not a wife, just a gf

Every morning, she spent eight dollars that wasn’t hers on coffee and an additional six dollars that also wasn’t hers on a loaf of ciabatta from the bakery next store for her daily panini. 

She lounged in a brownstone that she didn’t pay for, spending money that wasn’t hers on whatever caught her interest that day while already having a stack of packages that she hadn’t opened yet. 

She was sunbathing in a string bikini on her balcony, eyes closed and feeling increasingly restless while trying to think of outlets she hadn’t visited, dream destinations that she hadn’t been to, brands she hadn’t worn when she realized that her problem wasn’t as materialistic as she originally thought. This was when she realized that this life was no longer what she wanted.

What was this? She was living the life of a regency-era mistress. 

Using a man’s credit card, living in his apartment. 

She attended events with outfits he bought, makeup he paid for. She leaned against his arm and looked beautiful while he spoke about topics that she knew too much about, but wasn’t invited to speak on.

The only thing that she had that was hers was a blacked out 2015 Volkswagen Golf R which had sounded like so little to the version of her from six years ago, when this arrangement first began. 

Now she felt her that her Golf was somehow encompassing her entire world. She had hardly touched the car, had only passively kept up on its maintenance. 

She shot up, suddenly invigorated and rushed into his townhouse, hardly wasting enough time to shut the door to the balcony behind her and surveyed the room. She had expected to feel a pang of sadness to be leaving everything behind and wasn’t expecting the giddiness she felt at the prospect of nothing. 

She hadn’t known when the lethargy started, when the visits waned and she became complacent but now that she had become aware—she could no longer look past it. Being a sugar baby wasn’t bad. Her college self had dreamed of having a man like Bruce Wayne pay for everything she needed and then leave her be—no expectation of sex, though that did happen, just companionship, but the reality of that situation was different. 

It left her empty. She had become isolated, waiting for any drop of affection from a man was notoriously distant. She knew that it hadn’t always been like that, but she felt that the days of a Bruce Wayne that was almost suffocatingly affection had been gone for years now. 

She hadn’t known when she had stopped messaging her friends, or when they had stopped reaching out. 

She was in her mid-twenties, women she had once called friends had careers, or children, their lives were fulfilling even if she didn’t understand the appeal of a child. 

She had never used her degree, she dropped to her knees by her bed and shoved aside dust bunnies until she reached her duffel bag—a plain black Adidas that she had carried since high school. It was worn, faded, but undeniably something that she had paid for. She pulled it out and walked into her closet, breezing past racks of designer clothing to a series of tied grocery bags buried in the back that she had kept forgetting to part with. 

She pulled the bags out, opening them to check that they weren’t moldy and couldn’t help but smile at her completely mundane black t-shirts, dorky capris, hiking boots. She tossed everything but the three pairs of shoes in the washer and gathered her folder of important documents next, shoving that into her duffel and set to work on looking for items in the townhouse that she had purchased, spending three hours to come up with a total of ten things. Seven of them being books, one being her old purple iPhone, which she would need to get reactivated, a pair of corded headphones and then, surprisingly, an unopened, carefully wrapped present of something that she had bought Bruce and been too insecure to give him. It had been too long for her to remember what was inside, but she tossed it on her bed.

Whatever it was, she had no need for it. He could keep it—she didn’t want to remember Bruce. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, but it was easier than admitting that she had a silly, childish misconception that she would be different. She would be the wife, she would live with him, whoever that was. 

When her laundry was finally done, she folded everything out of the dryer and felt giddy at the complete mundanity of warm laundry. Then, she did a last survey of the townhouse, lingered on shelves of books that she had accumulated; easy over a thousand but paling in comparison to the library at Wayne manor. 

She had expected to feel sad, leaving everything she had ever wanted behind. She had scrolled on LinkedIn after finding her ten items, applied to at least forty seasonal jobs, before she transitioned onto Indeed and various government websites. 

She wasn’t entirely sure where she was going, but knew that she missed Boston and had applied to a Seafood Data & Operations role there. She had always wanted to road trip across the United States. Why hadn’t she? All the free time in the world and she had spent it doing nothing—she felt atrophied. She no longer researched, hardly ever drew. She wasn’t entirely sure that she could even be qualified for any of the jobs that she had applied to anymore.

 She had the basic yearn of journaling but she no longer eagerly waited for the Hobonichi drop each year and had eventually stopped even purchasing them two years ago. 

She would need to dig through her storage unit, but the thought of looking through years of her passions, shoved inside and forgotten about made her queasy. 

An entire life that she had abandoned, her eyes were stinging and she choose to look at the ceiling to avoid tears. 

Leaving this townhouse was different—her old life had fulfilled her. It was challenging, but it was hers. She visited the library everyday, pirated thousands of books and only bought groceries on sale and most items over one hundred with pay later apps. 

When she had met Bruce, it wasn’t with the intention of.. this. 

She couldn’t pinpoint when their relationship had transitioned into a sugar baby dynamic. 

They used to have fun. She dragged him with her to hike Mt. Tammany, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Whitney, she had been telling him to get time off to backpack the Appalachian Trail, but couldn’t remember why they had never gone. 

She looked down at her keys, the embroidered patch style motel keychain of swordtail shark had been a gift from Bruce—the first one that he had ever given her. 

She could remember the day with starling clarity—how lucky, how loved she had felt. She wondered if her Golf could make it to California, giddy the prospect of finding out. She thought about writing a note, but what was there to say? 

Bruce would be fine. How long would it take for him to even notice? Did he keep tabs on her? Their dynamic had to have been coming to an end even without her decision to leave.

She left the phone that he had bought her on the entrance table, inside the large catch-all bowl he had bought her beside the wallet he had bought her (she only needed the ID and her old, barely non expired debit card.) She looked in the mirror above the entrance table that Bruce had bought her and grinned. 

She was in her old chunky New Balances, cargo capri’s and a loose fitting brown and white shirt. Her hair was lose around her shoulders, grown out slightly and she looked considerably different than her fresh out of college self. 

She rifled in the bowl and pulled out an old light pink lipstick, scribbling on the mirror, ‘Gone Fishing. Wont be back.’ Before locking the door behind her and slipping the key under the mat as she left.

- 

Her phone was ringing. 

That shouldn’t scare her as much as it did. No one should be calling her. Her parents were dead, she was an afterthought to her siblings—had she even talked to them in recent years? She was no longer a prodigal daughter, but it did tickle her to still be the only one in her family with a masters.

She was a (hopefully) formally depressed, aimless (working on it) former sugar baby who had been camping in Congaree National Park for the better half of the week. 

She leaned over her center console, three missed calls, the same number she didn’t recognize. She had every number related to Bruce memorized, but he had been instantly ruled out—he would’ve called with a familiar number. Maybe it was her nephew? She answered.

“Hello?” 

“Where are you?” She jumped, let out a small screech and dropped her phone between the center console and passenger seat while cursing, “Hold on, I dropped my phone, let me—” she grunted as she rooted around for it, “Almost there.” She said when she finally managed to grab it.

“Where are you?” Bruce asked again, significantly less amused. “Didn’t you see my note? I’ve gone fishing.”

“And you won’t come back? Explain yourself, you have one minute to begin or—”

“Or what?” She spat, “You’ll cut off Daddy’s credit cards?” 

“You know I hate when you call me that.” 

“That wasn’t a no.” She pulled her leg to her chest, looking out at the campsite and watching families interact with each other. 

“You didn’t take my cards.” Came his low, deliciously gravelly voice. There was a unique note to it. She wouldn’t say that he sounded sad, maybe.. distant? Her mouth felt dry, “I’m surprised you noticed.” 

“I noticed instantly.” She fought the urge to hang up. “Now, where are you? I’m coming to get you.” Her hand was shaking, “Why would you do that?” 

“You’re clearly not thinking straight.” 

Ah, now he pissed her off. “I’m thinking with more clarity than I have in years.” She placed her phone between her ear and her shoulder as she started her car. 

She hadn’t seen the famous Congaree fireflies, but that was fine, she could come back. She decided her next stop would be the Bayou—drive straight through the night, day, whatever it took. “If that was true, then you wouldn’t be where ever the fuck you are now. You would’ve told me where you’re going and would’ve bought my cards. I see you’ve taken that German piece of shit car with you too. You’re going to end up stranded in the middle of no where with no way to get home.” She was surprised at the vitriol in his tone—Bruce didn’t often cuss. It would’ve made her laugh, if he had used different verbiage. 

“That townhouse is not my home & teenage boys everywhere would kill to have my Golf.” 

“That thing is a deathtrap, that’s why you have the E-Class.”

“I don’t have an E-class. I can call a driver to bring me the E-Class.” Then, with her eyebrow twitching she added, “and Mercedes is German too.” She could practically feel Bruce’s eye roll.

“How many speeding tickets did you get in the Golf? I had to bail you out of jail for racing an undercover cop!”

“He downshifted next to me! He provoked me! It was a trap.” The laugh that came from Bruce was sardonic, “Yes, yes, I’ve heard. You can explain it all to me again when I come pick you up.  Now, where are you? If I need to ask again—” She didn’t let him finish, “Bruce, I don’t need to be picked up.” She could admit that she didn’t sound convincing, there was little conviction in her tone. She hadn’t even really thought she would need to defend her reasoning to him. 

“I want to pick you up.” Bruce Wayne couldn’t fathom the idea of her no longer wanting to be with him—to him, this might’ve been her just being difficult, playing hard to get. 

She flinched at the memory of his exasperation, a distant memory of him referring to her as ‘annoying’ maybe that had been the beginning of the end, when her wanting affection had transitioned from something adorable, into something that had a crease forming between his brows before he waved her off.

“That’s nice and all, except. When I left, I meant for our arrangement to end.” 

Silence. She pulled her phone from her ear to make sure that the call hadn’t been disconnected and only caught the ending words, “—to end?” 

“I don’t want to be your sugar baby anymore.”

“You have never been my—” 

“Don’t piss me off. If I was your girlfriend, I’d be living in that scary ass gothic manor with your forty kids.” She was bouncing her leg, turning up the AC as her car was growing suffocatingly hot. “You’d be seeing me more than once every few weeks.” Her addition was an afterthought, almost mumbled as she wiped off a small section of dust she had missed off her dash.

“Mature adults would’ve reached out to have a discussion about this.” He wasn’t disagreeing.

“That’s what happens when you hook up with women twelve years younger.” She hung up and tossed her phone to the passenger side, exhaling and slumping into the driver’s seat. 

She felt the familiar burn of tears, but wiped at her eyes harshly enough for her to attribute them towards herself and definitely not Bruce. That was it, the last time she would ever speak to him. 

She hadn’t expected to end on a bad note, had thought the last memory she would have of him would from a week before she left, catching his gaze lingering on her as she tried to catch a budgie she hadn’t seen before the last few days and had become convinced it was someone’s escaped pet. His smile as she caught the bird.

She had texted Bruce notifying him that she had reunited the bird with it’s owners, but he had left her on read. She might’ve cared a few years back, but that somewhere along the way that had become their dynamic. 

She jumped at the ringtone, noticing quickly it was the same number. She blocked the number and pulled up directions to New Orleans. 

Her phone had rang three more times after that, she had blocked each number and after the fourth time, turned her phone off and went off highway signage. 

She ended up conceding and turning her phone back on a few hours later after the stretches of spotty radio connection left her alone with her thoughts for too long. 

She tried not to see the four new missed calls, the series of text messages. She didn’t want to think of them—they confused her, opened topics that she didn’t want to think of. 

- 

She made it to New Orleans in the middle of the night, or maybe it was early morning? She was tired. Exhausted and too broke to sleep in a hotel, so she searched for Hiltons with free parking and tried to blend in with the cars in the parking lot. 

From her previous car camping days, she had immaculate window blinds that covered each window and let almost zero light in. She pushed her back seats down and rolled out her bedding and stared the lighting she had installed in her ceiling to mimic stars—some of them were out, but majority were in great shape. 

She had been avoiding looking at the messages Bruce had left, but was tossing and turning too much with the knowledge that they existed to sleep. With a frustrated sigh, she checked her voicemail first—nothing, and no with no longer being able to avoid the inevitable, she opened her messages. 

‘Hanging up on me was extremely immature.’  Well, that’s what happens when you screw younger women. 

‘This is completely out of the blue and deeply concerning.’ Was it though? Or had Bruce just stopped reaching out, or talking to her?

‘You are welcome to leave, but you do not have a job, or an apartment.’ She had her car. That was good enough and how she had first moved into the brownstone originally—her decrepit apartment had been condemned and she had been sleeping in her car for almost a week before Bruce had offered. 

She still didn’t know how the man had known she wasn’t in a hotel (too expensive) since she hadn’t told him about the apartment being condemned—ironically, it seemed too personal. 

Too open-ended, her younger self had considered it like she would’ve been asking to move in with him. 

‘At least be angry with me where I know you’re safe.’ That tugged on her heartstrings. 

‘If you do not pick up this fucking phone, I am going to drag your ass back to Gotham with me.’ Where did this mouth come from? Why, she ought to wash it out with soap. 

She typed a threat, ‘I will get a restraining order so fast your head will spin.’ Her finger hovered over the arrow, she deleted it, tucked her phone into the pocket behind her passenger seat and forced herself to count sheep.

- 

She woke up to her phone vibrating and still half asleep, made the horrible mistake of answering it—too tired to remember the only person who could be calling was the one person she didn’t want to talk to. “Hello?” She heard a sharp intake of breath from the other side. “Where are you? I’m in Congaree and I don’t see that piece of shit car.” 

It took her a few moments to register what Bruce had said, “You’re.. in Congaree?” 

“Correct and before you repeat the next half, I’m not seeing your piece of shit car either.” She was wide awake now.

“You’re looking for me?” 

“I warned you that I would drag you back to Gotham if you refused to pick your phone up.” What could she say? I didn’t think you were serious? I didn’t think you would notice that I was gone? I didn’t think you’d miss me? 

“I told you I don’t want to be your sugar baby. What’s not clicking?” She tried to look for constellations in her ceiling, but didn’t think her past shelf had thought to add any. “Yes and that is fine—if you didn’t leave everything you owned behind and start driving across the country. You can stew in a different townhouse if you’d like, a penthouse, a loft, a studio. It doesn’t matter where are long as—” did his voice crack? She didn’t want to dwell on it. 

“I am safe.” She snarled, growing more annoyed and less endeared. “Go back to ignoring my existence. I preferred when you left me on delivered.” She hung up, deciding future attempts at sleep were impossible and that she suddenly no longer wanted to see the Bayou, so she folded up her window blinds and pulled up her seats and had no destination in mind as she started driving. 

She didn’t stop til she was in Texas and decided that peeing was no longer optional. 

She wanted to grab gas station snacks, but could only afford a slim Jim after using the bathroom and spent twenty minutes slouched in a parking spot, scrolling Craiglist looking for odd jobs that paid yesterday and ending up depressed that her only options were related to agriculture.

She scrolled her inbox next--zoom interview invitations, in person ones that she would need to ask to be done over zoom, a few rejections sprinkled in.

 She made quick work of replying to the zoom interview inquiries, sent the same copy and paste ask for a zoom interview to the ones asking for in-person before she finally decided to look at her messages. 

‘New Orleans? Are you serious?’ She shouldn’t be surprised that he is somehow tracking her. He was insanely wealthy—big corporations did this shady shit all the time. ‘I would prefer you broken down on the side of the road, rather than a city with drive-thru Daiquiris.’ She couldn’t recall asking what Bruce Wayne thought. 

‘The sooner you come back to Gotham, the sooner you can be rid of me.’ She was trying to be rid of him now. 

She didn’t need to be in Gotham to do it—she wasn’t even from New Jersey. She was from Nebraska! Then, below that was an Apple Pay of $400 with a note, ‘Noticed your bank account is getting a little low.’ 

She immediately sent $390 back with a note ‘Inconvenience fee’ he immediately sends $900. “Are you fucking kidding me?” She sends back $910. 

‘For the love of god, take the fucking money.’ He sends $3,000. 

She sends back $2980 with a note , ‘no.’

He sends her $25, ‘At least eat.’ 

Her lip wobbles. She was hungry. She sends back $45. 

-

She was sitting in the parking lot of a Chilis somewhere near Alamosa, $30 richer from helping an old lady with her lawn and sapping some of their WiFi for a zoom interview when her phone chimed. She didn’t need to look to know it was Bruce.

She waited until after the interview to reach over to and open her messages. It was primarily Bruce complaining about being in places that she had just been, asking if she was eating and sending her money that she promptly returned. 

He complained about having to work on the road, about important meetings that he was going to have to reschedule. Bruce had always excelled at making her mere existence feel like a burden. Her sheer presence too suffocating to tolerate. 

The distance had helped her realize how little she had been wanted in the last few years. The reminder had her tucking her laptop away and driving. 

She stopped in Flagstaff next, not because she wanted to, but because if she didn’t stop she was going to run out of gas and really be stranded. She leaned against her car, staring into the dark past the lights of the gas station and despite the exhaustion that had her eyes closing, she knew she couldn’t stop driving. 

She didn’t want to—Bruce was ruining her roadtrip. Not with his messages, but the knowledge that he was only ever a few cities behind her, a few hours away and yet he felt closer to her than when he was beside her. 

She stops in San Diego, at an isolated beach she doesn’t know the name of and almost stumbles out of her Golf. It’s late, so late, she has never driven for so long and doesn’t ever want to sit in a car again. 

She grabs her sleeping bag, bundling it up and almost falls down the stairs that lead to the beach. The night air is humid, the smell of the sea overwhelming and the sounds of cars distant. The city isn’t quite asleep, but it’s late enough. 

She unceremoniously drops her sleeping bag onto the beach and falls asleep as soon as she’s inside. 

She rises when the sun does. Groggily, half-conscious and still unbearably tired she forces herself up and still doesn’t miss the townhouse, the safety net of billions behind Bruce. She shakes out her sleeping back, more gentle as she rolls It up and tucks it into the trunk of her car, grumbling when sand flakes off into the boot and she knows she has to find a laundromat, a hotel, a shower. 

Only two of those she can afford, but she quickly discovers, it’s easier to find work in San Diego.

-

She didn’t intend to stay. It was accidental, a serving job that she couldn’t pass up and the perfect spot for a hammock in a hidden part of the beach. She showered, she did her laundry, she thought about apartments but didn’t want to look just yet. 

She would need to reset a dozen passwords that she couldn’t remember. Were her credit cards still active? Bruce hadn’t messaged her since Flagstaff. She had made the mistake of looking at their texts and cringed at the sentence she had texted in her exhaustion, before deleting the thread entirely. 

She was sitting behind the building, a shaky chair pulled up near the door that the line cooks sat and smoked at. 

There was a trail of sweat sliding down from her temple, the heat of the kitchen wafting out with the familiar scent of the family meal that she was only allowed to partake in on the condition that she would fall into the rotation of cooking—something she hadn’t expected to agree to but found it came naturally. 

“Aye, there is someone asking for you.” A gruff voice called from inside, the cook that it belonged to was considerably younger than the voice implied, but that was what happened when you chain-smoked everyday for years. 

“A table?”

“A man.”

“You can tell him I died for all I fucking care.” 

“Said he won’t leave til you talk to him.” She cracked her neck, standing and debating on the merit of asking for a cigarette but couldn’t stand the smell of whatever he smoked and knew she would only end up embarrassing herself by coughing out a lung. 

She walked past, knowing that the cook said something but the buzzing in her ears was too loud to comprehend as she walked out of the kitchen, almost immediately smacking into Bruce who had the audacity to be waiting immediately outside of the kitchen entrance despite the hostess—Araceli, attempting to politely redirect him to a table. 

She wasn’t sure what she was expecting when Bruce finally caught up. Was she expecting to regret her decision to leave? A pang of longing? was she expecting her chest to constrict? Or for her to break down into uncontrollable sobbing?

She found that she felt none of that. It was weird, slightly uncomfortable to be seeing him. It was as if any affection she had for him as carved out of her, leaving an empty void where she knew once, maybe, had been something adjacent to love. 

There were a few hairs out of place, his two top buttons were undone. “Are you available to talk?” 

“I’m in the middle of my shift.” That was a weird sentence to say.

“I’ll wait. Please place me in her section.” 

Araceli nodded and it was only when the hostess got back from settling Bruce in that she swapped sections with another server. 

The restaurant was small enough that Bruce could see her from every end. It was unnerving, the feeling of his eyes following her as she weaved between tables and dodged customers with no spatial awareness. 

There was an electricity in the air, reminding her of when she had accidentally electrocuted herself at her first job when plugging in the motorized cart.

The last few hours of her shift seemed to pass agonizingly slowly. She tried to slip out the back, she really did. She was almost home free, speed walking to her car when she noticed the giant fucking barnacle on her windshield and knew exactly who had done it.

She had spun on her heel, almost throwing open the front doors to the restaurant to storm up to a completely unbothered Bruce who definitely had noticed he hadn’t seen her leave. “My compliments to the chef.” He dabbed at his mouth 

“He did a line of cocaine off between a servers back dimple dermals last night. I don’t think he cares for your compliments.” Bruce’s expression remained carefully blank.

“I take it your shift is over?”

“You have five minutes to get that barnacle off my car.” 

Bruce stood, lifting the chair up slightly as he pushed it back against the table. “I’m afraid that won’t be happening.”

She couldn’t remember being so angry before. He had never provoked her like this—had never challenged her like he was now and she hated it. 

Outwardly, she was silent as she spun on her heel and walked out, shooting one last glare at the nosy staff suspiciously congregating in perfect view of Bruce’s table. 

Inwardly, she was going absolutely insane. She was going to gnaw the barnacle off with her teeth. She was going to key his Maybach, she was going to break his phone and throttle him with his own tie. 

She was going to scream and scream and she was going to stomp his foot. She was going to break the window just to have the barnacle off her car and she was going to be using his giant, hard head to do it. 

She was standing beside the drivers side door of her car, running her hand on the handle of the locked car to avoid pacing. 

She needed an anchor, a tether. She wanted to be calm, but felt increasingly unable to. Bruce, on the other hand, seemed to feel nothing but calm, even as he chased her half across the country after half-ignoring her for years. She hadn’t looked too far for his car, but she doubted it was too far. 

“Get this off my car.” She repeated, proud of how level her tone was. 

Bruce stopped hardly a foot away from her. She didn’t turn to face him fully, but she straightened her shoulders. That make Bruce any shorter, didn’t make her any more intimidating. 

“Will you be returning to Gotham?” 

Her grip on the drivers handle tightened. She exhaled, Bruce wasn’t used to being told no. 

He wasn’t used to being the one ignored, so she released the handle and leaned against her drivers side door, crossing her arms as she looked first his chest, the peak of chest hair and the few wrinkles on his shirts he usually kept impeccably smooth.  

“I genuinely don’t want to return to Gotham.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Let me pay for an apartment here.” She shook her head, “I was serious Bruce. I don’t want that life anymore.” 

“You would rather be broke and homeless?” 

“It’s just difficult now. It won’t be like this forever.” She was going to argue that she was moreso unhoused—she had felt better sleeping in her hammock, in her car than she had in that egregiously large bed but knew Bruce cared little for what she said, especially evident as he closed the distance between them, raising a hand to her softly cup her cheek. 

Was she breathing? He drew a circle on her cheek with this thumb, before his hand trailed slowly along the side of her face, he drew another circle just above her jaw line before lowering to her neck. 

“I don’t know what to do with you.” Bruce sounded almost reverent, completely at odds with his choice of words and his hand on the back of her neck, which tightened to keep her firmly in place. 

It seemed he knew exactly what to do with her and it involved keeping her from running from him, again. Though she didn’t really think of it as running. 

He didn’t need to follow her across the country. “I’m missing work for this tantrum of yours.” 

“I didn’t ask you to. You were welcome to go back at any time.”

“You refused to come with me.” 

“I am still not going.” She refused to flinch from eye contact, even as he looked more monster than man. Then, a flash and Bruce loosened his grip on the back of her neck, but didn’t remove it entirely as he pressed his forehead to hers, his eyes were closed. 

She averted her gaze as her mind was racing, when was the last time he had been so close to her? “Please, just let me—just let me pay for a hotel. Until you get an apartment. I just—” She was too scared to look up, she didn’t want to see his expression. “—Want to know you’re safe.” 

“Will you remove the barnacle?” 

“Yes.” 

She allowed herself to relax under his touch, his breath ghosted her face. 

“Okay.” She ducked out from under Bruce, unlocking her car and sliding into the driver’s seat and barely stopped herself from locking the door. He leaned against the door she had been and she chose to organize her center console as she waited for the barnacle to be removed.

-

It had taken ten minutes for the barnacle to be removed. Then, she had been so engrossed in pretending that Bruce wasn’t outside of her car that she didn’t notice he had moved until he was sliding into her passenger seat.

“Excuse me?” 

He looked unbelievably awkward in her car—his head almost touching the ceiling, his knees touching the dash until he adjusted the seat. “You’re excused.”

“I think you made a joke, just then. It wasn’t funny either, which is on par with your sense of humor.” He ignored her jab and moved to adjusting his seatbelt before clicking into place and reaching over to grab her phone. 

“What is this, an iPhone 14?” He tapped a code on her screen, frowned when it didn’t immediately unlock and tried another, “What’s your password?” She snatched it back from him. She couldn’t remember Bruce ever having this much audacity. “Nunya.”

“Nunya? Your password was—”

“Nunya business.” 

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose, “You are a child.”

“That is what happens when you--”

“I practiced consensual intercourse with a woman well into her twenties.” 

“Please never say it like that again.” She unlocked her phone and handed it over without thought. 

A few seconds after Bruce had opened her maps, typed in directions and then gently placed her phone on her magnetic mount she remembered that Bruce was no longer entitled to that level of trust. She took a sip of her day old Dasani. 

-

She had expected to drive to a hotel, not a towering apartment complex in the middle of downtown. Their drive was spent in silence, other than occasional directions and the top 40 rock hits of the last decade on the radio, “I didn’t know you knew how to drive a stick shift.” She wanted to start mentioning all of things that Bruce didn’t know about her, but didn’t want to risk inviting further conversation. 

She turned into the parking garage, “Or that you drove so well.” Bruce added, she waited an appropriate two seconds before slamming on her breaks, laughing when Bruce’s head bounced lightly off her ceiling, “Oops! Guess not that good.” Then, she stalled in the immediate aftermath for added effect. 

She didn’t find a parking spot til the second floor, which would’ve typically been a godsend if she wasn’t in the car with Bruce Wayne—brooding extraordinaire. 

She parked slightly too close to the SUV on Bruce’s side to see how the huge man would navigate sliding out without damaging either car.

“This doesn’t look like a hotel to me.” She commented when instead of attempting to squeeze out the passenger side, simply lifted himself over the center console and out of the drivers side. “You’re not looking hard enough.” His hand hovered at her lower back, close enough for her to imagine feeling the heat from his hand but far enough that he wasn’t touching her, unless she abruptly stopped and she was exceptionally careful not to. 

Bruce guided her to the elevator, a dynamic that despite abandoning, she fell into without much thought. 

It was habit, she told herself. They bypassed the receptionist, there was no keycard for Bruce to swipe when they reached the elevators, nor was there an option for a floor to be selected. Bruce entered a code on the pin pad she instantly recognized as her former phone password: 8008 and the elevator immediately came to life. 

She to be less aware that this wasn’t a hotel. When the doors opened, the apartment wasn’t sparsely furnished, but the furnishing was boring. 

A gray couch, a glass table, hardwood floors, a gray rug—everything was gray! One wall, facing the San Diego skyline was floor to ceiling windows, though the bottom level of curtains were half raised and created somewhat of a balcony effect. 

“I was thinking more of a Motel 8.” Bruce snorted. 

“This will be fine til you’re able to get situated in an apartment.” Silence came over the pair—she found it to be suffocatingly awkward, but he didn’t seem bothered. 

“This was conveniently close to my work.” Bruce remained silent, but inched slightly closer to her. She wasn’t stupid, but knew that arguing with him was fruitless. 

Jason hadn’t expected the emptiness in reaction to the councilman’s daughter’s absence. The empty space where she had been, that Jason hadn’t known she occupied. He found that he could pour into, pour, pour, keep pouring, then pour some more and it wouldn’t, couldn’t fill. 

Jason had thought he could bury thoughts of her, he spent more time on patrol, more relentless hunting of his marks. He had spent weeks traveling outside of Gotham, mistaken in his thinking that he had needed a change of scenery; she was Gotham. So if he left, he wouldn’t miss her anymore (it didn’t). 

He spent most of his time pushing down his bitterness, his regret. It had been Jason’s decision to put distance between them, before eventually ending their book club when he realized the distance wasn’t helping. 

He had no right to be angry with her. Jason had told her to leave, he continued to remind himself that it was his decision, it was the right choice– the councilman’s daughter challenged him, pushed him out of his comfort zone when Jason wasn’t ready for that. 

The hatred, the anger that Jason kept close to his heart had been challenged by her—the hypocrite who couldn’t forgive her own father, yet pushed him to forgive his. He still struggled to spend extended amount of time around Bruce, around the brother’s he had considered guilty by association. 

Jason stared at the couch. Like clockwork, he expected her there, doing whatever interested her that day. He had fallen into a routine domesticity with her, the councilman’s daughter had made herself a crucial part of his routine. It might’ve just started with their book club, but it had quickly developed past that.

They had started with reading, discussions based off their reading. Jason hadn’t intended for more, but it had.  Sometimes, the councilman’s daughter was just there. Jason would catch her reading as he walked past for patrol, ruffling her hair or telling her she had something on her chin. Other times he would join her in silence that would eventually dissolve into a discussion based on her book. 

Then, the Zoom calls began. Zoom call after Zoom call with multiple voices that Jason would recognize recoil with distaste over. 

She would sometimes break into rapid fire arguments in languages that Jason had known she’d spoke, but not with the fluency she displayed. 

Their descent into domesticity had been so gradual that Jason hadn’t realized what was happening. 

She had a spare Nokia with a cracked screen—he hadn’t realized they could crack in the way she had cracked hers. 

Sometimes, she painted. Those were the worst days for Jason, he enjoyed those moments too much. Jason would be doing something completely unrelated, cleaning a gun, cooking, washing dishes. 

It was too much. 

When she left for the last time, he had scrubbed the dried paint from the couch. It had been the only trace of her remaining and filled Jason with a rage every time he saw it.

Then, when it was gone Jason found regret when he had expected satisfaction. He should be glad that his safe house looked like she was never there, no trace of her was left: no shoes at the door, spare tooth brush. Her backpack wasn’t haphazardly splayed on the floor and Jason was no longer tripping over it. 

Jason kept himself busy, he found himself in the safe house less, choosing to spend nights patrolling and crashing in his apartment in the middle of Gotham, a two bedroom converted from a warehouse with a desk outlooking the city skyline, a place that the councilman’s daughter had never been but that Jason still pictured her in.

Jason hadn’t entirely stopped seeing the councilman’s daughter, though it was infinitely less intimately than before due to the similar circles they ran in. Jason had seen her just the night before (not even slightly as haunted as Jason) mediating discussions, then eventually arguing with her opposition. 

He hadn’t meant to watch for so long, hadn’t intended to be mesmerized by her until his view through the window was blocked by a meathead grunt snapped him out of his trance. That time, Jason hadn’t interrupted their meeting. He told himself that Jason had just lost his opportunity, but he knew that he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from wanting to see her home safely.

He had seen her work before, the councilman’s daughter momentarily stalled him before he inevitably disrupted the meeting. He was cautious of her presence, always pushing her out of the line of fire and connecting with her after the smoke had cleared to help her home. 

Tonight,  as he prepared to kill yet another mafia boss (Jason swore they sprouted like hydra heads) there was a middle aged man in her place. 

Jason was frozen in place, horrified by the scene in front of him.

The middle aged man lacked the fire that the councilman’s daughter had, there was a fear in his eyes where there had been a furnace in hers. 

She loved the challenge of her job, the danger, the excitement. To her, there was nothing better than balancing on the dangerously thin thread between the negotiations of criminals, at any moment she could have been standing in a room of dead men but she never had.

Jason thought of their last morning together and found that instead of anger, there was regret. Resentment. Jason hadn’t considered himself emotionally constipated. Irritatingly stubborn, yes. Unable to process his emotions? No.

Scared to be in love? Yes. 

The councilman’s daughter had been nonchalant. The early morning sun had cast her in an angelic, golden hue as she gathered every trace of her. Jason had thought he had more of her than he did, he had expected a box or two of her miscellaneous, scattered belongings rather a half-filled paper grocery bag.

There had been no tears, no refusal, no begging for him to reconsider. She had been unbearably calm while Jason had felt his world was collapsing. He wanted a challenge, wanted her to fight for him to reconsider. Jason had thought he mattered to her, but the councilman’s daughter had began to silently gather her things before Jason finished his monologue. 

Her lip hadn’t trembled when he had awkwardly told her to ‘gather her shit, get out.’

Jason’s jaw was clenched as he remembered the only sign of her anger, a soft distaste in her tone as she had said “is that so?” before humming as she went through the apartment, as if this was just another day and not the upending of Jason’s existence. 

He hadn’t interrupted that night’s meeting either.

It wasn’t lost on Jason that each time he had allowed a mark of his to get away, the councilman’s daughter had been involved. 

Jason sat limp on the roof of a townhouse. Staring into the distant skyscrapers and pictured her in one of them. 

He wondered if she had left Gotham. 

None of the Wayne family had thought she would stick around, Dick being the loudest of them all–-he had been in her class and knew the ways she slipped into the lives of others, just as easily as she slipped out of their lives; she was a drifter and the time she had spent in Gotham with Jason had been the longest since her graduation-–also according to Dick. 

Jason was a drifter too and if he could stay, she could’ve too.

Jason hadn’t intended to stay, he was only attending the Gala to catch his mark and didn’t silently sneak in so that he could gather intel about his other targets. Bruce’s presence had been his cover, making it easy for him to slip into their circle of elite. 

Yet he was here. Jason closed his eyes, the breeze blowing his already wild hair around him. Jason wanted to see the councilman’s daughter so desperately that he had gravitated towards her loft at one point, refusing to let himself get closer. 

Jason didn’t want confirmation that her loft had been vacated. 

There were times that Jason had told himself he didn’t have to avoid her street—Gotham belonged to him just as much as it did to her. He had only tried to convince himself of that once, as when he walked by her loft the lights had been out and extinguished any hope he had. 

Jason hadn’t wanted to get closer–-just living as near to her was terrible on its own. 

Maybe she had finally gone straight, he absentmindedly thought. 

-

The councilman’s daughter stared at a yellowed, stained ceiling. Her head was pounding, vision blurred and still spinning—faintly, she tasted the metallic tang of blood. 

Someone was groaning. She wanted to tell them to shut up, that they needed to stay silent to stay alive, stay alert. The sound was close, meant they would attract attention onto her as well, which was irritating then she realized that it was her—she was groaning, she was the one in pain. 

She was slumped against cold porcelain, there was a faint smell of cigarettes. 

She winced as she forced herself up, almost crying out with the pain of it and feeling unbelievably disconnected from her body at the same time.

Her attempt was mediocre at best and she fell back, unable to stop the cry of pain that came from the impact of her head against the hard porcelain behind her. Her hands were limp at her sides and she became aware of the slight amount of cold water that her hands were touching, barely a centimeter of depth to it and the blinding light had lessened as she stared up enough to allow her to weakly lull her head to the side. 

She was in a tub.

Great.

She probably only had one kidney now.

Her body was sore, which only added to her dread at the state she was likely in. She grit her teeth and tried to take in her surroundings. She was in a dirty, dingy bathroom that was heavily stained, the cheap stick on tile was peeling and part of the mirror was cracked. The towel holder had been violently hit off the wall and was hanging on by a screw on one side, one yellowed towel hung on by a thread and then two more piled at the bottom, looking like pissed on snow. The bathroom was so dirty that it colored the air almost—painting everything in the yellow of decades of cigarette smoke and lackluster cleaning.

She started to wiggle the tips of her fingers, her toes to try and gradually regain movement. When she looked at her stomach, there was no half assed stitches or blood, so she assumed who ever had put her here  would be back. She wasn’t surrounded by ice either, so that was a good sign but the fact that she was in a tub was deeply concerning. 

The bathroom was out dated, a place she would have never traditionally found herself.

Despite the pain that moving her fingers and toes brought her, the sharp stabbing sensation was subsiding and she could slowly feel the warmth spread across her body, overriding the cold pain.

She looked down at the small amount of water and froze in horror—it wasn’t just water, it was slightly red, tinged which something she knew was blood. 

Then she realized that just outside of the door of the bathroom, were pools of it. There was blood on the walls, on every surface outside of this bathroom and an undeniable trail of heavy male boot tracks that led to the tub she had been unceremoniously dropped into (if the pounding headache was evidence) in blood, of course. It was slightly dried, which filled her with hope.

Her blurry vision had covered many details of herself. As it cleared she grew horrified by the sheer amount of blood that crusted over her clothes. 

At last, she could move her hand and the first course of action was to touch the crusted shirt that bunched up around her stomach, showing unmarred skin at her hip. The councilman’s daughter let out a sigh of relief at the confirmation of all her organs remaining intact.

Then, from outside the bathroom she heard the faint commotion of a man’s grunt. Oh, okay, so someone’s organs were being harvested, just not hers. 

Not yet. Was someone being dismembered not even twenty feet away?

Through her daze, a string of fear cut through her. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been in a situation that scared her, she thought back to her first meeting with Jason—the realization that he was Red Hood and his presence in the office of Black Mask was nothing good.

It hadn’t been fear that filled her then, rather a calm realization of what had to be done and what would happen afterwards—she would die defending a man who could replace her easily.

That hadn’t scared her though, it was simply a fact of life. She had nothing that she would miss—life was meaningless and after her father had blacklisted her—difficult.

The councilman’s daughter hated how she thought of Jason in this moment. Thought if she closed her eyes again, the next time that she’d open them, Jason would walk through the door to save her. 

She refused to entertain those thoughts. There was no one coming to save her, no one who would notice she was missing. She had to save herself. 

She pushed herself further up, ignoring the sore muscles and pain while trying to control her breathing. She didn’t want to let who ever was outside of the bathroom know that she was even slightly coherent. She would need to utilize his surprise to even think about getting past him in this state.

She liked to think she took pain well, but she could’ve been screaming for all that she knew. She managed to force herself into a sitting position in the tub, but still too weak to pull herself over the side, let alone stand and step over. 

Hopeless engulfed her at the realization of her pathetic state. Her only hope was to crawl away and she knew it was a pointless endeavor. 

Still, she tried to foolishly push herself into standing only to fall backwards and hear a distant, pained cry and thinking who ever had cried out was stupid.

Then the bathroom door opened and she realized that she was the stupid one.

 The man that stood in the doorway was slightly blurry, but he was fucking huge, muscular, vaguely reminding her of a bodybuilder, but on roids that blocked most of the view of the bedroom. He barely fit in the doorway and his muscles were far too functional looking to be the decorative bulk of a bodybuilder. 

“Good morning.” She slurred, waving a hand as if this was normal and casual and not horrific. This was the type of polite greeting she would’ve offered someone the she remembered meeting. 

Her thoughts circled back to Jason, foolishly hoping that he would miss her, hoping he was wondering where she was, but she doubted it and the reminder that she was missed by no one had her faltering, feeling a little less invincible.

“Do you know Maya Ducard?” The gruff, masculine voice asked. 

Her head lulled to the side, facing away from the man and looking at the nothing of the yellow, stained tile

“Never heard of her.” She stated, disliking the slur of her voice from struggling to fully open her mouth. A part of her wanted to look the other way when he killed her, to be caught by surprise when her neck was severed from her head.

When his shadow loomed over her, she squeezed her eyes shut. Her life didn’t flash before her eyes and she felt a little lied to in that moment—her head was essentially empty. 

She tried to piece together the events of the past 24 hours: she remembered being at an airport, again, she had been on an almost constant move since what she had felt was expulsion from Gotham. If she couldn’t be with Jason, there was no damn point in that city being on the map.

In fact, who cared about New Jersey anyway! 

That was it. All she could remember. She couldn’t even think of something cool to say to the man: her death was going to be everything she had dreaded it would be, a quiet disappearance. She had left no mark, there was no family to mourn her, community to notice. 

Then, the man’s large, heavy hand gripped her chin with a little too much force, squishing her cheeks together and forcing her face towards him, an easy feat when she hadn’t the energy or strength to fight him. 

Her eyes widened in realization, the closeness of the man had left his blurred features crystal clear. Even drugged out of her mind, flittering in and out of conscience she knew who she was looking at.

He was too close for confusion 

“Deathstroke.” She whispered, fuckkkkkk. She was going to die in this dirty-ass motel room.

-

He was helping her sober up. Deathstroke was hand-feeding her stale m&ms and it was one of the scariest moments of her life. 

Not only because she hadn’t a clue how old they were, nor because he was pulling them from the side pocket of his cargo pants. Rather his gentleness being somewhat foreboding: the calm before the storm, the attempt to humanize himself before resorting to torture. 

The m&m’s had a disgusting crunch and a total lack of flavor, which was somehow helping sober her, but not pleasantly.

She didn’t argue though. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you.” Deathstroke stated, pulling a blue m&m from his pocket. He had been feeding her different colors in sets of five.

She didn’t understand the reasoning, but being propped up against the headboard gave her a full view of the shitty room that she had been in. it reminded her of the film set of a slasher movie with the amount of blood and mystery lumps on the wall, floor, broken tv, splintered wood chair and lopsided desk.

“That’s fun.” Her reply was quiet, devoid of tone and she was entirely focused on a vaguely her-shaped bloody imprint on the wall beside the broken tv. 

He gave her a green m&m this time, gently pushing it past her barely parting mouth. 

The silence was a little awkward. She hadn’t expected Deathstroke to be awkward— more pain, more stabbing would have fit her expectations. 

Or maybe he would just shoot her in the head like cattle. The councilman’s daughter pictured the cold of a gun to her head, she imagined that she would stare down the barrel and just before the trigger was pulled, she would look up at her killer. 

It would give her time to see if she really was being lied to about your life flashing before your eyes when you were seconds away from death, maybe it had never flashed for her in the tub ‘cause she had never been close enough–even when it felt like she had been.

“Are you not going to give me context?” The councilman’s daughter raised a brow, tilting her head to look at Deathstroke better, as if it would give her more clarify on their situation, “This is a very awkward encounter for the both of us.” She added, ah, god, this reminded her of being drunk, the way there was no thought behind any fucking thing she said.

Deathstroke retracted his hand, just centimeters from giving her another m&m and rested it on his thigh. “You didn’t seem coherent enough to give me the information I wanted.” Wilson was handsome, for an old geezer. She could picture him being young and the talk of whatever town he passed through. 

Wilson was smeared in dried blood and on some parts of him, had the faint (and heavily smeared) impression of small hand prints. His salt and pepper hair was stained with a slight red hue and a sense of satisfaction went through her when she noticed one of his ears was slightly reddened and had a crusty edge of blood.

“That makes sense. Well, let’s keep on with the m&m’s til’ I am.” 

Sobriety came slow, and fucking painful. What had she been drugged with? When had it happened?

when Wilson ran out of m&m’s, he had left and there was a brief relief—maybe he wouldn’t come back, but he did, with a McDouble, sprite and large fry that had her beginning to believe that it wasn’t Deathstroke that had drugged her, but that brought her more concerning thoughts than it did to relieve them: if he hadn’t drugged her and kidnapped her for information, then who had drugged and kidnapped her? And for what?

Deathstroke had cut the McDouble into bite sized pieces and it was then that she decided she would most likely help him fiddle his target, just to repay him. 

“I really don’t know anything about Maya Ducard.” The earlier feeling of invincibility had waned and more than anything, she was tired. The adrenaline hadn’t let her feel tired earlier when she had been determined to regain feeling in her limbs, to understand her situation and now that she had some vague semblance of safety and sobriety she found she wanted nothing more than to sleep.

Deathstroke had leaned back, tossing a fry into his own mouth and staring at the ceiling. The blood had dried there, and it kinda reminded her of mocha. “I wasn’t close with my ex-wife’s family either.” He slowly chewed on the fry and a brief thought of him being a little high floated around. 

“I’ve never been married.”

“Your entanglement with Jason Todd?” That was when she cringed, holding her hands in defense of herself “first of all, I’m uncomfortable that you know that.” He didn’t even emote and she felt “I would call it book club.”

Deathstroke scoffed, “I would call it fuck-buddies.”

If she rolled her eyes, would he kill her? 

She decided to reach for a fry of her own, “I’ve never actually tried their fries before. ‘Cause I don’t like salty things.” 

“A princess like you knowing what a McDouble is was surprising enough.” 

“Hey, I like to consider myself one with the common folk.” Her deadpan expression likely wasn’t conveying her humor, but neither of them seemed to understand the other’s humor, so it fit right in. This wasn’t the worst situation she had found herself in. She had never expected to live through a conversation with Deathstroke, let alone get along with him. She had heard stories, he was maniacal, insane, irrational but in this moment, he seemed uncomfortably similar to a well meaning father.

While she wasn’t entirely sure how she got into the room,  her busted knuckles, torn fingernails and pain level indicated that she had put up a fight. 

Likely against Deathstroke at one point, which was definitely a point of pride, considering she remembered her first meeting with Jason in crystal clarity, her failure had haunted her. It had been the end of everything she had built for herself.

It could’ve been worse, she had told herself. If Jason had found Black Mask a few months prior he wouldn’t have been the only person in prison, he would’ve inadvertently forced her back into her father’s home.

Faintly, she thought that this was another chance for her, to forge something that was entirely her own—she wouldn’t have the connection of Black Mask, or her reputation in Gotham. 

From that motel room came  a begrudging partnership and a newfound tolerance of McDonalds.

-

“Slade, can you hear me?” She called out through the mic, eyes rapid-fire scanning the leftover cameras and impatiently moving through them in search of her companion.

She cursed, irritated with ineptitude with computer programing: she should’ve paid more attention in her programming classes, attended more hack-a-thon’s so she could’ve known how to hack into a computer’s camera system but that was so far out of her current skillset that she shot a look towards her captive.

Underbroker was sitting next to her, tape placed over his mouth and arms tied tightly to his sides, legs tied together that reminded her of a mummy but with rope. 

The tape hadn’t stopped him from begging and the crying had loosened the original tape, forcing her to go completely around his head with it to avoid another instance of his screaming. 

The muffled sounds of pleading was better than listening to his bargaining. His help wasn’t even worth asking for, so she turned away. 

The pounding on the door was intensifying and she cursed, switching from trying to use the remaining cameras to find Slade, to getting the offline ones back.

The rival hacker’s first mode of business was cutting the connection to the cameras that had been the closest to Slade. Her communications weren’t working, she had no other option but to fiddle with control panels she hadn’t fully understood in better circumstances. 

All she found was shitty downloaded porn videos of questionable content and even further deplorable video quality. 

“If I die, you’re dying too.” She stated, not bothering even to make eye contact with Graves as she said it. His eyes were wide and his muffled pleading grew louder.

The barricaded control room door wouldn’t last five more minutes, the hinges of the steel door were beginning to come off from the force of the hits.

It was time for plan B. She turned towards her splayed out bag, rifling through the contents until she found the gun that Slade had given to her, only faintly remembering what kind of gun it was. 

She remembered being told when Slade was originally showing her how to use it, but that had been weeks ago and she was barely paying attention, in full confidence that she wouldn’t have to use it.

The door was barely hanging on, a rough, black hand gripped the door and was sliding it to the side as the councilman’s daughter raised her gun, flipping the safety off and firing her first shot, right at the hand that moved just in time to miss the shot that embedded itself in the steel door. 

The man on the other side hissed, “That was a close one.” The voice called, and then in a burst of speed that she wasn’t able to follow, he sprang from the door and within seconds was centimeters away from her, she hadn’t even gotten the chance to try and shoot at him again before the man had her gun clattering to the floor, sliding to a few feet away from the pair.

She tried to process his features, muscular, tall, medium length jet black hair and a mask that covered his eyes with unused batons strapped to his thighs. 

She was at least 67% sure that this was Nightwing. She had heard of him, seen glimpses, but had never cared for Gotham’s vigilante infestation.

There was a dawning look of realization in his eyes as he looked at her, that morphed into horror as he fully took in features, where she was and what she was doing. 

“What—” she didn’t waste time, using his distraction and their proximity against him. 

She didn’t waste time wondering if she had met him before, she abandoned the idea of reaching the gun and dropped to grip his right thigh instead, using her left foot to strike at his ankle and wincing at the pain—ankles were not supposed to be that solid and it could be attributed to the strength of his suit.

Her speed had caught him off guard and regardless of the suit blocking the majority of the force she had put into the blow, Nightwing hit the ground, giving her the chance to spin around and wrap her arms around the larger man’s neck, using her left arm to keep him in place as she attempted to hook her legs around his torso.

She found little success, he was huge, broad shoulders, broad chest, it was all too fucking much while she was all torso, no legs.

She cursed, her brief stints with attempting at remembering any of the various martial arts she had half-assed leaving her with nothing but the embarrassment of trying to fight someone leagues more skilled than her.

She had less than two seconds to think of an alternative hold and twisted her torso to where she was holding just one leg over him, pressing Nightwing closer to her body and moving her left hand to push his neck against her arm. 

The councilman’s daughter thought that he was saying her name, but he couldn’t have. Nightwing wouldn’t have known her name—it was just the adrenaline rush of knowing that she wasn’t going to be able to hold on if the man began to fight back. 

She tightened her grip, deciding her only option was to knock him out and judging from the way that he was beginning to pry her leg from its resting spot, she didn’t have long.

Leaving Slade wasn’t an option but neither was leaving the control room without Graves.  

She shot a glance towards the Underbroker who had managed to free one hand during her struggle with Nightwing.

She turned away, spitting out some of Nightwing’s hair from her mouth and decided that if Graves left the city, it wouldn’t matter. 

Slade and her would find him anywhere. 

Nightwing was gasping for breath at this point, she was straining with the effort of keeping him trapped when he changed tactics. He surprised her, letting his hands fall from trying to pry her leg off of him.

The change in tactic caused a jolt of panic–he had been so close to success, so what the hell was he trying to do now? 

He was moving his hands towards her and she expected the pain at any second, but it didn’t come. Instead, Nightwing moved towards his own reddened face and removed his mask. 

She didn’t immediately loosen her grip, in front of her, slowly losing consciousness was Dick Grayson.

Dick Grayson was Nightwing. 

Hm. The councilman’s daughter debated the meaning of this–did she have to release her grip on him and let him join the attack against Slade just because she had fucked his brother a few times? 

She thought of the last time that she had seen Jason and the distaste filled her mouth. She wouldn’t abandon Slade–he was far from the most fun to work with, but he had nurtured her back to health. Slade had helped her piece together the 48 hours she had been unable to remember and (she learned) had saved her from the criminals who had kidnapped and drugged her.

Slade had humored her recently developed Mcdonalds obsession, had treated her like more of a daughter than Ronan had. It left her feel uncharacteristically vulnerable, then it didn’t help how well they worked together.

At this point, she knew Slade better than she knew Dick and Slade had no piece of shit brother that fucked with her feelings and kicked her out of his safehouse–watching her the entire fucking time as if he was worried she would steal his shit.

Jason had ended their relationship with a sentence after a week of being gone and she could bet that the motherfucker hadn’t even realized she was gone–he didn’t miss her, Jason hadn’t checked up on her once.

Dick must have thought she would have let him go if she saw his face, and he likely thought that was what she had been doing when the councilman’s daughter had removed her left arm from its place. It wasn’t, the last thing Dick would have seen was her bringing the butt of his fucking baton onto his face until he was unconscious.

“That’s for Jason.” She pushed his limp body off hers and wiped the droplets of blood from her hands onto her pant legs as she wanted back over to Underbroker, who had began to flop frantically in a vague resemblance to a fish out of water. It made her cringe, “So embarrassing.” she mumbled, Underbroker was a joke. He looked at her with wide, pitiful eyes. 

“You really thought you’d get out?” She scoffed as she squatted to redo his hands and yanked him from his spot on the rolling chair and to his feet “Let’s go. Slade will catch up with us.” She was assuring the both of them.

-

Jason had left the fight against Slade as soon as he heard Dick say her name. 

Dick’s earpiece had shut off immediately afterwards, Jason only had the slightest idea of where Dick had been, but he had to be there.

He had to know that she wasn’t here. Jason couldn’t claim nonchalance, his thoughts raced. Was she a captive of Deathstroke? What would Deathstroke want to do with her? What was Dick hiding from him? Jason quickened his pace when he heard the faint sound of her distant voice, echoing off the walls and telling him exactly where she was. 

At the end of the long corridor, the hallway split down into two separate corridors. Jason looked between them, “Where are you?” He shouted, uncaring of if it would attract attention. He welcomed it; someone he could threaten to find her whereabouts. “Jason..” Her voice was faint, barely there down the left corridor and he immediately rushed down but she still hadn’t stepped out as he neared the end. 

“You’re safe now, come out.” There wasn’t a reason for her to hide now. When she came out, Jason wouldn’t let her go; he would spin her around, tuck her to him. Tell her that he had made a mistake, that he hadn’t been able to think straight since she had left. 

His pace slowed as he approached the dead end, still calling out for her. A few of the doors had been opened and he shined a light into them as he passed, but still saw nothing. 

All of the rooms til Jason had reached the third from the last were empty, in that third room he had shined his light upon a pathetic, whimpering Harlan Graves. “What are you doing?” He was frantically mumbling through the tape on his mouth, tied all around his head and so tight that it was making an indentation of red on a face already covered in bruises. 

“Jason.” her voice came from behind him and he immediately jumped around to face her. “You’re not tied up.” It was the first thing that came to Jason’s mind.

She shook her head

“But Underbroker is.” He tossed a thumb in the direction of the tied up man and nodded.

The conclusion came slowly, a gradual realization that could’ve never occurred to him without the memory of their first encounter. The violence he had never expected from the smaller woman. 

“You’re working with Deathstroke.” 

Another nod

“You knocked out Dick.”

Her answer was a gesture of ‘I guess’ 

Jason frowned 

“You were gonna do the same to me.” 

She didn’t need to answer, the grimace on her face did all of the talking and strangely, Jason was more hurt than he was confused. 

How she had met Deathstroke was (surprisingly) the last thing he was thinking about–with her skill as a translator, Jason would have been more surprised if the councilman’s daughter didn’t know him. 

Jason would have never expected her to work with Deathstoke though–she didn’t participate in the crimes of the men she surrounded herself with, she had always been a the litigator, the middleman who translated their deals, drew up their paperwork.

There was no way to paint her as one now. He realized she had slight droplets of blood splattered across her and a dark stain across her thigh. He noticed the red of her fingernails and the way that some parts of her hair stuck together.

There was too little blood for Dick to be dead and that was comforting. 

She looked at her feet “I couldn’t do it,” he noticed the glint of a gun, tucked into her back pocket. 

Jason held out his hand to her, the councilman’s daughter hadn’t attacked him—that meant something. Her partnership with Deathstroke meant nothing to him (been there, done that and all) 

Dick would live and in weeks it would be a throwback story but that was only if she took the chance that Jason was offering her. It was easier to explain a lapse in judgement by her association with him, that Jason had pushed her over the edge.

Her hesitance alarmed him and she stared at his hand, eyes wide and nose scrunched, as if she didn’t trust his intentions, yet she still walked towards him. 

She intertwined her hand with his own, then yanked him forward and Jason realized that it wasn’t that the councilman’s daughter was unable to hurt Jason; she couldn’t when he was prepared for a fight. She had to catch him off guard, just like their first fucking meeting. 

The shock of his own stupidity was more surprising. Why had he expected her to embrace him when it had been Jason who pushed her away? She used his surprise to her advantage as she pulled her gun out and brought it down against the back of his head. The force of the blow sent Jason to the floor, over so quickly that he hadn’t even got the chance to be angry. Just confused, disappointed in himself. Jason didn’t have a lot of time to process before he had to roll out of the way of her hitting him again–annoyed that her first hit hadn’t knocked him out. 

Jason pushed himself onto his feet only to immediately get smacked upside the head again. He felt the blood in his mouth, “Just like our first meeting.” He mentioned as he kicked her legs out from under her, she hit the floor with a thud, her head banging against the concrete but pushed herself up within seconds, hardly giving Jason the time to formulate a plan before she kicked at his thigh.

“I’ve gotten better though.” She jumped away from his next attempt at grabbing her and darted underneath his arm to grab his torso. Ironically, Jason wasn’t sure now was a good time to say that she really hadn’t, telling her how sloppy she was would only make her hate him more. 

Jason could imagine her retort being how she was holding her own now. He would laugh.

She dug her feet into the ground and with the momentum she had used to avoid him, she used to throw him to the ground, positioning herself on top of his chest with his head between her thighs as she raised the gun above her head.

His hands fumbled at her thighs, she was choking him and while she had often suffocated him in this position, she hadn’t actively tried to kill him in it till now. 

She brought the gun down with an unexpected speed, he grappled with her hands just as the butt was inches from his face “The fuck is your problem?” He demanded, shaking with a delayed anger. 

The feral, desperate look in her eyes as she tried to pull the gun from his hands let him know that this version of her couldn’t be reasoned with the way she had been when with Black Mask.

She was unsuccessful and in her focus on getting the gun back, had loosened her grip on Jason’s neck, allowing for him to push her off of him and pin her arms above her head and causing her gun to rocket from her hands, sliding feet away from her.

There was a moment of tenderness in her eyes, brief and so, so fleeting that Jason had believed it was just what Jason had wanted to see before she put her two feet together against his chest and broke his hold with the force that she used to push away from him.

Crawling away from him with a fury, trying to throw herself into a standing position but stumbling over her own feet in order to get away from Jason that resulted in her half running, half crawling to the gun she had lost while Jason was just fractions of a second behind her, gloves a ghosting touch at her ankle.

She flung herself towards the gun, rolling once she had grabbed it and backing herself against the wall with it pointed at Jason. At the close range they were at, he wasn’t sure he could avoid the gunshot.

“You wanna fucking die again?” She snarled, the vitriol in her tone had caught him off guard. “The fuck is your problem?” Jason asked again and this time, she had the audacity to look appalled by his attitude, as if it wasn’t completely justified. 

“I don’t have one. What’s your fucking issue?”

“You’re the one that’s been attacking me.” 

She sniffed before she retorted “Well, you’re the one that kicked me out of your shitty safehouse.” 

Jason paused, “Is that what this is about?”

“No! You meant nothing to me!” Jason didn’t entirely believe that, as she when plugged the trigger (Jason noted her flinch when the loud sound reverberated so close to her), she had pointed the gun towards where Underbroker was still tied. Jason liked to think if he truly meant nothing, then she would’ve used their proximity to shoot him square in the chest. 

Jason heard the man’s pathetic yelp, his muffled, desperate pleading but remained firmly focused on the councilman’s daughter. He was hesitant to move in, the closer he got, the easier of a target he was for her. 

“That is totally what this shit is about.”

She shot at his foot, missing by inches “Get on your fucking knees or next time I wont miss.” Jason hated that the vitriol in her snarl left him unbelievably attracted to her

 Jason crossed his arms, scowling but got onto his knees.

“You’re pulling this shit because–” She fired another shot that landed almost two feet away, he scoffed at her poor aim.

From the conflicted look on her face, she hadn’t expected him to listen to her but hesitantly stood and made her way over. “Lay on your stomach.” She ordered, keeping a safe enough distance that he couldn’t grab her.

Jason did as he was told. 

“Hands behind your back.” Jason complied as she pulled a few zip ties from her pockets and stepped behind him. From the corner of Jason’s eyes, he could see her planting her feet beside him and heard her close rustle before feeling the ghost of her pants against his back. 

“I love you.” Jason waited for her to tie his hands, but she didn’t move. Her breaths were heavy and the only sound than her rapid breath was from Underbroker’s futile attempts to escape while Jason was distracting her. 

Jason willed himself to relax, to stop expecting her to suddenly decide to shoot him like an executioner but found himself grow increasingly tense as he felt the warmth of tears begin to drop onto his bare neck, trailing down into his suit. 

A part of him wanted to comfort her, while another side didn’t want to turn around to see her. Jason wanted to respect her vulnerability; he had never seen her cry and wasn’t sure if he wanted to change that. 

Jason knew that if he looked now and saw her big eyes filled with tears, rather than malice he wouldn’t be able to forget it—the image would haunt him, even if he eventually forced himself to move on from her, to bury her and his failures. 

She lowered herself, hovering over where Jason’s interlocked hands were “Why’d you make me go?” 

What could Jason say to that? How could he explain to her that the same trait he loved was the same trait that made him push her away? 

“You push me from my comfort zone, you challenge me. I wasn’t ready for that.” He settled on, awkwardly moving his hand to rest it on her thigh but only halfway succeeded due to the position not allowing for too much movement.

“That sounds really stupid.” There was shuffling behind him, but she wasn’t tying him. The councilman’s daughter laid softly against his back, cheek resting against the back of his head. “I was really mad.” her inhale was deep, he could imagine her committing this moment to memory. He couldn’t stop himself from imagining this was the last time that he would see her. 

“I couldn’t tell.”

She lightly smacked the back of his head, with just enough force that it was briefly pushed forward. 

Jason closed his eyes, basking in the warmth of her at his back. He didn’t want to think of what would happen after this; what could happen after? He thought of how he would explain this Bruce, to Dick, to Tim and Damian. 

She draped an arm around his neck, gentle, almost lovingly. He didn’t miss that she hadn’t told him she loved him too. Jason didn’t have too much time to dwell on that, as her grip tightened and the last thing that Jason saw before he was unconscious was the familiar butt of the gun coming towards him.

-

Jason woke up to a bloody Dick prodding at his side with his foot with a pitiful, “She got me too.” The bright light Bruce was shining into his eyes made Jason cover them with his arm. 

“Deathstroke got away.” Tim’s loud footsteps announced his presence before his voice did. 

Bruce sighed and flicked the light off. Jason sat up, rubbing his head and wiping the blood from that on the pants of his suit. “With your girlfriend’s help.” added Damian “She’s not his girlfriend.” Dick immediately corrected, prickly as ever.

Jason groaned as he stood, “She’s not his girlfriend yet.” added Tim, placing an emphasis on the ‘yet’ earned him a shove from Dick “He’s not her type.”

“Because you know her type?” Damian’s bored tone failed to match the knowing smirk on his face.

Bruce raised his hands ``Let's move our energy from arguing over Deathstrokes’s assistant to figuring out what their plan is with Underbroker.” it was Jason’s turn to chime in “She’s not Deathstroke's assistant, she’s his prisoner.” 

Dick rubbed his forehead “Didn’t seem that unwilling to me.” 

“Great, he’s gonna switch sides again.” Damian grumbled and then hissed when Dick elbowed him with enough force he swayed to the side. “The only side I’m on is my own.” Jason stated, hiding his hurt behind a tone of anger. In a way, it was true. He had only tagged along for information on his own endeavors.

“She took a page from Todd's book about working with Deathstroke, I guess.” They chose to ignore Damian this time. Hadn't he also worked with Deathstroke? Who in this family hadn't?

“She has worked with criminals before. This is no different–” Jason cut Tim off “She has never actively participated in their crimes.”

Damian cleared his throat into his clenched hand “Working with criminals in general is participating in their crimes.”

“She’s worked with us too.” Tim mentioned, hand on his chin as if deep in thought. Bruce sighed, watching the interaction from a distance didn’t help him understand it any better “We have better things to do than argue about the morality of someone working with Deathstroke.”

“Or Jason’s relationship status.” Dick added.

“What he said– book clubbing at best.”

The hotel kitchen was filthy, borderline disgusting during the daytime but it was almost a haunted house during the night. 

Her back was pressed against the side of the industrial fridge, the edges of the magnetic board digging into her shoulders, watching as the Bunn began to brew the house coffee and trying not to let her mind run wild with what could be lurking in the darkness of the kitchen, past her arch of illumination. 

She looked over her shoulder towards the small simmering flame of the ovens that were constantly on and that she felt that she had worked at the hotel too long to ask about. 

She knew that she should begin to wipe up the grounds that had ended up scattered across the counter when she wasn’t paying attention to where she put the canister, but she couldn’t be bothered. 

This wasn’t her night. She was tired—her father had decided not to just fix her broken strut, but had decided that she needed to learn how to do it herself. It wasn’t the worst, not as bad as when he forced her to learn how to replace her water pump when that was giving out but it was time that she should’ve spent sleeping. 

Then when it was getting too close to her shift start time and she was tired of arguing with him over how long this was going to take, he refused to let her borrow her favorite of his project cars—his beautiful Legacy Spec.B and had saddled her with his import Impreza GC8 when he knew damn well she struggled to drive stick with her left hand. 

“Hello?” She jumped at the smooth, masculine voice. “Y-Yes?” She called out, pushing off the side of the fridge and pushing past the kitchen door, looking briefly at the bar area where her opened cola was before her eyes trailed towards the unfamiliar man standing awkwardly where the breakfast bar would’ve been set up.

Her breath left her—he was beautiful. 

Completely out of place for a multitude of reasons that started with she had no remaining arrivals, her hotel was in the middle of butt fuck nowhere desert with the nearest real town forty miles away and ending with she hadn’t heard any cars pulled up and knew that this man was not a guest. 

“Do you have any rooms available?” She nodded, too quickly. 

She was trying to buy herself time to think her next sentences through—she would need to quit if her next sentence was flustered stuttering about policies and rates. 

He was taller than her, tousled red hair tied behind his head, a slightly crooked hat with ‘Kill or Be Killed’ on it half obscured by red sunglasses and a sleeveless shirt showing a tattoo of swirling snakes on his shoulder. 

She quickly walked past him back to her computer and jostling the mouse with slightly too much force to wake the green iMac that had previously belonged to her AGM before she upgraded. 

The boujee woman having taken advantage of her weird, likely highly inappropriate relationship with the owner to get a computer that definitely shouldn’t belong in a three (almost four!!!) star hotel. She coughed into the crease of her arm as the screen name to life. 

“How long are you expecting to stay for?”

“Just one night.” She nodded, the man was rifling through his wallet. “Maybe two. My truck is giving me some trouble.” 

“Ah, my dad—he owns the shop in the town. If you need it.” Her words came out too fast, her voice a few pitches higher than normal. 

“Our rates are low tonight, 101.90.” she quickly added, clicking on their k1 before realizing that she should’ve asked him what room type he needed. “Is a king okay?” She added. The man nodded as he handed over a Driver’s License with a credit card behind it. 

“I should be able to fix her up. I’ll let you know if I need a shop though.” 

She avoided thinking that his statement implied he would be working on his vehicle in their parking lot.

She quickly entered the details, then asked for a phone number and email, gathering a few miscellaneous details before she was able to send out a confirmation email.

“Two keycards?” She asked “Just one will do.” As she swiped the flower shaped card, activating it and tucking in into the cactus shaped folder with his room number scribbled on the inside she tried not to think about how only one key card meant that the too attractive man was alone.

She was meticulous in making sure that she avoided any brush of their hands as she handed him his keycard and directed him towards his room. 

“Thank you.” The man, Roy, was gone around the corner within seconds and she wasted no time speed walking back to brewing the coffee. 

She spun the urn in a complete circle, checking underneath where the spout was before she lifted the urn up. She refused to risk another roach skittering across her hand as she  carried the urn out, ground more of the house coffee but left it unbrewed in the right hopper as she turned to grind decaf, leaving it unbowed in the hopper. 

She looked towards the darkness past the arch, leading towards the dishwashing area, the storage, fridge, freezer and food preparation areas. 

These nights were the worst—when the darkness was oppressive, when the hair on her neck rose and goosebumps enveloped her forearms. When she had to convince herself that she was the only employee in the hotel—there was no one waiting for her and honestly, the hotel was full with guests who would hear her scream. 

Someone would hear her scream and monsters weren’t real. There had never been a beast under her bed, a creature waiting in the dark of her closet and more importantly, nothing had ever been waiting for her in the darkness of the kitchen. 

It didn’t matter how the shadows danced, or how her brain tricked her into thinking that there some sort of twisted, monstrosity waiting for her. These were the nights that she hated her job. Night Auditor—ten minutes of work doing the actual auditing since most of the process had become automated, probably maybe only three hours with all of the tasks that she filled her night with.

She inhaled, clenching her fists. Then, she stepped forward but just as she was going to step into the darkness, a too large hand clasped around her wrist and just before she was about to scream, another rough hand clasped loosely around her mouth.

It was enough to silence her, but not enough to restrict her movement as she lunged for the nearest object, swirling around with the empty metal carafe in her hand and swinging towards the man who grabbed her. 

It took her a few seconds to adjust to the sight in front of her: Roy, his hand was tightly wrapped around her wrist and it had been his hand covering her mouth and she was filled with an unjust anger: he should not be here. 

In an employee only area: every ounce of attraction that she had felt for Roy dissipated in that instance. She couldn’t stand guests who thought they were entitled to employee only areas, who thought that they could waltz into the kitchen, into the Back Of House in the middle of the night just because she had not immediately been there.

It was their mistake—thinking that she was the same as a Front Desk Agent who was supposed to stand and do fuck all at that desk. She didn’t need to wait for guests, she needed to get the hotel ready for the next day. 

Roy looked desperate. His eyes were wide, sweat slicked his hair. He used his free hand to catch the carafe, inches from his forehead. He immediately pulled her towards him, not giving her the chance to admonish him, because he was dragging her out of the kitchen, past the breakfast bar, “What are you—” a crashing sound from the kitchen, sounding like every pot, pan, glass, shelf hitting the floor. 

She tried to twist towards the kitchen, tripping over her own feet as she did in fact, watch a hulking figure come from the darkness of the kitchen—something with features that she couldn’t quite make out, or maybe the problem was that she could make the details out and they just didn’t make any sense. 

They were rushing past the front desk, “Wait, wait—” she was putting more effort into her resisting, trying to grab the front desk phone, knowing that her own phone was tucked behind the front desk underneath the monitor. 

The crashing was still coming from the kitchen, “I can’t just leave!” Roy looked over his shoulder at her, entirely bewildered with his only concession being that they had slowed from a run to a speed walk, “You’d rather die?” 

“Well, what about everyone here? I should call the police.” He looked past her, towards the kitchen they had ran from.

“You aren’t abandoning them. I just needed to get you away from certain death.” 

Suddenly, she wanted to run back towards the kitchen, rather than think about how she had honest to god, thought he was going to kidnap her and take her on some sort of wild adventure where they fell in love and got married on the run and had five children and— he let go of her hand.

“What is that?” She asked, hurrying around the front desk to grab her phone, fingers hovering over the dial pad. She needed to know what to tell the police was happening, couldn’t just say that a monster was currently wrecking the kitchen area of her work. 

Roy grimaced, “Killer Croc.” 

“Killer.. Croc?”

“Killer Croc.” 

“Ki…ller Croc?” 

“How many times are we going to say Killer Croc?” 

“As many times as it takes you to say that you’re full of shit. So, once again, Killer Croc?” 

Roy ran a hand down his face, looking past her before he grabbed at her wrist, “You’re not going to survive without me.” She couldn’t remember why she found this man so attractive. 

Roy caught her phone as it slipped out of her hand with the force he grabbed her with and began to pull her past the front desk, towards the room she had assigned him.

“Listen, this is seriously skeeving me out and I need to—” She should’ve protested more, maybe it was the audacity. She couldn’t believe that this was happening to her, she was scared, but not scared enough that she should be allowing this man to drag her wherever he wanted.

When Roy pulled her into the room, she faintly thought that he was going to be murdering her. Killer Croc couldn’t do the job, so now it fell onto Roy. Except he didn’t even close the door, he left her awkwardly in the threshold as he dug through a duffel bag, pulling out… an extremely fancy looking bow, then a handful of arrows. 

“Stay here, how many people are here?” 

“I’m going to get fired.” Did she even really like her job that much? It was easy, overnight, she didn’t even get the same travel benefits like she did Hilton. She was only at this awful hotel because it was the only place that would hire her in her insufferably small hometown and it wasn’t really the worst place to work but her AGM was screwing the owner and she had walked in on them kissing against her AGM’s desk. The two women had the audacity to get mad at her!

Roy stepped up to her, one hand on her shoulder, “People will die if you do not lock the hell in.” 

“Please for the love of god do not say that. You are too old to be saying that. It doesn’t even sound right coming from your mouth.” Roy balked, “I’m—” 

“You have an AOL e-mail.” She couldn’t even look at Roy. She was going to immediately clean out her employee lodging after this, then update her LinkedIn and put on her big girl panties and finally prove her dad wrong and use her fucking Masters in Classics, maybe even some of the Latin and Ancient Greek she had spent years agonizing over. 

A muscle in his jaw twitched, “It doesn’t matter.” 

“Our occupancy is low. Only 34.10%.” She finally said, wiping the bubble of snot with the back of her sleeve as she imagined how pathetic her return to academia would be. 

Her cheeks were burning, her eyes stinging from the tears that were uncontrollably spilling over her cheeks as every horrible moment in her life cascaded over her. She tensed when Roy pulled her into the most awkward side-hug that she had ever experienced in her life, she half-choked when his side eye transitioned into a full on hug as he pulled her over the threshold of his room, “Stay here, okay?” He was speaking more to the top of her head than her. 

“Where else would I fucking go?” 

He scoffed, she felt his breath puff against her ear as he pulled away “I’m trying to have a heroic moment here.” 

She sniffed as he stepped out the door, “Do not come out no matter what sounds you hear. And um, I guess call 911 now.” 

“Wait, what are you—” she didn’t mean to rudely gesture towards him, but that was what she was doing “—going to do?” Roy pouted, rifling through his pocket and pulling out a strip of fabric, “Well, this isn’t how I wanted to reveal myself but..” He put the fabric on.

She stared at him, wiping at her eyes and sniffling, “You wear a sleep mask? 

Roy immediately closed the door.

- 

She ignored the crashing sounds that came from outside the door—it wasn’t her business. 

She had already resigned in her head and had tuned out the terrifying shouting from outside by applying to varying corporate jobs on LinkedIn, wishing she hadn’t dropped out of her Human Resources degree.

She only looked up when Roy opened the door, the faint sound of sirens coming from behind him as he limped inside. He looked relatively unharmed other than bruising beginning to form along what she could see of his arms and a cut across his cheek. “Cops are here. Guests evacuated. You should get out there.” 

“I don’t even wanna move. I quit already.” 

Roy tried to laugh, but ended up clutching his side. “I’m serious.” She cried, standing up and meeting him halfway. 

She intended to help steady him, but as soon as she provided Roy a slight amount of support, but he immediately put all of his weight on her, almost sending the pair of them to the ground. 

She grunted under his weight, barely managing to get Roy to his bed before collapsing under his weight, ending up face-down against the sheets as his chest covered the back of her head, almost suffocating her before he rolled off her with a groan. 

“I’ll take care of you for $25 an hour.” 

“Deal.” Roy awkwardly shook her hand.

“What? No way.”

“Too late. We shook on it.” 

- 

Roy was tapping his foot, scowling as she dragged her feet outside of her father’s shop. 

Two tweeks later, his truck was fixed, he finally felt good enough to walk a normal pace, though twisting was iffy and don’t even try to get him to bend,  “What am I paying you $25 an hour for?” 

“To take care of your injuries, but you ain’t injured no more.” Roy took that moment to lean against his truck, clutching his side and letting out a pathetically fake groan. 

“I still can’t bend. Who’s gonna tie my shoes?” 

She looked at her phone, three hours til her shift started. 

It was too late for her to sleep. Somehow, she hadn’t been fired and had needed the money too much to really quit, especially when all she got from the various jobs she had applied to with tears blurring her vision was a series of rapid rejections.

She fished his keys out of her pocket,  mimed tossing them to him before she walked past and slid into the drivers seat of his truck, immediately horrified at how far back his seat was—she essentially fell into it. 

He slid into the passenger, “Do not drive my precious baby like that imported death trap.” 

She bit her cheek to stop laughing, “GC8 is a rally legend. It’s disrespectful not to take every corner at seventy.” She pulled the seat forward, adjusted the rear mirror and then adjusted the seat more until the steering wheel reached almost her mid thighs and she could finally see somewhat decently. 

Then she glared at the stick shift, frowning at how much it flopped around in neutral. “Is this thing gonna slip a gear? Or strand me at a light?” Roy balked, as if she had personally insulted him and not the shitty Ford he must’ve frequently brought back from the brink of death. 

“No more than that rolling pile of rust you’ve been driving me ‘round on.” 

She decided she was going to try taking the roundabout at 50. “You mean my rust-free Impreza with my beautiful VR-S spoiler? I know you don’t. It must be that piece of shit GC8.” She hadn’t let him back inside her beloved car after he had spilt half a milkshake all over her alcantara seats and had spent five minutes furiously dabbing at the seats while he commented on how much she cared about her car, despite complaining about her dad forcing her to work on it with him. 

She had spent a further five minutes smacking her past self over the head for having even once thought that Roy Harper was one of the most attractive men that she had ever laid eyes on.

That was just her small town, vaguely sheltered shelf having very little men to go off of. 

- 

She heaved Roy’s newly acquired duffel bag of souvenirs for his friends in the small space behind his passenger seat, “What the hell did you get them? Bricks?” She scowled, picking up a pen that rolled out from underneath.

“Jason likes books. He would’ve gone crazy in your step-mom’s bookstore.” 

Roy stood beside her, blocking out the sun. He looked uncharacteristically serious, his lips in a thin line as he looked down at her. He had spent close to a month at the hotel, in the employee lodging next to her as construction went on fixing the damage from the Killer Croc debacle. 

She knew that he was Arsenal in the same way that she knew the ‘P’ in Ptarmigan was silent--it would’ve made her look stupid to talk about, so she refrained. 

She closed the passenger door, patting the dual toned Ford once, twice, a third time for good measure, “Well, you’re all packed up. Ready to go.” She refused to say that she was sad to see Roy go. He had truly made her work for her $25 an hour and honestly, couldn’t say she enjoyed their first meeting though she could admit he had saved her life. 

Unfortunately.  

She was mostly eager to finally getting adequate amounts of sleep. That was why she was so antsy. 

Roy didn’t immediately move to leave and she wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve, certain something must be on her face. There was a glint of amusement in Roy’s eyes, before he leaned down and closed the distance between them. She was too shocked to move away, hadn’t expected his slightly chapped lips against hers. 

She wanted to make a joke about chapstick. Maybe if he tossed her a bonus of $50, she would go to the Dollar General but dig in her center console for lip balm to pocket his change, unfortunately she couldn’t string together a sentence. It was chaste thing, but precise. She recalled her first kiss has being messy, sloppy and disgustingly slobbery. She tried not to think of it, but now she couldn’t help but draw comparisons. Roy was slow to pull away, eyes half-lidded as he looked down at her.

“I needed to kiss you just once before I left.” 

“Just once?” That breathy voice was not hers. That was absolutely not how she sounded. 

if i had a nickel for everytime I hid an animal in the starbucks bathroom id have three nickels, which isnt alot but its weird that its happened three times

Jason didn’t want her to know that she had caught his eye and he had almost gotten caught looking at her. 

He didn’t want the councilman’s daughter to know the instant recognition, the gravitational pull that had him unable to look away from her until she threatened to see him.

Jason should’ve known, was disappointed in his own lack of research. Disappointed in his blind haste to track down his most recent mark. He had known this party was to celebrate the daughter of a councilman but he hadn’t bothered to know which councilman’s daughter party this had been. 

It had never mattered, not until she was a speck of lavender in a sea of black and white, just that his mark would be here, mingling amongst the crowd of Gotham’s elite.

So he looked ahead, doing his best to keep his flat expression: eyes blank, lips downturned but not overtly irritated. At least, that was what Jason intended to convey: she wasn’t the worst, but he also was not pleased to see her.

What was he supposed to do in this situation?  In front of him was Black Mask’s former secretary, and she was beautiful. She looked just as Jason had left her, minus the bloody nose, bruised knuckles, pinpricks of blood forming where he held his knife to her neck.  He followed the trail of her french braid, wrapping around her head and trailing to rest on her collarbone as it eventually fell beside her mid waist. Her lavender split-thigh dress was bathed in the moonlight and Jason’s gaze kept lingering seconds too long—he was almost mesmerized. She was ethereal, despite the distaste that marred her features when she registered where she remembered Jason from.

Jason watched as her dress gently swayed, his eyes trailing to the glimpse of her skin peeking from the split in her thigh.

He noticed the slightest of goosebumps.

Jason averted his gaze, forcing himself to focus on the marble statues that filled the garden. He knew she was beautiful, had thought it the instant he first saw her, but Jason would rather pick the glass of her computer from his cheek again than to let her know. 

The councilman’s daughter would’ve never let him live it down. She was the type to mock him, even if she was being choked up against the wall. Her world could be fading to black, her clawing against his forearm growing gradually more sporadic. She could be lying on a broken glass table, dazed and vaguely concussed but still lucid enough to try and stab Jason in the neck, again.

When she stopped at the large glass entry door to the balcony, he didn’t acknowledge her at first. He refused to; that would imply that he had been watching her gradually make her way over to him (he had) “Here to steal from me again?” She snarled, “Ruin my life a little more?” She added in her sickly saccharine tone. The same tone she had used on him as her hand had trailed up to his shoulder, complimenting how his muscles had looked in his civilian disguise. 

Jason knew she was glaring, knew also that if he refused to meet her gaze, it would piss her off more. “I don’t recall. Hm, give me a smile, show some teeth.” Jason had broken the left canine in their brawl with the butt of the pistol they had been grappling for, had watched her spit the tooth to the floor without breaking eye contact as she tried, and failed to gather herself from the ground.

He could respect the determination, the ardent refusal to stay down. Even when Jason had told her that she had just gotten a few lucky hits; he wasn’t expecting her the fight in her. The councilman’s daughter had stumbled to a stand and for the third time, tried to stab him in the neck. 

Jason could see the strain in her smile. Then her annoyingly polite reply, “Mr. Sionis was a wonderful employer.” Jason wanted her to lose her composure, give him a reason to hold her against the balcony railing, twisting her arm behind her til she cried for him to release her. 

“I needed that money, jackass.” she sighed as she stood beside him, out of the corner of his eye, he could see that she leaning over the balcony and looking down at the garden below.

Her hand was twitching. 

“It was blood money.”

“Everything you have is blood money.” She retorted. 

Jason shook his head, “I take blood money and I donate it, I take of my community with it. You just filled your closet with it.” 

 The last time that they had seen each other she had smashed his head into her desktop computer– then demanded that he pay for a replacement. Jason couldn’t let get away with that; couldn’t be faulted for breaking that table, or brushing he pretty little neck after she bent his nose and left a shard of a glass in his neck. 

With the way the artist’s eye’s narrowed, Jason anticipated that this interaction would end similarly 

Jason wasn’t entirely sure that he preferred to see her on pleasant terms–the crazed look that had been in her eye as she slammed his head into her computer monitor, repeatedly had never left him. To see her almost demure left Jason uneasy: he was expecting a slow, sensual hand to make its way across his forearm, dancing up his arm, twirling in his hair before gripping his hair, suddenly tight and then the pain that came with her once gentle hold just as she had before; lowering Jason’s guard being the only way she could get the upper hand on him.

“Why are you here?” She asked, tilting her head to the side. 

“This is my party and I know I didn’t invite you” Jason looked down at the sea of people beneath them, socializing and laughing as they walked the grounds. More than Gotham’s elite, Jason knew that families from all around the world had traveled to pay their respects to the councilman and by extension, his daughter—it was a celebration for her father and a way to deepen their connections with him. 

“I moved back to Gotham. Reconnecting with the family.” 

She scoffed. The idea of family probably left a bitter taste in her mouth– he doubted a woman like her cared that much for her own family. She could never understand the ties that had Jason returning. It wasn’t debt to Bruce. It was Jason’s obligation to the boys that Bruce had taken in. To his younger self, even after the ways that Bruce had failed him.

Jason couldn’t find himself to blame her when thinking of the family she was born into–she was the shame of Gotham despite the city pretending that it wasn’t the case. 

The city was pathetic–hating her father yet desperately needing his support for anything larger than a corner store. “Why are you here?” Jason asked, glancing to the side to catch a better look at her expression, he couldn’t think of a way to describe it other than somber; with her facing away, the light from the grandiose celebrations of the party didn’t reach her. There were none of the stars twinkling in her eyes, no delusion or pleasure from the celebrations in her honor.

She lacked warmth in her eyes when she looked towards Jason, sharp and cold as she began to speak “You got my employer arrested.” 

Jason raised an eyebrow and she huffed, as if she had been expecting him to connect the dots and finish her sentence for her before continuing “I got cut off after I graduated Metropolis.” 

She was quiet, for a moment as she wet her lips before continuing, “that was why I began working for Black Mask. It was the only job I wasn’t blacklisted from.”

Jason felt there was something missing: the part where she explained why the councilman’s daughter had been blacklisted, the part where she admonished him for taking Black Mask down. Truthfully, he should have put her in prison but a corrupt system never would ever paint a hot, wealthy girl as anything but a clueless victim—her aggression would have been left out, the way that she had disarmed Jason considered outlandish. 

The idea that a short socialite could hold her own against Red Hood was unbelievable at its core and laughable at best. 

Jason even saying that it was her holding her own could be an exaggeration as after her surprise attack, she was almost just his punching bag, minus her cheap shots. 

“Trying to get back in your father’s favor?” Jason questioned, taking a quick glance at Tim attempting to slyly peek through the glass balcony doors. Nosey as ever, constantly trying to be the first to know everything; even when nothing was there to know. The councilman’s daughter shrugged, but her nose was scrunched—Jason could tell she was irritated, maybe disgusted, “Well, now that Black Mask is in Arkham, I don’t think I have too many other options.” 

She nudged him gently “Unless you feel like you could benefit from a secretary.” She laughed— the kind that you acquire after spending your entire life surrounded by people who couldn’t risk laughing too much or laughing too little– a perfect in between to save face amongst people who picked apart your every move.

Hadn’t they tried to kill each other a little too much for that type of laughter between them? 

“I’ll forward your resume to Bruce.” 

Jason was only half lying. He didn’t feel responsible for her, refused to think of accountability as something that wasn’t solely hers. If you worked for a villain, you risked jail time, not just unemployment. The councilman’s daughter getting off with only a concussion, bloody nose and some bruises was nothing. 

Their conversation didn’t die out after that– it flourished. There wasn’t resentment, though the pair hadn’t entirely forgiven each other. Between them there was no limit on what could be discussed–they had seen the worst sides of each other and yet, weren’t really at each other’s throat. 

There was something to be said about that, Jason wondered if it was a type of mutual understanding between them that allowed them to coexist (it was apathy at most)  at one point they had even been discussing her time at Gotham Academy, before tonight he hadn’t ever known who had made the maps of the tunnels, so old by the time that he had enrolled that there were printer paper copies and alcohol stained originals, some of the writing worn by grubby hands that weren’t washed enough.

Jason left out how the maps were now, especially when he saw the passion she had when she spoke of them, the love she put into them, the care. To know how disrespected they were now would have stung–he didn’t want to think deeper on why he cared why if her feelings were hurt. 

So much of their conversation had been about the aftermath of that, how the maps were received and if they were more user friendly than the previous ones. She wanted to know every reaction there was to her creations, even the less than positive ones. Her face had lit up when Jason told her that they were the preferred version. Her intensive revamping of the tunnel systems maps while at Gotham Academy hadn’t been the only thing they talked about in regards to her schooling–it had led into conversations about Dick,, since they had graduated the same year. Then, Jason had laughed laughed about her not remembering him at first, even when Jason had pointed Dick out, situated amongst the crowds of tables with Barbara at his side–looking bored and slightly flustered.

“Did I really go to school with that dude?” She asked, crossing her arms while she leaned against the railing and trying to side-eye him but failing and deciding to directly scrutinize him. Jason had noticed Dick tensing when she had given up the pretense of being indirect, but it seemed the only other person who did was Barbara.

“Might as well go ask him, with how obvious you’re being.” She laughed, different than the practiced laugh before— carefree, full of life. Jason was enthralled; he wanted more, as much as she would give him as she turned away from making Dick shift uncomfortably and tapped a finger on her chin. 

Jason wondered how many people had seen that side of her. The one that laughed without reservation, the obsessive, curious side of her where she couldn’t remember classmates but actively remembered every detail of her exploration of Gotham Academy.

Eventually, she did remember him. It was quite the ‘aha!’ moment, as it happened in the middle of a completely different conversation about how different a foreign novels translation can be, based on the demographic of the translator. A conversation that had occurred after they discussed the difference in  translations based on their polishing house. 

Then came the story of her only interaction with him–Dick having touched her hair in class–like a creep. 

Jason had laughed at that, he had laughed so hard that people had begun to side-eyed him to see what had been so funny!

They couldn’t have understood how much Jason was going to hold that knowledge over Dick’s head, both his creepy high school years and how his high school crush hadn’t even remembered him.

Jason hadn’t intended to stay for so long, he had arrived with a clear plan but had entirely abandoned it in favor of talking with her. Jason had watched the man he had followed leave—completely unharmed when Jason’s original plan had been to beat him within an each of his life. 

He had spent weeks tracking him, and yet the man had been completely clueless and would remain as so. Jason had another job planned after this. He hadn’t the time to waste: it was supposed to be quick, he was supposed to be in and out. Artemis was going to be pissed, but Jason knew she would’ve left without him by now. 

His plan had been to leave mid-party, with an excuse that no one had believed after not being seen since his first entry, his first intermingling and greetings. No one would call him out—the fear of being impolite to a son of Bruce Wayne too great. Only Bruce and his brothers would know, Barbara most likely.

He could imagine they were confused—why was Jason still here? Talking to her?

Jason didn’t move though, in fact, by now he completely missed the flight and the excessive sound of his phone vibrating had died down. Artemis would be fine without him, she was most likely done berating his attendance,  leaving Jason here to figure out the rest.

When the councilman’s daughter wasn’t grinding his face into a five thousand dollar computer or trying to see how many fingers of his she could break, Jason hated to say that he tolerated her company. He wouldn’t say that he enjoyed it, or that he loved it–those were things that he wouldn’t admit to. Jason decided to stick with tolerate as it had the least amount of implications. 

The party continued around them, occasionally she would break conversation with him to have a brief, surface level one with a guest. They would grab glasses of champagne from passing servers as they absentmindedly drank, looking out into the courtyard: the perfectly manicured grass, the pond and statues. 

Jason found that she had brought him a sort of peace—an in between, the councilman’s daughter didn’t admonish him for his violence. She understood him in a way that his brothers couldn’t with one foot inside of his world and one outside of it. 

As guests began to filter out, the music dying out and it grew later and later, they stood on the balcony still. Occasionally, Jason still noticed Tim around the corner, Dick walking by. Bruce had greeted her, a brief conversation regarding her schooling (Jason had been surprised to learn she majored in Surveying & Geomatics), jobs since (She had mostly worked secretarial jobs), what her future was looking like now (She had just finished a masters in Linguistics). Then Bruce had moved on, mingling with his own marks. 

As a few handfuls of drunken guests remained, as Dick and Tim were still floating around with Bruce, Barbara fighting off sleep and likely wanting to leave, but waiting for Dick. It was only Jason and the councilman’s daughter that remained the same. 

In the morning, Jason woke up holding her: Her head was held between his arms, almost locked into them (she couldn’t leave, even if she wanted to) His leg was over hers and he could faintly remember not wanting to kick her out when she had elbowed him in her sleep and woken him.

It was almost noon when the councilman’s daughter woke up. She initially had a look of horror that transformed into a nasty scowl where she blamed the alcohol, leaving without his offering of French toast.

Then came back the next day, a giant pair of tortoise shell glasses, a backpack that couldn’t have fit through his door sideways and with a pencil case clutched between her arms. 

Jason hadn’t told her to fuck off, he had welcomed her in. They fell into somewhat of a rhythm for the week she had remained in Gotham. Every morning, she would come over—same glasses, same backpack and pencil case looking adorabl—extremely mundane and they would sit on Jason’s neglected safe house couch to read whatever books she had placed in her bag (some were library books, but most had came from her personal library).

They had formed some semblance of a book club, not reading the same books, but similar enough to connect. They weren’t tied to a genre, Philosophy, Architecture, Fantasy, it was whatever had seemed interesting. 

“I think, that I’m gonna move back.” She stated one day, sometime in the middle of their week together as she was laying upside down on the couch, book resting on her chest and tortoise shell glasses being slightly crooked, almost falling off. 

Jason hadn’t looked up, hadn’t wanted her to see what Jason was terrified would be excitement. “Didn’t you say you’d never move back a few nights ago?” she only shrugged in reply, “I found some pretty good jobs here. You’d be surprised at the amount of jobs looking for a ‘secretary’ fluent in Greek.” She said, “and Russian, Italian, Romanian and you know, just overall good with languages.” 

The councilman’s daughter never alluded to using her initial degree. 

She returned the receipt into the pages to mark her place, rolling around in perfect timing with the oven beeping, signaling the end of the preheating Jason had insisted she did–the woman hadn’t believed in preheating before ten minutes ago. 

“You’d make a killing in the white collar world.” Jason noted, flipping a page as she walked into the kitchen. “Too bad criminals pay better.” She shouted back humming as she placed the pan in the oven.

She hadn’t moved back immediately and that had left Jason irritatingly… lonesome? He found that he missed her presence. Texting was too intimate, she hadn’t left her number and he hadn’t asked. 

It didn’t take her long to move, compared to how long she had been gone. What was two months when it had been almost seven years of her absence?

Yet, Jason had been annoyed nonetheless. It was winter when she moved back, he found her sitting at his stoop in the middle of the afternoon, wearing a thick peacoat, a black scarf and black turtleneck to bear the cold.

 “New Jersey sucks.” Her nose and cheeks were red, hands in her pockets as she waited for him “Jeez, how long have you been here?” Jason asked, pulling his keys from his pocket and transitioning his groceries to just one arm “You’re not worth waiting here long, so.” 

They were inseparable after that. He hadn’t meant to spend so much time with her and eventually they expanded from just his safe house—her industrial loft ten minutes from his criminal lot. 

They had been on her L-shaped couch, the floor to ceiling windows letting in a soft light with their books scattered and the councilman’s daughter sleeping softly on top of Jason’s chest, legs on either side of his torso. He had his arms wrapped protectively around her, staring at the studio lights on the ceiling when he felt the impending end—the doom that came from interactions with civilians, regardless of the dangerously thin line the councilman’s daughter was walking.

Jason thought of Isabel and the danger that he had put her in, how he had promised her nothing crazy would happen when he asked for another chance, only for their double date to end horribly after everything he had already put her through.

Jason had decided bookclub meetings were best held in public from that day—he needed the presence of others to keep him in line, to stop his hands from wandering. Tim tagged along sometimes, Jason had found he enjoyed her companionship to the extent that Tim had been mostly sidelined; someone who just occasionally added to their conversation and often left early.

He was nosy, looking for something that wasn’t there—some flicker of love, of a happy ending that Jason had decided could never happen, that he didn’t deserve. He had been consistently reluctant to give in to these dynamics, to trust the feelings of another after Rose.

“Into The Drowning Deep could be considered a modern classic, just give it a few years.” Jason argued, snow was falling in Gotham but never stuck to the city streets. Her condescending laugh filled the bustling coffeeshop, drowned out the majority of the patrons. She hadn’t cared for the novel “Killer mermaids are peak fiction, apparently.” 

“A classic is something that carves its place out in literature—with philosophical undertones, a societal commentary, a book that stands the test of time.” She scowled, immediately leaning forward and ready to argue “Into The Drowning Deep has barely launched! This is completely different than Rage, which is almost 50 years old and just as relevant.” 

She had put her copy of Vita Nostra to rest now, precariously on top of her hot toffee nut white mocha. She had a lack of care regarding her paperbacks—they were typically creased and occasionally stained, papers were folded as she typically kept them shoved into her bag.

“I can argue that Into The Drowning Deep has no philosophical undertones: it’s completely base level, low-brow fantastical—” Tim interjected now, their argument was worsening and the trio was earning side-eyes from the other cafe patrons. Direct looks of concern from the baristas behind the line.

“Hey, it’s like The Little Mermaid.” 

They had both turned to glare at him then. In moments like these he wondered why he spent time with the pair. They had circular arguments about books that Tim hadn’t given a second glance at—these were books that typically had no intellectual ground, mindless romance, classics that Tim had read as a child out of boredom. 

The councilman’s daughter had scoffed at that “They are completely different. The Little Mermaid proposes love, sacrifice. An exploration of the human soul.” 

Tim hadn’t missed the way that Jason had looked at her then, Tim almost recoiled. Tim had never seen Jason’s face soften as it did in that moment. It was completely at odds with the Jason that had returned from the Lazarus pit, the man that had killed so many now as an antithesis to everything that Batman stood for.

Then, as if caught, Jason’s expression hardened and he scoffed before he began to dive into another argument about modern classics. 

The sheer amount of times that Tim had heard that word within the last hour had him tuning out and watching the mannerisms of the cafe patrons. He had long since decided what the pair of them were—in denial. Tim was struggling to accept that this was what he had signed up for—couldn’t fathom that pointless arguments about books were the most trouble they got into.

Tim wanted to travel back to a time before he knew that Jason occasionally read Romantic Fantasy, or Mafia romance. Those genres he referred to as ‘literary popcorn’.

Where was the drama? The tea? Nothing of this he could take back to Dick. He had mentioned the insanity of the mafia romance that Jason had read and Dick had the audacity to look disgusted, looked at him with furrowed brows and lips in a thin line, remarking ‘you’re looking too deep into this.’ Before he had mumbled  ‘I don’t even like her. Babs is the only girl I need.’ or some variation of that. 

Tim only passively read the summaries of the worst of the books that they read, not only did they read at a pace he was too busy (and simply not interested in) for, but the books that they read were odd at most and unpredictable at best. 

One afternoon they read nothing but romance novels and tried to see who could finish the books faster, while the next week they exclusively read feminine rage and horror. Then, in the next week they didn’t even read the same genre–that was this week. 

Vita Nostra was a Ukrainian best-seller, the councilman’s daughter had said (of course she had the novel in its original Ukrainian as well) and according to her, a perfect blend of real life sciences, philosophies and fantasy while Jason read ‘killer anglerfish mermaids’ according to the councilman’s daughter.

According to Jason, it was a mockumentary styled horror about deep-sea murderous mermaids and the scientists researching them—trying to prove or disprove their existence. Tim preferred the councilman’s daughter’s straight-to-the-point description.

From her aggressive hand movements, their conversation was getting heated but Tim had tuned them out completely, focused on what was going on outside: Barbara and Dick, casually and oh so conveniently strolling towards the shop. 

Dick walked beside her, hand passively resting on the shoulder and arm leaning on the back of the wheelchair as they talked, Barbara’s face lit up from their conversation, looking at Dick as if he was the only man in the world, while Dick looked pensive, frustrated, irritated. There were a thousand ways to describe his face but none matched the feeling underneath–jealousy.

A smile tugged at Tim’s face and to his surprise, they walked right past the shop. Not without Dick throwing a casual glance towards the table where Jason and the object of Dick’s begrudging affection argued amongst each other, just when Tim hadn’t thought his expression could get worse, when his eyes met Tim’s and saw his cocky smile— if his look could kill, Tim would be splattered against the cafe patrons. 

Barbara didn’t seem to notice and the coincidence of their casual walk wasn’t lost on Tim. Dick’s casual visits to Gotham weren’t lost on him either, especially when the man in question had spent prior months exclusively in Bludhaven.

“Okay, I have a job interview and also, you’re wrong so I’m not arguing anymore.” Her  announcement pulled Tim away from his thoughts “Another one?” He asked as she began to gather her stationary. 

She shrugged, “I’m a freelancer.” was a casual way of saying she translated criminal negotiations. 

Tim nodded, “What happened to that one mafia dude?” 

“The one that was gonna hire me for real?” She asked, tossing a few loose pens into her bag, Tim nodded.

“Staying at one place just doesn’t pay as much as freelancing.” Jason chimed in, tucking his book under his arm as he stood, the coffee shop wasn’t far from his safe house “Exactly.” She agreed, hand trailing Jason’s forearm, a touch that had Tim’s grin returning. Their love wasn’t in words, or dramatic explorations but in tiny moments of intimacy, a calmness that they brought to the other. A balanced, soft love that lacked the emotional explosiveness of Jason’s previous relationship, without the risk. 

“Well, that’s the extent that I wanna hear about the criminal activities of you two.”

-

“If anyone asks–” began the councilman’s daughter, looking over her shoulder as the commotion of Dick arriving echoed down the manor hallway “--I’ll be saying I was lured away at the promise of seeing your teenage bedroom.” 

Jason grinned, quickening his pace til she could hardly keep up. He was impatient–Jason’s teenage room was a distant memory, it had been years since he stepped foot in the manor and he wasn’t confident he was even going in the direction of it.

Jason wouldn’t have walked the entire distance regardless, he pushed the door open into the nearest room and pinned his companion against the door, burying his face into her neck, provoking a soft shriek as he inhaled, a scent of artificial strawberry mixed with.. Jason furrowed his brow “My cologne?” 

The councilman’s daughter ducked out from underneath him, half eager to explore his childhood room and to escape the impending sense of something more than mindless lust and intellectual challenge that Jason brought.

“I didn’t have any of my perfume, didn’t wanna smell and didn’t have time to circle back to the loft.” She frowned then, realizing where she was, “This isn't your room.” she stated, gesturing towards the dark desk, backlit by moonlight coming through large windows. 

It was immaculate, papers organized perfectly, a few paper weights scattered and a large monitor to the side. The large leather chair was pushed perfectly in, there wasn’t a pen out of place on Bruce’s desk. 

In front of his desk sat two leather waiting chairs, not a shred of wear as if they hadn’t ever been used before. The rest of the room was shrouded in darkness, but that didn’t stop her from walking around and running her hands along what Jason guessed from the vague outline was mahogany bookshelves “Bruce’s office?”

“One of them, for his work-related business.” Jason watched as she changed direction, turning her focus on the desk and running a finger across the surface before inspecting it.

“Kinda dusty.” Jason snorted

She pushed the chair to the side and pushed herself up onto the surface of the desk and stared into the distance. Jason made his way to her, leaning against the desk beside her and watched what she was– a herd of deer in the distance, grazing and occasionally looking up.

The pair sat in silence, watching the herd move until they disappeared into the forest. 

“Do you miss living here?” She asked, fingers making circles in the thin layer of dust on top of the desk. 

“No.” Was his instant reply, she turned to her side, still leaning against the desk but looking directly at him now.

“I don’t miss Ronan either.” he snorted “you call your father by his first name?” she lightly kicked at his foot “You’re one to talk.” 

She didn’t realize what a point she had made.

Jason closed his eyes, allowing himself to enjoy her close proximity. It was calming, being back in this house brought back his anger, his confusion. When Jason was in this house, he felt stagnant: that his improvement was false and for nothing. He was still the angry boy that Bruce had found.

The manor made him feel trapped, he didn’t want to explore the places he used to frequent, to go into the garage and see the collection of older cars that he had worked on with Bruce. Jason hoped they had been sold but doubted they had, Bruce would never have gotten rid of those cars on Jason’s account.

Jason wondered if he would be here without her influence. He hated to think that she had such a hold on him, one that motivated him to be better. 

Jason didn’t want that: the soft love that he had only ever read about, the one that was comfortable, a love that was safe when Jason had only known violence, mutual toxicity and the knowledge that their relationship wouldn’t last long.

Jason had never seen a loving relationship, he wouldn’t even know where to begin or what to do with the type of love that supported each other, encouraging and soft. Gentle, filled with trust and understanding, it was entirely foreign to Jason who found he didn’t want the vulnerability of this moment, he closed the distance between them. 

He didn’t want her to think that their relationship had meaning. Book club with benefits, he had called them. 

“Friend’s don’t kiss each other, you know.” Her laugh was soft, whispered and she didn’t pull away from him as he kissed her. 

Jason had grinned into their kiss then, darting his tongue along her lower lip “Oh? We’re just friends now?” Her laugh rumbled against her lips as she tried to dart out from underneath him, to get the upper hand on him. She didn’t like to be the one pinned against the desk.

Her resistance simply made Jason press against her more, pinning her in place and keeping her at his whims. 

“Your heart is beating fast.” Jason tensed at her uncharacteristically soft tone, full of an affection Jason hadn’t wanted. He wanted lust, blind and maddening. Jason found himself pulling away with the sobering realization that Jason selfishly wanted every part of her—the soft side of her that curled closer to him during the night, sleepy, drained and wanting nothing more than his proximity. The side of her that whined for him to be closer to her.