MARK AND HIS NINJAHOLIC BOYFRIEND
Cooley note: the disowned ninja prince who refused to marry and rather be a beer drinking kunai throwing alcoholic hero maybe? (Mark grayson x male ninja!reader)
The first time Mark met you, he was tied to a chair in a warehouse that smelled like rust and rain. His captor lean, masked, and humming off-key—had just finished counting a stack of bills when they sighed, tossed the money aside, and muttered, “Client didn’t pay the full amount. Guess you’re free, hot stuff.”
They cut the chains dow with a flick of a blade, smirking as Mark stretched his body. “Sorry about that, didn’t mean to put you through all that bondage today. Cute boys look good tied up, you know what I mean?”
Mark didn’t know whether to run or laugh. He did neither. When you offered to buy him a drink, for the trouble he said yes.
Now, months later, Mark sat in a dim bar watching that same morally ambiguous ninja his morally ambiguous ninjabbelt out a karaoke rendition of a pop song with the enthusiasm of a tipsy god. Your voice cracked halfway through the chorus, but the grin never faltered.
You were a lightweight, a dangerous contradiction of steel and softness. One drink too many and they’d end up blackout drunk, sprawled across Mark’s dorm bed in nothing but boxers, mumbling in Japanese about the moon and love and how his hair smelled like summer rain.
Mark should have been horrified. Instead, he was obsessed.
Your not a hero. Not really. You killed sometimes mercifully, sometimes brutally. Mark had seen the aftermath: blood on your hands, eyes sharp and unreadable. And yet, when you turned to him, something in your expression softened.
He hated how much he liked it. How much he liked you.
You wrote him poems on napkins, whispered sweet nonsense in Japanese, and laughed at his attempts to debunk ninja myths.
“Yes, ninjutsu is real,” you'd say, rolling your eyes. “No, I can’t do a Rasengan. That’s anime, babe.”
The Guardians the city’s shining superhero team adored you. They called you an “asset,” a “wild card,” a “necessary evil.” Mark couldn’t help but feel a sting of jealousy. It had taken him years to earn their approval, and even then, he never quite fit in.
Not in high school. Not in the superhero world. Not anywhere.
But then you came back after a drinking-off with Immortal and putting Rex in a headlock, (showing him real material arts) half-drunk and ranting.
“These are the guys you’ve been so hung up about trying to impress? Jesus, baby, you’re twice as cool as any of them combined. I’d rather drink with a snapping turtle than an Immortal again. That dude’s a douchebag. How do you deal with it?”
Mark blinked, caught between laughter and awe.
“What’s with that face?” you teased, leaning close, eyes glinting under the bar lights. “Come on, I’m only here for this gathering for you.”
And just like that, Mark’s world tilted.
The Guardians, the fame, the expectations all of it faded into background noise.
Because sitting there, drunk and radiant, was his chaotic, bloodstained, poetry-writing ninja prince.
And for the first time in his life, Mark felt like he belonged.
