🧿

Your mother’s expression remained beautifully composed, but warmth shifted behind her eyes. Your father looked back down at his report before anyone could accuse him of hope. Mistress Alis looked so pleased you nearly reconsidered.

Adrian smiled. “Thank you.”

“With escort,” you said.

His smile did not falter. “Of course.”

“Visible escort,” you added.

“I would expect nothing less.”

“And if you attempt poetry before noon, I will abandon you near the fountain maze.”

This time, his smile became real. “A useful warning. I will reserve any poor metaphors for after luncheon.”

“You admit they are poor?”

“All royal men are issued several upon reaching adulthood. We are encouraged to use them sparingly.”

Behind you, Roy made a noise so small only you and Jason could have heard it.

Amusement.

Resentment.

Both, perhaps.

You rose, and the room moved with you.

That was the worst part of courtship, you were discovering. It did not belong to the people inside it. Your choice to walk became your mother’s careful glance, your father’s hidden relief, Mistress Alis’s smug little notation in her folio, a dozen courtiers shifting like birds scenting weather. You had not agreed to a marriage. You had not agreed to affection. You had agreed to walk through a garden while guarded.

Already, the palace had begun embroidering the future around you.

Jason and Roy followed you into the rose court.

Of course they did.

They were your visible escort.

The court was beautiful in the morning, which felt unfair. The roses had opened under the sun, cream and red and pale gold spilling over trellises and low stone walls. Bees moved lazily through the blossoms. The fountain at the center threw light across the path, and the air smelled sweet enough to make politics seem briefly absurd.

Adrian offered you his arm.

He waited.

You took it.

Gloved hand on formal sleeve. Polite. Public. Safe.

You still felt Jason’s attention on your fingers like heat.

“You seem fond of warnings,” Adrian said as you began walking.

“I have found them more useful than compliments.”

“Then I will warn you that half the upper gallery is watching.”

“I know.”

“Does that trouble you?”

“No. It irritates me.”

“A more honest answer than I expected.”

“You keep expecting less. That is your mistake.”

Adrian laughed, and you hated that the sound was pleasant. “I was told you are difficult.”

“By my mother?”

“By everyone, in increasingly affectionate tones.”

You glanced at him. “Everyone?”

“The queen said you dislike being underestimated. Your father said you dislike being managed. Lady Tamsin said you dislike pears. Lord Pelham said you dislike his son.”

“Lord Pelham’s son dislikes thoughts longer than two sentences.”

“I gathered.”

“And Mistress Alis?”

Adrian’s mouth quirked. “Mistress Alis said you are spirited.”

You stopped walking.

Adrian stopped with you.

Across the path, Roy coughed into his fist.

Jason’s face did not move, but his eyes narrowed in a way that suggested Mistress Alis had made another excellent argument for the moat.

“Spirited,” you said.

Adrian tilted his head. “I understand that was not the correct answer.”

“Spirited is what people call horses before deciding whether to break them or breed them.”

His expression changed at once, humor fading into something sharper and more thoughtful. “Then I apologize for repeating it.”

You had not expected that.

You had expected defense. Explanation. A polished little correction about how he had meant no offense. Men raised in courts were very good at arranging their pride into something that looked like reason.

Adrian simply apologized.

You resumed walking because standing still made the surprise too visible. “You are making it difficult to dislike you.”

“I was hoping to make it impossible.”

“That is ambitious.”

“I was also told you value ambition.”

“By whom?”

“Your father.”

You sighed. “My family has betrayed me extensively.”

“Only in flattering directions.”

“Betrayal with ribbons is still betrayal.”

He smiled again, but softer this time. “May I offer an observation?”

“That depends entirely on the observation.”

“You are much more at ease when you are armed.”

You glanced at him, then at the dagger visible at your waist. “Most sensible people are.”

“Perhaps. But I did not mean safer. I meant more yourself.”

That stopped you differently.

You looked toward the fountain. Water flashed white in the sun. Beyond it, Jason stood beneath a rose arbor, dark against the pale stone, his gaze moving between you, Adrian, the path, the upper windows, the palace guards posted at the far gate, and the prince’s own attendants waiting near the entrance. Roy lingered closer to a pillar where the vines grew thick, an arrow’s line clear across the court despite the decorative inconvenience of flowers.

They were both watching.

They were always watching.

Adrian followed your glance, then looked away with enough tact to prove he had noticed what he was not saying.

“You are observant,” you said.

“I try to be.”

“Why?”

“Because people reveal more when they are not being corrected.”

You looked at him.

Adrian’s expression held nothing mocking now. “I am not here to break you, Your Highness.”

The words landed too close to the place Mistress Alis had bruised.

“No,” you said, after a moment. “You are here to court me.”

“If you allow it.”

“And if I do not?”

“Then I will discuss shipping rights with your father, admire your mother’s gardens, try not to be murdered by your guards, and return home disappointed.”

You almost laughed. Almost.

“You say that very easily.”

“I have spent a great deal of my life wanting things that required another person’s consent. One learns not to confuse disappointment with injury.”

That was the worst thing he had said yet.

Because it was good.

You walked with him for half an hour. Long enough for the upper gallery to become bored and then interested again. Long enough for Adrian to ask about your training without sounding scandalized, your daggers without sounding thrilled in a tiresome way, and your opinion on Veyr’s naval policy with enough seriousness that you forgot, briefly, he was also looking at your mouth when he thought you were watching the roses.

You noticed.

You knew what it meant now.

The knowledge did not frighten you.

It did not make you want him the way Jason and Roy had taught your body to want, but it made you aware that wanting could exist in several directions at once, not all of them equally strong, not all of them equally dangerous.

When the walk ended, Adrian bowed over your hand but did not kiss it.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You survived the fountain maze.”

“I count myself blessed.”

“You should. I considered abandoning you near the eastern hedge.”

“For the poetry?”

“For the word spirited.”

“Deserved,” he said solemnly.

You smiled at him.

A small smile. A real one.

His gaze warmed.

Beyond him, Jason turned away.

And suddenly the rose court felt less like a garden and more like another room full of doors you had not chosen.

🛡️⚜️👑⚜️🛡️

By evening, the court had decided you and Prince Adrian were a love story.

Court did not require much evidence for that sort of thing. A walk, a few smiles, the fact that no one had been publicly insulted beyond repair, and already people had begun using phrases like promising, suitable, and natural understanding. Lady Veyna told you at dinner that the prince seemed quite taken with you. Lady Tamsin blushed when you asked whether “taken” meant “fond” or “kidnapped.” Mistress Alis spoke of “encouraging progress” and nearly lost her life to the butter knife in your hand.

Your mother noticed the knife.

You set it down.

Your father noticed you setting it down.

He gave you dessert.

At no point did Jason or Roy behave badly.

That was the problem.

Jason stood behind your chair with flawless control. Roy made the correct number of quiet jokes. Both watched Adrian when he approached to ask whether you would consider showing him the training yard later in the week. Both heard you say perhaps. Neither reacted in a way anyone else could see.

You could see.

That was the curse of the lessons. They had taught you looking, and now looking hurt.

By the time the evening ended, you were exhausted from being watched by everyone except the two men whose eyes you wanted and feared most. Jason had looked at you in court the way he always had before this began: guard first, man buried somewhere too deep to reach in public. Roy had smiled, but it had been his court smile, easy and charming and evasive. You missed the version of him who had kissed you badly because he was trying too hard to be gentle.

You missed Jason’s hand at your waist with a force that embarrassed you.

So when the court finally released you, when your mother kissed your cheek and told you she would see you at breakfast, when Adrian bowed from across the hall with warmth and patience and entirely too much political possibility, you walked back to your apartments with Jason and Roy behind you and made it all the way to your private solar before your composure cracked.

Elowen had left water again.

You loved her. You ignored it.

Jason checked the balcony, the inner door, the side passage, and the outer hall. Roy closed the door. Both of them moved with the careful precision they used around traps.

You stood in the center of the room and turned on them.

“I am tired of being handled.”

Roy’s face changed.

Jason went still near the balcony.

“By the court,” you said. “By Mistress Alis. By everyone who has used the word “promising” today, as if I am a horse with acceptable hips. By Adrian, who is not handling me at all, which somehow makes the rest of it worse. By both of you standing behind me as if nothing has changed.”

Jason’s jaw tightened. “Something has changed.”

“Then act like it.”

Roy inhaled slowly. “Princess.”

You looked at him. “Do not call me that if you are about to use it as a bridle.”

He flinched.

Good.

No, not good.

The anger tasted bad as soon as it landed, but you could not swallow it back. You had spent the entire day turning yourself into the shape everyone needed: clever enough for Adrian, composed enough for your parents, sharp enough to remain yourself, soft enough not to terrify the court, steady enough not to betray what happened in this room.

Now the room was yours, and the want was too large for your body.

Jason came away from the balcony slowly. “What do you want?”

The question should have steadied you.

It did not.

You laughed once, brittle and low. “That is becoming a very dangerous question.”

“It is the only one that matters.”

You looked at him, at the broad line of his shoulders, the dark formal guard clothes, the hands he kept carefully at his sides. You looked at Roy, warmer and no less tense, his face open enough that you could see how much he wanted to fix something and how afraid he was of choosing the wrong tool.

You wanted to kiss Roy until the day’s careful charm broke into something honest.

You wanted Jason’s hand on your waist again, not hovering, not restrained to the point of pain, but there because you had asked and he had answered.

You wanted to stop feeling like every part of you belonged to the future before it belonged to you.

“I want the next lesson,” you said.

Roy’s eyes darkened.

Jason’s face closed by a fraction. “Which one?”

You lifted your chin. “What comes after kissing.”

The silence that followed was so complete you could hear the balcony curtains stir in the evening breeze.

Roy looked toward Jason.

Jason looked only at you.

“We need more words than that,” he said.

You had expected the request. The terms had not vanished simply because your temper had risen. You wrapped your fingers together and forced yourself to answer instead of turning embarrassment into command.

“I want more touching,” you said. “I want to understand what it feels like to be touched because I asked, not because I am being measured for silk or arranged beside a prince.”

Roy’s voice softened. “Where?”

Your face warmed. “I do not know.”

“That is an answer,” he said.

“It feels like a useless one.”

“It is not.”

Jason’s gaze moved over your face. “Do you want to keep your clothes on?”

The bluntness stole your breath.

Your first instinct was to make a joke. Something sharp about how the gown had been a national burden all day, or how Jason had spent years trying to get you into armor and now wanted a clothing inventory. But the question was not crude. It was practical. Respectful.

Terrifying.

“Some,” you said.

Roy’s breath caught.

Jason nodded once. “What do you want removed?”

You looked down at yourself. You were no longer in the formal gown. Elowen had helped you change into dark trousers, a soft linen shirt, and a sleeveless riding vest that laced snugly at the front. Your boots were still on. So were three daggers, because you had been too restless to remove them.

“The vest,” you said.

Roy stared at the lacing as if it had personally declared war.

Jason’s voice remained steady. “By whom?”

You swallowed. The room seemed to grow smaller, not like the fitting room, not like a cage, but like a held breath.

“Roy,” you said.

Roy’s eyes lifted to yours.

“And you,” you added. “If you want to.”

Jason’s expression changed.

You caught it. Of course you caught it. “You can refuse.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Then answer.”

His mouth curved, faint and pained. “Brat.”

The word should not have made your pulse jump.

It did anyway.

“Yes,” Jason said. “I want to.”

Roy exhaled, then approached first. He stopped in front of you, close enough that the heat of him reached your skin. “May I?”

You nodded, then corrected yourself because the rules mattered most when you wanted to ignore them. “Yes.”

His fingers moved to the front of your vest.

He did not touch skin. He did not need to. The first tug loosened the knot at your sternum, and the entire day seemed to go with it: court smiles, rose-sweet air, Adrian’s gloved arm beneath your hand, Mistress Alis’s approving face, the word promising said by too many mouths.

Roy worked slowly.

That was the worst of it. He could have unlaced a vest in seconds. He had done it before when you were injured, when speed mattered, and modesty was a luxury no one could afford. Now each pull of the cord was deliberate, giving you time to stop him and himself time to survive the act. His knuckles brushed the front of your shirt once, over your ribs, and your breath caught.

He stopped instantly.

You glared at him. “I did not say stop.”

“No,” he said, voice rough. “But you did stop breathing.”

“I resumed.”

“Heroic.”

You would have smiled if your nerves had not been full of sparks.

Jason stood behind you now.

You knew because the air changed. You did not hear him move. Jason could cross a room more quietly than any man his size had a right to. But you felt him at your back, not touching, the heat of him near your shoulders, his shadow falling over Roy’s hands.

“Still all right?” Jason asked.

The question was low, close enough that it moved over the side of your neck.

“Yes.”

Roy finished the last lace and eased the vest open.

You held still.

Jason reached from behind you, not touching your body, and slid the vest off your shoulders. His fingers brushed the linen of your shirt, grazing the shape of your upper arms through the fabric. You shivered before you could stop yourself.

The vest fell away.

Roy took it and set it on the couch.

Jason’s hands remained near your shoulders. Hovering. Waiting.

You turned your head slightly. “May I lean back?”

His breath changed. “Yes.”

You leaned into him.

Not fully. Only enough for your back to meet his chest, for his solidity to catch you, for his body to become the wall behind yours. Jason went utterly still at first. Then his hands settled carefully at your upper arms, holding you with such restraint that the restraint itself became a kind of touch.

Roy looked at you.

You felt Jason’s heartbeat against your back.

Something in your body answered both of them at once.

“Oh,” you whispered.

Roy’s eyes darkened. “Good?”

“Yes.”

Jason’s mouth was near your hair. “Say if it becomes too much.”

“It is already too much.”

Roy’s expression sharpened.

You continued before either could move away. “I did not say bad.”

Jason’s hands tightened slightly on your arms.

That small increase in pressure nearly ruined you.

Roy stepped closer. “May I kiss you?”

“Yes.”

His mouth met yours with none of the careful distance of the first time.

Still gentle. Still listening. But more certain now, because all of you knew the shape of this. You knew how to answer, how to breathe, how to grip the front of his shirt and tug when you wanted him closer. He came willingly, one hand lifting to your face. He stopped just before touching.

You broke the kiss enough to say, “Yes.”

His palm cupped your jaw.

Jason’s breath shifted behind you.

There it was again, the impossible awareness of being between them. Roy’s mouth warm on yours, his hand at your face. Jason behind you, steady and tense, his hands on your arms, his chest a hard line against your back. Your body did not know where to direct its attention first, so it sent it everywhere.

Roy kissed you until your fingers curled hard in his shirt.

Jason’s thumb moved once over your sleeve.

You made a sound into Roy’s mouth that none of you could mistake for anything but pleasure.

Roy stopped.

You pulled back with an annoyed breath. “I am fine.”

Roy’s pupils were dark. “I know.”

“Then why—”

“Because if you make that sound again, I need a second to remain a gentleman.”

Jason’s hands flexed on your arms.

The honesty went through you like heat.

You looked up at Roy, breathless and suddenly bolder than you felt. “What if I do not want a gentleman?”

Jason said your name sharply.

Roy closed his eyes.

The room stopped moving.

You realized, a beat too late, that you had not meant Adrian. Not really. But the shape of the day was still around you. Gentleman. Prince. Court. Suitor. The acceptable man with acceptable manners and a public right to ask.

Jason heard it.

Roy heard it.

You heard it after they did.

Roy opened his eyes slowly. “What do you want instead?”

You swallowed. “I do not know.”

Jason’s hands left your arms.

The loss of contact frightened you before you understood why.

You turned, but Jason had already stepped back.

“Stop,” he said.

It was quiet.

Complete.

You froze.

Roy’s hand fell from your jaw.

For half a second, your mind refused to understand. Your body was still warm from kissing, your back still remembering Jason’s chest, your mouth still parted around the breath Roy had stolen. Then the word arrived fully.

Stop.

You took one step back from Roy, then another, because that was what the terms required. Your hands curled at your sides.

“I did not say stop,” you said.

Jason’s face tightened. “I did.”

The answer struck cleanly.

Roy looked down.

You forced yourself to breathe. “All right.”

Jason’s gaze flicked to yours.

You saw the brief flash of relief before he buried it, and that nearly hurt more than the stop itself. He had expected you to push. To argue. To forget the rules now that they had inconvenienced you.

You hated that he had feared it.

You hated more that you understood why.

“I said all right,” you repeated, colder now. “We stopped.”

Roy closed his eyes briefly.

Jason’s voice came rough. “Princess—”

“No.” You lifted a hand. “You stopped. That is allowed. That is what we agreed. I am not arguing with your no.”

The room held its breath.

You looked between them, anger beginning to rise through the shock. “So do not look at me like I failed the lesson.”

Roy flinched. “You did not.”

“Then what?”

Jason dragged a hand over his face. “This is not why we started.”

“What is this?”

He looked at you then, and the expression in his eyes made some part of you want to retreat before the words came. “I am not going to be the man you use to survive the thought of another one.”

Silence.

The words did not land all at once. They entered slowly, each piece finding a place to wound.

The man you use.

Another one.

You looked at Roy.

He looked back, miserable and honest, which told you the worst thing before he said it.

“I want to say he is wrong,” Roy said.

Your throat tightened. “And?”

Roy’s mouth compressed. “He is not.”

Something in you went very still.

Jason took a step toward you. “That is not—”

“Do not.”

He stopped.

Good. At least everyone was listening now.

You reached down and began relacing your vest with fingers that shook only slightly. The room had become too intimate, too warm, too full of the smell of Roy’s skin, Jason’s leather, extinguished lamp smoke, and your own humiliation. The laces fought you. You forced them anyway.

Roy moved instinctively. “Let me—”

“No.”

He stopped too.

The word had weight now. You were learning that.

Jason looked as if he had swallowed glass. “You said you did not want him to be the first man who—”

“I did not say that.”

“No,” he said. “You said you did not want a gentleman.”

“And you decided what I meant.”

“You were thinking about him.”

“I have been thinking about him all day because the entire palace has made that impossible not to do.”

Jason’s jaw tightened.

You pulled the laces harder than necessary. “I was also thinking about Roy’s mouth. Your hands. The fact that this is the only room where anyone asks me what I want and means it. Apparently, I was wrong about that last part.”

Roy’s face changed. “That is not fair.”

“No. It is not. I am discovering unfairness is very popular tonight.”

Jason’s voice dropped. “We are trying to protect you.”

You laughed once.

It sounded ugly.

“There it is.”

“Do not twist this.”

“I do not have to twist it. You handed it to me that way.” You looked at him fully, your vest half-laced, your mouth still warm from another man’s kiss, your anger the only thing keeping your eyes dry. “You stopped because you wanted to stop. That was your right. I would have respected it if you gave me no explanation at all. But you did not stop there. You told me what my wanting meant.”

Roy’s expression tightened with pain.

Jason looked stricken, but you did not let that soften you yet.

“You do not get to do that,” you said.

Jason’s mouth parted, then closed.

You stepped toward the low table where your daggers sat beside the untouched water Elowen had left. “I can respect your no. I will not forgive you for trying to explain away my yes.”

Roy whispered your name.

You picked up the first dagger and slid it into your belt. “You taught me to ask.”

Jason’s gaze dropped to the blade.

“You taught me to use plain words,” you continued. “You taught me that touch could start and stop, that wanting could be real and still safe, that I could choose. You do not get to decide that my choice only counts when it is simple enough for you to bear.”

Roy came around the table slowly. “It is not that.”

“Then what is it?”

He stopped, throat working. “We were scared because we wanted to say yes.”

The honesty hurt. It should not have. It should have helped.

Instead, it made everything worse because it was too close to your own truth.

“So was I,” you said.

Roy had no answer.

You slid the second dagger into your boot.

Jason said, “Where are you going?”

The question made the last fragile thread of your patience snap.

“Do not.”

His eyes hardened, not with anger. Fear.

That almost stopped you.

Almost.

You crossed to the door.

Roy moved first. “It is late.”

“Yes.”

“The palace is full of foreign retainers and unfamiliar guard rotations.”

“Then perhaps my personal guards should have thought of that before making me feel unsafe in my own rooms.”

Roy recoiled.

Jason went white around the mouth.

You regretted it instantly.

Not enough to take it back.

Jason’s voice was very quiet. “Do you feel unsafe with us?”

The question gutted the room.

You stood with your hand on the latch, breathing hard.

No.

That was the answer.

Not physically. Never physically. You knew exactly how safe your body was with them. You knew it down to the bone, down to every scar they had prevented and every wound they had held closed.

But your wanting did not feel safe.

Your yes did not feel safe.

The part of you that had stood bravely in the middle of this room and asked to be taught now felt foolish, overruled, and small.

“I feel managed,” you said.

Jason closed his eyes.

Roy looked away.

You opened the door and walked out.

🛡️⚜️👑⚜️🛡️

The palace at night was not silent.

That was one of the first things Jason had taught you when he became your guard. Silence was for stories, graveyards, and men lying in wait. Living buildings breathed. Stone shifted as the day’s heat left it. Lamps hissed. Servants moved through hidden corridors. Guards changed posts with soft footfalls and lower voices. Wind pressed against windows. Somewhere, always, something creaked.

A palace that seemed silent was usually holding its breath.

Tonight, yours muttered around you like it disapproved.

You moved quickly through the inner corridor of your apartments, past the startled outer guards, down the narrow west passage, and into the older part of the palace where fewer lamps had been lit. You knew the route by memory. More importantly, you knew which corridors avoided the guest wing where Adrian’s people had been housed, which stair turned sharply enough to lose a tail if the tail was lazy, and which doors stuck in damp weather.

Jason had taught you most of that.

Roy had taught you the rest, usually while pretending he was not helping you escape supervision.

Neither of them called after you.

That hurt too, until you realized why.

They were following.

Not close. Not crowding. Not reaching for you. But following because they were your guards, because the palace was full of strangers, because you were angry and walking alone through darkened corridors after an almost-lover’s quarrel that had no name.

Good.

Let them follow.

You passed the portrait gallery and ignored the painted ancestors. You passed the blue sitting room and felt an irrational urge to kick the door. You passed the east stair, then turned toward the training wing, gathering speed as the familiar smell of oil, leather, and cold iron reached you.

The armory door was unlocked.

That was a security failure.

You would mention it later, when you were less interested in stabbing every target in the room.

Inside, the old armory was dark except for moonlight slipping through the high slit windows. You did not bother lighting every lamp. One was enough. You found the flint, struck it harder than necessary, and watched the small flame catch behind smoky glass. Shadows leapt across weapon racks, practice blades, shields, old armor stands, and the long table where the terms had begun.

The room steadied you.

Not gently. The armory did not do gentle. It offered weight, edge, angle, distance. Things that could be understood. Grip and release. Target and throw. Mistake and correction.

You went to the throwing wall.

The practice target still had Roy’s painted mustache on its wooden head.

You drew the dagger from your belt and threw.

It struck the painted mouth.

The sound of impact cracked through the room.

You drew the second dagger and threw again.

Heart.

The third came from your sleeve.

Eye.

By the time you reached for the fourth, Jason and Roy were in the doorway.

Neither spoke.

You did not turn. “If you tell me it is late, I will aim the next one at you.”

Roy’s voice came carefully. “I was going to compliment your grouping.”

You threw the fourth dagger.

It split the target’s wooden cheek.

“Little wide,” Jason said.

You turned on him.

He stood just inside the doorway, hands loose, face pale beneath the controlled mask he wore when fear became something he could use. Roy stood beside him, his usual humor gone quiet around the edges. Both had come. Both were breathing too steadily.

They had run.

Not all the way, perhaps. Not loudly. But they had run to catch you.

Good.

No.

Not good.

You reached for another dagger and found none.

That irritated you enough to make you cross to the table where old practice knives were kept. You picked one up, tested its balance, and turned back toward the target.

Jason stepped inside. “The armory door was unlocked.”

“I noticed.”

“It should not have been.”

“Then scold the door.”

Roy exhaled. “Princess.”

You threw the practice knife.

Throat.

Roy fell silent.

For several moments, the only sound was the faint hiss of the lamp and the distant movement of night air through stone.

Jason closed the armory door but did not latch it.

You noticed.

Of course you noticed.

The terms followed you everywhere now.

“You wanted to stop,” you said. “We stopped.”

Jason’s face tightened. “Yes.”

“You wanted distance. Here it is.”

Roy looked pained. “This is not distance. This is you alone in an unsecured armory at night with half a foreign court under the same roof.”

“I was not alone. You followed me.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“It is close enough.”

Jason’s voice sharpened. “No, it is not.”

You looked at him, and something in your face must have warned him, because he stopped there.

Wise man.

You picked up another practice knife but did not throw it. The weight was wrong. Too light, poorly balanced, meant for boys learning not to cut off their own fingers. You set it down and reached for another.

Roy came closer, slowly. “We did not mean to make you feel managed.”

“I know.”

His expression flickered.

“I do know,” you said. “That is the annoying part. You never mean the worst version of what you do.”

Jason looked away.

You turned the second knife over in your hand. Better. Still not right.

“Do you know what the worst part is?” you asked.

Neither answered.

You smiled without humor. “Wise.”

Roy’s mouth twitched despite himself, then fell.

“The worst part is that you were not entirely wrong,” you said.

Jason’s eyes came back to you.

You kept your attention on the knife because looking at them made everything too complicated. “Adrian was in the room. Not literally. Obviously. Though at this point, I am sure the palace would invite him if it thought it would help. But I thought about him. I thought about the walk, and his hand, and everyone whispering. I thought that if I marry someday, if I choose him or anyone else, there will be a bed everyone will call mine while treating it like the kingdom’s business.”

Roy’s face had gone still.

Jason’s expression darkened with pain.

“I thought about that,” you said. “And I wanted you. Both of you. Not because I wanted to practice for him. Because I wanted something that did not belong to him first. Or to the court. Or to my parents. Or to whatever treaty everyone has begun building in their heads.”

The knife shook in your hand.

You hated that.

Jason noticed and looked as if he wanted to come closer.

He did not.

Good.

Bad.

You set the knife down before the trembling could become visible enough to humiliate you further. “Maybe that is tangled. Maybe I do not know how to untangle it. But it was still mine.”

Roy’s voice was rough. “Yes.”

You looked at him.

He swallowed. “It was yours.”

The admission hurt because it came too late and because you believed him.

Jason stepped closer, stopping on the other side of the long table. The old wood stood between you, scarred by years of blades, oil, and your own restless hands. “I panicked.”

The word landed strangely.

Jason Todd did not panic. He planned, attacked, guarded, bled, swore, and glared at masonry. He did not admit panic in a moonlit armory with practice targets watching.

You said nothing.

He continued anyway. “Not because I thought you did not want us. I know you do.”

Your face warmed despite everything.

His gaze held yours, steady and brutal with honesty. “I know. That was the problem. You wanted us, and you were scared, and the whole damned court had spent the day turning your future into a hallway with one door at the end. I heard the prince in what you said, and I could not tell whether he was there because you were choosing us against him or because you were trying to outrun him.”

You gripped the edge of the table.

Jason’s voice lowered. “I should have stopped at no.”

“Yes,” you said.

“I should not have told you what your yes meant.”

“No. You should not have.”

He accepted that too.

No defense. No grim little speech. No attempt to wrap the wound in intention and pretend that made it smaller.

That helped.

Not enough.

Roy came to stand beside Jason, though not so close they looked united against you. “I backed him because I was scared too.”

“You said that.”

“I need to say the rest.”

You looked at him.

Roy’s face had no joke left in it. “I wanted to keep going. I wanted it enough that when Jason stopped, part of me hated him for doing the right thing before I could decide whether I was still capable of it.”

Jason’s jaw tightened, but he did not interrupt.

Roy looked down at his own hands. “Then you looked hurt, and I told myself that meant stopping had to be right. Because if stopping hurts, then going further might hurt even more. That sounded sensible for about three seconds. Then I realized I was doing the same thing everyone else does. Deciding fear made your choice less real.”

Your throat tightened.

He lifted his eyes again. “I am sorry.”

You looked away.

The apology landed too softly. It did not demand. It did not explain. It simply sat there, waiting to be accepted or not.

You hated how much you wanted to accept it.

Jason said, “I am sorry too.”

His voice was quieter than Roy’s. Harder, because the words came from a place less used to being opened.

You stared at the target across the room. The practice knives stood from its painted face and body like accusations. Mouth. Throat. Heart. Eye.

Excellent grouping.

“I do not forgive you yet,” you said.

Roy’s shoulders eased, which was not the reaction you expected.

Jason nodded once. “Fair.”

You turned back. “Do not look relieved.”

“I am relieved you said yet,” Roy admitted.

“That was arrogant of you to notice.”

“I am emotionally observant under threat.”

Jason muttered, “He is emotionally irritating under all conditions.”

You did not want to laugh.

You almost did.

That made you angrier, though the edge had dulled now into something more exhausting. You picked up one of the poorly balanced practice knives and set it down again. “I did not want him to be the first man to know me that way.”

Both men went still.

The sentence was smaller here than it had been in your mind. Less dramatic. More painful.

“I did not say it before because I did not want you to think it was only about him,” you said. “It is not only about him. It is barely about him, and yet he is there because everyone keeps putting him there. I want to choose before the court teaches me to confuse being chosen with being taken.”

Jason’s expression changed.

Roy looked wrecked.

You forced the rest out. “Tonight, I chose you. Both of you. And then you told me I had chosen fear.”

Jason closed his eyes briefly.

Roy whispered, “I know.”

“No,” you said, and this time the word held less anger than grief. “You are learning.”

Neither argued.

The armory felt colder now. Your feet were bare. You had not noticed until then. In your rage, you had left your solar without boots, wearing only the soft indoor slippers Elowen made you use because she claimed stone floors would be the death of you. Your toes had gone numb against the old floor.

Jason noticed at the same time you did.

His gaze dropped. His whole body reacted.

You pointed at him. “Do not.”

He stopped.

“I am cold. I am not helpless.”

The muscle in his jaw jumped. “I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” he said. “But knowing does not turn off the part of me that wants to put you somewhere warm.”

That should not have hurt.

It did.

Because you wanted that too.

You looked away first.

Roy’s voice came carefully. “Will you let us walk you back?”

There it was. Not a command. Not an assumption. Not Jason lifting you over his shoulder like you were seventeen and trying to finish an argument while poisoned.

A question.

You wanted to refuse because refusal had shape, and shape felt like power. But you were not reckless enough to wander back through the palace alone merely to prove you could. They knew that. You knew that. Pride was useful until it began making decisions for the enemy.

“Yes,” you said.

Both men exhaled so quietly no one else would have heard.

You heard.

You hated them.

You loved them.

You were not ready to examine either feeling.

Jason moved toward the target. “Your knives.”

“I can get them.”

“I know.”

He stopped beside the target and looked back. “May I?”

The question was absurd. It was also correct.

You nodded once. “Yes.”

He pulled your daggers free with efficient care, checking each edge before returning them hilt-first. When he reached you, he held them out without stepping too close. You took them one by one and placed them back where they belonged: belt, sleeve, boot.

Roy watched your hands. “You really did leave with only three.”

“I was upset.”

“Even upset, that seems low for you.”

You gave him a flat look.

His smile flickered, tiny and hopeful. “There she is.”

You did not answer.

The smile faded, but he did not look away.

Jason opened the armory door and looked into the corridor. His body shifted back into guard work: alert, lethal, controlled. Roy moved to your left without being asked. You stepped between them, the old formation returning around you like armor that no longer fit quite the same.

For a moment, none of you moved.

Then you walked.

🛡️⚜️👑⚜️🛡️

The palace corridors felt longer on the way back.

Perhaps because you were tired. Perhaps because anger had carried you outward and grief did not have the same stamina. The lamps burned low. The guest wing lay far behind a guarded turn. Twice, Jason signaled for you to stop while Roy checked a crossing passage ahead. Once, a servant appeared carrying folded linen and nearly dropped the entire stack when she saw you between your guards in the middle of the night, hair loose, slippers silent, three daggers visible and probably more suspected.

You lifted one finger to your lips.

She nodded rapidly and vanished.

Roy waited until she was gone. “That will be a rumor by breakfast.”

“Only one?”

“She looked efficient.”

Jason said, “We can find her.”

You looked at him.

He corrected himself. “To ask for discretion. Not to threaten a linen maid.”

“Growth,” Roy murmured.

You almost smiled again.

Almost.

When you reached your apartments, the outer guards straightened with badly hidden relief. They had clearly spent the time since your departure imagining various ways to be executed for losing the princess. You did not scold them. That seemed generous enough for one night.

Jason checked the receiving room first. Roy checked the balcony. You stood in the center of your solar and looked at the couch, the low table, the water, the vest you had half-relaced badly, the place where Jason had stopped, the space where Roy had kissed you.

The room was no longer only yours.

That had been true for days, but tonight it felt less like intimacy and more like consequence.

“All clear,” Roy said quietly.

Jason returned from the inner door. “Outer hall is secure.”

“Good,” you said.

Neither moved toward the exit.

You turned to them. “I am tired.”

Roy’s expression softened. “We will go.”

That hurt too, but differently. Because he offered it before you could ask, because he understood that tonight distance was not rejection. It was mercy.

Jason hesitated.

You looked at him.

He said, “Do you want us close tonight?”

Your breath caught before you could stop it.

Jason’s mouth tightened, as if he had heard the shape of the question only after saying it. “In the outer room.”

Roy leaned against the doorframe. “Or the guest room off the hall. Close enough to hear trouble. Far enough not to become it.”

You looked between them.

“Yes,” you said. “Stay close.”

Jason nodded.

“I also want the armory door secured.”

“Already sending someone,” he said.

“Good.”

Another silence.

You hated how many of them this night had produced.

Roy’s hand twitched at his side. Not reaching. Wanting. Stopping.

You saw it.

He saw you see it.

He let his hand fall.

That almost undid you more than if he had touched you.

“I can respect your no,” you said again, softer this time.

Jason’s eyes lifted to yours.

“But you have to respect that my yes belongs to me,” you said. “Even when it is messy. Even when I am scared. Even when you are scared. If you cannot, then this has to stop.”

Roy went pale.

Jason looked as though the words had found bone.

You held your ground.

The terms had always gone both ways. They had taught you that. Perhaps now they had to survive being used against them.

Jason’s voice was low. “I can.”

Roy swallowed. “I can too.”

“You have to do more than say it.”

“We know,” Roy said.

Jason nodded. “We know.”

You believed that they meant it.

You did not yet know whether belief would be enough.

“Goodnight,” you said.

Roy bowed his head. “Goodnight.”

Jason looked at you for one long moment. No request about your hair. No hand lifted toward your face. No small, careful tenderness to soften the wound before leaving.

You were grateful.

You were devastated.

“Goodnight,” he said.

They left together.

The door remained unlocked.

You stood in your solar until their footsteps faded past the receiving room, past the outer guards, into the corridor where they would take up whatever watch they had decided between them. Only then did you sit on the couch.

The water waited on the table. You picked up the cup and drank because you were angry, not suicidal.

Then you touched your mouth with the tips of your fingers and hated the tears that came to your eyes because they were not only from hurt.

They were from wanting.

That was the cruelest part.

They had stopped, and you were angry.

They had stopped, and you were grateful.

They had stopped, and your body still remembered the moment before they did, the heat of Roy’s mouth, Jason’s chest at your back, the word yes alive in your throat.

No one had taken the choice from your body.

But the choice had nowhere to go.

Outside, the palace settled around you, full of sleeping courtiers, foreign guests, watchful guards, and one prince who had done nothing wrong except arrive at the worst possible time.

Inside, your solar held its silence.

For the first time since the lessons began, it did not feel safe enough to fill.

🛡️⚜️👑⚜️🛡️

credit to @uzmacchiato for the cherry divider, @robin-vb for the Roy Harper fanart, and Nick Robles for the Jason art ❤️💛

Taglist: @twentytomidnight, @ferbiederbie, @stilestotherescue, @lackofsins, @rain-the-ramblr, @saaucie, @dutifullyshamelesstrash, @seamlessepiphany, @splodencible, @allaboutirem0, @hyyperfixationstation, @chronicenby

The seventh photograph was older.

You were dressed for some Wayne Foundation charity event you’d attended with Jason nearly a year ago, long before you learned why he disappeared at strange hours and came home with bruises he never adequately explained. His hand rested against the small of your back, his head inclined toward yours while you laughed at something outside the frame.

Someone had drawn a red circle around you.

A folded piece of paper sat beneath the photographs.

BRUCE WAYNE CARES ABOUT HIS FAMILY. LET’S SEE HOW FAR THAT EXTENDS.

There was a number beneath it, followed by instructions to wait for a call.

You stood there in the hallway long enough that the automatic light above you shut off.

For several months after Jason disappeared, you’d imagined emergencies that might force you to call him. Your mind had manufactured increasingly ridiculous scenarios in the worst hours of the night, when exhaustion eroded your common sense and his absence became something physical pressing against your ribs. A break-in, a fire, some Gotham disaster that left half the city inaccessible. You’d imagined his name glowing on your screen and wondered whether anger or longing would win.

Eventually, you deleted his number.

You hadn’t forgotten it.

You gathered the envelope and photographs, went back inside, locked every bolt, and called Dick Grayson instead.

He answered before the second ring. “Hey.”

The easy warmth in his voice nearly undid you. You hadn’t spoken to Dick since before Jason disappeared. There hadn’t been a dramatic falling-out with the rest of the family because you’d never been close enough to them for one to happen, but after Jason stopped answering your messages, maintaining relationships with his brothers had felt too much like refusing to understand the message.

“Dick.”

A brief silence followed. Your voice must have given something away because when he spoke again, the warmth was gone.

“What happened?”

You looked through the peephole despite knowing there wouldn’t be anyone there. “Someone left something outside my apartment.”

“What kind of something?”

“Pictures.”

Another pause, shorter this time. “Of you?”

“Yes.”

“Recent?”

You looked toward the kitchen counter where you’d spread everything out.

“Yes.”

Dick’s voice became frighteningly calm. “Don’t touch anything else. Is your door locked?”

“All three locks.”

“Windows?”

“Locked.”

“Good. Stay inside. I’m coming to you.”

You swallowed. “Dick.”

“Yeah?”

Your gaze settled on the old photograph of you and Jason.

“Don’t call Jason.”

The silence on the other end lasted long enough to make your stomach tighten.

“I mean it.”

“I heard you.”

“I called you.”

“I know.”

There were too many things inside those two words for you to sort through.

You closed your eyes. “He doesn’t want to hear from me.”

Dick went very quiet.

When he spoke again, his voice had changed. “I’ll be there soon.”

The call ended before you could ask what that meant.

You spent the next twenty-three minutes pacing between your living room and kitchen. Work received a vaguely worded email about an emergency. Your friend received a cancellation without explanation. Every sound in the hallway stopped you in place, and by the time someone finally knocked, your heart was beating hard enough to make your fingers numb.

You looked through the peephole.

Dick stood directly outside.

Jason stood behind him.

For one disorienting second, the hallway seemed to narrow around the sight of him.

Seven months had changed almost nothing. His hair was slightly longer than you remembered, the white streak falling forward instead of being pushed back. A dark jacket stretched across shoulders you knew too well, and his hands were empty at his sides. There was no mask, hood, or armor, nothing that would identify him as anything other than the man who had once left a toothbrush beside yours and learned which takeout order to place when you’d had a terrible day.

He looked tired.

You hated yourself for noticing.

You opened the door just far enough for Dick to see your face.

“I told you not to call him.”

“I didn’t.”

Your eyes moved to Jason.

His jaw tightened.

Dick lifted one shoulder. “I went and got him.”

“You dragged me out of my apartment,” Jason said.

“You were being difficult.”

“You threatened to break my door.”

The familiar rhythm between them should have been comforting. Instead, it made you acutely aware of how much time had passed while Jason’s life continued somewhere you couldn’t see.

You opened the door wider.

Jason didn’t move.

Dick stepped inside, then looked back when he realized his brother remained in the hallway. Whatever passed silently between them ended with Jason’s mouth flattening before he crossed the threshold.

You closed the door behind him.

It was the first time Jason had been inside your apartment since the last night he slept beside you, and the changes registered immediately.

His attention moved over the room in quick, involuntary pieces: the different rug beneath your coffee table, the armchair where his battered leather chair used to sit, new artwork over the television, the bookshelf pushed against another wall. His eyes stopped briefly on the kitchen.

You’d rearranged that too.

Something flickered across his face and disappeared.

Dick pulled on a pair of gloves and moved to the kitchen table to examine the envelope and photographs while Jason remained several feet inside the apartment, holding himself with an unnatural stillness.

“You can sit down,” you said.

“I’m good.”

Of course he was.

You looked away first.

Dick spread the envelope and photographs across the kitchen table while Jason approached, and the moment he saw them, whatever awkwardness had held him rigid disappeared beneath something colder.

Red Hood wasn’t visible in his clothing, but you saw him anyway.

Jason pulled on a pair of gloves, then lifted the photograph taken outside your workplace by one corner. “When was this?”

“Last Thursday.”

He indicated another. “This one?”

“Tuesday.”

His eyes moved between the images. “Anything unusual lately? Same car on your block more than once, someone asking questions, deliveries you weren’t expecting?”

“I didn’t know I was being followed.”

“I didn’t ask if you knew.”

His tone was sharper than it needed to be.

You stared at him.

The sharpness left Jason’s face almost immediately. “Sorry.”

Dick glanced between you and wisely said nothing.

You looked at the photographs again. “A man asked whether I lived in the building about a week ago. I thought he was looking for someone.”

“What did he look like?”

You described what you remembered: ordinary clothes, baseball cap, maybe thirty-five, average height. You hadn’t paid enough attention because Gotham trained people to ignore strangers whenever possible.

Jason listened without interrupting. When you finished, he tapped the old photograph from the gala.

“They don’t know.”

You understood immediately. “About you.”

“They know Jason Todd.”

Dick nodded. “Looks like it’s about money.”

The sick pressure beneath your ribs loosened slightly, although the distinction didn’t make you feel particularly safe.

Jason studied the note. “They see somebody who dated Bruce Wayne’s son, isn’t living behind security, doesn’t have a driver, and doesn’t have private protection. They think you’re easy leverage.”

“They’re right about most of that.”

His eyes lifted sharply.

You regretted the words when you saw what they did to him.

Jason lowered the paper. “This is because of me.”

Dick exhaled. “Jay.”

“I’m the connection.”

“To Bruce,” you said. “Not Red Hood.”

Jason looked at you as though that were supposed to help.

You knew that look. You’d seen versions of it during the last weeks you were together, after the night he finally told you the truth.

Jason Todd had always been capable of turning guilt into mathematics. He collected every mistake, every failure, every person he’d hurt, then arranged them into an equation whose answer inevitably proved he was the problem.

Months of distance hadn’t changed that.

“This is exactly what I was trying to keep away from you.”

The anger arrived so quickly that fear barely had time to get out of its way.

“You cannot be serious.”

His brow furrowed.

“You disappear for seven months, someone decides to threaten me because I once dated Bruce Wayne’s son, and somehow this proves leaving me was the right decision?”

Jason’s shoulders tightened. “That’s not what I said.”

“It’s exactly what you said.”

“I said this is what I was trying to prevent.”

“And you did a fantastic job.”

Dick quietly gathered the photographs.

Jason flinched.

The satisfaction you might once have expected from hurting him never came. You were too angry to enjoy it and too familiar with Jason to miss how easily your words found somewhere he was already bleeding.

Dick straightened. “I’m going downstairs to call this in.”

Jason turned. “Dick.”

“I’m going downstairs.”

“Richard.”

His brother looked at him.

“You’re not leaving me here.”

Dick’s expression was almost serene. “Yes, I am.”

“You dragged me here.”

“And now you’re here.”

Jason stared at him.

Dick nodded between the two of you. “You clearly have some things to discuss.”

“Dick—” you started at the same time Jason said, “Absolutely not.”

Dick ignored both of you. He took the evidence, paused beside you long enough to squeeze your shoulder, and headed for the door.

“I’ll be right downstairs.”

Then he looked directly at Jason.

“Try not to disappear.”

The door shut behind him.

Jason stared at it.

You almost laughed, but the sound caught painfully somewhere beneath your sternum.

He turned back toward you. “I didn’t tell him.”

You frowned. “Tell him what?”

Jason’s gaze dropped. “That I just stopped speaking to you.”

Your throat tightened.

Apparently Dick hadn’t known.

You had spent seven months imagining Jason explaining the breakup to his family. You’d pictured yourself reduced to an uncomfortable subject at dinner, someone Jason had dated once and didn’t anymore. You’d wondered whether Dick knew why it ended, whether Alfred did, whether they’d quietly agreed Jason was better off.

“What did you tell them?”

“That it ended.”

A laugh escaped you then, brittle and humorless. “Did it? Because I don’t remember that conversation.”

“I know.”

“You never broke up with me. You stopped coming over, stopped answering, canceled dinner twice, and then ignored every message I sent you until I finally got embarrassed enough to stop sending them.”

“I know.”

“You don’t get to keep saying that.”

His mouth closed.

You wrapped your arms more tightly around yourself. “When did you decide we were over?”

Something shifted in Jason’s face, slight enough that you might have missed it if you hadn’t known him so well.

You had known him.

Maybe that was the problem.

“I didn’t.”

Your anger stumbled. “What?”

“I didn’t decide that.”

“Then what exactly did you decide?”

“That I needed to stay away from you.”

The answer was so quietly delivered that for a moment you could only stare.

Jason looked exhausted beneath the weight of it. “I thought it would be easier if I stopped before—”

“Before what?”

His gaze moved toward the window.

“Before you figured it out.”

You waited, but he didn’t continue.

“Figured what out?”

His silence answered before he did.

“That you were better off.”

Something inside you went cold.

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Jason looked at you.

Seven months ago, you might have crossed the room at the sight of his expression. Your body still remembered the impulse. Your hands remembered how his face fit between them, how easily his forehead lowered toward yours when exhaustion finally overcame whatever stubbornness kept him upright.

You stayed where you were.

“I need you somewhere safer tonight,” he said.

The change of subject was so obvious you nearly snapped at him again, but Jason continued before you could.

“The manor’s secure. Alfred’s there, and Dick and I can work from the Cave. You’d have access to us the entire time.”

“You’re telling me to go to Wayne Manor.”

“I’m asking.”

The correction stopped you.

Jason glanced toward the door, then back at you. “I’d rather you were there. If you don’t want that, we’ll find somewhere else.”

There was strain in every word, as though asking instead of instructing required active effort.

You hated that you noticed that too. “What happens once I’m there?”

“We figure out who they are.”

“And I sit in a room while everyone refuses to tell me anything?”

“No.”

The answer came immediately.

Jason reached into his jacket and removed a small communications unit. “I’ll give you access to the main channel.”

You stared at it. “So I’ll know what’s happening?”

“Yeah. Bruce already knows, and the others are being looped in in case we need them. Dick and I will be active on the channel while we’re out, and Alfred will be monitoring from the Cave. If we have to split communications, he’ll keep you updated.”

“You’re okay with that?”

Jason’s thumb moved once across the edge of the device.

“You’re part of this.”

There were a hundred things you could have said.

You took the comm instead.

“All right.”

Jason nodded, and the relief on his face hurt more than it had any right to.

Wayne Manor looked exactly as intimidating as you remembered.

Jason drove because Dick had already left to follow up on whatever he’d gotten from the photographs. The ride passed mostly in silence, although this silence felt different from the ones that had ended your relationship. When his phone vibrated, he glanced at the screen and told you it was Dick before answering through the car. A few minutes later, he gave you the short version of what Dick had found, without you having to ask.

None of it should have felt significant, but it did.

Alfred opened the manor door before either of you reached it. You had met him four times while dating Jason and liked him immediately, which had made losing him alongside Jason an unexpectedly sharp part of the aftermath.

His composure slipped when he saw you. “My dear.”

“Hi, Alfred.”

He stepped forward and hugged you, and the warmth of it made your eyes sting.

Jason looked away.

Alfred released you after a moment and held your shoulders long enough to inspect you. “You are unharmed?”

“I’m fine.”

“Physically,” Jason said.

You turned.

He seemed to realize too late that he’d spoken.

Alfred’s gaze shifted between you, and his expression became unreadable. “I see.”

Jason grimaced. “Don’t.”

“I haven’t said anything, Master Jason.”

“You’re doing the face.”

“I have only one.”

You would have laughed months ago.

This time, your mouth merely twitched.

Jason noticed anyway, which somehow made it worse.

Alfred brought you into the kitchen while Jason went downstairs to change. Tea appeared in front of you, followed by food despite your insistence that you weren’t hungry. You ate because Alfred looked capable of making refusal more exhausting than compliance.

When Jason returned, he was dressed as Red Hood.

He carried the mask in one hand only long enough to check the fastening before securing it over his face and pulling the cloth hood over his head.

You had seen Red Hood countless times before learning who he was. Everyone in Gotham had.

You remembered the early stories, when he’d appeared as something closer to a crime lord than a vigilante, leaving bodies and broken men behind him while Batman chased him across the city. The stories changed over the years. Red Hood remained violent and still crossed lines Batman wouldn’t, but the fear surrounding his name shifted direction. People in Crime Alley talked about him differently now. Criminals feared him far more than the people they preyed upon did.

Jason had managed to make all of that sound incidental when he told you the truth.

The night of his confession came back in fractured pieces: Jason sitting across from you with blood drying beneath one fingernail, his hands locked together so tightly his knuckles blanched, the terrible flatness in his voice while he told you what he’d done after returning to Gotham.

He told you about the killing, the guns, the Joker, Bruce, the people he’d hurt and the rage he’d carried for so long that it had become easier to live inside than grief. He told you about waking in a coffin and clawing his way through the earth, about pieces of memory that returned wrong and anger that had once seemed capable of swallowing everything else.

You’d known Red Hood protected people by then.

When you said as much, Jason looked at you and said, “Sometimes,” as if everything good he’d done had been an incidental side effect of everything he considered unforgivable.

You’d asked for time, not because you intended to leave, but because you needed to process the fact that the man sleeping in your bed had died before you met him. You needed to understand that every scar you’d touched belonged to a history significantly larger and uglier than you’d known.

By the time you were ready to talk, Jason had already started retreating.

You hadn’t understood it then.

Standing in Wayne Manor while Red Hood checked his weapons beside the kitchen door, you understood far more than you wanted to.

Jason looked toward you. “The comm.”

You took it from your pocket.

He showed you how to secure it and adjusted the volume when you said it was too loud. His gloved fingers hovered near your ear for half a second longer than necessary before pulling away.

“You’re on the main channel. Alfred will be monitoring from here.”

You nodded. “Where’s Bruce?”

“Working the Wayne angle. If they make contact about money, he’ll handle it.”

“And you?”

“We found the vehicle that delivered the envelope.”

“You already found it?”

“Dick found traffic-camera footage.”

Of course he had.

Jason stepped back. “You’ll hear us.”

The words settled strangely between you.

He seemed to hear it too.

Then he left.

Alfred waited until the sound of the motorcycle disappeared before sitting across from you at the kitchen table.

“He told you we broke up,” you said.

Alfred went very still.

After a moment, he folded his hands in front of him. “He informed us that your relationship had ended.”

“He stopped answering me. We never actually broke up.”

A quiet hardness entered Alfred’s expression.

“He disappeared.”

Alfred closed his eyes briefly.

You stared down at your tea. “He thought he was protecting me.”

“I’m sure he did.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“No.”

You looked up.

Alfred’s expression softened. “It does not.”

Something in your chest loosened. You hadn’t realized how badly you needed someone who loved Jason to say that.

Alfred didn’t explain him away or tell you his intentions mattered more than the consequences. He simply sat with the uncomfortable truth.

You traced one finger along the edge of your cup. “He thinks knowing about Red Hood changed how I saw him.”

“Did it?”

“Yes, but not the way he thinks. I knew what Red Hood was before I knew it was him. Everyone does. I knew what he used to do, and I knew what he does now, but when Jason told me…”

“You heard Master Jason’s account of himself.”

The precision of the sentence made you look at him.

Alfred sighed. “I love that boy dearly, but I would not recommend relying upon him for an objective assessment of Jason Todd.”

Despite everything, you laughed.

The sound surprised you both.

Alfred smiled faintly. “He has always been particularly skilled at discounting evidence that might contradict an unfavorable conclusion.”

“You make him sound like a badly researched paper.”

“I’m afraid the comparison is not entirely unfair.”

Your smile lingered for several seconds before fading. “He told me all the worst things.”

“I suspect he believed those were the most relevant.”

“That’s the problem.”

“Yes.”

Alfred was quiet for a while before beginning, almost casually, to tell you about Jason—not Red Hood as Jason understood him, but the boy Alfred had watched arrive at the manor suspicious of every kindness because he assumed generosity contained an expiration date.

Bruce had once told Jason that several books he’d become attached to in the library were his to keep. Alfred found them hidden beneath Jason’s mattress nearly a month later and eventually learned that Jason had convinced himself Bruce must have meant he could borrow them. Even after being explicitly told otherwise, he had apparently decided hiding them was safer than risking someone noticing he’d kept something that wasn’t truly his.

Another story followed about Jason returning from patrol with a sprained wrist and spending twenty minutes insisting Bruce shouldn’t have needed to help him because Dick wouldn’t have made the same mistake.

Your chest tightened.

“He still does that.”

“I know.”

The comm crackled before Alfred could continue.

Dick’s voice came through first. “Found the vehicle.”

Jason followed. “No driver.”

The shift in Alfred was immediate. He stood and gestured for you to follow.

The Cave was colder than you remembered. You’d only seen it once while dating Jason, and then only briefly. Tonight, the enormous bank of monitors glowed across the darkness while Alfred moved between screens with practiced ease.

A map of Gotham appeared, with two markers moving near the Bowery. Alfred also opened feeds from nearby traffic cameras and the cameras built into their masks.

You sat in the chair he indicated.

Jason’s voice filled your ear. “Building looks empty from street level.”

Dick responded. “Thermal says three upstairs.”

“Back exit?”

“Covered.”

“Civilians?”

“Apartment next door has two.”

Jason went quiet for a moment before saying, “We don’t breach through the shared wall.”

Jason had told you about the doors he’d kicked in. He hadn’t spent nearly as much time talking about all the quiet calculations that came first, the ways he changed plans when someone innocent might get caught in the middle.

Alfred switched between the exterior camera and Jason’s feed as Red Hood and Nightwing disappeared into an alley.

The next several minutes unfolded through sound and blurred video: footsteps, Dick counting under his breath, Jason warning him about a camera, a door opening and then the unmistakable violence of a fight.

You’d known what he did, but knowing was different from hearing it.

There was something intimate about the comm, about every clipped breath transmitted directly into your ear. Jason sounded nothing like the man who had sat across from you months ago and described himself as if brutality were the only language he spoke.

He was controlled.

One of the men bolted through a back exit, and Jason followed him into the alley. A woman stepped through a side door carrying a trash bag at exactly the wrong moment, freezing when she saw Red Hood running toward her.

Jason stopped. “Ma’am, back inside.”

“What the fuck—”

“Inside. Lock the door.”

His voice gentled without losing its authority.

The woman obeyed, disappearing through the doorway before Jason continued the pursuit.

You looked at Alfred. 

He was already watching you.

“He didn’t tell me about this.”

Alfred’s expression softened. “He rarely does.”

A gunshot cracked through the line.

Your heart lurched. “Jason?”

The name escaped before you remembered everyone could hear you.

The silence lasted just long enough to make your stomach turn.

Then Jason answered. “I’m good.”

Dick sounded winded when he added, “He’s not shot.”

Jason muttered something you couldn’t catch while Alfred’s fingers moved rapidly over the keyboard.

A new traffic feed appeared, and you recognized the street immediately.

“Wait.”

Alfred stopped.

You leaned closer. “There.”

The camera showed a man crossing behind the abandoned van.

Your skin prickled.

“That’s him.”

“The man who spoke to you?”

“I think so. Go back.”

Alfred rewound several seconds until the man’s face appeared in profile.

“That’s him.”

Alfred opened the channel. “Master Jason.”

“I heard her.”

The man climbed into another vehicle while Alfred began tracking its route.

You remembered something else. “He had something on his shirt.”

Jason’s voice came through your ear. “What?”

“A logo. I thought it was a delivery company.”

“Can you remember it?”

You closed your eyes. The conversation had lasted less than a minute. He’d been carrying a clipboard, wearing a blue cap and gray polo.

“Three letters. Maybe CMC? The first C was curved weirdly.”

Alfred began searching.

Jason didn’t interrupt or tell you to stop involving yourself.

“Anything else?” he asked.

You concentrated. “There was a green line underneath it.”

Alfred pulled several results onto the screen.

One made your stomach drop.

“That one.”

Crown Metropolitan Couriers.

The company had gone out of business eighteen months ago, but its former distribution warehouse was still standing twenty minutes from your apartment.

Jason exhaled. “Got it.”

You stared at the moving marker representing him. “Be careful.”

The silence afterward lasted only a second.

“Yeah.”

It wasn’t a promise.

You were glad.

Promises had never been the thing you needed from him.

The next hour was worse.

Jason and Dick reached the warehouse and found enough equipment inside to confirm the operation was larger than one threat. Jason’s feed swept across a wall covered in photographs. You weren’t the only target. Former employees, girlfriends, friends, assistants, and distant relatives of several wealthy Gotham families had been cataloged according to perceived vulnerability.

Then his camera stopped on your photograph.

EASY ACCESS had been written across it in red.

Jason went silent.

“Jason.”

“I’m here.”

His voice had gone flat.

You closed your eyes. “This isn’t because you’re Red Hood.”

“They picked you because of me.”

“Because I dated Jason Todd.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“It’s not supposed to.”

Another silence followed.

You could almost feel him preparing to fold the knowledge inward, another piece of evidence for the prosecution.

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“You know what.”

Jason didn’t respond.

Dick’s voice cut through before either of you could continue. “Movement.”

The fight happened fast. Alfred switched between their feeds while Jason and Dick moved deeper into the warehouse, issuing directions whenever one of the building schematics revealed something they couldn’t see.

Then every feed vanished. The markers disappeared from the map. Static filled your ear.

Your hands tightened around the edge of the desk. “Jason?”

Nothing.

Alfred’s expression remained composed, but his hands moved faster.

“Signal jammer.”

“How long?”

“I am working on it.”

“Jason?”

Static.

Seven months collapsed into several seconds: your unanswered messages, your phone glowing beside you at two in the morning, every excuse you’d manufactured for him before you finally understood there wouldn’t be another response.

Maybe he lost his phone. Maybe patrol went badly. Maybe he needs time.

Maybe tomorrow.

Maybe tomorrow.

Maybe tomorrow.

“Jason.”

The static broke.

A sharp breath came through first.

Then his voice. “Still here.”

Your eyes closed.

Relief made your entire body ache.

“Okay.”

Jason coughed. “Jammer’s down.”

Dick’s voice followed. “We’ve got them.”

Alfred’s shoulders relaxed by less than an inch.

You stayed seated until the markers reappeared on the map.

This time, you watched them all the way back to the Manor.

Jason entered the Cave forty-three minutes later, his hood down, already taking off his mask.

You were out of your chair before he finished pulling it off.

Blood covered one side of his face. The cut above his eyebrow wasn’t deep. You could see that immediately, but blood had spread along his temple and mixed with sweat, making the injury appear worse than it was.

Jason stopped when he saw you approaching.

For a second, neither of you seemed to remember what relationship you were supposed to have.

Your hand rose automatically.

His head tilted toward your touch just as automatically.

You stopped before your fingers reached him.

Jason’s eyes dropped to your hand.

Hurt flickered across his face.

“Alfred has a first-aid kit,” you said.

“Yeah.”

You lowered your arm.

Dick came up behind him and handed Alfred a drive recovered from the warehouse. Bruce’s voice sounded over the channel, already coordinating with the police and working out the public-facing explanation that would prevent anyone from questioning why vigilantes had been involved.

The threat was finished.

You had no reason to stay anymore.

You knew it before anyone said it.

Alfred cleaned the cut while Jason insisted he was fine. Dick left to finish the handoff, and eventually Alfred dismissed both of you with the unmistakable authority of someone who had already decided the conversation happening next was none of his business.

Jason drove you home.

The apartment looked exactly as you had left it that morning, which felt strange.

You set your keys down while Jason remained near the door, and you recognized the distance immediately. His weight had already shifted backward. His hand hovered close enough to the knob that you could almost watch his body arranging itself for departure.

Something in you snapped. “So that’s it?”

Jason looked at you. “They’re in custody.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

He went still.

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Leaving.”

His eyes flicked toward the door. “You’re safe.”

You laughed once. “Unbelievable.”

Jason rubbed one hand over his face. “I don’t want to make this worse.”

“Walking away is how you made it worse the first time.”

His hand dropped.

You hated the hurt in his expression.

You hated that he’d earned it.

“Tell me something,” you said. “When you told me about Red Hood, what did you think I was going to do?”

Jason looked away. “Leave.”

“Did I?”

“You asked for time.”

“I found out my boyfriend had died, come back to life, become a crime lord, tried to kill multiple people, fought Batman, and had been lying to me about all of it. I thought taking a few days was pretty reasonable.”

“I know.”

“No. You decided those few days meant I was already halfway out the door.”

Jason’s mouth tightened. “You didn’t know everything.”

“There it is. You always say that like there’s going to be one final terrible thing that makes everything else irrelevant.”

“There are things I’ve done—”

“I know.”

“You know what I told you.”

“Exactly.”

He stared at you.

“You only told me the parts you thought proved you were a bad person.”

Jason’s face hardened. “I told you the truth.”

“You told me your version of it.”

“It happened.”

“I never said it didn’t.” You stepped closer, anger sharpening every word. “I want you to stop acting like the worst thing you’ve ever done is the only honest thing about you. You told me about people you killed, but you didn’t tell me how quickly you’ll abandon a chase the second an innocent person might get hurt. You told me about every line you crossed, but not all the ones you draw to keep other people safe.”

“That’s basic fucking procedure.”

“To you.”

Jason shook his head. “Don’t.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The words hit harder than you expected.

Your anger sharpened.

“No, Jason. You don’t get to do that either. You don’t get to make me see you the way you see yourself.”

Something in his expression collapsed.

You kept going because if you stopped now, you might never get another chance to say it.

“You hated yourself enough for both of us, and then you decided your opinion counted more than mine. When I asked for time, you thought I was going to leave. When I came back ready to talk, you were already halfway gone. Then you kept pulling away until there was nothing left for me to hold onto.”

“I thought it was better.”

“For who?”

His silence was answer enough.

“For me, or for you?”

His eyes lifted.

You saw it then: the fear he had turned into sacrifice because sacrifice sounded nobler.

“You didn’t leave because you knew I didn’t want you,” you said. “You left because you were terrified I’d eventually decide I didn’t.”

The color drained from Jason’s face. “You don’t know that.”

“I know you.”

“You knew me.”

The correction hurt.

You took another step. “I knew enough.”

His voice dropped. “I couldn’t stay and wait for you to start looking at me differently.”

Your breath caught.

Jason’s eyes were red now, although you knew he would rather bite through his own tongue than acknowledge it. “I thought it was only a matter of time.”

“It wasn’t happening.”

“It would’ve.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“No, you don’t.” Your voice cracked, and Jason flinched. “You decided what I was going to feel. You decided what I could handle. You decided I’d be safer without you, and then you decided I’d eventually be happier without you. You made every decision except the one where you actually asked me.”

“I was trying not to hurt you.”

“You disappeared.”

The words came out quieter than everything before them.

Jason stopped breathing.

“You disappeared from my life and made me figure out by myself that apparently my boyfriend wasn’t my boyfriend anymore. You made me wonder what I’d done, whether I was too angry when you told me, whether I should’ve forgiven you immediately, whether asking for a few days made you think I hated you.”

“I never thought you hated me.”

“Then what did you think?”

“That you should.”

Silence filled the apartment.

You stared at him.

Jason looked away first.

Everything inside you hurt.

“You really don’t see what you’re doing.”

“I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“No. You decide why someone should leave you before they’ve even had the chance to decide whether they want to.”

His throat moved.

You were close enough now to see the cut Alfred had cleaned above his eyebrow.

Without thinking, you reached up.

Jason froze.

Your thumb brushed carefully beneath the injury, and he leaned into your hand so faintly you might have imagined it if you hadn’t known him so well.

Your chest tightened.

“You should’ve called me,” you whispered.

Jason’s eyes closed. “If I’d called and you’d answered, I would’ve come back.”

Your hand stopped against his face.

The admission was so quiet you almost wished you hadn’t heard it.

Jason opened his eyes. “I knew I would.”

You stared at him. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“No.”

“It doesn’t.”

He winced.

You started to lower your hand.

Jason caught your wrist, not tightly, just enough to stop you. The contact sent heat through you so abruptly that anger briefly lost its footing, his thumb resting against your pulse while months disappeared beneath the simple familiarity of his hand on you. He noticed. His gaze dropped to your mouth before he released you, and the loss of contact felt unbearable.

“I should go.”

You laughed softly in disbelief as his hand moved toward the door. “There you go again.”

Jason stopped. “What do you want me to do?”

The frustration in his voice was real, but you held his gaze. “Ask me.”

His brow furrowed. “Ask you what?”

“What I want.”

Jason’s mouth parted. For a long moment, he looked almost frightened before he finally asked, quieter this time, “What do you want?”

The answer should have been complicated.

Instead, your body supplied it before pride could interfere. “You.”

Jason stared at you, disbelief giving way to something painfully hopeful.

You stepped closer. “Right now.”

His breathing grew shallow.

“That doesn’t mean everything’s fixed,” you said. “It doesn’t mean I forgive you.”

“I know.”

“If you say that again, I might actually hit you.”

His mouth twitched, but the almost-smile disappeared immediately.

Jason looked at you for a long time. “You still want me?”

Your chest cracked open at the disbelief in his voice.

You hated him a little for making you answer.

You hated yourself more for how easy the answer remained.

“Yes.”

Jason didn’t move, so you closed the last inch yourself and kissed him.

His breath caught against your mouth. For a moment, his hands stayed at his sides as though touching you without being explicitly invited would be another decision he had no right to make.

You answered that hesitation by catching one of his hands and placing it against your hip. The invitation broke whatever restraint had kept him motionless.

Jason kissed you back with a sudden, aching intensity, his fingers tightening through the fabric of your shirt while your other hand slipped into his hair. The familiarity hit harder than you expected. He still tilted his head the same way when you caught his lower lip between yours, still made that low sound in his throat when your nails grazed his scalp, and your body responded before seven months of anger could remind it that this was supposed to feel unfamiliar.

His free hand came up to cup the back of your neck, holding you close without directing you anywhere. When you finally broke the kiss for air, neither of you moved far enough apart to pretend it had been a mistake.

His eyes opened. “Okay?”

The question nearly destroyed you.

“Yes.”

He kissed you again, harder this time.

Your fingers tangled in his hair, and Jason shuddered when your nails dragged lightly against his scalp. His mouth moved along your jaw and down your throat before stopping at the place he used to bite.

You felt his hesitation.

“Jason.”

He lifted his head, and you could see the question he still wasn’t willing to ask.

“Don’t start deciding for me now.”

Something in his expression shifted. His gaze dropped to your throat before he leaned in, giving you plenty of time to stop him, and pressed his mouth to the place he used to bite. The first kiss was careful, but when you tipped your head farther to give him room, his restraint loosened. His teeth grazed your skin, sending heat curling through your stomach as one hand slipped beneath your shirt and settled against your side, his touch growing surer when you leaned into him.

“You remember,” you whispered.

Pain crossed his face. “Everything.”

He kissed you before you could answer, and somewhere between the hallway and bedroom your shirt disappeared. Jason stopped when he reached the doorway, his hand still warm against your waist, and you knew what had caught him before you even followed his gaze.

The room had changed in all the ordinary ways a room changed when someone stopped belonging in it. New bedding covered the mattress. A different lamp sat on the nightstand. The photographs that had once included him were gone from the dresser, and the half of the closet where his clothes used to hang had long since filled with yours. His gaze flicked toward the bathroom, and you knew he was thinking about the toothbrush that hadn’t been beside yours for seven months.

You watched the realization settle across his face before he looked at you again.

“Still want me here?”

There was enough uncertainty in the question to hurt.

“Yes.”

You stepped into the bedroom, and Jason followed.

He had always touched you like he couldn’t decide whether to savor every inch or tear through whatever stood between him and your skin. Tonight, restraint lasted until your bra joined your shirt on the floor. After that, his hands moved over you with an aching familiarity, tracing your ribs and waist before settling heavily around your hips as if memory hadn’t been enough and he needed to prove to himself that you were still real beneath his palms.

Jason sank to his knees and drew your pants and underwear down together. The sight of him there after seven months of absence sent a sharp, vindictive thrill through you, immediately tangled with something much softer when he pressed his mouth to your stomach.

“You have any idea how many times I thought about this?” he murmured against your skin.

Your fingers tightened in his hair. “You could’ve reached out.”

His eyes closed for half a second. “I know.”

The answer should have cooled you.

Instead, his mouth moved lower.

Jason guided you onto the edge of the bed and spread your thighs, his hands firm enough to make your pulse jump. He looked at you once before lowering his mouth to your cunt, and whatever resentment you’d been preparing to hold onto fractured beneath the first slow drag of his tongue.

“Fuck.”

A low groan vibrated against you.

There was nothing hesitant about the way he ate you once he knew you wanted him there. He remembered exactly how you liked his tongue, how much pressure made your hips lift and which spot made your fingers twist helplessly in his hair. When he pushed two fingers inside you, he curled them with the same maddening precision you remembered, his mouth staying on your clit until your legs tightened around his shoulders.

Your body responded to him before your pride could interfere, and the ease of it hurt more than you wanted to admit. Seven months of anger, seven months of telling yourself you could forget the weight of his hands and the sound of his breathing beside you, and your cunt still knew him.

Jason looked up from between your thighs.

His hair was a mess beneath your fingers, his lips wet, his pupils blown wide enough that the green of his eyes had nearly disappeared. The hunger in his expression wasn’t new. The naked longing underneath it was.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

His fingers slowed without stopping. “Like what?”

“Like you missed me.”

Jason went still.

The anger came back hard enough to make your chest burn. “You don’t get to look at me like that when you’re the one who decided not to come back.”

The words landed exactly where you meant them to, and you regretted them almost immediately.

Jason’s gaze dropped. Instead of arguing, he turned his head and pressed a kiss high on the inside of your thigh.

“I missed you.”

Your throat tightened.

His eyes lifted to yours again. “I missed your voice. Your bed. You stealing the fucking blankets. Waking up with your knee shoved between mine because you somehow take up more room than I do.” His thumb moved slowly along your thigh. “I missed all of it.”

You couldn’t decide whether you wanted to kiss him or punch him.

Jason saved you the decision by lowering his mouth again.

This time, there was nothing careful about it.

His tongue flattened against your clit while his fingers fucked into you, and your breath broke around his name. Jason groaned as if hearing it from you again did something to him, his free hand tightening around your thigh hard enough that you knew there would be bruises tomorrow.

“Jason.”

He sucked your clit into his mouth.

Your hips jerked.

“Fuck, right there.”

He didn’t need the instruction, but something about hearing you give it seemed to unravel him further. His fingers drove into you in the rhythm he knew made your stomach tighten, and when you tried to shift away from the intensity, his arm hooked more securely around your thigh.

“Stay,” he murmured against you.

The word hit harder than it should have.

You stared down at him.

Jason seemed to realize what he’d said, but he didn’t take it back.

Then his tongue found your clit again, and you stopped being able to think.

Your orgasm built brutally fast. Jason knew it too. He always had. He kept the same pressure when your thighs began trembling instead of changing anything at the last second, his fingers curling inside you while his mouth worked your clit until pleasure snapped through you.

Your cry broke on his name.

Jason held you through it, tongue gentling without leaving you until overstimulation had you tightening your hand in his hair and pushing weakly at his shoulder.

Only then did he rise.

You caught the front of his shirt before he could straighten completely and dragged him toward you.

Jason came willingly.

You kissed him hard enough to taste yourself on his mouth, and the groan he gave you was filthy and helpless. His hands found your hips again as you pulled his shirt over his head, the fabric barely clearing his arms before your palms were moving over bare skin.

There were scars you remembered and others you didn’t.

Your fingers stopped over one along his ribs. “This is new.”

Jason glanced down. “Couple months ago.”

The words hit you strangely.

A couple months ago, he had been bleeding somewhere, and you hadn’t known. You hadn’t sat on the bathroom counter with gauze and antiseptic while he complained about your bedside manner. You hadn’t watched for signs that the wound was worse than he claimed or fallen asleep with one hand spread carefully across his stomach because you wanted proof he was still breathing.

You had been somewhere else.

His life had happened without you.

Jason looked at your face and understood immediately.

His hand covered yours over the scar. “I’m sorry.”

“For getting hurt?”

“For you not knowing.”

Your eyes burned.

You kissed him because answering would have required admitting how much that mattered.

His pants came off in the tangle that followed, and when Jason settled over you, skin finally pressed to skin, you had to close your eyes.

You remembered him too well.

The heavy warmth of his body between your thighs. The way his forearm braced beside your head so he never put all his weight on you. The scar near his collarbone that your mouth found almost without thought.

Jason buried his face against your neck and exhaled shakily.

For a moment, neither of you moved.

“So many fucking times,” he whispered.

You opened your eyes. “What?”

“I almost called you.”

Your hands tightened against his back.

“You should have.”

“I know.” His mouth brushed your throat. “Had the number pulled up. Wrote messages I didn’t send. Got halfway here once.”

That made you go still.

Jason lifted his head.

“You came here?”

“Made it three blocks away.”

“And then?”

“I turned around.”

A fresh ache opened inside your chest.

“You’re an idiot.”

“Yeah.”

Your hand slid between your bodies and wrapped around his cock.

Jason sucked in a sharp breath. He was painfully hard, thick and hot in your palm, and his forehead dropped against yours when you stroked him from base to tip. His hips jerked forward before he could stop them.

You did it again.

“Fuck.”

There was something satisfying about watching him lose control under your hand after months of imagining him perfectly capable of living without you. You tightened your grip and watched his jaw clench.

“Thought you were doing so well without me.”

Jason’s eyes opened, and something raw moved through them.

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“You know that’s bullshit.”

You stroked him again, slower this time. “I didn’t know anything, Jason. That was kind of the problem.”

His face tightened.

You immediately wished the bitterness hadn’t followed you into bed, but Jason only caught your wrist gently and brought your hand to his mouth.

He kissed the inside of it.

“I know.”

The words sounded different this time.

Jason lowered your hand and glanced between your bodies before looking back at you.

“We should talk about this part.”

It took you a second to understand.

Then you did.

“I haven’t been with anyone since you.”

His eyes searched yours.

“Neither have I.”

“IUD is still good for another year.”

Jason’s thumb moved once over your wrist. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

The tension in his shoulders eased. He reached between your thighs, gathering the wetness there before circling your clit once, and your hips twitched beneath him.

“Still this wet for me.”

The filthy satisfaction in his voice made heat rush through you.

“Don’t get cocky.”

“Trying real hard not to.”

His fingers dipped lower, pushing briefly inside you again before he withdrew them.

“Jesus Christ.”

Your cheeks heated despite everything. “Jason.”

“I know.” His gaze dropped between you. “Just forgot how fucking good you feel on my fingers.”

“You said you remembered everything.”

“I do.” His eyes lifted to yours. “Doesn’t mean having you this wet around my fingers again won’t fuck me up.”

The words went through you like a current.

Jason lined himself up and rubbed the head of his cock through your wetness, catching against your clit once before settling at your entrance.

His expression sobered.

You reached up and touched his face.

“Jason.”

“Yeah?”

“I want you to fuck me.”

His eyes closed briefly.

When he pushed into you, he did it slowly. The stretch made your fingers dig into his shoulders. Seven months without him meant your body needed a moment despite everything it remembered, and Jason stopped halfway when your breath caught.

“You okay?”

“Yes.”

He kissed your cheek.

“Keep going.”

Jason pushed deeper.

You felt every inch of him until his hips finally settled against yours, and then he went completely still.

His face twisted.

You touched his jaw.

“Jason.”

“Give me a second.”

Something in your chest tightened because you knew immediately that this had nothing to do with the physical sensation.

His eyes remained closed.

You stroked your thumb along his cheekbone.

“I’m here.”

Jason opened his eyes.

The grief in them almost undid you.

“Yeah,” he whispered.

He pressed a kiss to your palm before he finally moved.

Jason started slow, as if he were trying to relearn something his body had never actually forgotten. Each thrust dragged another sound out of you, and the tighter your legs drew around his hips, the harder it became for him to keep pretending he had any control left. The second you clenched around him, his composure cracked. His hips drove deeper, rougher, until every thrust was dragging against the places he still remembered well enough to make you shake. 

“Fuck,” he breathed against your mouth. “I missed feeling you like this.”

Your throat tightened. “So did I.”

Jason kissed you hard.

His rhythm built gradually, each thrust growing heavier until the bed shifted beneath you. He kept his body close, one hand hooking beneath your thigh to open you wider while he fucked into you with a familiarity that bordered on cruel.

Your body knew exactly what to do with him as your hips rose to meet his.

Jason groaned. “Yeah. Fuck, just like that.”

His forehead pressed against yours.

“Missed how you take me.”

The words sent heat crawling over your skin.

“Jason.”

“Missed watching you get all fucking needy when I get deep enough.”

He thrust harder to prove it, and the sound that left you wiped the last of the restraint from his face.

“Yeah, like that.”

You grabbed his shoulders.

“Don’t—”

“Don’t what?”

You glared at him through the haze building behind your eyes.

Jason’s mouth brushed yours. “Tell me.”

You hated that your cunt tightened around him when his voice dropped like that.

“Don’t stop.”

His eyes shut.

“Fuck.”

Jason drove into you harder. He kissed you constantly between rougher thrusts, mouth moving over yours, your jaw, your throat, as though he couldn’t bear to have you beneath him without touching every part he could reach. The combination was almost unbearable: his cock fucking you hard enough to make your thighs shake while his mouth treated you like something precious.

You dragged your nails down his back.

Jason groaned and snapped his hips into you. “Fuck, baby.”

He froze.

The word hung between you.

You felt the exact second he realized he’d said it. His body started to retreat almost automatically.

You locked your legs around his hips. “Don’t.”

His eyes searched yours. “You don’t have to let me—”

“Jason.”

Your fingers tightened at the back of his neck.

“Don’t take it back.”

Whatever hesitation remained finally gave way as he kissed you.

Jason’s next thrust was hard enough to push a gasp from your mouth, and his hand slid between your bodies to find your clit.

“Baby,” he whispered again, like he was testing whether he was really allowed to have the word. “Fuck, I missed you.”

Your throat tightened.

His thumb circled your clit.

“I missed this pussy. Missed you squeezing me like this.” His breath hitched when you clenched around him. “Yeah, fuck. That. You always do that when I talk to you like this.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Probably.”

“You disappeared for seven months.”

Pain briefly broke through the pleasure in his expression.

“I know.”

“And you still remember what makes me come.”

Jason’s eyes locked on yours.

“I told you. I remember everything.”

His thumb pressed harder.

“You get quieter when you’re close. Start holding your breath like you think I won’t notice.”

Your breath caught immediately.

Jason’s mouth curved. “Like that.”

“Shut up.”

“You gonna come for me?”

The question should have annoyed you.

Instead, your cunt clenched around him.

Jason swore. “Fuck, baby. Do that again.”

You couldn’t have stopped yourself if you tried.

His thrusts grew rougher, his hand never leaving your clit, and suddenly you were right at the edge with no room left to hide from it.

Jason felt it; of course he did.

“Come on,” he whispered against your mouth. “I’ve got you.”

Your eyes burned.

He kissed you.

“Let me have it.”

Your orgasm tore through you.

Jason’s name broke apart in your throat as your body tightened around him, your thighs clamping around his hips while he fucked you through it. His breath came apart against your mouth when your cunt kept pulsing around him.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

His rhythm faltered.

You caught his face between your hands.

“Jason.”

He looked at you, almost wrecked. “Where?”

“Inside.”

His eyes shut.

“Fuck.”

“Jason.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

He buried himself as deeply as he could and came with a harsh groan against your mouth, his cock pulsing inside you while his entire body went rigid over yours. You felt the warmth of him filling you, and Jason shook once before dropping his face against your shoulder.

His breathing was ragged.

Your fingers slid into his hair.

Neither of you spoke.

For several minutes there was only the cooling sweat between your bodies, the slowing beat of Jason’s heart against your chest, and the uncomfortable knowledge that sex had changed absolutely nothing about the seven months behind you.

It had only proved that wanting each other had never been the problem.

Eventually, Jason shifted his weight carefully away from you. The loss of him left you aching in more ways than one, but before you could say anything, he went into the bathroom and returned with a warm towel.

He cleaned you with a tenderness that felt almost out of place after the way he’d just fucked you, one hand resting against your knee while the other moved carefully between your thighs. Neither of you commented on the mess he’d made or the way your body still occasionally trembled beneath his touch.

When he finished, you reached toward the chair beside your dresser and pulled on an oversized sleep shirt.

Jason went still.

You looked down.

It was one of his.

You had stolen it years ago and somehow kept wearing it long after everything else belonging to him had been boxed up, moved, or shoved somewhere you didn’t have to look at it.

“I never gave this back.”

“I noticed.”

You almost apologized.

Then you remembered he had abandoned half his possessions by disappearing from your life without a conversation.

“You’re not getting it now.”

“I wasn’t asking.”

There was no teasing in his voice, which made it worse.

Jason remained beside the bed instead of automatically climbing in. Months ago, he would have known the answer without asking, but months ago he had still belonged here.

You lifted the blanket.

Jason joined you.

His arm settled around your waist only after you moved close enough to make it clear you wanted him there, and your body fit against his with the same terrible ease it always had. Seven months apart had changed almost everything except this. You could have closed your eyes and pretended the last seven months had been nothing more than a particularly bad dream.

Jason’s thumb moved slowly along your side beneath the hem of his old shirt, and your breathing gradually matched his.

For several minutes, neither of you spoke.

Then you asked, “What happens when you get scared again?”

Jason’s hand stopped.

You stared at the wall. “Because you will. Something else is going to happen eventually. Someone will get hurt, or you’ll think I’m in danger, or you’ll decide I deserve something better.”

Jason stayed quiet long enough for your chest to tighten.

“That’s what I don’t know,” you said.

He shifted behind you, and you turned until you could see his face.

“You can stay, Jason. You always could.” Your throat tightened. “I don’t know if you will.”

Jason looked down between you.

“What do you want me to say?”

“The truth.”

He was quiet for so long that you wondered whether he had an answer.

Finally, he said, “I’m probably going to want to run. I’m probably going to convince myself I’m right, because I’m really fucking good at doing that.”

“That’s comforting.”

“I’m trying.”

“I know.”

His eyes lifted, and something almost like a smile touched your mouth at the reversal.

“But I can tell you.”

You waited.

“When I’m scared. When I think I’m going to fuck everything up, or I start thinking you should leave, or I convince myself I know what you need better than you do.” His fingers tightened slightly against your waist. “I can tell you instead of deciding for you.”

“And then?”

“Then you get to decide.”

The words lodged painfully beneath your ribs. That choice was what he had taken from you the first time.

You reached up and touched his face, and Jason leaned into your palm.

“I’m still angry with you.”

“I know.”

“You hurt me.”

His jaw tightened. “I know.”

“I don’t trust you not to do it again yet.”

Pain tightened his expression, but he didn’t look away. “Okay.”

You swallowed. “I still love you.”

Jason’s eyes closed.

His forehead lowered to yours, and the breath that left him shook.

“I love you too.”

“You don’t get to disappear because of that.”

“I—”

He stopped himself.

You raised an eyebrow.

Jason exhaled. “I heard you.”

“What do you want?” you asked.

Jason became very still.

For someone who had spent so much of his life deciding what everyone else deserved, you wondered how often anyone bothered asking what he wanted.

“I want to try again.”

Your heart tightened. “Actually try?”

“Yeah.”

“That means talking to me.”

“I can do that.”

“It means the next time you decide I’d be happier with someone safer, you tell me you’re thinking it instead of disappearing.”

Jason’s expression tightened.

“I can do that too.”

You traced the edge of his eyebrow, carefully avoiding the cut.

“I can’t do this twice.”

He sobered completely.

This time he didn’t tell you he knew.

His hand covered yours.

“I heard you.”

You took a breath.

“Then we try.”

Jason looked at you with such cautious hope that your chest tightened.

“We try?”

“We try.”

His eyes closed.

He kissed your palm and then your wrist before pulling you against him, holding you tightly enough that you could feel his heart pounding through both of you.

You let him.

Much later, when sleep had begun dragging at the edges of your awareness, Jason shifted carefully beneath the blankets.

Your body tensed before you could stop it.

His movement halted immediately.

“I’m getting water.”

You closed your eyes.

The reaction embarrassed you.

Jason’s hand settled against your hip. “You want anything?”

“Just water.”

“Okay.”

He climbed out of bed, leaving the bedroom door open behind him. You listened to his footsteps move through the apartment, followed by the kitchen cabinet opening and the sound of running water.

Then silence.

For one terrible second, the silence dragged you back to another absence.

Footsteps crossed the apartment again. Jason came back carrying two glasses and handed you one.

You pushed yourself up enough to take it. “Thanks.”

He placed his own glass beside the bed and climbed beneath the blankets again.

He told you where he was going, and then he came back. It was painfully small compared to everything that still needed fixing, but it mattered anyway.

You curled against him, and Jason’s arm wrapped around you.

Morning arrived slowly, gray light filtering through the curtains and settling across the room. You woke with your cheek against a warm chest and spent several disoriented seconds trying to remember why.

Jason was asleep beside you.

Still here.

His face looked younger without all the tension he carried while awake, one hand resting loosely against your back with his fingers curled into the fabric of the shirt you’d stolen from him years ago and never managed to throw away.

You studied him.

Seven months didn’t disappear because he spent one night in your bed, and neither did the damage. There would be conversations you needed to have, anger that returned at inconvenient moments, and nights when Jason’s instincts screamed at him to put distance between himself and everyone he loved. There would probably be moments when your own instincts told you not to believe him. Seven months had taught both of you habits that one night together couldn’t undo.

Jason stirred.

His eyes opened slowly, and for one brief second, panic flashed across his face before he saw you and relaxed.

“Morning.”

“Morning.”

His gaze moved toward the window before returning to you.

“I have patrol tonight. Probably around nine.”

You blinked.

Jason swallowed. “I’ll text you before I go.”

Your chest tightened. “All right.”

“And when I’m done.”

You stared at him long enough that he shifted slightly beneath the attention.

“You said talking.”

“I did.”

“I’m trying.”

You reached over and touched the white streak falling across his forehead.

“I know.”

Jason turned his face into your hand and pressed a kiss to your palm. He stayed there for another moment, eyes closed, before drawing you closer again.

That night, your phone buzzed a little before nine. Heading out.

You stared at the message longer than necessary before typing back. Be careful.

The reply came almost immediately. I will.

Hours later, another vibration woke you. Done for the night.

Then, before you could answer, another message: Can I come over?

Your throat tightened.

Seven months ago, Jason had decided what was best for you and disappeared before you could tell him otherwise.

This time, he asked what you wanted. He asked to stay, and then he waited for you to decide.

Yes.

credit to @uzmacchiato for the cherry divider ❤️💛