You know that Tiktok trend where the girlfriend asks if she can eat infront of her partners parents? Well, here's that for Kyle and Stan- Might do this for more SP characters
This is genuinely so stupid.
STAN MARSH
It was a peaceful dinner, to peaceful in fact. You were surprised that Randy hadn't said something stupid or Shelley hitting Stan; You decided to change that.
"Oh, Stan, can I get seconds after this? I know you said don't like me eating a lot because you said you wouldn't be attracted to me if I got fat."
The table all glances at Stan, who was wide eyed and shaking his head, clearly loss for words.
"I-I-I have- I've never said that!"
"What are you talking about? you always tell me I should stay in a calorie deficit."
"Stan!" Sharon gave him the 'This better be a joke' look. "How could you say that to her?"
"Yeah, especially since you're the only one who needs to cut the calories," Shelley laughs at her joke, causing Stan to glare at her.
"I never said that, she's lying! Y/n why would you say that?"
"Do you always ask permission," Randy jokes, but you decide to stick with the bit.
"Yeah, always. He's super strict about what I eat."
"I'm literally not! She can eat whatever she wants."
"Then why would she say that?" Sharon looks about ready to throw food at her son. Said boy looked like he wanted to die on the spot
"I don't know ask her!" He gestures to you.
"That's just what you say!"
Stan cover his face, questioning his life choices up to his moments.
"Of course you can eat more, Y/n. As long as you're under my roof, you can eat whatever yu want."
---
KYLE BROFLOVSKI
It was really quiet, when you decided to ruin your boyfriend's night.
"Hey, Kyle, can I have a little bit more food?"
"Bro what?" Kyle looks at you with wide eyes, clearly confused.
"Why would she say that Kyle?" Sheila has a wooden spoon in her hand and if you didn't know any better, you'd think she was going to hit him.
"I don't know! I've never said that! She's crazy."
"So I can't eat and I'm crazy?" You had to admit, even you were convincing yourself this was real with the tears you just pulled out.
Kyle lets out an awkward chuckle, before his mother starts hitting him with the spoon.
"How. dare. you! I raised you better." With each word, she hit him with the spoon.
"Ma- I never said that! She's making it up."
Both Ike and Gerald just continued to eat, seeing their mother had this handled.
"Why would she do that?"
"I don't know!"
She then turns to you after she's satisfied with a smile on her face. "Y/n, you don't ever have to ask that fool for permission- Here," She then starts dumping more food on your plate and you have to stop yourself from laughing.
Read chapter one here first. Warnings: Yandere Themes, Batfamily x reader, Superfamily x reader, Death, Dark fic → read at your own discretion. Chapter Two.
The hallway felt wrong.
Too bright. Too loud. Every sound bounced around your skull like a ricochet. Lockers slamming, distant chatter, shoes squeaking against polished tiles. Your pulse drowned most of it out anyway, roaring violently in your ears as you stumbled after Mr Cameron into the corridor.
The classroom door shut behind you with a soft click. A mercy.
“Easy,” the teacher said carefully, voice lower now, gentler than before. “Just breathe for a second, alright?”
Breathe.
Right.
Your lungs seized painfully as if they had forgotten how. You made it three more shaky steps before your knees finally gave out beside the bag racks lining the wall. The impact jarred through your body, but you barely felt it. Your hands clutched at your chest instead, fingers digging into fabric as if you could physically hold your heart together.
This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. You stared at the floor, breaths coming sharp and uneven.
Six years. Six whole fucking years.
You had died. You remembered it.
You remembered the loud bang. The bullets impact. The impossible pain splitting through your heart. The suffocating weight in your chest as everything faded into darkness.
You remembered dying.
So why were you here? Why did your body feel eighteen again? Why did your hands look smaller? Why did the air smell like cheap school disinfectant instead of rain and blood?
A trembling sound escaped your throat before you could stop it.
Mr Cameron crouched down a few feet away, keeping enough distance not to crowd you. You noticed that immediately. Instinctively. Like he was trying not to scare you.
“We don’t have to go back inside yet,” he said quietly. You looked up too fast and regretted it instantly. Because he looked young. Not young compared to how you remembered him, but young compared to reality.
Mr Cameron had been nearing retirement when you last- No.
Your stomach twisted violently.
He should’ve had grey hair. Wrinkles. That tired expression he always wore after years of grading papers.
Instead, he looked barely forty. Clean-cut. Sharp-eyed. Concern written plainly across his face as he watched you try not to fall apart on the hallway floor.
“You’re really him,” you whispered hoarsely.
His brows furrowed slightly. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re actually him,” you repeated, more to yourself than him. “Holy shit…” Your vision blurred.
“Okay,” he said slowly, carefully, like every word needed to be handled with caution. “I’m gonna take you down to the nurse, alright? You look like you’re about two seconds from passing out.” The concern in his voice almost made your chest hurt worse.
You couldn’t stop staring at him. At the lines that weren’t on his face. At the dark hair with only a little sprout of grey starting behind his ear. At the fact his wedding ring was missing because he hadn’t even met his wife yet.
Your stomach churned violently.
“Hey.” His tone softened further when you didn’t answer. “Can you stand?”
You blinked hard, forcing yourself back into the present. “…Yeah,” you managed weakly. You couldn’t tell if it was true. Still, you let him help you up.
His hand hovered near your arm rather than grabbing it outright, like he was afraid sudden contact would spook you. The tiny consideration dug under your ribs unexpectedly deep.
You followed beside him in a haze.
Students moved around you in blurs of uniforms and backpacks, conversations echoing down the corridor in warped fragments. Every now and then someone glanced your way before quickly looking elsewhere. You wondered vaguely what you looked like right now.
Probably insane.
Your legs carried you on autopilot while your mind spiralled somewhere far away, trapped between memories of dying and the impossible reality of polished school floors beneath your worn down shoes.
Mr Cameron said something to you halfway there.
You nodded without processing the words.
The nurse’s office door opened with a soft creak. Warm lighting spilled across the room, gentler than the harsh fluorescents outside. A small fan hummed quietly from the corner beside neatly stacked folders and medical supplies.
“You can sit there for me, sweetheart,” the nurse said immediately, concern flashing across her face the second she saw you.
You obeyed automatically.
Mr Cameron lingered near the doorway.
“They nearly collapsed outside class,” he explained quietly. “Caused quite a ruckus, had to leave the TA in charge.”
The nurse nodded once, already moving around the office gathering things. “Probably a panic attack,” she murmured. “I’ll handle it from here.”
Panic attack.
If only it were that simple. Your eyes drifted absently around the room while they spoke.
Posters about exam stress, a faded CPR chart, a school banner pinned crookedly near the filing cabinet, a half-heartedly made anti-bullying poster.
You wondered if this was hell.
Not fire-and-brimstone hell. Not demons with pitchforks and eternal screaming. Something worse. Something tailored specifically for you.
A punishment built out of teenage angst and overdue assignments. Out of uncomfortable plastic chairs and group projects with people who never did their share of the work. A cruel, cosmic joke where some higher being looked at your deepest fears and decided high school deserved a second round.
Maybe that was the point. Maybe dying hadn’t been enough. Maybe this was some sick afterlife where you were forced to relive adolescence forever. Endless exams you hadn’t studied for, teachers disappointed in you, the suffocating pressure of trying to figure out a future you already knew would never happen.
Or maybe this was your brain breaking apart in its final moments.
That felt possible too.
Maybe your body was still lying somewhere cold and ruined while your mind desperately stitched together familiar places to soften the terror of dying. One last comforting hallucination before everything finally shut off for good.
Except there was nothing comforting about this.
Your chest still hurt. Your memories still felt sharp enough to cut through you. You remembered blood. You remembered fear.
You remembered your grandma.
The thought slammed into you so suddenly your stomach twisted.
No.
No, you didnt want to think about her. Not yet.
You couldn’t imagine her all alone in that house. Couldn’t imagine the police knocking on her door, interrupting her while she was singing along to some old country song while she cleaned or making burnt sugar cookies for the end of the week when you were supposed to come over.
Your fingers curled tightly against your knees instead. Willing the thoughts of her all by herself out of your head.
Maybe you were in a coma.
Maybe six years hadn’t passed at all, maybe your brain had invented them entirely. Maybe none of it happened.
Maybe you’d never grown older. Never watched everything spiral so violently out of control.
Maybe your mind had simply created an entire lifetime out of a few dying seconds.
The idea should’ve comforted you. Instead, it made you feel sick. Because it had felt real. Too real.
You remembered the weight of hands grabbing your wrists. The sound of voices desperately calling out your name like something precious. The look in the vigilantes eyes right before-
Your breath caught violently. Stop!
You squeezed your eyes shut hard enough to hurt. The room hummed softly around you. The fan. Papers shuffling. Distant footsteps beyond the office walls.
Real.
It all felt horribly, unbearably real.
Your gaze drifted again, unfocused, until it snagged on the navy-and-gold banner pinned near the filing cabinet.
METROPOLIS HIGH.
Your brows furrowed immediately.
Metropolis? Not Gotham.
A sharp pulse throbbed behind your eyes. “… Wait,” you muttered faintly.
The nurse glanced over while scribbling something onto a clipboard. “Hm?”
You stared at the sign. “Why does it say Metropolis High?”
She blinked once like the question made no sense at all. “…Because that’s the school you attend, honey.”
“No, I-”
Your words caught against each other. Because that wasn’t right. Was it?
You stared harder at the banner like the letters would rearrange themselves if you looked long enough.
The nurse gave you a sympathetic look instead, already moving toward a cabinet near the back wall.
“You’re overwhelmed right now,” she said gently. “Just sit tight for me, alright? I need to grab some paperwork.”
Paperwork. Of course, even hell had paperwork.
The office door clicked shut behind her, leaving you alone in the softly humming room.
Silence rushed in immediately. Your breathing sounded too loud.
Slowly, uncertainly, you lifted one trembling hand in front of your face. You squeezed your fingers together. The sensation grounded and terrifying all at once.
Warm skin, pressure, movement. Real.
Your pulse jumped harder.
You pressed your thumb harshly into the web of skin between your thumb and pointer until pain bloomed under the skin.
Still real. Still here.
A shaky breath left you. “What the fuck…”
Time lost meaning somewhere around the fifty-minute mark.
The nurse came and went in intervals, checking your pulse, making you drink water, asking questions you barely processed long enough to answer. You nodded when expected to nod. Spoke when silence stretched too long. The rest of the time you sat there staring at the crooked Metropolis High banner pinned beside the filing cabinet like the words might rearrange themselves if you looked long enough.
They never did.
The clock above the door ticked forward relentlessly.
Eventually, the nurse stepped back into the office with a gentler expression than before.
“Well,” she said, setting her clipboard down, “your friend’s here to pick you up.”
Your brows furrowed immediately. “My… what?”
Before she could answer, the office door opened. And your stomach dropped straight through the floor.
Tim Drake stepped inside.
You knew that face.
Everyone knew that face.
One of Bruce Wayne’s sons. You’d seen him on magazine covers before, standing beside billion-dollar donations and carefully rehearsed interviews. Always neat in that rich-kid way.
Except this version of him looked younger. Eighteen. Maybe nineteen.
And the second his eyes landed on you, his entire expression shifted. Relief.
Sharp, immediate, real.
“There you are,” he breathed, like he’d been genuinely worried.
Your pulse spiked violently.
Tim crossed the room without hesitation, stopping beside your chair. Expensive cologne lingered faintly beneath the smell of antiseptic and printer paper. His tie hung loose around his collar like he’d rushed over here faster than he should’ve.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he said quietly. Not formal. Not distant.
Familiar.
His hand lifted instinctively toward your face before stopping halfway. You noticed the hesitation immediately. The restraint. Like he wanted to touch you and was actively stopping himself from doing it in front of the nurse.
“You almost collapsed?” His eyes searched your face rapidly. “What happened?”
You stared at him blankly.
Because Tim Drake was not your friend.
A Wayne should not have been standing in your school nurse’s office looking at you like this.
The nurse gave a sympathetic hum from behind her desk. “I think they just overwhelmed themselves. Panic attack, most likely.”
Tim’s expression tightened instantly. His attention snapped back to you so fast it almost felt physical. “You’re still not sleeping properly, are you?” he said softly.
The question landed with terrifying familiarity. Not the kind people asked out of politeness. The kind asked by someone who already knew the answer.
You opened your mouth, but nothing came out. Something about that seemed to concern him even more.
Your skin prickled. Everything about this felt wrong.
Not because he was acting friendly. Because he was acting close. Years-of-history close.
The kind of closeness built from late-night phone calls and inside jokes and habitual concern. Like this wasn’t unusual for him. Like worrying about you had become second nature a long time ago.
And somehow the worst part was that nobody else seemed to find it strange.
Tim studied you for another second before exhaling quietly through his nose. A flicker of something you couldn’t place crossed his face then. Easy amusement slipping through the concern. It transformed him strangely. Made him look less like a carefully polished Wayne and more like an actual teenager.
Then his eyes landed back on you. The amusement softened immediately.
“C’mon,” he said gently. “Let’s get out of here.”
Let’s.
Not I’ll take you home.
Not your ride is here.
Let’s.
Like wherever you went next was automatic. Shared.
The nurse handed over a folded slip of paper. “A slip to leave early. Try to get some rest, we don’t want this happening again.”
Tim accepted it for you with a quick nod.
Then, before you could fully process what was happening, he reached down and grabbed your bag from beside the chair. Effortless. Like he’d done it a hundred times before.
You stared at him again. He noticed.
“Don’t start,” he said immediately, already heading for the door. “Last time you carried this thing I had to sit through you whining about sore shoulders. I don’t have all night.”
Last time.
You followed him out hesitantly.
The hallway outside had mostly emptied by now. Afternoon sunlight spilled through the tall windows lining the corridor, painting long golden streaks across polished floors.
Students still lingering around glanced over as you passed. Not at you. At Tim.
Whispers started almost instantly.
Of course they did. He was.. well, him.
You caught fragments as you walked.
“..is that Tim Drake?” “Thought he graduated…”
Tim either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He walked beside you with easy confidence, your bag slung over one shoulder while occasionally glancing your way like he was checking you were still there.
It should’ve felt comforting. Instead it made your skin feel too tight.
Outside, the warm Metropolis air hit your face immediately. The parking lot shimmered faintly beneath the afternoon sun, rows of expensive cars scattered between students gathering near the gates.
Tim headed toward a sleek black car parked near the curb. Of course he drove something expensive.
He clicked the unlock button casually before opening the passenger door for you without a second thought.
The motion was so smooth. So instinctive. Like habit.
You stopped beside the car instead of getting in.
Tim looked at you over the roof, brows lifting slightly. “…You good?”
You stared at him carefully. At the loosened tie. At the concern still lingering behind his eyes. At the way he stood close enough to block half the parking lot from view without seeming to realise he was doing it.
Then quietly, cautiously, you asked: “Why are you acting like we know each other?”
…
For a second, Tim just stared at you.
Still.
The sounds of the parking lot seemed to dull around you. Distant conversations, car doors slamming, someone laughing near the front gates. All of it faded beneath the sudden tightness pulling across his expression.
“…What?” he said finally.
Your pulse hammered harder. “You keep talking to me like we’re friends,” you said carefully, watching him closely. “Like we’ve known each other forever.”
The words felt surreal coming out of your mouth. Because this was the CEO of Wayne Enterprises. Someone you’d only ever seen through screens and newspaper headlines.
Tim blinked once.
Then twice.
And something about his face changed. Just enough for unease to settle deep.
The concern softened into something sharper. More focused. Like his brain had immediately locked onto a problem and started dissecting it from every angle.
“You hit your head?” he asked quietly.
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
His jaw tightened slightly. Not angry, thinking.
You suddenly got the horrible impression that Tim Drake thought very fast.
His eyes searched your face with frightening intensity, tracking every tiny reaction you made like he was trying to solve you.
Then, unexpectedly, he huffed out a short breath through his nose.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “That’s… not funny.”
You frowned immediately. “I’m not joking.”
“I know your sense of humour is terrible, but fake-amnesia terrible feels excessive even for you.” The ease of the response sent ice down your spine.
He sounded so certain.
Certain enough that he wasn’t even considering another explanation.
You stared at him. Tim stared back.
Then the amusement faded from his face completely.
“…Wait,” he said. For the first time since he’d arrived, genuine uncertainty slipped through his expression.
“You’re serious.” It wasn’t a question.
Your silence answered for you.
Something tense settled into the space between you. Tim looked at you for another long second before glancing away sharply, gaze flicking toward the school entrance like he was reorganising his thoughts in real time.
When he looked back, his expression had smoothed out again. Controlled too quickly.
“You know who I am though,” he said carefully.
“…Tim Drake.”
“And?”
You swallowed. “One of Bruce Wayne’s sons.”
A strange look crossed his face. Not surprise. Something quieter. More dangerous.
Like hearing you describe him that way physically bothered him.
“And that’s it?” he asked.
You nodded slowly. The parking lot suddenly felt very warm.
Tim went silent. Completely silent. His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around the strap of your school bag.
Then he smiled. Small, Careful. Wrong.
“Well,” he said lightly, “that’s mildly concerning.”
The understatement hit so strangely you almost laughed.
Instead you watched him step closer. Not enough to alarm anyone watching. But enough to make your heartbeat spike anyway.
“Okay,” Tim said calmly, like he was talking someone down from a ledge. “We’re gonna try this again.”
His eyes locked onto yours. “We’ve been best friends since fifth grade,” he said. “You practically lived at my place last year because your apartment had mold issues. You hate mushrooms, Kon’s music, and that one physics teacher with the cheese breath.”
Your stomach twisted violently. Because none of that sounded familiar.
But he said it with the effortless confidence of someone reciting facts. Not lies.
“You throw your textbooks at me when I talk too loud when you’re trying to study,” he continued. “You cried for hours when your grandma’s dog died. You steal fries off my plate every time we go out to eat anywhere.”
Each sentence landed heavier than the last. History. Details. Memories you didn’t have.
Tim watched your face carefully the entire time.
And when nothing clicked, when recognition never came, something unreadable darkened behind his eyes for just a fraction of a second. Gone so fast you almost imagined it.
Then he smiled again. Gentle. Controlled.
“Still nothing?” he asked softly.
You swallowed hard. “…No.” The word came out quieter than you intended.
Tim’s smile didn’t fall. But something about it changed, subtly. Like he was forcing it to stay there.
For a few long seconds neither of you spoke. Wind stirred through the parking lot, warm against your skin, carrying distant traffic and scattered conversation from students near the gates.
Tim looked at you like he was trying to fit puzzle pieces together in real time.
Then he sighed softly through his nose and opened the passenger door wider.
“Okay,” he said lightly. Too lightly. “You’re either having a psychotic break or you finally snapped after calc homework.”
You blinked at him.
He tilted his head slightly. “Personally, I’m blaming calculus. It’s evil.” The joke landed strangely after everything else. Like he was trying very hard to keep things normal.
Your throat tightened unexpectedly at the effort.
Tim gave the car door a small tap with his knuckles. “Get in before someone from school takes a picture of us standing out here.”
Your feet didn’t move.
Tim seemed to notice your hesitation easing by half an inch because he stepped back from the door immediately, giving you more space. Another tiny act of restraint.
“You can sit there and stare at me suspiciously the whole drive if it helps,” he offered dryly. “You already do that normally anyway.”
That word again.
Like there was an entire relationship happening around you that only he could remember.
Slowly, you got into the car. The interior smelled faintly like coffee and expensive leather. Clean, organised, lived-in in a way that somehow made this feel worse instead of better.
Tim shut the door gently behind you before circling around to the driver’s side.
The second he got in, his attention flicked toward you automatically. Checking. Assessing.
His fingers tightened briefly against the steering wheel. Then relaxed.
“You hungry?” he asked casually as he started the car. The normalcy of the question almost made your head hurt.
“What?”
“You haven’t eaten since breakfast.” He pulled out of the parking spot smoothly. “Probably contributing to the almost-passing-out thing.”
You stared at him. “How do you know when I ate?”
Tim glanced at you briefly. Then, somehow, he looked confused by the question.
“Because I was there.” The response came instantly, like it was obvious.
Your pulse stumbled.
“I dropped you off this morning,” he continued, eyes back on the road. “You complained about being tired and stole half my coffee.”
Silence filled the car. Tim tapped his thumb once against the steering wheel before speaking again, quieter this time.
“..You really don’t remember me?” There was something careful hidden underneath the question.
You looked out the window instead of answering.
Metropolis blurred past outside the glass in streaks of sunlight and towering buildings. Everything looked too clean compared to Gotham. Too bright. Too alive.
Wrong. Everything felt so wrong.
The buildings outside stretched high into the sky in gleaming sheets of glass and steel, sunlight reflecting off them hard enough to hurt your eyes. People crowded sidewalks carrying shopping bags and coffee cups, laughing too loudly, moving too casually.
No one looked afraid. No one looked over their shoulder. There were no flickering police lights reflecting off wet pavement. No grime clinging to alleyways. No looming sense that something terrible was waiting around the next corner.
Metropolis felt clean in the same way hospitals felt clean. Artificial.
“…I lived in Gotham,” you said suddenly.
Tim’s hands stilled for half a second against the wheel. Small. Almost invisible.
“You do live in Gotham,” he corrected lightly. “Technically.”
You turned toward him sharply. “What does that mean?”
“It means your apartment’s in Gotham.” His tone stayed easy, conversational. “You go to school in Metropolis because your grandma transferred here after she moved.”
Your stomach dropped. “Grammy moved?”
“About two years ago.”
Two years. The number hit like whiplash. Because that meant this version of your life had an entire history you knew nothing about.
Tim glanced at you briefly before looking back at the road.
“You begged her not to,” he added. “Said Gotham had better takeout.”
You stared at him. The casual certainty in his voice made it hard to breathe sometimes. Like these memories genuinely belonged to him.
Your fingers curled tighter in your lap. “My grandma…” Your throat tightened around the words. “She’s alive?” The question came out smaller than intended.
Tim’s expression changed instantly. Concern threading beneath the surface again.
“Yeah,” he said carefully. “Of course she is.”
Relief hit so hard it almost hurt.
You turned away immediately, pressing your fist lightly against your mouth as your eyes burned unexpectedly.
She was alive.
You didn’t realise how hard you were breathing until Tim quietly reached over and lowered the music volume that you hadn’t even noticed was playing.
Giving you silence instead.
That silence stretched on for a good twenty minutes.
Tim drove one-handed now, the other resting loosely near the gearshift, fingers tapping occasionally against the console like his brain was running faster than the rest of him.
Every now and then you caught him glancing over. Like he still hadn’t decided how seriously to take this.
“…So,” he said eventually, voice deliberately lighter, “if you’re committing to the amnesia bit, can you at least forget the pic of me on your phone?”
You blinked at him, brows furrowing in confusion. “What?”
“The one you threaten to show Damian every time I annoy you.”
There was the faintest hint of amusement in his voice now. Careful amusement. Testing.
Watching to see if anything landed. When you just stared at him blankly again, the corner of his mouth twitched downward.
“…Right,” he murmured.
For the first time since this started, Tim looked unsettled too. Not outwardly. Most people probably wouldn’t notice it. But you were starting to.
The slight pauses before he spoke now. The way his fingers kept tightening briefly against the steering wheel.
The way his eyes flicked toward you every few seconds like he was making sure you were still there. Like he was afraid to look away too long.
You swallowed hard. “Why are you being so calm?” you asked quietly.
Tim glanced over at you, brows pulling together slightly. “What do you mean?”
“You’re acting like this is normal.”
“I’m not-”
“You are.” Your voice came out tighter than intended. “I just told you I don’t remember you and you’re making jokes.”
Silence settled briefly between you.
Tim looked back at the road.
When he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “If I start freaking out too, you’ll freak out harder.” The honesty of the answer caught you off guard.
He exhaled softly through his nose, gaze fixed ahead. “And honestly?” A faint humourless smile crossed his face.
“You’re already kind of terrifying me right now.”
The further you got from Metropolis, the stranger the world outside became.
You weren’t used to this much open space.
In Gotham, everything felt crowded together. Buildings stacked over buildings. Alleys cutting through cramped streets. Siren's bleeding into traffic noise at all hours of the night.
Out here, the silence felt almost unnerving.
Fields stretched endlessly beyond fences and telephone poles. Farmhouses sat scattered in the distance with wide porches and rusted mailboxes. The sky itself looked bigger somehow. Too open, and far roo bright.
Tim slowed the car as the road narrowed further, tires crunching softly over loose gravel.
Your eyes drifted toward the passing scenery automatically. Cornfields, trees, a weathered wooden fence leaning slightly sideways.
Then finally a small country house came into view. It wasn’t large, just cozy.
White paint slightly faded with age, warm porch lights glowing softly against the coming dusk. Flowerpots crowded the front steps in messy little clusters, and wind chimes stirred gently near the porch roof.
The sight of it hit something deep in your chest unexpectedly hard.
Tim pulled into the gravel driveway slowly before putting the car in park.
For a moment neither of you moved. The engine ticked softly as it cooled.
You stared at the house. Something about it felt familiar in the same way that dreams felt like déjà vu.
Your eyes caught on to small details.
A knitted blanket hanging over the porch swing, crooked little garden beds overflowing with herbs, and a faded ceramic bird sitting near the front steps with one chipped wing.
It was homey.
Tim watched you quietly from the driver’s seat. He tired not to push. Just observing carefully again.
Then, after a second, he glanced toward the neighbouring property.
You followed the movement instinctively.
Another farmhouse stood not too far away across the fields. Larger than your grandma’s place, surrounded by fences and acres of farmland stretching toward the horizon. A red barn sat farther back near a windmill turning lazily in the evening breeze.
The Kent farm.
Something strange twisted low in your stomach. Recognition, almost. Like seeing a place from a dream you couldn’t fully remember.
Tim noticed you staring. “The neighbours are probably all home by now,” he said casually. “So if Jon suddenly appears out of nowhere, don’t be alarmed.”
Your brows furrowed slightly at the name. Was that the one he mentioned earlier?
Tim unbuckled his seatbelt with a soft click before looking back at you.
“You ready?” he asked gently.
The question felt heavier than it should’ve. Because somehow, stepping out of the car felt bigger than just getting out of a vehicle. Like crossing some invisible line you couldn’t uncross afterward.
Still, after a long pause, you nodded.
Tim’s expression softened with relief, stepping out first.
Gravel crunched beneath his shoes as he rounded the front of the car, evening sunlight catching briefly against the lenses of his glasses. The country air felt cooler once you opened the door, carrying the scent of cut grass, soil, and something faintly sweet drifting from the garden beds near the porch.
You stood slowly.
Wind stirred softly through the fields surrounding the property, rustling the cornstalks in long waves. Somewhere farther off, you could hear crickets starting up in the grass.
Tim grabbed your bag from the backseat before shutting the door behind you.
Your eyes drifted back toward the house.
Warm light glowed through the kitchen windows now. You could just barely make out movement inside.
Your chest tightened painfully.
Tim adjusted the strap of your bag over his shoulder before starting toward the porch, slowing after a couple steps when he realised you weren’t beside him yet.
He waited. Not calling for you. Not rushing you. Just waiting quietly at the edge of the driveway.
The restraint felt strangely deliberate now that you were noticing it.
Like he wanted to reach for your hand. Like he wanted to guide you inside himself, but he wasn’t.
Because he knew it would scare you.
Slowly, you followed him.
The wooden porch creaked softly beneath your shoes as you stepped up beside him. Up close, the house looked even more lived-in. Gardening gloves abandoned near the steps. A half-watered tray of plants sitting near the railing. Tiny scratches near the doorframe like a large dog used to jump there repeatedly.
Tim reached for the door, then hesitated. His hand stilled briefly against the handle before he glanced sideways at you. And for the first time since this entire nightmare started, he looked uncertain.
Not about you forgetting him, not about what was happening, about this.
About whatever waited on the other side of the door.
“She doesn’t know about what happened at school yet,” he said quietly.
Your brows pulled together faintly.
“I didn’t wanna freak her out over the phone.”
Before either of you could say anything else, the front door opened. Knob slipping from Tim’s palm.
Your grandmother stood there with a cigarette between two fingers and an expression already bordering on irritation.
“Well?” she said. “You two gonna stand around starin’ at my porch all night or what?” The roughness of her voice hit painfully in your chest.
Tim snorted softly beside you. “Nice to see you too.”
“Don’t get smart with me, city boy.” She pointed the cigarette vaguely toward him before looking at you properly. Her eyes narrowed slightly behind slipping reading glasses. Concern colouring her features. “You look pale.”
“Long day,” Tim answered smoothly before you could.
“Hm.” She sounded more annoyed on your behalf than anything else. “School’s a scam. Get inside.”
She turned and shuffled back into the house without waiting to see if you followed.
Tim opened the screen door for you. Again. Like habit.
You stepped inside slowly.
Warm air wrapped around you immediately. The house smelled like coffee, cigarette smoke, old paperbacks, and something cooking in the kitchen. A small television muttered quietly somewhere deeper inside the house while an ancient ceiling fan clicked overhead in lazy rotations.
The floor creaked beneath your shoes.
Your grandmother disappeared into the kitchen muttering something chiding under her breath.
Tim smiled faintly like he’d heard that speech before.
Of course he had.
He slipped your bag off his shoulder and set it beside the staircase without asking where it belonged.
Another practiced movement. Another stupid thing that he did too naturally.
You noticed his eyes flick briefly across the room afterward.
Checking windows.
Doors.
Exits.
The movement was subtle enough most people probably wouldn’t think twice about it.
You did.
Then a loud knock rattled suddenly against the front screen door.
Your grandmother yelled from the kitchen instantly.
“If that’s one of the Kent boys, tell ‘em I still want my casserole dish back!”
Tim sighed.
And for the first time since meeting him today, genuine exasperation crossed his face.
“…Too late,” he muttered.
Before you could process that response, the screen door swung open.
A dark-haired boy stepped inside with the kind of ease that suggested he’d done it a hundred times before.
He looked to be around fourteen or fifteen.
And the second his eyes landed on you, he lit up. Relief crashed across his face so openly it startled you.
“There you are!” he said immediately.
Then, without hesitation, he crossed the room and wrapped his arms around you.
The contact hit too suddenly for your brain to catch up. He was warm. Solid.
Clingy in the way only kids and younger teenagers could get away with.
Your entire body locked up instantly. The boy either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
“You disappeared before lunch,” he complained into your shoulder like this was a completely normal thing to do. “I texted you like eight times.”
Your pulse stumbled violently.
Because this, whatever this is, was worse somehow.
Tim had been careful. Restrained.
This boy wasn’t restrained at all.
He held onto you with easy familiarity, like touching you came naturally to him. Like he’d done it hundreds of times before and never once considered you might not want him to.
Your gaze darted towards Tim in question.
He was watching the two of you with an unreadable expression.
Not surprised. Something tighter, like he was barely tolerating this.
The boy finally pulled back enough to look at your face properly.
And immediately frowned.
“…Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
You stared at him blankly.
Up close, he looked even younger. Bright blue eyes. Dark hair falling messily across his forehead. Farmboy built despite the baby face he hadn’t fully grown out of yet.
There was something overwhelmingly earnest about him.
Dangerously easy to trust.
“I think they had some kind of panic attack at school,” Tim said before you could answer.
The boy’s entire expression changed instantly.
Concern flooded in so fast it nearly bowled over everything else.
“What?” His attention snapped back to you immediately. “Why didn’t anyone call me?”
The possessiveness in the question caught you off guard. Like he genuinely believed he should’ve been informed immediately.
Tim leaned back lightly against the wall near the staircase, arms crossing loosely over his chest.
“You were in class,” he said flatly.
“I still could’ve left.”
Tim stared at him for a long second, eyes narrowed.
The boy ignored him completely.
His focus stayed entirely on you now, concern written openly across his face in a way Tim never allowed himself.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
The question should’ve felt simple.
He sounded sincere. Not polite or performative. Like he cared too much. You’ve never had anyone fret over you like this.
Before you could answer, your grandmother’s voice echoed from the kitchen. “Jonathan Kent, if you came over here empty-handed again, I’m tellin’ your mother.”
The boy, Jonathan apparently, groaned immediately.
“I brought the dish back last week!”
“You brought back the wrong lid!”
“That sounds fake!”
“It ain’t!”
For some reason, the argument continuing in the background made this all feel even more surreal.
Like you’d stepped into somebody else’s life halfway through. And everybody else already knew the script except you.
It’s only after a long moment of calm that Jon finally looked back at you.
“…You sure you’re okay?” he asked again, quieter this time.
You opened your mouth automatically. “I’m fin-”
“Bullshit,” Tim said flatly from across the room.
You blinked at him.
Jonathan nodded immediately like that was the most obvious thing in the world. “Yeah, you look awful.”
“Thanks,” you muttered reflexively.
“..There it is.” Tim pointed at you lazily. “That’s the first normal thing you’ve said all day.”
The familiarity of the teasing landed strangely in your chest again. You felt.. Comfortable.
Like this was a rhythm you slipped into often.
Jonathan moved closer before you fully noticed, hovering just inside your space with restless concern written all over him.
“You didn’t answer any of my texts,” he said. “I thought maybe you were mad at me again.”
Again.
Tim let out an irritated sigh. “You whine about that every time they don’t answer for twenty minutes.”
“Because last time they ignored me for like six hours!”
“You survived.”
“Barely.”
The response came so dramatically sincere that your grandmother snorted from the kitchen, you could just hear it over the music you were sure she’d been singing to before you arrived.
Then Tim’s eyes landed back on you.
And just like that, the softness disappeared into something quieter. Focused.
You were starting to realise Tim watched people constantly. Especially you. Like every blink and twitch meant something.
“You should come over later,” Jon said suddenly. “Mom made pie.”
Your grandmother yelled again from the kitchen. “Don’t you bribe my grandkid with baked goods!”
“You can’t stop me!”
“You’re lucky I like your mama!”
Jon grinned toward the kitchen before looking back at you again, expression brightening hopefully.
“You’ll come, right?”
Both boys went still waiting for your answer. Each for different reasons.
After everything that had happened today, the warmth of the house and the easy arguing and the smell of food drifting from the kitchen made exhaustion settle heavily into your bones.
You’d already died once. What was the harm in trying to enjoy yourself now?
Slowly, you nodded. “…Sure,”
Jon lit up instantly, delighted. “Oh, thank god,” he blurted. “I thought you were gonna say no.”
You snorted softly before you could stop yourself. The sound surprised all three of you.
Jon’s expression somehow brightened even more.
And Tim went very still.
There was a slight pause in his breathing. His attention snapping fully onto you the second the laugh left your mouth.
Relief flickered across his face so quickly it barely existed.
“C’mon,” Jon said, already moving toward the door again. “Mom’ll be offended if the pie gets cold.”
“Pie doesn’t get cold,” Tim muttered.
“Yes it does.”
“No, it becomes breakfast.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“You eat cold pizza for breakfast.”
“That’s different.”
You watched them bicker as they moved toward the porch. And for one dangerously fragile second, It almost felt normal.
The walk toward the Kent house was quiet.
Not silent. Jonathan still talked, because apparently he never stopped talking, but the energy from earlier had dulled slightly beneath the weight settling in your chest.
“…and then Damian said the cow wasn’t technically missing because he knew where it was,” Jonathan was saying beside you, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket. “Which apparently meant it didn’t count.”
You blinked slowly. “He stole a cow?”
“He was making a point.”
“That doesn’t explain anything.”
“I know.”
Tim walked a few steps behind the two of you. Not far enough to seem strange, still close enough to hear everything.
The gravel path crunched softly beneath your shoes as the farmhouse grew larger ahead, warm yellow light spilling from the windows across the darkening fields.
Jonathan kept glancing toward you while he spoke. Checking your reactions. Like he was trying to pull you back into something.
“…Damian hates everybody,” he continued. “But he only threatens people with gardening tools if he likes them.”
You frowned faintly. “That feels concerning.”
“It is concerning.”
“You let him around livestock?”
“He’s banned from the hen house now.”
The Kent farm stretched larger the closer you got. The smell of earth and cut hay lingered faintly in the air while warm light spilled from the farmhouse windows ahead.
Everything out here felt too peaceful.
Your brain still kept waiting for the catch.
Tim was already looking at you when you turned to him.
Something unreadable sat behind his expression for half a second too long before his phone buzzed sharply through the quiet.
His gaze moved towards it immediately.
You saw the exact moment irritation cut across his face. Cold. Instant.
Jonathan noticed too. His own expression tightened almost automatically.
Tim answered without stopping walking. “What?” No greeting.
Silence stretched.
His jaw flexed once. “I told Alfred I’d be busy.” Another pause. Then his eyes lifted toward you again.
There was something deeply unsettling about the way his attention kept returning to you no matter what else was happening. Like every conversation existed around you instead of separate from you.
Jon slowed slightly beside you.
Tim’s voice flattened further. “No. I’m with them now.”
Your fingers curled slightly at your sides.
A long silence followed. “…Fine.” The word sounded bitten off.
Something unreadable darkened behind his expression. “I’m on my way.”
The call ended.
Jon frowned immediately. “You’re leaving?”
“I have to go back to Gotham.”
“You just got here.”
Tim ignored that entirely. His attention settled on you instead with unnerving intensity.
“I won’t be long,” he said carefully.
You nodded slowly.
Tim hesitated. Like leaving you here physically bothered him.
Nobody spoke for a second. Wind moved softly through the fields around you.
Jon finally broke the silence first. “Bruce?”
Tim looked at him. Just looked. It wasn’t openly hostile, “does it matter?”
Jon held his stare for a second before looking away first with visible annoyance.
Tim slid his phone back into his pocket with controlled precision before looking at you.
Your brows pulled together faintly. “You really have to go now?”
“Yes.” The answer came too fast. Like the decision had already been made the second the phone rang.
Jon shifted beside you immediately. “They can stay with us until-”
“I know.”
Flat.
Jon’s mouth shut.
Something tense settled in the space between them.
You suddenly had the awful feeling this argument had happened before. Repeatedly.
Tim stepped closer then, invading your space.
“You’ll text me when you get home,” it wasn’t phrased like a question.
You blinked once. “…Okay.”
His eyes stayed on your face another second too long. Searching. Like he was trying to decide something.
Then Jon reached over absentmindedly and hooked his fingers loosely around your wrist to tug you forward again, and the shift in Tim was immediate. Tiny, but immediate.
His gaze flicked downward, going very still.
The evening air suddenly felt colder.
Jon noticed. His fingers tightened slightly before letting go entirely.
A warning shot.
Your stomach twisted.
What the hell was wrong with these people?
Tim’s attention returned to you instantly afterward, expression smoothing back into something normal enough to pass.
“If anything feels off,” he said quietly, “call me.”
Something about the way he said it made your skin prickle.
Jon scoffed softly beside you. “You say that like we’re gonna poison them.”
Tim looked at him. A long pause followed.
“..I didn’t say that.” The response was strangely heavy.
Jonathan’s expression darkened immediately. Not playful annoyance anymore. Real irritation.
For one brief second, you caught something ugly underneath his usual warmth. Sharp and adolescent and possessive in a way that reminded you of a dog baring its teeth before you could fully process it.
Then it vanished.
Tim exhaled quietly through his nose before looking back at you again.
And there it was. That restraint.
Like he wanted to say more. Wanted to do more. But was actively stopping himself.
“Get back to the apartment safe. I’ll pick you up in the morning,” he said finally. He wasn’t asking. He was deciding for you.
Then, after the smallest hesitation, “…Don’t stay up too late.” The softness of it felt weird. It sounded genuine.
Tim held your gaze one second longer, his hands lifting as if to wrap around you, only to fall short. Just giving your shoulders a squeeze. Then he stepped back toward the driveway.
Jon immediately moved closer the second space opened beside you.
You let him drag you along, not noticing how Tim stopped halfway back toward the car and looked directly at Jon. No expression at all.
Jon stared back.
And then he left.
You’d made it all the way to the entrance of the house. The headlights disappeared slowly down the gravel road beyond the fields.
Jon waited until the car was fully gone before speaking.
“…They hate leaving you here.” The words slipped out under his breath. Not meant for you.
Your brows furrowed immediately. “What?”
Jon blinked like he hadn’t realised he’d said it aloud.
Then he smiled too quickly. “Nothing.”
But his eyes drifted toward the road Tim had vanished down.
The screen door creaked loudly as the younger boy pulled it open. Warmth spilled over you immediately. Not just heat, life.
The house smelled like garlic, black pepper, fresh bread, and something sweet baking somewhere deeper in the kitchen. Pots clinked softly against the stovetop while an old radio hummed low enough to blend into the background.
For one disorienting second, the normalcy of it all made you still, letting out a deep breath.
Jon kicked his shoes off carelessly by the door. “Ma?” He called, already reaching back for you without looking. His fingers closed loosely around your wrist, guiding you over the doorway before letting go again like it was unconscious. “We’re back.”
“Wash your hands before you touch anything,” a voice called immediately from the kitchen.
Lois stood near the stove with one sleeve rolled to her elbow, wooden spoon in hand while something simmered steadily in a large pot. Reading glasses sat low on her nose as she glanced between the stove and a tablet propped beside the counter.
She glanced up briefly at the sound of your footsteps. Then froze. Though it only lasted a fraction of a second.
The spoon in her hand stilled. Her eyes flicked rapidly over your face, shoulders, posture. Assessing.
Relief followed so quickly afterward it almost looked painful.
“There you are,” The words left her mouth before she seemed to think about them.
Lois crossed the room without hesitation and pulled you into a hug before you could properly react. Warm arms. Firm enough that it startled you.
You froze.
Lois seemed to realise it a second later and loosened immediately. “Sorry,” she said softly, though she still kept one hand against your arm when she pulled back. “Long day?”
You stared at her for half a second too long before answering. “…Something like that.” Who the hell was this woman?
Jon disappeared toward the sink without another word, leaving you standing awkwardly near the doorway while Lois watched you with an intensity disguised as casual concern.
“You look exhausted,” she said. The words were gentle. Her eyes weren’t.
You suddenly understood where Jonathan got it from.
Clark leaned against the kitchen table nearby, broad shoulders slightly hunched as he read through a stack of papers spread beneath one large hand.
Something unreadable crossed his face before his expression softened almost instantly into something warmer. Safer.
And suddenly the room felt smaller.
You knew who he was immediately. Everybody knew Clark Kent’s face. Pulitzer-winning journalist. Metropolis golden boy. Too kind-looking to be real.
Except this version of him didn’t look like the carefully edited photographs from newspapers.
He looked bigger somehow. Not taller. Just… solid.
Grounded in a way that made the kitchen itself feel built around him.
And the second his eyes landed on you, his entire attention sharpened completely. That horrible, focused attentiveness you were beginning to recognise in people around you.
Jon was back at your side by then, nudging his elbow against yours.
When Lois noticed him she pointed toward the table. “Sit.”
Something about her tone made all three of you obey automatically.
Jon dropped into the chair beside yours while you sat more cautiously across from Clark.
The second you did, his attention flicked briefly toward the way your fingers hovered unconsciously near your chest before returning to your face.
Lois returned to the stove, though her attention kept drifting back toward you every few seconds.
“Well,” she said brightly, “good news is I made enough food to feed an army because apparently living with boys means groceries evaporate overnight.”
Jon snorted beside you. “That’s because Kon eats like he’s preparing for winter.”
A second later the said boy appeared in the kitchen holding a bag of chips under one arm.
Conner leaned against the doorway easily. “You guys took forever.”
Jon pointed immediately. “See? He’s already eating.”
“I’m growing.”
“You’re twenty.”
“And thriving.”
Lois sighed like this was a conversation she’d heard a hundred times before. “Hands. Sink. Now.”
Conner grinned lazily before finally pushing off the doorway.
As he passed behind your chair, his fingers dragged briefly across the top of your shoulder in an absentminded greeting. Casual.
“You’re wiped,” he said as he moved toward the sink. “What happened to you?”
“..Long day,” you answered finally.
“Hm.” Conner washed his hands quickly. “You look awful,” he said bluntly.
Jon made a noise of protest. “Kon.”
“What? They do.” Conner reached down without hesitation and squeezed the back of your neck once, casual and familiar. “You sleep at all?”
The touch settled something restless in your chest before you could question why.
You exhaled quietly, not sure how to respond. “Not really.”
“Yeah, figured.”
He moved around the table and dropped into the chair beside you heavily enough to rattle it. Close enough that your elbows brushed immediately.
Nobody in the room seemed to think anything of it.
Clark folded the papers in front of him neatly before setting them aside. “Rough day at school?”
The question sounded normal. Everything here sounded normal.
You nodded anyway. “Something like that.”
Clark nodded once like that explained more than you intended it to.
Lois finally slid a mug in front of you, steam curling softly into the kitchen light. “Tea,” she said. “You look like you need it.”
“Ma thinks tea fixes everything,” Jon muttered.
“It does,” Lois replied immediately.
Conner reached over without asking and stole a piece of cut meat from the chopping board beside the stove.
Lois smacked the back of his hand with the towel.
“Ow.”
“You have your own plate.”
“I like yours better.”
The conversation moved around you easily after that. Natural. Loud in the quiet way families were loud.
At least.. the way that the ones you’ve seen on TV were.
Jon kept leaning against your shoulder whenever he talked. Conner sprawled sideways in his chair close enough that his knee bumped yours every few minutes beneath the table. Lois drifted constantly around the kitchen while Clark stayed seated across from you, listening more than speaking.
And through all of it, you kept catching them looking at you. Not staring. Just… checking. Like they were making sure you were still there.
Your fingers tightened slightly around the mug.
Clark noticed immediately. “You alright?” he asked gently.
Four heads turned toward you at once.
The attention hit like pressure. “Yeah,” you answered too quickly.
Nobody called you out on it.
Jon’s arm slid across the back of your chair as he leaned closer. “You’re doing that weird thing again.”
You looked at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means your face does this thing.” He gestured vaguely toward you with his free hand.
“My face does not do a thing.”
“It does.”
Conner nodded seriously beside you. “Yeah, you get this little line right here.” He reached over like he intended to touch between your brows.
You jerked back automatically before he could. The movement froze the table for half a second.
Conner stopped immediately.
“Sorry,” he said, and for the first time since walking in, his voice lost some of its easy warmth. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
The apology came too fast. Too careful.
Like your reaction mattered far more than it should have.
Jon’s posture shifted beside you almost instantly. Subtle tension settling into his shoulders.
Clark was watching you closely now too.
They were watching you the way someone watches a door they’re waiting to lock.
The silence stretched after your reaction to Conner reaching toward you.
Too long.
Jon leaned closer beside you, arm hooked loosely over the back of your chair again. “You’ve been weird all day..”
“I haven’t.” The defense came too quickly, even though some part of you knew he was right. Whoever you’d been to them before today wouldn’t have sat this stiffly at the table. Wouldn’t have flinched away from casual touches like they were something dangerous.
“You have,” Conner said easily from beside you. “You’re quieter.”
“You guys are just intense.” The second the words left your mouth, the room went still.
Not everything. The radio still hummed softly behind Lois. Something simmered steadily on the stove. A fork clinked lightly against ceramic.
But them. They froze. Like you’d said something hurtful without intending to.
Clark’s expression softened almost immediately afterward, though something unreadable lingered underneath it now. “Intense?”
You gave a small shrug, trying to laugh it off. “I don’t know. You all keep staring at me.”
“We’re listening to you,” Lois corrected gently.
“No,” you said slowly. “It’s more like…” You hesitated. “Checking.”
Nobody answered.
Jon’s fingers tapped once against your shoulder absentmindedly. “You notice everything.”
The comment should’ve sounded teasing. Instead it sounded observational.
Conner leaned sideways in his chair, openly studying you now. “You didn’t used to.”
Your head turned toward him immediately. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Another pause. Tiny. Wrong.
Then Lois spoke smoothly over it. “It means you’ve seemed stressed lately.”
Your eyes narrowed slightly.
Clark folded his hands together on the table. Calm. Steady. “School been difficult?”
“Not really.”
Again, silence.
Like they were all choosing their words carefully around you.
Conner looked almost irritated suddenly. Not at you. At the conversation itself.
Clark glanced briefly toward him before looking back at you. “…We’re worried.”
You blinked in surprise. “About what?”
Nobody answered fast enough.
Your chair scraped softly against the floor as you shifted backward slightly. “You’re overreacting.”
“No,” Lois said gently.
The word settled heavily into the room.
Clark reached across the table then, large hand closing carefully around yours before you could think to pull away. Warm. Steady. Terrifyingly comforting.
“You matter to this family,” he said quietly.
Your stomach dropped at the wording.
Wrong. So fucking wrong. This entire thing felt wrong. You didn’t belong here. Not really.
These people were warm in a way that hurt to look at too long. Easy with each other. Familiar. Loving. The kind of family people envied quietly from a distance.
And you-
You were just someone they’d decided to pull into it.
The worst part was the awful little ache in your chest that wanted to let them.
You let out a slow breath and carefully slipped your hand from Clark’s grasp before pushing your chair back farther. “I think I should go home.”
“No.” The response came instantly.
All four of them at once.
The force of it made your pulse jump.
Lois removed her reading glasses slowly, violet eyes settling fully onto you now. “It’s late,” she said softly. “Far too late for me to let you drive all the way back to that little apartment alone.”
“It’s barely evening.” But the protest sounded weak even to your own ears.
Because part of you truthfully didn’t want to leave.
This house felt warm in a way that every place you’ve ever lived never had. Loud and alive and full in a way that made something lonely in your chest ache every time Jon laughed or Lois nudged Clark with her elbow or Conner leaned against you like being close was the most natural thing in the world.
You wanted it.
You just didn’t understand why they wanted you.
“You can stay here,” Conner said casually, though his attention sharpened immediately when you stood fully. “You stay over all the time anyway.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to tonight.” Another weak lie.
Jon stood too. Immediate. Close enough that your pulse jumped again. “You’re upset.” His face fell almost instantly, expression softening with something dangerously genuine.
“Hey.”
God. Why did he have to look at you like that?
Like your discomfort physically hurt him.
Clark stepped closer more slowly, grounding the room around him without even trying. “Nobody’s trying to scare you.”
“…Then why does this feel so weird?”
Silence.
Jon looked down briefly before meeting your eyes again. Because unlike the others, he looked tired of pretending.
“You wanna know the truth?” he asked quietly.
Something in your chest tightened. Nobody stopped him.
Lois watched carefully from the counter.
Conner leaned back against the table beside you, arms folding loosely across his chest.
Clark stayed still. Waiting.
Jon stepped closer. “You pull away,” he said softly. “Every time people get too attached to you, you try to run away.”
Your throat tightened.
“And we know we’re a lot,” Lois admitted gently behind him.
“We tried giving you space,” Conner added. “Didn’t really work out for us.”
The honesty behind his words felt miserable.
Jon’s gaze flicked briefly toward your hands, toward the way your fingers tightened around the edge of the chair.
Then back to your face. “You make this place feel…” He stopped, jaw tightening slightly before trying again. “Right.”
The room suddenly felt smaller. Warmer. Dangerously warm.
Clark’s voice came quieter than before. “And when you leave, everybody notices.”
Nobody laughed. Nobody acted embarrassed.
Conner looked completely serious. Lois too. Jon looked at you like this was the simplest truth in the world.
You were sure that if you looked at them for a moment longer your eyes would well with tears.
Because somewhere beneath the unease and the wrongness and the intensity of all of this, you understood exactly what they meant.
And it scared you.
Conner reached for your hand carefully this time. Slow enough for you to pull away.
You didn’t.
Relief crossed his face so quickly it almost looked painful.
His fingers tightened around yours. Certain.
“You don’t have to leave tonight,” he murmured again.
The house had gone quiet around you again. Waiting.
Like they already knew your answer.
And.. maybe you weren’t sure if they were wrong.
We’re all collectively going to pretend that Jon was never aged up. (For the plot)
Reblogs help more people find the story, comments help me survive writing it. → They’re the only way for me to know whether to continue writing this series or not.
Read the synopsis here first. Warnings: Yandere Themes, Batfamily x reader, Superfamily x reader, Death, Dark fic → read at your own discretion. Chapter One. Chapter two.
Before the incident, you were no one special.
Not in the tragic way people liked to romanticise afterwards, either.
You weren’t secretly important. There was no hidden inheritance waiting for you, no extraordinary talent buried beneath years of hardship, no destiny quietly lingering around the corner.
You were just another person trying to survive Gotham.
One of millions.
Your family sat somewhere awkwardly in the middle class for most of your childhood. Not poor enough for sympathy, but never comfortable enough to stop worrying about money either.
Your mother worked double shifts as a waitress downtown, feet swollen and patience thin by the time she came home each night. Your father worked construction when jobs were available, though half the time he seemed more interested in spending his paychecks into alcohol, cigarettes, and nights out with friends before they ever made it home.
They’d had you young. Too young.
At least, that was the excuse everyone always used.
Your grandmother used to defend them constantly when you were little.
“They’re trying,” she’d sigh whenever your mother forgot to pick you up from school again. “They’re still figuring things out.”
You believed her back then.
Children usually did.
By the time you turned ten, though, you’d started noticing things.
Noticing that your parents always somehow had money for cigarettes, drinks, nights out with friends. But argued whenever school supplies needed replacing. Noticing how your grandmother quietly covered expenses without complaint whenever they “fell short” again.
You noticed how often your father looked annoyed when you interrupted him. How your mother’s smiles became strained whenever conversations lasted too long.
Eventually, you stopped interrupting altogether. It was easier that way.
Your grandmother practically raised you herself after that.
She was the one who picked you up from school. The one who remembered birthdays. The one who stayed awake during fevers while your parents argued somewhere down the hall about money neither of them had.
You learned early on not to ask for much.
Gotham had a way of wearing people down until survival became the only thing they had energy left for.
Your grandmother’s apartment sat above an old laundromat in Crime Alley, though nobody really called it that anymore unless they were tourists, cops, or trying to sound dramatic on the news. To the people actually living there, it was just another neighbourhood trying not to collapse in on itself.
The building always smelled faintly like mildew and detergent. Old wallpaper peeling near the ceiling. Weak heating during winter. Pipes that rattled loudly enough to wake you at night whenever someone used the shower.
Half the lights in the hallway never worked properly. The elevator broke down at least twice a month. Sometimes gunshots echoed somewhere nearby late enough at night that your grandmother would quietly close the curtains without pausing the conversation.
Like it was normal.
Because it was.
Still, it felt more like home than anywhere else ever had.
She liked listening to the city.
You never understood why.
Gotham was loud in all the worst ways.
Sirens screaming through the streets at three in the morning. Arguments through paper-thin apartment walls. Televisions blasting news reports about murders, robberies, masked vigilantes tearing through the city again.
Growing up in Gotham meant learning very quickly which sounds were dangerous and which weren’t. Car backfires. Arguments. Sirens. Police helicopters. Screaming.
Eventually it all blended together into background noise.
As a child, you used to sit cross-legged on the living room floor watching those very news reports while your grandmother muttered complaints from the kitchen.
Batman, Superman, Robin, The Justice League, Arkham breakouts, bank robberies, another chemical attack downtown, another body found in the Narrows.
The city lived in this constant state of barely controlled chaos where people still somehow expected you to show up to work the next morning afterwards. And everyone did. Because what else were they supposed to do?
“Rich people playing dress-up,” she’d scoff. “Always punching symptoms instead of fixing the disease,” she’d mutter while folding laundry.
You remembered laughing at that once.
At the time, you hadn’t understood what she meant. Then getting older and realising she wasn’t entirely wrong.
The heroes never came to your neighbourhood unless something exploded.
By the time you graduated high school, Gotham already felt exhausted into your bones.
You weren’t stupid. Your grades had been decent enough, but decent didn’t really mean much when every college application came attached to tuition you could never afford.
You got rejected from two schools outright.
The third accepted you with costs that may as well have been impossible.
So you did what most people did. You worked.
Then one acceptance attached to tuition costs so absurd you actually laughed reading it.
So that was the end of that.
You got a job two weeks later. Then another after the first store shut down following a robbery that left the owner dead behind the register. Then another after new management fired half the staff to cut costs. Then another after the building literally caught fire during some fight between Batman and Killer Croc three blocks away.
That was Gotham.
Jobs disappeared overnight. Buildings vanished. People vanished. Nobody acted surprised anymore.
By twenty four, your resume looked less like career experience and more like a trail of failed businesses and bad luck.
Convenience stores, warehouses, gas stations, stock work, night shifts, delivery driving, Cash handling, whatever paid enough.
You worked constantly, not because you were ambitious, but because stopping even briefly felt dangerous. Like if you stood still too long, the city would swallow you whole.
Most of your paychecks disappeared into rent, groceries, utilities, and helping your grandmother whenever her medication costs got bad again.
Still, after years of unstable jobs and cramped living conditions, you’d eventually managed to scrape together enough money for your own apartment.
“Apartment” was generous, honestly.
The place sat on the outskirts of Gotham in a building old enough that the pipes screamed whenever someone showered. Water stains spread across the ceiling above your bed in branching patterns, and the radiator worked only when it felt particularly motivated.
The radiator barely worked during winter. The upstairs neighbour screamed at video games until two in the morning almost every night. Water stains spread slowly across the ceiling above your bed no matter how many maintenance requests you filed.
Sometimes the alley outside smelled so bad during summer you had to keep the windows shut entirely.
It was terrible. The apartment was awful.
And you loved it anyway. Because it was yours.
For the first time in your life, you had a space that belonged entirely to you.
That mattered more than you cared to admit.
You still remember standing alone in the empty apartment the first night after moving in, staring at the stained carpet and flickering kitchen light while holding a box of instant noodles under one arm.
You’d actually smiled.
Not because you were happy, exactly. Just… Proud.
Even if it was small. Even if nobody else would’ve cared.
It was the first thing in your life that had belonged entirely to you.
Your life had settled into an endless cycle of exhaustion. The kind that sat permanently behind your eyes no matter how much sleep you got. The kind that made your body feel heavy the second your alarm went off each morning. Or afternoon. Or evening. Your schedule changed too often to keep track anymore.
Between two jobs, days stopped feeling separate from one another entirely.
The warehouse job started early.
Most mornings, when you actually slept at night, began before sunrise. Stumbling half-awake through Gotham’s freezing streets with cheap coffee burning your tongue and yesterday’s exhaustion still clinging stubbornly to your bones.
The warehouse itself sat tucked near the industrial district downtown, surrounded by chain-link fencing and graffiti-covered loading docks. The work was mindless.
Your manager barely remembered employees’ names despite half the staff working there for years.
Nobody really spoke much during shifts either. Everyone just kept their heads down beneath the constant drone of machinery and fluorescent lights overhead. People came and went constantly.
One guy got fired for showing up high. Another stopped appearing altogether after getting mugged outside the bus station. A woman you’d worked beside for almost six months vanished after her apartment building got condemned unexpectedly.
You knew not to get attached to people.
Your second job was worse.
The convenience store sat near one of Gotham’s busiest intersections, right between a liquor store with bars over the windows and a laundromat that always smelled vaguely like bleach and cigarettes.
The place stayed open twenty four hours a day because people apparently never slept.
Not safely, anyway.
You mostly worked evening and overnight shifts there, which meant dealing with every kind of customer imaginable.
Drunk college students stumbling in after midnight. Half-conscious office workers buying energy drinks at two in the morning. People clearly high on something wandering aimlessly through the aisles for hours. Sometimes shoplifters.
Sometimes worse.
People lingering too long near entrances. Bulges beneath jackets that you had to learn the hard way didn’t just mean guns. The twitchy, restless movements of someone looking for an easy target.
Mostly, though, the job was just boring. Painfully boring.
The fluorescent lights buzzed constantly overhead. The slurpee machine broke at least twice a week. One of the refrigerators made an awful rattling noise management refused to fix.
You spent most shifts restocking shelves, cleaning spills, rotating expired food, and pretending not to notice suspicious customers stuffing things into their pockets.
The pay wasn’t enough for the hours. Neither job’s pay was. Still, together they kept your bills barely manageable.
Barely.
That night had started like every other shift.
Your feet already hurt by hour three. By hour six, the ache in your lower back had settled into something dull and constant while the cheap energy drink beside the register slowly went warm. Outside, rain hammered violently against the store windows hard enough to blur the neon signs across the street.
Gotham looked different in heavy rain.
Meaner, somehow.
The streets became slick mirrors of distorted lights and moving shadows while pedestrians hurried past with their heads down like the city itself might reach out and grab them if they slowed too long.
The clock above the cigarette display read 11:52 PM.
Eight more minutes.
Then you could go home, shower, maybe sleep four hours if you were lucky, and drag yourself back to the warehouse by morning.
You were reorganizing one of the drink coolers when the cashier called your name from the front counter.
“Can you grab more cigarettes from the back?”
You shut the refrigerator door with a sigh. “Yeah.”
The storage room behind the counter was cramped and dimly lit, stacked floor-to-ceiling with boxes of inventory management never organized properly. Dust coated nearly every surface despite repeated cleaning attempts, and one of the ceiling lights flickered badly enough that half the room remained trapped in shadow.
You crouched beside one of the shelves, digging through cardboard boxes for cigarette cartons while absently trying to remember whether you’d paid your electricity bill already. Probably.
Hopefully.
Your phone buzzed faintly in your pocket. A reminder alarm. You ignored it.
The sound of laughter drifted faintly from the front of the store. A customer arguing over lottery tickets. The steady hum of refrigerators. Rain slamming against the windows outside.
Normal.
Everything felt painfully normal.
Then the front windows exploded inward.
The crash was deafening.
Glass shattered across the floor in a violent spray as screaming erupted instantly from the front registers.
Your entire body locked up.
For one stunned second, you genuinely thought a car had crashed into the building.
Then the gunshots started.
The sound cracked through the store so violently your ears rang immediately afterward.
Someone screamed. Terrified.
You froze beside the shelves as heavy footsteps stormed through the store outside.
“EVERYBODY ON THE FUCKING GROUND!” Another gunshot. Closer this time.
Your pulse slammed violently against your ribs. Instinct finally kicked in.
You stumbled upright too quickly, nearly knocking over a stack of boxes before rushing toward the storage room doorway. The second you looked out into the store, your stomach dropped.
Six women. Masked. Armed.
One stood near the destroyed front entrance holding an assault rifle while shattered glass glittered across the floor around her boots. Another had vaulted over the counter already, shoving the cashier roughly toward the ground while emptying registers into a duffel bag.
Customers were screaming. Crying. Trying not to move.
One of the women fired another shot directly into the ceiling.
Dust and debris rained downward instantly. “GET DOWN!”
Your knees hit the floor before you consciously decided to move.
Cold tiles dug painfully into your skin through your uniform pants as your hands instinctively lifted slightly away from your body where they could be seen.
Your heart was beating so hard it physically hurt.
Around you, the store dissolved into chaos.
One customer sobbed openly near the candy aisle. Someone else whispered prayers beneath their breath. A display rack had been knocked sideways during the panic, chips and drinks scattered everywhere across the floor.
The women moved through the store quickly. Efficiently. Like they’d done this before. “Phones in the bags.”
“Wallets too.” Another reminded.
“Don’t fucking look at us.”
One customer tried arguing. You didn’t even see which woman hit him. Just the crack of a gunstock against bone and the sudden silence afterward.
Nobody spoke again.
Nobody was stupid enough to play hero.
You kept your eyes lowered toward the floor, breathing shallowly through the overwhelming smell of rainwater, gunpowder, and adrenaline thickening the air around you.
Heavy boots stopped directly in front of you.
Your stomach twisted violently.
“Get up.” A hand grabbed the back of your jacket roughly before you could react.
You stumbled upright immediately, pulse roaring loudly in your ears as cold metal jammed hard against your ribs.
Gun.
The woman shoved you forward toward the counter. “Open the registers.”
Your hands shook immediately.
The other customers and employees remained huddled on the floor behind you while the women barked orders over each other, duffel bags steadily filling with cash, cigarettes, medication, and whatever expensive items they could grab quickly enough.
One woman stood guard near the shattered entrance with her rifle raised casually toward the hostages.
Another paced between aisles like she was waiting for someone to try something stupid.
Rainwater and broken glass covered most of the floor now, crunching loudly beneath boots as the women moved throughout the store.
You swallowed hard, forcing your hands to cooperate as you reached for the register keys.
The gun dug harder into your side. “Hurry the fuck up.”
“I’m trying,” you muttered before you could stop yourself.
The woman immediately grabbed the back of your neck hard enough to make you stumble.
“Don’t get smart.”
Your pulse pounded violently in your throat. “Sorry.”
The register popped open with a sharp ding.
The woman beside you immediately started shoving handfuls of cash into a duffel bag while another forced the cashier toward the second register nearby.
“Him too.”
A different gun pressed against the cashier’s head this time. The poor guy looked barely conscious with fear.
You looked away.
One of them vaulted over the counter while another shouted from somewhere near the aisles. “Safe’s in the back.”
Your stomach dropped instantly. Of course they knew about the safe. Someone had probably tipped them off beforehand.
The woman beside you shoved the barrel against your spine this time. “Move.”
You stumbled forward immediately.
The cashier was dragged alongside you toward the storage room, nearly tripping over shattered glass in the process. Behind you, customers whimpered quietly while another warning shot suddenly echoed through the store ceiling.
Dust rained downward.
Nobody screamed this time.
The fear had settled too deeply for that now.
The storage room suddenly felt even smaller than before.
Claustrophobic.
The flickering overhead light buzzed faintly while the women crowded around the safe bolted into the concrete wall behind stacked inventory boxes.
“Open it.”
Your throat felt dry. “I-I don’t have the code.”
That wasn’t entirely true. Only managers technically had access, but employees were taught the emergency code in case of late-night robberies. Which now felt horribly ironic.
The woman tilted her head slightly. Then cocked the gun.
Your stomach twisted violently.
“Open it.”
Beside you, the cashier looked moments away from passing out entirely.
Your hands fumbled badly against the keypad.
Wrong number.
The woman behind you grabbed your shoulder painfully hard. “Hurry up!”
Your vision blurred slightly. You couldn’t think properly with the gun pressed against your back.
Breathe. Just breathe.
Your fingers shook harder as you entered the code again.
This time the safe clicked open.
The women immediately surged forward.
“Holy shit—”
Stacks of cash disappeared into bags almost instantly while one of the robbers laughed sharply beneath her mask.
Your knees felt weak with adrenaline.
This was bad. This was really bad.
Nobody robbed stores this close to the central city unless they were desperate or stupid.
And desperate people were dangerous.
One of the women suddenly grabbed your arm. Hard. “You’re coming with me.”
Your heart nearly stopped. “What?”
The gun pressed against your temple before you could react. Cold metal against skin. Every muscle in your body locked instantly.
“You heard me.”
The cashier beside you made a weak noise like he wanted to object before another robber snapped toward him immediately. “Eyes down.” He obeyed instantly. So did you.
The woman dragged you back toward the front of the store with the weapon still pressed tightly against your head, using you like a shield while the others continued emptying the safe behind you.
Your breathing had turned shallow. Too fast.
The entire store looked wrecked now. Glass covered the floor. Shelves had been knocked sideways. Products littered nearly every aisle. Somewhere near the entrance, one of the customers was crying quietly into their hands.
The rain outside had worsened, thunder rumbling faintly overhead while police sirens echoed somewhere far enough away to still be useless.
The woman holding you cursed under her breath suddenly.
A pair of headlights swept briefly across the shattered storefront outside. The lights flickered.
One of the robbers near the entrance straightened immediately.
“Did you hear-” The front doors burst inward.
Everything happened at once.
A dark blur slammed violently into the woman near the entrance hard enough to send her crashing into a shelf. Another figure dropped from somewhere above while a third came crashing through the side fire exit almost simultaneously.
Shouting erupted instantly.
The woman holding you jerked the gun harder against your temple. “Fuck! Move.”
You barely managed half a step before the front lights blew out entirely.
The store plunged into darkness.
Somebody screamed.
One of the robbers hit the floor hard enough to crack against the tiles. Another shape moved through the darkness near the entrance, striking fast enough that you only caught flashes of black and blue between the confusion.
The women started shouting. Gunshots erupted instantly. The sound was deafening in the enclosed store.
Your captor spun sharply, dragging you backward against her chest as chaos tore through the aisles around you. Shelves crashed violently somewhere nearby while customers scrambled further beneath counters and displays.
You couldn’t see properly. Only movement. The loud noise. Shouting.
Then the emergency lights kicked in. Dim red lighting flooded the store. And suddenly you could see them.
Nightwing moved first. Fast enough that it barely looked human.
One of the robbers swung toward him with her weapon raised only for him to twist sideways, baton slamming against her wrist before she could fire. The gun skidded across the floor as she crumpled hard against a shelf.
Near the registers, Red Hood ripped another woman’s weapon clean out of her hands before shoving her violently into the counter.
Red Robin was already restraining someone else near the entrance.
Robin was heading directly toward you.
The woman behind you panicked. You felt it immediately in the way her grip tightened painfully against your shoulder. “Don’t fucking move!” The gun pressed harder against your head.
Robin didn’t stop. For one brief second, everything slowed.
You saw the sharp movement of his arm. The glint of metal. The woman beginning to pull the trigger-
Then the blunt edge of Robin’s katana slammed violently against the side of the weapon.
The gunshot rang out anyway.
The sound echoed through the store loud enough to make your ears ring instantly.
The weapon flew from the woman’s hand as Nightwing tackled her to the floor almost immediately afterward.
You stared blankly ahead.
Confused.
Something felt strange.
Warm.
Your knees suddenly gave out beneath you. The floor rushed upward too quickly.
You hit the ground hard, the impact rattling painfully through your body while the world around you blurred strangely out of focus.
Why- Why was it hard to breathe?
Noise swelled around you in distorted waves.
Someone shouting. Boots hitting the floor. A voice yelling your name- or maybe not your name. Maybe you imagined that.
Your chest burned.
Slowly, your trembling hand moved downward.
Warm. Wet.
When you pulled your hand back, your fingers were covered in blood.
For a second, you just stared at it.
Dark red beneath the emergency lights. Too much blood.
Oh.
The realization settled quietly into your mind.
You’d been shot.
You weren’t even sure when it happened.
Pain exploded through your chest a second later.
A broken sound tore from your throat as your body curled instinctively against the floor. Your lungs seized painfully, every breath wet and wrong and burning all the way down.
Fuck.
Your vision blurred instantly.
Movement dropped around you almost immediately.
Four figures.
Nightwing caught your shoulders carefully before your head could hit the tiles again. Red Robin was already pressing gloved hands against your chest wound hard enough to make another scream rip from your throat.
“Easy- easy-”
“There’s too much blood.”
“Call an ambulance now.”
Robin had gone frighteningly still beside you.
Red Hood looked ready to kill someone. Actually kill someone.
You didn’t understand why they looked so panicked. People died in Gotham all the time. They’d all seen worse than this before.
The thought felt distant somehow as warmth spread rapidly beneath your body, soaking through your uniform and pooling across the dirty floor tiles.
Your breathing hitched painfully. Everything sounded underwater now.
Nightwing kept talking to you, voice strained and rough beneath the ringing in your ears, but you couldn’t focus enough to understand the words.
Your eyes drifted sluggishly across the four vigilantes surrounding you.
They looked horrified. Not shocked. Not professionally concerned.
Horrified.
Like this wasn’t supposed to happen. Like you weren’t supposed to happen.
Oh.. You were dying.
The realization should have scared you more. Instead, all you could think was how absurd it felt.
Twenty four years old. Shot in the chest during a robbery at a shitty convenience store five hours before your next shift was supposed to start.
A weak laugh almost escaped before it turned into a wet cough instead. Blood spilled down the corner of your mouth immediately afterward.
Red Robin swore under his breath.
“Stay awake.” Nightwing’s hands tightened slightly where they steadied you. “You’re okay,” he said quickly.
You weren’t sure if he was talking to you or himself.
Your hand twitched weakly toward the wound in your chest. Pain tore through you instantly.
A scream ripped from your throat before your eyes squeezed shut hard enough to hurt.
Shit.
Your chest hurt.
Everything hurt.
And through it all, you couldn’t stop staring at how devastated they looked.
You weren’t special. Just another civilian. No friends. No family nearby. A shitty apartment. An even shittier job. Nothing worth mourning this badly.
The last thing you felt was someone grabbing your hand tightly.
Then everything went black.
Or.. at least it should have.
Gasping violently for air, you lurched upright with a broken choke of sound clawing its way out of your throat.
The chair beneath you screeched loudly against the floor as your entire body jerked forward in panic.
Pain.
You braced for pain.
For the burning agony still carved into your memory so vividly you could practically feel it splitting through your chest all over again. You could still remember the warmth of blood pouring between your fingers. The wet, suffocating feeling in your lungs every time you tried to breathe.
You remembered dying.
Your hands flew frantically to your chest.
Fingers clawed desperately at the fabric covering your skin, shaking so violently you could barely feel what you were touching. You pressed hard against your sternum, searching blindly for the wound.
The bullet hole. The blood. Something. Anything.
But there was nothing.
No shredded convenience store uniform soaked crimson beneath your hands. No sticky warmth coating your skin. No hole torn through your chest.
Nothing.
Your breathing turned sharp and uneven.
“No-” The word escaped instinctively beneath another panicked inhale as your hands pressed harder against yourself like force alone would somehow uncover the injury that had been there.
It had been there.
You remembered it. You remembered collapsing. Remembered Gotham’s vigilantes surrounding you. Remembered choking on blood while your vision darkened at the edges.
You remembered dying.
A shaky breath caught painfully in your throat.
Your pulse hammered so hard it made your head spin. Then slowly-
Slowly,
You realized the floor beneath you wasn’t tile.
There was no smell of smoke. No shattered glass crunching underfoot. No distant police sirens screaming outside.
Instead, fluorescent lights buzzed softly overhead. The air smelled faintly like old textbooks and dry erase markers.
Silence pressed heavily around you.
Wrong. Everything felt wrong.
Your hands finally stilled against your chest as you looked up. Rows of desks. Teenagers. A classroom.
Several students were staring directly at you now, expressions twisted somewhere between concern and confusion. One girl near the windows looked outright alarmed. Somebody else had half-risen from their seat like they didn’t know whether to help or stay back.
Your breathing picked up again immediately.
No.
No, no, no-
This wasn’t possible.
Sunlight streamed warmly through large classroom windows, illuminating dust drifting lazily through the air. Outside, distant voices echoed faintly through hallways. School.
You knew this room.
The realisation crashed into you hard enough to make your stomach twist violently.
Your gaze darted wildly around the classroom.
The faded poetry posters peeling slightly near the ceiling. The cracked corner of the whiteboard. The clock above the doorway that always ran three minutes behind.
Recognition flooded through you so suddenly it almost hurt.
You knew this classroom. You had sat in this room before. Years ago.
Your fingers curled tightly against the edge of the desk beneath you as panic crawled violently up your spine. That wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.
Because you were twenty four. Because six years ago you’d graduated.
Because minutes ago you’d been bleeding out on the floor of a convenience store in Gotham while four vigilantes desperately tried to stop you from dying.
A cold wave of nausea rolled through your stomach.
Slowly, almost fearfully, your eyes lifted toward the front of the classroom.
And locked directly with the stunned stare of your twelfth grade literature teacher.
Hey Yael. I’m back for the kids.
Read chapter two HERE
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Dick Grayson was six years old when he first started wondering about his soulmate.
At the time, his greatest concern was whether pirates were cooler than cowboys. A debate he took very seriously.
His mother, however, seemed far more interested in the scrape stretched across his knee.
"Stop picking at it."
"I'm not."
"Dick."
Mary Grayson sighed and gently caught his hand before he could peel away the corner of the bandage.
The injury wasn't actually his. That was the whole reason she was tending to it in the first place.
Somewhere out there, another child had tripped and fallen.
The scrape on their knee had appeared on his moments later, bright and stinging against skin that had never touched the ground.
Dick considered this one of the most fascinating things in the world.
A person he'd never met.
Someone who somehow belonged to him. Connected to him by something no one else could see.
"Maybe they were climbing a mountain."
His mother's lips twitched. "A mountain?"
"Or a castle."
"A castle is much more likely."
"I think so too." Dick nodded solemnly. A castle explained the scrape much better than simply falling over.
Castles had stone staircases and secret passageways. Castles had dragons and villains and daring escapes.
His soulmate was probably off on an adventure.
His mother finished securing the bandage before pressing a kiss to the top of his head.
"Your soulmate must be having quite the day."
The thought filled him with excitement.
For the rest of the afternoon, Dick imagined another child racing through hidden corridors, ducking beneath traps and escaping dragons by the skin of their teeth.
The possibility that they had simply tripped over their own feet never even crossed his mind.
←↓→↑
When he was seven, he spent two days complaining about a toothache.
The pain settled deep in his jaw, throbbing every time he tried to smile.
By the third day, it disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived.
His father explained that soulmate resonance sometimes worked that way.
That his soulmate had probably gone to the dentist.
Dick immediately sat upright. "What if they were scared?"
"I'm sure they were brave."
"What if nobody held their hand?"
John looked up from the costume he was repairing. "Dick."
"What?"
"They're not stranded on a deserted island."
"You don't know that."
His mother laughed so hard from the other side of the trailer that she nearly dropped her equipment.
Dick didn't see what was so funny.
His soulmate was out there somewhere.
They might be scared of dentists. Or hated needles.
The thoughts lingered with him long after the conversation ended.
Sometimes, late at night, Dick would stare at the ceiling and wonder if they ever thought about him too.
Whether they looked at the strange injuries that appeared on their skin and imagined a boy they'd never met.
He didn't know it then, but that question would follow him for years.
↑→↓←
Dick had developed a habit of asking questions nobody could answer.
What was their favourite colour?
Did they like animals?
Could they do cartwheels?
Did they live nearby?
Did they know about him?
Did they ever wonder the same things?
His parents always answered as though the questions mattered. With interest. As though his curiosity wasn't silly.
As though wondering about the person connected to him was the most natural thing in the world.
Maybe that was where it started.
Not the soulmate bond itself, the encouragement. The way nobody ever told him to stop asking. The quiet certainty with which his parents treated his soulmate's existence.
They never spoke about them as a possibility. They spoke about them as a certainty.
That somewhere in the world, there was a person who was completely his.
→←↓↑
At night, after the performances ended and the circus grounds settled into a comfortable hush, Mary often read to him before bed.
Dick's favourite stories weren't fairy tales.
They were stories about connected souls.
The old book lived beside the couch in their trailer, its spine cracked and softened with age. The pages had been turned so many times that the corners curled.
Inside were dosens of accounts collected from all over the world.
Stories about soulmates separated by oceans, soulmates born years apart, soulmates who searched for decades, or who stumbled into one another entirely by accident.
Dick never grew tired of hearing them.
He already knew most of the endings by heart. But that wasn't the point. The point was that every story promised the same thing.
No matter how long it took, how far apart they started, or how impossible it seemed, the soulmates always found each other.
Every single time.
The certainty of it settled somewhere deep inside him. A truth as unquestionable as gravity. As natural as the rising sun.
His soulmate was out there. And one day, they would be his.
By the time Mary finished reading, Dick would already be staring out the trailer window.
Wondering how they would meet. What they looked like. If they laughed loudly or quietly.
If they liked the circus.
Wondering if they were looking at the same stars scattered across the night sky. If they ever touched the marks that appeared on their skin and thought about him.
The thoughts comforted him.
No matter how large the world felt, where he went or how many cities the circus travelled through, there was always someone in it who belonged to him.
Someone he hadn't met yet.
A person he was already learning how to love.
↑→↓←
When he was eight, before the fall, he started keeping things.
Not intentionally at first.
A postcard from a city the circus had passed through. A photograph he liked. A joke that made him laugh. A story he thought someone else would enjoy.
Small things.
The kind of things most children forgot about by the following week.
Dick didn't.
Because whenever he found something special, he caught himself thinking the same thing.
I should tell my soulmate about this someday.
The thought came so naturally he never stopped to question it.
Why would he?
His soulmate was part of his future. Everyone said so.
Some days, he imagined finally meeting them and emptying years of collected memories into their hands.
Showing them every postcard.
Telling them every story.
Introducing them to every place he'd loved.
As though all the little pieces of his life were simply waiting for the right person to share them with.
As though he'd been saving a seat beside him all along.
Years later, after Gotham, after Robin, after everything that came afterward, Dick would still remember those moments.
The scrape on his knee.
The toothache.
The bedtime stories.
His parent's laughter.
The quiet certainty in their voices whenever they spoke about soulmates.
People often assumed his faith in destiny came from the bond itself.
They were wrong.
The bond only connected him to another person.
His parents were the ones who taught him to care. To wonder and to wait.
They were the ones who taught him that somewhere in the world there was a person meant for him.
Someone important who was worth searching for. Someone worth believing in.
Long before he knew anything about them at all.
He loved the idea of them first. Everything else came later.
Before he ever even had a reason to.
Most people loved talking about destiny.
Adults spoke about soulmates with the same certainty they reserved for death and taxes. Teachers smiled when the topic came up in class. Grandparents reminisced over holiday dinners. Entire television networks built reality shows around reunions.
It was impossible to escape.
Not that anyone seemed interested in trying.
Soulmates were proof that the universe cared. Proof that nobody was truly alone. That somewhere out there existed a person created specifically for you.
People loved that idea.
You hated it. Not the concept itself, just yours.
When you were younger, you'd thought soulmate injuries sounded romantic.
A sore wrist because they spent too long writing or a tiny burn from touching a hot pan.
The sort of stories people laughed about.
"My soulmate tripped over again."
"Mine wears his rings on too tight."
"I love when she bites her lip when she’s nervous."
Everyone always sounded so fond when they talked about it. As though every ache was a love letter. Like pain somehow became sweeter when it belonged to someone else.
Bonds manifested differently depending on the pair.
Some people shared emotions, some met each other in dreams. A small percentage could hear each other's thoughts during moments of intense stress. The most common bond, however, was physical resonance.
If your soulmate got hurt, so did you.
Not the injury itself, the consequences. A broken bone wouldn't suddenly appear in your arm, but the pain would. The ache, tenderness, and limitations.
If they twisted an ankle, you'd spend the next few weeks limping around on a perfectly healthy leg.
If they got a migraine, you got one too.
Most people only experienced minor inconveniences.
Nothing life-altering. Nothing that interfered with daily life. At least, not often.
You were not most people.
You stopped finding it romantic at twelve.
Because scraped knees and accidental burns were one thing. Waking up unable to feel your left arm was another.
The pain hit without warning. One second you were asleep, the next you were on your bedroom floor screaming.
Your parents rushed you to the hospital.
The doctors found nothing wrong.
No fracture. No dislocation. No nerve damage. Physically, your arm was perfectly healthy.
Unfortunately, your soulmate's wasn't. Apparently they'd shattered theirs.
Badly.
The pain lingered for nearly two months.
Everyone acted excited.
Your soulmate survived.
Isn't that wonderful?
You received congratulations.
Congratulations.
As though being unable to lift a backpack was somehow a milestone worth celebrating.
The years that followed only got worse.
Your soulmate got shot.
They got stabbed.
Sometimes they manage both within the same week.
You developed a concerning familiarity with painkillers. The nurses at your local urgent care knew you by name. One doctor suggested keeping a journal to track symptoms.
You filled three notebooks.
Looking back through them felt less like medical records and more like a crime scene timeline.
Gunshot wounds. Broken knuckles. Dislocated shoulder. Concussion. Concussion. Another concussion.
You had spent years trying to imagine what kind of person accumulated this many injuries.
At first you'd pictured an athlete.
Then a firefighter.
Maybe a soldier.
Eventually, you'd settled on a simpler explanation.
Your soulmate was an idiot.
At the time, it felt like the only reasonable explanation.
Years later, you would discover that the truth was significantly worse.
But for now, all you knew was that somewhere out there existed a complete stranger whose self-preservation instincts had apparently been beaten to death in an alley.
And for reasons you would never understand, the universe had decided that person belonged to you.
←↓→↑
The first time you missed a school excursion because your soulmate had managed to break something important, everyone treated it like an unfortunate coincidence.
The second time, they called it bad luck.
By the third, people had started joking that your soulmate had a personal grudge against your social life.
You laughed along because it was easier than admitting how much it bothered you.
Most people, hell, everyone romanticised soulmates.
Talked about fate and destiny and finding the missing piece of yourself.
Most soul pairs experienced a handful of major injuries throughout their lives.
Yours seemed determined to collect them.
You remembered when your soulmate somehow got stabbed before your final exams. The pain had hit so suddenly you nearly collapsed in the middle of class.
Your friends had thought you were having some kind of medical emergency.
In hindsight, they weren't entirely wrong.
You sat the exam anyway.
You failed it.
The examiner wasn't interested in hearing that somebody else's knife wound had ruined your concentration.
Life kept moving regardless.
Teachers didn't extend deadlines because your soulmate had been hospitalised.
Employers didn't care that you were limping because someone you'd never met had twisted their ankle chasing God-knows-what.
The world expected you to adapt,
So you did.
You learned how to function through headaches. How to smile through pain. How to swallow frustration before it became bitterness.
You learned exactly how many over-the-counter painkillers you could safely take.
You learned how to fake being fine.
But most importantly, you learned how to stop hoping.
Because every time you wondered if maybe things would get easier, your soulmate proved you wrong.
At first you'd worried about them.
What kind of life were they living? Were they sick? Were they trapped in dangerous circumstances? Did they need help?
That concern lasted until the fourth broken bone.
Then the sixth.
Then the first gunshot wound.
The shot had been a turning point. Because normal people did not get shot. Normal people definitely didn't get shot more than once.
You remembered lying awake in bed afterward, staring at the ceiling while pain radiated through your shoulder.
What the hell is wrong with this person?
The question never really went away.
As the years passed the injuries kept coming. Sometimes there would be weeks of peace.
Then suddenly your soulmate would decide to throw themselves off a building.
Or through a window.
Or into traffic.
At least that's what it felt like.
You didn't know who they were. Didn't know their name. Didn't know where they lived. But you knew they had absolutely no regard for their own safety. No fucking regard for your safety either.
And eventually, concern became irritation. Irritation became anger. Anger became resentment.
Not because of the pain. Not even because of the injuries. Because of what they stole from you.
Your freedom. Choices. The ability to plan a normal life. Every decision came with a silent question.
What if my soulmate gets hurt that day?
You missed birthdays. Missed opportunities. Cancelled plans. Skipped events.
Not because you wanted to.
Because experience had taught you that sooner or later another injury would arrive.
Meanwhile your soulmate remained a stranger. A ghost. A burden you carried without ever being asked if you wanted to.
It always did.
It made you angry.
Not the broken bones. Not the scars. Not even the countless nights spent curled around pain that didn't belong to you.
The fact that someone you'd never met had become one of the most important influences on your life.
Without your permission, your consent, and without ever even saying sorry.
Somewhere out there, your soulmate was choosing to live their life this way.
And every time they did, you paid the price.
You wondered if they ever thought about you. If they ever felt guilty.
If they even cared.
Or if, wherever they were, they simply got back up after every injury and ran headfirst into the next disaster.
Unaware that somewhere across the country, someone was beginning to hate them.
Dick found the post three weeks later.
If anyone asked, it had been an accident. A coincidence.
The sort of thing that happened when someone spent too much time scrolling through soulmate forums at two in the morning.
Nobody asked. That was probably for the best. Dick knew himself well enough to recognise a lie when he told one.
There had never been anything accidental about the way he searched for traces of his soulmate.
The post appeared halfway down a discussion thread titled:
What's the worst injury you've ever shared with your soulmate?
Most of the replies were harmless.
Broken wrists.
Appendectomies.
A woman whose soulmate had somehow fractured their nose trying to impress someone with a skateboard.
Dick smiled despite himself.
Then he kept scrolling.
The smile disappeared.
←↑→↓
I've had more concussions than some professional athletes.
At this point, I'm convinced my soulmate has a death wish.
If I ever meet them, my first question is going to be what the hell is wrong with them.
The post went into concerning details about their injuries dating from over ten years.
Dick stared at the screen.
Read the post again.
Then a third time.
The amusement slowly drained from his face.
Because the timeline matched. Not approximately. Not close enough to be concerning. Exactly.
The gun wounds, the stabbings, concussions, fractures. The endless collection of injuries that had become so commonplace to him he rarely thought about them anymore.
His stomach twisted.
For a long moment, he simply sat there. Laptop balanced on his knees. Apartment fading into the background.
The words blurred.
Not because he couldn't read them. Because he couldn't stop.
Every sentence felt heavier than the last. Not the complaints.
Those made sense.
God, they made sense.
What hurt was everything beneath them.
The frustration. The years of accumulated resentment packed into a handful of sentences.
Not anger born from a single bad day. The kind that settled in after years of disappointment.
His chest tightened.
He scrolled further.
The account wasn't anonymous. There was a username. Years of history.
Dick clicked on it before he could talk himself out of it.
The oldest post was five years old.
The next mentioned another concussion.
A missed birthday.
A cancelled trip.
A broken rib.
An emergency room visit.
Each entry felt like another weight settling onto his shoulders.
Dick had spent years accepting pain as part of his life.
Bruises, bones and cuts all healed.
It had never occurred to him that somebody else had been dragged through it alongside him.
A stranger.
Someone who had never agreed to any of it.
Someone who had spent years waking up with injuries they couldn't explain.
Dick closed the laptop.
Immediately opened it again.
His jaw tightened. He rubbed a hand over his face.
For twenty years, he'd wondered about his soulmate. Wondered who they were. What they were like. Whether they ever thought about him the way he’d always thought about them.
A quiet curiosity that surfaced in the spaces between missions and late-night patrols.
He'd imagined meeting them someday.
Not because soulmates guaranteed a happy ending. Life had taught him better than that.
But because they'd always been there.
Every broken bone. Every near miss. Every moment he'd walked away from something that should have killed him.
They'd felt it too.
Somewhere.
Somehow.
The idea of them had become a constant. A second shadow stretching alongside his own.
And now, for the first time, he was seeing things from the other side.
The reality of it. The cost.
His throat felt tight.
tBecausehey weren't waiting for him.
They weren't searching.
If anything, they sounded exhausted by the idea of him.
And for the first time, Dick found himself wondering whether meeting him would be the last thing they wanted.
The thought hurt far more than it should have.
Dick had managed to stay away from the profile for three days.
He told himself it was respect.
Privacy.
Common decency.
They had spent years dealing with consequences they never asked for, the least he could do was leave them alone.
Three days lasted longer than he expected.
Not nearly as long as he'd hoped.
On the fourth night, he opened the page again.
Just for a minute.
Just to look.
That was the excuse, anyway.
One minute became an hour. Then two. Then the rest of the night.
He read everything.
Posts. Comments. Replies buried in forgotten threads.
Tiny fragments of a life scattered across years of internet history.
Favorite movies, music recommendations, complaints about work.
A rant about a terrible landlord. An argument over whether pineapple belonged on pizza.
Meaningless details.
Except they weren't meaningless. Not to him.
Every new discovery felt strangely precious. Like hearing a voice through a wall after years of silence.
For the first time, his soulmate wasn't an abstract possibility.
They were becoming real.
And Dick found himself wanting more.
What did their laugh sound like? What expression did they make when they were annoyed? Did they drink coffee in the morning? Did they still sleep curled up on the same side of the bed they'd mentioned three years ago?
The questions multiplied faster than he could answer them.
By sunrise, he knew more about them than he'd ever thought possible.
By sunrise, he also knew that it wasn't enough.
↑→↓←
The more Dick learned, the more impossible it became to ignore the distance between you.
You were real.
A real person living somewhere beyond his reach.
A real person carrying scars that belonged to both of them.
And once he knew that, how was he supposed to walk away? How was he supposed to forget? Keep waiting?
Dick spent years helping strangers.
Pulling people out of collapsing buildings. Talking frightened kids off ledges. Running toward people who needed help. Doing nothing had never been one of his strengths.
The realisation should have worried him.
Instead, it felt reasonable. Natural.
Almost inevitable.
By the end of the week, he found himself revisiting old comments. Looking closer.
A mention of weather. A complaint about public transit. A local restaurant.
Tiny details.
Nothing significant on their own, but what became patterns when placed together.
The detective in him noticed before the rest of him did.
A city narrowed to a suburb. A suburb narrowed to three possibilities. Three possibilities narrowed to one.
Dick stared at the screen. His pulse quickened.
A line had been crossed somewhere.
He wasn't entirely sure when.
Only that he should probably stop.
Instead, he opened another tab. Then another.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard. Long enough for hesitation to appear. Not long enough for it to matter.
Because you were out there, and you were hurting.
The first search took less than ten seconds.
The second took even less.
And when the first genuine piece of information appeared on his screen, Dick felt his heartbeat stumble.
For the first time in twenty years, his soulmate wasn't a dream.
You were becoming a person.
And Dick Grayson had never been very good at letting go of the people he loved.
The next morning began the same way most mornings did.
Pain.
You woke before your alarm, blinking groggily at the ceiling while a dull ache settled somewhere between your shoulder blades. Not terrible. Not even particularly surprising. Just another reminder that your soulmate was still out there making questionable decisions.
At least nothing felt broken.
That was practically a victory.
You lay there for another minute before forcing yourself upright. The soreness protested immediately, but years of experience had taught you how to judge the difference between annoying and hospital-worthy.
This fell firmly into the first category. Which meant work.
Lucky you.
By the time you arrived at the coffee shop, Gotham was already awake.
Rush hour traffic crawled through the streets outside. The sidewalks overflowed with exhausted office workers, students, tourists and people who looked like they hadn’t slept in three days.
Which, in this city, narrowed nothing down.
The familiar smell of coffee beans wrapped around you the moment you stepped behind the counter.
Honestly, it was one of the few things you genuinely liked about your job.
The customers were a different story.
By eleven o’clock, you’d already been yelled at twice.
Once because a man believed waiting three minutes for coffee constituted a personal attack.
The second because somebody thought you controlled the weather.
“Rough morning?”
You glanced up, the question knocking you out of your haze.
Your coworker was already grinning.
You sighed. “When isn’t it?”
“Fair.”
The lunch rush arrived shortly after.
Orders piled up. Names blurred together. Your feet hurt. Someone dropped their drink. Another person complained because their coffee was too hot.
You resisted the urge to suggest that coffee was generally known for that.
Then the bell above the door chimed.
Normally, you wouldn't have looked up.
Lunch was a bloody nightmare. There were six drinks waiting to be made, three customers already staring holes into the back of your head, and somebody was arguing over oat milk. You had better things to do.
Yet somehow your eyes lifted anyway.
The man who stepped through the door looked like trouble. Not due to anything he was doing, but because nobody should have looked like that.
For a second, your brain simply failed to process him properly.
Dark hair. Blue eyes. Tall enough to stand out without seeming imposing. Broad shoulders hidden beneath an ordinary jacket that somehow wasn't ordinary anymore because he was wearing it.
The details registered one at a time.
Like your mind was struggling to decide where to look first.
It wasn't just that he was handsome. Handsome was too simple a word. Too ordinary.
Handsome was the guy on a billboard, the actor in a movie, the model in a magazine. This felt different. More annoying.
Like somebody had reached into your head, extracted every preference you'd ever had, and assembled a person around them.
You immediately disliked him for it.
Unfortunately, that didn't make him any less attractive.
His smile appeared as he spoke to the customer in front of him. It transformed his entire face. Softened it.
Made him look approachable in a way beautiful people rarely managed.
The kind of smile that made strangers smile back. The kind that suggested he remembered names. Held doors open. Helped old ladies carry groceries.
He looked like someone that got people into trouble because they assumed nobody that nice-looking could possibly be dangerous.
You tore your eyes away.
Absolutely not.
You were not doing this today.
He was just a customer. A stupidly attractive customer. Nothing more.
Several minutes later, he stepped up to the register.
Up close was a mistake. You realised that immediately.
Most attractive people benefited from distance.
A few feet between you and them gave reality time to point out imperfections.
The lighting changed. The angles shifted. Something human emerged.
Not him.
If anything, proximity made things worse.
His eyes were brighter than you'd thought. Not just blue, more like a deep ocean colour that caught light. The kind that made direct eye contact feel strangely unfair.
There was a faint scar near his eyebrow. Another disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt.
Tiny imperfections that should have made him look less attractive.
Instead they only made him look real.
"Hi." His voice wrapped around the single syllable with effortless warmth.
He sounded so fucking pleased to be talking to you.
"What can I get for you?"
For a moment, he simply looked at you. Like he'd forgotten whatever he'd originally intended to say.
Then he smiled.
And suddenly it felt difficult to remember how to breathe.
"I'll take a large flat white."
Of course.
Of course the voice matched the face.
Why wouldn't it?
You entered the order before your brain could embarrass you.
The register beeped.
He handed over his card.
His fingers brushed yours for half a second.
It was nothing, really. Barely contact at all. Yet something strange tightened beneath your ribs.
Gone before you could identify it.
You frowned. Weird.
"Name?"
"Dick."
You blinked.
He looked entirely too pleased by your reaction.
"You serious?"
His eyes crinkled at the corners as his grin widened. The bastard somehow became even prettier. "I get that a lot."
A laugh escaped before you could stop it.
Hd let out a deep shaky breath, like he'd been hoping for it. Waiting for it.
As though making you laugh had accomplished something important. Like a strangers happiness mattered.
The look vanished so quickly you almost missed it.
For a brief, inexplicable moment, it felt less like meeting a stranger.
And more like being recognised.
The city belonged to him at night.
Not officially. Gotham belonged to no one. It clawed at anyone foolish enough to try and claim it.
But Dick knew its rhythms better than most.
He knew which rooftops held the best sightlines. Which alleyways concealed drug deals. Which fire escapes groaned beneath a person's weight. Which apartment windows stayed lit long after midnight because the people inside couldn't slep.
And he knew yours.
Perched on a neighboring rooftop, Dick lowered his binoculars slightly.
Your bedroom light had turned on twenty-three minutes before your alarm.
Again.
His jaw tightened.
The bond was never subtle.
He rubbed the back of his neck, the strain from yesterday's patrol still lingered. A bruised shoulder. A pulled muscle. Nothing serious.
Yet the thought of you waking up sore because of him left an uncomfortable weight in his chest.
You sat on the edge of your bed for several moments before standing. Slow and careful. Judging whether the pain was worth worrying about.
Dick recognised the routine.
You'd done it countless times.
The first time he'd seen it, he'd nearly broken a criminal's jaw.
It was then that he'd truly realised what years of sharing injuries with a vigilante must have been like.
You'd learned to evaluate pain before breakfast.
His fingers tightened around the binoculars.
You deserved answers.
You deserved him.
The thought arrived as naturally as breathing.
Dangerous. Wrong. Impossible to stop.
Dick watched you leave for work.
Then he followed.
He knew how surveillance worked. Knew exactly how easy it was to make someone feel watched.
So he stayed distant. A block behind, sometimes two.
Just another face in Gotham's endless crowd.
The irony wasn't lost on him.
Nightwing could disappear from sight whenever he wanted. Dick Grayson found excuses to linger near coffee shops.
By eleven, he was seated across the street with a newspaper he hadn't read once.
His attention remained fixed elsewhere.
On the way you tucked loose strands of hair behind your ear when concentrating. On the tiny crease that appeared between your eyebrows whenever customers irritated you. On the exhausted smile you gave coworkers despite clearly wanting to go home.
His chest ached.
He hated seeing you tired.
Hated seeing people take advantage of your kindness.
Hated that he couldn't simply walk inside and tell everyone to be careful with you.
Because you were important.
Because you mattered.
Because.. No.
Dick shut the thought down before it could finish.
This wasn't about ownership.
It couldn't be.
The soulmate bond wasn't ownership. It was connection.
Destiny.
A promise written into both of them before either had been born.
At least that was what he told himself whenever the possessive thoughts became harder to ignore.
By lunchtime, the crowd had thickened.
Good.
That made entering easier. Less noticeable.
The bell above the café door chimed as he stepped inside.
Immediately, he saw you.
The sight struck him with embarrassing force.
Every single time.
He'd spent months watching.
Months learning your routines.
Listening to your laugh from across rooms.
And somehow the impact never lessened.
You stood behind the register looking exhausted. A little annoyed. Ethereal.
Dick looked away before anyone could notice he'd been staring.
The line moved forward.
One customer. Two. Three. His pulse accelerated.
Ridiculous.
He'd fought assassins without flinching. Faced alien invasions. Stood against enemies capable of leveling cities. Yet somehow speaking to you felt more intimidating than any of them.
Because this mattered. Because you mattered.
The customer ahead of him finally left. And then it was his turn.
For a moment, neither of you spoke.
Your eyes lifted to meet his. Everything else disappeared. The noise. The conversations. The espresso machines. All of the buzzing was gone, just for a second.
Just long enough for Dick to feel the strange, impossible certainty he'd been carrying since the first moment he'd seen you.
There you are.
His soulmate.
His.
"Hi." The word came out softer than intended.
Your gaze remained fixed on him. Trying very hard not to stare.
Dick nearly smiled.
You had no idea.
No idea how many nights he'd spent imagining this conversation.
How many times he'd rehearsed introducing himself.
How often he'd wondered whether the bond would feel different when you finally met.
Instead, you asked professionally, "What can I get for you?"
For one disastrous second, Dick forgot the answer. Forgot he'd ordered the same thing repeatedly for weeks specifically because it was easy to remember. How human conversation worked.
You looked even better up close.
God, your eyes. Your voice. The tiny signs of exhaustion. The familiar shape of someone he'd spent months studying from a distance. Real.
You were finally real.
"I'll take a large flat white."
Smooth.
Very smooth.
Dick internally cringed.
You entered the order.
The register beeped.
He handed over his card.
Your fingers brushed his. The contact lasted less than a heartbeat. Lightning shot through him anyway.
The first touch.
The first real touch.
Dick forced himself not to react. Years of training saved him. Barely.
Then you asked the question he'd secretly been waiting for.
"Name?"
His mouth twitched. "Dick."
The blink you gave him was immediate.
Perfect.
Dick couldn't help smiling.
For the first time all day, genuine amusement broke through the tension knotting his chest.
"You serious?"
A laugh threatened to escape him.
God, he loved your voice already. Far too much.
"I get that a lot."
Then you laughed.
His breath caught.
Don't.
Don't do this.
Don't build a future out of a single laugh.
Yet he couldn't stop.
For a brief moment, your eyes met his again. Confusion flickered there. Recognition without understanding. A pull neither of you could explain.
And for the first time since entering the café, Dick wondered if you felt it too.
If you could physically feel that he was someone who looked at you and saw the center of his world.
You frowned slightly.
Dick’s smile was warm. Harmless.
The same smile that convinced criminals he was merciful and civilians he was safe.
"Thanks," he said.
Then he stepped aside to wait for his coffee.
And for the first time in months, waiting didn't feel difficult. Because now you knew he existed.
Dick returned three days later.
Then again the day after that.
Soon, the visits became a part of his routine so deeply ingrained that he no longer questioned it.
Patrol.
Sleep.
Reports.
Coffee.
You.
The order never changed.
He learned your schedule without meaning to. Or maybe he had meant to. Dick wasn't entirely sure where the line had disappeared.
At some point, knowing things about you had stopped feeling like gathering information and started feeling lke breathing.
He knew which coworker made you laugh.
Which customer always left you irritated.
Which days exhaustion sat heavier on your shoulders.
He knew the difference between your real smiles and the fake ones. The difference between a smile that reached your eyes and one offered out of politeness. The difference mattered.
Everything about you mattered.
Sometimes guilt still surfaced. Usually late at night. During the quiet moments after patrol, when Gotham finally stopped screaming for a few hours and left him alone with his thoughts.
That was when he remembered the forum posts.
The complaints.
The frustration.
The resentment.
Years of it.
You didn't want a soulmate. Not one who left you waking up sore after fights. Or one whose life seemed determined to get itself stabbed, shot, electrocuted, and thrown off rooftops.
The thought should have hurt.
Instead, Dick found himself staring at the ceiling and feeling strangely calm.
Because you didn't hate him.
You hated the idea of him.
The unknown. The stranger connected to your life.
You hated the inconvenience.
The pain. Uncertainty.
But him?
You didn't know him yet.
How could you hate someone you didn't know?
You didn't know about the nights he spent bleeding through cracked armor because civilians needed help. About the disasters he'd prevented. The people he'd saved. The promises he'd kept.
You didn't know how many times he'd nearly told you the truth.
How many times he'd stood outside your apartment building and wondered if tonight should be the night. How often he thought about you. How he worried.
You didn't know.
But you would.
Eventually.
Dick believed that with absolute certainty.
Because every day gave him something. A conversation. A smile. A joke.
Tiny, worthless things.
Things nobody else would notice.
By the second week, you knew his order.
By the third, you smiled when he walked through the door.
The first time it happened, the entire day felt brighter.
Ridiculously embarrassing of him, he knew that.
Yet the memory replayed in his head for hours.
The way your face lit up with recognition. How you'd greeted him before he even reached the counter.
Like you were happy to see him.
Like he'd become part of your day too.
A crack in the wall.
A tiny one. But cracks spread. Eventually walls collapse.
Dick was patient enough to wait. To let things unfold naturally.
Most of the time.
You still didn't know the truth.
Didn't know that he could identify your footsteps.
Could find your apartment window from almost anywhere in the neighborhood.
Didn't know he'd memorised the route you walked home.
The backup routes too.
The places where the streetlights didn't work. The alleys he disliked.
The intersections with the highest crime rates.
Important information. Necessary information.
Someone had to know those things. Someone had to keep you safe.
The city certainly wasn't going to.
Dick smiled to himself as he watched you lock the café doors one evening.
The sun had already disappeared. Streetlights painted gold across the pavement.
You looked tired. A little cold.
Still breathtaking.
Always so fucking ethereal.
His chest tightened with pure unfiltered need.
The overwhelming, consuming need to make sure nothing bad ever touched you again. To stand between you and every ugly thing Gotham could throw your way. To erase every danger before it reached you. To make the world safe enough that you'd never have to worry.
Hell, even the need to just push you down and capture your mouth in a kiss so intimate that you’d never want to let go.
The feeling had become stronger lately. Harder to ignore.
Before, you had been a concept. A hopeful possibility.
Now you were you.
You had a face. A laugh. A favorite drink. A life.
And every day made the thought of losing you more unbearable.
You disappeared around the corner.
Dick waited.
Five seconds. Ten. Then he rose from his seat. Following. Never too close. Never enough to be noticed. Just enough.
To intervene if something happened.
Making sure you got home safely.
Just enough to reassure the restless part of himself that always seemed to whisper what if?
What if someone followed you first?
What if someone hurt you?
What if someone took you away?
The thoughts were irrational. Dick knew they were.
Most people walked home every day without incident. But most people weren't you.
His jaw tightened.
That was the difference.
People talked about soulmates as though finding them was the end of the story. Like destiny did all the work.
As if fate guaranteed a happy ending.
Dick knew better.
Finding you wasn't the difficult part. Keeping you safe was. Protecting you was. Making sure the universe didn't decide to take back the greatest thing it had ever given him was.
His gaze remained fixed on your retreating figure. Unwavering.
The possessiveness no longer startled him.
That battle had ended weeks ago.
Every justification had been exhausted. Every argument dismantled.
The truth remained.
You were woven through his life. Through his thoughts. Through every future he could imagine.
His soulmate.
His person.
The one thing in this city he couldn't lose.
And somewhere along the way, the distinction between wanting you and needing you had quietly disappeared.
Dick watched you disappear into your apartment building. Only then did the tension leave his shoulders.
Safe.
The word settled warmly inside his chest.
Safe for another night.
His eyes lingered on the illuminated window that he knew belonged to you.
Terrifyingly devoted.
The universe had tied your lives together years ago.
And Dick had no plans on fighting fate.
And if the day ever came when something, or someone, tried to take you away from him, Gotham would learn exactly how dangerous Nightwing could be when the only thing he loved was threatened.
The first time you noticed something was wrong, it didn't feel important. Just strange.
"Wait."
Your friend blinked across the table. "What?"
"You got offered a job in Blüdhaven?"
"Yeah?"
You frowned. "When?"
"A few months ago."
A few months ago.
That couldn't be right.
You'd applied for that same position. Gone through three interviews. Spent weeks waiting for a response.
And then nothing.
No rejection.
No acceptance.
Nothing.
"I never heard back."
"Really?" they said. "That's weird."
It was weird. You'd checked your emails obsessively at the time.
Nothing.
Not even spam.
Eventually you'd assumed they'd gone with another candidate.
The conversation moved on.
You didn't.
↓→←↑
Then another thing happened. And another.
"..You never told me your landlord sold the building."
Dick looked up from where he was cooking. "What?"
"The building."
You leaned against the counter. "The landlord was apparently trying to sell it last year."
Something flashed across his face.
"Huh."
"He said he couldn't find a buyer."
Dick hummed. "Guess it wasn't the right time."
You frowned.
That wasn't what the landlord had said. The exact words had been: "Every buyer that showed interest pulled out at the last minute."
←→↓↑
Then there was your ex.
Not an ex, technically. Just someone you'd gone on a few dates with before Dick.
Someone who suddenly moved overseas without warning.
You only found out because you bumped into one of their friends.
"Yeah, he was furious."
"What?"
"They withdrew the visa investigation thing eventually, but by then he'd already accepted another position."
You blinked. "The what?"
The friend frowned. "You didn't know?"
No.
No, you definitely hadn't known.
↓←→↑
The pieces don't fit together immediately.
Not until one late night, sitting on Dick's couch.
When his phone lit up.
You hadn’t even meant to look, the flash just caught your attention. The “image of the day” was a photograph.
Your photograph.
Not a recent one. Not one you’d sent him.
A candid picture.
Taken months before you met.
You were standing outside of your apartment.
"..Dick."
His entire body goes still at your tone.
Like prey hearing a gun click.
Slowly, he looks up.
You hold out the phone.
The photograph staring back at both of you.
Your pulse begins to hammer. "When did you take this?"
Nothing.
For a second, Dick just looks at you.
Then at the photo.
Then back.
“…Before we met."
Your stomach drops. "What?"
"I took it before we met." His voice is calm. Too gentle. The same voice he uses when you're upset.
Like he was expecting to tell you that everything was okay.
"I found you before the café."
The room suddenly feels too small. "How long?"
"A while."
"Dick."
"A few months."
The answer hits like a truck.
Months.
Your laugh comes out strained. Unsteady. "You're joking."
"No." He doesn't look ashamed.
If he looked guilty, maybe this would make sense. Instead, he looks concerned.
Concerned about you.
Like you're the one having a difficult time.
"Dick, that's stalking."
His jaw tightens immediately. Hurt.
Like you've accused him of something unfair.
"I was making sure you were safe."
"No." You stand. "Dick-"
Your heart is racing now. Too fast. "What the fuck do you mean you were watching me?"
And for the first time since you've known him, Dick looks frustrated.
Not because he got caught. Because you're not understanding.
"You lived alone."
"Dick-"
"You walked home after dark."
"Listen to me!"
"There were three muggings within four blocks of your apartment." His voice rises. Emotion breaking through.
"And I knew what Gotham was like."
You freeze. He sounds desperate. Terrified.
"I couldn't just leave you there." His eyes are shining now. Raw.
Honest.
The truth finally spilling out.
"You think I wanted to scare you?" His voice cracks.
"I spent twenty years looking for you."
You take a step backward.
Dick notices immediately. The devastation that crosses his face is instantaneous.
He actually believes that he's innocent. That every line he crossed was reasonable.
Because every choice was made for the same reason.
Love.
And suddenly all those little coincidences don't feel like coincidences anymore.
The failed job.
The vanished opportunities.
The relationships that somehow never worked out.
The people who drifted away.
The life that kept shrinking until Dick occupied most of it.
The door slammed hard enough to rattle the frame. For a second, neither of uni moved.
You stood frozen in the hallway outside Dick's apartment, one hand still wrapped around the doorknob, your pulse pounding so hard it made your ears ring. The argument replayed itself in fragments. Accusations, denials, half-finished explanations. None of it felt real.
Behind the door, you heard Dick's footsteps. Part of you expected the handle to turn. Expected him to come after you. To stop you before you left. To grab your wrist, block the doorway, force the conversation to continue.
Instead, the footsteps stopped. You could picture him standing there on the other side of the door. Not chasing you. Not arguing. Just... standing there. Devastated.
If he'd gotten angry, maybe this would have been easier. If he'd yelled, if he'd lied, if he'd given you a reason to hate him, maybe the hollow ache opening inside your chest wouldn't have felt so unbearable.
Instead, he'd looked heartbroken. Like he was the victim. Like you were the one tearing something precious apart.
The walk home passed in a blur. You barely remembered unlocking your apartment. The second the door shut behind you, instinct took over. Deadbolt. Chain. The secondary lock.
You checked the windows twice. Then a third time.
Only when every entrance was secured did you allow yourself to breathe.
Your phone vibrated. The screen lit up. Dick.
You stared at the name. The call rang until it stopped. A second call appeared almost immediately. Then a third. The messages started after that.
Can we talk? Please answer. I just want to know you're okay.
For a dangerous second, your thumb hovered over the screen. Then you blocked him.
The number disappeared. You blocked his social media. His email. His Spotify. Every account you could think of. Anything connected to him. Anything that could give him a way back in.
When you finally finished, the apartment felt unnaturally quiet. You'd wanted silence.
Hadn't you?
So why did it feel like something was missing? Why did the absence feel so loud? Sleep never came. Every time you closed your eyes, another memory surfaced.
The internship opportunity that had vanished after months of promising interviews. The friendship that had somehow dissolved without explanation. The coworkers who'd grown distant. The photograph.
At four in the morning, you found yourself sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket, staring into the darkness. The city lights beyond your apartment window painted faint reflections across the floor.
You couldn't stop thinking. Every memory felt poisoned now. Every coincidence felt deliberate. How much of your life had actually been yours?
How many choices had been choices at all?
You didn't notice yourself drifting into a shallow sleep until your alarm exploded beside your head. You jolted awake.
Immediately regretted it. Pain tore through your leg so violently that for a split second you genuinely thought something had exploded. A scream ripped from your throat. White-hot agony shot from your shin to your hip.
The room tilted. Your knee gave out. You hit the floor hard enough to knock the breath from your lungs. The impact barely registered. All you could feel was the pain. It burned. Throbbed. Pulsed with every heartbeat.
You curled instinctively around your leg, gasping for air through clenched teeth. "What the fuck!" The words dissolved into another strangled cry.
Minutes passed. Or maybe longer.
Time became difficult to measure when every movement felt like driving a knife through bone.
Eventually you managed to drag yourself onto the couch. Sweat clung to your skin. Your stomach churned. The pain wasn't normal. It wasn't a cramp. Wasn't a pulled muscle. It felt broken. A fresh fracture.
Then a bitter laugh escaped your throat. Of fucking course.
You’d barely survived the worst night of your life and apparently your soulmate had decided now was the perfect time to break something. Again.
The bitter laugh that escaped you sounded almost hysterical. The empty apartment offered no response. Not that you expected one.
Your soulmate had never apologised before.
Several hours later, three sharp knocks echoed through the apartment. You froze.
The sound cut through the silence like a gunshot.
Another knock followed.
Then a familiar voice. Every muscle in your body locked. You remained motionless.
Maybe he'd leave.
Another knock sounded, softer this time. Almost hesitant. "…Please open the door." The concern in his voice made your stomach twist.
You hated that it still affected you. Hated that some part of you still wanted to believe him.
Then came the sentence that made your blood turn to ice. "You shouldn't be standing."
Everything stopped. Your breathing. Your thoughts. Your heartbeat. Slowly, very slowly, you turned toward the door. The apartment suddenly felt too small. Too quiet.
"Dick?" A pause.
Then: "I brought groceries." His voice sounded tired. Careful. Like he was approaching a wounded animal. "I also got pain medication."
You stared at the door. A sick feeling began unfurling in your stomach.
"Can you let me in?" No. No, no, no. Maybe coincidence. Maybe a lucky guess. Maybe-
"You need to stay off that leg." The world seemed to tilt. Your pulse thundered.
How? You hadn't told anyone. You hadn't gone to the hospital. You hadn't even texted anyone. There was no way he could know. Unless-
The thought hit so hard it felt physical. You forced yourself upright and limped toward the door. Each step sent another wave of pain through your leg.
By the time you reached it, your hands were shaking. You opened the door only a few inches.
Dick stood on the other side. One arm loaded with grocery bags. Takeout containers balanced in the other hand. A bottle of painkillers tucked beneath his elbow.
The second the door opened, his gaze dropped.Straight to your injured leg.
"There it is." The words slipped out before he could stop them. His expression tightened immediately. "You really shouldn't be putting weight on-"
"How do you know?"
Silence.The question landed between them like a blade. Dick froze.
You felt your heartbeat climbing higher and higher. "How do you know my leg is injured?"
For the first time since you'd met him, Dick looked caught off guard. Not angry. Not defensive. Caught.
Something that looked dangerously close to guilt crossed his face. And suddenly you understood enough to make your blood run cold.
The fracture hadn't happened to your soulmate. It had happened because of them.
Dick's expression changed immediately. Not much, most people probably wouldn't have noticed, but you'd spent months learning the subtle shifts in his face. The slight tightening around his eyes. The way his shoulders stiffened.
"Angel-"
You took another step backward on instinct. Pain shot through your injured leg. A sharp hiss escaped you before you could swallow it.
Dick flinched. The reaction was instantaneous. His hand jerked forward as though he meant to catch you before he stopped himself. The concern that flashed across his face was so immediate, so visceral, that it made your stomach turn.
For a horrible second, you couldn't stop thinking about it. The way he'd known. The way he'd looked directly at your leg. The medication tucked under his arm. The certainty in his voice when he'd told you not to stand.
Maybe he really had felt it. Maybe every pulse of pain that had left you curled up on the floor this morning had reached him too.
"You knew." The accusation hung between you.
Dick's jaw tightened. You stared at him. Stared at the man standing in your doorway carrying groceries and painkillers like some devoted boyfriend stopping by to take care of you after a bad day.
"You knew you were my soulmate." For a second, one stupid, desperate second, you hoped he'd deny it.
Maybe there was another explanation. Maybe you were wrong. Maybe this entire nightmare had gotten out of control.
Dick looked down. "...Yeah."
Every injury. Every unexplained ache. Every ruined plan because somebody you had never met couldn't stop getting themselves hurt.
You remembered sitting in emergency rooms as a teenager, trying to explain symptoms doctors couldn't understand. Missing school because you'd woken up unable to walk on an ankle you'd never injured. The migraines. The broken fingers. The bruises.
The soulmate bond had shaped your life whether you'd wanted it to or not. And all this time, it had been him.
Not a stranger. Not some faceless person halfway across the world. Dick. Your Dick.
The man who knew how you took your coffee. The man who remembered insignificant details about conversations you'd forgotten having.
The man you'd trusted enough to love.
Your hand found the wall beside you before you even realised you were reaching for support.
Dick took a step forward automatically.
You recoiled.
The look that crossed his face was immediate and devastating.
He stopped moving at once. "Angel..."
"How long?" Your voice sounded strange. Thin. Distant. "How long have you known?"
For the first time since arriving, Dick looked genuinely uncomfortable. Ashamed.
His gaze dropped briefly to the floor. "Eight months."
"Eight months?"
"Angel, I know how bad that sounds-"
"You knew for eight months." Every word came out sharper than the last. "You knew and you didn't tell me."
"I wanted to." The answer came immediately. Too quickly. Like he'd rehearsed this argument a hundred times. "I did. God, I wanted to tell you from the beginning."
"Then why didn't you?"
Dick looked away. That was answer enough.
Because he'd been watching. Learning. Getting closer. Fitting himself into your life before you knew what he was.
"You let me hate them."
Something flickered across his face. A strange sadness. Not guilt exactly. Something closer to regret. "I never wanted that."
"You let me spend years hating my soulmate." His expression tightened. "I know."
"You let me blame them for everything."
"I know." The quiet sincerity of the response only made you angrier. He wasn't denying it. Wasn't making excuses. He understood exactly what he'd done. And somehow, he still thought he'd been right.
The apartment fell silent.
Dick stood near the door surrounded by grocery bags and takeout containers. The sight would have been almost domestic under different circumstances. Ordinary.
Something in his expression softened. "You don't have to do this anymore."
You frowned. "What are you talking about?"
Dick hesitated. For the first time since arriving, he seemed unsure of how to explain himself. "..You've spent your entire life paying for things that weren't your fault."
The words were quiet. Measured. His gaze dropped briefly to your injured leg before returning to your face. "I know every hospital visit."
A chill crawled down your spine.
His voice grew softer. "I know every surgery. Every cast. Every time you had to cancel plans because I did something reckless." The guilt in his expression looked genuine. "I know what it cost you."
"Dick."
"I do." His voice cracked slightly. The sound startled you.
"I know exactly what I've put you through."
For a moment neither of you spoke. Then Dick slowly set the groceries on the floor. "You shouldn't have had to deal with any of it alone."
Something about the direction of the conversation suddenly felt wrong. Dangerous. "Dick..." "I mean it." His eyes never left yours.
"You shouldn't have had to worry about medical bills because I got shot. You shouldn't have had to miss work because I decided jumping off rooftops sounded like a good idea. You shouldn't have had to build your life around my mistakes."
A humorless laugh escaped him. "You definitely shouldn't have had to spend years wondering who was responsible." The guilt in his voice was so real it almost hurt to listen to.
And somehow that made what came next even worse. "But you don't have to do that anymore."
The knot in your stomach tightened. "What does that mean?"
Dick looked genuinely confused by the question. As though the answer was obvious. "As long as I'm here, you're not dealing with any of it alone."
"You don't need to worry about rent." The words landed heavily.
You stared at him, dumbfounded. "What?"
"I'll take care of it." "No."
"You don't have to keep working two jobs." "No."
"You don't have to stress about groceries or bills or whether you can afford physical therapy."
"Dick!"
His voice remained calm. Patient. Like he was trying to explain something simple. Something reasonable. "I can handle all of that."
"You can't just decide that." "Why not?" The question came out so naturally that it stopped you cold.
Dick frowned slightly, confused. "As far as I'm concerned, taking care of you is my responsibility."
Your heart dropped. The conviction in his voice was absolute. Not possessive in the way you'd expected. Like he wasn't describing what he wanted. He was describing reality.
"You don't owe me anything," he continued quietly. "You don't have to love me back. You don't even have to forgive me. But I'm not going to stand there and keep watching you suffer because of things I've done."
His gaze held yours. Steady. Intense. Terrifyingly sincere. "You've carried this alone for long enough."
The apartment suddenly felt too small. Too warm. Too difficult to breathe in. Because you finally understood. Dick wasn't asking for a relationship. He wasn't asking for forgiveness. He wasn't even asking for another chance.
He was asking you to hand him control.
The first escape attempt had been almost gentle. A mistake, in hindsight. You’d underestimated him. Underestimated his understanding of you.
By the time you reached the outer perimeter, your leg had already started to fail in ways that didn’t make sense at first. Pain bloomed without warning, sharp, targeted, precise, as if your body had been waiting for permission to collapse.
It was him. Dick Grayson had already noticed you leaving. Already made his choice.
He carried you back without comment when he found you kneeling in the rain like you’d simply run out of endurance. Like your body had just… stopped cooperating. Like he couldn’t even feel his own pain shooting through him.
For three days after that, he barely spoke. Not anger. Not even punishment. Adjustment. Because he was learning how far he could push the bond, and how far he could push himself.
The second attempt cost you more. Not because he was harsher, because he was faster. You barely remember leaving the room. You remember waking up in a different one. Reinforced, seamless, wrong in ways your instincts couldn’t map.
Dick sat beside the bed like he’d never moved. Like time had folded around him. “You dislocated your shoulder,” he said calmly, as though that explained everything.
You tried to sit up. Your body refused. His hand rested on your wrist before you could test it further. “You pushed too hard,” he added. “I had to stabilise it.” “I didn’t-”
“Yes,” he interrupted, still calm. “You did.” But what he didn’t say, what you only began to understand later, was that he had done the same thing to himself at the exact moment you tried to leave.
The third time you tried, there was no hallway. Just motion that died halfway through becoming action. Your body locking down in controlled, precise waves of agony. Like a switch had been thrown. And somewhere behind you, his voice. “I told you not to do that again.”
When you woke, your ankle was wrapped. Your phone was gone. The doors had changed again.
That was when you understood the rule. You could try. He would let you try. Not because he expected you to succeed, but because every attempt gave him data. Every spike of your pain told him what the bond could tolerate. And every time you pushed too far, he matched you. By breaking himself just enough that the connection snapped you both back into place.
Now, in what he liked to call the living room, too controlled to feel like a home, you listened to him in the kitchen. Normal sounds. Water running. A cup set down carefully. Like nothing was wrong.
You swallowed. Your voice weak from disuse. “..I want to leave.”
“You don’t want that,” he mumbled, not looking up from the pan.
“I do.”
“No,” he said gently. “You want the version of it that doesn’t hurt.” He walked patiently over to you. His hand lifted, hovered near your shoulder, then settled. Warm. Certain.
“.. I won’t let it get that far.”
Your throat tightened. “You’re hurting me.”
This time, he didn’t deny it immediately.
He just looked at you for a long moment. Then, “No,” he said quietly. “I’m stopping you from breaking past the point where there’s no coming back.”
“You don’t get to leave anymore,” he said at last. “Not like that.” Not a threat. A conclusion.
“And you won’t try again,” he added, softer.
“Because I won’t let either of us survive what happens when you do.”
Then he turned back toward the kitchen. As if the decision had already been made. As if your life together had always been structured this way.
And in a sense, it had.
10K+ Words, 61K+ Characters, 1K+ sentences, 36 min average reading time, 58 min average speaking time.
Been consuming a lot of Batfam x Neglected!Reader lately, and it got me thinking
Imagine being neglected!reader to the batfam and you just be doing shit to do shit. Like, ya know, kinda being petty but also kinda not caring.
Like after burning yourself out trying to be a loveable child (and failing cause this family is self centered in the most selfless of ways) ya basically just go "meh" *shrug emoji*.
Like maybe moving furniture in a decently well used space incrementally to the left by an inch everyday for a week just so that when one of your brothers flops down, they're a lil confused but dunno why.
Purposely tilting paintings and pictures ever so slightly (Alfred is very busy, I feel like his attention to detail would be challenged by this, especially if you clean the space behind the picture so there isn't a glaring outline from where it was)
Rearranging the the organization of the library every time they go on a long trip together and forget you at the manor (which would be every time they go on a trip)
When you're older, having the bad habit of moving in your situation-ship after no one noticed that you had a friend stay over for like a week straight when they were going through shit at home.
OOH! Doing random DIY projects in the manor. The amount of confusion this would create would be amazing ("since when where the walls painted green in this room? And why is there a cabinet in the middle of it??")
Saw that one instagram where a woman turned her cheating ex's $5k couch into a nice leather jacket, bag, and shoe set. Imagine the batfam come home from a long combined mission with the justice league and one of the couches in the livingroom has just been skinned and left with the stuffing exposed.
All around taking advantage of being treated as invisible to be a minor inconvenience.
🥀🖤: Ngl, I would personally take advantage of the fact there's no way they're using all the rooms in the manor. Also, manors like that be having multiple of everything, including kitchens, diningrooms, and livingrooms. I'd make whatever wing they ain't using into my own.
OK, hear me out: Batfam x Batsis Miraculous Holder.
Reader heads to Paris after Jason's death because she needs space to come to terms with her loss, and she needs to get away from her family since they do nothing but argue with her. In reality, it's also because Gotham is suffocating her—the press is always hounding her, she's constantly forced to make public appearances to keep up appearances, and she's tired of rich people.
So she went to Paris to attend a public high school. She had only been in France for a few weeks when, on her first day of school, she helped a random guy get up off the ground, and that afternoon she found a box with a ring inside in her room.
Exactly, Reader is the holder of the Cat's Miraculous!
This would basically be an alternate universe for *Miraculous: Ladybug* lol. I'm not sure if I should use the characters as they are or change some things about them.
I was thinking about an alternate version of Adrien as the holder of the Ladybug Miraculous. An alternate version of Marinette as the holder of the Mouse Miraculous.
Polyamory between Marinette, Adrien, and Reader? 🙏
Reader has a complicated relationship with Bruce. After Jason's death, Bruce became more overprotective of her; her self-defense classes got tougher, and their time together was reduced to just seeing each other for training.
Reader never became a vigilante because Bruce never gave her permission. Reader is his only biological daughter; even though she was unwanted, Bruce still loves her and is willing to protect her at any cost. Reader never insisted on becoming a vigilante in exchange for self-defense lessons.
It's harder for me to describe Reader's relationship with Dick because I haven't read his comics yet to get more context on why he became Nightwing and his relationship with Bruce, Jason, and Alfred 😭, so I'll focus on how it changed after Jason's death:
Reader, she couldn't even bring herself to dwell on the fact that Dick wasn't at the funeral. But she will always remember how Dick never returned her calls or messages, not even when he came back from that mission. And when he returned to the mansion with Tim Drake, he never bothered to explain to her what was going on and why Tim was now Robin. (Actually, Dick didn't feel up to facing you; he wasn't ready to talk to you. He thought you were going to blame him for not being there when it happened. ) Even so, he was and always will be your older brother.
Jason and Reader were undoubtedly the closest, but it wasn't always that way. At first, there was a childish rivalry stemming from their own insecurities. But they were able to resolve their conflicts and become each other's favorite sibling. Jason's death left a void in your heart that no one will ever be able to fill.
Reader and Tim’s relationship never had a chance to develop, since Reader left for France shortly after the boy arrived at the mansion. Reader never blamed him for anything, nor did she see him as a replacement, but she couldn’t bring herself to talk to someone who, in some twisted way, reminded her so much of her brother.
Reader and Alfred were close; Alfred was always there for her, especially at galas and parties where Reader was. Alfred always knew how to get her out of those events without drawing attention, and he always made sure there were cookies or some other snack waiting for her in the kitchen.
It was Alfred who convinced Bruce to let Reader move to France.
In France, Reader made friends, became a heroine, and even fell in love (maybe)
(Let's say I'm rewriting the story of Miraculous; some things stay the same, but others change.)
By this I mean, for example, that Reader is the one who defeats Hawkmoth/Monarch—in other words, Monarch *does* take Adrien and Kagami to London, and Reader is the one who has to fight with him using the Ladybug and Cat Miraculous.
Since I’m giving Adrien the role of strategist that Ladybug originally had, along with that professionalism as a hero, I’m changing what happens after the final battle.
Reader tells Adrien that Monarch was his father. The reason is simple: she lived for years without knowing that Bruce was Batman; the news came as a shock, and she felt betrayed upon discovering that Alfred, Dick, and Jason knew that secret—even people outside the family. They kept such an important secret from her and made her feel unloved by her family, if it weren’t for the fact that Jason was a big mouth.
So Reader decides to ignore Gabriel’s request and tell Adrien the truth.
Obviously, the news devastates Adrien. Reader can’t stay to comfort him because of identity issues, but she does let Kagami do so.
Later, she has a conversation with Mister Bug, asking him if she did the right thing by telling Adrien the truth and explaining what happened. Mister Bug assures her that it was the best choice.
Maybe Marinette is still the guardian of the Miraculous, but she gets to keep the mouse Miraculous, because I like giving her an important role since I love her so much 😭 but I also want to lighten her load because I want her to be happy lol.
She knows who the bearers of all the Miraculous are, except for the ladybug and the cat. She is the one who approves the distribution of all the Miraculous.
Well, all of this happened over a period of 3 or 4 years. Which means you were between 14 and 17.
You graduated (no family members attended) and enrolled in a university in Paris with some of your friends (Marinette, Adrien, Alya, Nino, maybe Luka and Zoe)
You only visited Gotham during Christmas break (if you could), and since there was no villain because the new bearer of the Butterfly Miraculous wasn’t active, you spent your free time training the other heroes with Mister Bug and Multimouse.
So now you're 18, and the new villain has started making their move. Mister Bug and you have talked about revealing your identities to each other, but Multimouse doesn't agree.
The people who know your identity are: Luka, Kagami, and Natalie
The people who know Adrien’s identity are: Luka, Felix, Kagami, and Nino
The people who know Multimouse’s identity are: Alya, Kagami, and Felix
You don't know about Jason's resurrection, but you know Cassandra and Stephanie.
Alfred is asking you to come to Gotham this Christmas because you need to meet your biological brother. He hasn't stopped pestering you about this guy Damian; he says you could help him adjust to his new life or something like that.
So, after letting Mister Bug know that you'll be out of town and that he should call you if he needs anything, you're heading to Gotham... but you're not going alone.
Alya decided it would be a good idea to take a group trip, so after making sure everything would be fine in Paris while her main protectors are away, Alya, Nino, Marinette, Adrien, and you are heading to Gotham.
But it turns out that the new holder of the Butterfly Miraculous decided to go to Gotham too 💔💔
So now you have to juggle your friends, your family, and your hero duties.
Idk, someone should write this fanfic—you guys know I'll never finish it, lol 😞☝️
I (16NB) am a crime boss in Gotham. You don’t see me among Batman’s rogues gallery or shit like that, since I rarely go outside. But I inherited the criminal empire (that specializes in illegal weaponry making and distributing) from my parents when I was 12 when they died in a shootout, as is normal in Gotham. So the past four years have been me balancing school with running the operations. This is semi-relevant.
So, recently, I received my drivers license. And after, I was gifted a car for my 16th birthday by my legal guardian/right hand man. We’ll call him Bill (48M). My goons told me to take it for a spin, said that they could hold down the fort for a couple of hours, and that I should go outside and treat myself. So I did.
Bill and I went out partying at Iceberg Lounge till the wee hours, so it’s dark and it’s 3 AM at night. I’m driving home, in the new car, with Bill sat beside me. It’s pitch black, and I take a wrong turn into Crime Alley. Coincidentally, Joker and his goons broke out earlier today, and were also out in Crime Alley doing lord knows what. Shit.
So, his goons surround my car, and Bill and I start to panic. The goons are hooting and hollering at us, waving their guns around, yelling at us to come out, and I could hear Joker’s shrill laughs somewhere in the dark.
I hit the gas, and the sound makes the goons at the front of my car back up. I drive forward, only to feel a massive bump, and I see a very familiar clown flying over my windshield. I hear shrill screaming, and a loud snapping sound.
I ask Bill what do I do, should I get out and exchange insurance info, should I check on Joker? He says nah, it’s too dangerous to exit the car, just drive forward, we can afford a good lawyer and shit. So we drive a couple of blocks away, and I call 911 to Joker’s location.
The very next day, I find out through everyone throwing a parade in the streets that Joker died. Apparently, my car slamming into him broke his ribs into his lungs, and he broke his neck after he flew over my car. He didn’t die immediately, but he died on the way to the hospital. The Bats and the police are out looking for Joker’s killer for god knows what. Since I am a crime boss, this is threatening to start a street war with Joker’s goons. One of my henchmen says that I should’ve at least tried to check on him. That maybe he would’ve survived if I immediately started using my first aid training on him instead of driving off.
So Reddit, AITA?
🩷🩷🩷
OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
I could’ve tried checking on him and using my first aid knowledge on him until the ambulance arrived, or at the very least exchanged insurance information with one of the goons acting on Joker’s behalf.
✫・。.⋆˚ੈ✩‧₊࿐࿔
This was mostly written as a shitpost, This was pretty self-indulgent, because I wanted to write about the reader killing the Joker, but the Joker won’t be involved in my current fic at all. So I wrote this to get it off my chest lol. Roleplaying as Reddit users giving out a verdict in the comments and reblogs is encouraged, including roleplaying as the Batfamily giving out verdicts via Reddit lol
You can imagine the OP as either an OC, or you as the reader posting.
Synopsis: You’re a spy disguised as a maid, sent to infiltrate the crown prince’s castle and gather information. The mission never mentioned anything about being caught. Or worse, being kept.
And now he’s willing to pay anything, just to keep your eyes on him.
Look At Me
You were currently in the chamber of the crown prince, excitement barely contained.
It’s been three months since you started working as a maid, your disguise. Three months of careful steps, lowered gazes, and quiet obedience just to reach this point.
You were tasked with cleaning his bedroom, something only highly recognized maids were allowed to do.
And now, you were finally here.
Alone in his room.
Or… so you thought.
But the head maid never told you the crown prince would be in there, waiting. Quietly watching you enter from his bed.
“I’m sorry, your highness—” you bowed immediately, lowering your head the second you realized he was there. “I wasn’t informed you would be present.”
You had to keep your head down. It was a criminal offense to even make eye contact with the royalty.
He just sat there, unbothered, on the bed. You could feel his eyes tracking your movement.
“It’s fine.” His voice was calm and dismissive.
Yet he didn’t move. He didn’t leave.
You looked up slightly to see if he was going to leave or not. Dang it! How else are you going to snoop around the room if he’s still here?
You hesitated, then forced yourself to continue. If anything, this just made your job harder.
“I’ll begin cleaning, your highness.”
“Hmm.” Was all you got back, meaning he had no intention of leaving. And you were in no position to tell the prince of the country to get out of his own bedroom.
So you worked. Carefully, quietly, while avoiding his gaze.
But you could feel it…
His eyes. Following you. And it was definitely not the casual kind of look. No, he kept watching long enough for sweat to collect around your collar.
“How much do they pay you?”
Your hand stilled mid-motion.
“You mean my salary as a maid, your highness? Well…” you tried to answer as calmly as possible, fingers shaking with nerves.
“Not that.”
Your shaking paused for a moment.
“I’m trying to hire you.”
Fingers tightened slightly around the cloth, you braced yourself to speak. “I’m already employed here, your highness—”
“You know that’s not what I mean.” He repeated, eyes tracking the way your shoulders tensed.
Silence stretched between you.
“You can drop the act.” A soft step came from behind you.
“Maid.” He mocked, voice came out closer than before with a faint smile playing on his lips at the title.
Your grip on the duster tightened.
So… You’d been found out.
Slowly, you turned to face him.
The prince was no longer on the bed. He was right behind you now. Too close.
You hadn’t even heard him move.
It made you wonder how long he’s been standing there… Right behind you, watching how you trembled in your boots. Shivers went down your spine.
Your eyes narrowed, and for the first time since your stay here, you met the prince’s gaze head on.
“How long have you known?” you asked, dropping the act entirely.
His lips curved at the eye contact in delight. “Long enough.”
His gaze didn’t waver. If anything, it sharpened. Like he’d been waiting for this.
“For someone so careful,” he continued lightly, “you do stare quite a lot.”
Your breath caught. “…What?”
“Not directly, of course.” He stepped closer, his shoes clanked against the high quality flooring, unhurried.
“You watch me when you think I won’t notice.”
This… wasn’t part of your plan today. Your mind was twisting in horror now as you calculated for a way to escape.
“…So?” you said, forcing steadiness into your voice. “What now? You expose me? Interrogate me?”
“No.” The word came out too quickly.
Then, his gaze softened.
“I want to hire you.” He let his words sink in for a moment.
“So? Name your price, and I will pay you triple, no quadruple the amount they paid you.”
Your brows furrowed in confusion. The words still making no sense.
“You… want to hire me. Actually?”
He nodded firmly, the faint smile still on his face.
But that was still vague. Did he want you to betray your initial employees, is that it?
No, more importantly, why hasn’t he disposed of you yet… He could’ve dragged you to the torture chamber and gotten all the answers out himself, why bother to pay?
“To… spy back on them?” You raised an eyebrow, confused and on guard for an escape. You were trying to buy as much time as possible while also considering the offer he was about to give.
“No.” He answered curtly again, and your guard immediately dropped at that response.
What the hell does he want? You couldn’t read anything from his face, only that unnerving smile stayed in place.
Then, a dumb idea came to mind.
“You… want me to spy on you?”
He beamed at the question, like he was waiting for you to say those words. Like you’d finally asked the right question.
“I don’t want you to spy,” he said quietly, taking another step.
Your heart hammered against your chest as you stepped back instinctively from this prince.
“I want you to watch.”
Your breath hitched at another step your way.
“Not like before,” he continued. “without hiding, and without avoiding eye contact.”
Now there was nowhere left to go.
You were pressed against the door now, the prince only inches away. And your hand was frantically looking for the handle.
His hand lifted slowly. Giving you time to pull away.
You couldn’t didn’t.
His fingers brushed your cheek. It was gentle, too gentle for a spy like you deserved.
“I want your full, undivided attention on me,” he murmured.
His thumb tilted your chin just enough to force your gaze back to his.
“Not short, secretive glances. Full on watching me, just like this.”
You couldn’t look away. Not with him this close.
Not with his eyes fixed on yours like that.
“Is that too much to ask?”
His voice softened further. Something almost thoughtful in it now.
“Because I’m willing to pay for it.”
He tilted his head, a small furrow forming between his brows.
“All of it. I’m willing to spend all of my fortune for your time and attention.”
You tried to shake your head in response, but his hand on your chin made it impossible to move away.
“All you have to do is give it to me. Hm?”
Your hand finally found the door handle, only to realize it was locked ever since you came in.
There was no space for refusal now.
He was never asking in the first place.
Synopsis: You’re a witch known for making love potions. They're fake. The reviews are real. Your track record? Immaculate. Until a duke walks in, covered in blood, and demands you reverse the spell you cast on him.
You didn't cast anything.
He doesn't care.
And now you live in his mansion.
Love Potion or Love at First Sight?
"Are you sure this is it?"
"Yes yes! This is the love potion. Now pay up or leave because I have other customers to attend to!"
You groan at the woman hesitating in front of you, wasting your time.
You're an infamous witch known in the black market for selling all types of spells and potions for a hefty sum.
Your most popular item? The love potion.
Which is actually just… an aphrodisiac.
But after selling 170 potions? You've only ever received positive reviews. All from noblewomen, lovestruck and happy with the results.
What can you say? You've always known men to be lustful creatures, barren from emotions. After selling a 170 with zero bad reviews? Your ideology is proven correct.
"Are you sure it works?" the woman whispers.
"100% customer satisfaction guaranteed!"
She still looks nervous.
"And if it doesn't work, you can come back and I'll give double your money back as refund."
The woman nods. Pays. Leaves.
Another positive review, you think to yourself. Already confident and marking this as your 171st success.
…
You just didn’t expect your first bad review to appear right in front of your face.
The door slams open.
A man stands in your doorway.
Black hair. Red eyes. Blood splattered across his face, his clothes, his sword.
"So," The bloody man starts.
"You're the witch selling cheap love elixirs all over the market."
You don't answer. Your hand slides toward the defense charm under your counter.
Because this wasn’t just any man, this was the war-crazed duke feared by all of society.
"You better pay for this."
…Guess you'll be closing the shop for a while.
___________
And… you've been working at his mansion ever since.
Tasked with reversing whatever spell you supposedly casted on him. Despite all your protests, despite swearing up and down that you never did anything.
He doesn't believe you.
He won't believe you.
Because how else do you explain what he felt when he walked into your shop? That made his sword hand waver and his heart stutter, and his threats turn into something softer?
Obviously, you’ve cursed him. There was no need to investigate this any further, nor did he feel the need to tell you about all these symptoms.
So now you're stuck in a massive estate with a madman who thinks you cursed him, brewing antidote after antidote, watching nothing work.
You could only curse that woman.
The one who bought the potion and slipped it to him. The one who left you with this mess and then promptly left this world, if the blood on his sword was any indication.
Damn her.
What the hell did she see in this man anyway?
Because here's the thing you're learning, piece by piece. The duke? He's not just some nobleman. He's the nobleman. The one everyone whispers about. The one who's had three fiancées and buried all of them. The one who allegedly keeps a dungeon beneath the east wing and a graveyard behind the west garden.
The madman of high society.
If only you'd known he was the target that woman was after, you would've never sold her that potion. Never agreed to the commission. Never opened your stupid mouth about the satisfaction guarantee!!
But you didn't know.
And now you're stuck with the aftermath…
___________
At first, the madman kept you confined to a workspace somewhere within the mansion.
Close enough to monitor. Far enough to ignore.
Then, he started calling for you more often. Checking on your progress. Standing just a little too close while you worked. Watching you with scrutinizing red eyes.
And then, he started sticking around you 24/7, following you from room to room like some clingy puppy who couldn't bear for you to leave his sight.
Even that wasn’t enough. At some point, you stopped being assigned a room at all.
Wherever he was… that became your workspace.
You’d turn around and he’d be there.
In the doorway. Behind you. Leaning against the wall like he’d been there the whole time.
Like he had nowhere else to be. Don’t dukes have better things to do? Go tend to your paperwork or something!!
Through it all, he's never kind. Still angry. Still demanding. Still barking orders about reversing the damn spell.
But he never hurts you.
His threats are loud. His hands are rough. His voice could shatter glass.
But you've started to notice something.
He always stops. It’s all bark but no bite…
And it becomes a routine.
You work. He watches. You brew. He hovers. You try to leave. He blocks the door.
At some point, he has you working in his bedroom.
No, like, actually. He stooped to this level of stupidity, allowing needing you to stay in his chambers at night.
He's sleeping on the bed and you have to sit beside him. On the floor. With your books and your herbs and your constantly dying patience.
You don't know when this became normal.
You hate that it feels normal.
__________
Tonight, you try to get up.
His hand immediately shoots out to grab your wrist.
"Where do you think you're going?"
You don't flinch anymore. The first few times, you did. Now? You just sigh.
"I'm trying to study for a reverse spell. Or a cure. For you, remember?"
"Stay."
His voice is flat. Unreasonable. Like he's not even considering the possibility of you leaving.
"I can't work if I'm stuck by your side, your grace."
"Leave and I'll rip your throat out."
You've heard this before. The first time, you froze. The second time, you nearly cried. The third time, you started noticing the pattern.
He never follows through.
Not with you.
"Your grace," you say, calm as anything, "you can't do that. Who will reverse your spell if not the caster?"
His jaw tightens. His grip on your wrist doesn't loosen.
But he knows you're right.
He's quiet for a long moment. Thinking. And you can see the exact second he shifts tactics.
"Then I'll slit the throats of all the guards outside who allow you to leave this room."
"…I'm sat."
You sit back down on the floor. Head leaning against the bed where his hand lingers limbly. Sometimes brushing your hair unconsciously, like it was to make sure you were still there.
And you work on the spell in his chambers all night long. Barely getting a blink of sleep.
He, on the other hand?
Dead to the world.
The madman who threatened to rip your throat out twenty minutes ago is now curled up on his ridiculous silk sheets, snoring softly.
His face is slack. Peaceful. Innocent in a way that makes you want to throw a pillow at his head.
You've noticed this before. The way his eyes get heavy when you're nearby. The way his shoulders drop when you enter the room. And the way his threats get lazier the longer you stay.
At first, you thought it was the potion's side effects.
Now you're starting to think he just… can't sleep without you.
Which is not your problem. You didn't sign up to be a nobleman's sleeping charm. You're a witch. A busy one! One who is currently being held against her will in a mansion that smells too much like old money and fresh blood.
And yet.
Here you are.
Watching him sleep.
Because if you move, he wakes up. And if he wakes up, he gets grumpy. And if he gets grumpy, he threatens to kill someone.
Usually the guards.
You've started to feel kind of bad for the guards.
"I hope you wake up with a stiff neck," you mutter, dipping your quill in ink. "I hope you stub your toes when you wake up. I hope your breakfast is cold and your tea is bitter and your horse steps on your foot."
His lips curl up softly. Like you're singing him a lullaby.
Your quill scratches to a halt.
"…I hope you dream about spiders," you try, weaker this time.
His smile deepens.
He doesn't wake up. He just… rests. Peaceful and content. Like your curses are the sweetest words he's ever heard.
You stare at him.
Then you look down at your notes. At the page full of failed antidotes and useless counter-spells.
At the truth you've been avoiding for weeks.
Nothing is wrong with him.
The potion didn't work.
He's just like this.
You set down your quill.
Press your palms to your eyes.
And wonder, for the thousandth time, what in the hell you did to deserve this.
Maybe its time you suggest a psychiatrist.
___________
Little did both of you know.
The potion didn't work on him.
It never could have. Years of assassination attempts had made his body resistant to poisons, potions, anything ingested.
The drink that woman slipped him? It passed through his system like water. Barely a flicker of discomfort. A vague pulling in his chest that he dismissed as irritation.
He came to your shop that day ready to kill the witch who made it.
Not because the potion had affected him.
But because he was annoyed.
Someone had tried to enchant him. Someone had failed. And he wanted to make an example of the person responsible.
Until he saw you.
And something in his chest pulled again.
Not the potion. That was already gone.
Something else.
Something he didn't have a name for.
He still doesn't have a name for it. He calls it a curse. A spell. Your fault.
It's not.
He was just love-struck at first sight.
And he's been falling harder and harder with each day that passes.
Deep in his sleep, one thought surfaces in his mind.
I remember you guys really enjoyed my previous post with Negan, so I decided to make another Yandere TWD post! I like the thought of Carl being overprotective, almost like an older brother towards Y/N.. But sometimes, he goes a 'little' too far.
But can you blame him? Rick left him responsible for you and refuses to let him down! Even if his methods are a bit 'extreme'.
Yandere Boytoy! Who acts all confident and funny but becomes a babbling whiny mess the second you’re hand goes to his jeans button.
Yandere boytoy! Who’s confident enough to send you hundreds of dollars worth of flowers and show up to your Pilates class and stare at you the entire goddamn time but who’s face DROPS the second you actually look at him like you might want him.
Yandere boytoy! Who will spend his cute finance or tech big boy bonus to buy you a Bulgari serpenti bracelet but will cream his pants and cry if you actually send him a message that says “Thank You 💋” with a pic of it on your wrist(he will be using his absurd high graph hd expensive ass printer to make a photo and put it into a scrapbook he totally made when he learned who you were)
Yandere boytoy! Who somehow always knows where you are which is weird because you always post your stories after the fact and don’t recall EVER sharing your location so how the fuck-
Yandere boytoy! Who… has a job? But always seems like he’s in your business instead of his, so, this is really weird…
Yandere boytoy! Whose feelings you love messing with because you’re unsure about yours, but you know he’s cute, well off, and has a liking(crippling degrading delicious obsession) for you. ;)
inspired by @yandere-romanticaa's fic! Tehee your works are so eye opening 0.0 <333
I licherally haven't created a yandere content for such a looong time lolol let's see if I can still pull this off lmao
Imagine making a wish for a different life to get away from your neglectful husband and your wish is granted… but now you’re trapped in the body of an unhappy housewife from the 1950s. Your husband in this time period is a typical patriarchal white collar man, James Prescott. And the only way to go back to your world is to play your part… a shame you hadn’t realized just how neglected he’s been. Otherwise you wouldn’t have fed a starved man the affection he so desperately craved.
Yandere Husband who is surprised when you, his wife, are suddenly affectionate that morning. You hardly kissed his cheeks anymore or wished him a good day at work. Especially when she turned down his desire for a family all those years ago. Were you sick? This wasn’t like you at all. He was suspicious. Did you want something? Work had been going well lately so he could afford to buy you a gift… if you wanted one, of course.
Yandere Husband who is surprised to come home to a warm meal after a long day that actually tastes good. You were never a good cook before. He was startled but also satisfied to be taken care of. He even gave you a rare compliment he never had before. “The food is good today. I really like this roast.” His blue eyes studied your face for a reaction and he only received a warm smile. His heart fluttered for the first time in two years since he started this dead marriage. Meanwhile, you kept a journal noting his likes and dislikes so you’d have an easier time in this world. A fact that would later come back to bite you.
Yandere husband came home with flowers after work the next day. Blush pink roses with the thorns taken off with care. His blue eyes were hopeful as he waited for your reaction and you didn’t disappoint. He came home to another delicious hot meal and a warm smile as you happily accepted the flowers. It was like the love was back again… the love back when the two of you first started dating three years ago. And James was so thrilled.
Yandere husband loved coming home to warm meals and a clean house. James loved his clothes being washed and folded. He also loved how you ironed his work shirt. You hadn’t been this domestic in ages… you deserved more from him. Heavens, you deserved the world.
Yandere husband began to bring flowers or chocolates by every day after that just to see you smile… and he was so thrilled when you hugged him. You felt him tremble a bit as he tightened his hold on you as if he was terrified you’d disappear in a mere moment. “…how about we go on a date this weekend?”
Yandere Husband who was all too eager to put on a suit that matched the dress you wore. He made sure to open the car door for you, the restaurant door, and even pull out your chair. You were shocked at how eager he seemed for this date… and the fact that he gave you his utmost attention.
Yandere husband who made sure to order your meals once you told him what you wanted. His hand held yours under the table as his thumb brushed against your knuckles with utmost affection. James was so happy you wanted to do these kinds of things together again. He had missed this more than anything but never wanted to voice it.
Yandere husband who cuddles you in bed at night now. His hands wander more and he gets bolder as the days drag on… but you didn’t know how long you’d stay in this world with him and you would feel awful if you left suddenly. But you were happy that someone wanted to touch you… your husband back in your world hadn’t in ages either. So why not indulge this one?
Yandere husband who was gentle at first but it wasn’t long for him to grow rough once he had a taste. Had intimacy always been this good? Or had James just been denied for so many years that he was losing his mind in you? He didn’t care that the bed creaked in protest or how your back arched in a way it never had, James was so thrilled to touch his wife again.
Yandere Husband who now kissed your shoulders every morning when the sunlight streamed in before work. James would hold you from behind as you cooked and helped with dishes. He was so happy to have all his stress melt away with your touch.
Yandere husband who finds your journal and despite knowing it was wrong to read it, he read it anyways. James’s heart fluttered at the words.
James really enjoys pot roast, steak, mashed potatoes, and carrots. He says he likes tomatoes, but I notice he will push them off to the side when I’m not looking. He also prefers beef gravy over chicken gravy. James says he likes his coffee black, but he always adds in a table spoon of sugar when I’m not looking.
Yandere husband who read deeper and soon discovered your secret. You weren’t his real wife or at least, his original one. You were from another timeline trapped in a loveless marriage just like him… and he’d felt such a kinship with you.
My husband from my world hardly ever spent time with me. He never stayed for dinner and we never went on dates. I really like James. I want to stay with James. How could someone not love James? He’s such a wonderful man.
Yandere husband was so flattered that you were noting his preferences. James never thought anyone noticed him… and he’d be damned if he’d ever leave him. He loved you too. James loved you so much. More than anyone else in his entire life. Even more than himself and more than his cushy job at the law firm.
Yandere husband who put the journal back and made a decision. He was going to keep you here in this world with him forever. And he’d never, ever let you go.
