#femjay

The team runs drills until Jay can't take it anymore. Eight missed shots. She's going insane on the ice, which sucks, because this is where she usually finds clarity. Not today.

"Hey." Cassie, right defenseman, bumps her shoulder as she joins Jay on the bench. "You disappeared last night. We did jello shots."

Jay snorts. "Not sorry I missed it."

"Jello shots pale in comparison to the tender touch of a lady friend," Marcy says, too smirky. "You two left pretty fast."

Jay sighs. She knows what Marcy's gonna say next: that Jay has more of a chance than she thinks, that being vulnerable is worth it for you. But Marcy hasn't known you for ten years, and she doesn't know what it's like to love someone so much, you'd rather throw yourself down the stairs than lose them.

"Cork it, Mars," Shauna says.

"Yes, ma'am." They're dating now, so Marcy is very obvious about enjoying her hot girlfriend telling her to shut up. Jay's grateful. At least Marcy doesn't try flirting with you anymore.

Shauna looks at Jay sadly. She hates it.

"Did you two fight?" she asks. "You were outside for a while."

Jay shakes her head. "No. We're fine. Just a misunderstanding on her part. Except somehow, I'm even deeper in the friend zone than I thought was possible."

And then she relays what you told her last night about wanting to be a better friend, as if that's possible. Jay delicately skips over you telling her that she can talk about who she has sex with. She doesn't know what to make of that one, but she's damn sure that she doesn't want to hear what her teammates think about it.

Marcy exhales. "Wow. Shit."

Jay tries not to look so glum. "Yeah."

"Oh my God," Shauna says exasperatedly. "You're both stupid. Jay, she likes you. She was jealous last night!"

"But she tried to set me up with Marcy."

Shauna rolls her eyes. "Yeah, and it basically brought her to tears."

"Understandably so," says Marcy. "We'd make a terrible couple."

Jay felt awful seeing you like that. She knew it wasn't the wind that made your eyes glassy, but she didn't want to pry. You were tipsy and it seemed like you had a lot more on your mind than you let on. But Jay trusts you, trusts that you'll tell her what she needs to know. Won't you?

"I dunno." She shakes her head. "No, I doubt it. She's never mentioned possibly liking women. Much less me."

"Maybe she doesn't realize that's what she's feeling. She thought she wasn't being accepting enough, but why would she panic about suddenly not accepting her gay best friend she's known for a decade? Any more accepting and she'd be sticking her tongue in your mouth."

Marcy gets two slaps on the arm: a hard one from Jay and a softer one from Shauna.

"Don't be rude," Shauna says. "Jay's friend is a nice girl."

"Just calling it like it is, babe. Nice girls can like tongue. No shame."

Shauna rolls her eyes and turns to Jay. "Just ask her if she likes women. What's the problem?"

The problem is that Jay's afraid you’ll see right through her. Why else would she ask, if not for her own interest? Besides, if you haven't figured it out for yourself, Jay doesn't want to be pushy and pry it out of you. She knows how vulnerable it is to tell someone such a thing.

"No way," she says. "I can't be that straightforward."

Shauna thinks for a moment. "Then tell her that someone from the team likes her and wants to ask her out. You'll know at the very least if she likes women."

Jay makes a face. "I don't wanna lie."

"But you won't ask her outright either! This is the best way, Jay."

"And what if she says yes? Then I have to come up with a reason why they can't take her out."

Not to mention that Jay would probably keel over and die if she had to endure you dating a teammate of hers. She'd rather let Kayla Berger smash her face into hockey glass.

"I'll take out your friend," Isabel, a left defenseman, says. "No lying needed. She's really cute."

Jay didn't even notice the audience she's gathered in talking about you, but three other women have tuned in to her pity party. She scowls, feeling like she's fending off vultures. The thought of her teammates finding you cute or hot or pretty makes her want to snap her stick in half.

"No. I don't want her to go out with anyone on the team."

"Not even you?" Marcy asks.

"I'll punch you in the face, Simmons, I really will."

"Fine, then I give you permission to paint me as the worst possible potential girlfriend," Shauna says. "If she shows any interest, tell her I... I retile pool grout as a hobby. I don't know. Whatever you want, Jay. Just nothing illegal. I do have a reputation to uphold."

Jay laughs. She thinks about the face you'd make if she told you something outrageous, like that Shauna picks pine needles off of trees to make her own Christmas tree.

Shauna is really in love with Marcy, so Jay has nothing to worry about. They’ve played together since college. And more than a part of her is curious. Would you date a woman? Her instinct is no, because it seems impossibly unreal, you liking women. A dream Jay has had many times. Her crush is devastating either way, but you've never acted the way you did last night.

Irrationally, a part of her still doesn't want to tell you that a woman she knows likes you. Even Shauna. It's terrible of her to feel so possessive when she has no right. She had no right either in moping over the few dates and one boyfriend you had in college, then rejoicing when you broke up. It's sick. She's sick to want you so much when she can't have you. You're not a doll for her to squeeze and cuddle when she needs comfort, even if you let her get close to you in bed and on the couch.

No, you deserve someone who makes you happy. You deserve a friend who has a normal, healthy attachment to you. Jay truly feels like a creep sometimes, the way she thinks about you. When you're near, all she can focus on is the scent of your hair and how soft your hands are. Sick!

"I'll think about it. Thanks." Jay gets up from the bench, ready to get back on the ice. She has a good feeling about her shooting now. And they need to practice. Scouts are coming to make definitive decisions next week.

She skates down the rink, imagining you in the stands, watching her score the winning goal and making it to Nationals. Would you get her number tattooed on you then? She hasn't stopped thinking about it since you said it. 15 on your wrist or ankle or hip. Somewhere no one but Jay knows.

She skates faster and slams the puck past Amara. Nothing but net.

"Are you trying to say that you would have been better off having never met Bruce Wayne? " asked the lawyer smugly, clearly thinking they had somehow trapped her.

"Ofcourse not, but I fail to see why that has anything to do with whether Damian should go to live with him? "

"Don't you? By all accounts the two of you are quite similar."

Right. They had gone to quite the efforts to paint the kid as troubled hadn't they?

Time to cut this arguement off at the knees.

"Our situations are entirely different." she states with an unimpressed l9ok and cocks her head to the side beforeexplaining in an almost bored tone; "I was a street kid with no support or anything to my name. Dealing with Bruces miriad of issues and the emotional neglect and mental abuse was worth every second if it meant a roof over my head and a chance to go to one of if not the best schools in Gotham. He gave me a chance to be more than another dead kid walking."

"Well-"

The lawyer tries to interupt but clearly wasn't expecting the calm if blunt response.

Bruce had clearly prepaired them for the agressive, violent child he had always pretended she was and her lack of emotional response to their proding had them on the back foot.

Good.

"But Damian isn't me." She cuts them off sharply wothout remorse; "He has a mother who loves him and will happily provide for him everything he needs. Mr Wayne isnt trying to take custody of his kid because he wants to give Damian a 'better life', I'm a gothamite to my core but i know what this city is like, we all know what this city is like."

At this statement she finally looks to the jury and doesn't continue until she see's atleast a few of them nod in understandimg; "Damian would be safer and happier in Metropolis than he would be here. Talia offered Mr. Wayne visitation rights and he responded with trying to take custody away from her entirely. An act that would force Damian to move schools, take away his friends and place him into an unknown environment with a crime rate 20 times that of where he currently lives. This isn't the actions of a man trying to protect his kid as he's claimed to every newspaper in Gotham. This is a man using his kid, that he hasn't even bothered to talk to yet, to hurt his ex. The whole reason Mr. Wayne didn't know about his son in the first place is because he abandoned the woman he married under the pretense that the marriage didn't count because it was solely religious and not recognised by the state. Considering Mr. Wayne's history of abandonment I wouldn't trust him with a child unless he was undisputably the only option and that simply isn't the case here."

"Two people does not a pattern make Ms. Todd."

"It's Ms. Knight and you're right but three people does."

"Three? Who-"

The lawyers eyes widen as they realise their mistake but it's too late.

When she first started working on the streets, that's what drew her in. Not the people—even if she never forgot a face, a sneer, a laugh or grin—not the drugs or guns, or the money passed from hand to hand. It was the cars, the lights, the music.

She loved and hated them. The Alley was gorgeous in it's own fucked up way but it was also an ever present danger. A thrill and adrenaline rush all in one, it made her heart pound in her chest, it made her sick to her stomach, it made her bare her teeth in a fierce grin.

She was never not memorized by the way the lights flickered in her eyes, or the way the sun set over the skyline, the darkened hues of orange, red and pink smeared over the blackened smog of the city. And how, at just the right angle, at just the right alleyway, these neon lights illuminated the clouds, striking through the dark like the Batsignal.

A reminder to the rest of the city—we're still here.

She hated it too. The way it killed her parents and the way it hurt her friends over and over. How the corruption seeped into every crook and cranny of the Alley. How it made people desperate.

So, when she had to pick between drugs, sex, and cars—she picked cars.

If anyone asked, Jaye would lie and say that stealing the tires off the Batmobile cemented her love for fast cars, bright lights, and danger.

But it wasn't. A desperate act to survive, which in turn gave her a family was nothing short of a dream. And she'll always be grateful that what she loved and hated in equal measure brought her to them.

It's the sleek black and blue Z28 Camaro, the warm black leather seats, the cassette tapes in her hands, the wind tangled in her hair, and Dick Grayson's laughter over the radio that cements her love for fast and dangerous.

His hair was curling to his shoulders, undecided on whether he would actually keep the mullet-inspired look or cut it short again. His leather jacket was laying in the backseat and for once, he wasn't wearing somethin atrocious and low-cut (not that teenage Jaye ever minded but it was a little embarrassing). And his eyes sent electricity singing across her skin, sizzling down her spine just like those neon lights flickering over the strippers and cars.

Her stomach dropped, her heart pounded in her chest so loud she could hear it, and she bared her teeth as he laughed, foot on the gas pedal and the engine roaring underneath his hands.

She never understood the nickname, Golden Boy, until that day. The sun shimmered across his skin, catching on the glitter in his hair left over from a "Titans mission" and his chain necklace. A halo, a spotlight made just for him.

Stay gold, ponyboy, she had thought to herself, mesmerized and wide-eyed.

Fast, dangerous, and golden.

She never stood a chance.

--

He watches Jaye stretch out in the backseat of the car that somehow made it through all the shit of his Titan years, of his early years in Blüdhaven, and thinks-knows she's a dangerous type of trouble. Terrifying, but addictive.

He can't get enough.

She grins, all teeth in the backseat like she can read his mind. His hands clench around the steering wheel, the leather creaking under the pressure. She tips her chin up, showing off more of her bare neck as she quietly laughs at him.

She's in one those corset-like bras. A deep, dark red lace. Her underwear matches, a dark and intoxicating red peeking out from under the bunched up fabric of her short skirt.

She's wearing his leather jacket.

He exhales harshly, putting the car in gear.

"Get up here," He growls out, pulling out on the street. He doesn't look in the rearview mirror, hearing the rustling of his jacket as she moves.

"So bossy," She murmurs in his ear as she slides across the center console, her hand trailing down his neck and arm. When she sits in the passenger seat, leaving her skirt bunched up against her upper things, he guns it.

The roar of the engine and the hum of his old cassette tapes reverberate through his head and she laughs. Loud and bright and biting and he can't help himself. He twists his hand in her curls and kisses her.

She opens up to him without complaint, hands clawing at his shirt as he stretches her neck into an uncomfortable and painful arch. It's bruising and brutal, more teeth than tongue. She tastes like strawberries and sugary sweetness.

He nips at her bottom lip as he leans back, turning back to the road. He tugs at her hair once more, watching as her eyes flutter at the touch, before moving his hand back to the shifter. She huffs, her hand ghosting over his chest and playing with chain as she glares-pouts at him.

He shifts gears, hitting the main drag. A smile curls on her reddened lips, her eyes alight as she watches the road race underneath them. Her hand teases down his arm, only stopping to entwin their fingers together around the shifter.

"How come your polish isn't chipped?" She suddenly grumbles, lips pursed as she gazes down at their hands. She plays and wiggles their fingers—his black and blue nail polish gleams in the passing street lights compared to her chipped and matte red polish. He squeezes her hand and gives a soft smile as he whips the car down the next street.

"New brand and a clear top coat." He explains, tapping his middle finger against hers. Her face scrunches up and he can't help his chuckle. She leans over, squeezing his hand right before she bites into his shoulder.

"Jay-" He hisses, his muscles tensing under the assault of her teeth. She quietly laughs, rubbing her face against his shirt before giving it a soft kiss. She gazes up at him through hooded eyes full of mischief, and he feels the grin against his shirt.

"You're so mean to me," He murmurs with a crooked smile, finally reaching the highway ramp. He takes their hands together and shifts gear. Her quick and sharp inhale makes him grin as he races up the ramp and swerves them into traffic.

He weaves them through the last dregs of the nightly rush hour, her hand squeezing painfully around his and the shifter as he dodges car after car.

"You deserve it." She probably means to be cruel and vicious, but her words are soft, more of a low, breathy sigh than a cutting remark. He hums and shifts gears one more time, hoping to hear more of those pretty noises. And fuck, he wishes he could just throw her into the backseat and do it himself. Take her apart in his jacket and his jacket only.

She shifts in her seat, and he watches her free hand twist in the edges of her skirt from the corner of his eye. They're tearing down the highway, the road signs mere blurs as they pass by. The speedometer twitches over 95 and she hums, low but loud. It almost sounds like a muffled moan.

And he's a weak man.

He takes their entwined hands and trails their fingers over her exposed skin, ghosting over her thighs with the barest amount of pressure. She gets the hint, guiding his hand over the scars and the edges of her skirt. She arches just a bit, shifting her hips forward and tilting her head towards him.

She catches his gaze, but she doesn't move her hand any further, holding it there.

"Faster." She says, eyes dark and filled with an insatiable hunger that tingles down his spine. He shudders at her words. There are no more lights to illuminate her, just the moonlight and the low lights of the radio. And gods, it suits her like the sun suits him.

He curls his fingers into her skin, kneading at the muscles that could easily kill a man, thighs he would gladly spend the rest of the night between.

Without a word, he presses down on the gas pedal and watches the speedometer gradually move past the 100 mark. When it reaches close to 110 and they blow past the Bristol exist, he gives her a look and flexes his fingers.

"So good to me, aren't you Bluebird?" She murmurs, biting her lip as she smiles at him. He jerks, a sharp inhale-exhale, as the leather of the steering wheel creaks under his hand. He gives her a choked hum, positive that if he opened his mouth to speak all that would come out is desperation and need.