#hahaaaaaaa

Meeting the Red Hood is a memory you find yourself looking back on often.

The man is cruel, cold, and brutal. But at the same time, he’s filled with a fierce type of love and care that makes you feel like you’d burn up like paper in a fire if you touched him. And you can count the amount of times on your hands you’ve actually physically interacted with him. He’s not one for affection, verbal or otherwise. He pokes fun at the obvious things, like your attachment to certain books or the one time he caught you holding a childhood plush you’ve managed to keep all this time. But then he’ll clam up when you so much as seem like you’re actually hurt, coughing and steering the topic away from the apparent crack in your walls he accidentally found.

And he’s short with you, sometimes. But you have what you like to call a sixth sense, of sorts, for detecting when someone’s at the end of their rope. It’s like your hair prickles, turning down music or removing any unnecessary stimuli and not talking until you feel like they’ve finally calmed. And even then, you talk softly, too afraid of crossing that line. You’re not sure where this skill came from. You can’t remember what could warrant it.

Although to be fair, you also can’t remember a lot of things from when you were little.

But ever since he came crashing through the little window of your apartment, bleeding with glass stuck in his back, the Red Hood has sort of… fallen into your orbit. Not quite like the moon, but a natural satellite nonetheless. Perhaps temporary, perhaps not. You think you’ve gotten closer to him. He makes fun of you a lot less, and listens when you share all the fun lectures you keep carefully stored away in your brain, because nobody else will listen to them so you’ve had to make up your own audience until now. And maybe your heart races when he stops by, but you’ve long ignored its longings.

Right now, you’re quietly watching him from where you’re laying on your couch, eyes silently taking in his every move from the reflection in the hall bathroom mirror.

He’s stitching himself up, barely flinching as he threads the needle through his own bloodied skin. He’s started to come by for first aid now, so you keep a little kit just for him in your cabinet. You don’t touch it, too inexperienced in first aid and too afraid to hurt him further to even try to help. And you can’t help but get a sense of… bitterness. It clings to him like fog to mountains, pushing his shoulders until he’s hunched ever so slightly like how he is now.

The silence is getting to you.

“How do you do it?” You speak up softly, his head whipping around to stare you down, like he forgot you were there. And that’s fine. You haven’t really talked since he came in, and he seemed pretty out of it. You swallow a little, not understanding the feeling in your gut when he stares back, fingers rising to pick nervously at the cut of your old sleeveless tank. “What, fix myself up?” He snorts, and you can almost hear the nose wrinkle in his tone. “Practice, duh.” He grouses, looking back down to finish his work.

And that’s not really what you were asking about, but those invisible spikes of his keep you from really breaching the topic. So you sigh, resting your head against a couch cushion instead of your arm now, eyes closing just enough to turn the lights fuzzy with your lashes. You can just barely make him out past the little puffs of glimmering LEDs. His sharp edges and harsh angles are gone now, lost amongst the warm colors you can see and the vague shapes that move as he works.

Something about it steals your breath away for a second.

Maybe it’s the quietness. The absurd mundanity that comes with having a notorious vigilante stitch up his wound in your bathroom. Or it could be the build up of all those hours spent quietly observing him when he visits; his crooked finger bones when he takes off his gloves, the soft huffs that make his shoulders hunch in when he stands alone in your small hallway, or that one brief glimpse you got his lips, scarred and showing some teeth, when the front of his helmet clicked open so he could steal a drink of your water once.

But whatever the reason, your heart still gets put in a tailspin.

And yet, as much as you want to bask in the fluttery warm feeling that graces your oh-so tired bones, you feel as though you have to put down an old dog. Because deep down, just like every crush and too-warm feeling your gut has had for different men you’ve met before, you know you can’t have him. You don’t know if he’s straight or not, but that doesn’t scare you so much as his possible reaction to what lies beneath your clothes.

You’ve already spent countless nights in that same bathroom, staring at your reflection with feverish cheeks and wild eyes as you wrangled down the feeling of disgust. You don’t feel it so much anymore, not since you finally got that surgery. The fading scars that linger, but are beginning to disappear the longer time stretches on. It’s a source of pride for you really; a soft ‘I made it’ letter to a younger version of yourself who was convinced you’d end up six feet under before making it out of middle school.

But more often than not, the people you meet don’t share the same sentiment.

You’ve only ever gotten intimate with one man—a stranger from a party—and even then you couldn’t make it past fast kisses and bites. Your stomach had flipped outside in when he tried reaching for your belt, and when he saw your scars he recoiled like you were a rotting slab of meat. It took weeks to recover from that. Too many hours feeling like an infection come to life and too many days spent sobbing into your friends’ shoulders.

And with how much of your shaken heart is dangerously close to the Red Hood’s hands, whether he knows it or not, you don’t think you’d be able to bounce back if he broke it. He has so much power over you, it’s almost terrifying. You bend your routine around him, slowly turning into his own moon instead of the other way around. Except he feels like the sun, with you just being another face, not even standing on a separate orbit, but rather circling another. He only met you by sheer chance, and god knows why he’s stuck around for this long. You’ve heard some stories about him and his odd, eclectic team. The Outlaws, you vaguely remember. A strong Amazonian, and another Superman lookalike.

What do you have to compete with that?

“Hey.”

That low, modulated voice of his snaps you out of your quiet pondering, making you blink and actually meet those two white lenses that hide his eyes. His jacket is back on now, his suit zipped back up. He walks slowly, leisurely, over to your couch, standing not quite over you but near enough for your face to fall under his shadow. “You’re a dork, right?” He asks, making you snort in both surprise and slight offense. But without waiting for your answer, he tugs out his phone and shows you a photo, a strange necklace at the center of it. “You got any idea what this could be?”

Now this gets you to sit up. Not because it’s serious, but because it’s a puzzle. A treasure hunt. A matching game.

A way to stay useful.

Squinting slightly at the image, you reach for your own phone to pull up your go-to search engine, looking back up at the pendant of the necklace as you think. Pursing your lips slightly, you mentally run through any animals that it resembles the most. Once you have a clue, you start typing until you have multiple windows open and you’ve swiped through more articles than you can count.

“Looks like a Phyllocrania paradoxa, or a Ghost Mantis. It’s an insect from Africa. Dunno why someone would make a necklace out of one though.” You mumble out the last part, one brow twitching slightly because yeah, the pendant in the photo is straight up a preserved Ghost Mantis. Not wood, not metal, not plastic, but an actual bug.

Very strange.

“I dunno why there’s those stupid ass long names for animals,” he grumbles, although his tone is too light to be a true complaint. “Helps trace their tree.” You answer, knowing full well he probably wasn’t looking for one. “And differentiate between animals, because some scientists named multiple organisms after themselves.” You add, to which Red Hood scoffs. “O’course. What else would they name them?” You just exhale softly, smile beginning to grow as you lay back down.

“Well,” you start, not really thinking too much on your words, “I think I’d give something your name if I ever found a new species. The Red Hood’s Beetle or something. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?” You ask, looking from the ceiling to him now.

The Red Hood stiffens almost imperceptibly, going utterly still and silent for just long enough for it to be a noticeable reaction. But then one of his gloved hands suddenly runs through your hair, ruffling it up and taking you by surprise. You can’t help your laughter and swatting, or the way your heart does flips and twists in your chest. “Dork,” he grunts again, fingers leaving to poke your nose before finally falling away. “The most dork person I’ve ever met.”

You just scrunch your face at him, huffing a chuckle. “What a way to thank the person who helped you identify a bug you couldn’t.” You reply, but your smile dies a little when he turns and makes his way towards the same window he always comes through. Sitting up, your hands fidget with the hem of your tank, swallowing down the little ‘don’t leave me alone’ that tried to skitter out your throat. “Leaving already?” You ask instead, and the Red Hood just gives a noncommittal shrug. “This city waits for nobody.” He hums, head tilting just enough for you to see a white lens. Right. He’s a vigilante. Not a friend stopping by.

You try to keep your shoulders from slumping so much.

“Well, stay safe. Or as safe as you can be. Can’t blow all my cash on first aid supplies, y’know.” You mumble, smiling again. But this one is just a tug of muscle memory, not triggered by the warm yellow glow that you swear you could feel in your chest each time he makes you laugh. “Yeah, yeah. Tell that to the idiots I gotta deal with.” He snorts, pulling the lock open before crawling out your window, sliding it shut after.

Then he’s gone, leaving you all alone.

It’s probably not healthy, you think to yourself as you stand, to have a mental timer start ticking the second he leaves. It’s probably not healthy to count down until he returns again. But that’s never really stopped you, has it? And it’s definitely not stopping you now as you stand up, bones aching and back popping quietly, making your way to where he slinked out and locking the window shut. You linger there, haunting that spot like a ghost as you subconsciously hold your fingers to where he had put his own, wondering if you’ve gone crazy when you think you can distantly feel some left over warmth.

Part of you wishes that there was a little more substance so you don’t feel so stupid for getting your feelings in a knot over a virtual stranger. Another part of you wishes that there would be a chance that maybe something could come out of this. But the third—and much wiser part, in your own opinion—knows that it’s just best to stay exactly like this and never make a move, because you can’t get hurt if you never push the boundaries. Playing it safe. That’s just what you do.