Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
yan harvey getting a conservatorship over reader. send tweet.
You been looking through my computer? 👀
In all seriousness, this is absolutely the move for pre-Two-Face Harvey.
I especially like the angst potential of it. He's built a career punching up at the kind of people that abuse the legal system for their own gain. So how does he find himself blackmailing Arkham psychiatrists and bribing a judge to keep you fixed under his thumb? He's willing to make far more concessions when it comes to you.
You can't take a step in Gotham without his say-so. Every time you make a break for it, you're collected by law enforcement, and brought straight back to his doorstep. His friends in the police treat you like you're confused. The others treat you like you're stupid.
The power he has over you doesn't end there. He has control over all your assets. Your car has been sold, all your money put in trust, and all your documents have been moved to his box in the bank. He's been given reign over your medical records and your prescriptions, including the new sedative ordered after your psych eval (an appointment you were never actually there for).
He would use his care of you to justify his actions after the attack as well. Yes, the way he took you into his care was illegal, but it couldn't have been wrong. It kept you out of Falcone's reach, didn't it? The "right way" doesn't work anymore. So when the state relinquishes you from his care, he doesn't accept it. Countless innocent people are lost to the system, and you won't be one of them. He'll be picking you up by the end of the month.
Summary:
With King Bruce away, Prince Timothy Drake is left to defend the kingdom beside a Knight Commander he can no longer regard as merely an advisor.
As missing supplies and suspicious movements along the border point toward a threat within Gotham itself, duty forces them into closer quarters and makes years of carefully restrained feelings increasingly impossible to ignore.
Author’s Note:
written for these two requests: royal advisor!reader and knight!reader. ended up combining the two ideas; hope you guys like it
King Bruce announced his vacation during the morning council. He didn’t call it a vacation. He called it a royal progress through the western provinces, which would include diplomatic meetings, inspections of several coastal fortifications, and an extended stay at the summer palace overlooking the sea. The fact that Queen Selina had already sent six trunks ahead of them suggested that very little inspecting would actually occur.
Crown Prince Dick sat at his father’s right hand, smiling as though he hadn’t spent the past month quietly encouraging the journey. Prince Tim occupied the next chair with three reports open before him and the exhausted expression of someone who had realized the king’s absence would create more work rather than less.
You stood behind the council table with one hand resting on the pommel of your sword. Your armor was ceremonial today, polished steel laid over a dark blue gambeson with the royal crest fastened at your shoulder. The position of Knight Commander allowed you a chair, but you preferred standing when the king attended. It gave you a better view of the room and made several of the older lords considerably more nervous.
Bruce looked around the table. “Richard will govern in my absence.”
Dick inclined his head. “I’ll try not to dismantle the monarchy before you return.”
“Try harder than you did last time.”
“The musicians’ pension was a necessary reform.”
“You doubled it.”
“They were very persuasive.”
Bruce ignored him and turned toward Tim. “You’ll oversee the kingdom’s defensive affairs. Garrison readiness, supply routes, military intelligence, fortifications, and any response required along the borders.”
Tim’s fingers stilled against the report in front of him. It lasted less than a second, but you saw it. The weight of the assignment settled over him before he concealed it beneath the careful neutrality he had cultivated since childhood.
“Under Dick’s authority?” he asked.
“Under the crown’s authority,” Bruce said. “Dick will rule. You’ll ensure I still have a kingdom to rule when I return.”
Dick leaned toward his brother. “I’d appreciate the help.”
Tim glanced at the columns of figures spread before him. “How long will you be gone?”
“Three weeks.”
Selina had told you five. Judging by the way Dick’s smile widened, he had heard the same estimate.
Bruce looked toward you. “Commander.”
“Your Majesty.”
“You’ll remain in the capital and assist Tim.”
Several councilors shifted in their seats. Lord Marrow, who had spent the last decade attempting to expand his influence over the royal army, looked as though Bruce had personally confiscated one of his estates.
You bowed your head. “Of course.”
“Assist,” Tim repeated.
Bruce studied him. “Do you object?”
“I’m trying to determine whether she’s been ordered to advise me or prevent me from sleeping until every grain ledger in the kingdom balances.”
“I can do both,” you said.
Tim looked over his shoulder at you. The corner of his mouth moved. It was a fleeting expression, nearly hidden by the angle of his face, but warmth stirred beneath your breastplate anyway. Tim’s smiles were rarely careless. Each one felt discovered rather than offered, something precious that had slipped past his defenses before he could reconsider it.
Bruce rose, ending the council before anyone could object to the division of authority.
“You leave in four days,” Dick said.
“The roads are clear.”
“The roads will remain clear for another month.”
“Selina wants to see the coast.”
Bruce’s expression suggested that this explained everything. It probably did. The councilors stood. Chairs scraped against stone while servants hurried forward to collect abandoned cups and roll the less sensitive maps. Lord Marrow disappeared through the eastern doors with two of his allies close behind him, already whispering. Tim remained seated.
“You look thrilled,” you said.
“I’ve been given responsibility for every road, wall, weapon, horse, grain store, and soldier in the kingdom.”
“That’s an impressive list.”
“It’s an unreasonable list.”
“You’ve been complaining for years that no one gives you enough authority.”
“I was younger and more foolish then.”
“That was last week.”
Tim gathered his papers into a precise stack. “Last week, I was responsible for intelligence reports. Reports are considerate enough to remain on desks. Armies have a habit of moving.”
“Usually after receiving orders.”
“That assumes the orders reach them, are understood correctly, and aren’t ignored by whichever lord believes military command is an inherited talent.”
You glanced toward the door through which Lord Marrow had departed. “An entirely hypothetical lord, naturally.”
“Naturally.”
Tim stood, collecting two ledgers beneath his arm. He wore court clothes rather than armor, his dark doublet fitted neatly enough to satisfy protocol while remaining plain compared to Dick’s richer garments. A silver chain marked him as a prince of Gotham, although he wore no other jewelry.
He looked down at the papers in his hands, then at you. “Are you busy?”
“I command the royal knights.”
“Is that a yes?”
“It means I’m always busy.”
“I need someone to explain why the northern garrison claims to possess four hundred horses when the royal stables have records of supplying them with three hundred and twelve.”
“Perhaps the remaining horses were born there.”
“Eighty-eight of them?”
“It must be something in the northern grass.”
Tim’s eyes narrowed. You smiled. “Lead the way, Your Highness.”
The first problem appeared before Bruce had left the city. The northern garrison did not possess four hundred horses. It possessed two hundred and ninety-six, twenty-three of which were lame, seven of which were too old for military service, and one of which the stablemaster insisted had died the previous winter.
The second problem followed shortly afterward. Three shipments of grain intended for the same garrison had vanished between the capital and Northwatch. The merchants responsible for transporting them claimed bandits had attacked the wagons, but none of the drivers had been injured and the local magistrates had received no reports of armed men along the road.
The third problem was a report from the eastern border describing unfamiliar riders near the mountain passes.
Tim spread all three documents across the strategy table. The room had been built during the reign of Bruce’s grandfather and renovated under Alfred’s supervision, which meant the walls remained ancient while everything within them functioned with ruthless efficiency. Maps hung from wooden rails. Shelves contained military records, reports, and carefully labeled boxes of markers. A long table occupied the center, its surface currently covered by a detailed map of the northern provinces. You leaned over it, bracing one hand near the road leading to Northwatch.
“The riders could be mercenaries,” Tim said.
“They could also be hunters crossing from Vesper.”
“Hunters usually carry bows instead of lances.”
“You’d be surprised what northern nobles consider necessary for hunting.”
“I’ve met them. I wouldn’t.”
He placed a black marker near the mountain pass. Another followed beside the western road where the grain shipments had disappeared. “The timing bothers me.”
“It bothers me too.”
Tim glanced at you. “You agreed too quickly.”
“I do that occasionally.”
“Not with me.”
“You’re wrong more often than most people.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“You wouldn’t.”
Tim’s mouth tightened against another reluctant smile. He looked back at the map before you could enjoy it properly.
“The missing grain could explain the false horse reports,” he said. “Someone’s inflating the garrison’s strength to justify additional supplies.”
“Then selling them elsewhere.”
“Or storing them.”
You studied the roads surrounding Northwatch. The fortress guarded the widest passage through the northern mountains, but it hadn’t seen a serious attack in nearly twenty years. Most of its soldiers were younger sons, local recruits, and veterans serving out the final years of their commissions.
“An army large enough to threaten the border would need food,” you said.
“So would mercenaries.”
“An invasion would need more than three wagons of grain.”
“Three wagons that we know about.”
Tim moved away from the table and crossed to the shelves. You watched him scan the labels, select a box, and return with a collection of red markers representing supply depots. He arranged them across the map. Your shoulder brushed his when you leaned closer. Tim stopped moving. It was barely perceptible. A moment of stillness, one held breath before his hand resumed its path toward the northern road. You told yourself you had imagined it, as you had imagined every other glance that lingered too long and every private meeting that could easily have included another officer but somehow never did.
The king had assigned you to advise him. Tim summoned you because you were useful. Anything else would be inconvenient for both of you.
“The roads won’t support a large force once the rains begin,” Tim said.
You forced your attention back to the map. “The western road won’t. The old quarry road would.”
“It’s been abandoned for twelve years.”
“The crown abandoned it. Smugglers didn’t.”
His eyes lifted to yours. “You’re certain?”
“I spent two winters patrolling that region.”
“I thought your service had been concentrated along the eastern border.”
“My official service was.”
Tim looked at you for several seconds.
You straightened. “There were smugglers.”
“There were unofficial patrols.”
“Several villages were losing their winter stores to raiders while the local lord insisted nothing was happening.”
“So you disobeyed orders.”
“I interpreted them generously.”
“How generous?”
“I was told to remain east of the river.”
“And?”
“The river bends.”
Tim stared at you.
You folded your arms. “The villages kept their food.”
“I’m beginning to understand why Bruce promoted you.”
“Because I’m an excellent commander?”
“Because placing you at the council table made it easier to know where you were.”
A laugh escaped you before you could stop it. Tim looked pleased with himself, which was rarer than his smiles and infinitely more dangerous.
The strategy room doors opened. Dick entered carrying a plate of pastries and an expression of profound suspicion. “It’s almost midnight.”
Tim didn’t look away from the map. “That’s unlikely.”
“I checked three clocks.”
“They could all be wrong.”
Dick placed the pastries on an uncovered portion of the table. “Have either of you eaten?”
“Yes,” you said.
“When?”
You and Tim looked at one another.
Dick sighed. “I’m ruling the kingdom. I shouldn’t also be responsible for making sure my younger brother and the Knight Commander remember food exists. Eat something.”
You selected a pastry. Tim continued staring at the northern roads until you pushed the plate toward him. He looked at it, then at you.
“That’s an order,” you said.
“You can’t order a prince.”
“I’m Knight Commander. You’re responsible for the military. That makes you adjacent.”
Dick took a pastry for himself. “I support this interpretation.”
“Of course you do.”
Tim surrendered and took one.
Dick leaned against the table, careful not to disturb the markers. “Is it serious?”
“We don’t know yet,” Tim said. “The Northwatch records are wrong, grain is disappearing, and armed riders have been seen near the border.”
“Could the garrison commander be stealing?”
“He could,” you said. “Sir Halden has never struck me as particularly imaginative, though. If he were stealing, I’d expect the numbers to be less complicated.”
Tim nodded. “Someone altered records in the capital as well.”
Dick’s easy expression faded. “You’re sure?”
“Different clerks copied the stable ledgers and supply orders, but the same figures appear in both. Either the original requests were false, or someone changed the copies before they reached us.”
“Who has access?”
“Half the council, most of the treasury, several officers, and every clerk who handles military correspondence.”
Dick exhaled. “Bruce has been gone for three days.”
“He does inspire efficiency,” you said.
Tim ate another bite of pastry without seeming to notice.
Dick looked between you. “Most people stop working when the king leaves. Jason left the kingdom before Bruce did, and even he found time to send a message.”
You raised an eyebrow. “Is he alive?”
“He claims to be. He also claims he found pirates.”
Tim looked up. “Where?”
“He didn’t specify.”
“We don’t have a piracy problem.”
“We might now.”
You set down the remains of your pastry. “I’ll send inquiries to the coastal garrisons.”
Dick pointed toward you. “This is why you’re my favorite.”
“You said that to the royal treasurer yesterday.”
“He approved funding for the midsummer celebration.”
Tim moved one of the markers. “You’re distracting us.”
“I’m trying to prevent you from working through the night.”
“You’ve failed.”
Dick smiled. “I haven’t started singing yet.”
Tim’s head lifted sharply. You gathered several reports before the threat could become reality. “Your Highness, perhaps you should return to governing.”
“Perhaps both of you should sleep.”
“I’ll sleep when we determine where the grain went,” Tim said.
Dick looked at you. You knew what he expected. As Knight Commander, you had spent years ordering exhausted soldiers away from training grounds and dragging injured knights to the infirmary. Tim, however, possessed a unique ability to make any reasonable command sound like a tactical error.
“We’ll stop within the hour,” you said before Tim could object.
Dick’s smile returned. “I knew there was a reason Father assigned her to you.”
“She wasn’t assigned to me.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
Dick left before Tim could respond. Silence settled across the strategy room. You pretended to read the report in your hand while Tim pretended to believe you were reading it.
“He enjoys being irritating,” Tim said eventually.
“It’s one of his greatest skills.”
“His greatest skill is making people think he isn’t.”
“I’m afraid it stopped working on me years ago.”
Tim set down his pastry. “Did it ever work?”
“Once. The day we met.”
“You threatened to throw him into a fountain.”
“That was later.”
“It was the same day.”
“He had an eventful afternoon.”
Tim laughed quietly. You looked down at the report before your expression revealed too much.
The next morning, a fourth grain shipment disappeared. By noon, the captain responsible for inspecting the western road had vanished with six of his men.
Tim summoned the war council. Dick occupied the king’s chair, a narrow circlet resting against his dark hair as he listened to the reports. Tim sat at his right with maps and correspondence arranged before him. You took the seat beside Tim, while the remaining councilors filled the table according to rank.
Lord Marrow arrived last. He was a thin man with silver at his temples and the permanent look of someone forced to tolerate the incompetence of the entire world. His family controlled several estates north of the capital, including two towns through which the missing grain should have passed.
“The situation is obvious,” Marrow said after Tim finished speaking. “Northwatch requires reinforcements.”
“Northwatch claims to have nearly twice the cavalry it actually possesses,” Tim said. “Sending additional soldiers before we know who falsified those records would be premature.”
“While we investigate ledgers, armed men gather across our border.”
“Scouts have seen fewer than thirty riders,” you said.
Marrow turned toward you. “Thirty riders are enough to burn a village.”
“They’re not enough to invade a kingdom.”
“Is the Knight Commander suggesting we allow our subjects to be slaughtered because the enemy hasn’t gathered in numbers sufficient to interest her?”
The chamber went quiet. Tim’s hand tightened around his quill.
You leaned back in your chair. “I’m suggesting that sending soldiers north without secure supply lines would place them exactly where an enemy expects them, hungry and unable to retreat once the rains begin.”
“Our roads have supported armies before.”
“Our roads have supported armies during summer.”
“The season has hardly turned.”
“It rained along the northern ridge yesterday. It’ll reach the western road within the week.”
Marrow’s mouth thinned. “I wasn’t aware the Knight Commander had acquired prophetic abilities.”
“I looked out a window.”
Dick coughed into his fist.
Tim’s gaze remained fixed on Marrow. “The commander is correct. We won’t send reinforcements until the supply route is secured.”
“Then what do you propose?”
“A smaller investigation,” Tim said. “Officers we trust will inspect the garrison, compare its original records against the copies held here, and determine whether the riders across the border are connected to the thefts.”
Marrow’s attention shifted toward the maps in front of him. “That will take days.”
“Yes.”
“In which time our enemies may advance.”
“If they do, we’ll know their strength before committing our soldiers to an exposed road.”
Marrow looked toward Dick. “Your Highness, surely the crown understands the danger of hesitation.”
Dick rested one elbow against the arm of his chair. “The crown understands that my brother has spent three days doing little besides studying this situation. I trust his judgment.”
A faint flush rose beneath Tim’s collar. You didn’t smile, although the impulse was strong.
Marrow sat back. “Of course.”
The council continued for another hour. Each suggestion eventually returned to the same obstacle: the kingdom couldn’t move soldiers north while someone controlled or disrupted the roads supplying them.
When the other councilors departed, Marrow paused beside your chair. “You’ve accumulated considerable influence for someone born without a title,” he said.
Tim looked up immediately.
You continued gathering your papers. “Have I?”
“The king places you at his council table. Prince Timothy seeks your opinion before speaking. The crown prince allows you to contradict noblemen who have served this kingdom since before you could hold a sword.”
“I was an unusually capable child.”
Marrow lowered his voice. “Armor doesn’t make you their equal.”
You looked at him then. He stood half a head taller than you and possessed the confidence of a man who had never been struck by anyone he considered beneath him.
“Neither does a title,” you said.
His expression hardened.
“Lord Marrow,” Tim said.
The lord turned. Tim hadn’t raised his voice. He didn’t need to. The coldness within it carried across the chamber far more effectively than anger would have.
“You’re addressing the Knight Commander of Gotham.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then you’re aware that insulting her office is an insult to the crown that appointed her.”
Marrow’s jaw shifted. “My concern is for the kingdom.”
“Then direct it toward something useful,” Tim returned.
Dick remained in the king’s chair, his face carefully blank.
Marrow bowed. He left without another word. The doors closed behind him.
Dick waited three seconds. “Well,” he said. “That was subtle.”
Tim returned to his papers. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You nearly had him executed with your eyes.”
“He insulted the Knight Commander.”
“I noticed.”
“So did I,” you said.
Tim looked at you. “You shouldn’t have to tolerate that.”
“I’ve tolerated worse.”
“That doesn’t make it acceptable.”
Something in his expression stole the answer from you. Tim’s anger wasn’t performative. He didn’t defend you to display his authority or prove himself before Dick. He was angry because Marrow had attempted to diminish you, and the offense had become personal before Tim could conceal it. You looked down at your papers.
Dick rose from the throne. “I’m going to leave before this conversation becomes even more uncomfortable.”
Tim frowned. “What conversation?”
“The one neither of you is having.”
“We’re discussing Lord Marrow.”
“Of course you are.”
Dick crossed the chamber and patted Tim’s shoulder as he passed.
Tim watched him go. “He’s become insufferable since Father left.”
“He was insufferable before.”
“Yes, but Father distracted him.”
You stood, arranging the reports beneath your arm. “I’ll send Captain Montoya to Northwatch.”
Tim’s attention sharpened. “No.”
You paused. He seemed to hear himself a moment too late.
“Do you object to Captain Montoya?” you asked.
“She’s competent. That’s why I need her here.”
“Why?”
“If the records were altered in the capital, we need someone we trust overseeing the guard while we’re away.”
You studied him. “We?”
Tim folded one of the maps. “I’m going to Northwatch.”
“You’re responsible for the defenses of the entire kingdom.”
“Which includes Northwatch.”
“Dick won’t approve.”
“Dick already has.”
You turned toward the empty throne. Tim’s expression became suspiciously neutral. “When did you ask him?”
“Before the council.”
“You decided before hearing my recommendation.”
“I predicted your recommendation.”
“You predicted that I’d send Montoya.”
“You always send her when you need someone competent and unlikely to provoke a diplomatic incident.”
“She provoked three last year.”
“None became wars.”
“That’s a generous definition of success.”
Tim placed the folded map into a leather case. “We’ll leave tomorrow morning with twelve riders.”
“You’ve already selected the escort.”
“I made a list. You can revise it.”
“How gracious.”
“I’m learning.”
You watched him secure the case. “Who said I was accompanying you?”
“I assumed the Knight Commander would want to inspect a compromised garrison personally.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
Tim met your gaze. “Will you come?”
It should have been an easy question. You had ridden beside princes and kings, escorted diplomats, hunted raiders, and led charges into battles that still visited you in dreams. Accompanying Tim to a royal fortress was an ordinary duty compared to most of your career, but the way he looked at you made the answer feel like something else.
“Yes,” you said.
Tim’s shoulders eased. “Good.”
Northwatch lay four days from the capital if the roads remained dry. They didn’t. Rain began during the second afternoon and continued through the night, turning the western road into mud deep enough to slow the horses. The escort abandoned the main route the following morning, following you through a series of woodland tracks used by foresters and smugglers.
Tim rode beside you beneath a dark cloak, his hood pulled forward against the rain. He had refused ceremonial armor in favor of a fitted breastplate beneath the cloak, although the sword at his hip and the quality of his horse made disguising his status nearly impossible.
“You said this road was faster,” he said.
“It is.”
“My boots are full of water.”
“That isn’t the road’s fault.”
“I believe the road is directly responsible.”
“You could have remained at the palace.”
“And allowed you to investigate without proper oversight?”
You turned in the saddle. “I’m the Knight Commander.”
“You ignored a direct order because the river bent.”
“The order relied too heavily on geography.”
Tim’s horse picked its way around a fallen branch. “How many of Bruce’s orders have you interpreted generously?”
“Very few.”
“That answer was too fast.”
“I’m decisive.”
“You’re evasive.”
“You find that attractive.”
The words escaped before you considered them. Tim’s horse continued another few steps before stopping. You stopped as well. Rain struck the leaves above you, gathering before falling in heavy drops from the branches. The riders behind you slowed, careful not to approach close enough to make their interest obvious.
Tim looked at you beneath the edge of his hood. “I do,” he said.
Your pulse stumbled.
His expression remained composed, but color touched the tops of his cheekbones.
Then Captain Rowe called from the rear of the column. “Commander, the packhorse has lost a shoe.”
You looked away from Tim. “See to it,” you ordered.
The escort halted along the narrow trail. Soldiers dismounted, checking straps and offering the horses water while the farrier inspected the damaged hoof. You swung down from the saddle. Tim followed.
Neither of you spoke while the rain continued around you.
You had known Tim since you were both young, long before either of you held the authority you carried now. Over the years, the brilliant, sharp-edged boy you had met became a man who carried every responsibility as though failing once would prove the worst things he believed about himself. You had shared council meetings, late nights, and private conversations with him until attraction slipped quietly into the space between professional respect and friendship, leaving you unable to separate one from the others.
He found you attractive. He had admitted it with the same directness he brought to military reports. You didn’t know what to do with that.
Tim adjusted the strap securing the map case to his saddle. “You’ve become quiet.”
“I’m considering the road.”
“You’ve spent most of the morning insulting the road.”
“It deserves reflection.”
“Commander.”
“Your Highness.”
He stepped closer. The soldiers remained occupied with the horse, but you felt their awareness anyway. Tim lowered his voice. “You said it as a joke.”
“I say many things as jokes.”
“Was it one?”
You looked at him. Rain had darkened the strands of hair escaping his hood. A drop traced the line of his cheek before disappearing beneath his jaw. “It seemed safer,” you said.
His eyes held yours. “Does it need to be?”
The farrier hammered a nail into the replacement shoe. The sharp sound broke the moment.
You glanced toward the escort. “We should discuss this somewhere our soldiers can’t hear us.”
“Then we’ll discuss it at Northwatch.”
His certainty unsettled you more than hesitation would have. Tim returned to his horse.
You never reached Northwatch. The attack came as the escort passed through a ravine less than ten miles from the fortress. An arrow struck the rider ahead of Tim, piercing the narrow gap between his shoulder guard and breastplate. He fell without a sound.
“Shields!” you shouted.
The ravine erupted. Arrows descended from both ridges. Soldiers raised shields while the horses screamed and shifted beneath them. A second rider fell. Another horse reared, throwing its rider against the rocky ground. You drew your sword.
Men poured from the trees ahead, their armor mismatched and their faces covered with dark cloth. They moved with more discipline than ordinary bandits, dividing as they entered the ravine to cut off both directions of escape.
“Commander,” Tim called.
You turned. He had dismounted behind a shield, his sword already drawn. Captain Rowe stood beside him with blood running from a cut near his temple.
“There’s an old watchtower east of here,” Tim said. “Two hundred yards beyond the ridge.”
“You memorized the survey map.”
“I had four days.”
The attackers advanced.
You assessed the ravine. Remaining in place would allow the archers to kill the horses one at a time. Retreating along the road meant forcing the escort through a narrow turn already held by armed men. The eastern ridge was steep but climbable.
“We go up,” you said. “Leave the horses.”
Rowe began issuing orders.
Tim caught your arm. “What about the archers?”
“I’ll handle them.”
His fingers tightened around you. “That wasn’t the plan.”
“We didn’t have a plan for being ambushed.”
“We have one now. Shields advance first. You stay behind them.”
“I command the shields.”
“You can command them from behind.”
An attacker reached the outer line. You tore your arm free and met him. Your sword struck his with enough force to turn the blade aside. You stepped within his guard, drove your elbow into his throat, and cut across the exposed edge of his armor. He fell at your feet.
The familiar clarity of combat settled through you. You hadn’t fought in a true battle since accepting command. There had been training yards, ceremonial tournaments, and several drunken nobles who had mistaken your rank for softness, but none of them carried the violent urgency of a blade intended to kill. Your body remembered. You moved through the front line, directing your knights toward the slope. Shields locked above the wounded while the remaining soldiers climbed. Tim stayed near the center as ordered for nearly half a minute before appearing beside you.
“You’re supposed to be behind the shields,” you said.
“So are you.”
“I gave the order.”
“I amended it.”
“You can’t amend my battlefield orders.”
“I’m the prince responsible for warfare.”
“That isn’t how command works.”
Tim blocked a blade aimed at your side. You turned and drove your sword beneath the attacker’s arm.
“This feels like a poor time to debate jurisdiction,” he said.
“You started it.”
“You told me I couldn’t.”
“You can’t.”
“Then there’s nothing to debate.”
An arrow struck the ground beside his boot.
You seized the front of his breastplate and dragged him behind a shield. “Stay down.”
His expression suggested he intended to object.
“Tim.”
He went still. It was the first time you had called him by his name alone.
You pointed toward the ridge. “The archers are concentrating on you. Get the wounded to the tower. I’ll bring the rear guard.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You’re not leaving me. You’re obeying the officer in command.”
“You just told me I can’t overrule you.”
“You can’t.”
“Then I’m refusing the order.”
“Tim.”
“We go together.”
Another volley struck the shields. You looked at the soldiers climbing ahead, the wounded struggling between them, and the attackers gathering below. Arguing would cost more time than surrendering.
“Fine,” you said. “Stay close.”
Tim smiled grimly. “That was my intention.”
The watchtower had lost most of its roof and one wall, but the remaining stone offered protection from arrows. Your soldiers reached it with seven wounded and two dead. The attackers followed more cautiously, spreading through the trees rather than charging the narrow entrance. You counted your people. Ten remained capable of fighting.
“There should be a signal brazier,” Tim said.
“It hasn’t been maintained in years.”
“The survey listed one.”
“The survey is twenty years old.”
“So is the tower, and it’s still here.”
You found the brazier beneath a collapsed section of roof. The iron basin had rusted through along one side, but the pitch jar sealed beneath it remained intact.
Tim knelt beside it. “Northwatch will see the smoke.”
“If anyone at Northwatch is loyal.”
His hands paused. You regretted the words immediately. The garrison’s records had been altered. The missing captain had disappeared near the same road. Whoever organized the attack knew which route you had taken, which meant the conspiracy extended farther than you had hoped.
Tim opened the pitch jar. “Then we make sure someone farther south sees it too.”
He arranged broken timber beneath the brazier while you positioned the soldiers around the remaining walls. The attackers gathered beyond bow range. Too patient for bandits.
A horn sounded from the woods. Your knights looked toward you. “They’re waiting for dark,” Rowe said.
You nodded. “Then we don’t give them the chance.”
Tim struck steel against flint. Sparks caught in the dry lining of the pitch jar, spreading quickly through the soaked black substance. Smoke rose above the ruined tower.
“Commander,” one of the soldiers called.
Movement crossed the tree line. The attackers advanced from three directions. You took your place at the broken wall.
The first man to reach the stones carried a hooked pole intended to drag defenders from cover. You severed its head with a downward strike and caught him across the face with the return. Another climbed behind him. Rowe drove a spear through his chest.
The tower filled with steel and shouting. Tim fought at your left. His style lacked the strength of larger knights, relying instead on speed, precision, and the unsettling ability to predict what his opponent intended before they committed to it. He ducked beneath a sword, cut behind the man’s knee, and stepped aside as one of your knights finished him.
You turned toward another attacker. Pain tore through your side. For an instant, you didn’t understand it. Then you looked down and saw the broken end of a narrow blade protruding beneath the edge of your breastplate.
The man behind you pulled it free. You stumbled. Tim shouted your name. The attacker raised his sword again.
Tim reached him first. He struck the man’s wrist, forced the sword aside, and drove his own blade through the opening beneath the attacker’s ribs. The man collapsed, dragging Tim’s sword halfway from his hand. Tim abandoned it and caught you before you hit the stones. Blood spread across the fabric beneath your armor.
“Stay with me,” he said.
“I’m standing.”
“You aren’t.”
You realized he was right. Your knees had given way. Tim lowered you against the interior wall while the battle continued around you.
“Rowe,” you called.
The captain turned.
“Hold the entrance.”
“We’re holding.”
“Take command.”
Rowe’s expression tightened when he saw the blood. “Commander—”
“That’s an order.”
He returned to the wall. Tim pressed both hands against your side. Pain flared so violently that your vision blurred.
“The blade went beneath the plate,” he said. “I can’t see how deep.”
“Then stop pressing on it.”
“I’m slowing the bleeding.”
“You’re attempting to push your hand through me.”
“That would be counterproductive.”
Despite everything, a laugh caught painfully in your chest. Tim looked furious. Not at you. At the blood, the attackers, and perhaps himself for failing to anticipate an ambush no reasonable person could have predicted.
You placed your hand over his wrist. “I’m all right.”
“You’ve been stabbed.”
“I’ve been stabbed before.”
“That doesn’t improve the situation.”
“It gives me authority on the subject.”
The horn sounded again. This time, another answered from beyond the woods. The attackers hesitated. A third horn followed, deeper and closer. Northwatch riders broke through the trees. The men surrounding the tower scattered. Some fled into the forest while others surrendered as mounted soldiers closed around them. Rowe ordered three knights in pursuit before turning back toward you.
Tim didn’t remove his hands from your side.
“Northwatch,” you said.
“I can hear them.”
“You should speak to the commander.”
“I’m occupied.”
“You’re the prince.”
“You’re bleeding on me.”
“That’s what happens when you press on a wound.”
His eyes lifted to yours. Fear lived beneath his anger, stripped bare enough that you stopped trying to make light of it.
“Tim,” you said softly.
“Don’t.”
You didn’t know what he thought you intended to say. Perhaps neither did he.
The commander of Northwatch reached the tower minutes later. Sir Halden was a broad, gray-haired knight who looked exactly as unimaginative as you remembered. His horror upon seeing you injured appeared genuine.
“Your Highness,” he said, dropping to one knee before Tim.
“Who knew we were coming?” Tim asked.
Halden looked up. “No one until this morning. A messenger arrived with your seal ordering us to remain inside the fortress and disregard any signal from the southern tower. The seal appeared genuine, but the wording was wrong, so I sent a patrol to watch the southern road.”
Tim’s expression sharpened. “Where is the message?”
“At Northwatch.”
“Secure it. Arrest the messenger if he’s still there.”
“He left shortly after delivering it.”
“Then send riders after him.”
Halden rose and began issuing commands. Tim looked toward the surviving attackers. Northwatch soldiers had pulled away their face coverings and forced them to their knees.
One of the men turned his head. You recognized him despite the pain clouding your vision. He had stood behind Lord Marrow during council sessions and accompanied him through the palace often enough that you knew the scar cutting through his left eyebrow. A member of Marrow’s household guard.
Tim followed your gaze. His face became very still.
You remained at Northwatch for three days before beginning the journey back to the capital. The garrison healer informed you that the blade had missed anything immediately fatal but had torn enough muscle to make movement unpleasant. Tim remained at the fortress, questioning prisoners and comparing records while pretending his decision had nothing to do with your condition.
He visited your room each evening. The first night, he brought reports. The second, he brought food. On the third, he arrived with both and discovered you attempting to fasten your sword belt.
“What are you doing?”
You looked up. Tim stood in the doorway, a tray balanced in one hand and several documents beneath his arm.
“Getting properly dressed.”
“You’re wearing a shirt and trousers.”
“I’m the Knight Commander.”
“You’re an injured Knight Commander.”
“I have a meeting.”
“You have a wound.”
“The wound didn’t need an invitation.”
Tim set the tray down with unnecessary force. “You aren’t attending the interrogation.”
“I outrank everyone conducting it.”
“You can barely stand.”
You straightened despite the pain pulling along your side. “I’m standing now.”
“Against the bed.”
“The bed happens to be nearby.”
Tim crossed the room and removed the sword belt from your hands. You stared at him. “Give me that.”
“No.”
“You’re stealing the Knight Commander’s sword.”
“I’m preventing the Knight Commander from reopening her wound because she’s too stubborn to remain in bed for another day.”
“The healer is overly cautious.”
“The healer said you attempted to leave yesterday.”
“I wanted air.”
“You climbed through the window.”
“The door was guarded.”
“It was guarded because you tried to leave.”
“You see the problem.”
Tim placed the sword belt on the far side of the room.
You folded your arms. “You’re abusing your authority.”
“I’m preventing the Knight Commander from reopening her wound.”
“By stealing her sword.”
“Temporarily.”
“You’re becoming arrogant.”
“I nearly watched you die.”
The anger left you. Tim looked away. He stood near the window, his profile outlined by the afternoon light. Exhaustion marked the skin beneath his eyes. He had changed clothes since the attack, but when you looked at his hands, you could still picture them pressed against your side, dark with blood.
Your blood.
“Tim.”
“You were right beside me,” he said. “Then you weren’t.”
You sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m still here.”
“You don’t know that because you’re careful. You know it because the blade missed by chance.”
“It wasn’t chance. The armor turned it.”
“It entered beneath the armor.”
“And missed anything vital.”
“You’re proving my point.”
“You don’t have a point. You have fear dressed as an argument.”
His jaw tightened. You had gone too far. Tim had spent his life surrounded by loss. His parents, friends, soldiers, and people whose names the court rarely remembered had all left marks on him. He responded by preparing for every possibility, as though enough thought might transform grief into something preventable.
You held out your hand. After a moment, he crossed the room. Tim didn’t take your hand. He stood between your knees, close enough that you could see the fine stitching along the edge of his doublet.
You touched his wrist instead. “I’m sorry,” you said.
“You don’t need to apologize for being injured.”
“I’m apologizing for dismissing what it did to you.”
His gaze lowered toward your hand.
“You’re my commander,” he said.
“Only in the field.”
“You advise me.”
“I advise the crown.”
“You argue with me more than anyone else.”
“That isn’t an official duty.”
“It should be.”
You smiled faintly. Tim didn’t. His hand lifted, hesitated, and settled against your cheek. The touch was careful enough to hurt more than the wound.
“You asked whether I found you attractive,” he said.
“I remember.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Which question?”
“Whether it needs to be safer as a joke.”
Your fingers tightened around his wrist. The room seemed smaller than it had moments before. “No,” you said. “It doesn’t.”
Tim inhaled slowly. “You’re certain?”
“I’ve faced cavalry charges with less certainty.”
“That isn’t reassuring. You once charged thirty men with six knights.”
“They fled.”
“They thought reinforcements were behind you.”
“They didn’t verify.”
His thumb moved across your cheek. “You’re impossible.”
“You like that.”
“I do.”
He kissed you. For all Tim’s careful planning, the kiss held nothing cautious. His hand slid into your hair as his mouth met yours, years of restraint collapsing beneath the first touch. You caught the front of his doublet and pulled him closer until he stood between your thighs.
Pain tugged at your side. You made a small sound against his mouth. Tim pulled away immediately. “I hurt you.”
“You kissed me.”
“You’re injured.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“We shouldn’t do this now.”
“You started it.”
“That doesn’t make it wise.”
“Most things involving you aren’t.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re attempting to provoke me.”
“Is it working?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Tim looked at your mouth. The heat in his expression made you forget every sensible argument available to either of you.
Then he stepped back. “We’re waiting.”
You stared at him. “You’re cruel.”
“You’re recovering.”
“I’ll recover faster with improved morale.”
“That isn’t how healing works.”
“You aren’t a healer.”
“I read the medical texts.”
“Of course you did.”
Tim collected the reports from the table. “When we return to the capital and the healer clears you, we’ll continue this conversation.”
“You expect me to wait?”
“I’ve been waiting for years.”
The answer stole your amusement. Tim looked almost surprised that he had said it aloud.
“How many years?” you asked.
He moved toward the door. “Recover, Commander.”
“Tim.”
He paused.
“How many?”
His hand rested against the doorframe. “Since the fountain.”
You laughed, then winced as the movement pulled at your wound. Tim turned back with immediate concern.
“I’m fine,” you said.
“You’re incapable of recognizing that word.”
“You wanted to kiss me the day we met?”
“You were threatening Dick.”
“He deserved it.”
“I know.”
Tim left before you could call him back.
The journey back to the capital took six days. Lord Marrow was arrested three hours after your party returned to the capital.
The evidence had become impossible to deny. One of the captured mercenaries was a member of Marrow’s household guard, and records found among his belongings connected the others to payments made through Marrow’s steward. The steward had purchased grain through intermediaries in three northern towns, while the forged orders delivered to Northwatch had been copied by a clerk whose debts Marrow had quietly erased.
He hadn’t intended to invade Gotham. He had intended to manufacture an invasion, isolate Northwatch, and remove Tim from military affairs. If the ambush killed or captured the prince, Marrow could blame the riders across the border. If Tim escaped, the failed expedition would still discredit him and force Dick to summon Bruce home. Marrow’s timely intervention would have secured him control over the army.
The missing grain had been stored in abandoned mines to feed the mercenaries. The absent road captain was found alive inside one of them.
Dick presided over the final council from Bruce’s throne. Marrow stood under guard before him, stripped of his chain of office. Tim presented the evidence in a voice so calm that the gathered lords listened more closely than they would have if he had shouted. You stood at Tim’s side in formal uniform rather than armor, one hand resting discreetly near the healing wound beneath your clothes.
“The crown entrusted you with its defenses,” Dick said when Tim finished. “You used that trust to endanger Gotham’s people for your own advancement.”
Marrow lifted his chin. “I did what was necessary to reveal the weakness of those governing in the king’s absence.”
“You arranged attacks against royal soldiers.”
“I tested them.”
“Two are dead.”
Marrow’s gaze moved toward you. “A capable commander should have anticipated resistance.”
Tim stepped forward. You caught his sleeve. He stopped, though tension ran through his entire body.
Dick’s expression lost every trace of warmth. “You’ll be tried for treason,” he said. “Your lands and titles are forfeit pending judgment. Take him to the dungeons.”
The guards led Marrow from the hall. The remaining councilors watched him disappear with the careful stillness of people reconsidering every opinion they had expressed during the previous two weeks.
Dick rose from the throne. “This council is dismissed.”
No one argued. The chamber emptied quickly. When the final doors closed, Dick removed the circlet, set it on the arm of the throne, and dropped back into the seat. “I hate this chair.”
“You’ve been sitting in it for nearly three weeks,” Tim said.
“That hasn’t made it more comfortable.”
“That seems psychological.”
“It’s inherited.”
You lowered yourself into a chair.
Tim noticed immediately. “Your side?”
“It’s fine.”
“You said that at Northwatch.”
“It was true eventually.”
Dick looked between you. “Something happened.”
Tim became interested in rearranging his documents. You examined the ceiling.
Dick leaned forward. “Something definitely happened.”
“We uncovered a conspiracy,” Tim said.
“I gathered that from the evidence you just presented.”
“The commander was injured.”
“I also gathered that from the bloodstained reports and the six messengers you questioned personally.”
“What exactly are you asking then?”
Dick smiled slowly. You suddenly understood why Bruce had occasionally threatened to send him to a monastery.
Before Dick could speak, the western doors opened, and a messenger hurried inside carrying a mud-stained letter.
“Your Highness.”
Dick accepted it, broke the seal, and scanned the contents. His expression shifted from concern to resignation.
“Jason found the pirates.”
Tim looked up. “Where?”
“South.”
“South where?”
“He doesn’t say.”
You held out your hand. “May I?”
Dick passed you the message. Jason’s handwriting covered half the page, describing three burned ships, a captured smuggler, and a coastal baron who had apparently been selling weapons to anyone with sufficient coin. The final line instructed Dick not to worry because everything was “mostly under control.”
You returned the letter. “This is unrelated to Marrow,” you said.
“You’re sure?” Dick asked.
“The ships were carrying southern steel. Marrow’s mercenaries were armed from local stores.”
Tim rubbed his forehead. “How does he find separate conspiracies by accident?”
“I don’t think Jason believes in accidents,” Dick said.
“He doesn’t believe in instructions either.”
Dick folded the letter. “I’ll send riders.”
“Send twice as many as you think he needs,” you advised.
“He’ll be offended.”
“He’ll survive.”
Dick passed the message back to the waiting courier with instructions for Captain Montoya. Once the man had bowed and left, Dick stood and stretched, looking far too pleased. “Now that the kingdom isn’t being invaded, I assume both of you have time to address whatever happened at Northwatch.”
“Nothing happened,” Tim said.
You turned toward him. He met your gaze.
“Nothing that concerns the crown prince,” he amended.
Dick drew himself up. “As acting king, everything concerns me.”
“You aren’t acting king in private.”
“I’m still your older brother.”
“That gives you less authority.”
“I disagree.”
“You’re wrong.”
Dick sighed dramatically. “The two of you are exhausting.”
“You may leave,” Tim said.
“This is my council chamber.”
“You just dismissed the council.”
Dick considered arguing, then looked at you. “Commander, he hasn’t slept properly in three days.”
“Dick.”
“He also moved four meetings because they conflicted with your return.”
“Dick.”
“And he questioned every messenger from Northwatch personally.”
Tim’s face had begun to redden.
You smiled. “Thank you, Your Highness.”
Dick bowed. “Always happy to serve.”
Tim looked ready to commit an offense against the crown. Dick escaped before he could.
The doors closed. You and Tim remained alone beside the council table.
“I apologize for him,” Tim said.
“You don’t need to. I threatened to throw him into a fountain the day we met.”
“I remember. It was one of the first things I liked about you.”
You rose carefully. Tim followed the movement with obvious concern but managed not to comment. The healer had cleared you for non-strenuous activities that morning, though armor and combat remained forbidden until the wound closed fully.
You crossed the space between you. “You moved meetings for me.”
“They weren’t urgent.”
“You questioned every messenger.”
“The reports were inconsistent.”
“You haven’t slept.”
“That’s unrelated.”
You stopped in front of him. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m an excellent liar.”
“Not with me.”
Tim looked down at you. The council chamber was quiet. Afternoon light crossed the floor in long bands, catching the dust disturbed by the departing lords. “The healer cleared you?” he asked.
“For non-strenuous activities.”
His gaze lowered briefly toward your side. “And what qualifies as non-strenuous?”
“Walking. Riding short distances. Council meetings.”
“That’s a suspiciously incomplete list.”
“I didn’t ask for a written copy.”
“You should have.”
“You told me we’d continue our conversation when I returned to the capital.”
“I said when the healer cleared you.”
“She did.”
“For non-strenuous activities.”
“Kissing you feels increasingly non-strenuous.”
Tim’s composure slipped. You reached for the chain at his collar and drew him closer. His hands settled against your waist without pressure, careful of your injury even as he kissed you. The restraint lasted several seconds. Then you opened your mouth beneath his, and Tim made a quiet, helpless sound that sent heat through you.
He backed you against the council table. Maps shifted beneath your hand. A quill rolled toward the edge and fell to the floor.
“You’re ruining your reports,” you murmured.
“I have copies.”
“Of course you do.”
Tim kissed you again, his mouth moving along your jaw before finding the sensitive place beneath your ear. You gripped his shoulders as his teeth grazed your skin.
“We should go somewhere less public,” he said.
“You’re responsible for strategy.”
“I’m occupied.”
“You’ll regret saying that when Dick returns.”
Tim lifted his head, and you watched the calculation appear. “He’s in the southern court until supper.”
“You know his schedule?”
“I know everyone’s schedule.”
“Terrifying.”
“Useful.”
His hand slid over your hip, pulling you closer until you could feel how much the conversation had affected him. Your breath caught. Tim’s eyes darkened. “Still confident?” he asked.
“You’ve presented limited evidence.”
“I can be thorough.”
“Now you sound like a prince.”
“That wasn’t praise.”
“It could become praise.”
Tim kissed you once more before stepping away.
You leaned against the table, watching him cross toward the shelves. “You aren’t seriously considering doing this here.”
He opened the narrow door concealed behind them. “Do you object?”
You looked around the chamber. The king’s throne dominated one end, military reports covered the table behind you, and the banners of Gotham hung from the stone walls.
“Bruce might banish me to the most remote garrison in the kingdom.”
“He won’t.”
“You say that now. Wait until he catches me half-dressed in his council chamber.”
“Then we won’t remain in the council chamber.”
Tim held out his hand.
You looked past him into the narrow passage. “You planned this.”
“I considered possibilities.”
“How many?”
“Several.”
You stared at him.
Tim’s mouth curved. “You find that attractive.”
“I do.”
The admission erased his smile. You placed your hand in his, and he led you through it. You had known the royal apartments could be reached from the council chambers, although you had never used the passage. The corridor beyond curved between the interior walls and ended inside a private sitting room.
Tim’s rooms were quieter than Dick’s, furnished in dark wood and lined with shelves. Books occupied nearly every available surface. Papers covered the desk near the window, held in careful stacks by small carved weights. A fire burned low in the hearth despite the mild weather. He closed the hidden door behind you, then crossed the sitting room and turned the key in the outer lock.
“You knew we’d end up here,” you said.
“I hoped.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
The honesty in his voice softened something in you. Tim remained near the door as though entering the privacy of his rooms had made the stakes real in a way the council chamber hadn’t. Desire still darkened his expression, but uncertainty had entered with it.
You crossed the room. “I’ve wanted you for years too,” you said.
His eyes searched yours. “Since the fountain?”
“Since shortly before the fountain.”
Tim blinked. “You threatened to throw Dick into it.”
“He was interfering.”
“With what?”
“You were looking at me.”
Color rose across his cheekbones. “I was trying to determine whether you were actually going to do it.”
“You were staring before he said anything.”
“I’d just met you.”
“I know.”
Tim’s hands tightened slightly around your waist. “So you wanted me then?”
“I thought you were beautiful. A few years later, when you reorganized the eastern supply routes, I understood it wasn’t going to pass.”
His eyebrows lifted. “The reorganization?”
“You were standing in the strategy room telling six generals that their transport estimates were useless because none of them had accounted for feed.”
“They were wrong.”
“You were very forceful.”
You had watched Tim face assassins, hostile courts, and rooms filled with nobles questioning his competence. None of them unsettled him as effectively as a sincere compliment. You touched the front of his doublet.
“You looked at me afterward,” you continued, “and asked whether your calculations were realistic.”
“I remember.”
“You listened when I corrected you.”
“Your figures were better.”
“That was when wanting you became impossible to dismiss.”
Tim’s hands settled more firmly around your waist. “I’ve been asking for your opinion ever since.”
“I noticed.”
“Did you?”
“You invented a dispute over stable placements to keep me in the strategy room for two hours.”
“The placements mattered.”
“There were only two possible locations.”
“One was better.”
“By six steps.”
“Six steps become significant during an evacuation.”
You laughed softly. Tim kissed you before you could answer. This kiss unfolded more slowly, stripped of the urgency that had followed you since Northwatch. His fingers worked through the fastenings of your uniform, pausing whenever the movement drew near your injury.
You opened his doublet in return. Layers of dark fabric parted beneath your hands. Tim’s skin was warm when you touched his chest, lean muscle shifting beneath your palms as he inhaled. He removed your coat and laid it over the back of a chair rather than dropping it.
“You’re tidying,” you said.
“It’s expensive.”
“You’re undressing the Knight Commander in your private rooms, and you’re concerned about creasing her coat.”
“I can manage several concerns at once.”
“Impressive.”
“I was given responsibility for the kingdom.”
“You mention that often.”
“You keep challenging my competence.”
“I keep encouraging demonstrations.”
Tim’s eyes sharpened. He loosened the ties of your shirt and drew the fabric over your head with careful movements. The bandage around your side remained clean, wrapped tightly beneath your ribs. His expression changed when he saw it.
You touched his jaw. “It’s healing.”
“I know.”
“The bruising looks worse than it feels.”
“I know.”
“Then stop looking at me as though I’m about to disappear.”
Tim covered your hand with his. “I’m trying.”
You kissed him. His arms came around you, holding you without touching the injury. You felt the restraint in every careful movement, the effort required to remember your body was healing when both of you had waited so long.
“You won’t break me,” you whispered against his mouth.
“That isn’t the only concern.”
“What else?”
“I’d like this to be good.”
The vulnerability of it made your chest ache.
“It’s already good.”
“We’re barely undressed.”
“You’re difficult to reassure.”
“I prefer evidence.”
You slid your hand beneath the waistband of his trousers. Tim’s breath left him.
“Is this evidence?”
“It’s compelling.”
You kissed the corner of his mouth. “Take me to bed, Your Highness.”
He did. Tim’s bed was large enough to reflect his status and plain enough to reflect him, covered in dark blankets without the ornamental canopy favored by most royal chambers. He lowered you onto it carefully, bracing one hand beside your head while the other traced the line of your waist.
His mouth followed. He kissed your throat, the center of your chest, and the skin above your bandage. Each touch became slower as he moved downward, his attention fixed so entirely on you that embarrassment flickered beneath the desire.
“You’re staring,” you said.
“I’m studying.”
“Should I expect a report?”
“Eventually.”
His fingers opened your trousers. You lifted your hips as much as the wound allowed, letting him draw the fabric down your legs. Tim’s gaze moved over you with open hunger. Years of armor and training had left their evidence across your body. Scars crossed your thigh, shoulder, and ribs. A pale line curved along your knee from a tournament lance. Another marked the place where an eastern raider’s axe had broken through your armor.
Tim touched the scar near your hip. “I remember this one.”
“You weren’t there.”
“I read the report.”
“You read my injury reports?”
“I read every report submitted by the royal army.”
“You asked Alfred for copies.”
“Some of them were incomplete.”
You threaded your fingers through his hair. “How long have you been obsessed with me?”
His eyes lifted. “You say that as though it’s past tense.”
Heat spread through you. Tim kissed the inside of your thigh. His mouth moved higher, unhurried despite the tension in his shoulders. When his breath touched you, your fingers tightened in his hair.
“Tim.”
“I’m gathering evidence.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“You’ve mentioned that.”
He pressed his mouth to you. The first stroke of his tongue pulled a broken sound from your throat. Tim’s hands settled against your thighs, holding them open as he explored you with the same concentration he gave maps and coded reports.
You had imagined Tim’s mouth before. During meetings, training sessions, and nights spent leaning over strategy tables while he stood close enough to touch, your mind had supplied possibilities you refused to examine in daylight. None of them had included the quiet sound he made when you moved against him. His tongue circled your clit, finding a rhythm that made your hips lift from the bed. Pain tugged faintly at your side, but pleasure overwhelmed it before concern could return.
Tim looked up. The sight nearly undid you. His hair had fallen across his forehead. His mouth was wet, his eyes fixed on your face while his fingers tightened around your thigh. “Good?” he asked.
“You know it is.”
“I want confirmation.”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
You stared at him. Tim leaned down to lick you again before you could answer, his tongue pressing harder.
“Tim.” His name broke on a gasp.
He seemed to enjoy that. The next pass of his tongue was slower, followed by the careful press of one finger inside you. Your head fell back against the pillows.
Tim watched every reaction. He adjusted with each movement of your body, learning which pressure made your thighs tense and which curl of his finger drew his name from you again. A second finger joined the first.
You reached down, gripping his wrist when the pace became nearly unbearable. “I’m close.”
“I know.”
“You wanted confirmation.”
“I have evidence.”
You laughed breathlessly, but it dissolved into a moan when his mouth returned to your clit. The pleasure tightened until your body couldn’t contain it. You came with your hand twisted in his hair, your thighs trembling around his shoulders while Tim worked you through every wave.
He didn’t stop until you pulled gently at his hair. Tim kissed the inside of your thigh and rose over you. His expression carried a satisfaction that would have been intolerable from anyone else.
“You’re pleased with yourself,” you said.
“The evidence was conclusive.”
“You’re still wearing your trousers.”
“An oversight.”
“A serious one.”
You pushed yourself upright. Tim began to object when you shifted, but the words disappeared as you reached for his waistband. You opened the remaining fastenings and drew the fabric down far enough to free him. His cock was hard, flushed at the tip and already wet.
You wrapped your hand around him, and his eyes closed. The composure he maintained before the council fractured beneath a single stroke. His forehead lowered to your shoulder as you moved your hand slowly along his length.
“You’ve been waiting years,” you murmured.
“Yes.”
“You could have said something.”
“You commanded my father’s knights.”
“I still do.”
“You were also intimidating.”
“Was?”
“You’re half-naked in my bed with a sword wound and still arguing with me.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“You didn’t seem interested.”
“I spent every strategy meeting finding reasons to stand beside you.”
“That was where the maps were.”
“The maps weren’t what I was looking at.”
Tim’s hips moved into your hand. “You were thinking about me?”
“Frequently.”
His eyes opened. You smiled and tightened your grip. Tim kissed you hard, pushing you carefully back against the pillows. Your hand remained between you, stroking him until his breathing turned uneven.
He caught your wrist. “I won’t last.”
“That’s flattering.”
“It isn’t my plan.”
“You have a plan?”
“I had several.”
“Of course you did.”
Tim drew your hand away and removed the rest of his clothing. He settled between your thighs, his gaze moving over your face as he guided himself against you.
“You’re still all right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And your side?”
“Tim.”
“I need an answer.”
“My side is fine, and I want you.”
His expression softened, though the tension in his body didn’t. He dragged the head of his cock through the wetness between your thighs, and your breath caught at the pressure against your entrance.
“Tell me if anything hurts.”
“I will.”
“Promise.”
You touched his face. “I promise.”
He entered you slowly. The stretch stole your breath, your body still sensitive from his mouth. Tim stopped after the first careful press, watching your expression.
“Keep going,” you said.
He pushed deeper. Your fingers dug into his shoulders. Tim’s mouth opened against your cheek as he filled you, inch by measured inch until his hips rested against yours. For several seconds, neither of you moved. Tim trembled above you.
“You’re all right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Your side?”
“Fine.”
“You’re sure?”
You turned your head and kissed him. “Move.”
His first thrust was controlled. The second was less so. Tim found a rhythm that kept his weight from your injury, one hand gripping the bed beside you while the other held your thigh. Each movement drove him deep enough to draw a soft sound from you.
You wrapped your legs around his hips. Tim groaned. His forehead pressed against yours as he moved faster. The care remained, but it no longer resembled hesitation. He had learned the limits of your body and begun testing everything within them.
“You feel incredible,” he said.
“So do you.”
“I’ve thought about this.”
“Me too.”
“I thought about you on the council table.”
Heat rushed through you. “Tim.”
“With the maps beneath you.”
“You’d complain if they creased.”
“I’d make copies.”
His hips struck yours harder. You tightened around him. Tim swore, the word rough and breathless against your mouth.
“You liked that,” you said.
“Yes.”
“The council table?”
“You telling me what to do.”
You laughed softly. “That explains a great deal.”
“Don’t become unbearable.”
“I’m your Knight Commander.”
“You aren’t commanding anything at the moment.”
You tightened your leg around him and rolled your hips. Tim lost the next breath. “Am I not?”
He kissed you before you could continue. His hand moved between your bodies. His fingers found your clit, circling with a precision that made your body tighten around him again. The pleasure returned faster this time. It gathered beneath every thrust, sharpened by the sound of his breathing and the tension in his body as he fought for control.
You touched his face, forcing his eyes toward yours. “Let go.”
Tim shook his head. “You first.”
“Stubborn.”
“You started this.”
“I’ve been waiting too.”
Something in your voice reached him. His rhythm faltered. Tim came with your name against your mouth, his body pressing deep as he shuddered above you. The warmth of it pushed you over the edge a moment later. Your nails caught against his back while pleasure rolled through you again, slower and deeper than before. He remained above you until both of you could breathe.
Then Tim shifted immediately. “Your side?”
You laughed weakly. “Still attached.”
“That isn’t useful.”
“It hurts less than it did yesterday.”
He examined the bandage. The fabric remained clean. Satisfied, Tim lowered himself beside you, keeping one arm around your waist without pressing the wound. You rested your head against his chest.
Silence settled over the room. The distant sounds of the palace reached you through the windows: bells marking the late afternoon, horses crossing the courtyard, and voices drifting from the gardens below.
“You realize this complicates the council,” you said.
“Yes.”
“You’re a prince.”
“I continue to be aware.”
“I’m your military advisor.”
“You advise the crown.”
“I also command the royal knights.”
“I’m adjacent.”
You lifted your head. Tim’s expression remained entirely serious. “That was terrible.”
“It worked when you said it.”
“It was terrible then too.”
He touched your cheek. “We’ll determine the practical considerations.”
“You make it sound like a logistics problem.”
“Logistical problems can be solved.”
“And if Bruce objects?”
“He won’t.”
“You’re confident.”
“He assigned us to work together.”
“That wasn’t permission to sleep together.”
“He understands predictable consequences.”
You settled against him again. “Dick already knows.”
“Dick suspects.”
“He knows.”
“He has no evidence.”
“He doesn’t need evidence. He has instincts.”
Tim sighed.
You smiled against his chest. “He’s going to be unbearable.”
“He already is.”
“You could send him to deal with Jason’s pirates.”
“That’s tempting.”
Tim’s fingers moved lightly along your back.
“When Bruce returns,” he said, “Dick will remain crown prince.”
“I should hope so.”
“I’ll remain responsible for intelligence and military planning.”
“Most likely.”
“You’ll remain Knight Commander.”
“Unless the king exiles me for compromising his son.”
“He won’t.”
“You’re strangely certain of that.”
“Bruce has been asking why I haven’t married.”
You lifted your head again to see Tim watching you carefully. “Marriage is several campaigns ahead of our current position,” you said.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“You’re already planning.”
“I plan everything.”
“You planned the escape from the council room.”
“I considered possibilities.”
You touched the center of his chest. “How many possibilities are you considering now?”
“Enough.”
“That’s ominous.”
“You aren’t objecting.”
You looked at him. Tim’s confidence faded slightly, leaving the question beneath it.
You kissed him. “I’m not objecting.”
Relief softened his face. A knock sounded from the outer door to Tim’s quarters.
Tim froze. You pulled the blanket higher.
“Tim?” Dick called through the door. “Are you in there?”
Tim closed his eyes. You pressed your mouth against his shoulder to contain your laughter. The handle moved, stopped by the lock, and moved again.
“Interesting,” Dick said.
“Go away,” Tim called.
A pause followed.
Then Dick laughed. “I only came to tell you Father sent a message. He’s extending the trip another week.”
You bit your lip as Tim covered his face with one hand.
“Queen Selina wants to remain by the sea,” Dick said. “Father says we appear to have matters under control.”
“We do,” Tim answered.
“I’m sure you do.”
“Leave.”
“Dinner is in an hour.”
“We’ll be there.”
“Will you?”
Tim reached toward the bedside table, perhaps searching for something to throw despite the wall separating them. Dick’s footsteps retreated down the passage. You laughed until your side protested.
Tim rolled toward you immediately. “You’re hurting yourself.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re laughing at me.”
“Both can be true.”
“He’ll tell Bruce.”
“He won’t need to. Bruce understands predictable consequences.”
Tim stared at you. You smiled. He kissed you again, slow and warm, his irritation disappearing beneath it.
Outside, Dick began whistling as he returned toward the council chamber.
Tim pulled the blanket over both of you. “We aren’t going to dinner.”
“You told him we would.”
“I lied.”
“He didn’t believe you.”
“That’s his problem.”
You settled into the pillows while Tim drew you closer, the kingdom temporarily secure and the king safely several provinces away.
For the first time since Bruce had departed, neither of you intended to return to the strategy room.
DOG STAR ✶ a ticci toby x female reader fanfiction
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
CHAPTER ONE - NYMPH
go to masterlist
✶ do not copy, translate, or plagiarize any of my works. dividers by me.
This work is rated 18+. Reader discretion is advised. MINORS DNI.
✶ Chapter Summary - Jarfly Creek, a sweltering farm that serves as the focal point of a cicada-ridden land, and the place you've always called home. Nothing changes on this farm—not the animals, not the people, and especially not you. You're ready to live out the rest of your days alone on this godforsaken plot of land... until your father decides he could use some help.
✶ Tags - Farmhand!Ticci Toby, parental issues, themes of depression and hopelessness, this is only chapter one so it's just worldbuilding haha
✶ Words - 8.1k
✶ Notes - I am so beyond excited and ready for all of you to have this story, I hope you all enjoy chapter one! Now, this is only the beginning, but trust me when I say that this story picks up fast, so stay tuned for updates. This is my baby, my angel, my magnum opus—and I can't wait for you all to experience it. I'm aiming for 10 chapters, but you never know with me haha. ENJOY!!!!!!!!!
Listen to the story's playlist here!
✶ all coorelation to real people, places, or things is purely coincidental and unrelated. ticci toby belongs to his rightful owner, kastoway. this is an au.
In the south, there are only so many things you can count on during the summer months.
Namely, the sudden thunderstorm showers that turn the air sticky and thick. The out-of-towners who arrive every year only to stake their claim on the county lakes and swimming holes and little craft festivals strung up along the backroads. The days when the sun sits so high and blazing white that it feels like it’s trying to burn the color out of everything and melt you to the asphalt…
And the cicadas.
They burrow up from the ground in June when the hottest summer days start, and by the middle of July, their sound buzzes from the treelines and creek beds until you think you’ve gone nearly mad. And then they disappear as the summer months bleed out into cooler evenings, like they were never even here at all.
But at Jarfly Creek, it never really stops. The buzz lives in the fence posts and the tall grass and the acres of fields surrounding, singing their endless drone like the land was built right on top of their nest and they have never once forgiven your ancestors for it.
But you didn’t build this farm. You didn’t dig the plows into the ground and stir the nymphs living underneath, spurring a rivalry that you have no foot in.
But it is you that lays on your back in the paddock that was made from those plows, staring up into a sky so aggressively blue it almost hurts to look at. There’s no clouds. Not a single soft place for the eye to rest. In summer, the clouds only ever appear at the very end of the day, when the sunshine turns the color of bruised fruit, or when the air turns cool and the rain is about to come down. The rest of the time the sky just sits there, empty and obnoxiously bright enough to burn your retinas.
You miss the Fall. The clouds stay around all day during those months, and the air finally cools enough that you don’t have to fill your lungs with air the temperature of steam.
But it’s not the fall. It’s the middle of July, and you’re supposed to be helping your father load his truck with the haybales for the sheep.
Through the cicada’s drone and your heat exhaustion, you hear someone shouting muffled curses, before you register that shouting as your name being very unhappily called after.
You sit up quickly and push to your feet. Grass sticks to the back of your neck and the thin cotton of your shirt, and you have to wipe the blades off the fabric before you get scolded about staining it. Out by the gravel track next to the barn, your father is heaving the last heavy bale of hay into the bed of his old red Chevy Silverado. He doesn’t look at you all the way when he speaks.
“Get the hell up before you get yourself filthy.”
And that’s it. He’s already turning, shutting the truck door hard enough that the whole frame rattles, then the engine rumbles with a sputter and he’s rolling away. You stand there and watch the cloud of gray exhaust lift into the still air before the old red Chevy disappears down the gravel road toward the sheep pens—without you.
Oh well.
You sigh, tilt your face back up to that empty blue sky if only to see the hope of a cloud, then you start walking.
The hill between the paddock and the lower pens isn’t steep, but the heat makes every step feel heavier than it should. The grass is dry and yellowing in places that scrapes against your jeans and sticks to your boots, making the trek that much more miserable. Off to the left, the sheep pens stretch out in long, weathered rows of wood fencing, the woolly ruminants moving slowly in the shade of the few scraggly trees that still stand inside the fences, the sheep also trying to find the satisfaction of shade in the sweltering heat. Further back are the horse corrals—three of them, the posts leaning a little with age and weather, and the dirt packed in dry clumps from years of hooves stomping over them. The chicken coops sit closer to the barn, mostly faded and streaked with rust where the metal roofing has started to peel.
To outsiders, this place seems to be falling apart, rotting under the beam of constant sunshine and hard weather.
And you can’t help but agree with them.
Your father’s farm, Jarfly Creek, got its name the way most places around here did: because something stuck out like a sore thumb. The cicadas were so loud and so constant that the whole stretch of land eventually just became known for them. People stopped settling nearby after a while due to the annual summer noise the bugs create. So now there’s nothing for miles in every direction except more fields, thick woods that hide old swimming holes and the skeletons of barns and sheds that were already half-collapsed when you were little, and the long gravel drive that eventually spits you out onto the main road. Besides the sheep and the chickens and the various other livestock living here, you had no neighbors to visit or grow acquainted with.
The closest real town is forty minutes away, a little sleepy agriculture colony town known as Carrick County where there isn’t much but gas stations and dive bars for the locals to drown away in. Between here and there is just empty space and rows and rows of underbrush and forest.
You crest the ridge and look down toward your house on the other end of the field. The old antebellum-style farmhouse sits nestled against the treeline, its white paint gone soft in the sunlight and faded in places, and the wide front porch wrapping around the frame and making it seem like a much nicer place to live than it actually was. The gravel driveway curves in a wide loop around the property before heading out to the main road, and from up here you can see many of the windows have been cracked open to help with the heat.
You wonder what your mother’s doing. Probably on the phone again, her voice always feeble and timid when she’s talking to someone who isn’t your father. Or maybe she’s cleaning the stove for the fourth time this week, scrubbing at already-spotless burners just so her hands have something to do. The same as always.
Things stay the same here.
The sheep stay the same, the flocks giving birth to new flocks, the old crops drying up only to make way for the new ones, the summer ending just so it can start all over again. It’s all the same.
You cross the last stretch of field and reach the fence, pushing the gate open with your shoulder and latching it behind you. The sheep have already crowded to the far side of the pen where the feeding stalls sit, their wooly bodies pressing against each other and shoving to get to the dry bales first. Your father has pulled the truck right up next to the stalls and throws the haybales in, watching as they bleat and shove and fight over the straw like they do every single day. You wonder, for a second, if they ever get tired of the same routine too.
But as you walk up and circle around to the truck bed, grabbing the remaining bales and heaving them over the side, you watch them settle into eating and finding little interest in anything else. So maybe not.
By the time the last bale is gone, your father’s already shutting the tailgate and climbing back into the cab.
“I’m runnin’ to town. Be late for dinner.”
You nod, but he’s already putting the truck in gear and rolling across the field toward the gravel path, plumes of dust rising in a pale cloud behind him until he disappears into the treeline and out toward the main road.
You turn back to the sheep. They’re still eating, their cream wool baking under the late-afternoon sun. You lean over the stall rail and run your hand across the nearest one’s back, picking little pieces of dried grass and tiny twigs out of its coat while it bleats at you without much urgency, straws of hay crunching between its teeth.
“Yeah, yeah,” you murmur, smiling down at the animal. “Baah yourself.”
Then you leave the pen the same way you came, latching the gate behind you, and start the long walk back across the field toward your house.
You can’t help but think about how nice of a home it would be. Or how nice it would be if it wasn’t yours. If it was just some place you rode past on a back road, you’d probably slow down and look at it twice as you passed. You might even think it looked pretty, like a place you could see yourself settling down in.
But up close and inside, it’s different.
The old antebellum-style farmhouse sits two stories tall and smothered in weathered, fading white paint that’s chipping from the years of neglect. A big red brick chimney runs up the side, and the wide front porch stretches out under a low roof held up by white columns that have started to lean just a little with age. Dark green shutters frame the tall windows, some of them hanging crooked or flapping uselessly in the breeze, and there’s a bench swing on the far end of the porch that creaks obnoxiously when the wind blows it. The whole place is raised up on a brick foundation, but that doesn’t stop things like raccoons and feral cats from wiggling their way under and scaring you half to death when you step on the grass below.
You climb the creaky porch steps and kick your dirty boots off by the door so your mother won’t start. The screen door squeals when you pull it open before you push through the heavy main front door behind it.
The air in the house hits you and registers as the smell of boiling vegetables and meat roasting in the oven. It drifts through the whole house and out the open windows, clogging your senses and making you a little lightheaded with the already dusty smell your house produces. It’s not much cooler in here than it is outside, but being out of direct sunlight sure does help. Somewhere deeper inside you hear your mother’s voice talking timidly to what seems to be someone on the phone.
The living room opens up to the right. The same old furniture that’s been here longer than you have sits in its usual spots—the sunken couch with its faded floral cushions, the two matching armchairs dedicated to your mother and father, the little coffee table covered in a doily your late grandmother made. Against the far wall sits the box television that hasn’t been replaced in decades, atop the tv stand covered in books and knickknacks and junk with as many bible verses as they could fit. On every other available surface are the little porcelain Precious Moments figurines your mother collects, in all their faux soft pastel colors and big eyes and gentle poses. They paint a picture of a sweet, smiling family that has never once lived inside these walls. Every decoration here is downed with some sort of scripture or family quote about loving each other, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
You move through the arched doorway into the kitchen.
Your mother stands at the counter with her back half-turned, cutting potatoes into even chunks before adding them to a pot. The old landline phone is tucked between her ear and her shoulder, the long spiraling cord stretched tight from the wall because your father still refuses to pay for a mobile plan when “this works just fine.” She glances up when she hears you, already frowning, and waves a hand at you to go away without ever pausing her conversation with someone about how terrible the produce at the grocery stores are nowadays.
You ignore her.
The stove is crowded with pots, wisps of steam rising from the one on the front burner. You lean over just enough to look and grimace at the sight of cabbage and turnip greens swimming around in the boiling water. The smell alone is enough to make your stomach twist. You step back, already calculating how little of it you can get away with eating tonight, before you’re turning to go clean yourself off for the afternoon considering all your chores are done (and your father isn’t here to give you new ones).
You push out of the kitchen and into the hall that runs through the middle of the house.
The walls are lined with picture frames of childhood portraits and family photos from when your siblings still lived here. Your older sister and brother. They both left the second they found a good enough excuse. Your sister married the first man who asked, and your brother started some tech company your father was too stubborn and too far behind in modern technology to understand, let alone stop. They’ve been gone for a couple of years now. Besides the occasional short phone call, you haven’t seen them, and you don’t really care to. Your parents talk down on them enough every chance they get, so you’ve learned to just not speak about them at all.
The pictures still hang there, though. They paint a nice scene in broad strokes of everyone smiling blankly and looking like a real family. You remember how miserable it was to take those photos, though. How your mother used to haul all of you into the truck on those early Saturday mornings for the church registry photos, the whole ride filled with bickering and complaints and your father’s unwavering anger.
You eye the frames as you pass them and always find it funny how the photos get fewer and farther between the farther down the hall you go, like the family itself was slowly thinning out until there was almost nothing left to capture.
At the end of the hall you turn and start up the staircase, climbing toward your room.
Your sibling’s rooms still sit up here on the second floor, mostly filled with the leftover furniture and things they didn’t bother taking with them. It’s nice to think how you practically have the whole floor to yourself. Your parent’s bedroom is downstairs and strictly forbidden unless you need something quick, so the little time you actually spend inside the house is almost always spent up here, hiding away in your own room.
You open the bedroom door, shut it behind you, and immediately flop onto the end of your bed. Your work clothes are still sticky with sweat and grass and livestock pens, and you can feel them against the comforter in a way that should bother you more than it does, but you’re too stored to care. You lay out with your eyes closed, letting the sunlight that filters through your thin curtains wash over your face.
Your room has always been the one reliable escape when you can’t run out into the fields or disappear into chores long enough to be left alone. Your full-sized bed sits in the middle of the room against the far wall from the door, littered with homemade pillows and quilts from your family at holidays and such. Your desk is pressed against the right wall, facing the window that looks out over the front yard—though most of the view is blocked by the tall oak tree growing right beside the house, its large branches spreading across the glass. The closet is on the left, stuffed with church clothes and work clothes and a few faded hand-me-downs your sister left behind. The decor is sparse. You’ve collected a few things over the years, or made a couple of pieces yourself, and you put them up wherever they’ll fit just to make the space feel less like a prison cell than it already is.
Even here you can still hear the cicadas. Their drone seeps through the walls and the old windows without any trouble. Sometimes you swear they’ve dug their way into the attic and settled right above your room, just close enough to drive you stir-crazy.
Why do they stick around here? What keeps them at this farm? On this land? It’s not like there’s anything good left. Not like there’s anything worth staying for. If you were a cicada, you’d have flown away a long time ago. Found some other life. Somewhere quieter, somewhere more beautiful, somewhere that didn’t feel like it was slowly pressing the air out of your lungs.
You start to fantasize about it—another life, another time. One where your youth hadn’t been spent bent over farm chores and being dragged to church every Sunday and living under the constant weight of your mother and father’s expectations to stay here and take over the farm when they pass. Maybe you’d have gone somewhere with real seasons, or real people, or just the simple freedom to leave a place when it stopped feeling like home.
You feel your body getting heavier against the mattress. Sleep starts to pull at the edges of everything, and you let it.
And right before it takes you under, you smile a little at the thought of growing wings—thin, clear, useless things—and lifting up out of here, far, far away.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
You hadn’t realized how long you’d been asleep until the sound of your mother’s voice cut through your forgotten dreams and tore you awake.
You pushed up off your comforter without thinking. The fabric under you was damp with sweat, and your skin felt clammy and marked up from lying in one position too long, weird fabric divots imprinted on the side of your cheek. You blinked a few times, trying to get your eyes to adjust to the new darkness in the room. The sun had gone down while you were out, and only the last thin scraps of twilight were still bleeding through the curtains.
She shouted again, very obviously growing impatient if the tone in her voice was any indication.
You snapped to your feet and scrambled out of your room, down the stairs, and through the hall toward the kitchen. She was at the stove, scooping that cabbage-turnip green-sludge into a larger serving bowl. You grimaced at how the smell of it had practically doubled in strength since the last time you were down here.
“Yes, ma’am,” you let her know you were there.
She turned and grimaced at the sight of you. “You’re filthy. Why didn’t you wash up?”
You looked down at yourself and felt the full weight of how gross you really felt. You were still in the same work clothes from this afternoon, your grass stained shirt and jeans clinging to your clammy skin. You’d fallen asleep and completely forgotten to clean yourself off before supper.
“Sorry, ma’am.”
She turned back to the stove and huffed, “Set the table.”
You moved without arguing, pulling plates and forks and glasses from the cabinets while she transferred the rest of the food from the pots and pans into serving dishes. You set three places out of habit, putting a plate down for your father even though he still wasn’t home. Your mother never once asked where he was, and you didn’t think she cared to at all.
You never had a good relationship with either of your parents, but if you had to choose between the two, you would pick your mother. Not because she was soft or warm or particularly kind, but because the alternative was worse.
Your father had never been a gentle man. Even in the earliest memories you could still dig up, he was short-tempered, quick to anger, and possessed of almost no patience for the three children he seemed to regard as more burden than blood. He spoke in clipped commands and long silences where he would rather ignore his children than be civil with them. When something went wrong on the farm—and something always went wrong—his voice would rise sharply, and the rest of you learned early how to make yourselves small. Age had only made it worse. His body was weaker now, the strength that once made the work look easy slowly leaving him, and every limitation seemed to feed the bitterness. With your brother and sister gone, you were the only pair of hands left that he could still order around. He used that fact without mercy.
Your mother was different, but not in any way that offered comfort beyond the fact that she didn’t raise her voice too much at you. She had always been short with you, always kept her distance, and it had never really been more beyond that. There was no softness to lean into, no understanding of your father’s anger, and heaven forbid she tell you she loves you. Her love, if it could be called that, stayed strictly parental—she cooked your meals, she cleaned the clothes that couldn’t be washed in the normal laundry, and she made sure to give you medicine when you were sick—and that was it. When you and your siblings were still young, she had been both mother and teacher. The three of you were homeschooled for the entirety of your childhoods, kept close to the security of your house because of what she called “the state of the world” and her deep distrust of public schools to teach right from wrong. For years the kitchen table doubled as a classroom. Lessons, scripture, chores, more lessons, and more chores were the majority of your upbringing. The moment the last of the required coursework was finished and she declared you “graduated,” that thin thread of daily connection frayed and then largely disappeared. She went back to being only your mother, and even that role felt more like obligation than affection.
It left a hollow place in you. There was no parent to go to with the heavier thoughts, no one whose presence made the isolation of this farm feel less absolute. You had learned early not to expect comfort and eventually stopped looking for it. Sometimes you told yourself the distance had made you stronger or more self-reliant, and less dependent on people who would only disappoint you.
Your mother carried the serving dishes to the table now and set them down before you. The meat you had smelled earlier sat in the center, and you realized it was roast cooked with potatoes and carrots, the only thing on the table that looked pleasantly edible. The cabbage and turnip greens remained in their bowl, and you eyed them uncomfortably, knowing your mother would say something if you didn’t take a spoonful of them too.
She sat. You sat. And your father’s empty chair remained vacant, and not a single comment was made about it while the two of you ate in silence.
Your father doesn’t show up until you’re scraping the last of the potatoes from your plate. The meal hadn’t been half bad, all things considered, but the dead silence between your mother and you made it less than enjoyable.
The front door opens. You hear the familiar scuff of his boots against the mat, the thud, thud as he kicks them off, and the drag of fabric as he shrugs out of his jacket and hangs it on the wall hook near the door. He doesn’t speak as he crosses the room, pulls out his chair, and sits, reaching for the serving dishes to fill his plate that has sat vacant for the last hour.
You’re already finished. That doesn’t matter, though. Now that he’s here, you’re expected to stay seated until he’s done eating. Only then will you be allowed to clear the table and wash the dishes before you’re excused for the night. So you set your fork down, fold your hands in your lap, and try to find something to occupy your mind with while the minutes stretch.
Five full minutes pass in near silence, besides the tinking of silverware and him eating. Then your father sits up a little straighter, looking at your mother first, then turns his eyes on you.
You straighten your own posture on instinct, making sure he sees that you are paying attention before he can accuse you of drifting off or get irritated that you didn’t acknowledge him the second he walked in.
He sighs, takes another bite, then finally speaks.
“I hired help.”
Your mother looks up from her own plate at that, “Help?”
Your father nods and takes another bite before answering.
“I posted an ad in the paper a bit ago. Someone responded. He starts tomorrow morning.”
You glance over at your mother. Her expression has gone a little incredulous, her eyebrows lifting just enough to show she hadn’t been told any of this beforehand. Your father, for his part, has already returned his attention to his plate, as though the matter is settled and doesn’t need to be discussed further.
“I wasn’t aware you needed help,” she says.
He doesn’t look up. “Well, it’s not like the help I have now is any good. I need someone who can help me clear the barn before the tupping season starts. I went to town to meet him.”
You know what that’s really code for: he’s getting weaker. The heavy work is starting to cost him more than it used to, and he’s reached the point where even he knows he can’t work like he used to. The dig about your own usefulness doesn’t fly over your head, but you keep your face carefully blank and try not to dwell on it.
Your mother begins asking the practical questions—where exactly he found this person, what he’s offering in payment, whether she’s expected to start cooking for an extra mouth. Your father answers in short sentences while he continues eating. You barely register the details as you find yourself dwelling one something much more important.
There is going to be a new person here.
A new face. A new voice. Someone who doesn’t already know every detail of the wasteland that is this house. You can’t help but feel your gut twist with excitement, and force your expression to stay neutral.
From the pieces of conversation you do catch, the arrangement sounds almost insulting. One hundred dollars a week and dinner every night, in exchange for working from sunup to sundown. You’re genuinely shocked anyone bothered to answer the ad at all—which is why it doesn’t surprise you when your father tells you that this boy close to your age was the only applicant.
You can’t help wondering about the practical things. Whether he’ll take your brother’s old room upstairs. What he might look like. Whether the two of you would get along or had anything in common. You run over a million questions until you can’t help but ask one.
“Where will he be staying?”
Your father’s head turns. He eyes you for a long second, as if measuring the question for any hidden double meaning.
“Not here,” he says. “What he does after sundown isn’t my business.”
Then he goes quiet. He sets his fork down, crosses his arms over his chest, and turns his full attention on you. The look he gives you is the familiar one—his face telling you he’s only going to say these words once, and he doesn’t repeat himself.
You sit up as straight as your spine will allow, bracing for whatever is coming.
“But you are my business,” he says. “You are not to mess with this boy. Do you understand?”
You nod. He isn’t finished.
“You’re not to talk to him. He works for me, and that’s it. He’s here to make up for the work you can’t do, not to be your little friend.”
The way he says it hurts more than the words themselves. Like you’re already a risk to jeopardizing this great thing he’s about to have. Like the mere fact of your presence might somehow ruin the arrangements he’s made. You feel yourself shrinking under it, your eyes dropping to the empty plate in front of you.
You nod again.
You still want to ask the boy’s name. Even if you’re now forbidden from speaking to him, even if he’s only meant to exist at the edges of the farm and nowhere near you, the simple knowledge of a new presence feels like more than you’ve had in a long time. You keep what little excitement you have left buried inside.
By the time your father finishes eating and you begin collecting the plates, an argument has already started—which isn’t uncommon to happen at least once a day.
Your mother is angry that she wasn’t told. She’s tired of him making decisions and running off to do whatever he wants without a word to her. Your father, on his part, doesn’t see why he should need her approval in the first place. The two of them go back and forth in snippy voices while you stand at the sink and scrub the pan, plates, silverware, before setting them onto the drying rack. You keep your head down and let the sound of running water blur the worst of their words to each other.
When the last dish is done, you dry your hands and turn to ask if you might be excused for bed. Your father waves a dismissive hand at you as he stands and aims for the fridge to grab himself a beer, which is your cue to get out while you can. You leave the kitchen quickly, climbing the stairs two at a time until their argument is only a muffled roar behind you. Your mother can deal with it. You have no interest in staying to mediate something that has nothing to do with you.
The second your bedroom door shuts behind you, you lean back against the wood and let the smile you’ve been hiding stretch across your face.
There is going to be something new on the farm tomorrow. Someone new. Even if your father’s rules keep you from speaking to him, the simple fact of his presence feels like a crack in the sameness that has pressed down on everything for so long. And better still: your father will be busy. Busy training him, correcting him, pouring all that restless attention into someone else for once.
You shower and move through the rest of your nightly routine without much thought, going over the same motions you always do. When you’re finished, you climb into bed and reach over to switch off your lamp. Darkness settles over the room, save for the then veil of moonlight that filters through your curtains.
The cicadas don’t stop their mindless drone during the night, but the intensity of their noise definitely dampens. During the day they are a relentless roar. At night they settle into a crackling hum that seems to vibrate your bedframe just enough to lull you to sleep. After the long hours of work and the strain of dinner, the noise almost feels comforting.
Your blinks grow slower, and so do your thoughts, especially towards the boy who will be here in the morning.
You haven’t been near a boy in a long time, like, not really. There are the impersonal encounters when you ride into town for groceries or church, and the stilted contact with your brother on the phone, but nothing that lasts longer than a few minutes. This will be different. This will be the first time in as long as you can remember that a boy will exist in the same space as you for more than a passing moment.
Your mother raised you in a house thick with scripture and Sunday mornings and the constant reminder of God’s watchful eye. You’ve never cared much for any of it. Prayer always felt like speaking into an empty room or to someone who wasn’t listening. But lying here in the dark, listening to the low drone of the cicadas, you can’t quite stop the thought from forming that maybe this is something close to one of those blessings everyone harps about. It feels like a light shining on you, and one that isn’t the sweltering summer sun.
Maybe the boy will stay. Maybe he will take on more and more of the work until your father doesn’t need you anymore and the boy decides to take the farm for himself.
Maybe, eventually, you’ll finally get to leave.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
It was a little after eight the next morning when the sound of tires on the gravel drive pulled your attention away from the chickens trampling over themselves beneath you.
You were at the coop beside the barn, scattering their seed across the packed dirt and trying to break up two hens that had decided to start a fight. The sun still hadn’t fully cleared the ridge beyond the treeline, so the morning sky held a soft, dusky blue light that came just before the heat of the day, and a thin layer of mist clung to the grass. When the truck came rolling up the drive, it stirred the droplets into a mist cloud that trailed behind the tires.
You hadn’t even known your father had left the house. You’d assumed he was already out in the fields or checking the horses. But instead, here was the familiar red Chevy pulling up alongside the barn and cutting the engine.
You kept your face carefully blank and continued tossing seed, but your eyes kept drifting toward the cab. Your father stepped out first, but you could see the outline of another person still inside. A second later the passenger door swung open, and a pair of boots dropped onto the gravel below.
Is that him?
Your stomach gave a small lurch of excitement. You forced it down and focused on the impatient rooster pecking at the toe of your boot, scattering another handful of feed to look busy.
A hand came up, gripped the top of the door, and shut it against the cab.
Brunet. That was the first thing you noticed about him. His hair was dark and curly, thick on top and shorter at the nape of his neck, and rather messy. The line of it drew your gaze downward to the side of his neck, where a thick vein stood out against the skin, then to the taut muscle that disappeared under the collar of a plain black cotton shirt. His shoulder was solid beneath the thin fabric. The sleeve hid most of his bicep, but the forearm below it was corded with veins that stood out amongst tan, freckled skin. His hand looked strong. The knuckles were dark and seemingly bruised, like he’d been hitting something—or biting them.
You realized that you had been staring and dropped your eyes to your boots and fixed your expression into an uninterested expression.
Fuck. You hadn’t even seen his face yet. You had to look again.
You look back up when you hear the sound of their boots walking on the gravel.
He has a scar.
Everyone knows it’s bad manners to stare when someone has something about their appearance that stands out, but you almost can’t help it. It’s a wide, uneven stretch of scarred skin covering most of his left cheek. It looks like the aftermath of a bad injury—the skin that had been torn has now knit itself back together in overlapping, thickened layers. The scarring reaches all the way to the corner of his mouth, where a pair of pale lips sits against tan, freckled skin.
Then you notice his eyes.
They’re a pale brown that looks almost gray, and they seem very alert and observant. They dart from one thing to the next as he takes in the farm around him—blinking and cataloguing everything around him.
You want to punch yourself the minute the thought leaves your head:
He’s cute.
In a boyish way, maybe. He seems close to your age, maybe a little older. You notice his dark eyebrows are lifted, as though something has surprised him. His eyes really are pretty—
He’s looking at you.
The realization hits hard enough that you nearly jump out of your skin. Your eyes widen for a split second before you force them into a cool expression, schooling yourself to stare at the dirt like nothing had just happened. But you can’t help it when your eyes find their way back up a moment later.
He’s still looking.
And he seems just as startled as you were. You can make out a small, friendly smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Your gaze slips, unbidden, back to the scar again. Heat floods your face not only from the embarrassment of him catching you staring, and your inability to not look at the marred flesh on his cheek, but from another reason too. You turn around completely and start walking—walking straight out of the chicken coop, trekking away from the barn, and aiming straight for the horse corrals on the far side of the field.
You don’t look back. You don’t check to see if he’s still watching.
Because why. Why, why, why.
If there is a God, and if He somehow sent this boy here like you thought before, then He must be cruel. Because this boy—the one you are not supposed to talk to, not supposed to look at, not even supposed to exist near—is cute. And standing there in the misty morning light, staring at his cute face, and him back at you, you realize:
No matter how many times your father has yelled, no matter how many times your mother has looked straight through you, you have never once, ever, felt this particular kind of fear.
This is how people get themselves killed.
This is how you get yourself killed.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
You spent the rest of the morning and most of the early afternoon over at the horse corrals. Luck was on your side at least a little bit, because your father kept the new boy close to the barn and the main sheep pens, where the heavier work needed doing. The two of them stayed on that side of the property, your father showing him what he’d be mainly needed for, and you stayed on yours.
You occupied yourself with the stables. The horses were out in the pasture for the morning, so you left the big doors open and worked in the relative cool of the shade, raking the soiled bedding into a wheelbarrow and replacing it with clean straw. The repetitive motion gave your hands something to do while your mind refused to stay quiet about everything.
You thought about him… a lot.
Who he was. Where he might have come from. What had happened to his face. The questions piled up faster than you could push them away. Had he been homeschooled too, or had he gone to a real school with other people his age? Did he know how to drive? Did he have friends? What were his parents like? You wanted to ask him everything. You wanted the shape of a life that wasn’t this one, even if you only got to be a spectator.
None of those questions would ever be answered. You already knew that. But it didn’t stop them from forming.
By the time you finished the last stall and set out the horses’ feed for when they came back in, the sun had climbed high and bright in the sky. Under the stable roof, the heat was still manageable, but the air outside became thick with it. You leaned against the fence line for a moment, watching the mares out in the pasture as they trotted and nipped at one another, their tails flicking the flies away and enjoying the company of themselves.
You pushed off the rail and went to top off their water trough with something cool for when they got back. You had barely started letting the water fill the reservoir before you heard the telltale sound of boots on gravel.
You turned your head.
Your father and the boy were walking in your direction. Your father was talking, his one arm raised as he pointed out toward the far pasture, explaining something you couldn’t hear. The boy wasn’t looking at the pasture.
He was looking at you. Still.
You thought you might be sick at the sheer amount of nervous energy that shoots through your bones. You scrambled down from the gate, nearly dropping the hose, and started walking in the opposite direction without giving either of them a chance to close the distance.
And that was how the rest of the day unfolded.
You would settle into a chore, find a rhythm, and within the hour the two of them would appear on the edge of whatever field or building you had chosen. Your father seemed determined to make avoiding them as difficult as possible, circling the property with the new hire in tow like he was deliberately herding you from one task to the next. And the boy—he never stopped looking. Whenever your paths crossed at a distance, he would try a smile, or a quick little wave, or simply hold your gaze for a second. Each time you noticed them coming you abandoned whatever you were doing and moved on to the next necessary job before they could close the gap.
It worked, for a while. For most of the afternoon, actually.
Then you reached the feed storage.
This was the chore you liked least, if only because of how unrelentingly exhausting it was. The big sacks had to be shifted from the dry storage room out to the open trailer so your father could haul them to the farther pastures later. There was no rushing it, because each bag required both arms and careful footing, and the stack never seemed to get smaller fast enough.
You were halfway through the load when you saw them cresting the low hill that led down toward the storage shed. You let out a shaky breath and kept working, your eyes fixed on the next sack, hoping they would simply pass by on their way somewhere else. This was the one task you couldn’t abandon mid-way, couldn’t run away from without your father saying something.
They didn’t pass.
You heard your father talking about the mill and the silos, about how the farm used to grind its own feed and now simply bought the shipments that arrived every few weeks. The same shipments you were currently moving, one punishing bag at a time. You focused on the strain in your shoulders and the scrape of burlap against your palms, trying to seem like you didn’t notice them.
Then you heard your father grumble, “Stay here a minute. I’ll be right back.”
You felt the pit in your stomach the minute it was spoken, and tried to quicken your pace of work as much as you possibly could.
You could not be left alone with this boy.
You heard your father’s boots move away from the feed shed, heading toward the sheep pens where two ewes were, from the sounds of it, bleating and shoving at each other. His voice cut across the noise a moment later, breaking up whatever fight they’d started.
You refused to look over. Refused to confirm or deny whether the brunet was watching you with those pale brown eyes. The cicadas seemed louder than usual, a miserable, overlapping roar of buzzing that filled every empty space and overrode your racing thoughts. You kept your head down and your hands moving. You had to distract yourself, had to stop yourself from looking—
“Hey.”
The word was almost lost under the noise of the bugs, but you heard it. You also ignored it.
“Hey!”
This time it came clearer, and with it the soft crunch of gravel under boots. His voice was a little deep, but scratchy. You still didn’t turn. Getting in trouble over this boy was the last thing you needed. You simply hauled the next sack higher against your chest and kept working.
A few seconds of silence passed. Long enough that you began to think he might have given up and left. Curiosity got the better of you, and while lifting another bag, you turned your head just slightly—
He was right behind you.
You jumped, your eyes widening for a split second, then forced yourself forward and carried the sack the rest of the way to the trailer. You dropped it in with a thud and turned back for the next one, only to find that he had already stepped into the shed and picked up a bag of his own.
The sight startled you, and you couldn’t help but stand and watch him for a second. He wore a black cotton shirt, dark jeans, and boots that were scuffed and filthy and worn around the soles. He settled one sack over his shoulder like it weighed nothing, then reached down and hooked a second under his other arm. You gawked—there was no better word for it—as he carried both of them across the short distance and dumped them easily into the trailer. And, obviously, you didn’t miss the outline of his biceps straining under his shirt.
Something in your chest twisted uncomfortably. You forced yourself back into motion, grabbed the next bag, and fell into step beside him.
Neither of you spoke as you both hauled the feed sacks from the shed to the trailer until the shed laid empty and the trailer sat full. It was done so quickly.
With the trailer full and nothing left to keep your hands busy, you decided it was time to leave. You turned, already scanning the property for the next chore you could disappear into, but the boy moved faster.
“Hey.”
He stepped directly into your path. He was a little taller than you—just enough that you had to tilt your chin up slightly to meet his eyes. Your heart started knocking against your ribs and making your nervous system go on haywire. Your fingers found each other automatically and began picking nervously at your own nails.
He grinned.
You opened your mouth and then closed it again, unsure what sound was supposed to come out or what you were even supposed to say. Up close there were even more freckles than you’d noticed before. They scattered across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose in uneven constellations.
“I’m Toby,” he eventually said.
His name. Toby. You turned it over and over, rolling the syllables in your brain. It suited him. He looked like a Toby.
He was still watching you, his expression open and a little expectant, like he was waiting for you to give him yours. You shook your head, finally registering that you were standing in complete silence.
“We’re not supposed to talk to each other,” you said quietly.
He nodded, then smiled wider, showing his teeth.
“I know. Your pops laid it out for me already.”
His gaze moved over your shoulder toward the sound of your father’s returning boots. Before you could step back or say anything else, his hand reached out quickly and closed around one of yours. You couldn’t even think to pull it away—you couldn’t really move at all. He lifted your fingers to his lips, pressed a quick kiss against your knuckles, then dropped your hand as quickly as he had picked it up.
“But I h-hope we can be friends.”
Then he was trotting back toward the place your father had left him. A moment later the two of them were walking away together, your father’s tone picking up again like nothing unusual had happened.
You stood there and watched until they shrank into small figures far across the field. Only then did you look down at your own hand, at the place where his mouth had touched your skin.
Yeah.
This is how you get yourself killed.
Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are appreciated!
summary: my personal miscellaneous hc's for the bat boys and their physical attributes (listed in height order) <3
note: possible cw's for body dysmorphia in jason's btw. A/N at the end <3
jason:
the tallest and bulkiest of the bunch. I see him as just a bit taller than 6'4, but not quite 6'5. he's probably 6'5 when he's wearing his big patrol boots though.
his height and muscle mass are all results of the lazarus pit. if he hadn't died and been thrown into the pit, he likely wouldn't have gotten any taller than 5'9. childhood malnutrition will do that to you.
he was ridiculously shredded when he first came out of the pit and was training with the league, mostly because he didn't have the diet or nutrition to keep up with his new mass. he looked shrink wrapped. his abs were always incredibly defined because of dehydration. once he starts taking better care of himself and starts actually eating enough calories to keep up with his size, he gets a nice layer of healthy fat over his torso. someone play big boy by SZA.
it took him a long time to learn how to feel comfortable in his new body after the pit, and but the body dysmorphia still creeps in every now and then. there are times when he still feels like a gangly, awkward 15 year old boy living in a grown bodybuilder's body. he ends up standing with a slouch most of the time until he gets more comfortable with his new stature. I will say that the first time jason realized he could look bruce directly in the eye without craning his neck like he needed to when he was younger, it gave him a panic attack so badly he wanted crawl out of his skin. he had a similar reaction when he realized how small his old robin suit used to be.
his hair was much curlier as a kid, but now as an adult it's more wavy. however, his hair does get significantly curlier when it's wet/humid/sweaty/etc. every time he takes his helmet off after patrol he needs to shake his hair out like a wet dog or else the helmet hair is out of control.
biceps and thighs the size of tree trunks. even if a shirt fits his torso with room to spare, the sleeves will still be tight around his biceps. for that reason, most of his workout shirts are either muscle tanks or just old shirts that he cut the sleeves off of.
his hands get very sweaty and clammy when he's nervous. he hates it because he thinks of it as one of his most obvious tells.
very prominent arm and hand veins. I don't see him as the type to wear a lot of jewelry, but he would look incredible with a few chunky signet rings.
I can see him with a maybe a couple cartilage piercings in his ears that he either did himself, lindsay lohan parent trap style, or he got them done in some sketchy 24 hour gotham piercing and tattoo shop.
speaking of tattoos, I don't think he'd realistically have any because any visible tattoos would make him too identifiable, but the idea of a tatted jason makes me bark like a rabid dog. jason with sleeves and hand tattoos... jason with back tattoos... jason with neck tattoos. I gotta stop myself here before I start foaming at the mouth.
bruce:
the second tallest and second bulkiest. just a hair shorter than jason at 6'3, but appears closer to 6'5 in the suit because of the reinforcements in the cowl and in his boots.
he has incredible posture. alfred wouldn't accept anything less from his young charge, but it was really cemented into him by the Tibetan monks. his posture makes him seem even taller than he actually is.
I imagine the wayne men as all being tall, but bruce had sporadic growth spurts between the ages of 14-19. by the time he started training with the league, he'd stopped growing in height, but continued to gain significant muscle mass throughout his training.
bruce's muscle is more dense and compact, where jason's is more visibly bulky. bruce has the kind of muscle that can be easily hidden if he's wearing a heavy coat or a suit jacket, but as soon as he sheds the extra layers of clothing, you can tell he's jacked.
Shoulders For Days. shoulders and broad chests are the defining feature of the wayne men. all of his suit jackets and coats have to be custom tailored to fit his shoulders without ripping through the seams. his traps and deltoids are crazy. a pull-up bar hates to see bruce wayne coming.
his hair doesn't have much wave to it, but a few loose strands will always fall forward into his face no matter how much gel or pomade he puts in it.
his knuckles are almost always bruised or cracked. when paparazzi catch photos of it, bruce tells them that he's picked up boxing as a hobby. in reality he's just out punching goons straight into the ICU every night. alfred has to nag him about putting some fancy hand cream on every night to keep his knuckles from splitting.
his hair started going grey at the temples in his late twenties. dick and jason used to make fun of him for it, so every 6 weeks or so he would dye it to match the rest of his hair. he gave up on that once he got into his mid thirties, though. then the public happily embraced bruce wayne's new silver fox status.
there are a lot of gossip articles or those “plastic surgeon reacts” type of videos discussing whether or not he’s had plastic surgery done. botox, fillers, face lifts, rhinoplasty, etc. photos comparing and analyzing his face from when he was 20 to his face at 40. what the public is sure was at least a $50,000 nose job and face lift is actually just several broken noses, a few skin grafts, and various dental procedures that have occurred during his time as the bat. the cowl has continued to be more and more reinforced over the years, but it doesn’t protect him from everything.
dick:
right in the middle in terms of height and muscle. he's 6'1 and change, but probably says he's 6'2 on his driver's license.
he's definitely leaner than bruce and jason, but his entire body is equally muscular (whereas I imagine bruce and jason having the most of their muscle around their torso/arms). his calves are just as impressive as his biceps. the control he has over his entire body is olympic gymnast-level. (look up pictures of male olympic gymnasts if you want dick grayson body references).
dick has the quintessential Pretty Boy Hair. his hair isn't nearly as curly as jason's is, but it has the perfect amount of wave and length to frame his face perfectly. he's constantly running his fingers through it to push his hair out of his face, but it always falls right back.
dick has the kind of facial features that make everyone jealous. the most beautiful lashes you've ever seen, brilliant gigawatt smile, perfectly placed dimples, naturally full lips, jawline carved from marble. his eyebrows are somehow always perfectly shaped and groomed, despite the fact that he does nothing to them.
his hands are surprisingly calloused and roughed up for a boy as pretty as he is. people shake his hand at a gala and expect to feel a hand that has never worked a day in its life, but they're met with the callouses of a blue collar worker. he had callouses on his hands at age 8 that adult men in their 40s didn't even have.
he was a very small child, but then he had a ridiculous growth spurt in his teens. he basically went from 5'7 to 5'11 in the span of a few months when he was 15. alfred was having to tailor all of his clothes every few weeks.
he tans very, very easily, but he rarely ever burns. when he was a kid he would spend hours and hours in the wayne manor pool during the summer and never once got a sunburn. trying to put sunscreen on a young dick grayson was like trying to bathe a feral cat. on the rare chance that he does burn, it always turns into the most natural flush across his nose and cheeks.
dick gives the best hugs in the world. a very enthusiastic hugger. he's always unnaturally warm (there's a reason bruce would never get dick to add pants to the robin uniform) and he always smells good. i imagine his signature cologne is some mix of citrus, woods, and sea salt that shouldn't really make sense together, but fits him so well.
he's the type of person that needs to physically exercise nerves or jitters out of his body. jumping up and down, shaking out his wrists/hands, rolling his shoulders, lunges, cracking his neck, etc. jumps and leaps and flips that he could do with his eyes closed, sometimes he still needs to hype himself up before his feet leave the ground.
damian:
damian doesn't ever end up as tall as bruce (something he is secretly very upset about), but he does end up at 6'0 on the dot.
he had sporadic growth spurts between the ages of 13-16, just like bruce did, but he was still only about 5'8 by the time he was entering his senior year of high school. it got to the point that his brothers joked that he'd probably stopped growing and was destined to forever be the littlest brother. much to their intense chagrin, damian grew nearly 4 inches between 12th grade and when he started his med school undergrad.
damian has the trademark pending Wayne Men Shoulders. I'm team "damian is practically the spitting image of talia," but you get one look at damian's shoulders and know he is a wayne. I see him developing more more of a swimmer's build once he gets older; broad shoulders, muscular back, but with a narrower waist and leaner muscles.
the craziest bedhead you've ever seen in your life. his hair has very little wave to it, but it is crazy dense and crazy thick (you will never see him with a receeding hairline). that's part of the reason he's gotta keep his hair upright and spiky with gel; otherwise he looks like he just stuck his finger in an electrical socket.
he gets freckles across his nose and cheekbones that only come out when he's been in the sun for a while, something he gets from talia. they will almost completely disappear from his face during the gotham winter, but one weekend spent on the kent farm with jon during the summer and damian comes back to the manor with a full face of freckles.
I can see damian having very expressive features when he's not trying to mask them. he has a really deep furrow in between his brows (something I imagine bruce having as well) that comes out when he's focusing really intently, or when he's brooding. speaking of brooding, damian has a very distinct pouty/grumpy face that he insists he does not have. the batbrows come out in full force, along with the eyebrow furrow, and his lips form a little pouty frown. it's amplified 10x when stands with his arms crossed. it's an expression that is somehow a mix of "grumpy little kid who was told they can't have ice cream for breakfast" and "crotchety old man sitting in a park waiting to feed birds."
with the exception of bruce's fancy watches, damian is the only one of the boys that I can actually see wearing jewelry on a regular basis. I imagine that a lot of the jewelry he wears are pieces that were once talia's, some of the few things of sentimental value he was allowed to have in the league. things like simple chain necklaces or beaded bracelets that he can hide with a long sleeve or a higher collar. maybe a few jeweled or signet rings. maybe he gets his earlobes or his helix pierced when he's older. the only piece of jewelry he has from bruce is one of thomas' old watches that bruce gives damian when he gets accepted into medical school.
very, very nice hands. the kind of hands that practically scream "i use a $100 hand cream and take care of my cuticles." talia was very strict with teaching him good grooming habits, and it definitely paid off. you'll never see damian with hang nails or chewed fingernails. once he gets into his med school residency program and is washing/sanitizing his hands 100 times a day, he experiences his first bout of chapped hands. he calls talia for advice and sure enough, a package appears at his doorstep within 24 hours with 6 different hand creams (shea butter, goats milk, glycerin, jojoba oil, etc) and multiple vials of homemade cuticle oil, along with a pair of cotton gloves to wear at night.
tim:
last, but certainly not least, tim is the smallest of all of the batboys. at 5'10, he's not short by any means, but he's the only one out of his brothers to not break 6'0.
I am sick and tired of the twinkified!tim agenda. tim was always going to be more lanky and thinner than the other bats, just genetically speaking, but he's doing the same training regimen and fighting the same goons the rest of the bats are fighting. by no means is he unfit or not muscular. in my head, tim's got the sleeper build locked down. if he's wearing baggy clothes or long sleeves, you'd think he's just a pretty typical skinny white dude, but the second he wears shorter sleeves or the bottom of his shirt rides up when he pulls a sweatshirt off, people around him are doing double takes.
tim is a really, really terrible knuckle cracker. and yes I am projecting this from myself. it's one of his little "brain break habits" that he does when he's pouring over a case and needs to reset his brain. and it doesn't just stop at his knuckles. he'll crack his spine, his neck, his elbows, his wrists. basically any joint that he's capable of cracking? sounds like a glow stick. he has been yelled at multiple times during stakeouts because they can hear him cracking his fingers over the coms.
I can see him having very, very faint freckles across his nose. they were probably more prominent when he was little, but have now faded to the point where you can really only see them if you're up close and personal. if he actually pulled himself away from a computer screen and spent more time outside in the sun, they might darken a bit.
tim very rarely smiles with his teeth. he used to when he was a kid, but then he got braces, and jack and janet didn't like the way family photos looked with timmy's mouthful of metal. even after he got his braces off, he still doesn't smile with his teeth. instead, he has two different closed mouth smiles. there's the "fancy gala press photo" smile that doesn't really reach his eyes, but was perfected by his parents before he reached double digits. then there's his actual smile, the one that his friends and family catch in candid pictures, where the force of his grin makes his eyes scrunch together and his long-hidden dimples emerge from hiding. look at this picture if u want to see what i'm talking about.
some of the worst posture you've ever witnessed in your life. no amount of ergonomic desk chairs or posture correcting braces can fix it. it's also his casual resting position. if he's sitting in a chair or on the couch, he's curled his legs up in front of him. if he's actually fallen asleep in his bed and not hunched over his desk, he's tucked himself into a ball, roly poly style. someone unshrimp him please, i'm begging you.
you may think olivia rodrigo wrote the line "i think that you're killer, with your floppy hair" about louis partridge. you'd be wrong. she actually wrote it about timothy jackson drake. my source? shhhh dude just trust me. bruce and alfred are always nagging him to get a haircut, because surely his hair is getting into his eyes? what they don't know is that his floppy hair is responsible for 70% of his rizz. (except for that fuckass bowl cut. baby timmy was in the trenches with that one).
his lips are always busted and cracked. it's partially because he chews on his lips when he's really focused or when he's stressed, and partially because of just plain ol' dehydration. it's gotten so bad that sometimes he doesn't even register how cracked and bloody his lips are until he drinks or eats something acidic or salty, and then he's Very Aware of it. get this man a glass of water and a burts bees please and thank you.
his hands and feet are Always cold. tim drake, anemia king. fuzzy socks are always a much appreciated gift for him, even if he usually ends up losing one and wearing them mismatched. if he's feeling particularly annoying he'll walk up behind his friends or his siblings and stick his freezing cold iceberg hands down the back collar of their shirt. this habit has gotten him dangerously close to impalement multiple times.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
✦ content. . . scent headcanons for modern au, part one, ft. corvus, enjin, semiu, bro, tamsy, gris, follo, tomme, august, zodyl, jabber, and bundus
corvus ; comforting, expensive, rich, mysterious, just like the man himself.
he smells like staying in a cute little café, the lingering scent of fresh coffee mixing with the soft, silky blend of vanilla ice cream and hot espresso. the scent of rum adds richness that's only enhanced by warm spices like cardamom, cinnamon, and clove, but it's not too overpowering.
enjin ; balance of smoky and creamy sweetness and a hint of citrus.
he smells like he just came back from having a cigarette after attending a nice dinner, and the smoky scent isn't too much. coconut and nutmeg adds a touch of milky sweetness and warm spice, while bergamot and benzoin bring in that citrus-y orange smell and soft vanilla touch that makes him smell mouthwateringly good.
semiu ; romantic, sweet night after a long walk through a garden.
she smells so inviting, yet also out of everyone's league. the scent of sweet cherries melts into the cacao buttery richness, adding a juicy, fruitiness. the floral notes of jasmine and rose bring out a lush, honeyed sweetness together, and the cedarwood gives that extra woody depth.
bro ; sweet, a bit rugged, comforting, and clearly loved by dear.
he smells like he's been in a warm kitchen all day, thanks to how often he's picking up and giving a big hug to dear. fresh cookies blend with the smell of cinnamon and salted caramel, cozy and warm. sandalwood is smooth and creamy as well, his natural musk just making him smell manly and strong. and with how often he's working on his beloved car, he's always gonna have that lingering scent of motor oil stuck on his hands.
tamsy ; sitting next to an open window on a nice, breezy day with a cup of mint tea.
literally, he smells like simple, quiet luxury. the mint is cooling and only makes the scent of green tea feel fresh and earthy in the best ways. orange blossom adds an extra touch of citrus, blending with the high quality fabrics of the sweaters and blankets he uses. and of course, the incense he lights always sticks to him, a relaxing, tranquil smell.
gris ; refined and cool, definitely smells like a craftsman with a soft and gentle side.
he smells like an old, yet cared for workshop, honestly. the smell of leather works well with the scent of oak, sturdy, earth, and rich. toasted coconut smells nice and warm, balancing well with the eucalyptus that adds that cool, sharp scent. and the rose softens him overall, sweet and floral. just like bro, his hands and sometimes his hair get stuck with that scent of motor oil until he gets in the shower.
follo ; energetic mixing with cheerfulness, smells like what hanging with him feels like.
dorky sweetheart incarnate if it could be turned into a smell. fresh ginger paired with the cream soda give him a spicy and vanilla sweetness that you can taste. raspberry adds some juicy tartness while lime enhances the tartness with that bitter, sour scent. hibiscus adds a nice sweet, floral scent that balances out the tartness, almost like a sweet hibiscus tea.
tomme ; sweet and cute, like specially made strawberry desserts.
she literally smells like the prettiest pastry shop, the sugary scent matching her sweet, compassionate personality. she smells like vanilla and strawberry treats, creamy and warm with a fruity, syrupy accent. the marshmallow adds onto the vanilla, fluffy and comforting. freesia adds that fresh, airy fragrance that keeps it from being too warm, and the tart, sweetness of raspberry adds the perfect balance.
august ; odd yet good mix of scents from bouncing from the kitchen to his workshop.
with the amount of sweets he has, it's no wonder he manages to smell more than just fabric and glue. he always carries the scent of apple pie, baked apples, cinnamon, and pastry, he smells so yummy. the butterscotch and roasted pecans add a rich sugary smell and warm, smoky nuttiness. the scent of leather and suede still linger from how often he's in his workshop, but it still manages to smell good.
zodyl ; bold and seductive scent with an underlying feeling of danger...be careful.
he smells unbelievably good, smelling like pomegranate, all sweet and tart while the red currants that add an extra wine-like fruitiness. the amber warms his scent and that muskiness gives him a manly undertone. the grapefruit is refreshing, mixing with the faint scent of smoke, the citrus smell bitter but attractive.
jabber ; chaotic yet comforting? like the moments after a thunderstorm.
imagine being in front of a fire place while the window is open and its storming out. that's jabber, the smoky, warm smell of moroccan incense (woody, floral, and rich.) the toasted marshmallow-y scent smells like heaven, tonka bean adding to the sweet, vanilla scent with a touch of toasted almond. the vetiver adds an earthy scent that's just so him, mixing with the scent of ozone that brings in that sharp electric scent.
bundus ; sophisticated, but inviting, like an expensive lounge only VIPs can access.
smells like what he looks like, old yet refined. the smell of the dried tobacco leaves and cedar from his custom made cubans always lingers wherever he goes, the smoked rum blending with it perfectly. suede and light amber wraps the scent together, velvet, smooth, and warm. then the scent of fresh cake adds a bit of sweetness, the sugary smell of frosting softening his heavier scent.
really thinking about sleezy harvey who harasses you at your diner job…you agree to play nice so he won’t trap you in his penthouse and he’s just loving the cat and mouse going on between you two. the back and forth, the bartering for your freedom; it’s foreplay to him. he regularly pulls you into the back of his town car in the back alley of the diner after a long shift for a steamy makeout session while his goons stand guard. you’re kissed breathless and stumble out positively bitten from your lips down to your ankles. harvey’s a gentleman, so he always gives a ride home after.
but he starts to get bold, too bold. his hand worms its way into your pants, his knee pins you in place between your legs, he’s ripping the buttons off your shirt. there’s no pretense to it anymore, he’s a man starved. you’re propped on the hood of his car while he eats you out, already having made his goons turn around so they wouldn’t get a good look at you like this. you’re putty in his hands after he unwillingly gives you the hardest orgasm of your life and allow yourself to be tucked in the crook of his neck on the drive back. you’re too ashamed to even face his men, but really it’s better if you don’t acknowledge them at all. they blow past your apartment and you peak up from under harvey’s coat, asking him where he’s taking you. it’s time the game is over, isn’t it?
jason’s highest form of trust and intimacy is sleeping in the same bed as him…feeling safe enough to be unconscious around you is better than sex to him
thinking ab being in an on and off relationship with jason todd . . . . . smut . he cums quick cs he’s a loser in love .
the unspoken boundaries are pretty clear, he’s not yours and you’re not technically his but every time you two cross paths it always begins again the same way with a nasty makeout next to his bike while the darkness of east river rushes on and his hands are palming your ass, then a shabby little date and hours spent catching up on nothing at all. it always ends the same way, with plans that he doesn’t show for, excuses that don’t quite add up and arguing over the phone like this is highschool.
but the thing about jason is he just doesn’t quit. he can’t quit you. so when he confesses to dick that he hasn’t slept with anyone in months, he literally laughs in jason’s face. because there’s no way?
that admission comes back to bite him in the ass when he finally gets you alone again. when it starts all over and it’s hot and heavy and he’s got you under him, cock pushing into your slick gummy walls with twitching pulses. he’s begging himself not to cum because he swears to god his cock has never been this fucking swollen or sensitive before, and if he even were to actually admit it, he just couldn’t fathom the idea of fucking anyone else.
“missed you... fuck—” he stutters out, sweat dripping off his chest and onto yours where he has you folded beneath him, scarred arms flexing with the effort of rearing his hips into yours. “missed this pussy, doll.”
“yeah, i don’t doubt that.” you let out a guttural moan over his confession. all attitude dies in your throat when his head falls to your stomach, a hot pink tongue slipping out to lick the sweat from your body, and up, up, up, it goes, latching onto one of your aching nipples.
“i swear, you’re gonna make me cum already...” he moans like he’s been shot. “what... what the fuck are you doin’ to me?”
your thighs shake and you tense up tight, toes curling and legs locking as he yanks you open onto him, burying himself impossibly deeper in missionary. “fuck, fuck, fuck— jay!” you squeal, hurdling towards ecstasy. “fuck me harder.”
not even five minutes in and he has you stupid. the benefits of getting back together, sorta.
jason grins wickedly. “uh huh, you want that? wanna make a fuckin’ mess, doll?” you can’t even speak. “show me how you look when your man’s fucking you... yeah?” your abdomen is coiled tight and the sound of your pussy squelching open and molding to him is obscene.
his name leaves your mouth in a scream and his weight presses you down immediately. “so good, baby, keep squeezing it like that... fuuuuck!”
you expect him to maybe change positions again, to be mean and pull out, maybe toy with your swollen pussy untile you’re begging like he always does, but no, in the middle of a drawn out moan singing from your lips you feel a splash of heat.
then, jason heaves like a wounded animal, hugging your body impossibly tight to his.
neither of you speak for several seconds.
“did you just fucking cum—” “not a word about it.” comes simultaneously.
“oh my god,” you howl with laughter. “a minute man.”
“hey!” he eases off you a little bit to argue. “that was several minutes. several good minutes—”
he huffs when you kiss his jaw, his fingers finding your hair in soft strokes. “weren’t joking when you said you missed me, then?”
“laugh it up, peanut gallery.” jason grumbles. but he smiles, you see it. he feels throughly humiliated, of course, but he can’t really find it in him to care. “i missed you, yeah, happy now? might as well put a lock and key on it, only does this shit for you anyway.”
you graciously bite back any sliver of tease you have left in you. well, barely. “it’s mine?” you whisper.
his eyes nearly glaze over when he nods, and you can feel the twitch in his muscles, hear the way his voice goes a little higher. “always been. always yours.” your arms wrap around him and he kisses you slow and sweet, then sloppy, but unhurried, just needy. “m’ yours.”
“do you wanna...” you grin, with a playful shrug and he scoffs right in your face.
“yeah, way to ruin the moment, sexcrates,” he lifts himself off you and you giggle helplessly. in your fit of amusement, he takes you by the ankles and hauls you down the bed, prying your legs open and wasting no time.
“jay! what are you...” but he only looks up and you and clicks his tongue.
“what? i’ve gotta even the score,” he says, licking a fat stripe over the length of your used pussy. immediately, you shudder and he laughs, the fucker laughs. “cause we both know none of those scrubs you’ve been with take care of her like me.”
you weep as he eats you, if you can even call it that because hes suckling at your clit, parting your folds with his fingers and fucking his tongue into your hole. “say it,” he coos.
“jay, please!” you writhe against his mouth and he groans, easing a finger in and then a second, stretching you open and pushing you higher, so high you’re scared of how fast you’re about to cum. he’s the devil, you think.
“c’mon, say it,” his lips are swollen pink and starving. “you can do it, tell me.”
your back arches harshly as you cry, “it’s yours— fuck, it’s yours, only yours!”
jason todd, the guy you’re not with but are so with, lets out a shrill moan, his hips bucking into the mattress where his cock weeps pre at the slit. when you sieze and cum for him, all the breath in your body leaving you, he doesn’t even let you rest.
instead, he kisses your sensitive bud while you shiver from the overuse, the heel of his palm grinding down and smearing your slick.
DESK PET . cockwarming your gf barbara (kinda) pairing ! barbara gordon x fem!reader cw ! porn without plot, strap usage, dom!babs, slight degradation, orgasm denial, babs is a total meanie (hot) nicknames used : baby, honey, stupid girl, slut, pet, brat, sweet girl . 📓 sorry if u can tell this is so self indulgent, she’s lit my gf 🤷🏾♀️
It’s too hot today. The Clock Tower was a sauna.
The jacket you wore was thrown lazily over one of the many desks swarmed with piles of folders, the straps of your top nearly sticking to your skin and the fabric at the underside of your breasts already slightly damp and darkening.
“Barbie…” you whined, the sound of another shlick drop of your pussy lips stretched around the gummy silicone of your girlfriend’s cock punctuating your need. “F-fuuuck—!” You eased up again, all the way to the tip, then arched your back to drop down again, harder.
Your little skirt was barely there, bunched up around your waist, and your panties long since shoved to the side. Every drop of your hips made your girlfriend’s cock press against that perfect spot inside you, drawing a shaky breath from your lips.
“Come on, you can take it,” Barbara hummed into your ear, tilting her hips upwards as more of your creamy slick dripped down the shaft to soak the seat of her pants. “So good, baby…” she whispered, a free hand coming up to palm one of your aching tits under your top, rolling and pinching the tight bud between her fingertips. “Letting me stretch you out like this.”
“So big,” you cried, pressing a palm down against one of her thighs for leverage as you rolled your hips back and forth then back again in slow grinds. “Filling me up so good… wanna cum—”
Barbara hissed out a moan between her teeth, swatting your hand away and clutching you tighter against her with one muscled arm, the other pinching your clit between a forefinger and thumb before circling it gently, then furiously then gently again, coaxing you to the edge.
“Already? You’re so spoiled—” she grunted, fucking up into the mess between your legs, your ass flush against her pelvis and the pressure on her clit making the back of her neck burn with heat. “Can’t even sit still for two seconds. Climbing on my lap like a needy brat when you know I’m busy. Just needed me, huh? Needed me to fuck you full, baby… so needy for me… it’s okay…” she cooed into your hair.
Your mouth fell open in an uh! uh! uh! over and over again as she ground against that gummy spot inside you, your thighs shaking against hers.
“My stupid girl,” she rasped, hot against your ear. “You can do it— fuck— cum for me like this, honey.” she leaned back, taking you with her as your back pressed sticky against her heaving chest and your hips ground down to chase the aching pleasure she gave you. “Love when your pretty girl fucks you like this, baby?”
“Barbie— yes—” your hips jerked at the feel of her thrusts, your body jolting upward and tits bouncing as she held you down and fucked up into you like a toy. “Ahh— fuck, yes—like that, just like that—” you babbled breathlessly.
The sickening crackle sound of comm link coming in made you clench hard. It was Nightwing shouting into Barbara’s ear — something about a detonator, a pipe bomb or whatever, you weren’t even hearing correctly. You were so close, so close, if only your Barbie could keep fucking you just like this—
“Stay,” her arm banded around your front as she sat up straight, your pussy flush against the hilt and you whimpered at the loss of your impending orgasm as another voice crackled through her earpiece.
“Yeah, I’m still here. Go ahead.” She answered smoothly, typing one-handed while her other hand slipped between your legs to abuse your swollen clit with absentminded circles.
You turned your head, lips brushing her jaw. “Baby, please… I’ll be good, I swear. Just fuck me, please—”
“Nightwing, I’ve got eyes on the east entrance. You’ve got two hostiles, one that looks trigger happy. But handle it quietly...”
You whined, long and needy.
“You’re never good,” Barbara grunted into your ear. “You’re a spoiled brat that came here to distract me and now you’re whining because you’re too full and too wet to handle getting fucked like you asked.” The hand on your hip suddenly pulled you down harder, forcing the strap even deeper.
Your moan was barely muffled against her neck as the obscene sound of your pussy leaking on her cock made your face burn.
“You’re so fucking messy…” she laughed under her breath, right up against your ear. “You want everybody to know you’re a desk pet? Sitting on my cock, creaming all over my lap, and still whining for more?”
“Barbie…” you whined softly, trying to rock down again, but her hand tightened on your hip, stilling you instantly.
You were so soaked. Every slow clench around her strap made more slick drip down the base, coating her lap. “I said stay,” she murmured against your ear, voice low enough that the comms wouldn’t pick it up. “Sit there and wait like a polite slut.”
You whined like it hurt, tears leaking from the corners of your eyes as your pussy clenched and clenched but gained no relief. She rolled forward, pulling her chair closer to the desk and spreading your thighs wider over hers, as she stayed buried deep inside you.
You bit your lip, face burning. Three minutes passed, then five. You watched the gigantic hands of the clock beyond the glass tick by as Barbara typed one-handed, the other still barely stroking over your weeping clit.
Before the tenth minute, you caved. “I can’t help it… you’re so deep. Please, I need you to move—”
“Not yet.” Her tone was sweet but firm, the one that always made your stomach flip and she gave your hip a warning squeeze. “Sit on it a little longer, baby. Just keep me warm in this pretty pussy,” she said. When your bottom lip trembled, she turned her head and kissed you softly, the heel of her palm pressing down deliciously against your clit as you sobbed into her mouth.
“There’s my sweet girl,” Barbara whispered. “Warming my cock so good while I work… say it to me.”
You whimpered, clenching around her again. Your thighs trembled from holding the position for so long, as your pussy fluttered, begging for relief. “I’m… your sweet girl. Warming your cock so good, Babs.”
She smiled proudly at you and pressed a soft kiss to your temple, then turned back to her monitors like you weren’t impaled on her cock and dripping everywhere. Still, her voice never wavered on the comms. “Copy that. Keep me updated.”
You sat there trembling, waiting. The click-clack of her keyboard wasn’t anywhere near as loud as the heartbeat between your legs.
Eventually, you rocked your hips again, grinding down just enough to get friction on your clit and a soft moan slipped out before you could stop it. “I wanna cum, please… I’ve been good—”
“What did I say? Did you go dumb already ‘cause I’m stuffing you full?” Her hand reached up to grip your jaw, turning your face so you had to look at her eyes, all dark, amused, and full of heat.
You buried your face in her neck, breathing hard. “You’re so mean, Barbie…”
“Keep calling me that and I might just let you have it,” she warned, “but only after I finish this. So be patient.” Her free hand stroked your back gently while the other kept typing.
“Now quit squirming. The sooner I finish this, the sooner I can bend you over this desk and fuck you like you need it.”
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
꙼ᩚ . . . RASPBERRY PI . building a cyberdeck with bf tim !
pairings . tim drake x fem!reader ⋮ wc . 4.2k ⋮ fluff ⋮ warnings . none, pure fluff with a hint of suggestive language. nicknames used : babe, baby and sweetheart. notes . miscellaneous tech jargon + very self indulgent and sorta dialogue heavy, maybe ooc tim who knows... first tim fic kinda nervy + also new fic layout ! ⋮ art creds : @/quezartt ⋮
The rain hammered against the floor-to-ceiling windows of Tim’s penthouse apartment like it was trying to break in.
Gotham’s usual gloom had turned into a full downpour by the time the sun usually broke through the clouds, morphing the morning skyline into a blur of bruised pinks and gunmetal greys.
While inside, the world felt miles away. The only lights came from the soft glow of a few dim lamps, a monitor lazily blinking through the open door of an adjacent room, and the TV playing classics your boyfriend ever-so-graciously — albeit illegally — siphoned straight from Toonami Aftermath like premium cable television.
“Moon Princess Halation!”
The exclamation echoed from the wide flat screen and you snorted under your breath, knees tucked under you on the massive sectional as you hunched over the coffee table decorated with scattered tools. Tiny screwdrivers, flush cutters, tiny spools of wire, custom keycaps for an even tinier keyboard and a LED strip that cost more than you wanted to know.
“When’s Yu-Gi-Oh starting?”
A warm, bare chest pressed against your back while two arms slid around your waist. Tim — the boyfriend in question — groaned through a yawn as his chin dropped heavy onto your shoulder, his messy dark hair tickling your cheek. He smelled like sleep and the faint sharpness of menthol from whatever bruise cream he’d been swearing by lately.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” you murmured, not looking away from the ribbon cable you were carefully threading into the hollowed-out bottom half of an old Nintendo DS where the second LCD screen should’ve been, but was now waiting to be filled with the custom components you’d been collecting for weeks.
“Mmm. I was,” he rasped, voice still gravelly. One of his hands splayed across your stomach under the hem of your shirt, thumb stroking slow, absent circles. “Then I woke up and my favorite person wasn’t in bed. A sort of cruel and unusual punishment.”
You leaned back into him with a scoff, letting his body heat soak through your clothes, careful not to press back too hard because you remembered the look of the bruise along his ribs — that you assumed was still an ugly bloom of purple and yellow from the last time you looked at it while he slept.
“Hi, baby,” you said softly.
“Morning to you too, sweetheart.” Tim kissed the side of your neck, lazy and lingering, then peered over your shoulder at the half-assembled mess that was his cyberdeck project — or, formerly his cyberdeck project but now yours, since he was supposed to be horizontal and useless for at least two more days.
He pulled away from you only to come around the front. “You’re going too tight on that ribbon cable. The hinge is gonna pinch when we close it.”
“We?” You lifted your head just enough to glare at him. “Backseat building already and you’ve been awake for thirty seconds.”
Tim’s hair was longer now, falling into his eyes in wild strands that made him look softer — distracting enough to overshadow a dark bruise fading at the curve of his jaw, if the fact that he was shirtless hadn’t made you dizzy enough to almost not scold him.
“I’m not backseat building,” he protested, all feigned innocence, even as he reached past you to gently adjust the tension on the cable with two careful fingers. “I’m… offering emotional support. From a very horizontal-adjacent position.”
You flattened the cable in place just as his other hand reached over to try and steal the flush cutters you were working with.
“Down, boy.” You smacked his wrist and he whined, immediately dropping the tool into your awaiting palm. “This is my work station, by the way — if you haven’t realized — and I don’t want your grimey hands all over it.”
“Thought you liked my grimey hands.” He leaned over to kiss the side of your face, then your cheek, and another one right below your ear. The slight wince from the pull of his sore ribs was obvious, accompanied by the nasty bruise still on display exactly where you left it, like a painful kiss at the curve of his ribcage.
“You don’t love me anymore? Is that it?” Tim complained.
You did. Even with the bruises. Especially with the bruises, because they were proof he was home and safe enough to be annoying.
“Do not even think of sitting down, you need to get back to bed.”
On the TV, Sailor Moon struck another dramatic pose and the music swelled to a crescendo as Tim pretended he didn’t hear you at all.
“I came to watch Yu-Gi-Oh actually,” he hummed matter-of-factly while he sprawled out on the massive sectional, stretching his legs out and draping himself against your side. “Not to see you. Or the Sailor.”
You laughed, tangling one of your legs with his. “What is your deal with Sailor Moon?”
Tim’s hand lazily found your thigh, squeezing gently as he shifted closer, peeking over your shoulder. “I don’t have a deal,” he mumbled. “I just think it’s unrealistic that the bad guys wait for her to transform before the actual fight happens.”
“Right… Because Yu-Gi-Oh is so realistic.”
“Well. If you’re asking—” He stretched one long arm toward the coffee table without untangling his legs from yours, grunting at the flex of his aching muscles. “An argument can be made about its applications to any kind of strategy based initia—
“Again, I don’t recall this being a collaborative effort.” You swatted his arm away. “Shoo.”
Tim made a pathetic little sound and snaked his arms around you again, only tighter, before his hands eventually settled on your hips and pulled you closer, just until your back was flush against his chest.
“You should be recovering,” you continued. “R and R remember? Rest and relaxation—” You shifted so you could face him better, easing yourself up onto his lap gently at first, waiting for him to give you the full go ahead.
“I am recovering,” he mumbled, lips brushing your jaw. He didn’t wait another second before pulling you down onto him, stretching his legs out on either side of you with a sigh. “This is like homeopathic medicine. Skin-to-skin contact, all that stuff. Very healing.”
You shook your head, a hand reaching behind you blindly to push the hair back from his face, your fingertips brushing the faint scar near his hairline before sliding between the strands to scratch lightly at his scalp.
“You are the worst patient on the planet.”
“And you…” he whispered, pressing a slow kiss to the curve of your neck. “Are sooo pretty…” Then another. “When you’re concentrating.” And another, working his way up until he could nuzzle right behind your ear. “It’s distracting me from how much everything hurts.”
You melted despite yourself, tilting your head to give him better access. “Manipulation tactics. I see you, Drake.”
“Are they working?” He whispered. Your stomach did a flip.
“Unfortunately.”
You could feel him grinning against your skin. “Still got it.”
One of his hands wandered down to your thigh again, just to rest there, while the other slipped down to where you held the flesh cutters in your palm against a cable. This time, you let him intervene — his longer fingers sliding between yours to grip the tool a little tighter.
“Don’t backseat me,” you warned, as he guided your hand in the opposite direction you would’ve gone. “I’m serious.”
“I won’t,” he said. “Scout’s honor.”
And he kept to his promise for a little less than two minutes.
Tim’s lips puckered against the skin where your neck and shoulder met, trailing up the line of your neck until he reached the curve of your jaw, burying his face there with the tiniest kisses.
“Maybe,” he whispered. “And this is just a suggestion,” he continued, voice low. “Let’s... not use PiSugar for power supply…”
“Oh my God, you promised.” You groaned, but there was no real heat in it. His lips were too warm against your skin, his hair tickling you softly as he nuzzled closer and closer.
“I’m not helping,” he murmured with faux innocence, voice still raspy from sleep and the remnants of last night’s patrol that he was rightfully benched from midway. “Just… offering constructive criticism. From a very restful position. And I think that this… this just isn’t it, babe.”
Tim paused to shake the flush cutters from your palm, instead forcing you to pick up the little, black rectangular power cell.
You slapped his wrist in protest and he blew a raspberry against your cheek — so sloppy and wet it made you recoil with disgust and a squealed ‘Ew, you fucking creep—!’
He tossed the PiSugar cell out of the DS’ hollowed shell and toward the pile of unused tools with a victorious smirk.
“Muuuch better,” he said. “Why are we using PiSugar anyway? I’m kinda offended…”
You twisted in his lap just enough to shoot him a look as you rubbed the wetness from your cheek. “It’s cheap and it works. And I would prefer not throwing money at an overpriced battery solution, Tim.”
He made a scandalized little noise, arms tightening around your waist as he pulled you flush against his bare chest. “Now, with all due respect—”
Tim stopped himself when you glared at him hotly.
“Babe. Darling. Smartest girl in the whole wide world—” He continued. “You did not see me use PiSugar or some cheap ass LiPo pack when I made your first cyberdeck. I am disappointed.”
“Jeez, sorry Dad.” You snorted, leaning back into him despite yourself and he hugged you close. “Maybe I just didn’t wanna outsource a battery fit for a supercomputer… It’s not like I’m catching criminals as a hobby.”
“Dad?” Tim laughed softly, the sound rumbling through his chest and against your skin. “Low blow. And no— it’s reasonable and it works better. Geekworm is the go-to, baby. I’m ordering one later.”
“No,” you objected immediately, easing up and reaching for the discarded PiSugar just to make a point. “That is exactly what we’re not gonna do. It’s like fifty bucks, Tim.”
“More like eighty with shipping,” he corrected, completely unbothered, as he hooked his chin over your shoulder again, pulling you back into him. “But I’ll have it here by tomorrow if I—”
“We are not dropping eighty dollars for a battery, you capitalist freak. The PiSugar is fine.” You elbowed him lightly as you tried to squirm free from his grip. “And seriously, go away— I have to finish this—”
He made an exasperated sound, somewhere between a whine of protest and a sigh, then pressed another warm kiss just below your ear. “But I’m bored. And you’re so... so hot when you’re all focused…” Another kiss to the back of your neck, then another, and back up again to press one more against your cheek. “Let me help.”
“Leslie said intensive bed rest. And no activities that require more than ten minutes worth of focus,” you reminded him, trying — and failing — to focus as you reached down to thread another ribbon cable.
“Oh yeah?” Tim’s palms slipped under the hem of your shirt and idled over your stomach, squeezing gently, while his fingers traced silken patterns that made it very hard to keep your hands steady. “Nothing at all?” Your entire body felt hot as he whispered in your ear.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, perv. It’s not happening,” you laughed. “Wouldn’t want you to get a Charlie Horse and die.”
“Okay, mood obliterated.” He deflated. “Even doctors overreact sometimes. I am fine.”
“You came home looking like you lost a fight with a tank. Again.” You looked at him over your shoulder. “And you told Lonnie I was beating you at home, when you know damn well—”
“Firstly, that was a joke made in good faith that is much closer to the truth than you like to admit—”
“—I will ignore that because I refuse to give into the stereotype of punching you in the mouth.”
Tim continued, teeth grazing your shoulder. “Second, it was the line that failed me,” he corrected, lips brushing your jaw. “And I won—”
“You got punched into another building. Then fell from the highest floor of said building while trying to zipline your way back down.”
“Semantics.” Tim shrugged. “Your boy’s always a winner, baby.” Another kiss, this one so much sweeter, your face felt hot. “C’mon…. Let me help. Just the cable management. I’m excellent at cable management. World-class, even.”
You turned your head just enough to glare at him again.
His eyes were soft and heavy-lidded, his tousled hair falling into them, and that faint bruise along his jaw making him look unfairly pathetic, in an endearing way.
“Terrible at staying put, is what you are.”
“Please? I’ll be good.” Tim blinked slowly. “Scout’s honor? Again?”
“You were never a scout,” you laughed, your prior defenses now rendered null and void. “Like, ever.”
“Have pity on me,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to the corner of your mouth. “I’m hurting all over, you know?”
You frowned. “I’m being manipulated again, I think.”
Then another kiss, slower, coaxing. “Make me all better?” He pouted. “Please, sweetheart?”
“Tim—”
His lips met yours softly, and you instinctively turned to him for more, the kiss lazy and slow but full of heat. You could feel him smile against your mouth before he pulled away, forcing that same pout to keep his grin at bay.
Then you sighed dramatically and handed him the flush cutters. “Okay, fine, whatever. Cable management only. But if you even think about ordering that Geekworm before we finish this section, you’re sleeping alone.”
He gasped dramatically. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me, rich boy.”
“I’d like to.” Tim’s grin was immediate and devastating and you audibly boo’d him as he shifted you both slightly so you were still mostly in his lap but could both reach the coffee table easier. His longer hair kept falling forward as he leaned in, and you couldn’t resist reaching up to tuck it behind his ear.
For the next hour you worked like that—tangled together, half-lazy, trading slow kisses between crimping cables and snapping accessories shut.
His arms framed you on either side, one hand steadying the DS shell while the other passed you tools or held wires in place and every time he leaned forward, his bare chest pressed warm against your back, chin hooked over your shoulder so you were cheek-to-cheek, breathing the same air.
Whenever he reached too far and the ache in his ribs made him wince, you’d scold him gently and kiss the fading bruise on his jaw like it would help heal the rest of him. He’d just smile that small, deafeningly self-satisfied smile and pull you back in.
At one point Tim paused, peering at the exposed internals. “Hey, want an LED status light right here?” He tapped a spot near the hinge with one long finger. “Just a little power indicator. Would look sick when it’s closed.”
You hesitated, then shook your head. “Nah, it’s fine without.”
He gave you a long, knowing look, the corner of his mouth slightly curving upwards. “Uh-huh.”
Two minutes later he was carefully soldering a tiny LED in place anyway, one arm still looped around your waist to keep you steady against him while his other hand worked with that effortless precision you fell for.
“Tim...”
“Relax. I’ve got a steady hand.” He whispered, teasing. “And I know you want the blinky light, even if you’re scared of the iron.”
“I am not scared of soldering,” you lied, cheeks warming as you watched the focused pinch of his brows. The faint smell of solder mixed with the earthy petrichor drifting through one of the cracked windows, and the faintest ray of morning sunshine struggled against the rainclouds.
“Mhm. But you want the blinky light,” he murmured, blowing gently on the fresh solder joint. “I’ve got you mapped.”
“You’re the worst,” you whispered, but you were smiling as you turned your head to press a kiss to his temple. “Fucking show-off.”
“Your show-off,” Tim corrected happily, a dopey grin on his face. “And you’ll thank me when it looks sick as hell at night.”
The cyberdeck build came together slowly but surely after that with your vision and his refinements until it eventually started to look less of a disassembled mess and more like something usable.
The rain kept falling in steady sheets outside as the final Sailor Moon episode on the television faded into the opening chords of Yu-Gi-Oh.
Tim perked up slightly at the familiar theme, unable to hide the excited childlike quirk in his brows, but his movements were growing slower and heavier as the work became more about holding you than building— the little kisses pressed to your shoulder, the pads of his fingertips thrumming against the warmth of your stomach, the feel of his unclothed heartbeat against your spine took up more and more of your attention.
Between the distant sound of Yu-Gi-Oh and the occasional soft click of tools, Tim’s breathing also changed behind you, his body hunching forward against your back in a drowsy fold.
“You falling asleep on me already?” you whispered, amused.
“Halfway there,” he admitted, voice slurred and muffled against the nape of your neck. “...‘S your fault,” you felt him smile a little, nuzzling deeper into your skin, or trying to. “You’re warm and you smell like my shampoo… and you’re doing tech things…. You’re so beautiful.”
You sat the tiny keyboard down carefully and twisted in his lap to face him properly, straddling his thighs. His eyes were half-lidded, his eyelashes fluttering gently with that unguarded softness he only ever showed when he was here and all yours.
“Poor baby,” you cooed, brushing the hair back from his forehead, fingers trailing over his hairline. “Got beat up by bad guys on national television.”
“It was a local broadcast, please.” Tim deadpanned, tilting his head to catch your fingers with a lazy kiss. “And you’re supposed to be nice to me…” his teeth grazed the tips of your fingers.
“You’re spoiled, you’ll live.” You leaned in and kissed him, tasting the faint mint from his toothpaste and all those assorted flavors of him needing you. He sighed into it, one hand sliding up your back under your shirt, a warm palm splayed across your skin.
“Take me down a peg,” Tim hummed lazily, pressing another lazy kiss to your mouth. “I like that.”
“Pervert.”
Still, you kissed him again as the rain kept pouring and Yu-Gi-Oh dueled in the background. When you pulled back, his eyes were brighter despite the exhaustion and he pressed his forehead against yours with a long sigh.
“Does it hurt bad?” You asked, carefully trying to shift your body over his lap to ease the weight on him. You could feel the faint twitch of muscles every time you moved, but he never complained.
“Stay,” he whispered as his arms tightened around your waist, pulling you closer against his chest while the half-finished cyberdeck was forgotten on the coffee table next to you. “Hurts less when you’re right here.”
You hesitated, hovering just a little. “Tim… your ribs—”
“Are fine,” he murmured, already tugging you down with gentle insistence. “C’mere. I want you on top of me. Proper R and R.”
You let out a soft laugh but gave in, carefully lowering your full weight until your chest pressed against his and you were nearly melded to him. You stayed tense for a second, hyperaware of every bruise while Tim just hummed contentedly, one hand stroking slowly up and down your spine.
“See?” he whispered against your hair. “Perfect. You feel good like this.”
You relaxed bit by bit, melting into the steady rhythm of his breathing and the warmth of his bare skin as the rain drummed steadily against the windows and the low sounds of card duels came from the TV.
“Can you sleep like this?” you asked after a while, pressing a kiss between his brows as his eyelids fluttered closed. Tim murmured an ‘mhm’ and hugged you closer, his head leaned back against the cushioned sectional. “Don’t drool on me though,” you said, burying your face in the side of his neck.
“I do not drool.”
“And I’m Batman.”
Tim snorted, his nostrils flaring from amusement and you kissed his jaw.
After a quiet minute, his voice came out soft and drowsy. “We should make one like the Millennium Puzzle.”
You smiled against his collarbone, tracing patterns on his chest with your fingertip. “You seriously have a problem.”
“Hm, you’ll see my vision soon,” he said, voice low and warm. “Tell me your ideas instead. For the rest of this one, I mean. The layout, the interface, all of it. I wanna hear.”
You shifted a little lower so your chin rested on his sternum, careful not to press on the worst of the bruises.
“Okay… I was thinking the top half could have some custom acrylic designs maybe? I wanna see what I can do with that 3D printer you spent a million bucks on— I can give it a mini computer look… but I like the sort of Y2K gaming console turned high tech spyware concept in my head… if that makes sense, I don’t know—”
Tim’s hand kept stroking your back in slow, lazy circles, his breathing growing softer beneath you. “Mmm… keep going,” he mumbled, eyes already drifting shut. “What about the interface?”
You kept talking softly, describing the power cell you secretly did want just to run a bunch of gaming applications, the messaging interface you wanted to design just to sync with his cyberdeck, how you pictured the whole thing looking and operating like pure magic.
“—and that’s where the Raspberry Pi is gonna go…”
Tim’s responses got quieter, made up of little hums and half-formed words. “...Raspberry Pi.”
“…and maybe a small speaker for gaming effects, we can run an emulator for Yoshi’s Island,” you continued, grinning to yourself. “And Final Fantasy.”
You waited for his usual chuckle followed by some cheeky remark about the longstanding rivalry you two had in all things Final Fantasy concerned. But all you heard were the same slow, even breaths.
“Tim? You still with me?”
No answer. All you could feel was the steady rise and fall of his chest under yours and his arms still loosely wrapped around you like he’d fallen asleep mid-caress.
You lifted your head to get a good look at him, and his face was completely relaxed now, lips slightly parted and messy dark hair splayed across the cushiony sectional in fluffy tufts.
“Tim…” you called out to him in a whisper, but he didn’t shift. “Paging geektopia,” you giggled, nuzzling your nose against his cheek.
He twitched softly in his sleep, fingers tightening around your waist. “M’ awake…” he inhaled deeply through his nostrils, squirming tighter against you. “I’m listenin’.”
You let out a quiet, fond laugh and pressed a gentle kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Sure you are,” you whispered, nuzzling closer.
“Sure I am.” He repeated, grinning with his eyes closed. “Just resting my eyes, sweetheart,” his fingers danced in shapes over the skin of your waist — crooked little circles, lopsided hearts, the occasional RR symbol like he couldn’t help himself.
You stayed draped over him, your weight like a warm blanket that he refused to let shift even an inch.
The rain had softened into a gentle drizzle against the windows, and the Yu-Gi-Oh soundtrack played like a lullaby in the background. Every so often Tim’s fingers would still as sleep coaxed him away, then start up again, chasing the feeling of your skin as if touching you was the gravity holding him here.
“You’re gonna build the Millennium Puzzle cyberdeck with me, right?” he mumbled after a long, quiet minute, voice thick and barely there. “We should… date night… gonna be so cool…”
“Yeah, baby,” you murmured, brushing his hair back again. “We’ll build it together.”
Tim made a soft, contented hum, the sound vibrating against your chest as he murmured to himself. “So many Raspberry Pi’s….”
You chuckled.
Then his arms tightened once more, pulling you impossibly closer. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” you promised softly, pressing one last kiss to his bruised jaw. “Sleep, baby. I’ve got you.”
When you pulled back, Tim was smiling that small, lovedrunk smile, straining his eyes open a tiny fraction. “Love you, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know….” You let your head settle against his chest. “I know…”
His breathing evened out for good after that, deep and slow as his eyelids fell closed, the faint lines of unspoken pain smoothing from his face.
You watched him for a while, peering up through your lashes at the way his jaw relaxed, the flutter of those soft eyelashes against his cheekbones, and that tiny twitch of his mouth like he was still half-dreaming about his own Millenium Puzzle like a little boy on a lazy Saturday morning.
Outside, the rain kept falling while Yu-Gi-Oh played on low and your boyfriend — your stubborn, bruised, brilliant, and finally resting boyfriend — dozed in your arms.
You stayed right there on top of him, listening to the sound of his heartbeat against your ear drowning out everything else, perfectly content to let him sleep as long as he needed.
Within the tangled warmth of your limbs and his, you whispered, “I love you too,” and the rest of Gotham remained blurred away outside the glass as sleep took you too.
🗒️ written and proofread while half asleep so this might be the best and worst thing i’ve ever written. #timnation STAND UP . art creds : @/quezartt
CHAPTER TWO: guy who thinks i'm his ramona flowers or some shit
content warning: some sexual content/smut (VERY BRIEF), timestamps are NOT accurate, MDNI
"Fuck, you look so pretty like that."
Suna Rintaro is in a good mood. It could have something to do with him winning his match or the fact that his image is already starting to turn around just three days after announcing his fake relationship, but really the primary reason for his mood is you.
You, laid out beneath him, chest bare and eyes screwed shut in pleasure, making sweet noises that go straight to his dick. He feels drunk. There's a layer of sweat on his skin. He dips his head down and attaches his lips to your neck.
When it's over, Suna's pulling off the condom, while you rise from the bed and disappear out of the room. Suna lifts his head to stare after you, listening to your footsteps. He's wondering where you've disappeared to, and then he hears the shower turn on. He snorts. You certainly make yourself comfortable.
Twenty minutes later, you emerge from the bathroom wearing nothing but the jersey he gave to you, the one with his name on it. Suna stares for longer than he needs to. "You didn't have to mark me up," you say, sitting down at the edge of the bed. You reach up to tug at the neckline of the jersey and Suna sees it then, the dark bruise blossoming at the curve of your neck. "I'm too old for this shit."
Suna grins. He feels oddly smug. "Sorry, got carried away."
"Yeah, whatever. So are you gonna be a gentleman and sleep on the couch, or a dick and make me do it?"
Suna blinks. "We've already slept together. Do you draw the line at sharing a bed?"
You're terrible to share a bed with. Suna regrets it when it's three-fifteen in the morning and you've woken him up twice. You snore and then you stop snoring and then when you start it up again it jolts Suna awake. You've kicked him many times and you are the least generous blanket-sharer perhaps on the entire planet.
Suna gets hardly any sleep and when morning comes around you look like you've had the best sleep of your life. Suna almost hates you for it. But when he walks to you work and he gives you a kiss on the cheek (for the sake of the giggling teenager with the camera Suna is sure recognized him), Suna walks away with the distinct feeling that he is probably going to end up doing it again.
EXTRAS!
y/n and suna's text span about two and half weeks ignore the timestamps
y/n just texted her mom that she wasn't ready for her to meet suna yet because it's not that serious yet and she doesn't want to make the same mistake she made with kuroo
kuroo
y/n kind of has the feeling that suna has a little crush on her
froggi yaps -> i bombed my interview so badly today i really needed this comfort ;-; i feel like these kinda suck but this piece was kicking my butt so badly i just needed to get it out :p enjoy
Dick Grayson:
Dick’s sleeping when you text him, the incessant buzzing on his nightstand cutting into the sleep he desperately needs. It had been a long night last night and he didn’t make it home until seven in the morning, going to bed even later than that.
Still, he forces his eyes open and rolls over, grabbing the phone in his hand. He blinks away sleep when he sees the messages are from you, one after the other, each increasingly more panicked.
He’s on his feet in minutes when he reads them, tugging on the nearest clothes he can find and collecting his keys off his nightstand. Opening his phone to track your location, Dick’s on the road in minutes.
You’re sitting under a tree when he finds you, alone and overheating in the middle of a desolate trail just outside of Bludhaven. He calls your name before he approaches, shuffling carefully towards so as not to scare you.
“Dick?” You blink, exhausted from the heat.
He crouches at your side, pressing a hand to your forehead like you’re sick. He sighs, shaking his head and fighting the urge to hunt down your shitty boyfriend and give him a piece of his mind.
“Fuck, he just left you here like this? Do you even have water?”
You shake your head. “He had the backpack,” you explain. “Said I was too slow…”
Fuck, what an asshole. He never deserved you.
Dick helps you to your feet, keeping an arm around your waist to support you. Your steps are shaky, your breathing uneven—clear signs of dehydration.
It’s a long trip back to the car, ending with Dick carrying you on his back. You’re relieved when he finally sets you in the passenger seat, cranking the air conditioning for you.
He passes you a water bottle from his cupholder. “Here, have this.”
You drink half of it in one go, the water helping the dryness that has your throat swelling.
“How are you feeling?” He asks.
“Tired, sad.” You frown, “I feel dizzy.”
Dick puts the car in drive, peeling away from the parking lot and driving back to the city. “You probably will for a while, with how long you were in the heat.”
It’s silent for a while, the exhaustion setting into your bones and a new sort of tiredness weighing over you. You rest your head against the door of the car, letting your eyes flutter closed.
“Come hang out with me, yeah?” Dick finally breaks the silence. “Need to make sure you’re okay.”
You catch the undertone of it, the part that says: physically and emotionally.
You hum in agreement, letting yourself fall back asleep on the door of his car. Dick waits until he’s sure you’re out cold before leaning over and rubbing a thumb across your cheek.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he mumbles more to himself than anything, “I’ll take good care of you.”
Jason Todd:
Jason’s busy when you call, knee deep in a group of goons in the way of your boss. Still, it’s you calling him, and he doesn’t dare leave you waiting.
“Hello?”
You sniffle into the phone, the distant sounds of gunfire making you raise a brow. “Jay?”
He frowns, fighting his way through the men while talking to you like it’s the most casual thing in the world. “Are you crying?”
It’s a jumble of words that comes next, each one bleeding into the next and filled with sniffles. Jason strains to hear you through the comms piece in his helmet, the gunfire and sounds of violence almost enough to drown you out.
Still, he gets the gist of it. Fuck, he’s going to lose the target. But he can’t just leave you there.
He sighs, “I’ll be there in five.”
You’re pacing when Jason pulls up, soaking wet with the cold rain hiding the hot tears on your cheeks. If only the rain could hide the redness in your eyes and the way your lips have pulled into a pout.
It’s more than a twenty minute drive from where Jason was to the shitty, dingy bar your boyfriend abandoned you at. Jason made the drive in five, in the rain, on his motorcycle.
“T-thanks for coming,” you sniffle out.
Jason looks around, forcing himself to take deep breaths despite the anger surging in his chest. “You sure that ass—he’s not coming back?”
You shake your head. “He said we’re done.”
Jason shakes his head, showing off the fresh red mark under his chin. You frown, reaching up to run your thumb across the bruised skin beneath his stubble. He’s ditched his Red Hood getup, dressed only in his usual cargo pants and a t-shirt. Raindrops slick over his exposed biceps.
“Let me take you home, alright?”
You nod and then he’s ushering you towards his bike, thrusting his spare helmet into your arms. You buckle it over your head, Jason turning around and tugging the strap to make sure it’s tight.
You look at him through the open visor, blinking away the raindrops that cling to your skin. “Jay?”
“Hm?”
“Do you think you could…stay with me for a bit?”
And he knows he shouldn’t, that he has other things to do tonight, an obligation to himself and this city. “Yeah,” he says, “I can stay a while.”
It’s hours later that you’re asleep on Jason’s lap, head resting on the meat of his thighs. He should’ve left a while ago and yet, he can’t bring himself to go.
Still, watching you lay like this in his arms, warm and dry from the rain your boyfriend left you in, anger still swirls in his stomach. How dare he leave you like that? You could've gotten mugged or hurt or worse, and the very thought has Jason clenching his jaw.
Yeah, he’ll have to pay him a visit later.
Wally West:
Wally’s smile dies the minute he picks up the phone and hears you sniffling on the other end of the line. “Hey, what’s going on?”
It’s an unintelligible mess of words that follows, filled with choked sobs and occasional moments of silence. Somehow through it all, Wally manages to get the gist of it: you and your shitty boyfriend got into a fight on the way home, and he abandoned you at some gas station.
Alone. In the middle of the night. With nothing but your phone.
Hot rage sweeps through Wally and before he knows it, he’s running.
One minute, you’re staring at the screen of your phone, sobbing hysterically. The next, Wally West is at your side, looking just as outraged as he is concerned.
“He did what?”
Seeing your teary eyes and the pouty look on your face only makes him angrier. He clenches and unclenches his hands, forcing himself to breathe.
The anger melts away when you wrap your arms around him and bury your face in his chest, sobbing harder. “I don’t—I don’t know what I did wrong.”
Wally is careful to wrap his arms around you, pulling you flush with his body and kissing the top of your head. It’s been so long since he’s gotten to hold you like this, since he’s gotten to care for you, he selfishly drinks it in.
“Let’s get you home, hm?”
You sniffle, peeling your face back just enough to look at him. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”
“My place, then,” he flashes his best reassuring smile, “don’t worry, doll, I’ll take care of you.”
-
Two hours later and you’re settled on the couch at Wally’s, dressed in his sweatpants and one of his t-shirts. After an hour, he’d finally gotten you to stop crying and instead cuddle up with him on the couch.
Your boyfriend is yet to say anything, to even check in and make sure you didn’t get murdered. It leaves a bitter taste in Wally’s mouth but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel a little hopeful, too.
It’s when you fall asleep that Wally snaps a picture of the two of you, your head nuzzled into the crook of his arm. He grins as he types, trying his best not to laugh while he drafts the message to your boyfriend.
He reads it over once before hitting send, nodding in satisfaction.
Don’t worry, I’ll clean up your mess.
Roy Harper:
It’s late and Roy wishes he was asleep, and instead, he’s driving an hour away to some random highway where your boyfriend—hopefully soon to be ex—abandoned you on the side of the road.
His hands are clenched tight on the wheel, thoughts racing a mile a minute. His foot is pressed harshly into the gas, each minute that passes only increases his anxiety. He’d asked you to stay on the phone with him but that was before your phone died and your location stopped updating.
He can only hope you listened to him and stayed put, and that no one else comes across you before he does.
Luck is on his side when he spots you pacing back and forth on the side of the road. His foot is on the brake immediately, slowing the car down to a stop just a few meters ahead of you.
You make a break for the car, settling into his passenger seat like it’s somewhere you belong. And to Roy, it is.
He frowns when he sees the tears in your eyes and the way you’re shaking from the cold night. “You alright?”
You sniffle, “barely. I’m freezing my ass off.”
He nods, flicking on your heated seat. He moreso meant the whole being abandoned in the middle of the night thing, but given your closed off demeanour, decides not to push it.
“I don’t understand what I did wrong,” you say quietly.
Roy drops a hand from the wheel, gently squeezing your knee. “You did nothing wrong, that asshole just never deserved you.” Not like I do.
You blink. Maybe he has a point.
And now that he’s started, Roy’s not sure he can stop. “What kind of man just abandons you, alone, in the middle of the night? Don’t you think you deserve more than that?”
“Roy…”
“Seriously, babe,” the pet name slips out so easily that neither of you notice it, “don’t you want to be with someone who loves you properly?”
“Roy,” you say again, more warning than anything.
“God, I take much better care of you than he ever has.”
“Roy!”
He breathes heavily, the gravity of what he just said sinking in. The silence in the car is hot and tense, broken only by the crackling of the heat coming through his vents. Roy slows the car, pulling over to the side of the road.
For a moment, you’re worried he might leave you, too. But then he’s grabbing your chin and forcing you to look at him, touch equally scorching as it is delicate. He’s not even sure what he’s doing until he’s leaning in and brushing his lips over yours, the taste of your chapstick like an old friend.
“All I’m saying,” he says quietly, “is that you deserve someone who takes care of you. Okay?”
“O-okay.”
dc masterlist | navigation
thanks for reading & have a wonderful week /ᐠ > ˕ <マ ₊˚⊹♡
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
boxer jason likes when you press his bruises btw. you won't do it intentionally but when you do it by accident, all the synapses in his brain light up because he’s conditioned to expect touch through pain but he loves you and you touch him gently so when you accidentally make his bruises sore, pain and pleasure gets confused and the pressure is so good it makes his teeth grind
origamiaround
gamechangershow
titsay
stormborns
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
romaincrisis
