ricky

Being in a long distance relationship was never on Timothy Drake's to-do list, but in the long run, it seemed to work out just fine. From all of the late nights on patrol, to all of the long days studying case files and filling out reports, Tim found that it was better talking over the phone with his lover than having them close where his presence was needed constantly.

Now, this didn't mean that Tim didn't struggle with the distance. He called his lover every day–sometimes multiple times a day, not that he'd say that out loud. So when he and his boyfriend did meet up in person on special occasions, he was the happiest person alive–and his schedule would be completely cleared.

Bruce had informed all of his children--the non-adopted ones being included, too, that is--that he'd planned a boating trip for all of them at Pearl Beach. Tim knew that your classes wouldn't start until August, so his first question for Bruce was if he could bring you, and his second question was to Alfred–can you book his flights?

Now, as Tim waited for you at the airport, he was giddy as can be. He had picked up a stuffed animal and your favorite coffee order and waited by your gate. He was relieved that none of his siblings had accompanied him, positive that they'd tease him about it relentlessly.

And there you were, walking through the crowd of people with your eyes darting around almost frantically. Then they landed on him. Your Tim. You all but sprinted in his direction, throwing your arms around him despite the fact that he was holding a drink and a gift bag.

You buried your face in his neck on instinct, and he squeezed you tightly around the waist. How long had it been? Four months? Five? Too long, you thought to yourself.

Tim pulled away, but not before pressing a soft kiss to your lips. Too brief for your liking, but it was better than what you had received lately.

“Come on,” he said. “They're waiting at the dock.”

The boat waiting at the dock was nice and very clearly expensive. Why wouldn't it be? This was Bruce Wayne, after all. Everything he did was expensive.

This was the first time you had been in one space with this much of Tim's family at once. You had met some of them while hanging out at the manor, or Tim had introduced you to them through the phone while you were on one end of the face time call and he was on the other. But now you were here with them and it made everything feel so real. Like that you belonged there with them.

Tim climbed onto the boat first. He took your hand and let you walk in after him. He squeezed your hand tightly–an anchor. He wouldn't let you fall.

Okay, so maybe it's a bit embarrassing that you're nineteen and can't swim. Your excuse was something along the lines of, “We don't swim in the UK!” Tim had laughed hysterically.

You took a seat next to Tim on one of the benches on the boat, leaning into him as he wrapped his arm around you and let it rest behind you. The wind felt nice, blowing through your hair while the salty water sent a gentle mist over your skin. Oh, you could get used to this.

You could also get used to the way that Tim looked in the summer. Tan. Wearing less clothes than usual. When was the last time you had seen his knees? You weren't sure, but you knew that you wanted to see more of them. More of him.

Your head tipped back on Tim's shoulder, looking up at him as he spoke with his siblings. You tuned in just enough to hear that he was actually arguing. With Damian. No surprises there, but you thought that they might tone it down a bit while on vacation. Guess not.

“You can't possibly claim to be even slightly skilled in Mortal Kombat. I've beaten you four out of five times on average–”

“That's because I know how to spend my time, Drake. Maybe that pile of files on your desk would shrink if you quit playing video games,” the youngest Wayne quipped, and you could hear the smugness in his voice. “Besides, who cares about who wins in a video game? I win in real combat, something you would know nothing of.”

And Tim was quiet for a moment. You could feel him laugh more than hear it–the small puff of his chest. These were the “vigilantes” that were so feared in Gotham. They didn't seem very scary to you.

“You know, Damian, I could kick your ass right here, right now, but I'm a little occupied at the moment.” He gestured lightly to you. “Just wait until we pull up to the beach. Be ready.”

“You should be ready, Drake,” Damian said, crossing his arms. “I brought my sword in case something like this happened.”

“Can we not?” Someone asked, and you realized it was Dick. He was sitting on the edge of the boat, facing the water, but he turned back just enough to give both Damian and Tim a look. They both went silent.

You silenced your laugh, but your smile couldn't be contained.

“What're you smiling for?” Tim asked, and he was smiling, too. He hadn't stopped since you'd arrived. You weren't sure if he knew that he was, but you didn't want it to stop. “Is something funny?” He pinched your side and you twisted away out of instinct. He locked his arm around your waist and pinched your side again, harder this time. You squirmed and tried to break free, but this was a vigilante you were going against. You didn't stand a chance.

Stephanie gagged theatrically as she walked by, and Jason–you knew from the scars and white bangs–huffed dramatically.

“Oh, quit pouting,” Tim said, and he pinched your side again, digging his fingers in harder. You laughed uncontrollably and Tim just kept talking as if he wasn't torturing you. “You're just mad because Roy is busy and couldn't come.”

“No, I'm not,” Jason countered, leaning over the edge of the boat and looking at the water poetically. Tim had always said he was a drama queen. He was right.

“Sure,” Tim muttered with an eye roll. Then he looked at Dick. “What about Kori? She didn't want to come?”

“She had plans with Donna,” the acrobat explained while he opened a cooler, taking out a Sprite and taking a big swig. “Give him a break, Tim. I don't think he can breathe.”

“He's fine,” Tim said, but he finally pulled his hand away, chuckling to himself as you slumped against him, elbowing your mischievous boyfriend in the side as payback.

Dick shook his head, muttering something before sitting next to Damian and speaking with him.

Everyone seemed to be doing their own thing–either lounging on the boat, speaking quietly with one another, or eating some of the snacks Alfred had packed. It was all so peaceful. You couldn't help but wonder how often this peace lasted, them being vigilantes and all. You figured that once this trip was over, they'd go right back to risking their lives for the greater good without another thought. These moments probably mean a lot, you thought to yourself. How could they not? A minute of silence feels like an eternity in a day full of noise.

The beach came into view. Everyone seemed to wake up a bit, either talking louder, or… jumping into the water before the boat was even parked? You could hear Bruce from the front, already scolding them. They'd probably been told to wait until the boat was still. Tim patted your shoulder twice and took his shirt off before diving off the side of the boat. You immediately turned and looked over the edge, waiting for his head to bob up from the water. Once it did, you glared at him.

“Don't do that!” You were somewhat joking, but your voice was obviously filled with a little bit of panic. Knowing Tim, he was probably going to do it twenty more times. For good measure, he'd say.

“Come on!” he shouted, running a hand through his wet hair and–Oh, you were already ruined. He looked like a god. All tanned muscles, water dripping down soft skin. He looked good enough to eat--just a small bite. You were starving. “The water feels great!”

You opened your mouth, closed it, opened it again, closed it again, swallowed, and then said a silent prayer. For restraint. “I'll wait till we get closer to the beach!” you managed to say, but your mouth felt as dry as the Sahara.

The boat came to a full stop, and you climbed down the ladder and planted your sandal-clad feet into the sand. It was warm, soft, welcoming. Nothing back home could compare to this. It was all cold, sharp edges, and rainy, dim shadows. Nothing was ever gentle. Nothing was ever kind. This was both and everything else good.

Yeah, you could definitely get used to this.

Tim suddenly appeared in your vision, walking up towards the beach from the water. He shook his hair, stretching his arms up and putting those pretty abs on full display. Your stomach flipped without permission.

And then he was in front of you. One hand landed on your waist and the other ran through his hair again. It was like he knew what he was doing, getting you all riled up. But dammit, you loved it.

Tim brought his hand to your face and ran his hand through your hair, letting his finger run behind your ear and down your neck. You were so screwed.

“You're blushing,” he whispered. Too close. Too hot. Too fucking hot.

You threw all of your instincts as far away as possible. Who cares if you can't swim? You needed to get away before you exploded.

“I'm gonna swim,” you said quietly. Too fast. Too frantic. And you stepped out of your sandals and walked straight into the water, shirt still on. The water hit your waist. A comfortable depth. But you kept going. You needed to cool down. You needed to get away from your outrageously attractive boyfriend.

The water hit your chest and you panicked, arms flailing desperately. In hindsight, it was embarrassing. Even Damian was out further than you. Everyone was. You didn't care at the moment. Tim watched from the shore, laughing shamelessly.

You were drowning and he was laughing.

“Tim,” you choked out, splashing harder. “Help–”

He sighed, shook his head, and started walking into the water. He stopped in front of you while you jerked like a fish out of water. You immediately wrapped your arms around his frame–solid and warm and hard and smooth and touchable and kissable...

“You okay there?” he asked in that smug voice that he uses when he's about to be condescending. Is it bad to think it's hot? You don't care. Not when he's tilting his head and narrowing his eyes at you. Not when his hands are sliding up and down your sides beneath your shirt. Not when he's making your throat close up just by being him.

“Mhm,” you forced out, but you still clung to him like a lifeline. And you were so close to him. And he was touching you and holding you and even the water seemed to get warmer when he was in it.

Tim gripped your sides and forced you to stand up right, maintaining that patronizing eye contact–as if he was saying, “See? It's not that hard.” And screw every part of you that thought that it was hot.

But then you realized that the water was barely to your ribs. You had almost drowned… in water that was barely to your ribs. Your face grew hotter.

“You're so cute when you're embarrassed,” he said, and when you averted his gaze, he pressed his thumb under your jaw, forcing your attention on him. Oh, it was on him alright.

“Come on. I wanna show you something.”

Your back hit the hard wood of the tree as Tim shoved you against it, but his hand cradled the back of your head so that it didn't take any of the force. His lips were on yours in a millisecond, hands slipping under your shirt to knead at whatever skin he could find.

You were a dizzy, breathless mess within a minute, but Tim had no intentions of stopping yet. He gave your lips a break so that you could get some air while his mouth moved to your jaw, kissing and nipping his way down your neck. You fisted your hands in his shirt, trying to ground yourself as he assaulted your senses.

Tim pulled away for a second, still holding your waist and looking down at your neck. You dropped your head to his shoulder, panting and trembling from his onslaught.

“A little privacy would be nice, Cass,” he said, not even bothering to look behind him. You couldn't see her, and you knew better than to try. Tim had told you that she tended to lurk in the shadows, never fully making her presence known.

Once Tim was sure that you were alone again, his lips were back on your skin, this time kissing that place behind your ear that he knew ruined you.

“Tim–” you choked out, squeezing your eyes shut and gripping his shirt tighter. Your body was hot all over, and he was crowding you from all sides. It was overwhelming in the best way possible.

“Yeah, babe?” he asked, but he didn't stop. He let his hand glide over your stomach, fingernails raking over your skin. He chuckled against your neck when you tensed up.

A small hum was all you could get out, and you could feel him smirking against your skin. He was always so smug with it. He knew how to abuse your weak spots, and then he'd laugh at you for reacting. It was a cruel, cruel game, one that you had no intention of stopping.

“I know,” he whispered, and it made your stomach twist. He pressed a long kiss to your throat before pulling away. “Come on. They're gonna start wondering where we went.”

He grabbed your hand and started walking away, but your wobbly legs had other plans. You stumbled through the grass and sand, still breathing hard.

Tim turned back to you and laughed. “Really? Just from a few kisses?” he teased, wrapping an arm around your waist to steady you.

“Shut up,” you retorted, giving him a glare that held no malice.

You could hear laughter and yelling as you reached the shore, and Tim immediately jumped in excitement when he saw what was happening.

“Have you ever played chicken fight?”

You shook your head. Americans, you thought to yourself.

“Come on. You can be on top.”

Now that's something you don't hear often.

Tim crouched in the water and helped you climb onto his shoulders, and you gripped his hair for dear life, not wanting to fall backwards. Little did you know…

Stephanie was on Duke's shoulders across from you, an evil expression on your face.

“Okay,” Tim began explaining, “the point of the game is to not fall off of your partner's shoulders. You and Steph have to try to shove each other into the water. Duke and I can't help with that–we just hold you up. So you just try to push her off, okay?”

What the hell is this game?

Before you could answer, Stephanie was in front of you, arms outstretched as Duke came closer. Tim moved forwards at full force, and you were far from ready. Your balance was terrible, but you were determined not to give up.

Steph pushed you once and you were in the water.

Tim was laughing when he pulled you out of the water, looking at you with endearment. His eyes raked you up and down, and his eyebrows furrowed. The thinking face.

That can't be good.

“Dick! Jay!” Tim called. “Wanna play chicken fight?”

They started swimming over, and Tim's expression turned evil. You knew that look. It was the one that he wore when he was up to no good–which was pretty often, actually.

“You can be on Dick's shoulders. I'll get Jason.”

Now you had to go against Tim. Great. You figured you should practice holding your breath instead of worrying about the shoving part.

Dick helped you onto his shoulders, and you watched as Tim climbed onto Jason's. You felt slightly more prepared this time. Not that you were, but you knew what you were up against.

At least you thought you did.

Jason and Dick both charged at full force, and Tim immediately began pushing you. But you pushed back, trying your hardest to get Tim to fall.

In the end, Tim pushed you off of Dick's shoulders with ease. But hey, this time you got a few good shoves in. Better to try, right?

“Dinner's ready!” Alfred called from the boat, and you and Tim both made your way to the bench you had used this morning.

Tim grabbed food for both of you, placing your plate in your lap. This was also something you appreciated. Alfred's cooking was much better than the food you ate at home. Everything was always so bland and boring. It seemed like everything was more bright and warm and colorful here. Or maybe that was just because of Tim.

You took three bites before a yawn fell from your lips, and Tim raised an eyebrow at you. “Tired already?”

You suppressed another yawn and shook your head. You were exhausted, though. You had an early flight, no rest afterwards, and then spent an entire day at the beach. You were bound to be a bit tired.

You let your head fall onto Tim's shoulder, and then you were out like a light. He shifted you to lay your head in his lap, and he draped a towel over your frame as you slept.

“Aww,” Dick said softly. “The big bad Tim Drake is whipped.”

crow black dreams by kelidahauk

Asshole number one can't stop lying to save his life and asshole number two has difficulties talking. Both of them have the emotional range of a teaspoon. Forced together at the wakagashira's orders, they have to learn to live together. Sexy, rage-fueled shenanigans ensue. Two assholes fall in love. (tkkg yakuza au)

for all the perfect things that i doubt by handbagmarinara

Kageyama has purple eyes.

Long Time by localpharmacist

Tobio and Kei spend their spare time together in an abandoned house that they found during their childhood.

i've been waiting for you (how dare you show up with an injury) by moonking

Five times Kei and Tobio met each other, and one time they found out they were soulmates.

(i just had to let you know) you're mine by Spring_Emerald

Five times Tsukishima accidentally called Kageyama ‘my king’ and the one time he let Kageyama know he means it.

The soft-hearted by Bandit4Anime

A twisted ankle and a soft, yellow dinosaur onesie bring Tsukishima and Kageyama together.

if you would let me give you pinky promise kisses by prettyinwentz

Kei should've checked himself into a hospital the exact second he associated the word cute with Kageyama, and when he started feeling that stupid fluttery nonsense bubbling in his chest.

happy we're grown now by tangerines (adequater)

Kageyama got stupid hot and buff over the summer, and Tsukishima doesn't know how to act.

spaced out by tangerines (adequater)

Captain Yamaguchi has this brilliant idea to partner up Tsukishima and Kageyama so that they'll get along well, and stop scaring the new first years. (And maybe with some hidden agendas.)

How Not to Woo Your Soulmate by shivadyne

Everyone has a mark on their body that's meant to signify an important time in their soulmate's life. Unluckily for Kageyama and Tsukishima, they share each others' marks.

Goldfish Days by abigaru_chaaan

"Morning, King." The guy who he called turned his body to him, royal blue irises shining against his honey brown ones. After seconds of awkward silence and a bit of hesitation, he answered. "Do I know you?"

Punch Your Lips by EzzyDean

"I’m sorry but I was told to punch you in the face. I don’t know why but they’re giving me 20$ to do this. If you can make a better offer I won’t do it tho." AU "I always figured I’d get punched one day. I just thought I’d be worth more than twenty bucks.”

it's hard to volleyball by drifloon

He watched Tsukishima a few more times before exhaling. “You’re still doing it wrong.” Tsukishima stopped in the middle of a throw and turned to him, eyes like flints behind the glass. “Fuck off, Kageyama.” Kageyama gritted his teeth and took his messenger bag off his shoulder. “Do you want me,” he said slowly, each word only brought forth by a mental image of Daichi’s disappointed face, “to show you?”

show me where it hurts by lovingness

Maybe people take a certain kind of focus to hold, too. Tobio wonders if holding someone is like the grip of band-aids on one’s skin, of finger tape around sore digits. Or, if it’s like careful distance. If that distance can be closed.

Of Snow Storms and Stranded Cars by notquiteintoxicated

Kageyama was obviously one of those people who got cold easily, and while Tsukishima would gladly torment Kageyama on the worst of days, even he wouldn’t stoop so low as to let another person freeze to death if he had any way to prevent it. Of course, he didn’t imagine that ‘any way to prevent it’ included cuddling, of all things

tie your kisses round my throat by johntography

They started out from rock bottom, really, Kageyama and him. Kei had heard all these rumors and if he was already going to waste his time on a club, why not make it more entertaining by picking on someone who was gonna give him as good as he got? Somebody who’s called the King of the Court, who was ostracized by his own teammates, called selfish and impossible. He ought to at least try to put Kei in his place. Not that Kei would make it easy on him.

We Who Jump For Stars by tookumade

Tsukishima is dishonest; Kageyama is not.

eat up, it's good for you by diarahans

Kageyama comes by with a bag of snacks, and Tsukishima is terrorized by all of his friends and loved ones.

hold me still by reefs

Tobio and Kei on what it means to grow, understand, and say goodbye.

Always You by miyazens (dojaely)

Tobio is sick and Kei is willing to drop anything just for his King.

gentle your hands and mouths by diarahans

Their first kiss comes with the taste of blood, and the pulsing ache of a fight still running through their veins.

persephone by batman ✦

“Hers is a story characterised by absence. Her absence from the earth above, then her absence from the underworld. In essence, it is a story defined by longing. The union is only a part of it: the heart, then, is the separation.”

a fire well stoked by you by cookiescraems

Valentine's Day has filled the atmosphere of Karasuno High and Tsukishima Kei is forced to witness his very own best friends attempt to flirt with the person he likes, Kageyama Tobio.

He had lips like Sugar Cane by cellomanlove ★

“I just thought you could, you know, use Tsukki in your research.” “How?” he asked. “I’ve barely seen him for two weeks.” “Pavlov him.” “Excuse me?”

In the neon dawn by Kyrye ★

One level above him, he can hear the other man panting. Tobio will catch him, Tobio will trap him, Tobio will have him.

compromise by akanemnida ★

Snapshots of Tsukishima's brain throughout his theird year in Karasuno High.

No hesitation by anitarac

Tsukishima's ex-boyfriend is a creepy stalker, and Tobio's not gonna let that fly.

no shovel necessary by diarahans

“Tobio,” Miwa says, using her hand to tilt his head so she can get a better look at his neck, “is this a hickey?”

i'm dumb but maybe 128√e980 too by hoeseoksdimple

“Stay still,” you murmur, the words barely more than a breath as a quiet huff slips from you, your expression scrunched in gentle concentration while you sweep the cool modeling mask across his cheek in slow, deliberate strokes, each one featherlight and almost affectionate.

“It’s cold,” Tim mumbles, scrunching his nose in that tiny, endearingly stubborn way he always does when he wants to complain but doesn’t actually want you to change anything. Without pausing, you tug the edge of the blanket draped over your chair and lay it across his shoulders, tucking it carefully as if he were something fragile and precious you’re determined to keep warm.

He lets out a muffled snort at the gesture—half amusement, half reluctant surrender—before resuming his valiant attempt to keep still. Tim's fingers never slow, tapping against the keyboard in relentless, intricate bursts of motion, the rhythm so rapid and so precise that your own wrists ache just watching him work.

“Well, now it’ll keep you awake,” you hum, tilting his chin gently between your fingers so you can brush the mixture a little closer beneath his tired, blue-shadowed eyes, your touch soft enough that even his restless mind can’t rationalize flinching away.

It had been about an hour since you’d first swung into the room with the kind of dramatic entrance he pretends not to notice but secretly waits for. Earlier, he had lain beside you in bed for a precious half hour—whispering those soft, half-dreaming things he only says when his guard is melted by exhaustion, his hand combing through your hair with a slow, absent tenderness that lulled you faster than any lullaby ever could. When your breathing shifted into that familiar near-sleep rhythm, he had slipped away with the practiced stealth of someone who has spent too many nights trying not to wake the person they love.

Usually you don’t mind. Truly—you were never selfish enough to demand he stay pressed against you every night, not when you understood how his brain buzzed and sparked and dragged him toward unfinished work like a tether he couldn’t sever.

But tonight… tonight you simply wanted him near.

So you used the flimsiest excuse imaginable—that you’d forgotten to do your skincare (a lie so transparent Tim recognized it instantly; you never forget)—and dragged another wheeled chair beside him. You set about mixing a modeling mask with a level of ceremony usually reserved for potion brewing, your legs folded beneath a shared blanket, your steaming cup of tea nestled beside his cup of atrocious coffee. The bitter brew was legendary between you both for being nearly undrinkable, yet Tim clung to it with the same baffling loyalty he showed to three a.m. work sessions and new, un-tested software.

Then, without warning and without a single word, Tim felt the first cool, pale-blue brushstroke glide against his cheek.

He didn’t flinch.

Not from you. Never from you. He only bit the inside of his cheek in a futile attempt to hide the smile that wanted to bloom there, the corner of his mouth betraying him with the tiniest twitch. And though todays workload had been mercifully light—light enough that he could have been asleep hours ago—light days made him restless, his mind crackling with excess energy like static waiting for a spark.

“What does this do?” Tim mumbled after a while, barely parting his lips, his curiosity somehow unhampered by the fact that his face was now generously slathered in a pale-blue paste.

“Cools the skin temperature,” you replied gently, brushing the final strokes along the curve of his chin with the slow, tender care of someone petting a sleepy cat who has reluctantly tolerated a bath.

“How?” he asked, eyes never leaving the glowing screens in front of him.

“I don’t know.” You shrugged innocently. “Saw some hot girl use it.”

A beat of stillness. Then, almost fearful: “…I’m going to break out after this, aren’t I?”

You hummed, a sound meant to soothe. “No, no—it was expensive.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s good, babe.” Tim chuckled softly, the warmth of it muffled beneath the drying mask. “You didn’t even read the formula sheet?”

“Who reads the formula sheet?” you blinked at him, genuinely mystified.

Tim’s shoulders tightened the tiniest bit—a subtle inward recoil, as if his moral compass were quietly ringing an alarm bell somewhere in the depths of him. Still, he stayed perfectly still beneath your touch, letting the mask dry in peaceful surrender. At the end of the day, he was willing to risk a constellation of pimples if it meant seeing you this content, this close, this focused entirely on him.

You'd still fuck him anyways so why would he care.

And perhaps—if he were honest with himself, in the privacy only you ever get to see—he found the whole ritual inexplicably comforting.

Maybe even grounding.

Even if he’d never admit that out loud.

Not that he needs to.

You already know.

It’s around ten minutes of watching him work with the mask on—ten minutes of you forcing your sleepy brain to stay alert by tossing him small, gentle questions every few minutes just to hear his voice and keep your own eyes open.

“What are you typing?” you murmur, leaning slightly toward his screen.

“Do you want any snacks?”

“Why are those numbers overlapping like that?”

And without fail, Tim explains each one to you with quiet precision, his voice low and steady and warm in the dim light of the room. He speaks quickly but never impatiently, calmly guiding you through whatever strange digital puzzle he’s untangling, and ends every answer with the same soft murmur of, “There’s more, but I won’t bore you,” as if he genuinely believes you’d ever find anything he says uninteresting.

He has four double monitors surrounding him like some sort of glowing fortress—each filled with layers of blue light and open windows—yet at the moment, he’s only using one and his laptop. So, out of boredom and perhaps a bit of mischief, you reach out and turn on one of the closer unused monitors, the screen flickering to life in a wash of white before settling. With a few lazy clicks, you open Tiktok.

“Can I log in?” you ask softly, not wanting to distract him too much but very willing to test how much of his attention you can steal.

“Hm?” It takes him a second to process your words—blinking once, twice, the gears turning—before he mumbles, “Uh… it’s going to remember your login details, if that’s fine with you then—”

“I don’t care if you have them,” you say with a small shrug, typing in your username and password without hesitation. “What would you even do with it?”

Oh, he doesn’t know.

Maybe block every smug douchebag lurking in your DMs who watch those thirst traps you post, or quietly hit “not interested” on every thirst trap featuring anyone remotely attractive, or perhaps scroll through your feed just to see what makes you laugh.

But Tim only gives a faint, distracted huff, shoulders rising in a small shrug as he keeps typing.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he murmurs softly, as if the thought of invading your privacy is so absurd it barely deserves consideration.

It’s a few minutes of quiet scrolling and steady typing before Tim suddenly feels your hand rest on his thigh beneath the shared blanket — warm, casual, thoughtless, the kind of touch you give him when you’re tired and seeking closeness rather than making any particular statement.

And then you squeeze and he feels your fingers press into his thighs, your pinkie finger going underneath his shorts, tracing the waistband of his boxers.

Tim can’t help the small, startled jerk that makes him twist in his chair, hair shifting over his forehead, cheeks blooming pink like a sudden sunset against his pale skin, and he opens his mouth to protest, to stammer some hurried apology for moving so suddenly, only for his gaze to fall fully on the glowing screen and everything else to disappear in an instant.

Red Robin thirst edits.

You are completely absorbed in them.

Liking them. Favoriting them. Following the tag #RedRobinEdit while your hand is still resting warmly on his leg and tracing more dangerously up at every edit.

“B—babe—” he stammers, voice breaking slightly, embarrassed and high-pitched, faltering as he tries to keep his composure and simultaneously not stare too obviously at the shape of your hands under the blanket, while every rational part of his brain screams at him to turn away.

You blink up at him, innocently, sweetly, and entirely unbothered. “What?”

He gestures awkwardly downward, face flushed. “Your… hand.”

You glance at it without moving, not even twitching, then shrug slightly, as though he’s pointing out a funny looking cat instead of the fact that he’s utterly distracted and entirely unable to focus on anything but you.

“I know,” you reply, flatly, eyes already returning to the screen, completely calm, perfectly in control, leaving him to choke on the warmth that settles in his chest like liquid fire.

Tim is fairly certain his heart has stopped entirely.

He watches your expression shift—eyes widening just faintly as the edit slows dramatically on a clip of him sticking his tongue out mid-fight, the faint smear of blood on his mask making the whole thing look far more dramatic (and frankly ridiculous) than the original moment ever felt.

The video zooms.

The quality sharpens.

The audio swells, loud and obnoxiously enthusiastic, the lyrics of the song echoing across the cave with an almost mocking cheer: “Come here and get some!”

Tim swallows hard enough that he hears it.

You watch the edit again.

Then again.

And then you — God save him — open the comment section and type:

“I mean if he's asking nicely, I guess,”

Tim stares at you like you’ve just personally struck him with a tranquilizer dart.

He is pretty sure the cooling modeling mask on his face is the only thing keeping him from completely combusting.

“I’m sorry—are you… asking to…?” Tim’s voice trails off as he darts an awkward glance between you and the screen, his ears tinted a nervous shade of pink.

You squint at him. “Are you asking if I’m in the mood? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Tim looks at you like you’ve just solved a riddle he didn’t know he was asking. “No shit, babe.”

You let your eyes sweep him slowly from head to toe, deliberately thoughtful, deliberately teasing, and entirely too amused by how he immediately straightens in his chair like he’s bracing for impact.

“…Well,” you mumble at last, “we need our face masks to set first.”

He nods quickly, almost too quickly. “Right. Of course. Obviously. And— and then?”

“And then…” you drawl, tapping your chin, fighting back a grin, “We see if that chair of yours is as ‘ergonomically reinforced’ as you claim.”

Tim freezes. Absolutely freezes.

“Oh. Oh. Uh—cool. Cool. That’s— uh— that’s fine.”

He turns back to his keyboard, typing with the stiff, mechanical motions of someone trying very hard to look unbothered while being profoundly bothered.

“Perfect,” you hum sweetly, turning back to your phone. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need to find an edit of my boyfriend’s butt—”

Tim cuts you off instantly, leaning in to kiss you with flustered urgency—only to immediately regret it when the half-set modeling mask smears between you.

You squeal at the rubbery taste and smack his shoulder.

“Tim! Gross!”

He pulls back with a helpless laugh, face mask smudged, dignity in shambles.

“You were about to commit a crime,” he defends weakly.

“I was appreciating art,” you correct.

“You were appreciating my—”

“Art, Timothy.”

He groans while tilting his head back, and you giggle, nudging his knee under the blanket.

The moment hangs warm and bright between you, buzzing with affection and promise—nothing more needs to be said.

By the time the mask has tightened over your skin, cooling into its soft, rubbery shell, the air around you has shifted into something quieter and heavier, something threaded with anticipation that neither of you names out loud, though it hangs there like a shared secret waiting patiently between two heartbeats.

Tim keeps typing for a few more seconds, each click slower than the last, his eyes flicking toward you more often than toward the glowing screen in front of him.

It's like he is trying to pretend he is still focused on work while every line of his posture betrays just how thoroughly you have undone him.

You feel him watching you in those fleeting glances—feel the warmth behind them, the affection that pools in his gaze even when he tries to look away—and you can’t help smiling, soft and knowing, because you understand him in a way that feels as natural as breathing, a way that makes this dimly lit room feel less like a cave and more like a sanctuary built just for the two of you.

When you finally reach up to peel the edge of the mask from your cheek, he stops typing entirely, his hands hovering above the keys as he follows the slow movement of your fingers with an attention so gentle it makes your chest ache, as though he is memorizing this small, mundane moment simply because you are the one doing it.

Your skin practically glows and it's not just the computer light. God he wants to kiss you.

He removes his own mask more clumsily, his fingers trembling just a little—not out of nerves but out of the kind of unsteady eagerness he would never admit to if he didn't want you teasing him within a inch of his life—and when he looks at you again, his face is free of that cool blue sheen, flushed instead with the warm bloom of affection that he can’t hide. Tim tosses the remains in a nearby trash can.

Yeah. You decide mentally. You're going to want him longer than what that chair can provide.

Oh and the last thing you want is Mr.Wayne walking in.

You stand, wrapping the blanket around your shoulders like a borrowed piece of comfort, and he rises too, slower, almost hesitant, as though moving too quickly might shatter whatever fragile magic has woven itself between you in this quiet hour.

He can't wait until the two of you walk all the way to his bedroom though.

Tim reaches out with the kind of touch that is careful but certain, his fingers brushing your wrist first—as if asking, silently, without words—before sliding up to cup your jaw in a gesture so gentle it feels like a confession all on its own, one made with warmth instead of sound.

“It’s off,” Tim mumbles, his voice low and husky, almost reluctant to break the quiet first.

You chuckle softly, the sound gentle and warm in the quiet room, and reach up to sweep your fingers along a small patch of mask that stubbornly clings beneath his bottom lip, following it slowly upward to brush across the smooth line of his brow and then the corner of his eye, your touch deliberate, lingering just long enough to leave a small trail of warmth that makes him still, sharp in his awareness of every brush of your skin against his.

Tim leans slightly into your hands, savoring the sensation, the softness of your touch somehow grounding him, reminding him that this moment is entirely yours, entirely safe, and entirely intimate in a way that words could never capture. “Now it is,” you whisper, the words soft, certain, and tethered to the little warmth of your palm against his temple.

“You know there’s still some on your lip,” he murmurs after a pause, voice low and almost shy, though there’s a teasing lilt beneath it.

You glance at him, lips curved in a small, secretive smile, knowing perfectly well there isn’t, having already checked your reflection in the glow of your phone screen while removing your own mask, but you let the statement linger because it’s a perfect excuse to remain close a moment longer.

Your forehead presses against his softly, and the world seems to pause in the steady, electric quiet, each inhale and exhale stretching out longer than it should, each heartbeat echoing faintly as the two of you stay perfectly still, suspended in a delicate balance of trust, warmth, and a quiet devotion that needs no spoken declaration because it is already felt in every brush of skin, every small motion, every shared glance.

“Yeah?” you murmur, voice thick with intimacy and teasing softness. “Wanna help me get it off?”

Tim exhales your name like it’s a whispered vow, reverent and fragile, and your response comes not through words but through a slow, soft smile that tugs at something tender and carefully guarded deep within him. The part of him that only ever emerges when he’s near you and no one else, the part that is quietly unafraid to simply exist in the presence of your warmth.

The pale glow of his monitors spills across the room, bathing the two of you in soft light that seems almost protective, and his fingers weave themselves through your hair with a careful steadiness that grounds him even as it sends shivers of quiet delight through you. He's holding you close without pressure, without need, just pure want.

He leans in then, slowly, thoughtfully, with a kind of care that feels almost old-fashioned in its sincerity, and when your lips meet his, the kiss is unhurried and warm, stretching into a long, gentle moment that deepens not in passion but in closeness, in that intimate familiarity that comes from choosing each other again and again.

And then he feels your hand rest at his waist and he raises a brow, kissing you all the same still but watching the way your eyes flutter close and how the skin of your cheek becomes hotter.

When his tongue brushes the corner of your mouth he feels you grope his ass.

Tim pulls back suddenly, sputtering a laugh that shakes his shoulders and makes his chest rise and fall in quick, uneven bursts, “Babe!” he manages, voice half-shouted, half-laughing, entirely helpless against the ridiculousness of the moment.

“I’m sorry!” you protest breathlessly, cheeks warming in sync with his laughter, “It was the heat of the moment!”—your words tumbling out faster than you can catch them, as if the urgency of explaining yourself could somehow make everything feel less ridiculous, less exposing, less… completely perfect.

“You’re a horrible—absolutely horrible—fucking liar!” Tim cackles, the sound rolling out of him like sunlight spilling into a dim room, a laugh so unrestrained and warm that it seems to push all the shadows in the Batcave back into their corners, filling the space instead with its heat and vitality, and pulling you along with it whether you want it or not.

And somehow, without even thinking about it, his laughter lifts you too, every molecule of your being responding to it as he half-drags, half-tugs you out of the cave, fingers warm against your wrist, voice still shaking with delight, heart still bouncing in that ridiculous, giddy rhythm that only he can create.

Tim sleeps good that night, well into the afternoon as well. And when he opens his eyes, you're still in bed next to him.

With a hand still holding onto his ass.

tag-list [ check pinned post for tag-list infoദ്ദി˶ｰ̀֊ｰ́ ) ] ᯓ★ @marenyearlylover444, @psysgr, @sourstrawburry, @bloomfaery, @prettysweet02, @r-4-y-v-3-n, @backtonormalthings, @milam03, @animegamerfox, @tamyyyy2005, @arachniis, @k-pevensie28, @thetruecardinalsinner

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Something is wrong.

Jason feels it like a pressure change—subtle, almost polite—but it crawls under his helmet and settles behind his eyes. It hasn’t clicked, not cleanly. Not yet. He hasn’t asked. Hasn’t said a word through the harbor sweep, through the cold iron stink of saltwater and oil and Christmas rot. A small job. The kind that should feel easy. The kind that still manages to choke the air out of his lungs anyway.

Everyone’s moving like the night might shatter if they stop.

Tim keeps choosing his words too carefully, syllables slowed and smoothed like he’s sanding down sharp edges. Dick’s doing that thing where he smiles first and speaks second—but the timing’s off, the warmth a fraction too late, like a recording lagging behind the video. Damian watches Jason more than the perimeter, eyes sharp, calculating, guarded. Stephanie hasn’t joked once. Not even a cheap jab to him, not even under her breath. That alone feels wrong enough to tilt the world sideways.

Bruce didn’t come.

That absence is loud. A hollow where a presence should be, echoing through comms and instinct alike. The Cave, he’d said. As if that explained anything. As if Bruce ever sits things out without a reason that claws.

Cassandra says nothing—but she’s closer. Close enough that Jason can feel her awareness like static along his spine. When the group splits, she falls into step beside him without discussion, without a glance. Just there. Solid. Protective in a way that feels less like trust and more like vigilance. As if she’s guarding him.

That’s when unease really sinks its teeth in.

Bruce didn’t need all of them.

Didn’t need six sets of boots scraping concrete, six heartbeats crowding the same dark. Dick alone could’ve dismantled this whole thing with half the effort. Hell, Jason himself could’ve wrapped it up fast and bloody and been home already. Instead, they’re stacked together, overlapping, slowing each other down like they’re afraid to let him out of their sight.

He agreed because no one argued about his presence. Because no one questioned whether he was needed. Because the silence around that decision felt intentional.

That should’ve been his first real warning.

Between two groups of thugs, he had ducked behind a row of shipping containers, Gotham’s lights bleeding gold across the black water. He had pulled out his phone and called you, already rehearsing the apology in his head. Late for presents. Again. You’d tease him, pretend to scold, maybe force him to wrap some gifts for your co-workers. 

You didn't answer.

Probably a bath, he told himself. You’d mentioned one. Candles. The fancy bath salts you bought. Something soft to push the cold out of your bones. The thought settles him, briefly. He sends a text instead—short, careful. An apology. An I love you so much that he doesn’t overthink, because with you, he never has to.

You always know what he means.

The phone stays quiet in his pocket.

No buzz. No vibration brushing against his thigh like it usually does, grounding him, tethering him back to something warm and real. He told himself it’s nothing. That you’re relaxed, distracted, asleep. That the night is just heavy, that Gotham is doing what Gotham always does—making ghosts out of shadows and dread out of coincidence.

Still.

When he looks back at the others, he notices the way Dick avoids his eyes now. The way Tim’s gaze flicks to Jason’s pocket and away again. The way Damian’s jaw tightens when Jason shifts his weight, like he’s bracing for impact. Cassandra meets his eyes once—just once—and there’s something there that twists low and sharp in his chest. Not fear. Not exactly.

Knowing. Jason doesn’t ask. He doesn’t press.

But the harbor feels too quiet, the night stretched thin and listening, and for the first time since he sent that text, a cold, irrational thought curls in his gut—

That whatever is wrong didn’t start here.

And that somewhere far from the water, far from the mission, something precious has already slipped out of reach.

“That was the last of them,” Jason says, voice rough through the helmet, as Tim finishes cinching zip-ties around the final goon and anchors him to a rust-flaked shipping container. The plastic bites down with a sharp click that echoes too loudly across the concrete. The man mumbled insanities through spit.

The harbor exhales around them—cold wind off the water, carrying brine and diesel and something rotten that’s been sitting too long. Sodium lights flicker overhead, casting everything in jaundiced gold and long, distorted shadows that stretch and tangle at their feet. The concrete is damp beneath Jason’s boots, slick with mist and old oil, the kind of surface that never really dries no matter how many ‘sunny’ days Gotham pretends to have.

“We should do another check around the harbor,” Dick says.

He’s already kneeling, already breaking the man's phone in half with practiced efficiency, grinding it into the concrete with his heel until the screen spider webs and dies. He doesn’t look up when he says it. Doesn’t grin. Doesn’t even sound casual about it.

Jason lifts an eyebrow, slow, deliberate. His gaze slides to Damian automatically—because Damian is usually the first to shoot an idea like that down, sharp and impatient and blunt as a blade.

Instead, Damian just mutters, “Tim could be wrong.”

Mumbles it. Like he’s afraid the words might carry.

That alone sends a small, unpleasant chill up Jason’s spine.

Tim doesn’t argue. Doesn’t bristle. He straightens from the goon and dusts his gloves together, eyes flicking—not to Jason—but to Stephanie. The movement is quick, practiced, like muscle memory.

“Do you want to take the gates with me?” Tim says, too smooth. Too rehearsed. “Jason and Dick could go along the—”

“What?” Jason cuts in before he can finish, blinking once. “You two were perched on the gates the entire op. What’re you talking about?”

The wind gusts harder, rattling loose chains and setting a tarp snapping somewhere down the dock. Water slaps against concrete pylons in a slow, hollow rhythm. 

Jason suddenly feels like the sound is counting something down.

“It wouldn’t hurt to double-check,” Tim says, rising to his feet.

He still won’t meet Jason’s eyes.

Jason’s jaw tightens. He shifts his weight, the concrete cold and unforgiving through the thinning soles of his boots, and for a split second his mind drifts—unbidden—to you. To the warmth of your kitchen lights. To the way you’d probably be halfway through setting out plates by now, humming something low and off-key, waiting for him in that way that makes him want to claw his soul out and hand it over to you. 

The thought lands soft, intimate, grounding—and then slips through his fingers when he remembers his phone, silent and heavy in his pocket.

“…You guys don’t need me for that,” Jason says, firmer now. There’s an edge to it, something protective and stubborn. He already has plans. A timeline. A promise he intends to keep. “Seriously. If you want to sweep again, even one person could—”

Dick finally looks up.

It’s just a glance, quick and loaded, the kind Jason’s learned to read over a lifetime of almosts and unsaids. Cassandra shifts closer at the same moment, her shoulder nearly brushing his, her presence steady and deliberate. Jason doesn't think she's ever willingly touched him in his life. Stephanie opens her mouth like she’s about to say something—anything—then closes it again.

The harbor feels tighter suddenly. Smaller. Like the stacks of containers have leaned in, hemming them closer, their corrugated sides looming like silent witnesses. The wind cuts sharper off the water, needling through the seams of Jason’s jacket, and somewhere deep in his chest, that pressure builds again.

Jason turns fully to Damian.

“Kid, I swear to God, tell me what—”

Damian snaps at the exact same moment Cassandra moves. Her hand closes around Jason’s shoulder, firm and sudden, fingers digging in through armor like she’s trying to anchor him to the concrete before he does something irreversible. The contact is intimate in a way that feels wrong, alarmed.

“How the hell should I know? They didn't tell me—” Damian bites back, voice sharp, flaring too fast, too hot.

“Damian!” Dick hisses, the sound cutting through the night like a blade dragged too quickly from its sheath. He’s already moving, stepping between them without quite committing to either side, hands up in a placating gesture that lands closer to panic than calm. He turns to Jason almost immediately, words tumbling over each other. “Come on, dude, let’s just go check the security towers and—”

“That’s going to take another hour,” Jason cuts in.

The words come out flat, but there’s steel underneath. He shrugs Cassandra’s hand off—not rough, but final—and reaches into his pocket. The harbor lights blur for a second as his fingers close around his phone, the familiar shape of something that connects him to you grounding him. It’s 10:20. He knows that without looking but checks anyway. He’s been counting the minutes since the mission dragged past its supposed end.

“I had plans,” he says, quieter now, but more dangerous for it. “Let me at least—”

The batarang whistles through the air.

Jason barely has time to register the movement—Damian’s arm snapping forward, wrist precise, expression tight and furious—before metal slams into his hand. The impact jars up his arm, sharp and biting, and the phone slips free, spinning once before it hits the concrete.

Crack.

The screen fractures instantly, a spiderweb of dead glass blooming beneath the sodium lights before the device skids to a stop near Jason’s boot. The harbor seems to hold its breath. Even the wind falters, the water’s slap against the pylons momentarily muted, as if the night itself is listening.

Jason stares down at it.

At the dark screen. On the way his reflection breaks apart in the shattered glass.

Jason’s gaze lifts slowly from the ruin at his feet.

It settles on Dick.

“Call Bruce.”

The words aren’t loud. They don’t need to be. They cut anyway—clean, controlled, edged with something that’s starting to slip. Dick falters under it, hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck, eyes flicking anywhere but Jason’s face. The harbor lights stutter overhead, one of them buzzing like it’s about to give out, bathing Dick in a sickly gold that makes him look younger. 

Guilty.

“What, you gonna tattle?” Dick says, trying for levity and missing it by miles. His laugh lands wrong, brittle against the cold. “C’mon, Damian's just in a mood. I was going to surprise you with burgers but I thought the kid would spill. I’ll buy you a new phone, okay? Just—”

“Call Bruce,” Jason repeats.

This time it’s a hiss, dragged out through clenched teeth, something feral and fraying around the edges. The wind picks up again, slicing between the containers, rattling loose metal and carrying the sharp tang of rain that never quite falls in Gotham. Jason turns his head, slow and deliberate, until his eyes find Cassandra.

She hasn’t moved. She’s watching him like she’s afraid he might break.

“…He’s busy,” Cass says.

Her voice is barely there. Smaller than usual. Soft enough that Tim, standing a good ten feet away, doesn’t hear it at all. The words dissolve into the night almost as soon as they leave her mouth, swallowed by wind and water and distance—but Jason hears them. Every syllable.

Busy.

Something inside him tightens, winding down to a thin, dangerous thread.

His hand comes up to his comm without conscious thought. He adjusts it once, fingers steady despite the way his pulse thuds too hard, too fast. The harbor seems to lean in again—the stacked containers looming like watchful giants, the river below churning black and endless. 

Gotham breathes around him, damp and unforgiving.

“B,” Jason says.

Sharp. Precise. A single syllable fired into the dark like a flare.

Static answers him. Wind whistling through steel corridors. The distant cry of something alive and miserable echoing off the water. No voice. No correction. No irritation crackling back through the line.

Just silence. It stretches. Pulls thin. Grows teeth.

Jason exhales through his nose, a humorless breath that fogs faintly in the cold air. He thinks of you again—too vividly now. The way your voice softens when you say his name. The way you always pick up, even when he thinks you shouldn’t. The way silence has never belonged between the two of you.

His jaw locks. Fuck this shit, I should be at home with her.

Jason moves before anyone can stop him—before anyone even realizes he’s decided something.

He’s across the concrete in three long strides, boots splashing through shallow puddles that mirror Gotham’s jaundiced lights in broken pieces. Damian doesn’t flinch when Jason grabs his comm. Doesn’t pull back. Doesn’t protest. That, more than anything, makes Jason’s teeth grind.

He clicks the emergency signal to the Batcomputer—once, twice, a break, two clicks hard enough that it hurts his thumb—then rips the comm free. His helmet follows, clattering against the concrete with a hollow, echoing crack that ricochets between the shipping containers. The sound feels too loud, too exposed. Jason presses the comm to his bare ear, cold metal biting into skin.

No one stops him.

Not Dick. Not Tim. Not Stephanie. Cassandra watches with that same quiet intensity, hands flexing like she’s bracing for impact. They stand there and let it happen, like this is how it was always meant to go—like they’ve already accepted that Jason finding out is inevitable, but telling him would be worse. Like this is some twisted test, or penance, or family tradition he never agreed to.

The harbor hums low and restless. Wind slides through steel corridors, rattling chains, carrying the stink of oil and brine and rain-soaked concrete. Gotham feels awake in that way it only does when something bad is already in motion.

“Robin?” Bruce’s voice cuts through the static, sharp and immediate. Too immediate. There’s an edge to it Jason hasn’t heard in years—tight, almost nervous, parental. “Robin, what’s wrong?”

Jason almost laughs.

Instead, his mouth twists.

“I’m going home, old man,” he hisses, already turning away from Damian. “What was this? Ya trying to tire me out, or did you get mind-controlled again? ‘Cause everyone here apparently likes you enough to not tell me the truth.”

“Jason—”

“Red Hood,” Jason snaps, the correction coming fast and mean. He bends, scoops his helmet up by the chin guard, and starts walking toward the exit between the containers where the harbor opens up to the road. “What happened to keeping hero names on comms? Or are you the only one allowed to break rules tonight?”

“Red Hood, just give me—”

“It’s a lousy gang!” Jason shouts, voice tearing loose now, bouncing off steel and concrete and dark water. “They don’t even crack the top twenty. Damian could’ve done this shit by himself.”

He doesn’t look back, but he knows they’re following him. He can feel it—the weight of their footsteps, the way they trail just close enough to intervene if he breaks. Later, it’ll hit him why Tim made sure every single goon was double zip-tied, wrists biting white beneath plastic. Insurance. 

Tim knew Jason would find out. 

Knew none of them would be coming back to clean this up.

“Red Hood—”

“Merry Christmas, B,” Jason cuts in, bitter and sharp as broken glass. “Please don’t call.”

“JASON—”

Bruce’s voice snaps through the comm like a gunshot, dragging Jason straight back into another life, another night, another version of himself that answered to that tone. “She’s in danger. And if you want any chance of seeing her again, get to the Batcave—”

The line goes dead.

Not static. Not interference.

Bruce cut it himself.

Jason stops, because there's only one person he could be talking about to send all five of them with him.

The harbor seems to lurch, the world tilting just enough to make his balance feel theoretical. The wind howls between the containers, louder now, like Gotham exhaling something foul and satisfied. Water slaps hard against concrete pylons below, relentless, counting seconds Jason no longer owns.

Slowly—too slowly—he turns.

He looks at them. At Dick’s pale face. At Tim’s clenched jaw. At Damian’s rigid stillness. At Stephanie, eyes bright with unshed panic. At Cassandra, whose gaze is already on him, steady and mournful, like she’s watching something crack.

They look at him like he’s glass.

Like he’s a bomb they’re waiting to defuse—or clean up after.

Jason doesn’t give them the chance.

“Fuck all of you,” he spits, the words coming out broken and small despite his best efforts.

Then he runs.

Out of the harbor. Out of the sodium lights and rust and the weight of too many eyes. Jason runs like Gotham itself is on his heels, boots striking concrete in a brutal rhythm that drowns out thought—or tries to. The city stretches around him in jagged silhouettes and wet stone, skyscrapers looming like blackened ribs against a low, churning sky. Clouds hang heavy and swollen, bruised purple and gray, threatening rain they never quite release. Gotham loves the anticipation of pain more than the act itself.

His blood is loud in his ears. Too loud. Every heartbeat punches through his ribs, frantic and unforgiving, as if his body already knows something his mind refuses to accept.

Toward the manor. Toward answers.

Toward the awful, creeping certainty settling into his bones that whatever Gotham has taken this time, it didn’t take lightly—and it didn’t take something he can afford to replace.

He takes the shorter way.

Fire escapes. Rooftops slick with mist. Narrow alleys that smell like old rain and older sins. He vaults gaps without slowing, coat snapping behind him like a torn banner, the city blurring into streaks of shadow and light. This route cuts close to your place. Too close. He doesn’t consciously choose it; his body does, muscle memory dragging him along a path his heart has memorized better than any map.

And then—

Mid-leap, suspended between one rooftop and the next, he sees it.

Your building sits quiet against the skyline, dark in a way it never is. Your lights are off. All of them. The windows—your windows—are shattered, glass glittering weakly under the city’s glow like fallen stars. The balcony rail is smeared with something darker than shadow.

Blood.

The word doesn’t form. Not fully. His brain skids around it, refuses to give it weight. At most, he tells himself, you’re hurt. Something small. A cut. A scrape. A stupid accident that looks worse than it is. You’ll laugh it off when he gets there, scold him for worrying, tell him he’s being dramatic again.

Because you’re untouchable.

That’s the rule his mind has always clung to. Gotham can drown him in filth and violence and rot, but you—you—are clean. Untarnished. Something soft the city hasn’t learned how to bruise yet. You exist outside its reach, outside its hunger. Gotham takes things like Jason. It breaks people like him. It doesn’t get to put its hands on you.

It can’t have you.

Because if you’re hurt—if you’re really hurt—then everything Jason has built inside himself caves in at once. Every fragile structure, every careful compromise, every promise he’s made to stay standing for you. There’s no version of the world where you’re broken and he survives it intact.

He lands hard, barely absorbing the impact before he’s running again, lungs burning, throat raw. The manor rises ahead of him through the trees like a dark monument, windows glowing warm and oblivious against the night. Too slow. The gates are too slow. The doors are too slow.

Jason doesn’t bother.

He barrels straight for a ground-floor window and drives his elbow through it without hesitation. Glass explodes inward, sharp and screaming, biting into skin. He doesn’t feel it—not really—until he’s inside, boots skidding onto the polished floor, breath tearing out of him in harsh, uneven pulls.

Blood runs freely down his forearm, drips onto the pale carpet in dark, blooming stains.

It looks wrong there. Violent. Out of place, just like the blood on your balcony.

Jason stares at it for half a second too long, chest heaving, and something in him splinters quietly—because now he knows. The city has already touched you and it has never, not once, let go without breaking something in return.

Jason doesn’t slow down in the Cave.

The platform is still lowering when he’s already moving, boots striking metal too hard, too fast, the sound ricocheting off stone and steel. The Batcave yawns around them—vast and echoing, all cold water and colder rock, computer screens throwing pale blue light across jagged walls. The waterfall roars like it’s trying to drown the night itself, a constant, punishing noise that usually steadies him.

Tonight it only sharpens the edges.

Bruce turns at the last possible second. His eyes flick first to Jason’s face, then to the blood smeared down his arm, dripping steadily onto the pristine metal floor. Bruce’s mouth tightens. Not in anger. In calculation. In fear he refuses to name.

Jason shoves him.

Hard.

Bruce’s back slams into the Batcomputer console, screens rattling, data stuttering for half a heartbeat. A lesser man would’ve been airborne. Bruce Wayne could have thrown Jason across the Cave without effort—could have ended this in a clean, controlled second.

He doesn’t.

Jason knows he won’t.

“Where is she,” Jason spits, the words tearing out of him raw and shaking. His hands fist in Bruce’s cape, knuckles white, trembling despite the strength coiled beneath them. The fabric bunches beneath his grip like it might rip if he pulls any harder. “Where is she?”

Bruce lifts his hands slowly, carefully—not in surrender, but in containment. Like approaching a live wire. His voice, when he speaks, is measured to the point of pain.

“…Jason.”

The name alone is an attempt. An anchor. Bruce is already running scenarios, already gauging angles and exits and how much damage Jason could do if this slips another inch. He knows Jason’s tells. Knows the way his breathing has gone uneven, the way his eyes are too bright, too fixed. Knows this isn’t rage yet.

This is terror.

“Don’t,” Bruce says quietly. Not commanding. Pleading, buried deep beneath control. “Just—listen to me.”

Jason laughs once, short and broken, the sound scraping his throat raw. “No. You don’t get to slow this down. You don’t get to prepare me.”

Bruce swallows. “…Joker—” he begins.

And the world fractures.

The word lands heavy and obscene between them, fouling the air of the cave like poison gas. Joker. The name crawls under Jason’s armor, past muscle and bone, straight into the place where you live inside him.

Suddenly, you’re not untouchable.

You’re not the one clean thing Gotham never got its hands on. Not the soft place Jason runs to when the city claws at him too hard. Not the warmth in his bed, the light in his kitchen, the voice that says his name like it belongs to something human.

You’re not safe.

You’re not distant.

You’re not protected by the simple, impossible belief that the worst things in the world know better than to touch you.

You’re real.

You’re fragile.

You’re reachable.

Jason’s grip tightens without him meaning to, breath hitching violently in his chest. His mind fills with images he refuses to finish forming—broken glass, blood on pale surfaces, your windows shattered open to the night the same way his chest feels split open now. He thinks of your hands. Your laugh. The way you look at him like he’s something worth keeping.

And now—

Now you’re the blood he’s already wearing.

The blood he’s going to feel soaking into his gloves tonight.

Bruce sees it happen. Sees the moment Jason slips past anger and into something far more dangerous. His own heart lurches, sharp and traitorous. This—this is what he’s been afraid of since the second he knew Joker was involved. Not Jason lashing out blindly.

Jason focused.

Emotional.

Unanchored.

“Jason,” Bruce says again, softer now, steady as bedrock despite the fear tightening his chest. “I need you to stay with me. I need you here. Because if you go out there like this—”

Jason’s eyes snap back to him, glassy and feral and devastatingly alive.

“If I don’t go,” Jason says hoarsely, “she dies.”

“If you go,” Bruce says, low and sharp, the words cutting through the roar of the Cave, “you die—and you could lose her at the same time.”

The Batcave hums around them, fluorescent light washing the rock walls in cold blue, computer screens flickering with restless data. The waterfall crashes endlessly behind Bruce, mist clinging to the air, dampening everything it touches. It feels like the Cave is breathing—slow, heavy, watchful.

Bruce moves closer and grips Jason’s jacket with both hands, fingers clutching the leather like it’s the last solid thing in the world. He holds on the way a man holds a ledge he’s already slipping from, hoping friction alone might be enough to keep someone from falling.

It isn’t.

“Where is she,” Jason says.

His voice is flat. Too controlled. His eyes have already left Bruce, already slid to the Batcomputer, to the glowing map littered with red and yellow pings like open wounds across Gotham’s body. Each marker pulses faintly, alive and accusing.

He doesn’t notice his siblings closing in—Dick’s careful steps, Tim’s rigid stillness, Damian hovering sharp and coiled like a drawn blade.

“She’s alive,” Bruce says quickly, desperately. “She wasn’t the only one—at least four other children and three women—”

Jason turns his head.

The look he gives Bruce is devastating in its emptiness. Eyes glassed over, jaw set too tight, brows drawn together like the world has narrowed to a single, unbearable point.

“Do you honestly think I give a damn about them right now?”

The words aren’t shouted. They don’t need to be. They land heavy, obscene in their honesty, and Bruce’s grip tightens reflexively, knuckles whitening against Jason’s jacket.

“I know you don’t,” Bruce snaps back, frustration bleeding through control. “Which is why I didn’t tell you she was taken. Because we need a plan that keeps everyone who was captured safe—”

“At the risk she dies in the process?” Jason cuts in.

Then—he stills.

Something shifts. His hands loosen, falling away from Bruce’s cape as if the fabric has suddenly burned him. His gaze slides, sharp and intentional, and locks onto Tim.

“How long,” Jason says.

The question is steady. Solid. Frighteningly calm.

Tim swallows and flicks a glance at Bruce—a silent check, a plea, a habit Jason has seen a thousand times. Jason shoves Bruce’s hand aside and crosses the distance in two strides, grabbing Tim by the shoulders, fingers digging in through armor.

“Don’t,” Jason hisses, thumbs pressing hard, grounding, painful. “Don’t look at him.”

The words aren’t just for Tim. They’re for Jason too.

He vaguely registers Dick saying his name, Stephanie’s voice tight with panic somewhere behind him, but it all dissolves into a dull ringing as he stares down at Tim. Tim doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away. He meets Jason’s gaze head-on.

“How long,” Jason repeats. “Where.”

Tim exhales, slow and controlled, the way he does when delivering bad news. “Two hours,” he says quietly. “Warehouse two blocks from Crime Alley. Behind that busted playground.”

Crime Alley.

The name echoes through the Cave like a curse, sinking into Jason’s chest and blooming outward, cold and malignant. Of course it’s there. Of course Joker chose that place—layers of history piled atop rot, a shrine built from other people’s pain.

Jason releases Tim slowly, hands trembling now, control finally beginning to crack.

Two hours.

Two hours of you alone with the man who taught Gotham how to laugh while it kills.

The Batcomputer hums on, indifferent. Gotham’s skyline glows faintly on the monitors—jagged towers under a bruised sky, rain finally starting to smear the camera feeds, streaking the city in gray. Somewhere out there, windows are broken. Somewhere out there, that cashmere scarf he wrapped and placed under your tree stays un-wrapped.

Jason understands then—with a clarity so sharp it almost feels merciful—that plans are a luxury meant for people who still believe time is something they own.

Time has never belonged to him.

Because you—you—aren’t alone. You’re trapped with seven other people. Four of them children, Bruce had said, like that word didn’t rearrange Jason’s insides completely. His mind does something traitorous then, something he hates himself for even acknowledging: it calculates. It knows how these things go. It knows Joker’s sense of theater, his appetite for cruelty, his fondness for leaving one survivor behind as punctuation.

And the last one standing is never the strongest.

It’s the smallest. 

You would be dying before those kids.

Jason’s breath stutters, just once.

“Jason,” Bruce says from the Batcomputer, voice tight, forced into calm the way it always is when he’s terrified. The blue glow paints him hollow, all sharp angles and restraint. “Don’t make me stop you. The cops are on their way. Joker just wants cash.”

For the first time since the harbor, the noise in Jason’s head goes quiet.

Not peaceful—focused.

Everything narrows down to Bruce. To the way his shoulders are squared like a barricade. To the way his hands hover, uncertain, like he’s trying to decide whether to reach out or brace for impact. Jason’s heart hammers so hard it hurts, louder than the waterfall, louder than any threat Batman could ever make.

“If you even try, Bruce,” Jason says.

He doesn’t look at him when he says it. He can’t. The name comes out wrong in his mouth—too raw, too intimate, scraped down to bone. Instead, he keeps his eyes on Tim, standing rigid in front of him, small in a way Jason suddenly can’t stop seeing. He hopes—distantly, uselessly—that he isn’t glaring at his little brother. Hopes Tim understands this isn’t anger.

Just pure desperation. His last attempt, his last shot.

“Ill fucking shoot myself. I’ll make sure you know it’s your fault,” Jason continues, voice low and shaking despite his effort to keep it steady. “I’ll use my gun. And if you tie me up today, I’ll wait until next week. If you lock me down for a week, I’ll wait a month. I’ll do it.”

He swallows.

Because that’s the only thing that’s ever worked. The only language Bruce Wayne never ignores.

Dick moves fast—too fast—grabbing Jason’s arm where it’s still braced near Tim, fingers digging in hard. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he shouts, panic cracking straight through his anger.

Jason turns on him then, eyes blazing, voice breaking loose at last.

“Would you be this still?” Jason yells back. “If that was me with Joker again? If it was me instead of her—would you have left me there for the police to find? Again?”

The word hangs between them, heavy and damning.

Again.

Jason knows Dick well enough to see it land. To watch his brother’s grip falter, fingers loosening like they’ve forgotten what they were holding onto in the first place. Dick’s face goes pale, mouth parting uselessly, and Jason twists the knife—not because he wants to hurt him, but because he needs them to understand.

“This,” Jason snaps. “This is why none of you fucking knew about her.”

He looks at all of them now—really looks. At Bruce, frozen behind the console like a man staring down a live bomb. At Dick, wrecked with guilt.

“If you can’t even see me beyond a mistake you made,” Jason says, voice hoarse, “there was no way you wouldn’t have seen her as that too. And I love her too much for that.”

The words leave him hollowed out.

Then he’s gone.

The Cave swallows the echo of his footsteps, leaving only the roar of the waterfall and the hum of machines that suddenly feel pointless. No one moves to stop him. No one even tries.

It takes Tim a full minute to cross the platform and reach the Batcomputer, fingers hovering uselessly over keys he knows by heart.

It takes Cassandra four times as long to find a part of Bruce that still moves—some small, human place in his arm or shoulder that isn’t locked rigid like a man bracing for an explosion he knows is already ticking down.

Dick follows Jason’s trail almost immediately. And Damian follows Dick.

You don’t remember the last five hours.

They’re gone—hollowed out—like someone reached into your head and scooped the time away with a careless hand. The last thing you have is small and warm and ordinary: the coffee table between the couch and the window, set for two. Plates aligned just so. The new glasses you bought with Jason on that stupidly perfect thrift-store date, thin and elegant and impractical. You’d laughed about them, about how easy they’d be to break. Jason had pretended to scold you, fingers warm around yours as he tugged you toward the bookshelves, already stacking paperbacks in his arms like treasure.

You’d bought homeware. A vintage mirror with a gold edge, slightly warped, the kind that makes everything look softer than it is.

Jason always said you needed better locks. You realize it numbly.

He always said it gently, like a suggestion instead of a warning. Like he was talking about replacing a lightbulb or buying better coffee. You brushed him off every time, smiling, pressing a kiss into his shoulder, telling him Gotham wasn’t that bad. That you were fine. That you were safe.

And you were right. You always are.

Because an extra lock wouldn’t have stopped the man with the red smile.

It wouldn’t have stopped hands tangling in your hair, fingers tight and merciless as he dragged you across your rug, skin burning where it scraped against the fibers. It wouldn’t have stopped the way your mirror shattered when he slammed you against it, glass singing as it broke, your own reflection splintering into a hundred terrified pieces that stared back at you with wide, unbelieving eyes.

It wouldn’t have stopped the way he looked at you.

He crouched in front of you like this was intimate. Like this was a secret. His smile stretched too far, paint cracked and smeared, eyes bright with something wrong and delighted and ancient. 

Joker tilted his head, studying you the way a child studies an insect pinned to cork.

“Here’s the other lovebird,” he murmured, voice lilting, almost fond. “Ohhh… how cute you are.”

You remember thinking—absurdly, desperately—that Jason would hate that word. That he’d bristle at it, roll his eyes, pull you closer just to prove a point. You remember the ache of missing him hitting harder than the pain at first, your mind reaching for him the way it always does when the world goes wrong.

Jason would know what to do.

Jason would make this stop.

The thought is a comfort even now, curled tight in your chest, fragile but stubborn. You cling to it as the man stands, as one of the shadows behind him passes up an old, rusted crowbar. The metal is pitted and dark, flaking with age and something older still. It smells like iron and damp and rot.

It doesn’t take a lock to stop that.

It doesn’t take a security system to stop the sound your bones make when he brings it down.

The pain comes in blinding flashes—white-hot, nauseating, wrong. Your legs scream before you do, nerves lighting up in protest, your body trying to fold in on itself, trying to protect something already broken. You taste blood, copper and thick, your teeth chattering even as your throat burns raw from crying out.

Through it all, you think of Jason.

Of his hands—gentle despite their strength. Of the way he says your name like it’s something precious, something he’s afraid to drop. You think of his laugh, low and surprised, the way he softens when it’s just the two of you and Gotham can’t see him. You think of the books still stacked on the table, waiting to be read, of the glasses that shattered just like the mirror did.

Of how he warned you.

Of how he would be here already if he knew.

The room feels wrong—tilted, smeared with shadow, the air thick and sour. Blood pools where it shouldn’t, dark against your floor, soaking into the rug you picked out together. The city hums outside your broken windows, indifferent and vast, neon bleeding into the night like nothing is wrong at all.

You breathe when you can. You hold onto Jason’s name like a prayer you’re afraid to say out loud.

Because if he comes—when he comes—you need to believe there will still be something left of you for him to find.

Your consciousness returns in fragments, drifting in and out the same way you remember nights with him. Not clean breaks. Not mercy. Just gaps.

A void of sleep.

Jason easing your window open like the city might hear him, hands raised in mock surrender, voice low and careful. I didn’t mean to wake you… shh… go back to bed. The mattress dips, familiar weight settling beside you, warmth bleeding into your back.

A void of sleep.

Jason in your bathroom, the light too bright, the mirror fogged. Gotham’s blood and grime rinsed down the drain while he rubs his hair dry with one of your soft, ridiculous pink towels. He smiles at you through the doorway, sheepish and fond, promises he’ll be there in a second. He always is.

A void of sleep.

Jason shifting beside you, breath warm against the delicate skin beneath your ear. His arm tightens in his sleep, possessive without knowing it, like even unconscious he’s afraid the world might take you if he lets go. He murmurs your name—broken, reverent.

A void of sleep.

White hands. Cracked paint. Fingers threading through your hair, slick and tangled with blood. The touch is intimate in the worst way, scalp burning as he hums—no, sings—a childish tune about robins, voice lilting and wrong, laughter bubbling beneath it like rot under sugar.

A void of sleep.

Concrete tearing at your skin as you’re dragged, knees bouncing, spine jolting with every crack in the ground. A van door yawns open, metal teeth waiting. A child sobs near your ear, small and hiccuping. A woman screams at the child to shut up—panic sharp and desperate—until a gunshot rings out like punctuation. The woman goes silent. The child doesn’t. The word mommy repeats, thin and broken, drilling into your skull.

A void of sleep.

You wake choking on pain.

Your body is bound to a chair, wrists cinched tight, ankles screaming. Barbed wire coils around you like something alive, biting deep with every involuntary twitch. The metal is rusted, flaking, cruel—tearing skin open in ragged kisses that burn and throb and never quite stop bleeding. Your legs are numb in places, screaming in others. You can feel blood soaking into fabric, sticky and cooling as it trails downward.

He’s in front of you.

Smiling.

Head cocked, eyes bright with interest, like you’re a puzzle he’s just started enjoying. He steps closer, crouches until he’s eye-level with you, hands clasped together as if in prayer.

“You do love your sleep, don’t you?” he says, voice almost gentle.

Your vision swims. The room smells like iron and oil and damp concrete. Somewhere nearby, something drips steadily—water, or blood, or both. The walls feel too close, the shadows stretching and curling like they’re listening.

“The other birdy,” he continues, grinning wider, “wouldn’t even sleep if I cracked his skull. Such a shame.” He sighs theatrically, tapping the barbed wire with one gloved finger, delighted by the way you flinch. “I suppose I’ll have to find a way to keep you awake.”

Through the haze, through the pain, one thought stays stubbornly intact.

Jason is coming.

And you cling to that like a lifeline, even as the horror closes in, even as the night tries to peel you apart—because if you let go of that belief, if you let the void take everything—There will be nothing left for him to save.

You can’t see farther than four feet in front of you.

Anything beyond that dissolves into smears of color and motion, the edges of the room bleeding into one another. When you try to focus, your vision tilts violently, the world pitching sideways as warm blood slips down from your temple, sticky and insistent. It drips into your eye, blurring everything further, each blink making it worse. The ceiling swims. The walls breathe.

He notices.

Of course he does.

He steps into what little clarity you have left, face snapping into focus like a nightmare finally deciding to be seen. His hand comes up fast, fingers prying your jaw open with impatient familiarity. Something chalky presses against your tongue.

You gag immediately.

Your throat spasms around his fingers, saliva thick and useless as panic claws up your chest. Your head jerks instinctively, barbed wire biting deeper in protest, fresh pain flaring white-hot along your wrists and ankles. He doesn’t pull away. He shoves the pill back, past your tongue, past your resistance, until your body betrays you and swallows.

You choke.

Tears spill from your eyes, hot and humiliating, streaking through the grime on your cheeks. Your lungs burn as you suck in air in sharp, broken pulls.

Jason, you think, distantly, desperately. The name is a reflex now. A prayer you don’t dare say out loud.

His hand withdraws at last.

Then—

Smack.

Your head snaps to the side, vision exploding into sparks. Before you can react—

Smack.

The second strike lands harder, ringing through your skull, teeth clacking together as pain blooms anew. The world steadies just enough to be cruel about it.

“That’ll keep you awake, birdy,” he croons, pleased.

Your heart slams against your ribs, frantic and trapped. Already you can feel it—the way the haze pulls back just a little too much, the way your thoughts sharpen against your will. Your eyelids burn, heavy but refusing to close, nerves screaming as the drug seeps in and denies you even the mercy of darkness.

“Now.”

He leans back into his own chair like this is a rehearsal, like he’s bored of waiting for his cue. The legs scrape loudly against the concrete, the sound sharp enough to hurt. He reaches forward and adjusts the camera in front of you with careful precision. A small red light blinks every few seconds—steady, patient. Watching.

“We’re going to make a deal, okay?”

You don’t answer.

Your eyes refuse to cooperate, swimming uselessly as you blink through blood and tears. Every attempt to focus sends a wave of nausea through you, the room tilting, your pulse roaring in your ears louder than his voice. Your jaw trembles. Your tongue feels thick, wrong in your mouth.

“Okay?”

Nothing comes out.

The barbed wire strung cruelly across your throat digs in deeper with every breath you take, a quiet reminder that sound would cost you skin. Air hisses past your teeth in shallow pulls. You can feel your heartbeat there, fluttering and frantic against metal.

His smile thins.

He stands.

The rusty crowbar tightens in his grip as he rises from a stupid, bright orange folding chair—out of place, obscene against the filth of the warehouse. He steps into frame, then closer, until the camera, until you, are all that exist. He hooks two fingers under your chin and lifts your face, forcing your eyes up.

“Answer.”

You try.

Your mouth opens. Nothing happens.

All you can see is him—cracked white makeup creasing around his eyes, green hair greasy and limp, age showing in the lines around his mouth where smiles have lived too long. He smells like oil and metal and something sour beneath it all. The warehouse stinks of rust, damp concrete, old fuel. It crawls into your lungs.

And then—

You hear it.

A sound that doesn’t belong to him.

Crying.

Your head turns slowly, painfully, vertebrae protesting as the wire shifts against your throat. The movement costs you another sharp breath. Your vision blurs again—but this time, shapes resolve.

A cluster of bodies huddled together against a dented equipment container. Two teenage girls with their knees pulled tight to their chests, faces streaked with dirt and tears. Four little boys wedged between them, shaking, hands bound too tight, mouths open in silent sobs like they’ve already learned screaming doesn’t help.

Something in your chest caves in.

You don’t even see the crowbar move.

The impact comes out of nowhere—white-hot, brutal. The hooked end of the bar slams into your shoulder with a wet, tearing sound, metal biting deep as it pierces flesh. Pain detonates through you, ripping the air from your lungs. He yells as he does it, manic and delighted, like the violence startled even him.

Your body jerks against the restraints.

Barbed wire bites deeper. Blood spills warm and fast down your arm, soaking into your sleeve, dripping to the floor in thick, uneven drops. Your vision fractures, stars bursting behind your eyes.

You clamp your teeth down hard on your lip to keep from screaming.

You taste iron immediately—sharp and overwhelming—as skin breaks beneath your bite. Tears spill freely now, blurring everything, mixing with the blood already clinging to your lashes. It burns. It hurts. Your whole body shakes with the effort of staying quiet.

Behind you, the crying gets worse—fractured, panicked.

“Okay,” you choke out.

The word scrapes your throat raw on the way out, barely more than a breath. It tastes like blood and rust and surrender.

Immediately, the pressure is gone.

The crowbar pulls free with a wet sound that makes your vision white out, pain screaming down your arm as the hooked metal tears away from muscle and skin. You shudder hard, a broken gasp ripping out of you despite your best effort to swallow it down.

He steps back like a magician deciding on the next trick.

Then he leans in again—careful, deliberate—and pats at the wound where the bar pierced you. Not gentle. Never gentle. His palm presses just enough to make you flinch, fingers smearing warm blood across your torn clothes.

“See?” he says brightly, turning slightly so the camera gets a better angle. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Your breath comes shallow and fast, chest stuttering against the wire. Every inhale sends a fresh bloom of pain through your shoulder, the edges of it pulsing in time with your heart.

His hands come up next.

Dry. Cracked. Too warm.

He grabs your face, fingers digging into your cheeks, thumbs pressing at your jaw as he tilts your head from side to side. The movement drags the skin of your neck against the barbed wire, a searing, intimate pain that makes your eyes flood instantly.

“What a dumb dumb birdy you are,” he croons, affectionate in the way predators are. “It’s okay. Joker can teach you.”

Your body trembles uncontrollably now. Your fingers spasm uselessly against the wooden arms of the chair, nails scraping shallow grooves into the surface. You can feel blood slicking your palm and you don't even want to think about how you got hurt there too.

He releases your face.

Pats your head once.

The gesture is almost worse than the violence.

“Now,” he says softly, pleasantly, “say thank you.”

Your vision swims. The room feels too loud, too close. Somewhere behind you, one of the children sobs so hard it turns into hiccupping gasps. You swallow around the wire, throat burning.

You look up at him with shaking eyes, lashes heavy with tears and blood. Your mouth opens. Your lips quiver.

“Thank—” Your voice breaks completely. You force it back together, dragging the word out of yourself like it’s being pulled through glass. “Thank you.”

His smile spreads slow and satisfied, stretching the cracks in his makeup wider.

“Good birdy,” he coos, pleased. “So much more compliant than your love bird already!”

“Now—” Joker announces, voice lifting into a theatrical lilt, like he’s stepped beneath a spotlight instead of flickering warehouse fluorescents. He turns toward the camera, gives it a jaunty little nod, then looks back at you, grin splitting wider. “I was gonna let you go for some cash. Thought your little boy bird might get scared shitless—just a fun little bonus, really—buttt—”

He drifts away from you, footsteps light, almost playful. You can’t turn your head far enough to see what he’s doing. The wire bites when you try. Your vision pulses, dark at the edges.

Then—

A scream.

Sharp. High. A girl’s voice.

It cuts off halfway through, collapsing into a thin, broken cry that echoes far too long in the hollow space of the warehouse.

Something in you fractures.

Joker reappears at your side, breath brushing your ear, laughter bubbling out of him like it’s a private joke the two of you share. “Got lucky with a rich bitch on the road,” he cackles, delighted. “Gotham really does keep on givin’.”

Your stomach twists violently. You taste bile. The crying behind you swells again, panicked and animal, and you can feel your own body trying to fold in on itself despite the restraints, like if you curl inward hard enough you might disappear. 

His hands slide to your throat and at the same time your eyes land onto his hands. Diamond earrings.

He ripped her earrings out of her ears. 

Before you can flinch at the sight of pieces of skin in his open hand, he yanks.

The chain snaps free with a sharp tug, metal biting into your skin as the necklace tears away. You gasp, the wire at your neck punishing you for it, and the sudden cold where the chain used to rest feels obscene—too exposed. You feel lucky that you took off your earrings when you were doing your hair.

He dangles it in front of the camera, letting it glint under the harsh light, gemstones smeared faintly red from your blood. “This could go for a couple hundred too!” he sings. “Ohhh, how delightful!”

He leans closer, eyes alight, savoring every tremor that runs through you. “At least one of the birdies knows how to decorate their nest. Found a few rings at your place as well.”

Joker pockets the necklace with a satisfied hum.

“Well, now that I don’t need the money,” he croons, voice lilting, playful, like he’s deciding which joke to tell next, “what should I do with you?”

His fingers drag along your cheek again, slower this time, the pad of his thumb pressing just hard enough to bruise. His touch leaves heat behind, a crawling sensation that makes your stomach revolt. You feel contaminated where he’s touched you, like your skin is remembering something it shouldn’t.

“…I’ll give you more,” you whisper. Your voice fractures around the word, splintering into something pitiful and thin. “However much you want—just—”

“Oh, I don’t need money.”

The change is instant. His tone drops, sharp and venomous, and when he leans in his eyes are blown wide and empty, pupils swallowing the green like oil slicks. A hawk spotting movement. A blade finding flesh.

“I was looking for some fun, love bird,” he hisses. “You can’t give me that?”

You whimper around the grip on your jaw as his fingers tighten, nails biting into your skin. The wire at your throat digs deeper when you gasp, its teeth kissing something vital. Pain blooms hot and bright, stars bursting behind your eyes.

“Jason— Jason will—”

He doesn’t even flinch at the name.

Maybe that’s mercy.

His fingers move higher, rough and invasive, smearing through the makeup you’d put on hours ago with careful hands. The eyeshadow burns as it’s ground into your skin, sweat and blood turning it into a dark, ugly paste. His thumb drags through the faint blush on your cheeks, erasing it like it was a mistake.

“How pretty you are,” he murmurs, almost tender. “I do makeup on myself too, you know.”

Then his hands leave you entirely.

He grabs his own face, fingers digging into the cracked greasepaint, stretching the red grin wider, tearing at the corners until the white creases and flakes. For a second you think you see real skin underneath—white, lined, angry. Horrid.

“Do you like mine?” he asks brightly. “Do you think I’m pretty?”

Your mind blanks.

Your eyes flick helplessly to the camera instead—the blinking red light pulsing steadily, patiently. Recording. Waiting. You try to speak, to say yes or no or anything that might stop what’s coming, but your throat locks around the wire and all that comes out is a wet, useless sound.

Then—

“Very pretty!”

The voice is behind you.

Too young.

A teenage girl, no older than seventeen. Her voice trembles, thin and frantic, the words tumbling over each other. “So—so pretty—”

You feel something inside you tear open.

She’s trying to survive. You can feel that hope radiate off of her. The hope of throwing words into the dark and praying it lands somewhere safe.

Joker’s head snaps toward her.

His eyes narrow, sharp and wrong, smile freezing into something predatory. “You think so?”

There’s a frantic nod you can hear more than see—the quick intake of breath, the shuddering little sob that follows.

Joker bends down.

The crowbar scrapes loudly as he lifts it, metal screaming against concrete. You catch a glimpse of it as he moves past you—rusted, pitted, darkened in places where it’s already been used tonight.

Then he’s gone from your line of sight.

The scream that follows is immediate and unbearable.

It’s not just pain—it’s shock, terror, the sound of someone realizing too late that they were wrong. The metal wall amplifies it, throws it back at itself until it feels like the warehouse is screaming with her.

There’s a wet, sickening crack.

A sound like meat hitting concrete.

“Why don’t we match?” Joker coos from behind you, voice light and delighted. “I did one side, now the other!”

The crowbar hits again.

You hear bone give this time—feel it in your teeth, in your chest. Her scream fractures into something animal, then into choking sobs, then into a raw, bubbling sound that makes bile rush up your throat.

Your own crying breaks free, ugly and uncontrollable. Your body jerks against the restraints, fingers cramping, nails tearing uselessly into the wood of the chair. Hot tears spill down your face, mixing with blood, dripping off your chin in thick, dark drops.

The camera’s red light blinks again.

Once.

Twice.

It taunts you by matching every sound that breaks out of you.

Every gasped sob, every wet, hitching breath. The camera’s red light blinks in time with your chest, like it’s learned your rhythm, like it’s decided to breathe with you instead of for you.

And then the Joker comes back.

You smell him before you see him—iron-thick blood, old rust, sweat gone sour. His hands are slick, red to the wrist, fingers shining under the warehouse lights. The crowbar hangs loose in his grip, darker now, clotted, strands of hair caught cruelly in its curve.

He crouches in front of you, bringing himself eye-level, like he’s talking to a child.

“Well,” he hums thoughtfully. “I can’t give you her look, can I?”

Your vision swims. You can’t stop shaking. Tears slide down your face in hot, unstoppable streams, carving clean paths through blood and grime. Your mouth opens, but nothing coherent comes out—just a broken, animal sound that folds back in on itself.

His smile twitches.

“What should I do with you?” he asks softly. “Hm?”

You don’t answer. You can’t. You just cry harder, chest stuttering against the wire, throat raw and burning.

That seems to irritate him.

He clicks his tongue, disappointed, and lifts the crowbar. The cold metal taps against your cheek once—tap—just enough to make you flinch violently. He pauses, head tilting.

“Oh—”

His eyes light up.

“Oh yes, that’s wonderful! Oh—” He erupts into laughter, sudden and explosive, clutching his stomach as if the joke is too much to bear. Spit flies from his mouth, warm and disgusting as it lands in your hair, streaking through blood-matted strands. “Oh, isn’t my brain just splendid?”

He straightens, still laughing, wiping his eyes like he’s genuinely amused. “You bats are all poetry, I say—pure poetry!”

Then he turns.

Walks away.

His footsteps fade, echoing hollowly through the warehouse, until there’s only the hum of the lights, the distant crying behind you—and the camera.

You’re alone.

One last sob claws its way out of your throat, wet and choking. Blood follows it, dribbling down your chin, splashing darkly against your chest. You force your eyes open, drag them upward, lock them onto the camera.

You don’t know who’s watching. You don’t know if anyone is.

Your voice comes out steadier than it has any right to be.

“How—”

“Shut up!” someone whisper-yells behind you, frantic and terrified. “There’s other men!”

Your mouth snaps shut.

And the red light keeps blinking.

The metal door slams open with a shriek of abused hinges, the impact shuddering through the warehouse floor and straight up your spine. Dust rains down from the rafters in a thin, dirty veil, catching in your hair and sticking to the blood already drying there.

He’s laughing before you even see him.

Not distant laughter—close. Moving. Each step accompanied by a wet, dragging sound, like something heavy being pulled across concrete. His cackle ricochets off the shipping containers, off the steel beams, off the low ceiling that traps the sound and forces it back into your skull.

A little boy cries out behind you as Joker passes him. A sharp, panicked sound that fractures into a sob and then cuts off abruptly, like someone clamped a hand over his mouth.

The air grows hotter.

Through the warped reflection in the camera lens, you see it clearly now: a long metal bar burning red-hot, so bright it hurts to look at directly. Heat ripples distort the image around it, the glow painting the walls in feverish streaks of crimson. The smell hits you next—burning iron, scorched metal, something faintly organic beneath it that makes bile crawl up your throat.

Joker taps the brand against the concrete behind you.

It doesn’t clang.

It hisses.

The sound is sharp and alive, like meat on a skillet. Tiny sparks spit outward where it kisses the floor, leaving blackened scars in the cement. The red glow doesn’t dull. Doesn’t cool. It stays furious and bright, as if fed by something endless.

Whatever fragile hope you were clutching evaporates in that moment, leaving you hollowed out, lungs burning as you exhale something that feels like your last prayer.

He’s behind you in the next second.

Joker’s hand comes out of nowhere, clamping over your mouth, palm slick and hot. The copper taste floods you as his fingers press into your cheeks, nails digging in just enough to hurt—just enough to remind you that restraint is a choice he’s making. Your head is forced back, neck screaming as the wire saws deeper, the barbs biting into tender skin.

“Would you like to match your birdy?” he murmurs.

His voice is serene. Gentle. Almost affectionate.

He angles the brand around the arm of the chair so you can see it clearly. The letter is unmistakable now, its edges glowing white-hot, heat radiating off it in suffocating waves.

A ‘𝙹’.

Your body reacts before your mind can—your stomach convulses, gagging against his hand, breath stuttering uselessly through your nose. Your skin feels too tight, like it’s already shrinking away from what’s coming.

“We’re going to make the deal now,” he coos.

In the camera’s reflection, you can see his eye—wide, bright, utterly focused on the blinking red dot. Performing. Enjoying the audience if there even is one.

“You either get a matching look…” The brand drifts closer, close enough that the heat kisses your cheek, nerves screaming in anticipation, sweat instantly breaking out along your spine. “…or you tell me who you hate.”

His hand peels away from your mouth.

Air rushes in too fast. You choke on it, coughing hard enough that the wire grinds into your throat, pain blooming hot and blinding. Your voice comes out shredded. “Who… who I hate?”

“Who put you here?” he hums thoughtfully, as if the answer delights him. “It wasn’t me.”

The brand pauses, hovering inches from your skin. You can feel the heat burrowing inward, like it’s already memorizing you.

“Why do you think I found you?” he continues lightly. “Do you know how sloppy he is?”

Silence stretches, thick and oppressive.

You stare at the glowing red letter, your mind drifting somewhere distant and numb to survive. Absurdly, irrationally, you think of Jason’s helmet—the same violent red, the same defiant color. You wonder if he’s thinking of you right now. If he can feel this, somehow.

“Tell me who you hate.”

The words don’t just reach you—they enter you, heavy and cold, sinking past bone and settling somewhere deep and irreversible. They press the air flat, make the warehouse feel smaller, closer, like the walls are leaning in to listen.

He stands before you in all his wrongness, and up close there is nothing theatrical left. The Joker’s makeup has melted into something corpse-like, white cracked and flaking into the grooves of his face as though his skin is trying to shed it. The red smile is no longer a grin so much as a wound, smeared unevenly, darker where blood has mixed in, the corners dragged downward by age and use. His hair hangs limp, green dulled to the color of mold, clinging to his scalp in greasy strands. His eyes are too bright—glass-bright, feverish—never still, never soft, reflecting the warehouse lights like knives.

The space around you hums with misery. The concrete beneath your feet is slick with blood and oil, cold seeping up through the chair and into your bones. Shipping containers loom like coffins, their metal sides scarred and rusted, shadows pooled so thick between them it feels like something could step out at any moment. The air reeks—burnt iron, old sweat, copper, rot—and every breath feels like inhaling something alive and hostile.

You look at the camera.

That red eye blinks steadily, rhythmically, a heart that isn’t yours. It sees the way your chest shudders, the way your fingers twitch uselessly against the bindings, the way your body is already bracing for pain it knows is coming. Your thoughts drift, slow and exhausted, slipping through your hands like water you can’t quite hold.

You think of Jason.

Not the helmet. Not the blood. But his hands—warm, callused, careful when they touch you. The way he looks at you like the world might soften if you stay. The way he says your name like it’s something solid.

You could say his name now.

You could offer it up like a sacrifice and pray that this monster believes in deals, that you might walk out of here broken but breathing. You could lie and hope he lets you go.

Or you could say Jason’s name and watch Joker’s smile vanish as he switches off the camera and kills you quietly, preserving this horror to show your sweet boy later.

Or you could stay silent and take the brand—feel your skin burn, your body marked, watch the ecstasy bloom in Joker’s eyes as he claims you like an object he’s improved.

None of them feel survivable.

Something inside you twists—not courage, not bravery, but love sharpened into something desperate and ugly and defiant. You gather what spit you can in your blood-wet mouth and turn your head as far as the wire allows.

You spit in his face.

It lands wet and unmistakable, dragging a slow line through the cracked white paint, cutting through the red smile like an insult carved in flesh.

For a heartbeat, everything freezes.

The Joker goes utterly still, his expression emptying out in a way that is far more frightening than his laughter. Then his eyes widen, pupils dilating, fury flaring bright and feral—pleased.

You lean forward, neck screaming as the wire bites deeper, and you whisper because your voice will not survive being louder.

“You know,” you murmur, breath shaking despite everything you do to steady it, “he’s never mentioned you before.”

His breath stutters.

“You must not have left quite an impression.”

It’s a lie. A reckless, transparent lie.

You have lived in Gotham long enough to know exactly what he is—his name written in blood across the city’s history—but lies can still cut, and you see it land. You see the way his smile stretches wider, hungry and thrilled.

You’ve given him a reason.

A reason to prove himself.

A reason to keep you alive.

A reason to make you hurt longer.

His hand tangles in your hair and yanks your head back violently. Your neck slams into the barbed wire, spikes tearing in with a wet, intimate sound that makes you sob despite yourself. Warm blood spills down your throat, choking you, slicking your chest.

Then the brand descends.

The heat is indescribable—ancient, total, a pain so vast it consumes thought itself. Your flesh screams as it burns, the smell of seared skin rising thick and sweet, smoke curling upward as the letter is carved into you slowly, deliberately. Your body arches uselessly against the restraints, every nerve on fire, and the sound that leaves you is not a scream so much as something torn out of your soul.

You hate that he hears it. And when that drug denies you the void of sleep you so desperately need, you allow yourself to think numbly as the man pulls it away that at least Jason can't dwindle his appearance anymore.

Your tears stripe down your cheeks, burning as they touch your skin.

We match. You think numbly, Atleast we match.

He strokes over the brand with more delicacy than he has ever had in this whole nightmare, mumbling, “This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.”

When you wake again, it’s to the weight of tears landing on your face—warm, uneven drops that pull you out of the dark in slow, reluctant pieces. For a moment you don’t know where you are. The world rocks gently, like it can’t decide whether to keep moving or stop altogether. There’s the low hum of an engine beneath you, vibration traveling through bone and bruised muscle, and the smell of old leather surrounds you—worn, familiar, grounding in a way that makes your chest ache.

Leather is good.

Leather is not acid.

Leather does not burn your lungs on the way in.

“Hurts,” you mumble, the word barely surviving the journey out of your throat. You offer it up like an apology, like a peace offering, half-expecting pain to answer you back.

Instead, the crying breaks harder.

It comes undone above you, raw and ugly, and through the haze you realize you aren’t lying flat on concrete, waiting for the Joker to press a cinder block to your stomach. Your body is stretched across someone, your legs draped over another set of knees, your weight distributed carefully, reverently, like something fragile that might shatter if shifted wrong. 

An arm is braced beneath your neck, steady and strong, keeping your head from lolling, and your cheek presses into a leather jacket that smells unmistakably like gun oil, sweat, rain—

Jason.

The knowledge hits softer than it should, cushioned by exhaustion and shock, and when your eyes finally manage to open, everything swims. Light smears at the edges, colors bleeding into one another, but his face is there anyway, hovering close, carved with terror and relief and something so naked it almost scares you more than the warehouse did.

“Am I in heaven?” you mumble.

He lets out a sound that isn’t quite a sob and isn’t quite a laugh, choking on it as his chin trembles. “You don’t even believe in heaven.”

“Well,” you murmur, trying—and failing—to pull your mouth into something that resembles a smile, “what else could you be?”

Your jaw burns when you speak. Everything burns. It feels like your body has been filled with broken glass and lit from the inside, and you’re dimly aware of warm liquid slipping from your mouth, darkening the leather beneath your cheek every time you breathe wrong. You hate that you’re staining him. You hate that you can’t stop.

“I’ll kill him,” Jason whispers, like a prayer he’s been holding onto with both hands. His fingers shake as they brush your hair back, careful to avoid places he knows are hurt. “I’ll kill him. I promise.”

“Can I have hot chocolate first?” you mumble. The words feel distant, like they belong to someone else. “I bought that expensive kind… from Finland. Asshole knocked it all over my carpet…”

Jason’s breath fractures completely at that. He nods too hard, tears spilling freely now, dropping onto your cheeks, your neck, your collarbone. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll buy you hot chocolate. I’ll buy you all of it.”

Somewhere near your feet, another voice cuts in, low and strained with concern. “Hey, Jay—breathe—”

Jason doesn’t hear them. Or maybe he does and simply can’t afford to listen. His chest is rising too fast beneath you, breaths sawing in and out like he’s drowning on dry land, his eyes glassy and unfocused, the green in them shifting with every frantic blink.

Or maybe that’s just your vision still failing you. That would make sense. The powder. The smoke. The way light hurts now.

“Stop crying,” you murmur weakly. “I can’t die with you looking like that.”

That breaks him.

His face crumples completely, grief spilling over into something fierce and desperate as he bends closer, forehead almost touching yours. “Good,” he chokes. “Fuck you. I’ll cry even more, so–so stay with me, yeah?”

“No,” you whisper, your voice scraping raw against your throat. “Wanna sleep.”

“You slept an awful lot,” he snaps, but there’s no anger in it—only terror wearing sharp edges, only love clawing its way out however it can.

“Well,” you murmur, your voice thin but soft, like you’re afraid of startling him, “You show up in my dreams an awful lot.”

That does it.

Whatever fragile control Jason had left fractures clean through. He folds over you instinctively, shoulders caving as he tries—fails—to hide the sound of it. His breath comes apart against your hair, his forehead dipping close to your temple like if he presses himself near enough, he can keep you here by force alone. You feel the tremor of him through your whole body, every hitch of his chest echoing in your ribs.

You smell blood on him then. Copper and iron, sharp beneath the leather and sweat and rain. For a distant, numb second you think it’s yours again—until the scent is too heavy, too layered.

Oh.

Was this—

“Did I interrupt family bonding?” you whisper.

Your lips barely move. The words slip out half-asleep, half-dreaming, and they earn you a startled huff from somewhere behind you. Jason doesn’t answer. He can’t. His arms tighten instead, one hand splayed carefully at your back like he’s afraid even breathing too hard might hurt you more.

A voice comes from the seat behind, dry and unimpressed, because Jason is currently incapable of speech and whoever has your legs resting in their lap is rubbing slow, grounding circles into his back.

“If this is what you think family bonding is, you’ll fit right in.”

“Damian, be quiet,” another voice snaps.

“She’s the one shamelessly flirting with him in front of all of us, Tim” Damian continues anyway, undeterred. “And Father isn’t even saying anything, so—”

“Well she’s the one dying!” Tim blurts, voice cracking sharp with fear.

Jason chokes on the words that come from Tim’s mouth, breath stuttering hard, and a deeper voice cuts in from the front seat—controlled, measured, holding itself together by sheer will.

“She’s not going to die, Tim.”

“I want hoya bellas on my grave,” you interrupt softly.

Jason lets out a broken sound that might have been a laugh in another universe. He shakes his head over you, forehead brushing your hair, and through your blurry vision you think you catch a gloved hand popping up behind him in a solemn thumbs-up.

“Got it.”

Another voice joins in from the front, exasperated and strained. “Cassandra, she’s not being serious.”

“I’m sorry,” Jason whispers, over and over, like a mantra, like something he’s trying to carve into reality. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” His thumb strokes your hair away from your forehead again, impossibly gentle, avoiding the places he knows hurt, the places he doesn’t want to know at all.

“I’m gonna sleep now,” you murmur. It takes effort to shape the words. The dark is getting heavier again, tugging at you, warm and deep. “Can one of you give Jason water?”

“Hey—” Jason breathes, panic flaring sharp as his voice cracks. “Hey, no—no, no, no, stay with me, come on—”

But you’re already slipping.

Your eyes flutter closed despite him, despite the warmth of his arms, despite the way his heart is racing beneath your ear like it’s trying to outrun fate itself. His glove comes off hurriedly and you feel his bare fingers press to your pulse, grounding himself in the steady beat there, in the fact that it’s still happening.

After a few minutes, Dick leans forward and taps Jason’s shoulder gently, offering a water bottle. His uniform is torn and scorched like the rest of them, a thin cut bright against his cheek, but his voice is soft when he speaks.

“Drink.”

Jason doesn’t look up. He doesn’t let go. He just nods once, tight and shaky, eyes fixed on you like if he looks away for even a second, the world might take you again.

He forces himself to take a full gulp of water, the plastic bottle crinkling loudly in the too-quiet car, his throat working like it has to remember how swallowing goes. His hands are still shaking when he passes it off to Tim.

“Hey, I don’t need any—”

Jason looks at him.

Not sharp. Not angry. Just steady in a way that leaves no room for argument, the kind of look that says do this or I will fall apart next.

Tim takes a long swig immediately. Somewhere in the background, Damian lets out a low, satisfied cackle.

The digital clock on the Batmobile reads 4:00 a.m.

The numbers glow cold blue against the dark interior, reflected faintly in the windshield like a second set of eyes staring back at them. Gotham outside is hollow and half-dead at this hour—streetlights flickering, rain-slick asphalt stretching endlessly, buildings slumped together like they’re exhausted too.

Bruce’s voice is calm as he calls Alfred, clipped and precise, already listing supplies like this is something he can control if he names enough of it out loud.

Jason doesn’t listen.

He keeps his focus on you.

On the shallow rise and fall of your chest. The warmth is still clinging stubbornly to your skin. On the way your weight settles into him like it belongs there, like it always has. One hand stays firm at your neck, holding you upright because you need it—because you need him steady, and that knowledge anchors him harder than anything Bruce could ever say.

You need him here. You need him present. You need him not to break.

He knows that, because once—once—that was all he ever wanted too.

And that’s the cruel part of it.

Because the weight of you in his arms has only ever meant safety. Home. Sleep curling warm and heavy in his bones. His body doesn’t know the difference between holding you safe and finally being allowed to rest.

Jason Todd passes out with his forehead dipping gently toward yours, his grip loosening only by a fraction, like even unconscious he’s afraid to let you go.

The last thing he hears before everything goes dark is Tim’s voice, sharp with panic and disbelief.

“Dude—what the fuck—”

“Hold his head up—don’t let him fall on her!” Bruce barks from the front, voice cracking sharp through the Batmobile like a snapped cable.

All at once, everyone moves.

Damian fists the back of Jason’s T‑shirt, knuckles white as he yanks him upright with a strength born of panic he’d never admit to. Dick stretches impossibly from the passenger seat, arm braced awkwardly as he cups the back of Jason’s head, careful, reverent, like he’s afraid one wrong angle will shatter him. Tim presses a steadying hand to Jason’s chest, feeling the uneven rise and fall beneath his palm, grounding him the way he’s learned to do with bombs and brothers alike.

Jason is dead weight. Heavy. Still clinging to you even in unconsciousness, his arm slack but stubborn around your shoulders, like muscle memory alone refuses to let you go.

The Batmobile hums on, tires slicing through wet streets, Gotham blurring past in streaks of sodium light and rain-slick concrete. The city feels distant now, muffled, like it’s holding its breath with them.

“…Did someone check if the Joker was—uh—breathing?” Stephanie asks from the back, her voice small in a way it rarely ever is.

She hadn’t stayed for the end. Her job had been triage—getting the kids out, shouting orders, dragging civilians through blood and broken glass while the rest of them stayed behind in the warehouse with the laughter and the screaming. She’d smelled the aftermath on them when they regrouped. She didn’t need details then but...

Bruce doesn’t look back. His hands tighten on the wheel.

“Jason didn’t hit any vital points,” he says quietly, like he’s reciting a report he’s already memorized. “Just… ah—”

“Carved his face like a jack‑o’‑lantern,” Damian supplies, entirely too calm. “Heated up a crowbar to do it too. Very effective.”

There’s a beat of silence.

The city lights flash over Bruce’s face—old stone and deep eyes that are hollowed by relief he doesn’t let himself feel yet.

“…Yeah,” Bruce exhales, short and rough. “That.”

The Batmobile keeps moving.

Jason breathes.

You breathe.

And for now, that’s enough to keep the night from swallowing them whole.

You wake up in bed.

Not the thin, borrowed kind your body has learned to tolerate at your apartment, but something deep and indulgent—clean sheets tucked tight, the mattress yielding just enough to cradle you instead of swallowing you whole. The pillow beneath your cheek feels stupidly expensive, cool and smooth, smelling faintly of detergent and something old and comforting, like cedar and money and quiet hallways that echo.

For a moment, you think you’re dreaming again.

Then you feel him.

Jason is asleep beside you, solid and unmistakable. You don’t need to move—you can’t really anyways—to know it’s him. The arm wrapped around your waist is heavy with familiar strength, protective even in unconsciousness. His hair brushes against your arm every time he breathes, soft, tickling your skin in a way that makes your chest ache.

He’s breathing.

That fact alone nearly undoes you.

God. You really need to raise your standards, you think hazily. You’re reduced to this—listening to him breathe, feeling the slow rise and fall of his chest, and already you want to curl into him and coo like nothing in the world has ever gone wrong.

Then you see Bruce.

He’s standing near the bed, still as a statue, watching you with the careful intensity of someone afraid to spook a wild animal. It takes effort to focus on his face, your vision dragging itself into clarity inch by inch.

When you try to lift your head—manners resurfacing before sense—your body protests sharply.

Bruce moves instantly.

“Hey, hey—no,” he murmurs, hands gentle but firm as he presses you back into the mattress. “Relax. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

Your head sinks back into the pillow, and the moment stretches. You swallow thickly before managing a small, hoarse sound of politeness.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Wayne. Jason—”

“Hasn’t told you much about me,” Bruce finishes for you, a faint, tired chuckle slipping out. “That’s alright. I just need you to sleep right now.”

You glance downward as best you can, feeling something sharp dig into your side.

“…I can’t sleep if your son’s elbow is in my ribs.”

Bruce blinks.

Actually blinks—surprised enough that it breaks through the carefully assembled calm. “Ah—” he starts, then reaches for Jason, trying to rearrange him with the same precision he uses on everything else.

It doesn’t work.

Jason huffs in his sleep, a low, irritated sound, and somehow manages to make it worse—his arm tightening, his leg hooking over yours possessively, like you’re something he’s afraid the world might steal back if he lets go.

Bruce freezes.

You mumble, exhausted but soft, “It’s alright. I’m sure he hasn’t slept… I’ve gotten quite a lot, so…”

Bruce looks like he wants to argue. His jaw tightens, then loosens, the fight draining out of him. He exhales and sits back in the chair by the bed, elbows on his knees, hands clasped tightly together.

“It’s the 26th,” he says quietly.

Oh.

You missed Christmas.

What a shame.

After a moment, Bruce speaks again, and his voice is heavier now—careful, deliberate, like every word costs him something.

“I… want to apologize to you.” His fingers interlace, knuckles whitening. “I knew you’d been taken. And I didn’t tell him. Possibly… he could have been there sooner. But I needed to make sure the others would be saved as well.”

“Well,” you murmur, the word barely more than breath, “I don’t exactly blame you for that.”

It isn’t forgiveness exactly—nothing so grand—but it’s honest, and it lands heavier than anger ever could.

Bruce doesn’t relax. If anything, his shoulders pull tighter, like he’s bracing for a blow that never quite comes. He’s spent his whole life learning how to de‑escalate men with guns, gods with vendettas, cities with teeth—but you unsettle him in a quieter, more dangerous way. You’re calm. You’re lucid. You’re something Jason had threatened to shoot himself for.

He clears his throat, trying to give you something solid, something measurable. Facts are safer.

“Jason… got him,” Bruce says carefully. “Badly. I think—” He hesitates, eyes flicking once toward Jason like he’s checking for movement. “I think the Joker may be blind now. Or at least permanently impaired.”

“You let him?” you ask.

Still no accusation. Just a soft, stunned curiosity, as if you’re piecing together a story you were never meant to survive.

Bruce nods. Once. The motion costs him. “I did,” he admits. “But I—”

“Then that’s enough,” you whisper, interrupting him gently, like you’re afraid the words themselves might hurt. “Jason will realize that too.” Your lashes flutter; exhaustion tugs at you like a tide. “I mean… he probably won’t. He’ll still try to kill him.” A faint, crooked exhale. “But you did everything you could yesterday.”

Your gaze drifts—not to Bruce, but to Jason. To the way his arm is still locked around you, even in sleep. To the stubborn set of his jaw, the crease between his brows that never fully smooths out anymore.

“Thank you,” you add quietly. “For finding me.”

That’s when Bruce goes still.

Not rigid. Not defensive.

Still.

Because he’s been looking at you, yes—but now you realize he hasn't been looking you in the eye while he speaks. His eyes have been caught in one place, drawn there again and again like a bruise you can’t help but press.

Your cheek.

The skin there is angry beneath the bandage’s edge—raw, faintly swollen, discolored in a way he winced at while he bandaged it. Bruce didn't let anyone else tend to it, not even Alfred. 

Because this was a wound he inflicted, one that he needed to tend to.

“It’s still fresh,” he says, softer now, stripped of the Bat and the rules and the fear. Just a man speaking carefully around something fragile. “I’ll get you better medicine. The pigment should fade.” A pause. His voice lowers. “I can’t promise about the texture.”

You don’t look away. You don’t flinch.

“That’s okay,” you say.

And Bruce doesn’t know if you mean the scar, or the pain, or the fact that you’ll carry this forever—but Jason shifts in his sleep then, brow tightening, arm drawing you closer like he sensed the weight of the moment and refused to let it settle on you alone.

Bruce watches that. Watches how Jason anchors himself to you without waking, how his breathing steadies when yours does, how it pauses even in sleep when yours hitches.

“He loves you a lot.” Bruce mumbles.

“...And you too Mr.Wayne.”

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