.” You say, and his breath catches. His fingers curl beneath your shirt. You feel his eyes close against your cheek, the brush of his lashes a gentle kiss.

“I love you, you know.” He murmurs. And he’s said it before, and he’s meant it before, but now it sounds like a confession. Like a prayer.

“I know.” You whisper back.

“I don’t think you do, baby.” His hand, large and calloused, slides under your shirt to the skin of your back. Still not pushing. Just touching you. Holding you. Every breath ghosts across your cheek, and you feel like you might start shaking. “I love you. You’re not her. And I know that. And I love you.”  And then his other hand comes up, curling a lock of your hair around his finger like it’s something more precious than diamonds.

The meaning of his words hits you like a bullet, making an emotion you can’t name rise in your throat. You’re not a replacement to him. Maybe you were, in the beginning, even if he didn’t realize it.

Not anymore. And he loves you.

“I…” the words die in your throat, and he shakes his head, pulling back to look at you as he smooths his hand over your hair.

“You don’t have to say it.” He murmurs, and the words hold so much weight. So much understanding. His face is so close to yours, and maybe it’s wrong that this doesn’t feel wrong.

You don’t realize just how close he is until his lips brush over yours. Still not pushing. Not even hoping you close the distance. Just feeling your breath mingle with his own, like that’s enough. Like it might always be enough, if it needs to be.

Your eyes threaten to fall closed. It takes too much effort not to lean forward. To feel his lips connect with yours. He’s warm. Here. Familiar and different in ways that make it so difficult to form a proper thought.

“Will you sleep in the bed tonight?” The question is spoken so softly that it comes out as a whisper. He’s still so close that it feels like the promise of a kiss. You want more. You shouldn’t want more.

He looks at you. Takes a moment. Nods.

And so he comes to bed with you.

He stands behind you when you re-enter your bedroom, and your Adrian is still awake.

“He…” you start, unsure of what to say, unsure of what to even think.

But Adrian Chase, your Adrian Chase, knows you. You know each other. He may not understand emotions very well, but he understands you because he’s worked as hard at that as he’s worked at turning himself into a ‘weapon of vengeance’. He studies you like an obsession that will never fade. And that obsession has paid off. Connected you to each other to a point where words don’t need to be spoken.

He just opens his arms, and you know him well enough to know what he’s asking. He wants to hold you, like he always does, but he sees that Other Adrian needs to be here. That…that you need him here.

You climb into his embrace, and he wraps you in devotion with a kiss to your forehead, letting you get comfortable beneath the covers as the Other Adrian lies on your other side.

“You should hold his hand.” Your Adrian says, and his tone is nothing short of earnest. “I mean, I would want you to. Especially because I get to hold the rest of you, you know?”

Other Adrian rolls on his side to face you, one arm beneath his head, and there’s a moment where you just lie there. Watching him as he watches you, with your Adrian’s arms around you and your back to his chest.

You reach out, and when you catch his hand, he breathes a sigh of something like relief.

As sleep begins to pull you under, you find yourself pulling his hand closer. You press your lips to the back of it, and he makes a soft noise as he shifts beside you, until you finally find yourself held warm and safe between both versions of your boyfriend.

And as fucked up as it is, as strange and unusual as it all is, it feels…right.

-

“Working hours” with this black ops group are loosely defined at best, and entirely nonexistent at worst. And don’t even get started on pay, because you think at this point that you’re only getting comped whatever the pay is for your cost of living, and that’s only really when you’re on the clock. They’ll pay for the hotel room and sometimes the food, but besides that, you’re on your own.

But, back to those working hours. You don’t know when they stopped, but maybe it was around the time your roomie decided to crack open a bottle of whisky and pour out half of it for you into one of the plastic solo cups they provide with the coffee pot. God knows you’re not working anymore, you’re just sort of sitting idle while he rambles about the room, gesticulating with the bottle. Like he does.

(Plus, you don’t think he’s even being paid for this? Adrian is just here for the fun and because he’s available, and the rest of the team just let him tag along because he’s useful. The thought makes you smirk a little bit.)

You admire his profile as he talks, one finger pressed to your smiling lips as your eyes trail him back and forth, thinking he might eventually hypnotize you. He’s so… expressive. And he has dimples and curly hair, which you’ve always been a sucker for. He hasn’t even taken off his suit; blue on silver on black, with a red visor on the mask discarded on the table. You had watched him remove it, and carefully tried to hide the fact that you were staring as he pulled his wire-rimmed glasses out of a hidden pocket.

You’re very pointedly staring now, sizing him up like your next fucking meal (alcohol does that to you), and Adrian keeps on blathering in one long spiel, pacing in circles like hasn’t even noticed your hungry gaze (alcohol does that to him).

“Is that prescription?” you ask, cutting him off in the middle of his sentence, which you’d barely been paying attention to. Something something Twilight, something something cultural reset.

Adrian stops pacing, looking at you with a deer-in-headlights expression. “Huh?”

You nod at the mask laying on the table by the door. “The visor. Is it prescription?” 

He swivels to look at the mask, and then back to you with an almost bashful laugh. “Uh… yeah?”

“That’s sick.” 

“Really?” Dimples. You take another sip of your whisky to calm yourself, and it burns at the back of your throat. Objectively, you should not be feeling this way about your pseudo-coworker, who also happens to be somewhat of a lunatic. But, y’know, he’s… sweet. To you. Which is the odd thing, but you’ve gone beyond worrying about the details at this point. You’re hunting alien butterfly creatures that live in people’s brains, you can get past a couple character flaws.

“I mean, yeah.” You lick your lips, which have taken on the flavor of the peach liqueur in the whisky. “I wear prescription lenses, too, but they’re a bitch to keep clean on the job. If I could afford prescription hardware, I would. Good on you.”

“Yeah, I mean… yeah, it is fucking cool, thank you!” He grins, his eyes crinkling at the corners and making you clench your jaw with how badly you want to reach out and kiss him long and hard at that exact moment. “I was starting to think no one else would notice how genius it is. Y’know, I don’t even think Peacemaker’s noticed, which is totally not very best friend-like of him, but it’s fine, I’m sure he’ll come around eventually, the guy constantly has a lot of shit on his plate. Like I remember one time, me and him got stuck in a Winnebago that was rolling downhill toward a cliff like something out of Looney Tunes because some idiot crack dealer locked us in there with his load, and-”

He’s pacing again, and the amber colored liquid in the square bottle he grips by the neck sloshes against the glass as he continues waving it around emphatically. And you’ve zoned out again, because now you’re thinking about his hands, and how nice they’d feel on your body. You’ve seen him beat the shit out of people, you know he’s packing some major force in those fists, but you haven’t felt them on your own skin, or had the experience of having them wrapped around your throat for yourself. 

“-then, y’know, Eagly’s a fucking badass, I don’t know if you’ve seen him in action, but the little dude can take a guy out in like one peck. Like do not get caught on the wrong end of those talons is all I’m saying. Anyways, he swooped in and yanked the fucking wheel, so the Winnebago flipped. I mean, can you imagine! A bald eagle rolling a camper. That shit’s gotta be, like, legendary-”

And his quads as he walks, Jesus Christ. You’ve never been super partial to burly, buff guys (sorry Chris), but there’s something to be said for muscle in the right places. Adrian’s legs are nice, you can tell just by the way the fabric of his pants stretches around them when he turns, and fuck his ass is so tight. You nearly salivate just staring at it, thinking about how much you’d love to dig your heels into it, or squeeze it to urge him on as he fucks you. 

Your eyes snap down to your solo cup of whisky, and you frown. When did you drink half of it?

“-but like I’m sure you know Eagly pretty well because he loves you, I can tell. He kind of scooches closer every time you sit near him, it’s really cute actually, I mean, I would scooch closer whenever you sat near me too except I feel like you’d punch me in the dick, good thing my suit’s got a reinforced crotch-”

“Wait, what?” You blink up at him, your brain sort of fizzling out and then rebooting as you stare at him. What did he say? 

Adrian doesn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, the guy who made it was like, ‘That makes no sense, you’re gonna have the worst time trying to take a piss in this,’ and I said, ‘No, dude, have you ever been karate kicked in the nuts before? Shit hurts.’ I still had to pay extra-”

“No, no, what was that shit about scooching closer? To me?” You squint at him. “Babe, are you trying to tell me something?”

He blushes. You know he’s joked about not feeling emotions like other people do, but you wonder how true that really is, because he goes beet fucking red like he’s having trouble breathing as he stares down at his shoes. “I, uh- well, I mean, yeah, I’d scooch closer to you. Theoretically. If- if you wanted me to. And if you weren’t going to punch me in the dick.”

“Why would I punch you in the dick?”

“I don’t know, it’s like… it’s an understandable reaction to someone getting in someone else’s personal space!”

“No, it really isn’t…”

“Well, how was I supposed to know you wouldn’t punch me in the dick?”

You throw up your hand in an exasperated gesture. “When have you ever seen me punch someone in the dick?”

He screws up his face. “UM, I don’t know, you punched Peacemaker in the dick!”

“What? When?”

“When he tried lifting you onto the truck that one time!” 

“That was a misunderstanding, I kneed him because he didn’t give me a heads up!”

“But you did it!”

“Well, the last thing I would want to do to your dick is punch it, all right?”

You both stop and stare at each other for a long moment. You think you might have stopped breathing, too. Yeah, you are definitely tipsy at this point, but you raise a slightly shaking hand to take a casual sip of your drink, as if you aren’t staring at him with bulging eyes like you’re possessed.

He opens his mouth and closes it a few times before he comes out with a response. “Okay.”

You blink. “Okay?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, okay. I mean, what other stuff would you do to my dick?”

“Uh… stuff.” You jerkily stand, nearly sloshing your drink as you try to get your bearings. You set the cup down on the bedside table and turn to look at him with the most awkward, pin-straight posture you could possibly muster, like a high schooler trying to pretend they aren’t drunk in front of their parents. “I’m going to take a shower now. Yeah. I am. I’m going to do that.”

“Oh. Okay.” Adrian looks down at the bottle in his hand, and then shuffles a bit to the side so that you can pass him.

“I mean, unless you wanted to shower first?” You pause at the end of your respective bed, and turn to see him turning down the covers on his own by the window. “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting in bed,” he says flatly, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He reaches up and undoes a latch on his armor that frees the chestplate, and lifts it over his head in one swift move, leaving him in his tight fitting black undershirt.

You stare at him, scatterbrained until you manage to scowl at him, and the two knives he wears crossed against his lower back. “You’re going to sleep with all your weapons?”

“Yeah.”

“With all the dirt and sweat and fucking blood from fighting?”

“Yeah.” 

“You can’t just… you can’t just get in bed with your outside clothes on, dude!” you splutter, leaning your thigh against the end of the mattress before you, and slow your speech carefully as you declare, “It’s… unsanitary.”

“Oh, and who are you, the sleep police?” Adrian turns to sneer at you. “I thought you were going to take a shower.”

“Well I was, but that was before I knew you weren’t planning on it!” You throw your hand out at him. “Why?”

“Because! If I go to sleep with wet hair it dries all weird, okay? Get off my dick!”

“I’m sure you’ll look just as pretty regardless, Adrian,” you tut condescendingly at him, rolling your eyes as you turn on your heels toward the bathroom. “Do what you want, or fucking join me if you change your mind, I don’t care.”

You don’t register the full weight of your words until you turn on the tap. But, by that time, you also don’t get to see the way Adrian stares at the door to the bathroom like you’ve just presented him with the key to the city.

You very rarely opt for lukewarm showers, but you certainly do now. With the way your blood is humming through your veins like electricity, and you feel hot just from the sight of Adrian’s muscles in that tight fucking shirt, you feel a cold shower is in order. Well, colder, anyways. 

The water pressure is complete bullshit, of course. It pathetically trickles out, and it takes longer than usual for your body to get completely soaked. In that time, you lean against the tile and hold your head in your hands as the water drips down your face. How the fuck are you supposed to sleep in the same room as this guy? Between the way you’re just aching to jump his bones, and his inability to stop talking, you don’t think it’s a possibility tonight.

You wonder what he would sound like when you ride him. You wonder if he would finally shut up, or if he would switch to talking to you like a lover instead of a drinking buddy. You wonder if he would beg, or if he’s more dominant than that. 

You’re imagining his head between your thighs. You’re imagining what he’d look like with your hands tangled in his hair. You’re imagining the feeling of his mouth on your skin, the calloused planes of his palms on your breasts and beneath your thighs. You’re… you’re shaking.

The white shower curtain rips open, and Adrian steps in beside you, naked as the day he was born. “Hey, can you pass the soap?”

“What the fuck?” You turn your head to look at him with a bewildered expression, simply refusing to tear your eyes away from his face because you do not want to cross that line and have the image of his dick imprinted in your brain while you try to get to sleep tonight. “Adrian, what are you doing?”

“Well, you said to join you if I changed my mind.” He shrugs, his smile the absolute picture of innocence, but his eyes still rake slowly down your body before finding your face again. 

You blink, searching for a proper response to that. His eyes are green. Jesus Christ, that’s three for three: dimples, curly hair, and green eyes. He’s trying to kill you. 

“I was being sar-” you cut yourself off with a sigh, “yeah, you know what, I did say that. Shit. Fucking… okay. Whatever. Here.” You fumble with the tiny complimentary body wash tube and thrust it toward him. “Go apeshit.”

“You have a really great ass by the way.”

“Adrian.”  

“What? You do. I’m just being honest. I’m not even saying that because this is the first time I’ve seen you naked, I always thought your ass was nice, there just wasn’t a good time to say it.”

Your face is burning. You turn your back on him and try your hardest not to clap your hands over your eyes or do something equally embarrassing. You don’t think Adrian is even fazed by any of this; he wasn’t wearing his glasses, either, and you don’t know how strong his prescription is. You imagine pretty strong, if he needs it in his visor. Maybe there’s a good chance he can’t see the exact details of your tits. Maybe-

He touches your shoulder, and you feel lather running down your back as he starts massaging circles into your skin.

“Are you washing me?” you wheeze, your voice coming out an octave higher, and you really do cover your face again this time. Your heartbeat pounds in your ears, and you can’t focus on anything other than the touch of his hand on your shoulder blade.

“Uh, yeah? I wash your back, you wash mine, right?” He sounds cheery and completely content with everything that’s happening and, despite the sheer oddness of all of it, you don’t really want him to stop. You guess that’s why you haven’t told him to get the hell out, yet.

Maybe you’re just as much of a lunatic as him. “‘Scratch,’ Adrian. It’s fucking ‘scratch.’” 

He pauses. “What?”

“It’s ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine.’”

“That makes no fucking sense.” He shakes his head in your periphery, his hand resuming its circular motion against your back, moving across to your other shoulder. You feel the soft, wet glide like a molten lava trail.

“Of course it makes sense! Why would it be ‘wash?’”

“Why wouldn’t it be ‘wash?’”

“Because it’s about doing your friends favors,” you argue in a wobbly, strained voice as you shiver while his fingers slide down your spine. It raises goosebumps on your skin, despite the heat in your veins and the cool of the water. “Friends don’t wash each other’s backs, genius.”

“So, we’re not friends?”

His hand pauses again just at the curve of your lower back, where it extends down into your tailbone. You bite your lip, and you can feel his eyes on you, the touch of his gaze almost as real as his hand is. Your thighs clench together involuntarily. You simpering little… weak, desperate thing, you are not going to beg for him to touch you. That’s not it. That’s not how this should go.

But, you could turn around and touch him, too. You could probably kiss him, if you were feeling really adventurous. He just basically implied that he wouldn’t be opposed to fucking you, right? That was where the conversation had been going earlier, if you hadn’t been such a pussy. Neither of you is nearly as subtle as you think you are.

You manage to chew your lip enough to tear a gash in it, and salty, coppery blood hits your tongue. You’re losing it, standing on the precipice of something way bigger than the two of you. You’re just an inch away from becoming more than just friends with Adrian, if you don’t reel it in quickly. Your hand comes up to slam against the wall when his fingers, which seem to be discontented to remain idle, start tracing little shapes on your lower back. A star. A diamond. A heart.

“N… No, I- I mean, we are. But I don’t think we’re going to be, if you keep it up.”

He grunts carelessly. “I’m having a hard time not keeping it up, really.”

“What do you mean?” You turn around, and his hand glides across your lower back and to your hip, because he refuses to stop touching you now (not that you want him to stop, either, if you’re being honest with yourself). Your eyes flick down, and you know exactly what he means, because he’s hard as a rock. 

And also thick, and long, and veiny, but hey. What did you expect?

Your eyes linger on his erection for a long time, and drag your gaze slowly from the burst of dark hair at the base of his cock, up the line of his torso and to his chest. His pale skin is riddled with little scars here and there, from small injuries that weren’t serious enough to slow him down. He has a faint spray of freckles on his shoulders, suggesting that he spends at least some time in the sun. It makes you inordinately flustered to think of him doing some sort of outdoor activities to get that toned body of his. 

You clear your throat as you find his gaze again. “Next dumb question,” you say, and he gives you a wide-eyed, vaguely awestruck look that makes you way more confident than it ought to. “Are you gonna fuck me, Adrian?”

His eyelashes flutter. His cheeks are painted with that sweet pink blush again, like he’s been entirely oblivious to the fact that he’s had you melting for him since he cracked open the bottle of Jim Beam. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“I think it’s a fucking fantastic idea, do you?”  

“Yeah, I do.” And he grabs you by the face to kiss you, and crowds you back against the wall. You give a surprised yelp into his open mouth, your arms coming up to wrap around his neck as your back hits the cold tile. He grunts and brushes his soap covered fingers across your cheeks. “Did you bite your lip?”

“Yeah.”

“...Was that because of me?”

You whimper weakly as he slowly, and very purposefully, traces the length of your bottom lip with his tongue like he’s savoring the taste of your blood. “Yeah.”

“That’s so fucking hot.”

He yanks you up off of your feet, making you squeak and hold in a nervous laugh. Your leg bumps the faucet handle, and the water turns ice cold just as Adrian scrambles to hook your legs around his waist. 

“Shit.” Adrian hisses and smacks the wall beside your hip once or twice before he finds the faucet, because he doesn’t stop kissing you. He’s sloppy and rushed and overexcited, but at least he gets the water running warm against as he presses you up against the wall. “I’ve never done this here, have you?”

“Shower sex? No.” You bite his lip as he hitches you up by the back of your thighs, and he groans as his hips jerk up toward yours. “But I think you’re doing a good job.”

“Wait, fuck. Do we need, like, a condom…?” He blinks at you with a glassy look in his eyes. 

“IUD. I have- it’s all good, you’re fine.” You knock your head back against the wall with a whimper high in your throat as he brushes his cock against your entrance. You can feel the world spinning as you tangle your fingers in his wet hair, giving it a small but sharp tug. “Now, if you don’t fuck me I’m gonna-”

You choke when he drives the full length of his cock into you, pushing your hips back against the wall. Your nails scratch down his neck and across his shoulder blades as he splits you open, your legs tightening around his waist while simultaneously trying to spread wider to accommodate him. Adrian spits a curse into your neck, his teeth grazing a vein there as he ruts up into you, filling you so completely that a cry dies in your throat. 

“God, fuck, Adrian,” you sob toward the ceiling, only too aware of him moaning loudly against your skin. He feels better than you had imagined, stretching you out so perfectly that your toes curl as you try your hardest to draw him forward with your legs alone.

“I knew you’d be perfect,” you catch him whispering into the crook of your neck, just barely audible over the trickle of water over your head.

He doesn’t even give you time to adjust before he starts pistoning his hips into yours, jolting you up the wall. Your skin squeaks against the wet tile, and his grunts echo in the curve of your neck. Tears might actually be streaming down your face, but you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart from the warm water coming from the showerhead.

Adrian’s hand comes up to brace against the wall beside your head, and he surprises you. “You really think I’m pretty?” He asks with such a genuine note of hope in his voice that you think he must be serious. 

“I think you’re fucking gorgeous,” you breathe, whining when he nips at your jaw with his teeth. You interrupt your train of thought with a series of hoarse cries, because Adrian picks up the pace with less precision, and more just forceful thrusts that drive all the way to the end of you and make you see stars, regardless.

“You’re the most perfect person in the world and I wish I could paint because the only thing I’d be painting is just you over and over and over-” 

He’s blathering into your shoulder, his mouth brushing your skin as it moves and his hips slamming yours back against the wall hard enough that you’re definitely going to be feeling it in the morning. Every bit of desire you have for him surges up inside you like an inferno catching on, like every stroke he makes is stoking that fire within you.

“-so pretty everyone wants you I can’t believe you would let me touch you or even kiss you but you’re letting me do this to you and it’s all I’ve wanted to do since I first saw you-”

It occurs to you to tell him that you’d let him do anything he wants to you at this point, as long as he just doesn’t stop fucking you- but that’s yet another line you refuse to cross for the sake of self preservation. You’re already drunk, and confessing the true scope of your feelings to him in this state would just be a recipe for disaster. 

Oh god, but he’s like a reckoning. You shake your head to compose yourself and scratch your nails along his neck before you take his face in your hands and draw him up to you. His pupils were already blown out, but you think they nearly eclipse his irises when his hips falter and he sucks in a sharp breath. His dark hair is thoroughly drenched, and water drips down his face in little rivulets that you trace with your fingers just before you draw him to your lips.

You feel his small moan vibrate on your lips, and that’s enough. Your legs spasm, and your orgasm suddenly snaps within you like a rubber band, every muscle in your core tightening down on his cock as you see a burst of white behind your closed eyelids. It snuck up on you just as much as it did him.

“Holy fuck-” Adrian loudly gasps against your lips with a startled jolt of his hips, his full weight crushing you up against the wall. His nose nuzzles yours, so intimate in a way that you hadn’t expected from him, and with a few shuddering huffs of breath you feel him come with a rush of warmth deep inside you.

You’re floating somewhere above awareness when he slouches forward, his forehead resting against yours and his eyes closed as he takes deep, steadying breaths. It takes you a moment to realize that he’s just holding you, with his fingers digging into your thighs like he’s just trying to ground himself in your body.

You raise a shaking hand to smooth his wet hair back from his face. “Earth to Adrian. You still with me, babe?”

He grumbles something entirely non-coherent directly in front of your face, and blinks his eyes groggily open at you. 

“The alcohol’s catching up with you, huh?”

He nods.

“Guess I’m washing your back, anyways. C’mon.” You wiggle out of his grip, and you’re only too thankful that you’re smushed up against the shower wall, or else you may have easily slipped and ate shit on the tile. The alcohol is fucking with your head quite a bit now, too, and your movements are a little jerky and uncoordinated as you try to help him get cleaned up.

He’s uncharacteristically quiet. The rest of the shower takes place in complete silence, actually, with the exception of the little grunt he makes when you urge him to bend down so you can get his hair for him. You catch him looking a little dazed as you turn off the water, and he gives you an unfocused stare when you toss a towel at him. You wonder if you actually succeeded in frying the guy’s brains just by fucking him.

But then, back in the room as you clumsily dig through your bag to pull out a night shirt and a pair of underwear, Adrian shuffles directly to his bed and tosses his towel aside before clambouring into it, bare ass to the wind. He flops down face first, and shoves his feet under the turned down comforter.

“Adrian… what are you doing?” You say for what feels like the millionth time this evening. 

“‘M going to bed,” he drawls into the pillow. His entire body shakes as he hiccups, and then turns his head to the side to look up at you with his big green doe-eyes that make your heart do a somersault in your ribcage. “You should tooootally join me. There’s-” hiccup- “lotsa room. We could go again.”

You blink at him as you semi-stagger, semi-walk toward the bed, stooping to pick up pieces of his uniform strewn across the floor as he had, presumably, just ripped everything off as he made his way to the bathroom. “Mm, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Uh, you said it was a great idea,” he argues as you toss his clothes into a pile at the end of the bed.

“That was before the whisky kicked in and we were both staggering… fuckin… drunk-” you accidentally whack your foot against the corner of the bed and bite your lip as you fight not to crumble to the floor. “One of us has to be responsible.”

“I’m-” hiccup- “responstable.”

“Uh-huh.” You stop as your eyes land on the mostly empty Jim Beam bottle on the bedside table. You’re almost positive it had been at least quarter full when you left him to go take a shower. “Adrian, did you drink all that?”

He blinks his eyes open and follows your pointing finger to the bottle. “Oh, yeah. Hhhuuuhh… had to… I lost the cap so we can’t keep it.” When you march forward to snatch it off the table, he grunts dismissively. “Gotta… get rid of it.”

“Guess that’s why you’re worse off than me.” You shake your head and drop the entire bottle into the trash bin. “Aren’t you gonna put something on to sleep in?”

“I don’t have anything.”

You snap your head towards his sprawling, naked form. Your eyes linger on his ass for way too long. “You didn’t bring a single thing to wear?”

“Why… why would I bring a change of clothes to kill bad guys?” 

“I don’t fuckin’ know! Anonymity!” 

He grumbles into the pillow, “I have a mask.”

“Fuck the mask. You can’t sleep in the mask.”

“Sure I can. I fuck in the mask, I can sleep in it. S’a free country.”

You blink, your eyes flicking between Adrian and the mask on the table. “Dude, you fuck in that thing?”

“Hell yeah I do. I could fuck you in the mask. Could do it right now. Go get the mask.” Despite the conviction of his words, he’s slurring them, and his face is still pressed into his pillow as he lies motionless on the bed. 

“I… don’t think that’s gonna happen tonight.” You sigh as you toe forward and grab the end of his comforter, drawing it up over his body. “We’re both way too drunk. We probably… probably shouldn’t have…”

Adrian flops over to look up at you as you, essentially, tuck him in. There’s a note of hurt in his voice when he mumbles, “You regret it?”

You pause, staring down at his expression of confusion and betrayal. Do you regret it? You can’t deny that you hadn’t been hesitant to have sex with him for a litany of reasons- one being that you work with him, and another being that he’s a loose cannon on the best of days. Not exactly relationship material, you think. 

Or, you thought, but now he’s gazing up at you with these wide, dumbfounded eyes, and you’re tucking the comforter up beneath his chin, and he turns his face down and kisses your knuckle even though he looks mildly hurt. And yes, you liked the sex very much. You liked it so much that you can’t trust yourself not to do it again if you don’t shuffle off to your own bed immediately.

“No,” you tell him firmly, combing your fingers through his wet hair as you draw back. “I don’t regret it, but I think we both need to sleep this off.”

“Okay,” Adrian says quietly, his expression relaxing, but his arms come out from under the comforter and he reaches for you with grabby-hands. “Sleep with me?”

You catch one of his hands and give it a gentle squeeze. “G’night, Adrian.”

You hear him sigh in disappointment when you shut off the bedside lamp. His hands audibly plop down onto the mattress as he rasps, “Night.”

You wake from a dreamless sleep sometime in the early hours of the morning, and your throat is bone dry. Smacking at the nightstand a couple times, your phone manages to illuminate and tell you that the time is only 1:30. 

You blink sleep away from your eyes and try to see through the dark as you stumble into the combination vanity, closet, and kitchenette. You knew you brought a water bottle or two, it can’t be that hard to find-

“Hey, what’cha doing?”

You hardly even startle at this point. You’re slowly becoming acclimated to the idea that Adrian is just constantly awake and witness to your every move, which isn’t as disconcerting to you as one might think. “I’m looking for the water. Did you see where I put it?”

“Uhhhhh mini-fridge?”

You reach blindly under the counter and yank the little fridge open, once again smacking around until your hand lands on the shape of a water bottle. “You want some?”

“Yeah, you could spit it into my open mouth-”

“Adrian.”

“What? It would be fucking sexy.” Adrian grunts, and the light clicks on from the main room. Then, he wolf-whistles just before you straighten up from where he’d caught you, bent over in front of the fridge. “Y’know, I was right. You have a really great ass.”

You grumble a half-hearted thanks under your breath as you approach his bedside and thrust a water bottle at him. “I see you’ve sobered up a bit.”

He waves a hand at you dismissively. “Pshh, I wasn’t that drunk.”

“You were drooling all over your pillow.”

“Maybe I always do that.”

“Yeah, okay.” There’s a long pause, wherein you perch on the edge of your mattress and chug an obscene amount of water. Adrian watches your throat work until he, too, succumbs and lifts his bottle to his lips. 

An uncomfortably heavy silence settles between you two, only permeated by the quiet sipping of water and the cheap motel AC unit kicking in. It’s entirely unlike him to be silent and still for more than a couple of seconds, but he’s just sitting there looking despondent and running a hand back and forth over the white comforter, periodically lifting his bottle to take another drink. He doesn’t even really look tired, and you wonder if he ever got to sleep in the first place.

You know that the tension in the air is so thick because you have yet to address the giant fucking elephant in the room; and to address it is to have the most awkward and intimate conversation you can possibly imagine with Adrian, of all people. As much as you love his sense of humor, the idea of baring your soul to him is almost enough to have you running into the bathroom again, and locking the damn door this time.

But, in true Adrian fashion (because damn it all to hell if he ever lets something be), he beats you to the punch. “So, are you? Sober now, I mean.”

You chew your lip again, and reopen the gash you’d put there before. “Yeah. I am.”

He nods, pursing his lips as he looks down at his lap. He was right, his hair does dry… well, not weird, but just rather unruly if he goes to bed with it wet. Dark curls stick up at odd angles, a cowlick on the back of his crown standing straight up and begging you to come over and smooth it down. More curls fall across his forehead and nearly touch the top of his glasses. He blinks slowly, and severe shadows from his lashes cross his face in the golden light of the bedside lamp. You snap your gaze away, the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end.

“So… was that a lie? About just needing to sober up?”

Your thumbs twitch on your bottle. To tell the truth, or to lie? You feel like your mouth just stays dry, no matter how much water you drink. “Look, Adrian, I-”

“Also, I have, like, no pride and a ridiculously thick skull, or- or whatever Peacemaker calls it. So, you don’t have to beat around the bush or anything for my sake, you probably won’t even hurt me-”

“Adrian, I like you too fucking much, don’t you get it?” 

That fully shuts him up, and he locks his jaw as he fixes you with a startled look. You suck your bottom lip through your teeth, perturbed at the taste of blood still apparent on it, and dig your heels into the carpet. 

“The last thing I want to do is hurt you. You’re… one of my closest friends, all right? But I’m afraid that if we keep going like this, I’m not going to want to be friends anymore. And I think I’ll fall in love with you really quickly, and that might be a really bad idea for both of us. You just…” You shake your head, your voice dipping in volume as you stare bashfully down at your feet, “you have no clue how much I want you all the time, baby.”

“Why would it be a bad idea?” he asks you plainly.

“What?” You pick your eyes up off the floor to squint at him, finding him staring at you challengingly, a flush already on his cheeks. 

“I mean, honestly. Name a single reason why it would be a bad idea. Bet’cha can’t.” Adrian throws his empty water bottle across the room, and it makes a gentle tap against the side of the television before skittering to the floor. “I think we’d fuck like rabbits and then I’d wake up every morning and make you pancakes, because I’m really fucking good at those, but you’d have to make the eggs because I always burn them. And I think we’d kick ass together as a cool superhero power couple, and I’d carry your gun for you if you got tired, and I could show you where all my hidden knives are. And you could also do anything you wanted to me, like any time, and I’d be totally fine with it and probably also turned on by it, as long as you call me baby like you just did.”

“Are you serious?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m super hard right now. Probably should’ve warned you, I have a thing about that-”

“No, smartass, I mean are you serious about the other stuff?” You tilt your head at him. “I never really took you for the domestic sort.”

“Tsch- yeah! I’m, like, super domestic. I’m like one of those domestic...ated... cats?” He trails off as you step forward and crawl onto his bed, up his legs to straddle his lap.

“Cats?” you repeat with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m… I…” Adrian’s eyes flick across your face, down to your shirt and bare thighs on either side of his, your knees pressing the comforter taut across his lap and (very prominent) erection. “I don’t know, I have trouble thinking when you’re on top of me-”

Nodding, you reach forward and take his glasses by the wire earpieces, and pull them from his face. He goes stock still, his lips parted in awe as you slide them onto your own face, and give him a sweet smile. “I like your glasses. They look good on you.”

“They look good on you.” His voice cracks. “Can you see in them?”

You blink at him, and then turn your head to look across the room. “A lot better than I thought I would. I think our prescriptions are similar.”

“That means you can also wear my mask.” 

You look back at him, and find that he has his million-mile stare on, like he’s completely lost in thought. You smirk. “Do you want me to wear the mask?”

He blinks, and it’s like you’ve flipped a switch and turned his focus back on. “Uh… no. I mean, yes. Maybe later. I want to look at you.” His eyelashes flutter so fast you think he might take flight for a second. “You’re so fucking beautiful I could stare at you all day.”

“You can touch me, too. Don’t be shy.”

He practically vibrates with anticipation as his palms glide up your thighs, hot and big and just a bit rough. His eyes are everywhere at once; your lips, your eyes, your chest, your thighs, where your hips disappear under your oversized shirt. His fingers catch the hem, and he curls it between them.

“You should totally get naked, too. It’s super unfair that I’m the only one naked right now,” he says breathlessly, nodding the whole time like he’s trying to convince himself as much as you.

“So, do it.” You shrug, trailing a finger up his chest. “Take it off, baby.”

Adrian fists the hem of your shirt and rips it in half up the middle with a loud tear. You gasp, shivering as the garment falls from your shoulders and leaves you in just your panties. “Adrian!”

His eyes are trained on your tits. “What? It’s not like you need it tonight, anyways, and tomorrow we’ll be home…”

“What if that was my only shirt?” you retort.

He looks up at you. “Was it?”

“Well, no-”

“Then there’s your answer. Now, can I go down on you? Because I’ve wanted to for a really long time and I think it’s super hot that you’re wearing my glasses so it’s like I’m watching myself eat your pussy.”

He has such a hopeful expression on his face that you have to hold in a manic string of laughter as you nod at him. “Yeah, sure. Are you going to tear up my underwear, too?”

“No, I wanna keep those.”

“That makes perfect sense.” You shake your head before you kiss him deeply, and his tongue dips into your mouth as he rolls over with you, briefly getting tangled in the sheets before he roughly kicks them off. 

You run your fingers through his hair, snickering as he climbs between your legs and his hands deftly tug your panties down. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Depends on how incriminating it is.”

“I’ve never come from someone eating me out before,” you admit quietly, a blush furiously heating your cheeks until you fear that if you touch your face you might burn yourself. 

Adrian fixes you with a deadpan stare, and a slew of emotions cross his face before he lands on something relatively serene and says, “Okay.”

“Okay?” 

He nods and grins, like this is the most casual conversation in the world, and his green eyes bore into yours. “Yeah. You should probably, uh… hold on, though.”

You frown in confusion. “To what?”

He rocks back on his knees, picking up your arms by the wrists, and he very simply places your hands on his head, with a little smile that conveys, ‘it’s no big deal,’ but the tenderness with which he does it sends another message, altogether. Your fingers weave between soft, unruly curls, your fingernails digging in just a bit when he lowers himself down between your thighs, and you come to the conclusion that this is just how he is. Tenderness, closeness, hidden behind casual sighs and dismissive shrugs.

You’re learning. Slowly. 

His breath finds you before his lips do, where you’re wet and swollen and slippery like you haven’t been touched in your fucking life. But he has once already, and still his mouth feels like a searing hot brand between your legs. In fact, you nearly jump out of your skin at the first brush of his tongue through your folds, your hands tightening on his hair and tugging as you buck your hips up against him. 

Adrian grasps your hips and slams them down against the mattress. Sometimes you forget how fucking strong he is. His slight frame really doesn’t give justice to the force behind those lean muscles, because he holds you in an iron grip that you can hardly wiggle out of. It makes you feel small, in a way, that he holds you hostage to his tongue and won’t let you move away from or towards him. 

A long, miserable whine rips out of your lips before you can stop it, and you could blush at how pathetic it sounds, except that Adrian mimics it with a groan against your cunt. Your head is flung back against the pillows, but when you just barely tilt up to glance down at him, you find his green eyes trained directly on you. They start off wide as moons, and then narrow like he’s challenging you to look away as he drags the flat expanse of his tongue slowly over your clit, curling the tip just as it skims the mark.

“Oh, fuck you, Adrian, you’re so fucking good,” you grit out through clenched teeth. Your nails dig into his scalp and he shudders, briefly nuzzling his head up into your touch before he dips down to give you his tongue again. Your breath hitches, and your eyes flutter shut when he sucks on your clit long and hard. “So… s-so good… good boy…”

The moan that Adrian makes is overtly pornographic, and his hips snap once against the mattress so hard that the bed shakes beneath you. He breaks away from you to rest his forehead against your thigh, squeezing your hips tightly in his hold as his hot breath billows across your sweat-damp skin.

You loosen your fingers in his hair to stroke it softly, subconsciously struggling to flatten the cowlick at the back that you’d noticed earlier. Adrian’s eyes are squeezed shut, his shoulders heaving while he tries to steady his breath through his nose. “Did you just come?”

The tips of Adrian’s ears glow pink. He gives you a little nod and then a feeble, “Couldn’t help it.”

So, he can’t just take his praise in stride, he has to react to it with fervor. “That’s really sexy of you,” you blurt out, your voice ragged and just this side of adoring. 

He returns with a quiet mmm, rumbling across your skin as he drags his open mouth along the sensitive flesh of your thigh, his eyes drowsily shut. It takes him another moment to catch his breath, but once he does, he’s right back at it again. Dipping his head down and absolutely going for it with no signs of letting up, and you have to suck in a deep stream of air and scramble for a hold on him somehow.

“Oh- oh my fuckin-g god-” your voice comes out without thinking, wrung thin and anguished, as your foot plants itself in his shoulder. Adrian simply grunts, paying no mind to the fact that you’re effectively kicking the living shit out of him as he sucks so hard on your clit that you threaten to break his vise-hold on your hips.

He was right that you needed something to hold onto, because you feel like you might leave the ground. He works at you relentlessly, devouring you with his lips and tongue and teeth like he can’t get enough of you, his fingertips pressing so hard into your hips that his nails are turning stark white. 

“Fuck, you’re so squirmy,” Adrian groans when he pulls away from you for half a second, and struggles to hold you down when you try to chase his mouth. “Should I tie you down?”

“Do you have anything to tie me down with?” you mutter breathlessly toward the ceiling.

A beat. “Nope. Stay still.”

You fight not to jolt as the next touch of his mouth on you. He dips his tongue into your channel, seemingly trying to draw your arousal out of you that way. You start whining when he finally nuzzles his way back up, giving you soft, teasing licks to your clit that edge you closer and closer to the release of the swell of heat you feel building in your core. Your volume turns up a notch when his tongue starts drawing little circles around the swollen flesh. 

And when his lips come down to latch onto it and gently suck, you know you’re just shy of howling. His soft groans vibrate onto your skin as you scratch at his head and pull on his hair, and you eventually find yourself babbling, “Adrian, please, I’m gonna come, please pleasepleaseplease-”

He sucks harder, moaning like it turns him on just to hear you say it. You heave a few rapid breaths, and then come against his face with a cry that crackles and breaks in your throat as your head arches back, baring your neck forward. Your heels digging into his back, hands scratching, hips flailing like you can somehow escape the barrage of hypersensitivity he’s putting you through.

You really fucking hope no one is in the room next to yours.

His fingertips stick to your skin once he releases his grip on you. He’s practically glowing, grinning from ear to ear at you from between your legs, and it’s a better image than you had imagined. 

You drop your head back with a breathless chuckle. “Okay, Mr. ‘I Have No Pride.’”

“I made you come,” he chirps happily.

“Yeah, you did. It was really good, too.”

“So, why didn’t anyone else?” Adrian pushes his head toward your touch when you stroke your hand gently through his hair. 

“I dunno. They weren’t applying themselves, I guess.”

“That’s stupid. You’re, like, the hottest person ever. Hotter than Doja Cat,” he grumbles petulantly, and you can tell by the look in his eye that he’s dead serious. “Want me to kill them? I should kill them.”

“No.” You trail your fingers down the curve of his face, going for his chin, but he turns his face and sucks your two fingers into his mouth before you can manage it. You stop dead as the pad of his tongue swirls around the digits, and he blinks up at you innocently, despite the lewd connotations of the act. “N-no, I… hhhhh… you’re distracting me.”

He bats his eyes at you, and he slowly pulls back along your fingers until they pop out of his mouth, covered in saliva. “How am I distracting you?”

“You’re- you… you little shit.” You grab him by the chin and draw him up from between your legs. He clumsily crawls up the length of your torso with his cheeks smushed between your fingers as you hiss, “I’m going to fuck the ever-loving shit out of you, I swear to god.” 

“You know, that sounds slightly menacing when you say it like that,” he slurs, his jaw working against your hold. 

“On your back, Chase.”

He grabs you before you can protest, and rolls back over so that you plop down on top of him, your hand still jammed up against his jaw. A blast of air comes out of your lungs in lieu of laughter, and Adrian snorts, shuffling his hips so that he moves back against the pillows.

“Okay, look, I really really really like you,” he says as you pick yourself up, straddling his lap, “but if you’re too good at this I might accidentally fall in love with you. Just to let you know what you’re getting into here.”

“Oh, is that so?” 

“Yeah, and I think I might actually, um, ask you to move in with me, like, immediately. Like tomorrow. Do you rent or own? Doesn’t matter, I can put your name on the lease. Maybe if you own a house it can be income property-”

You cast your eyes down and find him, remarkably, hard and leaking precum as he continues babbling about living situations. You tilt your head, letting him get his stream of consciousness out there in the open, as your eyes catch on a dark wad of fabric beside his pillow. Your underwear, which he’d gingerly set aside instead of tossing across the room like you thought he would.

“Hm, Adrian?”

He blinks up at you, his eyes wide and dilated. “Yeah?”

You pick up the wadded up underwear. “You wanted to keep these, right?”

He licks his lips. “Um. Yes.”

“Hold them for me, then.” You grab his jaw and stuff them in his mouth, his eyes nearly popping out of his skull as he makes a noise of protest, but then actually moans when, presumably, he tastes you on them. “You’re so fucking cute, I haven’t even tied you up. You just want my taste in your mouth, huh?” He nods. “Yeah. Pretty boy.”

He predictably moans again, his hands grasping at every part of you they can reach; your arms, your breasts, the expanse of his palms gliding down the curve of your waist and settling on your thighs. You grab one, lifting it and settling his palm against your throat.

“Hold this for me, too?” You ask him sweetly, giving his bewildered expression a devilish smirk in return. You rock forward, sliding your dripping pussy along his erection, and his hand tightens on your throat just a bit. “That’s it.”

You pick your hips up, reaching between your legs to position him where you want him, and when you sink down onto his cock, the underwear in his mouth does nothing to muffle the obscene groan that he makes. His hand flexes on your throat, and his eyes close and open a few times as he tries to maintain a certain amount of control. Something tells you that he’s not really used to taking it lying down. 

You’re already decently sore from the way he effectively fucked your brains out in the shower. This is just ensuring that you’re going to be feeling it for the rest of the week, but you can’t help yourself. You take him in all the way, making agonized noises the entire time, and then jolt your hips down a little more so you can feel him bottom out. 

“Fucking hell, baby, you’re something else,” you snarl down at him, and his eyes go wide again as you squeeze him, every bit of your aching strength bearing down onto his cock until he whines loudly through the fabric and his fingers tighten on the sides of your throat. “Oh, god, I could ruin you. You could ruin me. I want you to, it would be so easy for you, I wouldn’t even be able to walk in the morning.”

And you’re moving, picking up your hips and letting them fall back down in slow, deep strokes that have him writhing, his free hand in a death grip on your thigh. You raise your hand to press against the back of his on your throat, your fingers weaving in between his, and he flexes them back a bit to make room. 

Even when he’s gagged, he’s noisy. Keening and grunting at you, his jaw tightening every once in a while and the tendons of his neck jumping out at you when your hips meet his. Dark curls hang down his forehead, damp with sweat, and you can’t help but feel like the shower was useless.

No, not useless. It brought you here.

Adrian bucks his hips up suddenly, meeting you halfway when you take a particularly long time on the downstroke. You gasp, tightening your hand on his, and your nails dig into his chest. 

“Oh, you want me to ruin you, don’t you?” You murmur at him, baiting him to do it again. And he does, just like you hoped he would. You pick up the pace in retaliation, letting the lewd sounds of your skin hitting his fill the room. “Silly boy, I knew you would.”

He whimpers, blinking up at you slowly, his face screwing up and tightening in earnest when you rake your nails up and down his chest. He makes a couple pathetic, weak groans in the back of his throat like he wants to convey something to you, but he’s not reaching up to remove your underwear from his mouth.

(You wonder if he even remembers that he can.)

“You gonna come for me?” you ask as his whimpers increase in volume. His cock is so hard, twitching and dragging thick inside you, and his chest jumps with every desperate, ragged breath he takes. “Yeah, you are. Go on, baby, make a mess.”

Adrian gives you a curt shake of his head, and paws at your thigh for a second before his hand slides forward, and his thumb touches your clit.

“Oh fuck, Adrian-” you lurch forward, pressing your throat hard against his palm, your legs seizing up on either side of his hips. He makes you come again with a single fucking touch, and it burns through your core like fire, almost more satisfying than the first because you’re able to feel him inside you this time, something warm and hard and thick to come on.

Apparently, that was all he needed in order to let go. His back arches a bit as he jerks his hips up into yours, and he fills your pulsing cunt until his shallow breaths rattle in his throat, his eyes squeezed so tight that you see a tear collecting in the corner of one. He lays with his head driven back hard into the pillow, whimpering and whining like he’s been mortally wounded. 

Too sore to move just yet, you pull his hand away from your throat and kiss his palm. Adrian’s eyes flutter open, and he finds you with a glazed-over stare, like he might either see you or see through you. Still letting out soft whimpers with each harsh exhale. 

“Oh. Sweetheart,” you giggle, and reach forward to pull the wad of underwear from his mouth. It comes out with a long string of his spit attached to it, and you give him a cheeky smirk as you break the string with your finger and lick it off, rather than wiping it on your skin. 

“You… you’re…” You swear his eyes nearly roll back in his skull before he closes them, trying to collect himself. He takes a deep, long breath, and then splutters, “Willyoumarrymeactually?”

You give him your biggest, goofiest grin, a little bubble of laughter wedging itself deep in your chest. “Get a little more whisky in me, and we’ll see what bright ideas I have then.”

“Okay.”

You lift yourself off of his softening cock, and the release comes with a dribble of his cum sliding down your thigh. He groans, but with one look at him you know that there’s not going to be any more action for the rest of the night. 

You shift to the left, and his hand smacks down onto your thigh. “Mmmm no, you sleep with me.”

“Yeah, obviously. But you came all over the sheets earlier, genius.”

“Oh.”

He takes a deep breath in and opens his eyes in time to see you taking his glasses off. You blink a few times, your eyes having adjusted to the slight difference in your prescriptions, and refocus on his face to find him gazing up at you adoringly. 

“I’m gonna take a guess and say you don’t sleep in these, too?” You wiggle the glasses at him. 

He licks his lips. “No, not… not usually.”

You set the glasses on the bedside table, and then slowly slide off of him, off the bed and onto shaky legs. You take his hand and tug just a bit. “C’mon, pretty. Into my bed.”

He follows your lead without a fuss, making the two step journey to the other bed and plopping down face-first. 

“D’you wanna get pancakes when we wake up?” he asks around a yawn as you nudge his ass, prodding him to scoot over. 

You nod furiously, even though you know he can’t see you as you switch the light off and climb in beside him, curling up against his warm back. “Pancakes sound fucking delicious.”

“Not as delicious as your pus-”

“Adrian.”

You, who were used to discipline and seriousness, couldn't understand how someone like him could be part of such an important operation. He had literally been one of the people who had saved the world from being dominated by a bunch of alien bugs.

He, for his part, looked at you as if you were the most interesting thing he had ever seen in his life.

He smiled at you in that silly, genuine way that got on your nerves. He talked nonstop about things you didn't care about, his life as a vigilante, his intimate friendship with Peacemaker, his passion for birds.

“Did you know that owls can turn their heads all the way around?” he asked you one day while you were on patrol. “They can turn them like 270 degrees in a circle without moving their shoulders. Can you imagine if I could do that?”

You ignored him and kept looking through your binoculars. “I'm not in the mood to talk about birds, Adrian,” you said, your voice as cold as usual.

He didn't give up and tried to rotate his neck, very awkwardly due to his mask. “I could just rotate my neck like this and—”

“Adrian, please shut up,” you interrupted him, finally turning your head so you could look at him. “We have work to do. Stop being a fucking freak for a minute.”

He fell silent, and for a moment, you felt a little bad. But then you thought about all the times he had pissed you off, and you got over it. 

Still, it was strange. 

Despite your constant rejections, your constant unkind looks, he always came back. He always smiled at you. He always offered you one of his homemade cookies —which, much to your chagrin, were incredibly good.

He extended that extra special treatment to you and only you.

Adrian treated you as if you were the most important person in the world. And that, in a twisted way, made you feel like you were the freak in the situation. He adored you.

Although, deep down, you found him ridiculously cute. He was damn attractive when he shut his mouth and obeyed you in everything.

You would never accept it, of course.

Chris, on his part, tried way too hard to make you like him. Every time you guys hung out, he would mention how good of a friend Adrian was, how good he was at killing people, as if that would somehow impress you—which it did, of course—and how big his dick was.

He literally just mentioned it like that, without further explanation or any context, as if it were a piece of information you would be interested in knowing.

He took special care to pair you with Adrian for assignments, leave you alone together, send you to buy food for Eagly together. He was a kind of fucked-up Cupid.

“I don't need to know that,” you would say with disgust, trying very hard not to envision Adrian's dick.

And Chris would just nod his head, leaning in close to you as if he were revealing a top secret, “You need to know, dude. Honestly, I don't think Adrian likes sex that much. But his dick is big, I can assure you that.”

You didn't even want to know how he even knew that.

You didn't even like Adrian that way.

At least that's what you thought.

Until now.

You were on a regular night of surveillance; preventing a crime of some criminal gang that you had been tracking.

Everything was going well until the hallways filled with armed men, and a flurry of bullets struck near you. 

Before you could react, one of the masked men shot you in the shoulder.

You feel a sharp pain that shoots through your entire arm, and then blood began to flow.

“Shit!” you cry out, retreating.

Adrian, who had insisted —begged— to accompany you that night, turn around when he hears the scream. You can scarcely see how his eyes panic, desperately searching for you through all the chaos.

He moves faster than you had ever seen him move before.

Then, he throws himself on top of you, covering you with his body, and drags you to a safe corner behind a wall of boxes.

“You're bleeding!” he gasps, his voice tinged with panic.

The pain makes you grit your teeth and the way he looks at you knocks you off balance. “I'm fine, it's just a scratch.”

“It's not fucking a scratch!” he snaps, tearing off a piece of his suit to cover the wound. “You got fucking shot, Lynx!”

The use of your vigilante name makes you finally look at him, dragging your gaze away from your bleeding wound. You can see the concern in his eyes through his mask, and he doesn't have to take it off for you to know that his lips are pursed in a pout.

His touch is gentle and careful, which surprises you. The adrenaline prevents you from thinking clearly. You'd never imagine that Adrian would be so... gentle.

While he is bandaging your wound, another man peers down the hallway. Adrian pushes you further back. 

“Stay here!” he whispers, and without a second thought, he stands up to confront him.

The shooting intensifies and then you hear the sound of a chainsaw igniting, followed by a flood of screams of pain.

Just a couple of minutes later, Adrian appears in your field of vision, his suit covered in blood.

He looks so fucking hot that you couldn't even suppress the thought, in all the haze of hurt you are feeling.

“We have to get out of here,” Adrian claims, returning to your side. “you need a doctor.”

​You shook your head, the pain throbbing in your shoulder. “My car is a couple of blocks away. We can go there, but no doctors.”

He looks at you disapprovingly for a moment before sighing and help you up, supporting your weight against him. Together, you sneak out of the market, leaving the entire criminal gang slaughtered behind and the owner of the store with a horrified look on his face, calling the police.

When you reach your car, you struggle to open the door. Adrian gently pushes you aside and does it for you.

You sit in the passenger seat, feeling the sting in your shoulder with every movement.

“Where are we going?” Adrian asks, starting the engine right after you toss him the keys.

“My house,” you reply. It is the closest and safest option, although the idea of being alone with him makes you uneasy.

Adrian already knew your address, of course; he had been there several times, showing up with his homemade cookies, sometimes with new weapons to show you, and other times with clues about some criminal you were hunting.

The journey is silent, except for the sound of the engine, some Frank Sinatra album playing on the stereo and your ragged breathing. Adrian glances at you from time to time, his eyes displaying full concern once he takes off his mask and throws it on the back seat. You don't dare look at him directly, feeling a strange mixture of gratitude and confusion.

“Frank Sinatra?” he inquires a in a teasing, incredulous tone, without looking at you. This time, it is you the one staring at him, at his side profile, the line of his strong jaw, the curve of his nose, the way his eyelashes barely brush his cheekbones with each blink. Looking at the undercut of his hairstyle makes your stomach turn. He certainly is so cute. “The most ruthless assassin I know listens to Frank Sinatra?”

He looked odd without his glasses, maybe even more gorgeous, which was ridiculously beyond belief that it was possible for him to be.

“I'm not a ruthless assassin,” you mumble, looking away from him and feeling your cheeks flush, suddenly hot all over. You assume it is because your body is starting to healing itself. Or at least that's what you want to believe. “And Sinatra is a classic.”

“He is, I guess.” Adrian snorts softly, looking at you for a couple of seconds before shifting his gaze back to the road ahead. “For old people.”

“What?” you ask, looking at him again, your eyes trailing over the bend of his nose from his side profile, feeling a heat spread up from the lower part of your belly as you picture all the things you could do with that nose. You clear your throat, trying to snap out of your trance and snap back to reality. “I’m not old.”

A smile curls on his lips as he turns his head to look at you again, his eyes gleaming under the subdued lights inside the car. His gaze is soft, and caring, and warm.

But even so, Adrian seems a little flustered and nervous, overwhelmed by your presence right next to him, your scent, your breath, your voice. You.

When you arrive at your house, he helps you walk up the stairs at the entrance, holding you firmly. Once inside, he guides you to the sofa, always holding you close to him and handling you with care, touching only the necessary parts. He does not allow his hand to wander.

“I'll go get the first aid kit,” he says, already moving toward the bathroom.

You lie back on the sofa, feeling tired and in pain. He returns with the first aid kit and kneels down in front of you, carefully opening the supplies.

He removes the makeshift bandage from his suit, his gaze fixed on the wound.

“I'm sorry,” he utters softly, with evident guilt in his voice. “If only I had been quicker...”

“Don't be silly,” you interrupt him, trying to keep yout voice quiet. “It wasn't your fault. And in fact, you prevented any more bullets from hitting me. So...” your voice trails off and you blush lightly, “you saved my life, Adrian.”

He looks you in the eyes, and for the first time, there is not a trace of his usual antics. Only concern and a tenderness that makes you feel vulnerable.

And he doesn't encounter the usual coldness and detachment in your gaze; no, this time he finds softness and closeness.

“And it's already healing. So don't be dramatic,” you add, trying to brush off the real gravity of everything you just said to him.

“Sometimes I forget you have those creepy powers,” he says softly, looking up at you from his spot right in front of your knees. “It’s so fucking cool... and scary as shit. And hot.”

Still, Adrian disinfects the wound with steady but gentle hands, bandaging it again with clean gauze. Every touch is delicate, every movement calculated. His closeness, his scent, his gaze, the soft expression on his face... everything blurs your mind and leaves you dizzy.

You feel vulnerable, but strangely safe by his side.

When he finish, his hands go down to your knees and linger there. The sheer heaviness of his touch and the way he looks at you as he kneels in front of you makes you gulp.

At that moment, you just know that his feelings for you are real. He really likes you. And he had put himself in danger to protect you.

A cold fear ran through you as you thought about what could have happened.

Suddenly, you realize you don't want to live in a world where you couldn't hear his off-key singing or his comments about birds.

“There you go,” he finishes treating your wound with a smile, his fingers caressing your collarbone before he pulls away from you.

Driven by a feeling you've never experienced before and profiting from his closeness, you take his chin in one hand, look him straight in the eyes, and kiss him.

Surprised, he just stands very still for a moment, then closes his eyes and kisses you back with a passion that makes you feel like you had never kissed anyone in your life.

Adrian kisses you as if he had been waiting and dreaming for this moment his whole lifetime.

When you separate from each other, Adrian's breathing is heavy, and yours isn't much better.

His thumbs caress your cheeks and his eyes drifts down to your lips, then back up to your eyes, with a silent question. He don't need to say it out loud really.

Adrian leans up again, close to you, this time deliberately slowly, his lips brush yours, his nose affectionately caressing yours, before deepening the kiss.

His kiss is hungrier now, more desperate. His hands moves from your cheeks to your waist, barely lifting himself up a little so he could be closer to you.

Both of you know it.

It isn't just a kiss; it is a declaration, a release of all the tension that had built up between you through all this time.

“This is only because you saved my life,” you whisper in between kisses, attempting to convince yourself more than him.

Adrian is ecstatic, kissing you as if there were no tomorrow, hungry and desperate, like a lion that had just been released from a cage.

A smile curved his lips, reddened from so many kisses, murmuring against your mouth, “I'll save you every fucking day then, if this is how you'll repay me.”

You try to suppress a smirk, your arms around his neck pulling him up, closer to you. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Shut me up,” he challenges you.

And you shut him up with a kiss, letting yourself be carried away by the thrill of the moment and your instincts, your body acting on its own, controlled by a carnal desire that you had tried so hard to suppress.

Until now.

“Let's go to my room.”

Adrian obeys instantly, picking you up as he stands up and carrying you to your room, without even taking his mouth off yours. It is the perfect excuse to press you against him, his hands running over your thighs and backside, grinding against you with every step he takes.

“Can I touch you everywhere?” he asks, desperate and pleading, detaching himself from you for just a moment, his hands holding you under your thighs, pressing you against him and making you feel the prominent bulge in his crotch.

“I thought you already are,” you reply, panting for air, your hands around his neck, your fingers lacing through his hair.

His voice lowers sheepishly, very uncharacteristically in him, “I'm a gentleman. Consent is very important.”

You offer him a little sincere smile, kissing him again, “Yes, Adrian. You can touch me everywhere.”

He gently lays you down on the bed, positioning himself directly above you, his lips moving down your jawline, pressing a wet trail of kisses across your neck.

“Fuck yeah,” he hisses against your skin, right after placing a love bite near the junction of your neck and shoulder—the one uninjured. “You don’t know how much I’ve dreamed of having you just like this.”

His mouth suck, his teeth nibble, his lips press kisses, claiming your skin as his own.

“You feel much better than any dream.”

“Adrian,” you moan out his name, arching your back as you feel his mouth reach your collarbone.

He pauses for a moment, lifting his head to look at you, allowing you to see his fully dilated pupils. “Can I take this off?”

You nod instantly, biting your lower lip.

His hands settle on the fabric of your suit on your chest, frantically opening it and tearing it apart, always careful not to cause further damage to your wound.

That makes you gasp.

“Adrian!” you disapprovingly shout his name.

But he is mesmerized by your tits, which bounce free once he ripped your suit open, your nipples perking up at the feel of the cool air in the room.

“Motherfucker,” he curses, leaning down further to kiss one of your breasts, making you sigh. “You're not wearing a bra under this suit?”

“No panties either,” you confess with a hiss, closing your eyes when you feel his wet tongue leisurely flick one of your nipples.

“You're such a freak,” he whispers against your skin, mesmerized. “You act like a good girl, but you're so bad, hm? You do bad things like this and still act like little Miss Perfect.”

You bite down on your lower lip, holding back a moan as he sucks on the nipple, his fingers playing with the other, giving both of your tits his undivided attention.

“Adrian...”

“If you keep saying my fucking name like that, I'm gonna cum,” he rasps against the warm skin between your breasts, moistening it with his saliva. 

He begins to descend further through your body, kissing your stomach, marking your skin with kisses, bites, and hickies. He is opening your suit as he roams your body, igniting your skin and sending shivers throughout your spine.

Adrian pulls your ruined suit down over your legs so he could remove it completely, taking advantage of the opportunity to kiss your knees and ankles before moving back up.

“Did you know this would happen?” he asks against the skin of your inner thigh, forcing your legs apart when you try to close them, suddenly feeling embarrassed by the way he looks down at you, adoringly. “Or you'd go for someone else?”

You try to smile through all the desire, offering him a crooked, lazy smile, “Don't be jealous.”

He gaze at you with eyes hazy with desire as he pulls himself up and begins to take off his suit with trembling, clumsy fingers.

“I'm not fucking jealous,” he mumbles, watching the way your eyes drift down his body, passing over the width of his shoulders, his pecs, his abs. 

“You're staring,” then he remarks the obvious, trying to conceal the way he puff out his chest to look even bigger. With the movement, a silver chain hanging around his neck shimmered under the dim light of the room.

“So are you,” you snap back in a broken whisper, feeling your cheeks flush. 

And of course you are cheking him out.

He is fucking ripped. 

And so big that even his bulge under the fabric of his white briefs looked massive once he strips off the lower part of his suit.

He is so hard that it looks painful.

So what you had been hearing was real, so fucking real.

“Can I eat you out?” Still, he asks, eager to make you feel good, as he shook his head, causing a couple of curls to fall messily across his forehead. “You're so fucking beautiful, holy shit. I need to taste you or I'll actually have a stroke.”

Adrian return to his position between your legs, his hands delicately caressing your thighs as he waits patiently for your response, your consent.

You look down at him with half-closed eyes, your head clouded by the desire to reach any kind of pleasure.

He is carefully placing your legs on his shoulders, staring in awe at your pussy, dripping wet and so ready for him, when you click your tongue, “Can you stop talking and just get to it, Chase?” 

“So mean even when I got you fucking-- dripping for me,” he quietly says, looking up at you once more just before nestling between your legs and leaning close to your cunt, his warm breath and the raspy tone of his voice makes you clench around nothing. And he just gawked, smiling as joyfully as if he were standing at the gates of heaven, wide open for him, “Pussy is so pretty too, look at her— fuck, you're soaking wet for me, baby"

The pet name makes you swoon and fucking fold. 

“Adrian—” 

Your voice chokes off as you feel his tongue trace your slit, scooping up all the arousal that is leaking out of your hole and savoring it as if it were the most delicious meal he had ever tasted in his entire life.

The sounds of his mouth slurping and licking your pussy flood the room, so filthy and messy that it makes you feel a heat wave from head to toe.

You can't control the way your body yields to him, as if your whole life had been longing just for this moment, as if tailor-made for him.

A righteous and sloppy suck on your clit has you promptly reduced to a trembling, whimpering mess.

One of your hands lands on his head, fingers sinking into his curly locks and pulling them, drawing a hoarse groan from deep within his throat.

The vibration against your cunt has you rolling your eyes back.

“You smell so good,” he hums into your splashing pussy, which is throbbing harder and faster, your heartbeat pulsing right against his lips. He can feel it. “Cum on my tongue, baby. I want to drink everything this pretty pussy has to give me—”

But your hand on his head tugs him back, detaching him from your clenching hole.

He looks up from between your legs with squinted eyes, his lips, drenched with your own arousal, curl into a pout.

He looks so pussy drunk and pathetic for you that you could cum just by watching him looking like that.

“Oh, baby, don’t be mean now—”

You interrupt him, your thumb lazily stroking curls away from his forehead, “I want to cum around your dick, Adrian.”

Your words leave him dumbstruck for a few seconds. And the next second, he's peeling off his briefs as fast as a flash, and the next he's climbing on top of you, nice and slow.

He leans down to kiss you, preventing you from staring in awe at his dick, now held in his own hand, so hard and angry red that it has you drooling, “Holy motherfuck, that has to be the hottest shit I’ve ever heard in my entire fucking life.”

“Put it in, Adrian,” you whine, begging for him, squeezing your eyes closed and arching your back for him, looking for any kind of friction that helps you gett off, “Please, baby—”

The pet name rolls off your tongue so naturally, lace with so much pleasure and warmth that it had an immediate effect on Adrian, who fucking whimpers, kissing your lips sloppily.

Even so, he has the strength to stop and look you in the eyes, all flustered, “I didn't bring any condoms— fuck”

“No? Why?” you ask in a choked, whiny voice.

He looks at you with a face that conveys puzzlement and hopelessness, “Because I’m on patrol. I’m supposed to be fighting, not fucking—”

You interrupt him again, kissing him once more and staring straight into his eyes, “Fuck me raw, Adrian. I don't care. But fuck me now.”

And he can actually feel himself melting against your body, you can sense how he's trembling right under your fingertips, squeezing his shoulders as he presses his forehead against yours.

He closes his eyes, breathing in the scent of your skin, pumping himself as he lines up the plump tip of his cock at your entrance, teasing it along the wet folds.

“I'll be gentle,” he promises, breathing shakily, though his hips tremble as if he might lose control at any second.

“Don't be,” you correct him, your legs wrapping around his waist, pulling him closer. “Fuck me. Hard.”

The growl he lets out when he hears you has something animalistic, primitive about it. Adrian finally pushes himself inside you with a slow but powerful movement,deeply carving a way into you.

“God, you're so tight...” he cries out, his eyes tightly shut, as if the pleasure is too much to process. He's only halfway inside your squeezing pussy. “So fucking warm— I'm gonna cum, damn it—”

“Don't even think about it,” you cut him off, digging your nails into his shoulders to force him to open his eyes and look at you. “Hold it for me, yeah?”

Your words set him on fire. Adrian begins to move, erratically at first, then with more force, each thrust slamming you against the bed. You you scratch his back, pull his hair, grasping any part of him you can hold on to, as the wet sound and rhythmic thrusts fill the room.

“So pretty...” he hiss in a broken voice, choking on his own whimpers and kissing you between each word, his hungry mouth tracing your neck and jaw, drooling on your skin. “So pretty for me— fuck, sweetheart.”

He's so dizzy with you, overwhelmed that everything is you, everything around him. Adrian is in love, thrusting into you with a force that makes you gasp, moving with raw desperation, as if his whole world depended on making you feel good. Your moans mingle with his panting, with the dull thuds of his skin against yours, with the creaking of the poor bed shaking under you.

Your legs squeeze him closer to you, trapping him inside, and when your nails dig into his back, Adrian almost splits the air in two with his broken moans.

“Can I— Can I cum n-now?” he asks like the good boy he is.

“Do it,” you whisper, already losing yourself on the edge of climax. “Cum for me, baby”

“W-where?”

“Inside,” you whine, frantically gasping for breath, feeling like the world is shrinking and slipping away from you with every thrust Adrian pushes into you, the tip of his cock hitting that spongy spot over and over. “Mhm! --Fill me up”

The rhythm becomes wild and brutal until your orgasm overwhelms you, making you cry out his name against his mouth. Your walls squeeze him tightly and Adrian can't hold back any longer, spilling inside you with an agonizing moan, torn apart by pleasure.

The sounds of your two fluids mixing inside you are so obscene that they make you tremble.

Adrian stays right there, trembling, and still cumming inside you, twitching occasionally, his forehead pressed against yours, both of you breathing as if you had been running for your lives.

“Holy fuck, babe,” he groans, cracking his eyes open to look at you, a goofy, lazy smile curving his lips. “We made a fucking mess.”

Very carefully, he pulls out of you and your pussy squelches, gaping and oozing with your mixed cums.

“Look at that” he coos, lifting himself slightly off you so he can look down, gazing at your abused pussy in awe.

“Adrian—”

Too late, he already has one hand reaching down between your bodies, swiping his index finger through your folds, scooping up the fluids and plunging them back into your cunt, making you pant from the overstimulation.

When he makes sure that not a single drop of his cum is wasted outside of you, he brings his hand back up, holding it to his mouth to savor the remains left on his finger, making eye contact with you as he sucks his index finger.

“Delicious” he delights, leaning down to kiss you, making you savor the mixture of the two of you together through his lips.

“You're so weird,” you whisper against his mouth, kissing him again.

Adrian flops down next to you on the bed, letting out a sigh he had been holding in his lungs.

“And yet my cum is still inside you,” he replies, smiling contentedly. His smile suddenly fades, as if he's come back to reality. “Wait, can you get pregnant from this?”

You snort softly at his worried face, your hand gently brushing his still-flushed cheek.

“People usually get pregnant like this,” he nuzzles close to your caress, looking at you in awe as you talk. “That’s why you have to go to the pharmacy and buy me the Plan B pill.”

“Did you know that swans mate for life?” he asks afterwards, out of fucking nowhere, pressing a soft kiss on your fingers cradling his cheek as he snuggles closer to you. “And that they die of love if their partner dies?”

“What’s your point?” you inquire back, looking at him with curious, gentle eyes.

It's the first time you are showing genuine interest in his bird facts. And he is so happy he could burst with excitement.

He'd only laughed at you and while you had expected it to be low and arrogant, it was more joyous, like he found what you'd said to be genuinely funny. You decided you liked it, you just didn't know how to draw it out with him teasing you. 

You drop the clothes into the colder water bucket, stirring until they are cool enough to handle. You set to work slowly ringing the excess water out, eyes looking up in search of your new favorite view only to find Jason missing.

You pause glancing at the space between the barn and the house. Perhaps he'd gone inside. You turn your head, intent on glancing through the window of your home next to you only to flinch.

“What is wrong with you?” You huff as you will your heart to slow. Jason leans against the house with a devil's smirk. 

“Like watching you skitter. Proves you're still a little scared,” he says, pushing off the house. You drop your gaze back down to the clothes, resuming your wringing.

“I’m not scared of you,” you tell him with a huff. You try not to tense when you feel his breath against your neck.

“Maybe not scared,” he hums quietly. Goosebumps form on your skin as he drags a touch finger against the side of your neck, pushing away fly away hairs. Your breath catches, hands pausing again.

“You  certainly feelin’ something, though,” he murmurs before he disappears entirely with a too soft dragged hand against your back. You sway slightly as you take in a deep breath. You turn your head to find him truly gone. The back door of the house slamming shut. 

You wipe your face against your shoulder, trying regain your focus from your distraction. He was right and you hated it. He knew something you didn't about this feeling, whatever it was. Your sure it showed on your face or in the way you stood, shifting from the sudden tightness in your belly when he teased. 

Part of you wanted to ask. You'd never felt it before. You thought maybe it was just to do with being around a man that wasn't family, though you'd never felt such away around the other boys in your town. Whatever it was, was starting to agitate you and you were going to take it up with him.

You finish wringing out the clothes and hang them dry before making your way into the house. You find him reading, honestly the most surprising thing you learned about him was that he liked reading in his free time.

“You're right,” you start twisting your hands together. He looks up from where he's sat on the settee, a sheet thrown over it after you'd complained about him sitting down dirty.

“About?” His brow arches. You wish he didn't ask but it had nearly been an hour since he spoke to you.

“The… feeling. It's just you but I don't know what it is.” You admit. He closes the book and stands setting it down. He's nowhere close to you but you still take a step back.

“Just me?” He asks slowly, taking a step towards you. You don't know why but you step back trying to keep a semblance of space between you.

“Yes.” You say firmly and then less confident, “is that wrong?”

Instead of answering your question he continues to question you, “no other loverboy makin’ you feel a certain way.”

You shake your head and flinch when your back hits the wall, skin suddenly burning. He chuckles lowly, “such a cute flustered thing.” 

He drags a knuckle against your cheek and you shiver, staring up at him.

“I don't understand.”

“What don't you understand?” His voice is surprisingly patient. His knuckle drags down your neck before disappearing.

“What it is, the feeling.” you duck you head.

He tugs your face back up gently. He smiles at you, soft, the way he had at the market. “You're a little naive, aren't you?” 

“What?” You frown.

“It ain't an insult, sweetheart. Just on observation. Can I kiss you?” his hand slides against your jaw, holding you.

You stare at him stunned and a little confused, “why?”

“test ya. If it makes the feeling worse, I know what it is. Don't you want to know?” He leans in, nose brushing yours. You think he may be right. The feeling in your belly tightening. You nod slowly.

“Be a big girl. Use words,” he murmurs, his breath against your lips makes you lean closer.

“Yes. You can kiss me.”

“That’s a good girl,” he mutters and you don't have time to  dissect the thrill that runs down your spin because his lips are on yours.

You're still surprised by it even though he'd asked and you said he could. Your eyes widen before sliding closed. His hand on your jaw holds you in place as his lips move against yours. Your hands timidly find his shirt, fisting at it as he pushes you against the wall more. He pulls away leaving you breathless. 

“Was that it?” He asks in a quiet panting. You ignore his question to hook an arm around his neck, dragging him back down to kiss you again. His other hand winds around your waist, pulling you flush against him. The heat in your belly triples. 

He pulls away again and you try to pull back but he stops you this time. His hand in your jaw, tips your head to the side. His lips find your cheek and move to your jaw.

“Need an answer. How's that feeling?” He asks as he finds your neck, teeth grazing the skin before the heat of his mouth envelops it. 

“It's worse,” you fingers tangled in his hair as you arch, "I don't understand. It- i want more.”

“More?” His nose brushes from your ear to your jaw, “and what's more?”

“I don't know,” you admit squirming when he pulls back to look at you.

“I won't take advantage of you,” he says, shifting away slightly. You don't let him go far. 

“What do you mean?” You question

“Like I said, you're naive, sweetheart.”

“What’s that mean?” You huff, slightly irritated.

“It means you don't know nothin’ about sex.” He answers, finally stepping back enough you could no longer touch him. Your hands drop to your sides before speaking, moving your hands as you do.

“I know plenty about sex. We have farm animals if you hadn't noticed,” you gesture to the barn outside. 

He rolls his eyes and laughs, a little more cocky than he had been moments before, “that's not the same thing sweetheart. Humans are a little different.”

“What are you going on about?” You cross your arms in frustration, leaning against the wall. 

“Animals do it to have baby's. That’s part of it for humans too, but…” he pauses ass glance at you up and down in a manner that makes you want to squirm again, the heat still there, “its little more about pleasure too.”

“pleasure?,” you say firmly and his eyes meet yours again, brows lifting in question, “you said you don't want to take advantage of me. You're not if I want you to.”

“You don't understand-”

“Then make me understand.”

He sighs before stepping forward again, brows pinched in concern, "you're sure of this?”

“You're the gentlest outlaw I've ever met. I want you to touch me.”

He groans and his lips find yours again, a little more heated. His hand finds your waist and then he's moving you, lips never braking. He finally parts from you, kissing the corner of your mouth gently.

“Your pleasure.” He tells you, gently pushing you down on the couch. You blink up at him, unsure about his plan.

“What about you?” You ask as he kneels down in front of you.

“Don’t you worry that pretty head of yours about it. Enjoy this.” His hands curl around your ankles and you tense. Your eyes widen when they slide up calf’s.

“You tell me if I do anything that makes you uncomfortable.” His hands stop at your knees, thumb rubbing under the band of your bloomers. You nod, watching him. He grins at you and kisses your thigh through the fabric of your skirt.

“Words.”

“I’ll tell you if I'm uncomfortable,” your voice shakes slightly.  He finally collects the fabric of your skirt, bunching it up to your waist.

“Hold this for me.” 

Your hands rush to grip at the fabric. He laughs quietly but you don’t have it in you to be irritated. Especially when his hands spread your legs and then find your hips pulling you to the edge of the settee. You tuck your chin to watch as his lips find your bare thigh at the split of your bloomers. You shiver when you feel his breath ghost across your cunt.

“I don’t think that's where your face goes,” you murmur, fingers tightening into your skirt. He looks up with a smirk. His hands press your thighs wider.

“Like I said, naive. This isn' t about makin’ a baby. It' s about makin’ you feel good.” He mutters. He kisses the crease of your thigh and hip. Your leg twitches. Then he presses a long soft kiss to your clit. Your hips shift at the pressure, brows pinching. He pulls away, a hand stilling your hips.

“Sorry,” your breath comes out ragged. He turns to nose at your thigh.

“You don't know what to do with yourself do you?” His head turns, nose nudging your clit as his tongue licks flat up from your entrance to your clit with a groan. You flinch from the new sensation, thighs attempting to close.

“What are you doing?” Your voice comes out in a way you don't recognize, that heat in your belly simmering.

 He easily keeps your thighs apart and ignores your question, “already wet, my god.” 

His hands slip under and around your thighs pulling apart wider to press his face back to you. Your eyes flutter at the sensation of his tongue slipping into you, hips bucking when he groans into. His hands tighten on you, pinning you down. 

You blink your eyes open again to find him watching you with lazy eyes. His tongue leaves your entrance as his mouth moves up, lips sealing around your clit to suck softly, tongue flicking against it in his mouth.

Your whole body jerks, back arching one of your hands leaves your skirt reaching for his hair. You don’t know if it's to pull him closer or push him away. Either way he repeats the motion with his tongue.

“What?” You gasp, voice whiney as.the heat of his mouth disappears for a moment.

“That it?” He asks lowly, he brings his mouth back to your entrance, licking into you, his nose pressing hard against your clit. 

You nod quickly at his question even though you don't know what he's asking. All you do know is that feeling that you get around him has grown intense, low in your belly, pulling taut. 

He pulls away from you and you whine, eyes finding his again as the feeling starts to simmer at the loss of him, hips trying to chase his mouth. He easily holds you down.

“I told you to use your words,” he says it like it's a threat and you're quick to rectify your mistake.

“Yes! Please, don't stop,” you pant and then pout adding softer, “please.”

“Needy,” he mutters and for a split second you swear you find something fond in his eyes. You don't have much time to think on it before he's diving back in with renewed vigor, tongue pressing deeper, nose rubbing against your clit with each motion.

Noises escape you that you'd never heard from yourself. Heat, pleasure, races through your body. Your thighs shift to close and he lets you this time settling them on his shoulders as he keeps the pace. He does hold your hips down from the erratic buck they'd fallen into. 

Your hand in hair draws tight and he moans into your cunt. The vibration is what tips you over. Your eyes water as your body tenses, thighs trapping his face to you, not that it slowed him. 

“Jason!” You cry out, a pitchy moan, lost in the overwhelming feeling coursing through your body. His movements slow, soft licks lapping at your wetness. One of his hands slips out from under you to pry your fingers from his hair as you twitch. 

He finally manages to part your thighs so he can pull back. You watch eyes heavy. His mouth shiny, face red, but he seems overall pleased with himself. He brings your hand in his to his lips, kissing at your knuckles like he had in past except this time he leaves a wet imprint of your slick there.

You tremble still as he moves to pull your skirt down, returning your modesty, like he hadn't done what he just did. He presses on his knees higher. You blink out of your haze when he presses his lips to yours. You finally move but he doesn’t let you kiss him much more. He pulls back and you lick your lips, humming slightly at the taste of yourself. 

He groans, squeezing his eyes shut before he looks back at you a little more steady, “pleasure? You understand now?”

“I understand,” your hand curls into the collar of his shirt so he doesn't slip away, “it's not just sex.”

He nods, “not just sex. Sex is good too though.”

“Did you want- can we-” you struggle to find the right words through your orgasm addled mind. This thing that he'd done to you, you wanted more. You wanted him.

His hands find your hips squeezing tightly, “you can’t just say something like that.”

You watch his jaw tighten and your brow pinches, “why not?”

“Oh cause I would happily take you on this couch. I could fold you over and make you take it,” he leans in, voice dark. Your brows raise in surprise. Then he softens, his hands, his features. His head drops, forehead to your sternum. Your hand hovers over his shoulder unsure.

“You deserve better than that,” you barely hear his mumble, “shouldn't've done this to you.”

You finally settle your hand on his shoulder rubbing at the tension you find, "I wanted you too. I want you.”

He pulls back to look at you with sorrowful eyes, “you don't know what you're talking about.”

“Fine,” you huff, "I don't but you don’t get to feel guilty about making me feel good. Never knew such a thing was possible like that.”

His frown slips into a smirk, “Yeah? That good?”

“Better,” you admit with a slight flush, “will you show me more? Please.”

“More?” You think he's done guilt-triping himself if his tone means anything.

“Not now, I just- there's so much I don't know and you've seen so much. This, you can show me without leaving the farm.” You stumble to explain without seeming, as he said, needy.

“Sound logical from a pretty lady. You have yourself a deal,” his nose nudges yours as he presses close, “until I leave at the end of the week.”

You frown at the thought of him leaving but nod. You press forward and kiss him, sealing the deal, “til you leave.”

---------

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jason todd knows you’ve never seen him in his full red hood gear despite knowing about his…other life, and barging into your apartment at 2am isn’t exactly how he’d hoped to ease you into it, but subtlety has never been his strong suit. he’s standing in your kitchen shifting his weight from foot to foot, waiting for you speak, red mask in hand. your eyes are wide, but your expression is hard to read.

“so…you wear this…when you’re out there?” you mumble. there’s a pause, and he nods, raising his eyebrows expectantly. you point at the mask. “that too?”

jason chuckles, turning it in his hand. “yeah,” he sighs, “this too.”

“well, put it on,” you say with a small smile after a moment, curiosity taking you over. “I wanna see the whole thing.” jason rolls his eyes, feigning annoyance, but he obliges you—she seems to be taking it well. you bite your lip in anticipation, feeling heat snaking down your belly, and he doesn’t miss the shift in your face.

he clips the mask into place, and stares down at you through the white eye-slits. the way he tilts his head makes your stomach tighten; suddenly, it’s not jason standing in your kitchen anymore, but the red hood, in all his fearsome glory. you picture him appearing like this in a dark alleyway, and your skin gets hot. he notices your sudden silence, and feels a pinch of smugness tug at his lips.

“mask sells it, huh?” he asks, but his voice is lower than before, more gravelly. the way you’re looking at him has his pants tightening over his cock, and he can see your chest rising and falling faster. “what’s wrong, ma? you scared?” he pauses, studying you, but there’s a glint in your eyes he knows all too well. he steps towards you, his movements heavy under the weight of his gear, and you can’t stop the nervous giggle that escapes you.

“nah, you’re not scared,” he chuckles, his mask hovering inches from your face. your hands instinctively rest on his chest—broader under his jacket somehow—as you search his blank mask, your cheeks burning as heat settles between your legs. he brings a gloved hand to your jaw, gripping it firmly. “you’re not scared at all.”

“fuck, look at that,” jason rasps, his red mask peering down at his cock disappearing inside your cunt, glistening with your fluids each time it slips out. “you’re so wet, angel.”

you’re bent over the kitchen counter, your belly flush against the cold stone as he fucks into you from behind, and you can’t control the moans that fall from your lips each time he snaps his hips. he has your arms pinned behind your back with one hand, the other planted firmly around your neck, squeezing softly. he leans forward, bringing his masked face next to your ear.

“if I’d known the mask is all it takes to get you to act like this,” he hisses, his voice low, “I’d have worn it a long time ago.” he laughs derisively at the weak whimper you let out, pounding into you harshly. “fuck, ma, you always been this greedy?”

he uses the hand around your neck to tug you back until you’re forced to look at him—or rather, his mask—and the look on your face makes his cock twitch. “you like it like this, don’t you, princess? like bein’ stripped naked and used, talked down to—y’like feelin’ helpless.”

you can’t reply, but the way your pussy tightens around him is all the answer jason needs. “so dirty, baby,” he teases, his tone condescending. “such a fuckin’ slut for me.” his rough gear against your soft skin, his length driving into you, his harsh words, the expressionless mask watching your face contort—it’s all going straight to the coil in your belly, which threatens to snap at any moment.

jason can feel you clenching around his cock, and he knows you’re close. the look on your face is priceless—a mix of delirium and elation—and the sounds you’re making are sure to get you both dirty looks from the neighbours in the morning. his pace is relentless as he splits you open, indulging in his fantasy to the fullest. “you gonna cum for me, ma?” he asks, knowing the answer already. “yeah, I can feel it. c’mon, let it out, baby. show me how bad you want it.”

maybe it’s the venom laced in the sweet names he’s calling you, or maybe it’s just the thrill of being fucked by this new version of your loving boyfriend—either way, it’s all it takes for you to cum around his cock, hard. he squeezes your neck just enough to make your orgasm rip through you like lightning, your body shaking against his massive frame with every convulsion of your cunt.

“fuck, angel,” jason gasps, his hips stuttering. you’re gripping his cock so tight that his own release follows soon after yours, pumping you full of his cum. he lets out a rolling groan as he thrusts into you until he’s empty, releasing your neck and letting your body relax beneath him on the kitchen counter.

he pulls out of you slowly, watching his load dribble out of your glossy, swollen pussy and down your bare thighs. his breathing is laboured as he unfastens his mask and drops it on the counter beside you. it lands with a thud, and you feel his heavy gear against your exposed back as he leans down over you to press a sweet kiss to your head, running his hands along your sides soothingly.

“jay?” you sigh, your voice raw and breathless. he hums in response, helping you back onto your feet. “you need to wear that more often.”

"Did you do it?" Jason's voice echoes in the cold room.

Ra's spins around, trying to locate him. "Jason?"

"Is it done?" He asks again.

The older man's eyes lock on the movement in the shadow of his cold lab. 

Ra's Al Ghul had always had a problem of messing with the line between life and death. 

When he'd brought Jason back, he was utterly disgusted by what he created. Though the pits can rejuvenate life, he realized it should never have been used to bring life back.

Thus, his disgust began a hatred between the two.

Jason had ran off a year ago, but returned with a plea. A threat.

Create one more. A bride. Someone that didn't look down on him for what he was. And he would never bother the Ghul again.

Ra's was intrigued by the idea of doing it just once more. His pride was too strong. Not a demon, but a goddess, he'd claimed. It made Jason's heart stir.

But Ra's was clever. 

"Yes," he said, stepping towards the shadows curiously. "She's almost finished. Perhaps you'd like to see her before I bring her to life?"

Jason's eyes lit up, green orbs being the only thing visible.

"Come out," Ra's called. "Yes. That's good."

The young man took slow steps. He still didn't trust the Ghul completely. "Where is she?" Jason croaked out. "Where is my bride?"

Ra's stepped back with a small grin, beckoning Jason to follow him further through the lab.

A sheet covered a table. Something was clearly under it. And Jason quickly realized that the one thing he longed for laid under the sheet.

Ra's rounded the table, standing on the other side to let Jason had a proper view of what he'd made for him. 

The sheet lifted.

A woman.

His goddess.

The most beautiful thing Jason had ever laid eyes on. 

Her skin seemed so soft. Her hair beautiful and perfect. He could imagine spending his hours combing through it for her. 

Her body was pretty, though covered by a thin gown Ra's had found. A protective thought ran through Jason's mind as he considered how much smaller she was than him.

How he hoped her eyes would look on him with mercy.

His hand reached out, but Ra's tutted at him. "She's not finished, Jason. But tell me. What do you think of her?"

 "She is… she is beautiful. I will treat her as my equal-"

"Will you care for her?" Ra's pressed.

"Yes."

"Will you protect her?"

"Yes."

"Will you love her?"

"Yes," he cried. "Yes, I will love her. Please-"

"And what if she does not love you?"

The question hung in the air. Jason was stiff. "What?"

"What if she despises you?"

"No, no, she wouldn't do that! She will love me! I will be sure of it!"

"She will see you as the rest of us see you," Ra's growled. "A monster."

"No!" He covered his ears. "No! She can't!"

"I will not make her for you, Jason," Ra's yelled, finally showing the boy his true colors. "I will not give you companionship. I refuse!"

"I will treat her as you treat a goddess! Like you said," he begged. "I will keep her from harm! You swore!"

"Did I?" Ra's taunted. He enjoyed watching Jason spiral. He pulled a knife out, holding it over the woman's body.

"No, no, no," Jason pleaded. Everything was being ripped away from him. "No, you swore to me!"

Ra's sunk the blade into her torso, tugging to ruin the organs he'd so carefully placed. 

Jason screamed.

He crossed the table, making Ra's abandon the torment and run.

If Jason caught him, he was as good as dead.

But he got away, leaving Jason in the lab.

He crossed the cold floors, going back to the body of his bride-to-be.

And this time, he let his knuckles trace over her cheek. 

She was going to give his life reason. She was going to change things. She was…

Jason pulled the knife out with difficulty, bending over the table to pull her to him. He cradled her lifeless body close to his chest while slightly rocking.

He would try this last attempt himself.

Picking her up, he carried her to the Lazarus Pit. 

The green acid bubbled horrifically. Jason was sick to even look at it. But for her, he'd do much worse.

Keeping her close, he stepped into the liquid, watching it crawl up his ankles, then calves, then waist, until he was was up his chest.

It burned so harshly that it felt cold. His skin ached. But he'd continue.

He lowered her down in his arms until her entire body was submerged.

And now he only had to wait to see if it worked.

It was so silent. He could feel her skin against his. An overwhelming feeling.

Within a minute, her body squirmed desperately, arm reaching out to claw at his bicep.

The scratching didn't bother him at all. In fact, it made his heart soar.

He pulled her up, ignoring the stinging of his own skin.

The green acid parted to reveal matching green eyes— wide and frightened. 

She gasped out, unable to catch her breath. She clung to him, tucking her nose against his neck.

Jason wasn't sure what to do. 

She felt so… perfect against him.

This was… this was more than his mind could have imagined.

He'd thought for months about their first meeting. What he would do. How pretty she would be. How he'd deal with that feeling in his chest. 

He didn't think he'd have to comfort her immediately.

He knew his hands were shaking.

Right, the pit. Get her out of the pit. Yeah.

He took cautious steps, avoiding rustling her any more than he had to.

He set her down gently.

When her body touched solid ground, she pulled away from Jason and began to crawl backwards from both him and the pit.

Jason's heart tore in two.

He stepped after her, hand out in a plea. "Don't hide from me! I'll never harm you! I love you."

Her eyes watered, causing her to blink in more panic.

"I know you don't understand why you feel this way," he pleaded more. He bent down to her level. "Please. Please, let me love you. Give me a chance. I saved you."

His hand gently takes hers, and she instantly relaxes.

His lips pull up in an uncomfortable smile, but he continues, interlocking their fingers. "You're beautiful."

Her head tilted.

He looked her over, noticing the deep stab wound is gone.  "I would do anything for you. Speak to me."

She opens her mouth but a weak whine comes out.

"'S alright. You and I have eternity.."

She becomes brave, reaching out her other hand towards him until it rested on his chest.

Jason's heart leaped. His breath caught. He imagined this for weeks, but he couldn't have imagined that his skin would feel this way at her touch.

She traced down his chest, feeling the warmth of life under her fingertips. She wasn't used to it.

Lower and lower she went.

Her fingers settled at the band of his pants and paused.

Jason was shaking in anticipation.

He wasn't expecting something sexual with her. No. Not immediate.

It would take time and patience and trust.

Or perhaps it wouldn't, it seemed.

"Do you…" he paused, not wanting to scare her off. He could feel his heart pounding out of his chest. 

But it wasn't of fear. No, his heart was pounding for another reason.

He wanted to be closer to her. As close as she'd let him.

He reached out himself, cupping her face with a shaky hand. As his fingertips finally got to feel the soft, perfect skin of his goddess, he shuddered.

She blinked once. Twice. Then gently leaned into his palm.

"You were made so beautifully," he whispered. "Far too beautifully to counter something like me."

A soft hum comes from her lips. 

He remembered the few romance books he was forced to read before all this. Romeo and Juliet. Things like that.

So he knew he was taking a risk when he leaned in and brushed his lips against hers. 

She initially flinched, not expecting it, but she quickly countered, learning to kiss him back.

He moaned into it, not expecting her to so earnestly reciprocate. 

When she parted from him, he could tell her eyes were dilated. 

"Love me, Jason."

He paused, feeling the blood run south in his body. Her voice was so cooling.

Then, his lips crashed back onto hers.

…

"My g~goddess. My sweet girl," Jason shuddered, his hips meeting hers.

His hands were sweetly gripped around her waist, like cradling something far too precious to ruin.

She had no shame, perhaps she had not learned it yet. So she basked in Jason's praise, letting out soft moans and arching up into his hold.

He kissed at her chest, softly licking nipping at her skin as he worked his way down slowly.

He slipped an arm around her back, supporting her and bringing her closer to him. 

She squealed as his lips closed around her left nipple. One of her legs kicked out, but Jason quickly soothed her and pulled her as close as he could.

He was sure the thin layer of sweat on him would repulse her. But she made no reaction against him.

He focused, letting his tongue sweep over her nipple again and enjoying the sounds that came from her.

"So good," he cooed again, breath over her breast. "I won't let you go, my love."

And he never would.

.....................................

A/n: this is the one I've been most excited about so I HAD to post it first.

Taglist for all: @domineezy, @cctoma, @iluvoaldmen, @borednessa

DC taglist: @maidenwhorecrone