#diky

Your eyes widen, and you fluster at his words, “Jay, that’s not what I said. I said someday, I want a baby. I didn't mean now. I wouldn’t- that’s not- Why do you want one?”

The question is clearly a means to get the heat off of you, and it does, but not in the way Jason wants. He flushes at the caught question, “No.”

Your head tips and you stare at him, “... why’d you say it like that?”

“It’s nothing,” he pushes you more out of the way so he can trek into the apartment in shame, feeling guilty and weird about his new desire. 

“Excuse me!” you huff as he moves, following after him. “Tell me. You know I won't tease!” 

He shakes his head, “Don’t lie. I know you.”

“Jason”

“Jay”

“Jaybaby, please.”

He pauses in the middle of your shared bedroom. Heat in his belly and nowhere to run from your questions, “Fine.”

You squeal as you climb onto the bed. Jason flushes dark as you practically flash him, no care about what your robe exposes, which is fair. He has seen it all before. You stare eagerly at him, practically bouncing on the bed. Despite his embarrassment, he gets distracted. You're such a sight. How had he not kissed you yet?

His feet move and then his lips are on yours. You let out a startled noise, but kiss him back with little urging. Your hand slides into his hair, and he slowly presses you down onto the bed, climbing on top of you. Your tongues slide together, lips slick as your legs part without thought, welcoming him close to your heat. 

“Oh!” your lips part from his in surprise. You grin, salacious, teasing, and sweet somehow, “Was it hard being away from me?”

Jason nips at your lip as you giggle. His hips settle down more, no longer hiding how hard he is. You squirm under him, nose scrunching. You let a breathless laugh that doesn’t help the situation for him. His lips find yours again, hard but not mean. He spills his feelings into it like always. He really had missed you, sexual things aside. 

You slip easily under his touch. You stop wiggling, and your hands slide from his hair to ruck up his shirt. If there was one thing when it came to you, it's that Jason was a good listener. He helps pull the shirt off, and your hands claim the new territory. Jason flinches slightly.

“Jesus, your hands are cold,” he mutters against your lips before his mouth slides down to your neck.

Your breath hitches, and you tip your head back as you answer thoughtlessly, “Well, I’m wet.”

Jason barely contains a laugh against your skin, “Yeah, you're wet?”

He didn’t need to lift his head to witness your eye roll, accompanied by a smile. Ever since you’d both been more open about sex, you’d come to understand that Jason had the humor of a middle school boy about it.

“Shut up and touch me, please,” you huff, and Jason snorts against your skin again before his lifting his head. 

His hand finds the collar of your robe. It already sits mostly open, your breast still hidden. Despite your demand, Jason still meets your eyes. You nod in answer to the silent question. His hand slides softly down your chest to undo the tie of the robe, and soon your bared to him entirely.

“Never gonna get used to this,” his hands slide across the bare skin of your stomach, up to cup your breasts. You arch gently into his. One of your hands covers his, urging more of his touch, before both your hands drop to his pants, undoing the button and fly.

“Me either,” you admit quietly as he helps you shimmy his jeans and boxers down. His weight presses back over you again. Your eyes flutter as he presses hot and hard against your cunt.

Your lips find each other again as he grinds slightly against you. His hand roams wherever it can touch, like he can't believe you're there, that you're his.

“I really did miss you,” he murmurs between kisses. You hum, enamored and the truth slips from his lips as it tends to with you, “think I want to get you pregnant.”

You freeze under him, both of you naked and bared to each other, but Jason feels more vulnerable than ever. This could make or break relationships, and youd both been through so much and-

“Do you have a breeding kink?” 

The question throws him entirely, “What?”

Jason’s so stunned that he lets you maneuver him onto his back. You straddle him with odd efficiency, and then you settle, heavy on him. A groan escapes his throat, his hips buck, jolting you slightly. Your hands ease across his chest, affectionate against his Y-scar. 

“Easy, Jay,” you whisper, your hips grind slightly, more like you're soothing rather than trying to get either of you off. He listens, mostly. His hands were already gripping your hips tight, not knowing when they’d made their way there.

“You want to knock me up, handsome?” you question softly.

Despite himself, he twitches between your thighs, “Don’t say it like that.”

You do a shimmy that makes his grip tighten, “I’m not mad, you know. We’re not- we should not have a baby right now.”

“Not at all,” he agrees immediately, and then he thinks about your earlier question, “What kink did you say I had?”

There was a brief discussion the first time you both had actual sex about things you would need to learn about each other, desires, and kinks. Jason didn’t think you’d spot them before he did.

“A breeding kink,” you murmur. Jason bites down a moan as you grind your hips against him again. He knows you're not really trying to fuck with him, knows that you like to keep your body aroused even when you're trying to have these important conversations, but it was really messing with him. 

“Sweetheart, you’ve gotta stop doing that. Give me something at least,” he pleads, completely at your mercy. 

Your hips still, and you bend over him slightly, “a breeding kink is when you want to stuff me full of your cum. Do you want that?”

“Holy fuck,” Jason groans as you hit the nail on the head. Jason's eyes flutter a moment before refocusing on you. You're grinning at him. Little devil. “You already knew this, didn’t you?”

Your hips wiggle and then lift for a moment, “I knew about the cum thing.”

Before Jason can complain about the movement, you're easing him into your slick entrance with caught breath. Jason’s fingers find your clit the second you sink down slightly. He muffles his own noises to watch you. It gets harder with each second as your warm heat sucks him in.

“Fuck your perfect,” he finally moans as your hips settle against his. You make a whine nose lower in your throat as you flutter around him, adjusting to the stretch. You don't move, the energy simply is not there yet. 

Jason talks your focus from the feeling for a moment, “Is there more?”

Your eyes, lidded and heavy, find his again, “Is there more what?”

“Is there more to this breeding kink thing?” he asks, trying not to lose it there and then. His stamina had gotten better over the past few weeks of living together. 

“Oh,” you sigh, shifting your hips with a light laugh, “You want to, um, you want to breed, get someone pregnant, so fuck as much cum into them as it takes.”

Jason can tell you're flustered by your own explanation. It was just part of your relationship, this dynamic, when it came to sex. It also didn’t help that you could read him for filth, “Is there anything special about it?”

“That’s a weird question.” Your hips finally lift, both of you moaning at the movement as you drop down.

Jason chase your movement with his own, hands on your hips to keep you higher, to press up into you, “and there’s an answer?”

“Fuck tonna kids usually,” a broken laugh escapes you as your brows pinch, head hanging as he nudges deep in you. 

“Funny, baby, gimme something else,” Jason keeps going, chasing your warmth around him. 

You stutter a moment before you manage, “there’s, like… positions.”

Jason stills, and you squirm trying to press down on him, but he keeps you up. You openly curse his strength. He ignores it, “Like this one?”

You give up fighting him, “It can be because you get, you know, pretty deep.”

Jason drops you on his cock. A sharp choke escapes you, nails biting into his chest  as your eyes roll, “What is wrong with you?”

He just laughs, and you can’t decide if you like it when he’s more confident during sex. You don't have any time to recover before you're flipped back onto the bed with him still snug inside you. He grinds against you, coarse pubic hair rubbing against your clit. It makes you keen, chest pressing to his.

“Or is this one better?” he murmurs. Your mind tries to understand what he's asking, trying to focus on anything other than his nudging cock inside you. You blink up at him a moment. One of his hands comes up to push your hair from your face, “Talk to me.”

“It's close,” you manage, “ we just need to-”

You take in a breath. Focus. Jason kisses your cheek, your nose. Your eyes flutter, and he kisses your eyelid. He whispers against your skin, like you missed it the first time, “Talk to me.”

“Legs up,” you get out, which Jason finds entirely unhelpful. His hips still from their grinding, and you have a moment of respite and finally find a sentence, “Hold my knees.”

Jason lifts a brow and sets a hand on top of your knee by his hip. A startled laugh escapes you, making you unintentionally squeeze around him. His hand squeezes your knee, and it almost feels like a scold.

“Under, Jay,” you correct, “hook under and like push it towards my chest.”

“I don’t want to break you,” he replies, though his hand does slip under your knee, “are you that flexible?”

“Let's find out,” you urge because, honestly, you were eager to find out if this was any good, for you and for Jason. You’d known he had a thing for filling you up since the first time. Thank god for birth control. 

He pushes your other knee up too, sliding out of you slightly as he adjusts. Then he leans over you. Your calves settle on his shoulders as he folds you in half. Your hips raise with the motion, and then he slides all the way back into you.

“Jason!” you whine-gasp. Your body seizes as he presses deeper than you’d felt him before. Your hands turn frantic, grabbing at his hair, his shoulders, his arms. 

He doesn’t move, just stares down at you, searching for a sign of hurt, “Is it okay?” 

“Fuck, move,” your eyes water slightly from being so full and gaining no movement, “please.”

“Yeah?” his hips pull back, timid and unsure, and you have to remind yourself that Jason was still new to these things.

“Feels good,” you press out, “your so- so deep, Jay, can feel you against my cervix.”

The phrase must work for him and his newfound breeding kink. His hips pull back with a moan and snap back into you. You cunt squeezes him for it as he pushes back in. 

Three weeks ago, he would’ve cum on the spot. Not this time, no, he was going fuck you this time in this position. He doesn’t know if it's your words or the way you're fluttering already, but Jason feels suddenly feral. His hips pull and snap back. Your head falls back, eyes sliding shut. Jason leans down on you more, your knees pushing to your shoulders as he finds a pace. 

You whine and whimper so beautifully. Jason watches your chest glisten with leftover water and the start of sweat. He doesn’t know how he got so lucky to find someone so forgiving and sweet.

“Sweetheart,” he groans as his hips stutter slightly, fighting himself, “Tell me what you need.”

One of your shaky hands finds his. Your calf slips from his shoulder, knee settling into the crook of his arm to give him space as you guide him between you. Jason huffs at himself. One of these times, he’s not going to ask. Most of the time, this is what you want. 

You let out a pitchy moan the second his thumb presses to your bundle of nerves, rubbing tight circles over it. Your hips buck, despite having nowhere to go, pinned under his weight. You clamp around him, warm and wet. He fucks into you harder for it.

“Come on, sugar,” he rumbles, trying to focus. Your eyes snap to his, and he knows he’s got you. It was just a name, but you claimed he only used it during charged moments. You also claimed it had an effect on you. You squeeze tighter. He rubs clit faster. Your eyes flutter.

“Jay, Jace, Jay, fuck.” Your thighs shake against his chest, “Please!”

Jason’s hips speed up slightly, his own thighs shaking, “Come on, you can do it, sugar. You can cum, and I'll fill you right up, stuff you full.”

Jason felt embarrassed by his words, feeding his own fantasy, but the thought disappeared because you're coming. You arch under him, sucking him deeper into your spasming hole as you let out a long whine. Your nails drag down his biceps, red welts trailing behind. 

He’s right behind you, considering he was barely holding on in the first place. You squeezed him like a vice, and he did exactly what he said he would, his hips stuttering twice before he stills entirely, filling you up. His head drops to your chest with a whimper. You always felt like heaven, but what the fuck was that?

Your chest heaves against his forehead as you both stay quiet for a moment, catching your breath. Then your hand slides in his hair as you mutter, “You definitely have a breeding kink.”

Jason rubs at your clit once, making you flinch under him, squeezing him again. You smack his shoulder, “Don’t do that.”

Jason thinks he will be doing that again, only because he can feel your mixed release attempting to leak out around him. He pushes up off of you to get a view. Your legs slide from his shoulders and arms to simply spread. His eyes snap to you as you whimper and tense up.

“Are you hurt?” he asks, suddenly worried.

You shake your head, “It's not- just achey, in my hips. ‘m fine.”

“Yeah?” his hands drop to massage your hips, “So this is only a sometimes thing then?” 

His eyes drop unintentionally to where you're connected. He forgets what you were talking about as he pulls back out. His massage on your hips turns to a grip as you wiggle. He pushes back with barely silenced noise. Fuck, he was sensitive, but he had a great view, cum pushing out of you.

“Jason,” you whine in complaint, shuddering, “Stop it.”

“Sugar,” he murmurs as he grinds slightly.

You shake your head, as if that would deter him. Your eyes meet his for a moment as you feel him twitch inside you, “You're joking? Are you getting hard already?”

He flusters, “No.”

“I can feel you, Jaybaby,” you poke the bear with a smile, “It's the cum, isn’t it? Wanna keep me stuffed?”

Jason drops his face to your neck with a groan as you laugh. You were definitely abusing this newfound kink.

---------

Kandy's Writing Challenge

“What are you doing up?” he responds just as quiet. You wrap your arms around his waist and press your face to his spine. You're still shaking, but the tension in your body vanishes the moment you feel his warmth. His warm hand slides across your arm and curls around your fingers.

“Cold,” you mumble against his back. You turn your head, pressing your cheek there. “What’s wrong?” You sigh out.

“Nothing's wrong. Why do you think something’s wrong?” He murmurs as hand rubs back and forth on your hand and arms.

“You're awake and,” you pause to find the right words, “brooding?”

He snorts. “I don’t brood, sweetheart. Batman broods; I do not.”

His comment has you giggling into the muscles of his back, squeezing him just a bit tighter. You quiet down and take a moment to breathe him in. In a matter of minutes, your nightmare is gone from your mind.

“I don’t like you leaving your windows open.” He finally says as he slowly unwinds your arms from him to turn and face you. His hands move up and down your arms in a warming effect.

“It’s warm. There’s nothing wrong with some good, fresh air,” you argue quietly.

“Nothing you said is even accurate,” he says it like he’s backed you into a corner. “Gotham air is neither good or fresh, and I don’t think it’s warm enough for little, fragile you.”

You scoff and whisper back, “I’m not little nor fragile. You're just dramatic.”

“I’m not dramatic.” he drags your hands up to his face, presses a kiss to one of your knuckles before he cups them and blows warm air on them. You almost don’t feel it.

“Your hands are frozen, honey,” he says so soft you nearly miss it before blowing on your hands again.

“‘s not from drafty windows. I had…” You trail off because you don’t know if you want to tell Jason about your nightmares. You didn’t have them when he was around, so you’ve never had a reason to talk about them. If you did tell him about them, you’d have to tell him everything else you had been hiding from him, namely that you had killed someone. A minor detail you did not want out in the world, privy only to the commissioner and Red Hood.

You’d have to tell him about Red Hood, too. About your brief relationship with him, about how he’s the reason you had gotten kidnapped (if Jason knew that you think he might try to murder the vigilante), about how he kissed you while he had been drugged up.

No, that was all too much for the middle of the night, and you weren’t ready to bare yourself to Jason like that. You trusted Jason a lot, but between the two of you, you knew you were both lying about something, things hidden behind corners just out of sight.

And there was the thing he kept doing. Coming on to you strong before he had some made-up distraction to pull him away from you. You have been in far too many tight situations of both your own making. You can’t believe you can count (meaning more than once) how many times Jason had been on top of you, but he still hadn’t kissed, hadn’t verbalized any inclination to be more than friends. It irritated you a bit.

“Tha’s what happens when my space heater leaves the bed,” you adjust for phrasing. He gives a concerned look, one that tells you he doesn’t believe you. You know he wants to ask. He’s not one to push, but he will ask, at least once. You don’t let him.

You grapple with his hands holding yours so you can tug him back to the bedroom. He resists slightly. You turn on him and pout, “Can we please go back to bed?”

You think his cheeks darken, but it’s hard to tell in the lighting. You tug on his hands again, and he moves much easier.  Once in the bedroom, you flop back into the middle of your bed.

“You can crush me now.” You say, splaying your arms out wide.

“What?” Jason breathed a laugh. Despite his words of confusion, he’s got one knee on the bed, halfway to you.

“Crush me? Like when you were sick.” You pat at your clavicle in a show of where you want him. He makes a face, or at least you think he does. You can’t really tell in the darkness of the room.

“I don’t want to crush you, babe.”

“That’s rude. I want you to crush me.” Your words leave your mouth before your mind realizes what it sounds like (while accurate, he doesn’t need to know that), “as, like, a heated weighted blanket,” you add, rushed. Jason chuckles, something dark that you don’t usually hear from him.

“Whatever you say, sugar.” There he goes again, voice low and teasing. You fear he’s clocked exactly where your thoughts went.  It makes you ache, stomach clenching for a moment before he’s on top of you. He settles his face against your sternum with a sigh.

You should probably be more startled about Jason using your boobs as a pillow but you’re really just not. He’s seen you naked (mostly), and you would rather die than wear a bra in your own home on your day off. So, he’s definitely seen you braless in PJs and t-shirts. You remember a thought you had months ago just after the kidnapping.

If Jason was going to do something to you, he would have done it already. That thought, while comforting, makes you wonder. If Jason was going to kiss you or date you, wouldn’t he have done it already?

“I don’t want you to leave your window open if I’m not here.” The odd feeling of Jason’s voice against your chest breaks you out of thought.

“I won’t,” you say with an eye roll while your hands comb through his hair. He sits up, eyes meeting yours.

“I’m serious. Promise me.” He demands. You're not used to this side of Jason. It has you stunned for a second.

“Okay, I promise.” You press a hand to his cheek, and his eyes close. You swipe a finger over the scar on his lip.” You have nothing to worry about, Handsome.”

You think Jason nearly shudders before he buries his face back on your chest. He doesn’t say anything else, but you know he’s not asleep, can feel it in the way he breaths and the way his hands move, both sliding under you, one pressed between your shoulder blades and the other on your lower back. You don’t know how long you stayed that way, fingers combing and twirling his hair, but you think you feel asleep first with a lasting thought of wonder, what was Jason even doing awake?

****

It’s much earlier in the morning than you would usually set an alarm for on a day off. Actually, you didn’t set an alarm for your days off. You and Jason usually choose to lounge in bed for an obscene amount of time. But today was important. Today was the Wayne brunch. Steph asked you to be at the Manor (these rich people! A Manor??) around 8 to get ready. The brunch itself started around 10:30.

It was only two days prior, when you were thinking about the brunch, that you realized you were likely going to meet more of Jason’s family. At the very least, his father. It was his foundation. You did some digging while Jason wasn’t around.

Bruce Wayne had an interesting, hard life. Parents killed in front of him at the ripe age of 8, and nobody in his immediate family wanted him, so he was raised by the family butler. He left Gotham for a while, most people assumed on a few years-long world vacation, and came back only to do a clean sweep of the corruption within Wayne Industries, refocused the company's energy into helping as many people as possible. Despite his big changes once back in Gotham, people on social media referred to him as Brucie Wayne, the ditzy playboy philanthropist of Gotham.

It surprised you that this idea of him still stood considering he had adopted at least 5 kids, although, you think Damian, who had showed up in Bruce’s life when he was around 9 years old from some unknown woman (allegedly a middle eastern princess), only solidified people's thoughts on the man being a player.

You had seen Jason’s name very briefly. The only thing you learned was that his last name was actually Todd. You glanced for only a second and quickly scrolled past any information about him. You didn’t want to learn about Jason’s life through a Wikipedia page. You wanted him to tell you. After your short search on Jason’s father, the next day, you had texted him and asked him if he was going to the brunch with you. He said he wasn’t planning on it, but he would drop you off at the manor if you wanted. You asked a question instead: Am I going to meet the rest of your family?

You didn’t receive a response for a long time, long enough you had forgotten about it, lost in working and gossiping with Darla. It was only when Jason came to walk you home at the end of the shift that you got your answer.

“I will definitely be there,” he had said, “We’re being set up, and I don’t trust a single member of my family.”

You had laughed despite his seriousness, but you were comforted knowing he would be there rather than just the exuberance of Steph guiding you through something new. Which brings you back to now, with the alarm blaring

“No,” Jason groaned, face now pressed to your neck rather than where he fell asleep on your chest. You can feel the warmth of his breath there, ticklish and making you want to pull away from him, which you do try to do, unsuccessfully, as his arms tighten.

“Bubs,” you practically coo, and his arms loosen up, “I have to turn the alarm off.” He rolls off of you enough that you can climb over him and try to turn off the alarm. His hand skims across your back in a soothing manner while you fight with the stupid machine. An upstroke drags your shirt up your back enough to expose your lower back to the cold air of the room. The alarm stops just as his hand moves down. The cold air is replaced with his warm hand on the bare skin of your back. It makes you pause, waiting for him to move his hand and continue his movement.

Instead, his hand slips further up under your shirt, your breath stutters, and you shift so you could be face to face with him. His eyes are closed like he’s sleeping, and his hand moves just an inch higher before settling on the inward curve of your back. The width of his palm covers the span of your lower back, fingers twitching occasionally.

“What’re you doing?” you ask quietly. One of his eyes flutters open to squint at you before closing again. You wonder if this is one of his sleepy, handsy moments that happen every so often. There’s silence for much longer than necessary with no answer from him and you, distracted by how nice it feels to have him touching your skin.

“Jason.” You get nothing.

 “Handsome.” his thumb swipes against your spine, and his lip twitches. It makes you smile

“Jay,” you coo, following quickly with, “baby”

His eyes open to stare at you wide-eyed, and you see the start of pink growing on his cheeks. His other hand comes up to settle atop his, locking you in place.

“Did you like that?” you giggle, “Baby?” It's not often you can get the jump on Jason, especially with nicknames. You were enjoying the flustered look on his face far too much.

“That’s not-” he cuts himself and turns his head. You stop him, hands coming to cradle his face. If he can keep you trapped against him, then you can make him meet your eye.

“Not baby? I called you Jay, but that’s not anything new.” You pause to think, your finger tapping against his cheekbone. His hand moves just a bit higher under your shirt.

“You're distracting me.” You mean to say it in accusation, but it comes out as factual. Jason’s hand stops, but he seems to still take the opportunity you’ve given him. His flustered features morph into a teasing smirk.

“Am I, Sugar?” he asks, and you feel he’s intentionally lowered his voice. It makes your own skin warm, and you hate him for it. You ignore him.

“Maybe it was the two words being so close together?” You stare him down, and there’s a flash of panic. It makes you cackle, literally. Jason's arms tighten with the movement of your body.

“That’s it! Jaybaby.” You say the same way he says sugar, thick and heavy, something hidden behind a sheer layer of politeness. He actually shudders, a full-body thing that’s followed by a groan. You are far too excited to have knocked it on the nose that you miss the implication of the noise. Your mind does, however, catch up with the shift of his hips and the press of something hard against your thigh. It makes you freeze and stare at him imploringly.

He looks embarrassed, shamefully closing his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at you. You're not embarrassed. Honestly, he’s been in your bed enough times, you're surprised you hadn’t felt a hard-on from him before. This moment now only makes you more sure that Jason does have a thing for you, at least a little bit. You want to tell him that it’s okay, that it doesn’t bother you, and really, it’s flattering. But you get distracted staring at his flustered face, scrunched in a grimace, lips pouting. You think you should kiss him instead of talking. You stroke a reassuring thumb against his cheek, leaning in slightly.

You jar away from him at a loud, obnoxious ringtone that can only be one person. Jason’s hands leave you, and you have no choice but to accept that the tense moment is over. You climb off of him to pick up your phone.

“Do you need something?” you try to keep the annoyed edge out of your voice, but between the ruined moment and the heat you’re suddenly aware of between your legs, you’re a little irritated.

“Wow, you are so not a morning person.” Steph’s voice greets you, “This is your one hour until call time announcement, so you better be awake! We’re expecting you!” It's hard to stay mad at the girl when she sounds so excited. Being upset wouldn’t matter anyway because by the time you turn around, Jason is gone, and you can hear the shower running in the bathroom. No doubt a cold one, you think.

“Okay, Stephanie. We’ll see you at 8.” You grumble, and you can hear her dramatic gasp through the phone.

“I must have totally woken you up if I’m getting full named.” You sigh at her comment. You were far from being asleep when she called, but she didn’t need to know that.

“Goodbye, Stephanie.”

“Wait, did you say we?” You hang up the phone without an answer.

You sit on the floor crisscross and bury your face in your hands. You hope Jason doesn’t hate you. He had clearly been embarrassed, and you hadn’t helped the situation at all, staying there on top of him. Although you can’t be the only one at fault. His hand was under your shirt. Not exactly what you would call friendly touching. Whatever it was you two had going on was getting out of hand. You wish he would talk to you, tell you what he was feeling because you were waiting on him to make a move. One that was preferably followed by words of explanation instead of him leaving you high and dry (or not so dry this time around).

You stand up and walk into the hallway. You wanted to at least talk to him about this morning, tell him that it was okay. You may be the overthinker of the two of you, but you knew Jason was a planner. You hope that he has a plan for your relationship and his body is jumping reactions. You knock on the door to the bathroom.

“Jay?” you say loudly, hoping he can hear you over the water. “I need to wash my face. Can I come in?”

There’s a moment of silence, and you assume he didn’t hear you. You prepare to knock again when he finally answers with a quiet, so quietly you nearly miss it, “Yea”.

You steel yourself before opening the door. Being in the bathroom while someone showers is usually something friends of the same gender or couples do. Jason and you were neither, but it’s not like you two had a normal view of platonic anyways. You quietly get to work washing your face.

You were right about the cold shower thing- not an ounce of steam fogging the mirror. There’s a minute of silence as you wash and rinse your face. Jason speaks up before you can gather the nerve.

“I’m sorry about earlier, sweetheart. You let me into your home and your bed because you trust me. I should be able to control myself for your sake.” He talks over the sound of the shower. He sounds entirely too guilt-ridden for your liking. God, he was too sweet for you.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about, Jay.” You nearly slip the baby on end without thinking but stop yourself considering the topic of conversation, “It’s a totally natural response to what was going on. You didn’t break my trust.” You tell him as you rub serums into your skin. You didn’t want him to feel guilty about getting hard because then you would have to feel guilty about the dampness in your underwear, and you just weren’t.

He sticks his head out around the curtain. “Are you sure? You know I never want you to be uncomfortable.”

You get distracted staring at him, water trickling down his face and onto the floor. You get an excellent view of his bare bicep where his arm sticks out slightly to hold the curtain. Your eyes meet his face again, a redness appearing there, but he doesn’t shift from your view.

“Of course I’m sure, handsome. Don’t think I’d be washing my face while your buck-ass naked on the other side of that curtain.” Your own words create a visual you’re not prepared for, but you ignore it while face to face with Jason.

He gives you a grinning snort, “Okay, that’s fair.” He says, slipping back behind the curtain. Your mind wonders over to the visual it had created. The slip of his bare shoulder you had seen gave you enough to work with. A mental image of a shirtless Jason had you rubbing your thighs together. You meet your own eye in the mirror, and you shake your head. Pull yourself together.

“You’d tell me if I made you uncomfortable, right?” you ask him to distract yourself.

“You know it. You’d tell me too?” he answers and questions.

“Yeah.” You say finishing your skin care.

“Look at us with good communication skills.” He jokes, and you want to pull the curtain aside to smack him. You two had the worst communication skills. You wouldn’t be having this conversation if he and you- but this isn’t about you- would talk to you about his feelings when he was literally on top of you. You don’t do anything or say anything along those lines (because you're part of the problem).

“Yup, look at us.” You murmur and sigh, “I’m going to go get dressed. Stephs already waiting, so we best get there sooner than later.” Just as you close the door, you catch the tail end of his sentence, “…shouldn’t go.” You know he’s trying to get out of it. So, you act like you didn’t hear him, closing your bedroom door to dress in some comfortable clothes for the ride over to the manor. You slip on black sweatpants and instantly realize they are not yours. You hold Jason’s sweatpants at your hip in bunched fabric while you fish through your drawers again for pants that are yours.

There’s a knock on the door, and you mutter a “Come in” as you search for your black sweatpants. You hear the door creak open, Jason laughing under his breath. You turn on him in mild upset only for your eyes to drop to his chest, half covered by a towel on his shoulders, another wrapped around his hips, sitting far too low for decent company. You lose focus at the nice view you get of his happy trail. He was trying to kill you.

“Forgot to grab clothes.” He mutters, and your eyes snap up to his eyes. You feel a flush of warmth at being caught not once but twice this morning ogling him. He eyes the sweatpants you’re holding onto for dear life. “I don’t think those fit you.” He says with a small smirk.

“Really? I thought baggy was an in-style.” You do a haphazard spin that has him laughing again. “But seriously, I think we need to reorganize the dresser; I thought these were mine.”

“How long did it take for you to figure it out?” he teases, and you pout.

“Don’t be mean to me. I can’t find my sweats.” You turn back around before you can get distracted again.  You hear him take a few steps and pray it’s not closer to you before you hear him settle on the bed.

“When you’re done with those, I would like them.” You hear him say and you glance at him from the corner of your eye. His towels offer only mild coverage, and the spread leg way he sits causes the towel around his hips to split up one of his thick thighs. You have a lingering thought of sitting there and just grind- No.

You were no better than a man. Maybe you were ovulating. yea, that had to be it because you couldn’t understand why you suddenly wanted to jump Jason’s bones. You needed to pull yourself together. You were supposed to meet his family today; you can’t act like this!

You finally find your sweats in the drawer, and you stand straight to face him head on, eyes momentarily dipping to his scar-covered chest. You bite your tongue to hold in a comment. You look back at his face; it was flushed slightly, and you worry that you made him uncomfortable, if not for the conversation you two just had while he showered.

“Close your eyes, and I’ll give you your pants.” You tell him. He opens his mouth before shutting it again. He complies, eyes sliding shut. With him no longer watching you, you stare at his chest just a bit longer.

 You had never asked Jason about the scars on his face. It felt personal and something he would share when he felt it was time, but now, looking at his chest, it made you want to ask. Jason was built, something you already knew, the muscles of his torso just prominent enough for you to see, a healthy layer of skin and fat covering a six-pack. Not shocking, you’ve eaten the most nutrient-dense, healthy diet you’ve ever had in the last few months, thanks to Jason.

Surprisingly, however, that’s not what distracted you. Not that or the various littering of scars, some looking fresher than others, on his chest. No, your eyes are drawn to the thick, white bump of a Y-scar that started at the top of his chest down to his belly button. You’ve watched enough cop shows with your sister to know exactly what it was: an autopsy scar. Although you can’t believe you're putting autopsy and scar together, considering one usually connotes death.

“If you wanted to stare at me, sugar, you could’ve just asked.” Jason’s voice breaks you from your thoughts, his eyes still closed. You think his legs have splayed just a bit wider. If he had said that to you two minutes prior, when your thoughts aligned with his tone and words, you probably would have jumped, but now you just feel concern for Jason’s past that he hasn’t shared with you.

****

Jason thinks you’re intoxicating, a drug he suddenly can’t do without, which is strange because he technically doesn’t have you. You’re just friends. He told Cass and Tim those words exactly. Doesn’t change the fact that he wants you all the time. If that stupid pollen told him anything, it was that. Doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t want to share you.

He already shared you with Cass, Steph, and Tim. They were generous enough not to borrow you too much, rarely texting you when he was with you, but he still wasn’t happy about it. Now, if you went to the brunch, he would have to share you with the rest of the family,

He’s sure Dick would be there, all the way from Bludhaven, just to meet you in his civies. And, of course, you would meet Bruce, his somewhat estranged father whom he has never talked to you about. He wasn’t excited about that. He wouldn’t mind you meeting Alfred, though. The thought of his grandfather meeting you gave him some kind of solace.

You’d meet Duke and Damian, too. Duke was mostly mild-mannered, but Jason knew if he was with Tim and the girls, it could be chaos. You meeting Damian isn’t something that bothered him. Damian probably couldn’t care less, but sometimes it mattered to Jason what the boy thought.

Damian had been with him just after he had come back from the dead, when he was in the league. Damian had been a baby at that time, and he’s not sure the boy even remembers Jason being there. Jason does. It’s one of his good memories from that not-so-great time. In the chaotic aftermath effects of the Lazarus pit, in one of the moments where Jason couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t, Talia had set the baby in his lap and told Jason to take care of him. She never wandered too far, just in case, but taking care of Damian had centered him, grounded him. Damian was his baby brother, and he’d be fine with you meeting him, but the rest of the family was a whole other story.

Maybe that’s why he was putting on a show. You had called him out first thing, had said he was distracting you, and he was. The hand under your shirt was so you wouldn’t get out of bed, but then you had called him Jaybaby in that tone, and he popped a boner like a teenager going through puberty. He was embarrassed. He should be able to control himself and his bodily functions, but nothing ever seems to work that way when you’re around.

Instead of shunning him for it, you brushed it off. It’s natural, you had said. The way you said it made him wonder if you had any natural reactions, too, considering the way you had stared at him in the shower. Maybe that’s why he’d been fine waltzing into the bedroom with just towels for modesty. To see what you’d do. It pleased him a little bit, the way you stared.

Jason didn’t look at himself in the mirror too often. His body was covered in scars from this lifetime and the last. He didn’t think himself the nicest thing to look at. That had never stopped you from looking over his face like it was the last time you’d ever see it, like you were memorizing every finite detail. You had a way of looking at him. Because of the scars on his face, most people tended to keep their eyes elsewhere out of some feigned politeness. Not you, though. He’d grown to love it when you stared.

Like this morning, you stared at him without an ounce of disgust when he entered the bedroom. So, he put on a show, sitting on the bed spreading his legs wide, and you stared again, probably longer than you intended. It made him a little hot under the collar, but he would control himself; no boners this time. He closed his eyes when you asked, but then it was silence, no shuffling of you changing.

He just had to comment. In less than a minute, he was hit in the face with the you-warmed sweatpants. It made him laugh, but he still didn’t open his eyes because you hadn’t said otherwise. He held the sweatpants in his lap while he listened to you shuffle around. He was tempted to get a peek, he had already seen you in your underwear before. A refresher wouldn’t hurt, though. He kept his eyes shut. He wouldn’t be Peeping Tom unless you wanted him to be one.

He was so lost in the thought of you in your underwear that he hadn’t heard you come closer. He flinches at the touch of your fingertips. They press at the skin just below his clavicle, moving up and then back down again. He knows exactly what you’re touching. That stupid autopsy scar, the most obvious thing on his body. He had hoped that the towel over his shoulder would cover it enough that you wouldn’t notice.

He opens his eyes to find you fully dressed, your eyes trained on the scar. He wanted to move away from you, to trudge back to the bathroom where he could hide from your gaze because he was sure the longer you would stare at the gnarled skin, the sooner you would grow to hate it, the same way he did. If you hated his scars, would you hate him? He hopes not.

Instead of pushing you away, his hand curls around the back of your thigh, not pulling you close, just holding you. Your eyes leave the scar at his touch to meet his gaze. He watches and waits for the glimmer of disgust, the sneer of disappointment. It never happens. You have a worried crease between your brows, eyes glimmering in concern. Your head tips in question. You don’t physically ask, but he can hear the question as if it rolled off your tongue: What happened?

“I'll tell you all about it later, sweetheart. Not yet okay?” he murmurs, worried that he’d upset you for not talking about (a null thought; you’ve never been upset when he stopped talking about something personal). Your hand skims across the scar one more time before drifting up his neck to hold his cheek, thumb stroking over the scar that you’re more familiar with there.

“Okay,” you say with a nod. There’s a tenderness in the way you touch and speak to him, and no amount of hormones will cloud his judgment when it comes to you. He wants to kiss you differently than the way he wanted to when he originally caught you gawking at him. Earlier, it was a rougher want in his mind, to pin you down and kiss the life out of you. Now it’s a softer want, like a caress, a ginger press of lips to lips.

He won’t, though. Jason Todd was a coward when it came to you. He didn’t think it was possible. Jason threw his life around without much care; that’s how the heroing business went. Civilian lives before yours. That was easy, you were not. Jason thinks he could be brave enough to kiss you, you’ve given him plenty of signs that you want him to.

He wasn’t stupid; he knew what you two have isn’t just a friendship, but he was still lying to you about Red Hood. He couldn’t do that to you because if the truth came out, he was sure he’d lose you forever. He had never felt like this, and he didn’t think he’d feel like this with anyone else. He couldn’t lose you.

 So, he’d sit in wait. If you kissed him, he’d let you. The same way he lets you drag him to bed, the same way he lets you hold his hand, the same way he lets you comfort him without knowing your doing. Yes, Jason was a coward and selfish when it came to you.

You’re tipping forward, like you're going to go for it. It makes his chest tight because he wants you to do it so badly, but he can see the hesitation in your eyes. He wasn’t moving, just sat there frozen waiting for you. You're leaning back then, and he moves subconsciously, hand tightening on the back of your thigh, and your brows quirk in confusion.

Then the phone rang, that obnoxious jingle that he knows Steph set in your phone. The moment was gone once again, and he was going to kill Steph when he saw her today.

“I’ll let you get dressed.” You tell him, and he instantly misses the feel of you in his space the second you step away to retrieve your phone. You leave the bedroom, and he’s left alone, angry with himself for being the reason you carried a disappointed frown with you.

This was going to be a hell of a day between the way this morning had gone, and he’d have to deal with his family. At least he won't have to do it alone this time. Maybe he can drag you to a secluded corner and he can show you his favorite activity of making fun of rich people. The thought gives him some solace as he starts to dress.

“We need leave soon if we want to be on time!” he hears you shout through the walls. He hears your keys, too, the impatient jingle of them. He can see you in his mind's eye, leather jacket and shoes already on, hand on one hip as you shake the keys in the other. It makes him smile. Yeah, at least you’ll be with him today.

Additional note: The next chapter will actually be a bunch of one. I'm struggling a bit with it because there are so many other people, but there are specific scenes that I want. I hope I can get them the way I want, pray for me, lol. Thank you for reading, and if you want, drop a thought in the comments.

nothing and no one can touch you when you’re like this, sunk deep inside yourself. your throat is still hoarse from shouting last night, but that’s incidental, not important. nothing is important.

you don’t want to be here, so you’re not. 

you’re standing on the corner with half a pack in your jacket pocket, and he’s not there—you can’t see him right now, not even in your head—but he’s on his way. the winter sinks cold so deep into you that your forehead starts to hurt. if you stand here much longer, you’re going to get a runny nose. you’re itching for a cigarette. you don’t want to smoke without him. 

a lot of people want your attention.

julie, you’ve got mail. who’s this, your man? is he trying to get you back? put a price on it, maybe you can finally get us something from commissary. 

julie, the feds are not playing around. it looks like there’s charges related to human trafficking coming down the pipeline, and they’re trying to tie you to it. i’m doing my best with your defense, but if you don’t want to cooperate, i can’t guarantee—do you hear me? 

julie, when she comes through, we’re gonna take her back here. if you see a guard coming, just keep your mouth shut and kick the dryer, okay?

a lot of people want your attention, but nobody gets it. you can survive this, put one foot in front of the other, only as long as you can stand partly sheltered by the angle of your apartment building, and listen to the wind rushing past. waiting and safe, as long as he never arrives.

the snitch gets carried out on a stretcher.

the lawyer leaves unsatisfied.

you don’t open the letter.

.

.

.

it’s much worse at night. but still, sometimes, you can sleep.

.

.

.

lunch here has a queasy familiarity. it feels like barracks or school. you sit at a long table and corresponding bench with the italians, wondering if all this sodium is gonna worsen your perpetual low-grade headache, squeezing peanut butter from its plastic packet directly into your mouth, not bothering with the bread. 

behind you, you pick out the word doctor in somebody else’s conversation. thinking that it might have something to do with you, you turn and glance over your shoulder, just in time to catch a woman saying, too loudly, no i’m fine. you think her words sound a bit slurred. you’re fifty percent sure her name is aja. 

you’re sweating, says her friend, a woman with box braids whose name you’ve never learned.  she sounds exasperated. did you take something? when she gets no answer, her voice gains a note of urgency. hey. did you take something?

aja, leaning hunched forward on the table, mumbles no.

relieved, her friend says, then just eat your lunch.

i don’t...aja blinks. goes to lift one baby carrot to her mouth, looks at it, then stops. is car warning, she explains.

in the back of your brain, something stirs.

by now, you’ve been noticed by the other women at that table, and they’re staring daggers back. they’re almost all black women, just like all the women at yours are almost all white—and your stare is violating rules more important than the law. 

beside you, your cellmate janine has caught on too. she smacks your arm a little harder than she needs to, annoyed that she has to reiterate a fundamental lesson. mind your business. but you can still hear aja muttering out a slow explanation of increasingly jumbled words, and that’s all you care to hear.

it’s like there was a heavy weighted blanket keeping you down and separate from life, and that’s suddenly lifted. you can see and hear. there are words floating to the surface, and next steps, and you’re on the move, standing up. 

every woman sitting at aja’s table is up on their feet in five seconds flat, except for aja and her friend, though the friend gives you a look that could cut glass. you can hear everyone from your table getting up behind you, too. 

what’s your problem? says one of the women standing opposite.

i’m a doctor. you’re not even looking at her, but when she says, sure you are, there’s enough menace in it to stop you in your tracks. then janine has an iron grip on your arm, trying to drag you away. it’s too late. when you said you’re a doctor, you believed it, and with that the world has come into focus with perfect clarity. the rest doesn’t matter.

is she diabetic? you say.

janine hisses in your ear stupid fucking bitch fast and low and you can see a flicker of movement to your right, another woman from your side coming for you, so you wrestle free from janine and dart a few steps forward. as quick and smooth as if you’d planned it, a woman from aja’s side steps behind you, between you and your own table. she’s taller than you by about six inches. she says, yeah, she’s diabetic. 

permission enough. you sit down on the other side of aja. up close, she’s sweating and wearing a concerned expression, like she’s forgotten where she left her phone. you can hear the guards shouting, getting closer. you ignore them.

don’t touch her, the friend snaps.

who’s gonna take her pulse, then? keeping a careful eye on the friend, you reach for aja’s arm. nobody stops you. aja herself looks at you with vague suspicion in her golden brown eyes, but she’s not all there enough to resist. once you get your fingers on her wrist and find her pulse, you don’t bother counting it for a full thirty seconds, that’s how fast her heartbeat is going. 

at this point, the outside world has gotten too loud, too insistent, and you can feel the moment about to break. 

she needs sugar now, you say to the friend. or she’ll end up in a coma.

got it, she says, and then the guards are on you. with shouts and shoves, they break up the gathering, end lunch ten minutes early. with a yank of your shirt, you’re returned to your group. 

what the fuck is wrong with you, janine hisses, but you barely hear her. you’re still thinking on your patient, trying to get a look. you think you see the friend reaching for somebody else’s tray—to get a packet of strawberry jam, maybe—but you can’t be sure.

.

.

.

it makes no sense. your head throbs. if janine’s threats are even half true, you’re in for more trouble than you know how to handle, and you didn’t know how to handle your troubles before. but somehow, once you’re in the laundry room, it happens. 

you realize that you like it all. the strong smell of detergent, the sun coming in golden through the high windows built too thin for jumpers, the way you have to lean forward and really push against the weight of hundreds of t-shirts in the hamper trolley. even the finicky machine quitting mid-cycle only amuses you, because you know the trick to starting it up again: thump it in the right spot a couple times, hear it rumble back to work. it’s not until one of the guards passes by you that you hear, the fuck are you smiling about? and you realize you were smiling at all. you stop at once.

the thing is: you fucking did it. at dinner, you’ll see aja sitting at that same table, eating and talking clearly. she’ll be fine. you did that. you never thought you’d get this again, but it seems not everything is over. there is still a little life in you, enough to save hers.

not everything is over, and for once you can think about the letter tucked into your bra without it burning you. 

you don’t imagine it contains forgiveness—hope isn’t the same as delusion—but there could still be something in it that you would want to keep. richie could never respect your decision to leave. loyalty is what he’s cared about most, the one value he’s managed to cling onto by the skin of his teeth. but he might at least understand. 

times past, he has understood you far better than you expected, and strangely enough, you’ve understood him too. he might understand you now. stranger things have happened.

you won’t read the letter, of course. but you’ll keep that possibility with you, the one thing you have left to hold.

.

.

.

hey doc, come here. look at this. 

janine is calling to you from across the laundry room, beckoning you towards the back corner where the security cameras don’t quite reach. you hesitate. you’re not stupid. that’s exactly the spot they once made you stand guard, and given how publicly you ignored all orders today, you wouldn’t be surprised if it was janine’s turn to stand watch and your turn to take the beating. it’s been a while since you’ve done that. you’re probably rusty. ah, fuck it.

you leave the bin of stained shirts where it is and walk over, rounding the corner to find two women waiting for you. one you recognize immediately as an enforcer, blonde and tall and glaring ferociously at you. the other, slight and silver-haired, is the leader. 

do you know why you’re here? she says. calm, even pleasant, like a schoolteacher. 

i have a guess, you say.

so the leader explains. she takes her time with it, uses so many words, but the long and short of it is: you have been living an easy life. they have been taking care of you, and you’ve repaid them with nothing but trouble. angie—the massive woman leaning on the far wall, the enforcer—burned herself today in the kitchen, on purpose, badly enough that she got sent to the infirmary. sure enough, there’s a bandage around the enforcer’s left forearm. aja was supposed to also be in the infirmary, unconscious.

why angie and aja would need to be in the infirmary together, with aja unconscious, is obvious. the leader doesn’t need to explain that part. 

interfering is a crime. interfering in someone else’s murder is a crime whose punishment you can’t afford.

i didn’t know, you say. on hearing your thin voice, you realize your mistake. times like these, you’re supposed to keep your mouth shut. matter of fact, almost always, you’re supposed to keep your mouth shut. 

i’ve been told you have a letter on you, the leader says. let me see it.

you say nothing. she motions to the enforcer.

in your second tremendously stupid choice of the day, you fight back. you duck one punch only to get your ears rung by another, square in the left eye. after that, she deals with you easily, with the advantages of height, weight, reach, and the knowledge that this might be her one chance to get you back. she hates you and she fights like it, like she might just kill you and call it an accident. it’s all you can do to keep quiet, not yell for help. 

in under a minute, she’s back to the leader with your letter in her hand, snatched from your bra. the sound of your own heavy breathing is so unsteady, it’s almost as bad as crying. your eye has already begun to swell up. 

we have a problem, the leader says. if you can’t follow the most basic instructions, how can we trust you? and if we can’t trust you, what can we do? 

in the silence, you realize: they have everything now.

you need to prove that we can trust you. you have no idea how you could possibly do that, and then she adds, tell me about what you did for linda.

this time, you think it through before you open your mouth. 

you know what she’s asking about, of course. it’s the only thing you’ve ever done for your boss’s wife directly, and you were told to keep it secret, too. an iud for her daughter-in-law, along with a fake fertility treatment. what a woman would do to convince the people closest to her that she wants children, when she doesn’t. you know what those men are like.

i don’t know what you’re talking about, you finally say. if you have a problem with linda, go settle it with her. 

the enforcer starts forward, but the leader stops her. i’ll give you the night to think about it, she says, as undisturbed as ever. but first, i want you to tell me the list of things we could do if you turn out to not be trustworthy. i need to make sure that you know.

you need to get these women away from you so badly now that it’s almost easy to talk. 

you could kill me. you say that first because you doubt they’d bother with that much effort. or make my life miserable. you could keep that letter. you could talk to your boss and work it so i get stuck in here for a ten-year stretch. 

and other than that?

i don’t know.

we could make it so you never work as a doctor again.

does she know?

her pale green eyes give nothing away, and the longer you stare at her, desperately trying to pierce her pitiless calm, the more you feel you’re only exposing yourself. eventually, you give up. it doesn’t matter if she knows. the carusos know. if they expose you, the best years of your life, spent in hard work and little else, they’ll be gone. the worst years of your life, spent in restless loneliness and little else, they’ll be gone too. if that bomb drops, there’s no point to any of it. a decade of your life, best and worst, all for nothing. every second of every day. everyone you pushed away. 

i’m in jail, you manage to say. i don’t think i’ll get work as a doctor ever again.

i’m just the messenger, the leader says. see you tomorrow.

.

.

.

that night, you wait for janine to snore, then you bury your face in the pillow and discover that you’re wound too tight to even cry. the pillow smells like old socks. you turn over and stare up at the bunk bed above you instead. 

it’s not a choice, it’s just pure dread. in this place, you have nobody else. if the italians drop you, you’ll be as easily extinguished as the slugs that little boys like to sprinkle with salt, but it’ll take much longer, however long they make your sentence. your lawyer said the feds were trying to pin human trafficking on you. maybe they’ll succeed. it’s life or hell, that’s the point. life or hell isn’t a choice.

you will tell them what they want to know. they will pass it back up the chain to old caruso, who in turn will figure out that alessandra has been fooling him all along with that combination of iud and fake fertility treatment. wronged the family, in his eyes. maybe, given the raid that came not long after, it will be considered a sign that she knew the end was coming and helped it along.

maybe she did snitch. you don’t know. does the truth matter? this man looked at his own wounded son and said, he should be dead. not helping death along was his idea of fatherhood. but he had considered it, you know. this is the man you’re going to deliver your patient to, the man who has you by the throat.

when you first learned about the hippocratic oath, you found it romantic in the only way you could bear: do no harm. not be kind or even do good, not change the world or save the day, and certainly nothing as lushly irrational as love. something possible and real. a solid foundation. first, do no harm. 

alessandra might never know that you’re the one who gave her up.

that’s your patient, you remember a veteran surgeon saying to another resident. you can’t exactly remember what made him say it, some disrespect, but the viciousness of his voice left an impression on you. the unspoken seemed obvious. they’re the patient, you’re the doctor. they let you cut them wide open and put your hands inside them, so you better be prepared to show some fucking respect. surgeons always have a reputation for ego, so maybe it had nothing to do with treating the patient well, maybe it was a pure ego thing. but it felt, and still feels, like a personal claim. you violate your own patient and you might as well be a leafless tree, an unloving father.

you think over the leader’s words, trying to find yourself some loophole. relive each word as best you can while sniffing back snot because you have no tissues. but all you find is that the letter is gone now too, and with that, you tighten your jaw and refuse to let yourself start crying, because this time if you lose it, you’ll be lost.

the laundry room sunlight feels like it fell on your face years ago. that hope is gone. richie would not understand you abandoning your patient, and you wouldn’t want him to. you don’t even want him living in the same country as this fucking place. 

why didn’t you open that letter when you had the chance? if it’s not understanding, it’s probably rage, and you want that.  you would willingly read in excruciating detail just how fucked up it is that you caused his best friend’s death and then wormed your way so deep into his life that you could see him up close fighting the grief like a fish against the hook. you’d take that. if he tells you to go fuck yourself, fair enough. as long as it’s his words. that letter is the last of him, and you want it. 

that letter is the last of him because once you give up alessandra, there’s no coming back. once you give up alessandra, you’re not just a legal liability, not just a burden, but a genuine honest to god piece of shit twice over. you were a piece of shit already, but this?

you only realize you had hope now that you’re losing it. you only know you want to be a doctor once your license is on the line; you only know you were going to go back to him now that the door is receding many more years into the distance. there’s some life left in you, yeah. that’s not a good thing.

.

.

.

when you get up out of bed the next morning to meet your fate, your left eye has swollen up so badly you can barely see out of it. you face the morning, the sudden harsh overheads turning on, with half vision and a desperate, helpless longing to be numb. the numbness doesn’t return, though the leader does. 

she sits next to you at breakfast. there’s no enforcer this time. apparently you’re not enough of a threat.

well? she says.

you should’ve cried last night; maybe then you wouldn’t feel such an intense urge to cry now. stupid. you say nothing. you want to pick at the lumps of rubbery scrambled egg on your tray, but you only stare at them.

this is your chance. she doesn’t say it like a threat. she says it like a friend. you sure you have nothing to tell me?

it’s happening, you can feel it happening, but you can barely process. she thinks your silence is a no. she thinks she’s being denied. and you know you need to tell her what she wants to hear, but the guilt of it is so heavy that your mouth stays closed. you’re terrified of her. of yourself. you know what will happen once you crack and open your mouth and let your patient down: your life will be over. and you have no idea of exactly what will happen if you don’t open your mouth, but your imagination can fill in those blanks a thousand different ways. 

you’re just fucking scared in all directions, and what it amounts to is this: you keep your mouth shut.

after what feels like hours, the leader speaks.

okay, she says. i’ll pass it on. 

she gets up from the table. around you, women are eating and joking and squabbling as usual. it doesn’t feel like you made a decision. it doesn’t feel like the end of anything. it just feels like you’re waiting for the next punch to land.

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days go by and you’re still tensed, waiting for that punch. nothing seems to change, but it’s cold comfort. and there’s no comfort in the moral victory, either—discovering that you have a single principle left doesn’t make you feel any better when all your energy goes into keeping your guard up. every dull hour, every dull meal could be taken away from you at any moment. the afternoon light in the laundry room is still beautiful. somebody should try to hurt you, and soon. if they don’t, you’re just going to lose it.

and then there she is. the enforcer, sitting on your bed, when you come back from the laundry room smelling of bleach from the white shirts. the burn on her arm is still bandaged. in full light, she looks even bigger. dirty blonde hair swept back in a ponytail, grey eyes hateful. 

when she takes out that blue envelope, your chest tightens. you can tell that she enjoys the look on her face, but it doesn’t last long. it’s strange. she tosses the letter with a dismissive gesture, and it lands on the floor between you.

congratulations. she still hates you, that much is clear—but she’s no longer enjoying herself, and that’s vital. that’s a good sign.

yeah? you say.

jack says you pass. 

she shoves past you hard on her way out. it’s all you can do not to snatch up the letter from the ground, to try and look as though you have some kind of control. 

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> dear julie, 

> i don’t know if you remember me, but you dated my best friend mikey a while ago. when i found out you got arrested, i talked to tina about it. she said you helped him till the day he died, and you’re the one who got us narcan.

> that sounds about right to me. i heard negative things about you once, but i never believed them. some things only come around once in a while, like a leap year. (which doesn’t have 365 days, it has 366.) one of those rare things is a friend who’s there when you need them. you have to recognize them when you see them. i think i recognize you now.

> this is just me saying that we haven’t forgotten you. tina says hi, and i’ll come visit, if you’ve got the time to spare. i’m guessing you’re pretty bored in there, and i can honk my horn and take a pie to the face as well as the next guy. 

> yours,

> richie

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yeah, that’s him. 

you know it’s him on the first reread, because you can see all the tightness falling away as he writes, from the cramped propriety and false casualness in the first sentences to the dear clown stupidity of the last. you know it’s him on the second reread, because he’s lying in his own way, trying to fit in with what you wanted, pretending he’s just the friend of your ex, not admitting to knowing you. you’re crying. you’ve waited a long time to cry. that’s incidental. 

it’s only on the fifth reread that you snag on the part about the leap year. it’s the weirdest part, the parentheses. long after you have the letter half-memorized and tucked away in your bra, after dinner and lights out, you’re thinking on it. you fall asleep to the question and wake up the next morning with the answer. 

i’d bet my life that there was a sig p365 in his hand when they found him.

some things only come around once in a while, like a leap year. (which doesn’t have 365 days, it has 366.)

what if it wasn’t you?

no, you’ve been inside for less than two months and you’re already detaching from reality. that’s probably what’s happening here. but you can practically feel the warmth coming off the page, and that’s all that matters. 

your nose is practically fountaining snot, and without kleenex, you just wipe it on your sleeve and read the letter again.

it’s only hours later that you stop obsessing over the letter for long enough to truly realize what has happened. you’re going to be okay. 

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the days pass quiet now. your swelled eye heals up slowly, until one morning you have full vision again. just as before, all you do is sleep, eat, work, and keep to yourself. nothing has changed. 

nothing has changed on the surface.

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you think about alessandra all the time, because of course you do. 

just because old caruso couldn’t get you to flip on her doesn’t mean she’s safe, and yet you think about her the way you think about aja, the way you think about a gap-toothed surgery patient from way back in your residency sometimes. the thing that made you text your bosses begging for news about the carbon monoxide poisoning patients. that’s still in you. 

you know you can’t actually save anyone in a way that lasts—any and all work can be undone in an car-crash instant, and sometimes is—but still. one of your patients has to make it, or else what’s the point?

eventually you stop seeing aja around, but you don’t hear any talk about her getting killed, so you figure: that’s the one. that’s the one you got to save. it makes no sense, you know, but you have this feeling that if you get to save anyone, you only get to save one. so you try to prepare for the news that alessandra is gone. 

but when the news comes of a death in that family, it’s not the one you expected.

you stare at your lawyer, shocked. wait, so old caruso is dead?

suicide, she says matter of factly. hung himself in his cell. 

the fuck? so do we think that… you trail off, mindful of the cameras, even if they’re technically supposed to be turned off for lawyer consultations. you believe he’s dead, but you don’t believe for a second that he actually killed himself. 

your lawyer shrugs. who knows. all that matters is that apparently there’s an informer of some sort that’s turned over a bunch of shit—cellphone records, emails—and they’re willing to give an affidavit that you were threatened. there’s a couple pretty graphic and specific examples. for example, allegedly, after the first surgery you performed in the easystop basement, the oldest of caruso’s sons put his hand in the semi-coagulated blood and—

he’s dead now, you feel obligated to say. it’s whatever. you remember it well, though you wish you didn’t.

she’s admirably noncommittal, your lawyer. it would be nice if it wasn’t so annoying. which one is dead now?

most of them, i guess. the father’s dead, the oldest son is dead, and the youngest son will probably never be the same despite your best efforts. considering those numbers, it’s nothing short of a miracle that jack, the middle son, has apparently decided to spare you. you kept your mouth shut on behalf of his wife, but right now there’s such a tangle of complications and so few actual facts available to you that you can’t begin to guess what’s truly happening behind the scenes. you can only be grateful that you haven’t been hurt worse. 

your lawyer is considering you with shrewd eyes. after a second, she says, if i can get you a plea deal, will you take it? 

i can’t testify, you say automatically.

i know. i think i can get a deal without testimony included.

wait, really? 

she gives you a look, as if to say, catch up, dummy.

how many years? you say.

months, possibly. we’ll see.

you hardly know what to say to that. cool, you say, feebly.

you’ve kept your mouth shut, so they’re taking it easy on you, that’s the bottom line. it feels like a copout to escape the worst punishments on the basis that you were coerced, even if that’s true, because you feel like you probably deserve worse. but fuck, you’ll take mercy from anywhere right now, right and wrong and dignity be damned.

i’ll let you know. your lawyer gets up to go, but just as you’re about to call for the guard, she stops short. oh, one last thing. your landlady finally agreed that you don’t need to pay her rent for the past two months.

lovely.

she threw out all of your belongings that the cops didn’t take.

can’t say i’m surprised. it still hurts, but it’s a hurt dwarfed by the immense relief of an imminent plea deal. i’d sue, but we both know my retainer’s gonna run out too soon for that.

she did forward your mail to me, though. 

my mail? what is it, a dollar fifty off a personal pan pizza?

one postcard from your mom and her boyfriend and his family. one interview request for a doctoral residency program in indiana. 

you don’t know which of those is weirder. the residency applications you mostly did in a period of loneliness and boredom. they were an exercise in desperation daydreaming, not meant to touch real life, and you never even imagined a person reading the papers you submitted. getting a response, a good response, is as strange as a character stepping off a page. and your mom having a boyfriend is no surprise, but a boyfriend with a family? the world’s ended, yeah, but is the world ending?

can you forward those to me? you say.

they’re already in the mail. you should get them within the next two weeks.

when your lawyer leaves, you’re still sitting there. the guard has to call your name twice before you get up.

what a fucking week.

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if you’re gonna get out in months, then…

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you earn seventy-two cents per day working in the laundry. the first time you go to the commissary, you buy a stamp, an envelope, and a blank card. then you smuggle detergent out of the laundry room so you can bribe janine into letting you borrow her pen.

you have richie’s letter memorized, but you read it again anyway. then you stare at the blank white space of the card. 

what is there to say? well, fucking everything, but there isn’t much you can say with the inevitable prison guard reading it all too. that cuts you off from saying most things, and then dignity wants you to shut up about the rest. sorry i thought my life was over and tore you to pieces about it. turns out my life isn’t over, can we be friends again?

thing is, if you write him a letter, he’ll write back, even if it’s to tell you to fuck off. and honestly at this point, you’d give up a lot more than dignity for that. so here fucking goes.

> dear richie,

> thank you for writing. i’m not good company right now and i can’t really write letters, but maybe we can get coffee sometime when i’m out?

> yours,

> julie

the yours gives you away, but you have so little else to offer. and besides, he started it.

it’s disciplined. that’s what you’re trying to tell yourself. it’s disciplined and concise and it gets across exactly as much as he needs to know and jesus fucking christ that short note looks absolutely pitiful in the comparatively vast white space of the card. 

so you make an addition.

> p.s. tear the bottom off for eva.

as best as you can, you draw the horses from memory. arched necks, white and dark patches on their coats, as close to the style of the girl who loved horses as you can. and then one girl with a superhero’s mask and a cape, holding up an apple so the tallest horse can eat it. you don’t draw well, but you don’t have the pen long enough to try a do-over. there’s a small chance you’ll make her smile, and that’s all you want. 

lick envelope, peel stamp, and send.

[ next chapter pending ] [ masterlist ]

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a huge thank you to all readers.