semi-feral. sleep-deprived. emotionally compromised over fictional characters. expect unhinged tags & late-night rambling.
šmainly here to goon over sad men and sharp women.
I overanalyze everything & reblog like itās a religious duty.
Come for the content, stay for the descent into madness.
š§ tags are therapy, reblogs are spells
You were having a blast with Marcus and Ashylnn. A āweekend getawayā as Marcus called it could not understate just how joyful each hour has been with them. You guys watched horror movies, played board games, video games, and just doing anything and everything under the sun that the group wanted to do.
This is perfect.
The three of you were currently seated at Marcusās dinner table just chatting after finishing your dinner.
āHonestly, itās just so strange to be here with just the three of us in your giant ass house, I donāt think I will ever get used to itā, (Name) said looking around at each doorway.
āI know right! Itās such a nice break from always having someone in the house. ESPECIALLY when that someone is a someone you have been actively avoiding!ā Ashylnn said resting her head in her hands, looking up at the ceiling. āAlso name your one to talk about big houses! Your dad is the richest man in Gotham!ā
āBut that doesnāt mean the house is empty like this! Itās so peacefulā¦I wish everyday it could just be the three of us chillingā (Name) said with a sorrowful downturn of their eyes.
āLetās make a bond.ā Marcus interjected into the conversation so suddenly with an unexpected statement that both (Name) and Ashlynn looked at him as if he grew a second head.
āIām sorry Marc, but what did you just say? Because I do not think āfuture doctor, legacy carrying, apple of his parentās eye Marcusā just said what I think he said.ā Ashlynn bit back, clearly on the defensive side for some reason.
āYeah Marc likeā¦what brought this on? Or are you just saying shit to say shit?ā (Name) replied very skeptical to where this conversation was heading.
āNo-no wait Iā¦Look Iām sorry if this seems sudden, but after these past two years I can tell we have shared more with each other than we ever have with our biological families. Andā¦I also noticed that neither of you have had your families create the bond on your inner wrists showing your status as a pack memberā¦ā Marcus hastily spoke to clarify his thought process before continuing.
Both you and Ashylnn looked at each other before you instinctively brushed your fingers around your right wrist gland, while Ashlynn engulfed her hand around her wrist bringing it against her chest.
Marcus could clearly see this was a sensitive subject, yet he knew his friends and he knew their struggles more than anyone so he pushed on, āLike I said, we all know so much about each other: the struggles with our home lives, the want to get far from Gotham, and to hopefully live together as we follow our dreams! But despite all this, we know that each of us still is hurting. Ashylnn, for years you have complained about your parents and basically them forcing their kid onto you - like what kind of life is that! And to do all that but not even bond with you! Solidifying your place in the family, they are basically making you live as a nanny that they donāt have to pay!ā
Ashlynn was nodding her head in agreement, however she also shrank back into her seat - clearly not liking the way the reality of her home life is forced to be realized.
Marcus pushed on. āAnd you (Name)! Your mom died when you were four yes, but your dad has been around for YEARS! Taking in kids left and right, and yet the only person that is not marked in that family is one of his only biological kids! What kind of logic is that? What makes you so different from them that you donāt get a place in their lives?!ā
Ok well that hurt, you thought with a grimace on your faceā¦but there was no denying the truth of his words. Even if Marcus didnāt know that your dad was Batman and that all his kids were crime fighting vigilantes that he trained, this skill didnāt explain why you were not important enough to them to be involved in their lives. Like what, were you only ever going to be bonded with if you were also a vigilantes, putting your life on the line every night, was that the only way you would have value?
As if Marcus noticed both you and Ashlynn being to spiral, he came to the conclusion of his argument. āI know this seems like a sudden ask, but I have been thinking about this for the past year. My family also wouldnāt mark me until I succeed in following my momās legacy. It seems like we are all just waiting for approval from people that have this image in their head about who we are supposed to be. I say, we should forge our own path. We already plan to leave Gotham together one day, why not take a large step in the direction of our future by marking each other and creating a bond that will last the rest of our lives?ā
Marcus looked at both of you with pleading eyes. You can deduce that something probably happened with his family before they left for the weekend.
Was his plan hasty? Yes. Objectively irresponsible? Also yes. Butā¦you and Ashylnn turned to look at each other, then back at Marcus.
Each one of you didnāt have a welcoming home life. You wanted more than what your families have given you. You all wanted to be loved for who you are, not just what you could do, what you were, and what you were forced to be.
āOkā¦letās do it before I change my mindā, Ashlynn said with a resolve that seemed to be easily shaken if the right counterargument was presented.
āYeah, letās do thisā, You replied with a firm tone to show your confidence in this decision to give her some reassurance.
āOne step forward is another step towards our future!ā Marcus said with a wide grin on his face. āTo do this since there is no āAlpha pack leaderā, or whatever they call it, I looked online and it just said that each person bites the glands on the wrists. So, we could hold our arms out in a circle and whoever the wrist is facing bites it!ā
āSoā¦we will be moving like the occult or vampires doing a blood pact ritual?ā Ashlynn said with a deadpan voice.
āThank you for your input Ashlynn, what a true testament to our upcoming familial bondā, Marcus replied with a huffing laugh.
āWell if weāre gonna do this letās do it!ā (Name) chimed in enthusiastically, āLook at us looking towards the future!ā
Everyone was shaking with anticipation and excitement. They would carve their own future; make their own family.
Each person got up and headed into the living room to sit in a circle with an arm in each direction like three triangles all connecting.
āHere is to the rest of our livesā you said with a firm yet excited resolve.
āHere is to familyā Marcus replied calmly with a slight buzz of adrenaline.
āHere is to usā Ashlynn stated with a more confident tone than she had when this idea was first proposed.
With each person giving their sentiments, you each leaned down -
and bit the first wrist.
Back at Wayne Manor -
Damian stood in front of his fatherās desk with his hands behind his back. Bruce was staring at your diary, now closed, with no expression. Yet, the people closest to him would be able to tell his mind was whirling.
When did this happen? When did he become too busy for you? Why didnāt he reach out? Why did he not go to you after Jasonās death? Where did he go wrong?
You were a child - are a child.
You needed him, where was he?
He could line every street in Gotham with excuses, but none of that matters now.
His baby was slipping away.
With each question he was brought back to that day at the police station picking you up for the first time. Your cheeks had dried tear stains and you were wrapping your arms around yourself tightly with fear that if you were to let go, you would be seen as weak in an unknown place.
Bruce knew that look.
It was what made him immediately know that you were his.
And he abandoned you.
He told himself that pushing you away was for the best, that handing you off to Dick and Jason would be better. He was still active in your life at the time, just not enough to be proud of it.
Bruce forced himself to isolate when Jason died. During that time, he assumedā¦he didnāt know what he assumed anymore.
āFather, I believe we should take immediate action against these thoughts (Name) is having in order to preserve our familyāā Damian understood Bruceās microexpressions so he decided it would be best if his father stayed focused on the core issue at hand.
Bruce looked up briefly before staring down at the diary again. āYesā¦thereās still time. Iāll fix this.ā
Damian opened his mouth to talk about his plan to his father, when a voice shouted from the front door.
āHi everyone Iām home!ā
The moment Dick finished shouting he felt a thick tension in the manor.
āMaster Bruce and young master Damian are discussing an urgent matter in the masterās studyā, Alfred replied after Dick stood looking around the corridor for a second too long.
āThanks Alfred! Iāll go see if I can offer my services!ā
Dick reached the room in record time, and welcomed himself in. He was immediately on alert with the palpable tension in the study. His eyes immediately found what Bruce was looking at, asking āWhatcha got there Bruce? A new case?ā
Bruce handed him the diary wordlessly, still contemplating where he went wrong, and what he would do to repair his relationship with his child.
While Bruce was brooding, Dick had read every word you had written.
Thisā¦couldnāt have been you, could it?
You were such a small little kid when he first met you, you always wanted to be around him in the training room, batcave, or watching a movie in the main room together.
You were Bruceās kid, but you were Dickās baby.
After Jason died, he needed some space; from Bruce and the manor. You understood right? Bruce was supposed to be there for you while he just took some time to himself anyway from Gotham.
When Tim came aroundā¦he needed to be trained. You understood that too, right? He didnāt forget you so to speak, itās just that Tim needed training to get into the field andā¦
Excuses
Thatās all he was thinking ofā¦but now it would be different! He would make time for you, right now even! He would go to your room and invite you to go watch a movie outside the manor, or go to a food spot you like (what did you like to eat?), orā¦whatever your hobbies are now Dick could learn! Dick could fix it! He just needed to talk to you and sort all this out! Then you would see this was one big misunderstanding, one went on for far too long!
Damian looked in between Bruce and Dick understanding that the three of them had neglected you for too long. They could fix this. As Damian goes to open his mouth once again to suggest a plan of attack, Tim and Jason walk through the door.
āJason and I have been searching, and we have compiled a list of various places vulnerable to Scarecrowās newest attacks. It doesnāt seem like there is a consistent pattern of places at the moment but-ā
āWhy are you all looking like there has been a murder?ā Jason interrupted Timās report to focus attention on the haunted faces of the room.
Damian found himself growing annoyed at the consistent interruptions he was facing and decided to summarize, āI found (Name)ās diary and in it they have written various things, but the important entry was the fact that they are planning on leavingā.
Before he even finished speaking, Jason had already walked over to Dick and snatched the diary from his hands and began reading with Tim next to him, peering over his shoulder.
Before Jason died, you were a safe space.
During some of his dark moments, he would often recall how the both of you would sit in Bruceās library and read together under a little fort you decided was āessentialā to the reading experience. You would often fall asleep first after reading for a few hours, and Jason would maneuver you to lay in his lap.
He remembers after he came back to life and to the manor you both had a falling out. Jason remembers yelling at you and you tearing upā¦however he canāt recall what he saidā¦
He knows he fucked upā¦but you were always for forgiving before he died, you would forgive him again right? You wanting to leave was just a little act of rebellion, he could get you back on the right path. He was sure of it.
He would even come back to the manor to hangout with you, or take you out to get away from this emotionally constipated family. He would fix this.
Tim followed along as Jason turned the pages.
You and him never got particularly close.
Bruce needed him for Gotham, and Dick needed to train him to handle Gotham.
But you were always there.
You offered small talk when he was lost in the silence of his work. Sometimes you would just sit in his room or in the batcave while he worked to āgive him companyā as you would call it.
He never thought about your presence not being there because that wasnāt an option. Even if you didnāt talk often, you were around each otherā¦but that might have been enough for youā¦
Donāt worry (Name), Tim sees it now. The solution is obvious. He can fix what he broke, heāll be more active in your life. This was-
āNow that everyone is caught up to speed, I would like to propose a method of handling this estrangement from (Name).ā Damian cut off everyone's train of thought and had their heads snapping towards him in desperation and possessive resolve.
āOk shortstack what do you propose we do?ā Jason huffed.
āIām going to go talk to them now, you can join me after I clear up my mistakeā, Dick said, already moving to the door of the study.
āThat will not be possibleā, Bruce replied in a stern tone.
āAnd why canāt he?ā Tim said, stepping away from Jason and towards Bruce.
āBecause they are gone to a sleepover to one of the houses of the two friends they mentioned in their diaryā, Damian snapped, already over how long this conversation has dragged on.
āWell then letās go get themā, Jason said as he also marched toward the door ready to get on his motorcycle and drag you back to the manor.
āNoā, Bruce stated while rising from his chair, and before anyone could interrupt he continued, āWe will let them have the rest of the weekend with their friends. In the meantime, we continue to learn whatever we can about them, and become an active family in their lives.ā
It was obvious that not everyone agreed with the idea, they were willing to concede to maintain the peace. With the time they had with (Name) away -
They began to learn.
Damian and Dick ransacked your room. Looking through every book, drawer, folder, etc. to see where all your interests lie.
Tim accessed all your medical and school records. Each report was printed and passed around the family.
After Tim bypassed the private account locks on your socials, Jason went through every single one of your accounts and posts. He compiled a list of every place you have been, every food you seemed to enjoy, anything and everything you posted was noted and would be shared with the family.
Bruce took the initiative to look into your friends and their families. If there was a single faulthood in place, he would have you home before the night was over.
Alfred wandered through the house with a tea tray with biscuits, asking if anyone would like refreshments all the while thinking, āI told you young master (name), it was only a matter of timeā.
A/N: Iām so sorry for the delay, but this turned out to be a longer chapter than the others. I have my storyboard planned and, if I pace it out properly, there should be five chapters left! I expect to be done within the next two weeks (hopefully), but thank you everyone for supporting my series. It truly means the world to me.
Also on a scale of 1-10 how quickly can you think on your feet Reader?ā¦bc youāre gonna want it at tenā¦
Also the tag list is closed now thank you!!
Taglist: Some of your users are in the comments, others that didnāt appear Iām so sorry but your user wonāt show up to let me tag you!! It might be something in your settings!!
Tim inhaled at precisely the wrong moment, sending coffee into his lungs. He doubled over, coughing into the crook of his elbow while several people turned toward him. One of the baristas took a concerned step in his direction, phone already in hand, presumably preparing to alert emergency services that one of Gothamās wealthiest citizens was being assassinated by an iced latte.
āTim?ā You reached toward him without quite knowing where to put your hand. When he raised one finger to indicate that he remained alive, you relaxed enough to add, āYouāre supposed to drink it, not inhale it.ā
By the time Tim managed a complete breath, his eyes were watering, and his chest hurt for reasons that had very little to do with the coffee. He had loved you for eleven months, three weeks, and somewhere in the vicinity of four days. The exact starting point was difficult to establish because his feelings had accumulated gradually through late-night study sessions, shared meals, and the increasingly frequent realization that every interesting thing that happened to him became something he wanted to tell you. Tim had survived nearly a year of being secretly in love with you, but he was no longer confident that he would survive this conversation.
āRed Robin,ā he repeated hoarsely. āThe vigilante.ā
You glanced around before lowering your voice. āThere are several vigilantes in Gotham, Tim. I wanted to make sure we were discussing the same person.ā
āThereās only one Red Robin.ā
āAs far as the public knows. This is Gotham. There could be six of them.ā
āThere arenāt.ā
āThat was a very confident answer.ā
āI read the news.ā
āYou read classified police reports for fun.ā
āThey arenāt classified if you know where to look.ā
āThat sentence is exactly why Iām asking you.ā
Tim placed his coffee carefully on the table before another unexpected statement caused him to drown in it. āWhy would I know whether Red Robin is single?ā
āBecause you notice things. You noticed that the woman behind us has been pretending to type while listening to her boyfriendās phone call, and you knew our waiter last week was planning to propose because he kept checking his jacket pocket.ā
The typing behind Tim abruptly stopped. He resisted the urge to turn around. āShe isnāt subtle, and the outline of the ring box was visible.ā
āTo you. Thatās my point.ā
Tim did notice things, especially when it came to you. He knew how you arranged your books according to a system you insisted was not a system, which drinks you ordered when you were tired, which songs you skipped despite claiming to like the entire album, and how long you would tolerate uncomfortable shoes before removing them beneath a restaurant table. He also knew that you touched the side of your glass when you were nervous and tucked your chin down whenever you were trying to hide a smile. You were doing both now, and something cold and unpleasant settled in his stomach.
āWhat happened?ā
āNothing happened.ā
āYouāre blushing.ā
āI am not.ā
āYour face temperature has noticeably increased.ā
āNormal people donāt say things like that.ā
āNormal people apparently ask their friends about a vigilanteās relationship status.ā
āI was curious.ā
āWhy?ā
You glanced toward the window, but Tim waited until your resistance collapsed beneath the weight of his attention. You lasted seven seconds before admitting, āHe saved me last week.ā
Tim already knew that. He had replayed the encounter several times, mostly while attempting to determine how three armed men had concluded that robbing the corner pharmacy while you were inside would be a sustainable career decision. Red Robin had entered through the rear delivery door, disabled the first gunman, and disarmed the second before either man understood what was happening. The third had grabbed you and tried to use you as leverage.
Timās recollection of the next fourteen seconds remained unusually fragmented. He remembered the gun against your ribs, the sharp sound of your breath catching, and the immediate certainty that he would tear the building apart before allowing the man to hurt you. He remembered throwing a birdarang, crossing the room, and catching the gun before it struck the floor. More clearly than any of that, he remembered the way you had looked directly at him afterward instead of through him the way frightened civilians sometimes looked through masked vigilantes.
āYou didnāt mention that.ā
āI didnāt want you to worry.ā
āIām worrying now.ā
āIt was a week ago.ā
āThat doesnāt make it less dangerous. You could have been hurt, and you still shouldāve called me.ā
āDuring the robbery?ā
āOr afterward.ā
āI was being held at gunpoint, Tim. Iām sorry I failed to observe proper hostage etiquette.ā
Tim pressed his lips together, but your expression softened. āIām okay. Red Robin handled it.ā
āI know.ā
His answer emerged more sharply than intended. When you asked whether he was angry at Red Robin, Tim insisted he was angry that you had been in danger, not at the person who had helped you. You pointed out that the danger had not lasted very long and then smiled into your drink as you described Red Robin as competent, polite, and unexpectedly considerate.
āHe gave me his cape while we waited for the police.ā
āYou were shaking.ā
The words escaped before Tim realized what he had said. Your eyebrows rose, and he scrambled backward. āThe article said the witnesses were shaken.ā
āI donāt think the article mentioned his cape.ā
āIt was probably implied.ā
āThe existence of a cape was implied?ā
āMost people know he wears one.ā
You watched him for another moment before explaining that Red Robin had stayed until the police arrived and asked whether someone could come get you. When Tim learned that you had refused to call anyone because he was supposedly in a board meeting, he informed you that he would have left.
āYou canāt abandon every meeting because something happens to me.ā
āI can abandon most of them.ā
āAnd then Lucius will eventually murder me.ā
āHe would understand.ā
āBecause I was held hostage?ā
āBecause most of those meetings could be emails.ā
You laughed, easing some of the panic beneath Timās ribs. He had spoken to you later that night after confirming through several hacked police systems that the robbers were in custody. You had claimed that your day had been uneventful, and he had believed you because he had not realized you considered an armed robbery unworthy of mention once Red Robin intervened.
āHe was funny too,ā you added.
āNo, he wasnāt.ā
āOne of the robbers asked who he thought he was, and he said, āStatistically, the worst possible person you could have encountered tonight.āā
Tim remembered saying it. The statement had not been intended as a joke. āThat isnāt particularly funny.ā
āIt was the way he said it, like he was disappointed the man had forced him to explain.ā
Tim could not dispute that without revealing more than he wanted. You smiled again, and the expression contained a softness that made him feel as though he were watching you look at someone else across the room. Except the someone else was him. This should have been good news, but it did not feel like good news.
āYouāre developing a crush because he gave you his cape and threatened a criminal with probability.ā
āI didnāt say I had a crush.ā
āYou asked whether he was single. Those things are directly connected.ā
āMaybe I wanted to know for someone else.ā
āWho?ā
When you hesitated, Tim gestured toward you as though that proved his entire case. You finally conceded that you might have a tiny crush, although your smile suggested it was not nearly as minuscule as you claimed.
āYou nearly died when I said his name,ā you reminded him.
āThat was the coffee.ā
āWhich entered your lungs because I said his name.ā
Tim looked down at the table. āHe isnāt available.ā
The lie left his mouth before he fully considered it. Your smile faded, and a brief, vicious satisfaction moved through him before guilt replaced it. He quickly amended the statement to an assumption that the vigilante lifestyle was not conducive to relationships.
āNightwing dates,ā you said.
āNightwing is a statistical anomaly.ā
āBatwoman dates.ā
āOccasionally.ā
āSuperman is married.ā
āDifferent city.ā
You studied him. āYouāve given this a lot of thought.ā
āI havenāt. You provided the examples.ā
āAnd you countered them immediately.ā
Tim folded his arms. āYou donāt know anything about Red Robin.ā
āI know heās brave and kind. He made sure the pharmacy clerk received medical attention before checking his own injuries.ā
āHe wasnāt badly hurt.ā
Your eyes narrowed. āHow do you know that?ā
āThe article.ā
āThe article that didnāt mention the cape?ā
Tim silently cursed Gothamās declining standards of journalism. He argued that Red Robin would not have stayed if he were seriously hurt, while you pointed out that vigilantes were notoriously bad at taking care of themselves.
āYou donāt know that.ā
āIāve met you.ā
āIām not a vigilante.ā
āNo, but you attended a presentation with a fever of one hundred and three and fainted on Lucius.ā
āI sat down abruptly.ā
āHe caught you.ā
āThe distinction is irrelevant.ā
āYouāre changing the subject.ā
āYouāre attempting to date someone whose face you havenāt seen.ā
āIām not attempting anything.ā You paused before adding, āAlthough I did tell him where I work.ā
Timās brain stopped. āYou what?ā
āHe asked whether the pharmacy was part of my normal route home, so I told him I usually leave the library around nine.ā
āYou gave a masked stranger your schedule?ā
āHe saved my life.ā
āThat doesnāt mean you give him your place of employment.ā
āYou just admitted he was brave and kind.ā
āYou said that. I said he probably possesses adequate qualities.ā
āAdequate qualities?ā
āHeās tolerable.ā
Your mouth twitched. āAre you jealous?ā
āI am not jealous of Red Robin.ā
āThen why are you reviewing him like a disappointing job applicant?ā
āBecause youāre basing an infatuation on one stressful encounter.ā
āItās been more than one encounter.ā
Tim went still. You reluctantly admitted that Red Robin had checked on you two nights after the robbery and then stayed with you on the library roof the previous evening while your rideshare circled the wrong block. Tim remembered both encounters, including the several minutes he had spent deciding whether the more heavily armored suit would seem unfriendly and the eleven minutes of conversation he had enjoyed far too much.
āThat sounds like heās monitoring the area,ā Tim said.
āHe spoke to me.ā
āHeās monitoring you.ā
āThat sounds much more romantic.ā
āIt wasnāt intended to.ā
āYou really donāt like him.ā
āIām assessing the situation objectively.ā
āObjectively, you think heās tolerable and possesses adequate qualities.ā
āThat seems fair.ā
You leaned back with the expression Tim knew usually preceded trouble. āIām going to ask him out.ā
āNo.ā
The answer emerged much too quickly. Tim tried to recover by explaining that dating a vigilante could be dangerous because he might have enemies, but you pointed out that Tim also had enemies, even if most of them sat on the Wayne Enterprises board.
āYou donāt even know when youāll see him again.ā
āI work late tomorrow.ā
Tim knew that, just as he knew he had planned to patrol the library district. He could change routes and avoid the building until your crush faded, but you would be disappointed. That should not have mattered. It mattered immediately.
āWhat are you going to say?ā
āIām going to offer him coffee, Tim, not my hand in marriage.ā
āYou donāt know what he drinks.ā
āIāll bring options.ā
āHe doesnāt need coffee.ā
āEveryone needs coffee.ā
āHe might not like it.ā
āYouāre being weird.ā
Tim was losing an argument against himself, and somehow both sides were making him miserable. He gathered his laptop and jacket before the situation could deteriorate further. āI have to go.ā
You checked your phone. āYour routine budget review isnāt for another forty minutes, and you said you could conduct it while unconscious.ā
āIāve revised my opinion.ā
āYouāre definitely jealous.ā
āIām definitely late.ā
āYou arenāt.ā
āI could become late.ā
āThat isnāt how time works.ā
Tim stood and looked down at you. āPlease call me the next time youāre involved in an armed robbery, and donāt wait alone on the roof.ā
āIt has cameras.ā
āThree of them have blind spots.ā
You frowned. āHow do you know that?ā
āThe libraryās security plans are publicly available.ā
āThey absolutely are not.ā
Tim froze with one arm still in his jacket. You stared at him, and he stared back while every plausible explanation abandoned him.
Stephanie was already in the cave when Tim returned, sitting in his chair, eating crackers over his keyboard, and smiling with every visible tooth. He knew immediately that she had heard.
āNo.ā
āI havenāt said anything.ā
āYouāre going to.ā
āI might not.ā
āYouāre smiling, and youāre eating over the computer.ā
āIām generally cheerful, and Iām establishing dominance.ā
Tim removed the crackers from her hands and set them on a nearby worktable. āWho told you?ā
āDick. You told Barbara that your civilian friend had developed an attachment to Red Robin, Barbara told Dick, and Dick told me because he understood that this was the funniest thing to happen in the family since Damian accidentally joined a school theater production.ā
āDamian was conducting surveillance.ā
āHe played a tree.ā
āIt provided an unobstructed view of the stage.ā
āHe had three lines as a tree.ā
Tim sat at the computer and opened his patrol reports. He had no intention of discussing you, his feelings, or the humiliating reality that he had spent the afternoon resenting a man who shared his fingerprints.
Stephanie rolled her chair closer. āYouāre losing the girl to yourself.ā
āIām not losing anyone, and she isnāt a prize.ā
āFine. The woman you love is choosing to romantically pursue another version of you.ā
āShe isnāt pursuing anyone.ā
āDick said sheās bringing Red Robin coffee. Oat milk?ā
āI donāt know.ā
āYou always take oat milk.ā
āIām aware.ā
āMaybe sheāll bring regular milk and end the relationship before it begins.ā
āThere is no relationship.ā
āNot with that attitude.ā
Tim returned his attention to a report concerning stolen electronic components. He should have been interested in whether they indicated an organized operation or an ambitious engineering student with flexible morals. Instead, he wondered whether you would bring sugar.
āYou could tell her,ā Stephanie said.
āNo. Revealing my identity solely to improve my romantic prospects would be irresponsible.ā
āYou could tell her you like her without revealing it.ā
āIāve tried.ā
Stephanie stared at him. āWhen?ā
āI invited her to dinner. At a restaurant. I wore a suit, made a reservation, and told her she looked beautiful.ā
āYou eat in restaurants, you wear suits for work, and you once described a motherboard as beautiful. Did you call her beautiful while actually looking at her?ā
Tim looked away.
āThatās what I thought.ā
āI was going to tell her today.ā
āBefore or after she asked whether you were available?ā
āRed Robin.ā
āIām sorry. Are we pretending you arenāt the same person?ā
āThat distinction is central to the current problem.ā
āYou donāt have a problem. You have a solution wearing a domino mask.ā
Tim rubbed both hands over his face. āShe doesnāt like me that way.ā
āShe already likes Tim Drake enough to spend half her life with him, and now she has a crush on Red Robin. This is an accidental controlled experiment. She was presented with two versions of the same emotionally constipated detective and found both appealing.ā
āShe has never said she finds me appealing.ā
Stephanieās expression softened. āHave you ever given her a reason to think you find her appealing?ā
āI spend time with her.ā
āYou spend time with Bruce. You also bought her a first edition of her favorite book and flew to Chicago because she mentioned she was nervous about giving a presentation.ā
āIt was her birthday, and I had business in Chicago.ā
āYou created the business. You scheduled a meeting twenty-four hours earlier and made Lucius attend it.ā
āThere were potential expansion opportunities.ā
āHe called me afterward because he wanted to know whether you were having a breakdown.ā
Tim frowned. āWhy did he call you?ā
āHe said Iām the most emotionally perceptive member of the family.ā
āHe must have called everyone else first.ā
āKeep talking like that, and Iāll help her marry Red Robin.ā
āShe doesnāt want to marry him.ā
āNot yet.ā
āThere is no yet.ā
Stephanie laughed and rolled out of reach when Tim tried to take the chair from her. āWhat are you doing tomorrow night?ā
āPatrol.ā
āNear the library, while your beloved waits on the roof with coffee?ā
āPossibly. She should not wait on rooftops.ā
āYou could tell her that.ā
āI have.ā
āAs Red Robin?ā
āAs Tim.ā
āAnd did she listen?ā
Tim said nothing.
Stephanie nodded with exaggerated satisfaction. āYouāre definitely her type.ā
The following night, Tim altered his patrol route. He told himself the changes were strategic because the library district had experienced an increase in robberies, and your encounter at the pharmacy suggested the area required greater attention. The fact that he reached the library roof at exactly nine eighteen, three minutes after your shift ended, was entirely coincidental.
You were sitting on the western wall with a cardboard drink carrier in your lap. Tim landed behind an air-conditioning unit and remained concealed while he assessed the roof. Two cameras covered the entrance, a third faced the neighboring building, and the position beside the west wall remained outside all three fields of view. You had chosen that exact position.
He needed to address your increasing willingness to compromise reasonable safety precautions, but his irritation weakened when he noticed the coffee. He stepped into view, and your face brightened in a way that made his chest ache.
āHi.ā
The voice modulator built into his collar concealed the slight catch in his response. āYou shouldnāt be sitting there.ā
āHello to you too.ā
āThe cameras canāt see this section of the roof.ā
āI know. I thought vigilantes preferred avoiding cameras.ā
āIām not worried about being recorded.ā
āYouāre worried about me?ā
Tim should have lied. Instead, he said, āYes.ā
You looked pleased, which was dangerous too. āI brought coffee. There are three options because I didnāt know what you liked: regular, black, and oat milk.ā
Tim stared at the carrier. The oat milk cup had a small red bird drawn beneath the name Red Robin.
āThe barista asked for names,ā you explained.
āAnd you said Red Robin?ā
āI panicked.ā
āWhat did you put on the others?ā
āRobin and Red. I had people waiting behind me.ā
āYou perform poorly under pressure.ā
āI am offering coffee to a masked vigilante on a roof. Iām performing magnificently under pressure.ā
Tim approached the wall. āYou shouldnāt make a habit of waiting here.ā
āYouāve appeared every time.ā
āThat doesnāt make it safe. I wasnāt here when you arrived.ā
āYou were probably watching from behind something.ā
Tim glanced involuntarily toward the air-conditioning unit. You followed the movement and smiled.
āThat thing?ā
āI was assessing the roof. There are limited concealed positions available.ā
Your laughter followed him as he removed his grappling line from his belt. He should leave. Accepting the coffee would encourage you, and the conversation was already drifting away from appropriate vigilante-civilian interaction. He had also been awake for thirty-one hours.
āWhich one is the oat milk?ā
You handed him the cup with the bird. Tim sat beside you while maintaining what he considered a respectable distance, took a drink, and discovered that it was exactly how he liked it.
āHow did you choose this?ā
āLucky guess.ā
āYou bought three options.ā
āAnd you selected the correct one.ā
āYou could have brought tea.ā
āCoffee felt more appropriate because you look tired.ā
āMy posture is fine.ā
āYouāre sitting like your spine is negotiating a surrender.ā
āThatās unusually specific.ā
āI know someone else who does it.ā
Tim looked back toward the street. āYour friend.ā
āYou remember Tim?ā
āYou mentioned him.ā
āI talk about him a lot.ā
His heart changed rhythm, but he kept his altered voice neutral. āDo you?ā
āProbably too much. He usually looks like heās mentally reorganizing a spreadsheet whenever I talk.ā
āHe might be listening.ā
āYou donāt know Tim.ā
āNo.ā
āHave you met him? He knows several vigilantes.ā
Tim nearly dropped the coffee. You leaned toward him immediately.
āI knew it.ā
āYou made a strange statement.ā
āIt isnāt strange. Tim grew up around the Waynes; heās always disappearing when something dangerous happens, and Nightwing once called him by name.ā
Tim remembered the incident. Dick had been concussed, bleeding, and significantly less cautious than usual. Tim had convinced himself that you were too distracted to notice. Apparently, he had been wrong.
āHe also identified the model of a grappling hook from a blurry photograph,ā you continued. āHe knows an alarming amount about vigilante equipment.ā
āThat information is available online.ā
āThatās what he said. You sound like him.ā
The modulator should have made that impossible. Tim stared at the street and tried to determine how quickly he could escape without appearing suspicious.
You rested both hands around your cup. āI think heās worried about me.ā
āHe is.ā
The answer emerged before Tim could stop it. You turned toward him. āHow do you know?ā
āYou said he was upset about the robbery.ā
āI didnāt tell you that.ā
Timās mind moved through several explanations and rejected them all. āYou said he knows about vigilantes.ā
āThat doesnāt answer the question.ā
āHe seems observant.ā
āYouāve never met him.ā
āIāve read interviews. Heās a public figure.ā
āYouāre avoiding the question.ā
āYou ask too many questions.ā
āYou dress like a bird and spend your nights jumping between buildings. You should expect curiosity.ā
Tim took another drink to delay his response, but you continued watching him. āTim doesnāt like you. He thinks youāre tolerable and that you possess adequate qualities.ā
āThat seems harsh.ā
āHe was being weirdly judgmental. I think he was jealous.ā
The word settled between you. Timās fingers tightened around the cup, but his voice sounded almost neutral when he asked, āWhy would he be jealous?ā
You looked down at your coffee. āI donāt know.ā
āDo you want him to be?ā
Your silence answered before you did. āIt would be nice.ā
The traffic below, distant sirens, and the soft mechanical hum of the ventilation system receded until Tim could only feel the narrow space between your shoulder and his.
āYou like him.ā
āI didnāt say that.ā
āYou want him to be jealous.ā
āThat doesnāt necessarily mean anything.ā
āYou told him those things werenāt necessarily connected.ā
You blinked. āHow do you know what I told him?ā
Timās body went cold. He stood before you could examine his reaction too closely. āI should patrol.ā
You stood too, leaving the empty cups on the wall. āDo you know him? Are you following him? Is Tim secretly involved in vigilante activity?ā
āNo.ā
That answer, at least, was mostly true. Tim was publicly involved in several Wayne Foundation initiatives supporting emergency-response teams. His private involvement was another matter.
You stepped closer, and Tim retreated automatically. āWhy are you backing away?ā
āTo establish appropriate boundaries.ā
āYou sat beside me for twenty minutes.ā
āCircumstances have changed.ā
āBecause I asked about Tim?ā
āBecause I have work to do.ā
āYouāre behaving like a cornered animal.ā
āIām standing on the edge of a roof.ā
āA cornered bird, then.ā
Tim prepared to fire his grappling line, but your quiet request for him to wait stopped him. Your suspicion softened into something more vulnerable.
āFor the record, Iām not asking Tim to compete with you. Heās my friend, probably my best friend. Heās kind and brilliant, and he cares about everyone more than he admits, but he doesnāt look at me like that.ā
Tim had looked at you like that constantly. Apparently, he had done so with the extreme subtlety of a concealed surveillance operation.
āSo the crush on you is easier,ā you continued. āYou arenāt going to reject me and then have to meet me for lunch every Thursday.ā
āI could reject you.ā
Your smile was faint and nervous. āWould you?ā
Tim had faced men with guns, assassins with swords, and villains capable of leveling entire city blocks. None of them had frightened him as much as that question. He wanted to tell you, but the confession tangled with every secret he had protected and every possible consequence of bringing you closer to his life. He could tell you that Tim Drake loved you without admitting what he wore at night, but he would still be standing in front of you as Red Robin while speaking for someone you believed was elsewhere. It would be unfair, and it would be unbelievably stupid.
āI donāt date civilians.ā
Your smile disappeared, and Tim immediately hated himself. āRight. Of course.ā
āThat isnāt becauseāā
āYou donāt have to explain. I offered coffee to a masked man on a roof. I understood rejection was possible.ā
āYou didnāt ask.ā
āI brought three cups. That was an implied question, and you gave me an explicit answer.ā
You picked up the carrier. Tim reached toward you but stopped before touching your arm. āYou should still call your friend.ā
You laughed quietly, though there was little humor in it. āYou donāt know Tim.ā
āHe would want you to.ā
āMaybe.ā
āHe does.ā
You looked at him for a long moment, and Tim wondered whether the domino still concealed enough.
āGood night, Red Robin.ā
He watched you leave and briefly considered throwing himself from the building without using the grappling line.
When Tim met you for lunch the following day, you were quiet. You were not openly angry, although anger would have been easier. You smiled when he arrived, asked about his morning, and listened while he described a disagreement with the boardās transportation committee. You responded in the right places and laughed at a remark that was not funny enough to warrant it.
Tim knew you too well to miss the careful distance beneath your normal behavior, just as he knew exactly who had put it there. āYouāre upset.ā
āIām fine.ā
āYouāre cutting your sandwich into smaller pieces instead of eating it.ā
You looked down at the plate. āMaybe Iāve developed new culinary preferences.ā
āYouāve been rearranging the same tomato for three minutes.ā
āIt knows what it did.ā
āDid something happen?ā
Tim tried to appear concerned without looking guilty, a skill he had successfully employed during police questioning and had apparently forgotten in your presence.
āI made an idiot of myself last night.ā
āYouāre not an idiot.ā
āYou donāt know what happened.ā
āI know you.ā
āThat is disgustingly sincere. When you try to reassure people, you sound like a greeting card written by an algorithm.ā
Tim frowned. āThatās inaccurate.ā
āLast year, when I was worried about changing jobs, you told me that my capabilities exceeded my current professional environment and that any organization would experience a measurable improvement from my presence.ā
āThat was true.ā
āIt was also the least natural reassurance anyone has ever given me.ā
āYou accepted the job.ā
āBecause you made a color-coded spreadsheet.ā
āThe spreadsheet demonstrated the benefits, and you prefer visual organization.ā
Your expression finally softened, and Tim felt a small flare of hope. āWhat happened last night?ā
You stabbed the tomato with your fork. āRed Robin turned me down.ā
Tim pretended this information was new. āYou asked him out?ā
āNot in those words. I brought coffee, and he said he doesnāt date civilians.ā
Tim had spent most of the night reviewing that sentence and concluded that it was possibly the worst collection of words he had ever assembled. āThat doesnāt mean he isnāt interested.ā
You gave him a strange look. āYesterday, you thought he was barely tolerable.ā
āIāve reassessed.ā
āBased on what?ā
āNew information.ā
When Tim reached for his water, you groaned. āYouāre doing the thing where you drink because you donāt want to answer. Youāve consumed eight glasses of water during conversations about relationships.ā
Tim slowly lowered the glass. āYou counted?ā
āI notice things too.ā
That statement carried an alarming implication, and Tim decided not to explore it. Instead, he suggested that Red Robin might have been trying to protect you from the dangers of his life.
āDo you think he has a secret family somewhere?ā
āNo.ā
āYou answered very quickly.ā
āItās statistically unlikely, and he probably doesnāt have time for a relationship.ā
āNeither do you, but you once maintained an eighteen-day argument with a man in Singapore because you thought his encryption method was insulting.ā
āIt was insulting, and the argument eventually improved an industry standard.ā
āYou slept four hours that week. My point is that people find time for the things they want.ā
Tim looked down at his plate. You set aside your fork and sighed. āIām not heartbroken. I barely know him.ā
āBut youāre disappointed.ā
āYes.ā
āIām sorry.ā
āWhy?ā
Because he had hurt you. Because he had been too afraid to admit the truth and too jealous to step aside. Because you had offered him something as small and uncomplicated as coffee, and he had responded by making you feel foolish. Tim could not say any of that.
āYou deserve someone whoās available.ā
You watched him carefully. āDo you know anyone?ā
His pulse jumped. āI might.ā
āIs he a vigilante?ā
āNo.ā
āDoes he sleep?ā
āOccasionally.ā
āThat doesnāt narrow it down in Gotham.ā
āHeās intelligent.ā
āYou think most people are idiots.ā
āThat isnāt true.ā
āYou refused to speak to my former landlord because he used āreply allā incorrectly.ā
āHe used it seven times.ā
āWho is this hypothetical person?ā
Tim could have said it. He had rehearsed several versions of the confession while pacing the cave between four and six that morning. Some were direct, while others were careful. One included a detailed explanation of the statistical likelihood that your friendship could survive a romantic relationship, which Stephanie had taken from him and deleted. He looked at you, and every prepared sentence disappeared.
āIāll tell you later.ā
Your expression closed. āOf course.ā
Before Tim could correct himself, his phone vibrated with a silent alert from the security system. Armed intruders had breached a Wayne Enterprises research facility six blocks away.
āI have to go.ā
You laughed once, without amusement. āNaturally.ā
āItās an emergency.ā
āYou always have an emergency.ā
āIāll call you.ā
āYou always say that too.ā
Tim paused, and regret crossed your face almost immediately. āIām sorry. Go.ā
āIām going to explain.ā
āLater.ā
āTonight.ā
āFine.ā
Tim wanted to stay. He wanted to sit back down, silence the alert, and tell you everything despite every rule he had established to protect his identity. Then another notification appeared: multiple armed intruders, employees still inside.
He hated the decision even as he made it. āTonight.ā
Then he left you sitting alone at the table.
By the time Tim reached the lower laboratories, one prototype energy cell had already been removed from its cooling unit. Red Robin entered through the ventilation system, disabled two intruders, and locked the remaining four inside a secure testing chamber. The confrontation lasted less than eight minutes, but security footage revealed that a seventh accomplice had escaped with the cell shortly before he arrived.
The consequences occupied the rest of his afternoon. Tim spoke with the police, secured the remaining prototypes, reviewed the footage, and called Lucius to explain why one laboratory now contained a Red Robin-shaped impression in the wall. He also texted you twice.
The first message received no response. Nearly an hour later, you replied to the second: Can we talk tomorrow? Iām going to the Wayne Foundation gala with Mia tonight.
Tim had forgotten about the gala, despite being expected to attend. You knew he was expected because you had helped him choose a tie two weeks earlier while insisting that all his formalwear looked identical.
Tim typed three possible responses and deleted them before settling on something simple.
Okay. Iāll see you there.
Your answer arrived a minute later.
Donāt leave a board meeting for me.
Tim stared at the message until the words blurred.
The gala began at seven, but Tim arrived at seven forty-three after changing in the back of a car, signing two electronic reports, and listening to Dick explain over the phone that disappearing every time you became emotionally vulnerable was unlikely to improve your relationship.
āI donāt do it intentionally,ā Tim said as he entered the hotel through a private corridor.
Tim adjusted his cuff. āIs everyone discussing this?ā
āDamian requested that we stop because the situation is, and I quote, āan embarrassing indictment of Drakeās already limited courtship abilities.āā
āHeās thirteen.ā
āAnd yet he has identified the problem.ā
Tim entered the ballroom beneath crystal chandeliers and Wayne Foundation banners. Hundreds of guests moved around the room while a string quartet performed beside the stage. Security personnel stood at every entrance, supplemented by several plainclothes officers Tim recognized from Gothamās major crimes unit.
You stood on the far side of the room, and Tim forgot Dick was speaking.
You wore an outfit he had never seen before, though that seemed impossible given how frequently he saw you. The fabric followed the movement of your body as you turned toward Mia, and the light caught along the jewelry at your throat.
Tim walked directly into a waiter. The tray tilted, but he caught it before several glasses of champagne could fall.
The waiter stared at him. āSorry,ā Tim said.
Dick laughed through the phone. āDid you just walk into something?ā
āNo.ā
āYou absolutely did.ā
āI have to go.ā
āTell her.ā
Tim ended the call and crossed the room. You noticed him before he reached you, your gaze moving over his suit and lingering briefly on the tie you had selected. Something warm entered your expression before caution replaced it.
āHi,ā Tim said.
āHi.ā
āYou look beautiful.ā
The words came naturally this time, and your eyes widened slightly.
āThank you.ā You glanced at his tie. āYou followed my advice.ā
āI usually do.ā
āThatās not true.ā
āItās frequently true.ā
āYou ignored every restaurant I suggested for your last business dinner.ā
āThey had inadequate security.ā
āThey were restaurants.ā
āOne had an unsecured service entrance.ā
āYou were having dinner with accountants.ā
āAccountants can have enemies.ā
You laughed despite yourself, and the pressure in Timās chest loosened slightly.
Mia appeared beside you and looked between the two of you with open interest. āIām getting another drink.ā
Her glass was still full. You stared at her, but she ignored you and walked away. Tim resisted the urge to thank her.
āIām sorry about lunch,ā he said.
āYou had to work.ā
āI still shouldnāt have left like that.ā
āIt wasnāt the first time.ā
The statement contained no accusation, which made it worse.
āNo,ā Tim said. āIt wasnāt.ā
You touched the edge of your glass. āWhat did you want to tell me?ā
Tim looked around the ballroom. This was not the setting he had imagined, but every carefully selected opportunity had failed, usually because he had allowed it to. Perhaps he did not need perfect circumstances. Perhaps he only needed to speak before another building was attacked.
āThereās someone I think you should consider.ā
Your mouth tightened. āTim.ā
āIt isnātāā
āI donāt need you to arrange a date because you feel sorry for me.ā
āI donāt feel sorry for you.ā
āYou spent lunch explaining why Red Robin might secretly be interested in me.ā
āHe probably is.ā
āThat doesnāt matter if heās unavailable.ā
āAt the time, I thought my best friend disliked him because he was jealous.ā Before Tim could respond, you added, āThen my best friend started defending him, tried to convince me he might secretly be interested, and offered to introduce me to someone else.ā
āI didnāt offer to introduce you.ā
āYou implied it.ā
āI was trying to tell youāā
A sharp crack interrupted him as the ballroom windows exploded inward.
Tim moved before the glass reached the floor. He pulled you against him and turned, shielding your body while shards struck the back of his suit jacket. Guests screamed as the chandeliers flickered, went dark, and returned beneath the red glow of emergency lighting.
Four figures entered through the shattered windows on mechanical lines. Each wore tactical armor and carried a compact energy weapon.
Tim recognized the technology immediately. Modified Wayne Enterprises prototypes. Of course.
One attacker fired into the ceiling and ordered everyone down. Guests dropped behind tables while security personnel reached for their weapons. A second blast destroyed the nearest security station.
Tim lowered you behind a marble column. āStay here.ā
āMia?ā you asked, searching the ballroom.
Tim spotted her moving with the evacuating guests near the south exit. āSheās with security. Stay down.ā
Your hand closed around his wrist. āWhere are you going?ā
āTo help.ā
āWith what? You arenāt security.ā
āI know the building. I need to reach the control room.ā
āTimāā
Another blast struck the far wall. Tim could see the fear beneath your determination, but you were not frozen. You were already assessing the nearest exit and checking the positions of the attackers.
He wanted to kiss you. It was an inconvenient time for the realization.
āTrust me,ā he said.
Your grip loosened. āI do.ā
Tim ran.
He reached the service corridor and triggered an emergency release concealed in his cuff link. A locked maintenance cabinet opened near the kitchen, revealing the compact suit he had stored there in case the gala attracted exactly this sort of attention.
He changed in forty-two seconds.
By the time Red Robin entered the ballroom from an upper balcony, the attackers had gathered several Wayne executives near the stage. Their apparent leader held the missing energy cell.
Timās evening was becoming repetitive.
He dropped behind the nearest attacker and drove an elbow into the vulnerable joint beneath the manās shoulder armor. The weapon fell, but Tim caught it, removed the power source, and kicked the man into a table.
The other attackers turned. When their leader said his name, Tim threw the disabled weapon at his face.
The fight moved quickly. One attacker attempted to use the guests as cover, but Tim forced him toward the stage, swept his legs, and bound his wrists with a restraint cable. Another attacker fired repeatedly from behind a pillar until Tim redirected the hotelās motorized curtains through his wrist computer, wrapping her in several hundred pounds of velvet. She tore free before the fabric could tighten completely, anticipated his first strike, and caught him across the jaw with one armored fist. Tim twisted beneath her next swing and drove both feet into her chest. She struck the floor, but he landed badly on his left wrist, sending pain along his arm.
He ignored it because the leader was moving toward the ballroom exit with the energy cell.
You were no longer behind the column.
Timās heart stopped.
He found you near a fallen member of the hotel staff, helping her crawl toward cover. The leader spotted you at the same moment and seized your arm, hauling you toward him while lifting the energy cell in his other hand.
You drove your heel down onto his foot and struck his throat with the side of your hand. Tim experienced a brief, inappropriate burst of pride.
Then the man swung the energy cell toward your head.
Tim caught his wrist. The unstable device emitted a rising mechanical whine.
āLet go.ā
The man smiled and released it.
Tim grabbed the energy cell as it fell, warning lights flashing across the casing. He threw it toward the shattered windows and launched a specialized birdarang after it. The projectile struck the cell in midair, activating a magnetic containment field moments before the device detonated above the street.
The explosion sent a shockwave through the ballroom. Tim turned toward you just as a metal support tore loose from the damaged window frame.
He pushed you down and covered you. The beam struck his shoulder hard enough to drive him against the marble. His domino mask shifted beneath the impact, and an error flashed across his lenses as the voice modulator built into his collar shorted out.
For several seconds, neither of you moved. Tim heard the leader groan nearby while police flooded the ballroom. Guests shouted over one another and emergency alarms continued to sound, but the immediate threat had passed.
You were beneath him, breathing quickly.
āAre you hurt?ā he asked.
The damaged modulator stuttered halfway through the question, allowing Red Robinās distorted voice to give way to Timās.
Your entire body went still.
When Tim lifted his head, your gaze fixed on the portion of his face exposed by the displaced domino before moving to his dark hair and the familiar shape of his mouth.
āTim?ā
His heart stopped.
A police officer shouted from across the ballroom, and Tim immediately shifted between you and the room while pressing the domino securely back into place. Several guests had already begun raising their phones.
āWe need to move,ā he said, keeping his natural voice low.
You stared at him. āYouāreāā
āNot here.ā
He caught your hand and led you through the nearest service door before anyone could reach you. The corridor beyond was empty, shielded from the ballroom and its cameras by two heavy fire doors.
Tim checked both ends of the hall before disabling the damaged voice modulator in his collar. When he turned back, you had not moved.
There was no explanation left that you would believe. Tim reached up and removed the domino.
Recognition happened all at once. There was no confusion or careful assembly of evidence. You saw his face, and your expression emptied with the speed of a door slamming shut.
āYouāre Red Robin.ā
āIām sorry.ā
āThat isnāt an answer.ā
āItās the only one I have.ā
Your mouth opened and closed. Tim examined you quickly for blood or visible injuries, though the rapid movement of your chest and the tremor in your hands concerned him almost as much.
āDid anything hit you?ā
āYou rejected me.ā
āThat conversation needs more context.ā
āYou rejected me and then sat across from me at lunch defending yourself.ā
āI was attempting to correct the situation.ā
āYou were jealous of yourself.ā
Voices sounded beyond the fire doors. The police were securing the ballroom, and Tim had only a few minutes before someone came looking for Red Robin.
He glanced toward the door. āI need to make sure the attackers are contained.ā
āYouāre leaving again.ā
āIām coming back.ā
āYou always say that.ā
āI know.ā Tim stepped closer and lowered his voice. āBut this time you know why I have to go.ā
You folded your arms as anger overtook some of the shock. āYou have six minutes.ā
āTen.ā
āFive.ā
āEight.ā
āSix.ā
āAgreed.ā
Tim replaced the domino mask and pressed it securely into place. The voice modulator remained disabled, but he could keep his natural voice low until he was clear of the ballroom.
He opened the service door a fraction and checked the room beyond. āThe medical team is near the south exit. Iām taking you there first.ā
āI can walk by myself.ā
āI know.ā
āThat sounded patronizing.ā
āIt wasnāt intended to.ā
āMost things with you arenāt.ā
Tim accepted that he deserved the remark.
He kept himself between you and the ballroom as he guided you along the edge of the room, avoiding the guests, officers, and phones clustered around the shattered windows. Once you were safely beside the waiting ambulances, he stopped.
āSix minutes,ā you reminded him.
āIāll be back in five.ā
Tim returned in five, still wearing the Red Robin suit. His domino was securely back in place, though the damaged voice modulator in his collar remained disabled.
You were seated on the rear step of an ambulance, wrapped in a silver emergency blanket and arguing with a paramedic who wanted to examine your pupils.
āMy pupils are fine.ā
āYou were near an explosion,ā the paramedic replied.
āIāve been near several. Itās becoming a pattern.ā
Tim stopped beside the ambulance and kept his natural voice low. āLet him check.ā
You glared up at the domino. āYou donāt get to be authoritative right now.ā
The paramedic looked between you and Red Robin, evidently decided that whatever was happening had moved beyond his professional responsibilities, and stepped away to retrieve another ice pack.
āThe paramedic abandoned me,ā you said once he was out of earshot.
āHeās obtaining medical equipment.ā
āHe sensed danger.ā
āHeās working beside a hotel that was just attacked with experimental energy weapons.ā
āLess dangerous than this conversation.ā
Tim could not disagree.
You pulled the blanket more tightly around your shoulders. āLet me see you.ā
āWeāre outside.ā
āThere are no cameras facing this section. Donāt act surprised. You complain about blind spots constantly.ā
Several officers moved near the street entrance, but none were looking toward the ambulance. Tim sat beside you within the shelter of the open rear doors and pulled one partly closed before removing the domino.
Your eyes moved across his face with an intensity that made him feel more exposed than the lack of a mask should have allowed. āYouāre really him.ā
āYes.ā
āHow long have you been doing this?ā
āSince I was thirteen.ā
You stared at him. āYou were a child. You were five feet tall.ā
āI was highly trained, and height wasnāt a central qualification.ā
āAnd instead of telling me the truth, you insulted yourself.ā
Tim looked down at his gloves. āIn retrospect, that was ineffective.ā
āYou said Red Robin was tolerable.ā
āI was jealous.ā
āOf yourself.ā
āI hadnāt separated the issue logically.ā
āYou separate everything logically.ā
āI was experiencing an unusual amount of emotional interference.ā
āBecause I liked you.ā
āBecause you liked him.ā
āHe is you.ā
āIām aware of that now.ā
āYou werenāt aware yesterday?ā
āIntellectually, yes. Emotionally, it felt more complicated.ā
You stared at him until laughter escaped you. Covering your face with both hands, you shook beneath the emergency blanket.
āIām glad this is amusing.ā
āYou competed with yourself. You interrogated me about how much I liked Red Robin, told me he probably didnāt have time for relationships, and tried to ruin my crush.ā
āI was attempting to manage expectations.ā
āYou called yourself tolerable.ā
āI was trying not to appear biased.ā
You lowered your hands. āTim, you are the most ridiculous person I have ever met.ā
āI live with several strong competitors.ā
āAnd then you accepted the oat milk coffee.ā
āIt was the correct option.ā
āYou could have taken the black one.ā
āI donāt like black coffee.ā
āYou would rather risk exposing your identity than drink the wrong coffee.ā
āI didnāt expose my identity because of the coffee.ā
āYou quoted our conversation, told me Tim wanted me to call him, insisted Tim was worried about me, and said Tim would want me to know that Red Robin might be interested.ā
Tim rubbed the back of his neck. āThe pronouns became difficult to manage.ā
You laughed again, and the tension in his chest loosened enough for him to breathe. Then your laughter faded.
āYou lied to me.ā
The words were quiet, and Timās relief vanished. āYes.ā
āYouāve been lying for years. Every time you disappeared, you told me you were working.ā
āI often was.ā
āYou came to my apartment with a knife wound and said you caught yourself on a filing cabinet.ā
āIt was a sharp filing cabinet.ā
āTim.ā
āIt wasnāt.ā
You looked away. Tim wanted to reach for you but kept his hands on his knees. āIām sorry. I wanted to tell you.ā
āWhen?ā
āSeveral times. Before you developed a crush on Red Robin. Iāve wanted to tell you a lot of things, and the identity was only one of them.ā
Your expression became cautious. āWhat else?ā
This was not the setting Tim had imagined. Emergency vehicles filled the street, his shoulder ached where the beam had struck him, and his left wrist was beginning to swell beneath the gauntlet. Several members of his family were almost certainly listening through the comm unit he had forgotten to disable.
Tim switched it off and looked at you. āIām in love with you.ā
You did not move. Tim had anticipated several possible responses, including silence, though he had imagined it would contain more visible horror.
āHow long?ā
āEleven months and approximately three weeks.ā
āYou counted.ā
āI remember when I realized.ā
āWhen?ā
āYou fell asleep in my office.ā
āThat made you fall in love with me?ā
āNo. I think I already loved you. That was when I understood what it was.ā
You watched him, waiting, and Tim explained that it was the night you had stayed late to help him review a community outreach proposal because you knew he would otherwise have worked all night. You had fallen asleep on the couch, and when he finished, he realized he did not want to wake you because then you would leave.
āI sat there for almost an hour without doing anything,ā he admitted. āI just wanted you to stay.ā
Your expression softened. āYou could have told me.ā
āI intended to.ā
āFor eleven months?ā
āI encountered obstacles.ā
āCriminal syndicates?ā
āSome.ā
āAlien invasions?ā
āOne.ā
āAn inability to communicate like a normal human being?ā
āPredominantly.ā
You shook your head, and Tim hurried to defend himself. āI tried to ask you to dinner. I wore a suit, made a reservation, and told you that you looked beautiful.ā
āWe have dinner constantly, you always wear suits, and you make reservations for lunch. You also spent twenty minutes explaining the restaurantās fire-suppression system.ā
āIt was unusually advanced.ā
āI thought you were nervous about the building.ā
āI was nervous about you.ā
Your eyes widened slightly.
āIām not good at this,ā Tim admitted.
āYouāre good at everything. You defeated four armed people ten minutes ago.ā
āThey were considerably easier than telling you I like you.ā
Your mouth curved, though the smile quickly faded. āWhy didnāt you say anything when I told Red Robin I wanted Tim to be jealous?ā
āI almost did, but I didnāt want to reveal my identity because it would make dating me easier.ā
āThat sounds almost noble.ā
āIt was mostly fear.ā
āLess noble.ā
āI know.ā
āWere you actually going to introduce me to someone else?ā
āNo.ā
āThen who was the mysterious intelligent, emotionally unavailable man you wanted me to consider?ā
Tim raised one hand.
You stared at him. āYou were recommending yourself.ā
āI was attempting to.ā
āAs Tim or Red Robin?ā
āTim.ā
āWhy didnāt you simply say that?ā
āI lost momentum.ā
āYou control multinational business negotiations.ā
āThey involve agendas.ā
āIāll prepare an agenda the next time you need to confess something.ā
āThat would help.ā
You laughed softly, then studied him again. Tim waited because he had offered you the truth, or at least the part of it that mattered most. There was nothing left to calculate.
āI liked you first,ā you said.
Tim blinked. āBefore Red Robin?ā
āAbout eight months ago.ā
He searched backward through his memory, naming the museum and a fundraising dinner before reaching the weekend in Chicago.
You smiled. āIt was after you flew to Chicago because I was nervous.ā
āI had a meeting.ā
āYou invented a meeting.ā
Tim hesitated. āLucius told you.ā
āHe mentioned it when I thanked him for rearranging his schedule.ā
āI need to review what Lucius considers confidential.ā
āYou scheduled a meeting, crossed three states, sat through my entire presentation, and bought me dinner afterward because I looked tired. I thought it meant something.ā
āIt did.ā
āBut you never said anything. You spent the rest of the evening discussing quarterly projections, so I decided I had imagined it.ā
āYou didnāt.ā
āSo when Red Robin appeared, he felt easier.ā
āBecause you didnāt know him.ā
āBecause he reminded me of you.ā
Tim stopped breathing.
āHe was awkward and kind,ā you continued. āHe pretended everything he did was logical even when he was obviously worried. He noticed that I was shaking but acted like giving me his cape was a standard procedural decision.ā
āIt prevented heat loss.ā
āExactly.ā
Tim looked at you. āYou liked Red Robin because he reminded you of me.ā
āApparently, I have an extremely specific type.ā
āThat seems statistically unlikely.ā
āYou are never using that word during a romantic conversation again.ā
āI can try.ā
āAnd I didnāt fall in love with Red Robin. I had a crush on him. I was already in love with you.ā
Tim felt the world tilt. āYouāre in love with me? Present tense?ā
āUnfortunately.ā
He stared until uncertainty crept into your smile.
āYouāre allowed to react.ā
āIām processing.ā
āShould I give you a minute?ā
āNo.ā
Tim kissed you. The movement lacked his usual precision: his glove caught in the emergency blanket, his injured wrist protested when he reached for your face, and he nearly collided with your nose because he misjudged the angle. None of it mattered once your hand curled around the front of his suit.
You kissed him back with enough certainty to silence every possibility Tim had spent eleven months calculating. He had imagined slow kisses, careful kisses, and the kind that followed elaborate confessions in perfectly chosen locations. He had never imagined kissing you behind an ambulance while wearing the Red Robin suit and possibly nursing a hairline fracture in his wrist. This was better.
Your fingers slid into his hair, and Tim leaned closer until a horn sounded directly behind the ambulance.
You jumped apart. Nightwing had maneuvered his motorcycle into the narrow space beside the rear doors, where the ambulance shielded him from the officers and guests gathered along the street. He grinned openly while Spoiler, seated behind him, formed a heart with both hands.
Tim considered several crimes.
āThey know?ā you asked.
āThey know everything.ā
āDid they know I had a crush on Red Robin?ā
āUnfortunately.ā
Spoiler raised both thumbs, and you covered your face. Tim gently lowered your hands.
āTheyāll stop eventually.ā
āNo, they wonāt.ā
āNo,ā he admitted. āThey wonāt.ā
āYou let me tell your entire family that I wanted to ask you out.ā
āI did not tell them. Barbara heard part of a conversation.ā
āBarbara?ā
āOracle.ā
Your eyes widened. āIāve met Oracle?ā
āYes.ā
āDick is Nightwing?ā
āI thought you knew that one.ā
āI did. And Stephanie?ā
Tim glanced toward the motorcycle as Stephanie waved enthusiastically. āThatās another conversation.ā
āHow many conversations are we going to need?ā
āSeveral.ā
āDo I get a spreadsheet?ā
āI can make one.ā
āI was joking.ā
āI think it would provide useful structure.ā
You looked at him for a moment before smiling. āI really am in love with you.ā
āIām choosing to interpret that positively.ā
āYou should.ā
Tim touched your cheek, and your gaze lowered to the emblem across his chest. āI canāt believe you were jealous of yourself.ā
āIād prefer that not become a recurring topic.ā
āItās going to become my favorite topic.ā
āI saved your life tonight.ā
āYou also rejected me last night.ā
āIāve reconsidered the policy.ā
āSo you date civilians now?ā
āOne.ā
āVery selective.ā
āShe has unusually strong qualifications.ā
āSuch as?ā
āSheās intelligent, observant, and willing to bring me properly prepared coffee.ā
āYou nearly had a breakdown when I gave it to you.ā
āThat was unrelated to the coffee.ā
āSheās also apparently attractive to both Tim Drake and Red Robin.ā
āThey have identical taste.ā
Tim leaned forward and kissed you before you could continue. You smiled against his mouth.
His wrist still hurt, his shoulder would require treatment, and the police would expect a complete statement about the stolen technology. Bruce would request a security review, Lucius would ask why another prototype had exploded, and Dick and Stephanie would tell everyone about the ambulance. For once, none of it felt urgent.
You rested your forehead against his. āDoes this mean I get to date both of you?ā
āThere is only one of me.ā
āIāve noticed significant personality differences. Red Robin is more dramatic, and Tim Drake is more jealous.ā
āThey are contextual adaptations, and your conclusion is based on limited evidence.ā
āTim spent an entire lunch trying to sabotage Red Robin.ā
āRed Robin rejected you.ā
āBecause Tim was jealous.ā
Tim kissed you again. It was the most effective method he had found for ending the argument.
Three weeks later, you waited on the library roof with two thermoses of coffee.
Red Robin landed beside you. āYou shouldnāt sit in the camera blind spot.ā
āYou redesigned the security system.ā
āIt still has limitations.ā
āYou installed six additional cameras.ā
āThere are seven.ā
āOf course there are.ā
Tim removed his domino as he approached. He had learned that you preferred to see his face whenever the roof was secure, though you had also told him the mask was unfairly attractive.
He was still processing that information.
You held out one of the thermoses. āOat milk.ā
āI assumed.ā
Tim took it, then noticed the strip of pink tape wrapped around the side. JEALOUS BOYFRIEND had been written across it in Stephanieās unmistakable handwriting, accompanied by a badly drawn red bird.
He looked at you.
You smiled innocently. āSteph labeled them.ā
āYou allowed her to.ā
āI tried to stop her.ā
āNo, you didnāt.ā
āNo,ā you admitted. āI didnāt.ā
āI told you that topic should not recur.ā
āI rejected the request.ā
āI rejected the characterization.ā
āYou sulked for two days because I said Nightwing had nice hair.ā
āI did not sulk.ā
āYou created a list of practical disadvantages associated with long hair during combat.ā
āIt presents a legitimate vulnerability.ā
āYou sent me diagrams.ā
āThe diagrams illustrated the point.ā
āYou were jealous.ā
āNightwing is my brother.ā
āThat made it funnier.ā
Tim sat beside you, and your shoulder settled against his, warm and familiar. The city moved below, full of emergencies that would eventually demand his attention. For the moment, the streets surrounding the library were quiet, his comm remained silent, and no one was calling for help.
You took a drink and looked at him thoughtfully.
āWhat?ā
āIām trying to decide which version of you I like better.ā
Tim gave you a flat look. āThere are not multiple versions.ā
āTim buys me dinner.ā
āRed Robin prevents armed robberies.ā
āTim owns several buildings.ā
āRed Robin has a motorcycle.ā
āTim lets me choose his ties.ā
You took another sip and pretended to consider the matter carefully. āRed Robin wears leather.ā
āItās reinforced polymer,ā Tim corrected automatically.
āAnd Red Robin has thighs.ā
Tim stared at you. āTim has the same thighs.ā
You smiled into your coffee, and heat rose along his face.
āYouāre doing this deliberately.ā
āI am.ā
āYou know I can leave.ā
āYou wonāt.ā
āI have patrol.ā
āYou changed your route to stop here.ā
āThis area requires attention.ā
āYou redesigned the libraryās security system, arrested every active criminal within six blocks, and convinced the city to replace the streetlights.ā
āThe previous lighting was inadequate.ā
āYouāre here because you love me.ā
Tim looked out over Gotham before turning back to you. āYes, I am.ā
You kissed his cheek, and his irritation disappeared immediately.
āYouāre my favorite,ā you said.
āBetween Tim and Red Robin?ā
āBetween everyone.ā
Tim turned fully toward you. āYou should have led with that.ā
āI thought you preferred accurate comparative analysis.ā
āI do.ā
āThen youāll be pleased to know you won by a significant margin.ā
āAgainst myself?ā
You smiled. āApparently you finally defeated the competition.ā
Tim kissed you before you could laugh. This time, when you smiled against his mouth, he did too.
credit to @uzmacchiato for the cherry divider ā¤ļøš
Damian Wayne with a sleepy!reader?! You two met at school. An unusual pair but grew close quickly. He had trouble letting you in but you broke past those cold walls.
He invites you over, to watch a movie. It's an afternoon and the sun warms both of you up it slips past his curtains. You stares at you more than the computer. Enamoured by how the sun makes your skin glow. he could stay here forever except you got thirsty.
He went to go fetch you glass, shaking in the kitchen. He's never felt this way before like how you make him feel. Like he could love. he's never learnt how but for you he would do anything.
He makes his way back to see you laying on your side, with your mouth open. He rushes to your side, thinking how could he lose his beloved so early on. Just when he's promised himself to learn love.
You shift and asked him why he woke you up.
After that incident, he's become more wary that you like naps. he gave you an open invite to his bed, lap and heart. Always covers you and is prepared for when you wake up. Snacks, water and hugs if you wake up in a bad mood.
If anyone as so much as breathes next to you, he will (quietly) lose his bearings. How dare some fool disturb his loved one.
"sweetheart, are you sure you don't want to wear a different coat?" bruce asked. he had been trailing behind you as you tore both closets apart in pursuit of warmth.
you had decided on his navy coat. the one with italian-imported cashmere, hand stitched hemming, and too many visits to the tailor for alterations. you'd sworn up and down it was "so extra" when he first commissioned it.
"no, i do not, honey." you replied, a tad bitterly.
stubbornness. that was great.
bruce tried to keep the edge out of his voice, "what about that jacket you bought inā"
"none of mine fit me." you snapped, slipping the coat on. "maybe you should have put more thought into that before getting me pregnant, bruce."
"that's..." bruce let out a long sigh as he rubbed his temple. he gave a moment's consideration to his words before he spoke again, "y/n. i love when you wear my clothes, you know this. it's just..maybe we should look for a different coat? that color doesn't really go with your outfit anyways. fault of the coat of course."
"i don't care if the coat matches my outfit or not! i'm about to have a baby in like three weeks. so long as something fits and is warm, fashion is the least of my worries."
bruce's jaw worked for a moment before he let out a small disbelieving laugh, "baby, you cared yesterday.."
"yes, well, that was yesterday." you muttered as you shoved your hands into each respective pocket of the coat.
bruce visibly winced, which you raised your eyebrows at.
"if you're hiding your burner phone in here, you should have found a betterā" the words died on your tongue as your fingers closed around something small in one of the pockets. you glanced at bruce.
he stared back with a small grimace on his face, his lips pursed into a thin line.
you pulled the little object out before staring at it.
a square...box.
oh.
oh.
a ring box. in your favorite color.
you let out a gasp as you hurriedly looked back at bruce. he stared at the box for a moment more, an "oh well" expression blossoming across his features.
bruce met your eyes finally. "i was going to get a different boxā"
you made haste shoving the box back into the jacket pocket before he could completely begin his tangent. "maybe we should look for another coat," you said, slipping it off and handing it off to him.
bruce smiled as he took the coat back from you, holding back a laugh, "you think?"
"yeah. this one doesn't go with my outfit."
note: bruce wayne who can't keep his soon-to-be-wife out of the loop for long, so he immediately starts spilling every thought he's had and every step he's taken during the proposing process to her the moment she finds out š„¹
š¬š®š¦š¦šš«š²: roy calls you at 2 am, apparently jason is drunk and needs you
š°šš«š§š¢š§š š¬: 1.1k words, none, fluff, CRACK, sort of part 2 for this, roy is there too, 1 sexual comment, not edited just proof-read š¬
<š: art creds to @quezartt
Youāre currently wearing one of Jasonās Gotham U hoodies (you suspect itās not actually Jasonās) that reaches down to your legs, along with your winter boots. Aside from that, youāre wearing your pyjamas and nothing else.
Youāre absolutely freezing your ass off, and by the time you barge into the club Roy sent you the address to, you swear youāre on the verge of hypothermia.
You wouldāve told him to fuck off because itās literally two a.m. But he called with Jasonās phone, and told you to come right now.
You need to come. Itās Jason.
Your heart absolutely stopped for a second. What? You canāt even hear your own voice.
He laughs. Nothing serious. Heās just worried youāre hungry.
Huh? Your voice is still raspy from sleep.
Just come.
So now youāre here, climbing the stairs to the VIP lounge. And itās just your luck that someone is guarding the door.
He scans you up and down, then shuffles a bit closer to block the entrance.
"Hi, um, my friends are inside waiting for me."
He raises a brow. "Sure.ā
"Yeah," you insist. "Roy and Jasonā"
His face falls. "Youāre Jasonās girl?"
"Sorry?" You blink twice. "What do you meanā"
But youāre interrupted for a second time. You frown and check your phone again, to see if there are any missed calls. Thereās not.
The man turns around and taps his earpiece. A moment later, he spins back to you, smiling brightly. "You can absolutely come in." He opens the door for you. "Jasonās girl."
You mumble a thanks, still very weirded out by the whole experience.
The second you step inside, all eyes snap to you. Granted, there are only five other people besides Roy and Jason, but itās still very weird for everyone to be tracking your movements and whispering to each other.
You ignore the stares and make your way to the boysā table in the corner of the room. Just where Jay wouldāve chosen itā away from any potential threats.
"Roy! Jason!" you call.
Jason is rambling to Roy, waving his hands around and smiling brightly. But the second he hears you, his whole body freezes. Even his hands stop mid-gesture. His pretty green eyes immediately start scanning the room until they land on you.
And then he waddles. He waddles toward you. His movements are clumsy as he tries to grab you, nearly walking straight into a decorative plant.
"Baby!"
You catch him just as heās about to collapse on top of you. Struggling to support his weight, you try to steady him.
He lets you. Then he picks you up.
He kisses you on the nose, and all you can do is blink in confusion before he throws you over his shoulder.
"Jason?" you whisper-yell. "Put me down right now."
"Nuh-uh." He sounds smug. "Canāt."
The world flips again as he plops you down beside him on the velvet couch. Now youāre sandwiched between the two of them.
You look at Roy, raising a brow. "What did you even give him?"
He smirks, raising his hands innocently. "He said he could handle it."
Jason is playing with your hair. He tugs on a strand before curling it around his index finger.
"Why is everyone looking at us?"
Roy laughs, bright and loud. "Jason couldnāt stop telling everyone about you. The cocktail guy, theā"
"Bouncer?"
He snaps his fingers. "Yeah." Roy grins. "You know, I thought he'd eventually run out of facts."
You blink. "Facts?"
"Oh, yeah." He starts counting on his fingers. "You brush your teeth for ten minutesā youāre a psycho for that, by the way. You like your toast overly done. You cry at movies, even if theyāre not sad. Heās dissected the meaning of all of your favourite songs...ā
Youāre too dumbfounded to properly answer. Roy continues.
"You apparently have the prettiest smile in the tri-state area."
Jason nods solemnly. "It's true."
Roy whistles. "He's got it bad."
Jason is still playing with your hair. "Youāre so pretty."
You turn to him with a smile, brushing his cheek softly. He immediately nuzzles into your touch. "Not as much as you."
He shakes his head. "No, no. Youāre ridiculously pretty. Sometimes"ā he drops his voice, as if youāre sharing some great secretā"when you smile, I forget how to think. Or when you do anything, really."
He wraps an arm around your waist until there isnāt even an inch of space between you. You can feel every line of his body, the hard muscle beneath his clothes. "My pretty, pretty girl."
You place a soft kiss on his lips. "I love you, Jay."
"And you also make me really hard."
Royās laughter is impossible to ignore. He slams a hand on the table, wheezing as he mumbles something between fits of laughter. You see him fumble for his phone out of the corner of your eye.
"Yesterday, for example, when youā"
"Jason," you say sternly.
His face falls. "Donāt be mad at me." Heās frowning now, his big green eyes glossy and wide.
You cup his face. "Iām not angry, baby."
"Oh, okay." He nods slowly. "Iām sorry I told Roy you snore."
"I do notā"
Roy nudges your shoulder. "According to Jason, you do."
Jason nods matter-of-factly. "When I canāt sleep, I listen to you breathe. So yeah. You snore."
Your heart pounds in your chest, steady and hard. You want to kiss him. Not just his lips. Everywhere.
Because who decided kisses on the lips were the most intimate? Youād kiss every scar, every freckle, every crook of his beautiful body. You want to worship him with kisses.
"And you make me soup," Jason continues, completely oblivious to the look of pure love on your face.
Roy blinks. "Okay?"
Jason sighs dramatically. "Not canned soup. Actual homemade soup she spends time and effort making."
"Congratulations.ā
He rolls his eyes. "You donāt get it." Then his eyes find yours, unwavering. "But you do. You get me, and you love me."
"Of course I do, Jay.ā You smile softly.
Jason smiles before resting his head in the crook of your neck. His eyes flutter shut as you run your fingers through his hair. "Youāre my definition of an angel."
The next morning, Jason wakes up with a killer hangover and his entire body wrapped around you.
Then he bumps into Roy in the kitchen. He dies of embarrassment the second Roy holds up his phone to show him something.
The video shows nothing but the club ceiling, dim lighting, and red velvet. The audio, however, is crystal clear.
What if sheās hungry?
Jason physically cringes at the sound of his own whiny, worried voice. Heās never drinking again. Roy is barely holding in his laughter, the phone slightly shaking.
Sheās an adult, man.
She forgets to eat. Thereās a frustrated grumble. I canāt unlock my phone. Stupid numbers. A brief shuffle. The password is her birthday. You call her.
Jason wants to crawl into the Lazaurs Pit and disappear.
Batfam x Neglected Spider!Reader
Pairing: GN!Reader x Miguel O'hara
It had been 5 years since that night, since you had seen your family. However, after a rather unfortunate event, you are taken back to the city of Gotham and forced to see them again, with your husband alongside you.
Disclaimer(s): Canon typical violence, mentions of neglect, strained relationships with family, angst galore, more to be added
Based off this idea
Rewrite
Prologue | ćSomeone I Have Loved, But Never Knownć
Ch 1 | ćFor We're All That We Needć
Ch 2 | ćWanna see you, wanna see you but I gotta resistć
Ch 3 | ćThe Dark Sea Gets Deeper As You Approachć
āall my friends in love and i'm the one they call for a third wheeling.ā
summary - you and john tucker hate each other. this was a problem considering youāre basically in the same friend group. you didnāt really know where this animosity came from, itās just always been there. your relationship almost feels like a big fight where none of you know why or how it started, but youāre both too stubborn to let it go. Itās like the mere thought of him makes you irritated. you hate being around him and try avoiding him at all costs. Itās pretty much impossible though when your best friends are dating his best friends. because of this, you have to be around him quite a lot. you hate seeing him and he hates seeing you. or, thatās what you thoughtā¦. Ėį²š¼ā
contents- black!fem!reader (but anyone can read ofc!), cursing, use of y/n, suggestiveness, crack, fluff, slight angst.
Some people met theirs at six years old. Others died without ever learning their name. Plenty divorced them. Plenty married someone else entirely. There were support groups, government registries, psychologists who specialised in soulbonds, and entire supermarket aisles dedicated to products designed around them.
Soulmates werenāt fairy tales. They were biology. Or fate, depending on who you asked.
An overwhelming majority of the population shared pain. 75%, according to the latest census.
A scraped knee here became a scraped knee somewhere else. A headache echoed across cities. Broken bones were shared. Childbirth had become an odd source of sympathy from complete strangers who suddenly found themselves doubled over in agony while their soulmate was on the other side of the world.
The remaining 25% wereā¦ stranger.
Shared dreams. Shared senses. Shared emotions. Occasionally something so rare that medical journals spent decades trying to categorise it.
Writing was common enough to earn its own chapter in school textbooks.
Anything written directly onto one soulmateās skin would appear on the otherās moments later. Ink. Paint. Marker. Charcoal. Anything that bonded to skin.
The world adapted.
The first time a corporate lackey woke up with eyeliner because their soulmate had gone clubbing the night before, an industry had been born.
Make-up companies sold soulmate-safe eyeliner, lipstick, sports chalk, and any makeup that used synthetic compounds specifically designed not to transfer across writing bonds.
But it cost a shit tone more than the ordinary stuff, so most people didnāt bother.
It was just another part of life.
Damian Wayne had never considered himself lucky. He simply acknowledged facts.
His soulbond was uncommon, but it suited him.
Charcoal had always stained his fingertips. From the time he was old enough to hold it properly, heād sketched anatomy, architecture, animals, weapons, portraits.
His mother insisted observation was as important as combat. His grandfather insisted beauty existed to be conquered.
Damian decided beauty should simply be understood.
As his sketchbooks multiplied, so did the messages.
A doodle across his wrist. A rough smiley face. Practice strokes. Sometimes things he assumes to be his soulmates friendās crude humor. Occasionally an absent-minded note written during lessons somewhere across the globe.
He never replied.
Not because he lacked curiosity. He was plenty curious.
But curiosity was a weakness.
That lesson had been taught long before he could remember learning it. The League did not celebrate soulmates. They acknowledged them.
A soulmate was another variable. Another vulnerability. Another weapon waiting to be used.
Children raised within the League were instructed never to trust the bond. Never to assume affection. Never to reveal themselves first.
If your soulmate became known to your enemies, they ceased being a blessing and became a target.
His grandfather called them leverage. His mother called them responsibility. Neither called them love.
By the time Damian was ten, heād already concluded that the outside world was naĆÆve.
Children giggled over mysterious wounds appearing on their arms. Teenagers filled notebooks trying to guess who was on the other side. Adults got tattooed to find the other before theyād ever exchanged names.
Ridiculous. Your soulmate was simply another person. Potentially useful. Potentially dangerous. Nothing more.
Then Father took him to Gotham. The city believed in soulmates just as readily as it believed in monsters.
Robin learnt pretty quickly that civilians asked too many unnecessary questions.
āHave you met your soulmate?ā
āWhat bond do you have?ā
āIs it true you bats donāt have soulmates?ā
He ignored every one.
His bond remained hidden beneath gloves, sleeves and armour. His teammates knew he possessed one, none knew which.
Which was intentional.
Dick guessed shared pain, trying to bond with him. Drake theorised dreams. Todd insisted it had to be shared aggression.
Damian allowed the misunderstanding to continue. Knowledge was power, there was no reason to surrender it.
Besides, his soulmate had never written anything worth answering.
Not yet.
Youād spent most of your childhood convinced you were defective.
Not in the way children sometimes decided they were adopted because their parents said no to dessert, no. You thought that something inside of you had been assembled incorrectly.
That fate hadnāt seen your file cause the page accidentally got stuck to anotherās.
Everyone had a soulmate.
It was one of the first things children learnt in school, somewhere between tying shoelaces and basic maths. Teachers would explain the different soulbonds with colourful diagrams while students excitedly compared scraped knees and odd dreams.
āI saw them by the ocean last night!ā
āMy soulmate likes spicy food.ā
āI broke my arm when I was five because my soulmate fell out of a tree.ā
Children always had stories. You never did.
No mysterious bruises. No shared dreams. No sudden cravings. No inexplicable emotions. Nothing.
At first your parents smiled. āTheyāre probably just a late bloomer.ā āSome bonds take longer to show.ā āJust wait.ā
So you waited.
You turned seven. Nothing.
Eight. Nothing.
Ten. Still nothing.
Eventually your parents stopped saying, āJust wait.ā And started booking appointments instead.
Doctors asked endless questions. Had you ever blacked out unexpectedly? Experienced vivid dreams? Random pain? Hearing voices? Objects appearing? Writing?
You answered no so many times it became automatic.
Test after test came back blank. There wasnāt anything medically wrong with you.
āSymptoms usually present in early childhood,ā one specialist explained gently while flicking through your file. āItāsā¦ unusual.ā
Unusual.
That was the word everyone preferred. Not broken. Not defective. Just unusual.
Children werenāt nearly as polite.
āWhat do you mean you donāt have one?ā
āEveryone has one.ā
āYou must be lying.ā
Some looked at you with pity. Others with suspicion. One kid had actually asked if soulmates could reject people before they were born.
You laughed along.
Then cried in the bathroom afterwards.
By fifteen, youād stopped expecting anything to happen. Youād accepted it. Maybe fate had really skipped you. Maybe whatever invisible force connected billions of people had simplyā¦ forgotten.
Life moved on. It had to.
School still expected assignments. Friends still invited you out. The world didnāt stop just because yours felt slightly emptier than everyone elseās.
There was only one strange thing.
Your fingers.
Every now and then theyād end up stained a dusty grey-black. Not all of them. Usually just the pads of your fingers. Sometimes the side of your palm.
Like charcoal.
Youād notice it halfway through class or while eating dinner.
āā¦Huh.ā
Youād scrub at it absent-mindedly. Soap didnāt work. Water didnāt work. Hand sanitiser didnāt work.
It never smudged onto anything else either. It simply existed. Then itād disappear by the next morning as though itād never been there at all.
You blamed whatever youād touched that day.
Cheap pencils, old books, dust, maybe the graphite from your mechanical pencil had somehow stained your skin.
It wasnāt worth thinking about. There were bigger things to worry about than mysteriously dirty fingers.
After all, if you actually had a soulmate..
Surely something wouldāve happened by now?
āāāā
The questions never really stopped. They just became less frequent. Less innocent.
Children asked because they were curious. Adults asked because they couldnāt imagine another answer.
āSo..ā a co-worker leaned against the break room counter, stirring too much sugar into their coffee. āHave you met your soulmate yet?ā
You smiled automatically. āNo.ā
āThey overseas or something?ā
āMaybe.ā
āLong-distance must suck.ā
āI wouldnāt know.ā
They laughed.
You laughed too. It was easier. People preferred believing your soulmate was somewhere out there rather than accepting you might not have one at all.
The truth made them uncomfortable.
Eventually the conversation drifted elsewhere. It always did. Youād become good at redirecting it. Years of practice had a way of doing that.
Nowadays, the mention of soulmates barely stung. It was more like pressing on an old bruise. Tender, but manageable. Something youād learnt to live around.
Your phone buzzed. A message from a mate.
Movie tonight?
You smiled.
Only if youāre buying popcorn.
Hell no.
Then no deal.
A few more messages followed before the conversation inevitably dissolved into memes and poorly edited reaction images.
Normal.
Wonderfully, painfully, normal.
You slipped your phone into your pocket and reached for your bag.
Halfway there, you paused.
āā¦Seriously?ā
Grey-black dust coated the tips of your fingers again.
You rubbed your thumb over your index finger. Nothing came off.
āMustāve touched something.ā You couldnāt even remember saying it aloud anymore. It had become a habit.
See charcoal ā Blame the environment ā Move on.
You grabbed your bag anyway. By tomorrow morning itād be gone. It always was.
Outside, the city carried on around you. People hurried between work and home. Couples argued over dinner plans. Parents held childrenās hands as they crossed busy streets.
A teenager absent-mindedly scribbled something across their forearm while waiting at the lights, grinning when fresh handwriting appeared beside it a heartbeat later.
Their soulmate had replied.
Lucky them.
You looked away before they noticed you staring. There was no point wondering what it felt like. Youād made peace with the fact that youād probably never know.
Or at least, youād gotten very good at pretending you had.
Jason had made every news station in Gotham before breakfast.
Damian hadnāt intended to watch it. Heād walked into the kitchen cause Alfred had insisted everyone eat together while they were all in Gotham, only to find the tv already running quietly in the corner. A familiar image occupied nearly every channel. Red Hood disappearing across a rooftop. The freeze-frame paused just as the damaged plating along his hip shifted enough to expose black ink beneath.
A soulmark.
The reporters seemed incapable of discussing anything else.
āThe identity of Red Hoodās soulmate remains unknownā¦
ā¦social media has already begun comparing the mark to historical soulmate registriesā¦
ā¦raising renewed questions about whether Gothamās vigilantes are adequately protecting those connected to themā¦ā
Damian looked away before the segment finished.
People had always been intrusive where soulmates were concerned. They asked strangers questions theyād never dream of asking otherwise. When were you meeting them? Were you together? Were you trying? Had you rejected them? Did they reject you? Had they wanted you when they saw you?
It was strange what the existence of a bond entitled complete strangers to know.
Todd hadnāt commented on it once. Neither had Father.
Though, neither needed to.
The manor simply carried on as though nothing had happened, despite the fact every member of the family had undoubtedly seen the footage already.
Alfred served breakfast. Dick complained about the coffee. Tim answered emails between bites without looking up from his phone.
Only the occasional glance toward Jason betrayed that anyone had noticed at all.
Damian appreciated that.
If the mark had belonged to him, he would have expected the same courtesy.
āāāā
He found himself wondering whether his soulmate had seen the broadcast.
Statistically, they probably had. Everyone watched the news after a vigilante was involved.
Would they have recognised the mark for what it was? Would they have wondered what sort of person belonged to Red Hood? Would they have imagined someone dangerous?
The thought irritated him more than it should have.
His soulmate had no reason to concern themselves with another personās bond. Their attention belonged elsewhere.
His gaze dropped, almost unconsciously, to the inside of his own wrist.
Nothing.
No fresh handwriting wound around his skin. No absent-minded doodles.
Nothing had appeared there in years.
When he was young, the messages had arrived often enough that he eventually began expecting them.
Never on a schedule or enough to establish a pattern. Just, frequently enough that every few weeks he would wake to find unfamiliar handwriting stretching across his arm.
Are you there?
Sometimes that was all. Other times there was more.
Todayās been really bad.
I donāt want to be by myself right now.
The handwriting had always been clumsy.
Large letters that struggled to stay in straight lines, becoming neater with every passing year as childish motor skills gradually matured into something steadier. Occasionally there would be little smudges where the side of a hand had dragged through still-wet ink.
He had read every message.
Yet he had never answered one.
At the time, the decision had been obvious.
The League did not encourage soulmates. They acknowledged their existence because denying reality served no purpose, but sentiment had never held any value there. Your soulmate represented another avenue through which enemies might reach you. Another weakness to be managed.
Replying achieved nothing.
Years later, Father had reached the same conclusion for entirely different reasons.
Bruce had never instructed him not to respond, but he had agreed that anonymity offered protection. A soulmate nobody could identify was a soulmate nobody could target.
Objectively, Damian knew he had done the correct thing. Which only made one question increasingly difficult to dismiss.
Why had they stopped?
They had simplyā¦ disappeared. The last message had appeared years ago. Nothing after that.
No questions. No frustrated scribbles written during boring classes. No childish attempts to reach whoever existed on the opposite end of the bond. Just silence.
He had assumed, at first, that they were waiting. Perhaps they expected an answer. When none came, they would eventually try again. They always had before.
Except this time they hadnāt.
It should not have occupied his thoughts as often as it did.
People moved on. Children abandoned imaginary friends. Adults stopped believing in impossible things. Perhaps they had simply reached an age where writing to someone who refused to acknowledge them became embarrassing.
A reasonable conclusion.
One he found himself disliking more every time it occurred to him.
Because that implied they had given up.
On him.
Damian closed the sketchbook resting on his desk with more force than intended. The sound echoed briefly through his room before the manor settled back into its usual quiet.
He remained staring at the cover for several long moments.
He had done exactly what he was taught.
Exactly what logic dictated.
Exactly what would keep both of them safest.
So why did it feel strangely.. wrong that they had finally listened?
Your parents used to joke that they had never really known privacy.
If your father stubbed his toe in the kitchen, your mother would wince from the garden. If your mother caught the flu, your father would spend the week curled beneath blankets beside her, feverish despite never catching the virus himself.
Broken bones, headaches, paper cuts, childbirth. Nothing belonged to just one of them. The pain had always been shared.
But in a way, so was relief.
You grew up watching them laugh over bruises that appeared in matching places, your father kissing your motherās scraped knuckles that had never touched the pavement because he had been the one to fall.
They carried each otherās suffering so naturally that neither of them seemed to remember there had ever been a time when they hadnāt.
āThatās what soulmates do,ā your mother would say whenever you asked.
āNo one hurts alone.ā
It was spoken like a promise. A fact as certain as gravity. As ordinary as breathing.
You believed it. Everyone did. Then, slowly, your parents stopped talking about your soulmate.
First, they stopped asking whether anything new had appeared. Then the appointments became routine instead of hopeful. Then they stopped mentioning them altogether.
Your father buried himself in research.
Your mother lingered outside your bedroom more often than she used to.
One night, you woke to voices drifting through the hallway.
āā¦there has to be something they missed.ā
āThey didnāt.ā
āTheyāre wrong.ā
āTheyāve repeated every test.ā
āTheyāre still wrong.ā
Silence.
Then your motherās voice, barely louder than a whisper. āWhat ifā¦ā
Another silence, longer this time.
āWhat if there isnāt anyone?ā
You had never heard your father shout before. āThere has to be!ā
āThere doesnāt.ā
His voice cracked. āDonāt.ā
āYou know itās possible.ā
āNo.ā
āIf theyāre right..ā she whispered. āā¦then one day theyāll get hurt, and no one will feel it with them.ā
The house fell silent.
You stared at the ceiling until morning.
After that, something changed. Your parents still loved each other. They still loved you. But grief settled into the spaces between them.
Your father refused to accept the diagnosis. He found specialists halfway across the country, obscure researchers overseas, experimental studies no one had ever heard of. Every answer that came back the same only convinced him the question hadnāt been asked correctly.
Your mother went with him every time. But eventually even she had stopped believing that there would be a different answer.
When she stopped asking for another opinion, your father never forgave her for it.
Years later, they divorced.
Two people who loved each other deeply enough to share every wound, discovering there was one pain they couldnāt carry together.
You.
Neither of them blamed you.
They looked at you with the same expression people reserved for tragedies no one had caused.
You grew older. Doctors wrote papers about you. Researchers asked for blood samples. Every form returned with the same impossible conclusion.
Inconclusive.
You tried telling yourself it didnāt matter. People survived without parents. Without friends. Without homes. You could survive without a soulmate.
Except no one else ever had. Not once. There hadnāt been a single case of someone born without a soulmate ever.
You werenāt unlucky. You were impossible. And impossibilities werenāt supposed to exist.
Sometimes youād catch your parents looking at you when they thought you werenāt paying attention.
You couldnāt tell if it was disappointment, resentment, or grief.
You stopped wondering why fate had forgotten you.
It followed you through school. Through birthdays. Through every doctor who couldnāt explain you. Through every pitying glance. Until, one day, it stopped sounding like fear.
It simply sounded true.
You should have never been born.
The food on the plate in front of you had gone cold a long time ago.
Youād bought it mostly to justify occupying the table, pushing fries around the paper tray more than actually eating them.
Around you, the food court buzzed with the usual afternoon crowd. Children tugged exhausted parents toward the dessert stands. Teenagers laughed too loudly over shared drinks. Somewhere nearby, someone dropped a tray, followed immediately by the chorus of sympathetic groans from strangers.
You were halfway through convincing yourself to leave when a shadow fell across your table.
āMind if I sit here?ā
You glanced up.
Whoever this person is was about your age, maybe a little older. Attractive enough that a few nearby heads had already turned in their direction before looking away again.
āThere are plenty of empty tables.ā
āThere are.ā They smiled easily. āBut you are sitting at this one.ā
You stared for another second before giving a small shrug. āIf you want.ā
They slid into the seat opposite you without hesitation.
For a while, neither of you spoke.
You expected the silence to become awkward. Instead, they stole one of your fries.
āYou werenāt eating them.ā
āI was considering it.ā
āWell, now you have to. Canāt let me win.ā
A laugh escaped before you could stop it. It surprised both of you.
Then they were grinning. āI knew you could smile.ā
You rolled your eyes, though there wasnāt much annoyance behind it.
This person was.. easy. Felt like the sort of person who filled silences without suffocating them.
Conversation came pretty naturally after that. Nothing particularly important. Complaints about the shopping centre. The impossibility of finding decent coffee. A movie neither of you had actually finished despite insisting youād eventually get around to it.
It was pleasant. Dangerously so. You caught yourself relaxing.
Then your phone buzzed and you caught the time.
āI should get going.ā
āSo soon?ā
āIāve got things to do.ā
āFair enough.ā They stood as you gathered your things, rocking back on their heels for a moment before patting their pockets.
āDamn.ā
āWhat?ā
āI donāt have any paper.ā
āā¦Congratulations?ā
They laughed. āI was trying to ask for your number.ā
āOh.ā
You hadnāt expected that.
āI meanā¦ā They rubbed the back of their neck sheepishly. āYouāre hot. So I thought Iād at least give it a shot.ā
You hesitated just long enough for them to snap their fingers.
āIāve got an idea.ā
Before you could ask what they meant, they reached for your wrist, uncapping a pen theyād pulled from their pocket.
āYou donāt mind, do you?ā
Without really waiting for an answer, they turned your arm over and, with surprisingly neat handwriting, scribbled a phone number across the inside of your forearm.
The pen tickled against your skin.
āThere,ā they said, clicking the cap back on. āNow you donāt have an excuse.ā They winked, gathering their things.
You looked down automatically to the black ink stretching across your forearm.
Their name: Ash. Their number: 0401 863. āCall meā written smaller underneath.
It should have been nothing. Just ink. Just another stranger taking a chance.
Instead, it made your chest tighten. For a fleeting, impossible second, your mind brought up a memory your body hadnāt forgotten.
Small hands. Crayon pressed too hard against skin.
Are you there?
Another message.
Please answer.
Another.
I think somethingās wrong with me.
You blinked hard.
The memory vanished as quickly as it had come.
āā¦You okay?ā
You looked back up, forcing a smile that didnāt quite reach your eyes.
āYeah.ā
Your fingers unconsciously drifted over the fresh ink. āI justā¦ā
You couldnāt explain why seeing words on your arm suddenly made your chest ache.
āā¦havenāt written on myself in a very long time.ā
The afternoon was loud. Far too loud for Damianās liking.
He sat at the edge of the group, his posture perfect, expression a mask of practiced indifference. Public outings required a level of restraint that felt unnatural to him.
Dick was laughing at something Jason had said, and even Bruce seemed slightly less tense than usual.
Damian didn't care about the noise. Or about the conversation. He was mostly preoccupied with the sensation of the sunlight hitting his forearms. For the first time in years, he wasn't wearing the long sleeves or the tactical gloves he used to shroud his skin.
He had decided, with a cold sort of logic, that the bond was dead.
The silence from his skin had lasted so long years of nothingness that he had finally accepted the most likely reality: his soulmate had stopped looking for him. You had given up.
He was fine with that. It was efficient.
Then, the sting began.
It wasn't a sharp pain, but a slow, itching warmth, as if a heated needle were dragging across the underside of his left forearm. Damian stiffened. He kept his hands resting on the table, but his heart gave a singular, heavy thud against his ribs.
No, he thought. Not now.
He watched the skin. It started as a faint, dark smudge, then the lines began to bleed through the surface of his flesh, as if an invisible hand were pressing a pen into his muscle.
Dick was the first to notice the change in his posture. "Dami? You okay?"
Damian didn't answer. He couldn't. He was too busy staring at his own arm.
The writing was appearing in elegant, sweeping loops. Cursive. It was beautiful, flowing, and utterly offensive.
Ash
0401 863
Call me ;)
Damianās breath hitched. His eyes scanned the script, his brain overworking with the mechanical speed of a detective.
He knew your handwriting. He had spent a decade studying the messy, jagged print of the messages he had received as a child.
His soulmateās handwriting had always been blunt. Childish, hurried, and unrefined. Youād written in print, scrawled in desperation.
This wasn't it. This was polished. This was intentional. This was the handwriting of a stranger.
Someone had held your arm. Someone had pressed a pen to your skin. Someone had dared to claim a space on a body that belonged, by divine right, to him.
"Whoa," Jason leaned in, his eyes widening as he spotted the dark lines on Damian's arm. "Is that... is that a soulmark? Since when do you have a writing bond?"
The table went silent as the family stared. For the first time in his life, the secret was out. The quiet, private connection he had guarded like a weapon was visible for everyone to see.
"Damian?" Bruce asked, his voice low, laced with a rare note of surprise. "You never said-"
"Be quiet," Damian snapped, his voice cutting through the air like a blade.
He wasn't looking at them. He was staring at the name. It felt like a slur.
Ash
He could feel the phantom sensation of the strangerās hand on his skin, a greasy, intrusive warmth that made him want to scrub his arm until it bled.
It had been years. He had waited in the silence, convinced you had forgotten him, convinced you had moved on to a life where he didn't exist. And then, finally, the silence broke. The bond had screamed back to life after years of dormancy.
But it wasn't a "hello." It wasn't an "are you there?" It wasn't a cry for help.
It was a phone number. It was an invitation. It was a stranger's attempt to steal the only thing Damian was supposed to truly call his own.
His hands curled into fists on the table, his knuckles turning white. The rage was quiet, but it was absolute. Someone was touching you. Someone was talking to you. Someone was trying to take the person who had spent a lifetime writing into the void, waiting for a response that wasnāt coming.
And the response was a stranger's name.
"Damian, you're shaking," Dick said softly, reaching out a hand.
Damian pulled his arm back, tucking it close to his body, hiding the elegant, loathsome cursive from their eyes.
His gaze was dark, focused, and predatory.
The sound of the city became nothing more than a dull roar in the background. Damian didn't hear Bruce's worried voice or Jasonās insensitive joke. He didnāt see Tim and Dickās shared glances. The only thing that existed was the black ink on his skin.
He slid out of the booth, his movements jerky and frantic.
"Damian, where are you going?" Bruce asked, his voice sharp and commanding.
He didn't answer. He couldn't. If he spoke, he was afraid of what might come out.
He stormed away from the table, ignoring the confused looks from his family, and practically ran toward the restroom.
The moment he locked the door behind him, he collapsed against the wall, sliding down until he was sitting on the cold tile. He yanked his sleeve up, his fingers digging into the skin around the words.
Call me ;)
He hated it. He hated the person who had written it. He hated the precision of the cursive, how confident and sure it looked. This was a person who had no idea who they were dealing with. They had no idea that by writing on his soulmate, they had essentially written a death sentence for themselves if he could ever find them.
But as he stared at the ink, the rage began to ebb, replaced by something far worse.
He felt sick.
He felt small.
He hadn't answered his soulmate.
For years, he had read your heartbreaks, your fears, your lonely pleas, and he had met you with sterile, echoing silence. He had waited. He had played a game of patience, convinced that if he just waited long enough, you would eventually find him on your own.
And now you had. You had found someone else.
"You should have kept writing," he whispered, his voice cracking. He pressed his forehead against his knees, his eyes burning. "You should have waited for me."
He felt pathetic. The great Damian Wayne, the heir to the League of Assassins, was currently huddled in a public restroom tearing up over a phone number.
He felt like a child again, the one who would read the messages on his arm and then uselessly try to rub them away with a damp cloth, pretending they never existed, even as he felt his heart break every single time.
He reached for the paper towels on the dispenser and grabbed a handful, soaking them in water. He held his arm out, his hand shaking, and began to scrub at the ink.
At the name.
He rubbed harder. The skin turned red, the water and rough paper scratching at the surface of his flesh. He wanted it gone. He wanted the name to vanish, to disappear as if it had never been written. He wanted the stranger to be erased from existence.
But the ink wouldn't budge.
"I'll find you," he whispered, his voice ragged. "I'll find you and I'll make sure you never forget who you belong to."
He didn't have a plan. He didn't know who the person was or where you were. But as he sat there in the dim light of the restroom, his chest heaving and his arm raw and red, there was a new, sharper purpose in his eyes.
He had ignored you long enough. Now, he would be the one doing the hunting.
The evening had passed in a blur of crowds, train announcements, and familiar exhaustion that settled over Gotham once the workday ended.
By the time you unlocked your apartment door, your attention was fixed on the familia routine. Keys in the bowl beside the entrance. Bag on the chair. Shoes kicked off near the wall.
You were halfway through rubbing at your eyes when something on your arm had caught your attention.
For a moment, your brain failed to make sense of what you were seeing.
The writing was gone.
You stared down at your forearm.
The name that had been written near your wrist had disappeared beneath a thick streak of black ink. The number stretched somewhere underneath it, hidden beneath layer after layer of aggressive, uneven marker.
Whoever had done it had covered the writing completely, obscuring every letter beneath a blown-out dark smear.
A hundred explanations flashed through your head, each more ridiculous than the last. None of them made sense.
Slowly, you turned your arm beneath the light.
The ink stayed where it was. Fresh enough that it still looked almost glossy beneath the overhead lamp.
Your fingers brushed across it. Dry.
You frowned.
The stranger's number should have still been there. You'd checked it at least three times on the train ride home.
Twice because you were considering calling, then again because you couldn't quite believe someone had actually flirted with you so outright.
Now it looked as though someone had taken a marker and buried every trace of it.
Your stomach tightened. Your mind going back years ago.
To one of many small examination rooms. Familiar bright white walls. The smell of disinfectant.
You were eight years old, legs dangling from a chair too tall for you.
"Have you ever tried writing on yourself?" the doctor had asked gently.
You remembered laughing.
Of course you had.
Every kid who hadnāt gotten hurt by another yet did.
You'd covered your arms with marker for years. Names. Questions. Drawings. Entire conversations directed at a person who never answered.
Nothing had ever happened.
The specialists called it unusual. Some forums called it heartbreaking. Or fake.
Your gaze dropped back to the black ink covering your arm. Something had written over that number. Something had responded.
You didnāt feel any excitement. Or hope. If anything, what you felt seemed closer to dread.
Hope was dangerous.
Hope was what had kept your parents scheduling appointment after appointment, convinced the next specialist would finally have an answer. Hope was what left your mother crying behind closed bathroom doors after another inconclusive test. Hope was what taught you, over and over again, that wanting something badly enough didn't make it real.
You'd spent years trying not to care. Years learning how to ignore the empty space where everyone else seemed to carry certainty. One strange mark wasn't enough to undo that.
You pulled your sleeve down over your arm. The black streak vanished beneath the fabric. Better. Safer.
"Means nothing," you muttered.
You didn't believe your own words.
The rest of the evening passed normally enough. Dinner. Dishes. Television playing quietly in the background. The ordinary rhythm of a life that had long since moved on from childhood fantasies.
Yet every so often, your hand drifted toward your covered forearm.
Every time it did, the same feeling returned. An uncomfortable awareness that something had changed. After years of silence, something had finally answered.
And you had no idea whether or not that was a good thing.
āāāā
You shuffled into the bathroom still half asleep, already thinking about getting an energy drink more than anything else.
The mirror was fogged around the edges from the shower running in the neighbouring apartment, and the cold tiles beneath your feet made you wish youād bothered finding your slippers.
You rolled your sleeve up almost absent-mindedly. The black streak was still there.
You reached automatically for the sink, wetting a corner of the hand towel before rubbing experimentally at the edge of the ink.
Nothing.
āFigures.ā The muttered complaint barely left your mouth before something caught your eye.
You frowned. The towel paused against your skin.
You leaned closer to the mirror.
Yesterday, the marker had been solid. Messy, thick, almost violent in the way it covered the strangerās handwriting. Now there was a gap big enough for your skin to show through.
You were certain it hadnāt been there before.
For a ridiculous moment, you wondered whether youād accidentally rubbed some of the ink away on your sleeve.
Then you noticed the line beneath it. Fresh ink.
Your stomach sank. The handwriting wasnāt yours. It wasnāt the strangerās either. The stranger had written in looping cursive, every letter rounded and practiced. This was precise. Almost painfully neat. Each stroke looked deliberate, measured before it had ever touched skin.
Three words.
Donāt call them.
You read them once. Then again. Your eyes drifted over the sentence a third time, as though repetition alone might make it mean something different.
It didnāt. It remained exactly what it had been the first time. An instruction.
Not a greeting. Not a question. Not even an explanation. Justā¦
Donāt call them.
You found yourself looking around the apartment before you could stop yourself. The living room. The kitchen. The locked front door. Empty.
āā¦Okay.ā You laughed under your breath.
Nothing about this was funny, but the alternative felt insane.
Youād spent most of your life wishing something - anything would happen. That one day thereād be a mistake. A delayed bond. An explanation.
Now, standing alone in your bathroom with unfamiliar handwriting on your arm, you wanted a perfectly rational answer more than anything.
Your fingers hovered over the words. Careful not to smudge them. The ink was dry. As though it had been there for hours.
You swallowed.
Then, before you could talk yourself out of it, you walked back into the kitchen, dug through the junk drawer until you found an old biro, and returned to the bathroom.
The tip hovered over your forearm.
You stared at the empty patch of skin beneath the unfamiliar message for nearly a minute.
This was stupid.
You knew exactly how soulmate writing worked.
Or rather, you knew how it was supposed to work.
Children discovered it by accident. Teenagers filled each otherās arms with jokes. Adults stopped because texting was easier. Nobody your age stood in their bathroom writing into empty space. Not unless theyād completely lost it.
āWhatever.ā
The pen touched your skin. Your handwriting hadnāt changed much since childhood.
Still print. Still slightly untidy. Still pressed a little too hard.
Who are you?
You capped the pen almost immediately afterwards.
Nothing happened.
Youād expected as much.
You were already turning away when warmth spread beneath your skin. It wasnāt painful, just unexpected.
You looked down instinctively.
The place beneath your question tingled, the sensation travelling slowly enough that you could follow it with your eyes.
And then Ink.
Not appearing all at once. Growing. One careful letter after another.
The ink surface beneath your skin one deliberate stroke at a time, each line settling into place before the next began. There was no rush to it. Whoever was writing wasnāt hesitating, but they werenāt hurrying either.
Like they knew you would wait.
By the time the sentence finished, your pulse had climbed into your throat.
Donāt accept things from strangers.
You frowned.
That wasnāt an answer.
Your eyes flicked up to the question still sitting above it.
Who are you?
Theyād ignored it completely.
Another line began to appear. The warmth returned beneath your skin, travelling just ahead of the fresh ink.
Donāt let anyone else touch you like that again.
Your eyebrows slowly pulled together. āā¦Thatās what youāre worried about?ā
After everything. After years of nothing. After every specialist, every appointment, every unanswered question.. Whoever was on the other end had apparently decided that the pressing issue was a phone number.
You looked down at the biro still resting in your hand.
It felt strangely inadequate now.
Slowly, you uncapped it again. Your handwriting looked clumsy beside the careful precision of theirs.
You didnāt answer my question.
You hesitated, then added another beneath it.
Who are you?
The reply came quicker this time. Almost immediately.
The familiar warmth spread beneath your skin, and before youād even finished reading your own words, fresh ink had begun to weave itself between them.
That doesnāt matter yet.
The sentence continued without pause.
Tell me whether you called them.
You blinked. āSeriously?ā
The absurdity of it almost made you laugh. That was it? No introduction. No explanation. Not even an acknowledgement that this was impossible. Just another question about someone youād shared fries with for twenty minutes.
Your fingers rubbed absent-mindedly at the bridge of your nose. āThis is unbelievable.ā
You looked back down at your arm. The neat handwriting stared back at you.
You sighed through your nose before writing again.
No.
The ink had barely dried before another reply began. Only two words this time.
Good. Donāt.
You stared at them. The corners of your mouth twitched despite yourself.
āYouāre bossy.ā There was no irritation behind the words. Mostly disbelief.
Youād finally found the person who was supposedly meant to answer every question youād spent half your life asking, and apparently they preferred giving orders instead.
Damian hadn't realised how completely his priorities had shifted until he found himself standing in front of the Batcomputer, staring at an unfinished mission report he'd been pretending to read for nearly ten minutes.
He couldn't remember a single word.
His eyes kept returning to the faded writing winding around the inside of his forearm.
Nine messages. That was all.
It should have been insignificant.
He had exchanged more words with criminals before incapacitating them.
Yet somehow those nine short sentences had managed to uproot routines that had taken years to build.
He read them again.
Who are you?
Don't accept things from strangers.
Don't let anyone else touch you like that again.
You didn't answer my question.
Who are you?
That doesn't matter yet.
Tell me whether you called them.
No.
Good. Don't.
His thumb brushed unconsciously across one of the final words. Good.
It shouldn't have brought him relief.
But it did. An almost embarrassing amount.
The stranger had failed. You hadn't called them. Whatever smile you'd given that person, whatever polite conversation you'd entertained, whatever curiosity theyād mistaken for interest had ended there.
You had chosen not to continue it.
Damian hadn't realised how tightly he'd been holding himself together until that single word had loosened something inside his chest.
Not enough. Never enough. But enough that he could breathe again. For the first time since your messages appeared.
Then the relief faded. Because relief left room for thought. And thought was infinitely crueler.
Someone else had reached you first. Someone else had stood close enough to touch your wrist. Someone else had looked directly into your face. Someone else knew what colour your eyes were.
Damian didn't.
Someone else knew how tall you were. How your voice sounded. Whether you smiled with your mouth closed or laughed loudly enough to turn heads.
Someone else had information Damian should have had years ago.
The irrationality of the thought didn't make it disappear. He understood perfectly well that you hadn't betrayed him.
How could you? You didn't know him.
As far as you were concerned, your soulmate had ignored every message you'd ever written.
Every birthday. Every question. Every lonely evening. Every desperate attempt to find the person destined to answer.
He had been silent.
Not by choice. But silence looked the same from the other side.
He knew that.
If the positions had been reversedā¦ If he had written for years.. If every answer had been met with nothing.. Would he have waited forever?
ā¦
He wanted to say yes.
But he couldnāt.
His hand curled into a fist.
You'd lived an entire life while he wasn't there. Years of mornings. Of birthdays. Of scraped knees, illnesses, graduations, celebrations, disappointments.
Had someone hugged you when things became too much? Who comforted you when you cried? Who celebrated your successes? Who remembered your favourite food? Who knew your drink order? Who made you laugh after terrible days?
Questions multiplied faster than he could suppress them.
Did you live alone? Did you have roommates? Did you lock your doors? Did you own any means of defending yourself? Were you careful walking home at night? Had anyone ever hurt you?
Yesterday had already answered one of those questions.
Yes. Someone had.
Maybe not physically. But someone had ignored your discomfort long enough for you to write to a stranger instead.
To him.
You had reached for someone you couldn't even identify because the people around you hadn't been enough.
That thought settled somewhere deep beneath his ribs. Heavy and permanent.
He looked again at the sentence he'd written. Don't let anyone else touch you like that again.
He hadn't thought before writing it. There hadn't been time. Logic had come afterward. The wording had been possessive. Demanding. Unlike him.
No. Exactly like him. Just... stripped bare.
He closed his eyes. You must have thought he was insane. Some anonymous soulmate who vanished for decades only to return issuing orders. He would have been irritated too.
No.
He would have blocked himself.
Yet...
You hadn't.
You'd argued. Questioned him. Demanded answers. But you hadn't stopped writing.
Why?
Curiosity? Hope? Loneliness? Or had something inside you recognised the same impossible pull clawing through him?
He hated not knowing. He hated uncertainty. He hated relying on something as intangible as fate.
His entire life had been built on eliminating uncertainty. Gather information. Observe.Investigate. Prepare. Control what could be controlled. The League had taught him that. His father had refined it.
The soulbond ignored every single one of those principles.
It had expected him to wait. To trust. To believe.
He had. For years.
Where had it gotten either of you?
You alone in a shopping centre. Him halfway across the city learning about it after the fact.
No. Enough.
He opened his eyes.
The Batcomputer came alive beneath his fingertips. Monitors illuminated one after another, blue light reflecting across his face. Access permissions unfolded without resistance.
Traffic cameras. Retail security networks. Public transport footage. Cell tower data. Facial recognition databases. Search parameters. Time. Location. Shopping centre.
He could hear his father's voice in the back of his mind.
"People deserve privacy, Damian."
Normally, he would have agreed. He would have waited until you chose to reveal yourself. Normally.
Yesterday someone had approached you.
Tomorrow someone else might.
He had spent years believing fate would keep you safe until it brought you together. Yesterday had demonstrated exactly how fragile that assumption was.
For most of his life, Damian Wayne had believed his greatest weakness would be failing his mission.
He understood now that he'd been wrong.
His greatest weakness had a heartbeat.
That somewhere out there, someone was completely unaware that the heir to Batman was already searching every camera in Gotham just to catch a single glimpse of the face he'd imagined since childhood.
His finger pressed the key.
The search began.
āāāā
Finding you hadnāt been particularly difficult. Not once Damian started looking.
The shopping centre gave him a face. The face gave him transport records. Transport records became a place of work. A place of work became an address.
Within four days, he knew more about your routine than you did.
You had a habit of reading while waiting for pedestrian lights to change. You wore headphones without turning any music on whenever you didnāt want strangers talking to you. You checked your pockets twice before locking your front door.
You laughed with your whole face. You rubbed your eyes whenever you became overwhelmed.
You were, Damian decided, catastrophically easy to lose.
And even easier to protect.
The first time he introduced himself, it was as Damian Wayne. Not your soulmate. Just the youngest Wayne.
Professionally interested in one of Wayne Enterprisesā newest projects.
Your company had recently entered into a partnership with Wayne Enterprises.
Youād smiled.
Held out your hand.
Introduced yourself with the same easy politeness you seemed to offer everyone.
Heād looked at your outstretched hand for the briefest moment before taking it.
His fingers closed around yours carefully. Almost reverently.
āSo,ā youād said with an awkward laugh, āI guess weāll be seeing each other a lot.ā
āYes.ā
Youād mistaken the certainty in his voice for confidence.
It wasnāt. It was a statement of fact.
After that, he simplyā¦ remained.
Meetings that didnāt strictly require his attendance somehow did. Business lunches became routine. Coffee would already be waiting on your desk before you arrived.
You only noticed that life had become a little easier.
Financial inconveniences disappeared before they had the chance to reach you.
You thanked luck. Damian thanked himself.
The rest happened so gradually that even you struggled to pinpoint when it had changed.
His hand settled against the small of your back whenever crowds became too dense.
He began walking you to your car after evening meetings.
Your favourite snacks appeared in his office because āyou always steal mine.ā
He started calling you when you worked late.
Then expecting you to answer.
Then asking where you were if you didnāt.
āYou donāt have to keep looking after me,ā youād laughed one afternoon as he wordlessly took the heavier stack of folders from your arms.
āI know.ā
āYou do realise Iām an adult?ā
āI am aware.ā
You smiled, shaking your head. āYouāre impossible.ā
Damian looked at you for a long moment.
No. He thought quietly. Iām simply making up for lost time.
You never noticed the way his eyes lingered on your forearm whenever your sleeves rode up. Or how his expression softened whenever your handwriting appeared there.
The conversations continued. Always through ink. Never in person.
You still didnāt know.
You still believed your soulmate was someone else. Someone you hadnāt met.
Damian intended to keep it that way.
Not forever.
Just until heād repaired everything the years of silence had broken. Until you trusted him without hesitation. Until you looked for him first. Until your apartment felt less like home than Wayne Manor. Until every decision you made instinctively accounted for him. Until loving him became as natural as breathing.
Then, and only then, would he tell you the truth.
By that point, Damian no longer believed it would matter.
Because by then, there would be nowhere else in the world you would ever want to be except exactly where heād spent the years wishing you had always been.
Beside him.
You had skipped breakfast after oversleeping, rushed through the front doors of Wayne Enterprises with your hair still damp, and spent the next four hours buried beneath spreadsheets.
Around noon, someone knocked once on your office door.
You smiled despite yourself. "You came all the way down here for that?"
"You become irritable when your blood sugar drops." He set the bag on your desk with the same care he used when placing files in front of Bruce during board meetings.
"I thought you would appreciate the reminder."
It was thoughtful. You thanked him.
By the second week, he stopped asking if you'd eaten. He already knew.
"I brought lunch."
"I'm actually going out with the accounting department."
"You aren't."
You frowned. "We already planned it."
Damian removed a small container from the paper bag before speaking.
"They rescheduled."
"What?"
"They've been called into an emergency budget meeting."
Your phone buzzed. Every person in the group chat was apologising.
Sorry! Something came up.
Rain check?
You stared at the messages. "...That's weird."
"It happens." Damian placed a pair of chopsticks beside your lunch. "Eat before it gets cold."
You hesitated. Then opened the container.
It kept happening.
Whenever coworkers invited you somewhere, plans somehow dissolved before they happened.
A canceled reservation. An urgent meeting. Someone suddenly calling in sick.
After a while, people simply stopped asking.
It wasn't deliberate. It was just easier to assume you were busy. So lunch became something you shared with Damian.
Every day.
Without either of you ever discussing it.
āāāā
It was raining when you left the office.
Not super hard, just enough to make the pavement shine beneath the streetlights. You shoved your hands into the pockets of your coat and hurried toward the subway entrance, already thinking about the leftovers waiting in your apartment.
"You'll catch a cold."
You didn't have to turn around. "I'll survive."
Damian fell into step beside you, holding a black umbrella over both of you despite the fact that he'd appeared from nowhere. You hadn't seen him leave the building.
"You've said that before."
"I've also survived before."
"That isn't the point."
You sighed. "Then what is?"
"The point is that your zipper is broken."
Instinctively, you glanced down at your coat. The zipper caught halfway, as it always did. You gave it another tug before giving up. "I know. I'll replace it eventually."
Damian's eyes lingered on the torn seam near your wrist. "No."
You frowned. "No?"
"You won't."
"I literally just said I would."
"You said 'eventually.'" His tone remained perfectly even. "That generally means you have no intention of doing it until circumstances force you to."
"You don't know that."
"I do."
Something about the certainty in his voice irritated you.
"You don't get to decide whether I'm going to buy a coat."
"I already have."
You stopped walking. "So that's it?" You laughed once, short and incredulous. "You've decided for me?"
"You require one."
"I require money more."
"You have sufficient savings for the amount you have worked."
"How would you know what my savings look like?"
For the first time since the conversation began, Damian hesitated. Only for a fraction of a second. "It isn't relevant."
"It becomes relevant when you somehow know how much money I have."
"I know enough."
The answer settled uncomfortably in your stomach. You wanted to ask another question. Instead, you started walking again.
Neither of you spoke for the rest of the trip.
āāāā
Three days later, the receptionist downstairs smiled as you entered your apartment building.
"A package came for you this morning."
"I wasn't expecting one."
"It didn't have a return address."
The box was surprisingly heavy.
Inside was a winter coat. Not just any coat. The exact one you'd stopped to look at in a shop window two weeks earlier.
You remembered standing outside the display for maybe thirty seconds before deciding it was too expensive.
You'd never mentioned it to anyone. Not even Damian.
There was no gift receipt.
Nothing except a small envelope tucked beneath the tissue paper.
Inside was a single card.
Your previous coat no longer provided adequate protection. Dispose of it.
No signature. There didn't need to be one.
The coat fit perfectly.
āāāā
"You bought me a coat."
Damian didn't look up from the documents spread across his desk. "I replaced one."
"I never asked you to."
"No."
"I told you not to spend money on me."
"I didn't." He finally looked up. "I spent money on an item."
"...Which you then gave to me."
"Correct."
"So you spent money on me."
"No." His expression remained completely serious. "I spent money maintaining an asset under my care."
You stared at him. "An asset?"
He frowned slightly, as if that wasn't the word he'd intended. "A responsibility."
"I'm not your responsibility."
"You are."
"No, Damian. I'm not."
"You arrived at work soaked twice last week because you refused to replace damaged clothing. You developed a cough yesterday."
"I would've bought one eventually."
"You were cold."
"I said I would've bought one."
"But you didn't." He spoke with the same patient tone someone might use while explaining something obvious to a child. "Intent is meaningless if the outcome remains the same."
You opened your mouth to argue but he continued before you could.
"When Titus refuses to come inside during winter, I don't leave him outside because he wishes to stay there."
"...Did you just compare me to your dog?"
"I compared your behavior."
"No. You compared me."
"I compared two living beings who consistently underestimate environmental hazards."
"One of those living beings is a German Shepherd."
"Yes."
"And the other is me."
"Yes."
He didn't understand why that distinction mattered. You could see it in his face. To Damian, the comparison wasn't insulting. It was practical.
Titus couldn't accurately judge the risk of prolonged exposure to the cold.
Neither, apparently, could you.
The fact that you could speak, hold a job, pay taxes, and argue with him didn't alter the underlying equation in his mind.
Capability wasn't measured by adulthood. It was measured by whether you could reliably keep yourself safe.
He'd already reached his conclusion months ago.
You simply hadn't realised he'd been treating you accordingly.
A few weeks later, you found yourself standing in line behind two coworkers from accounting. They were chatting idly while the baristas rushed through the morning crowd.
"The usual?" the girl behind the register asked as soon as she saw you.
"Yeah, thanks."
She nodded before you'd said another word. "Oat milk latte. One pump vanilla."
You blinked.
"...Sorry?"
"Oat milk latte?" she repeated, already reaching for a cup. "One pump vanilla."
"No, I usually get caramel."
She looked genuinely confused. "You used to."
"I.." You laughed awkwardly. "No, I still do."
She glanced toward another employee behind the espresso machine. "Didn't they change it?"
"They?"
"The gentleman who usually orders for you."
Your smile faltered. "What gentleman?"
"The one who's in here all the time." She frowned, trying to remember. "Dark hair. Gorgeous. Kind of intimidating."
Your stomach sank. "...Damian?"
"That's his name!" She smiled, relieved.
"He said you'd been trying to cut back on sugar. We've been making it that way ever since."
You stared at her. "I never said that."
"Oh."
Her smile dimmed. "I just assumed.." She looked embarrassed. "I thought he was your assistant."
You didn't answer.
You took the coffee she'd already made, murmured a thank you, and walked away before she could apologise.
Halfway across the lobby, you took another sip. It wasn't even bad. In fact.. It tasted exactly the way you expected your coffee to taste.
You couldn't remember when your own preference had changed.
Or whether it ever had.
That Saturday you decided to stop at woolies on the way home.
Your fridge was nearly empty, and for once you had no plans. No meetings. No dinner at Wayne Manor. No texts from Damian reminding you that you'd skipped lunch.
You grabbed a trolley and headed toward the produce section.
Before you'd made it ten feet, someone in the green Woolworths uniform looked up from unpacking a crate of avocados.
"Oh! You're here yourself today."
You smiled politely. "I usually am."
He laughed. "No, your assistant normally collects everything."
The trolley came to a stop. "My assistant?"
"The bloke."
He pointed vaguely toward the online pickup counter.
"Tall. Black hair. Doesn't smile much."
Your grip tightened around the handle. "I... don't have an assistant."
The employee looked between you and the pickup shelves, clearly thinking he'd made some sort of mistake.
"Oh."
A pause.
"I just figured.." He rubbed the back of his neck. "He knows your order off by heart."
"My order?"
"Yeah."
He gestured toward the refrigerated section. "Every Tuesday. Same online pickup. Chicken breast, brown rice, spinach, Greek yoghurt, blueberries, eggs, almonds..."
He kept listing items one after another. Healthy. Measured. Predictable. Almost identical to what Damian packed for lunch whenever he insisted on bringing you food. Nothing like what you usually got.
"You've got one of the easiest orders to pack in the system," he continued with an easy laugh. "Never changes."
You looked down into your empty trolley. "I don't remember ordering any of that."
He blinked. "...Really?"
"I haven't done online groceries in months."
"Oh." His smile returned, uncertain now. "I guess whoever orders for you just has your account."
You wandered the aisles in a daze after that.
You picked up a box of sugary cereal, then hesitated.
Hadn't you loved this?
Or had you only bought it once?
You reached for the frozen buffalo chicken protein pizza.
No. You preferred the greasy cheesy ones.. Didn't you?
By the time you reached the checkout, your trolley contained almost nothing.
A loaf of bread. Milk. Pasta.
You couldn't remember what else belonged in your kitchen. Everything you reached for came with a second thought.
Damian doesn't buy this.
Not I don't like this. Damian doesn't buy this.
Somewhere, without noticing, you'd stopped shopping for yourself and you'd started shopping according to habits that weren't yours.
When you unlocked your apartment later that evening, you opened the pantry and simply stood there.
Brown rice. Herbal teas. Wholegrain crackers. Natural peanut butter. Every shelf was neat. Organised. Restocked.
You tried to remember buying any of it.
You couldn't.
The only thing you were certain of was that Damian liked all of it.
For the first time since you'd met him, a thought occurred to you that made your skin crawl.
You couldn't remember the last decision you'd made that had remained entirely your own.
āāāā
Which doors you were expected to use. Which routes you naturally took through Wayne Enterprises without thinking. Which elevators always seemed to arrive when you were alone, and which ones never did.
It wasnāt obvious enough to call it anything. That was the problem.
If someone had asked you directly whether you were being controlled, you would have said no. You still had your job. Your own apartment. Your own name on the lease. You could leave the building whenever you wanted.
Except you didnāt, not without telling Damian first.
And somehow it had become normal.
It had started as courtesy. You told him when you were heading home so he didnāt āworry about your commute.ā Then it became easier to mention where you were going so he wouldnāt text. Then it became automatic, like checking the weather before leaving the house.
Now, when you didnāt say anything, things got complicated.
A car would be waiting when you stepped outside anyway. A message would arrive asking if youād changed plans.
Once, when youād tried to leave without telling him at all, security had stopped you at the ground floor.
āMr Wayne requested confirmation,ā the guard had said, checking a list he clearly thought you belonged on. āJust routine.ā
You remembered standing there, keycard in your hand, realising you didnāt know when your movements had become something that required confirmation.
You hadnāt argued. There was nothing to argue against that didnāt make you sound paranoid.
So you went back upstairs, and sent Damian a message saying youād āforgotten something.ā
He replied almost immediately.
Good. Youāre learning to check in properly.
You stared at the screen for a long time after that.
The worst part wasnāt the obvious things. It was the gaps.
You told yourself it was coincidence until coincidence became too consistent to ignore.
When you asked Maya, your coworker from accounting, the one person who still occasionally tried to include you in plans, she hesitated.
āI meanā¦ itās always something,ā she said carefully one afternoon over coffee. āYouāre either busy or something comes up right after you say yes. Itās likeā¦ bad timing, constantly.ā
āI donāt cancel things,ā you said automatically.
She gave you a look you couldnāt quite read. āI know. Thatās why itās weird.ā
She didnāt say Damianās name. No one ever did directly when it felt like it might matter.
But it hung there anyway. Unspoken.
The moment you started to properly feel it, really feel it, was the night you tried to stay out late.
It wasnāt even rebellion. It was exhaustion. Youād been at work too long, your head aching, your phone already buzzing with reminders you hadnāt asked for. So when Maya suggested grabbing dinner nearby, you said yes before you could talk yourself out of it.
For once, nothing immediately fell apart.
No cancelled booking. No sudden emergency. No interrupted plan.
You almost relaxed.
Then your phone rang.
Damian.
You stared at the screen for a few seconds before answering.
āYouāre not home,ā he said without greeting.
āIām out.ā
A pause. Not surprised. Measured.
āWith Maya.ā
āYes.ā
Another pause, shorter this time.
āI see.ā
Something in his tone made you feel sick. āI didnāt tell you because I thought it didnāt matter,ā you added quickly. āItās just dinner.ā
āIt matters,ā he said simply.
Then, after a beat: āYouāre deviating from routine again.ā
āIām allowed to have dinner with a friend.ā
āYou are allowed to leave the environment Iāve structured for your stability, yes.ā
You closed your eyes. āThere is no environment youāve structured for me.ā
Silence on the line.
When he spoke again, his voice was lower. āYouāre tired. Your judgement will be impaired tonight.ā
āThatās not your call.ā
āIt is when you donāt recognise your own limits.ā
Something cold settled behind your ribs. Across the table, Maya was watching you now, pretending not to.
āIām fine,ā you said, quieter.
āYouāre not,ā Damian replied.
And then, almost gently, āIāll send a car.ā
āI donāt need one.ā
āYou do.ā
You stood up so abruptly your chair scraped the floor.
āI said no.ā
The line went cold.
āI hear you,ā Damian said.
That should have been the end of it.
Instead, he added: āBut youāre still not staying out late.ā
You stood there holding your phone, realising slowly that he hadnāt threatened you. He hadnāt raised his voice. He hadnāt even argued. He had simply stated the outcome as something already decided.
Maya said your name, cautiously, and you barely heard her..
You werenāt being managed. You were being kept track of. And you were just now realising how much of your life now required permission you didnāt remember giving.
āāāā
The sleek, black sedan pulled up to the curb of the restaurant with a silent, predatory grace. The driver was a man who looked like he had been trained to move without making a sound.
He simply stood by the door, waiting. He didn't look at Maya. He didn't look at the other patrons. He looked only at you, with the expectant, neutral gaze of a handler waiting for a well trained pet to finish its meal.
You felt Mayaās eyes on you, heavy with a mixture of pity and confusion. "Are you.. is everything okay?" she whispered.
"It's fine," you lied, the words tasting like ash. "Just... a long day."
As you slid into the back of the car, the scent of the interior, expensive leather, rain, and that faint, sharp undertone of mint that always seemed to cling to Damianās presence hit you.
The seat was heated, perfectly adjusted to a temperature you hadn't chosen but always found comfortable. The door closed with a heavy, pressurized thud, sealing you into a private, silent world.
You didn't have to check your phone to know he was watching. You could feel the weight of his attention even from miles away.
When you finally reached the penthouse, the lights were dimmed to a soft, amber glow. The apartment was silent, save for the low hum of the climate control. You kicked off your shoes, feeling the sudden, overwhelming urge to just crawl into bed and disappear, but the routine wouldn't allow it.
Damian was waiting in the living area. He wasn't sitting on the sofa like you expected. He was standing by the floor to ceiling windows, a glass of dark liquid in his hand.
He didn't turn when you entered. He didn't need to. He knew the cadence of your footsteps. He knew the exact moment you crossed the threshold.
"You're late," he said. It didnāt sound like a scolding.
"The dinner ran long," you replied, trying to keep your voice steady. You walked past him toward the kitchen, but he moved with a sudden, fluid grace, intercepting your path.
His tall, lean frame cast a long shadow over you. He reached out, his hand moving to your chin, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw with gentle pressure.
His touch was reminiscent of how he handled the high bred hounds at the manor. Firm, possessive, and entirely devoid of the hesitation one might show a peer.
"You look disheveled," he murmured, his eyes scanning your face, searching for any sign of distress, any sign of 'damage' caused by the outside world. "The city is loud, chaotic. It's too much for you. You shouldn't be out there so late, where things are unpredictable."
"I'm not a child, Damian," you said, though the words felt weak even to your own ears.
"No," he agreed, his thumb moving to brush against your lower lip. "You are much more precious than a child. You are.. delicate. You require a specific kind of stewardship."
He leaned in closer, his scent that cool, sharp mint enveloping you. "When you wander without a leash, you get lost. You get tired. You let people like Maya fill your time with trivialities that serve no purpose for your well being."
A shiver ran down your spine. He spoke of your life as if it were a garden he had planted. He didn't see your independence as a virtue, he saw it as a vulnerability.
"I have dinner planned for you tomorrow," he said, his voice dropping to that smooth, harmonic register that usually calmed you, but now made your heart race with a strange, trapped sensation. "Something light. Something that will help you recover from today's.. exertion."
He stepped back, finally releasing you, but the space he left behind felt cold. He turned his gaze toward the window again, the conversation effectively over.
"Go wash up," he commanded softly. "I've already laid out your clothes. The silk ones. They're softer on your skin."
As you walked toward the bedroom, you realised with a sinking heart that he hadn't even asked how your night was. He hadn't asked if you enjoyed the food or if Maya had said anything interesting. He only cared that you had returned to the enclosure. He only cared that his most cherished thing was back where it belonged: within his reach, under his eyes, and entirely under his care.
You felt like a bird in a gilded cage, and the most terrifying part was how much you had started to rely on the bars to keep you upright.
You had found it tucked away in a drawer of a desk in the library at the manor. A drawer you were never supposed to touch, a space meant for his private ledgers.
It was a small, leather bound sketchbook. Looked to be as old if not older than Damian himself.
You had opened it, expecting business notes or tactical maps.
Instead, you found your own soul.
Every "Are you there?" you had scrawled on your skin as a lonely child was there, preserved in his precise, elegant ink. Every "Please answer" was captured in his beautiful, sweeping script. He hadn't ignored you. He had collected you. He had been reading your heart for years, documenting your loneliness as if it were a sacred text.
The notebook slipped from your hands, hitting the thick rug with a dull thud.
Page after page of your own handwriting stared back at you. Preserved.
Every childish question. Every lonely afternoon. Every desperate, humiliating attempt to convince yourself someone might be listening.
You remembered writing most of them.
You remembered crying after some of them.
You remembered eventually stopping.
Your entire life reduced to paper.
"You were always a curious one," a smooth, deep voice drifted from the doorway.
You bolted upright, your heart hammering hard against your ribs. Damian stood there, silhouetted by the warm light of the hallway. He didn't look angry. He didn't look caught. He looked... satisfied.
"You-youāre.." you breathed, the words trembling. "My soulmate..?"
Damian crossed the room, his movements silent and predatory. He didn't stop until he was hovering over you.
He sank to his knees in front of you, reaching out. His fingers tangled in your hair, petting you with that same, terrifyingly gentle devotion he gave to his most prized pets.
"I was observing," he corrected softly, his deep emerald eyes locked onto yours. "I was waiting until you were ready. Until the world had finished bruising you so that I could be the one to mend you."
"You've been mending me?" You let out a breathless, hysterical laugh. "Damian, you've been curating me! The cars, the security, the 'routines'.. you weren't helping me live. You were making sure I didn't wander off!"
"And why shouldn't you be kept close?" He leaned in, his forehead resting against yours.
His scent that cool, intoxicating mint filled your senses, making your head swim. "The world is a jagged, cruel place. It doesn't know how to handle someone as precious as you. They see a person, they see a worker, a friend, a stranger. They don't see the miracle that you are."
"I'm not a miracle," you protested, trying to push his chest away, but your hands felt weak against his lean muscle. "I am a person. I have a life. I have choices."
"You have my choices," he whispered, his hand sliding down to cup your cheek, his thumb stroking your skin with a rhythmic, soothing motion. "And they are all designed for your happiness. Is it so wrong to want to ensure your comfort? To ensure you are fed, rested, and loved without the interference of the mundane?"
He leaned forward and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to your temple. It burned. Felt nothing like the passion youād always hoped for.
"You're sick.." you whispered, the word feeling absurd in the face of his overwhelming tenderness.
Damian pulled back just enough to look you in the eye, a small, boyish grin the one that usually looked charming but now looked devastating touching his lips. "A harsh term. I prefer... devoted."
He stood up, reaching down to take your hand. He didn't pull you, he simply offered his palm, waiting for you to take it. It was an invitation, but you knew it was also a command.
"Come," he said, his voice a warm, melodic hum. "You've had a shock. You're trembling. Let's get you settled. I've had Alfred prepare that tea you like, and the new linens are ready." His voice was calm.
If anything, faintly disappointed when you didnāt move. Like bat-cow had wandered somewhere she wasnāt meant to and now required collecting.
You looked at him. Really looked. For the first time since meeting him, pieces that had never seemed connected began slotting together with nauseating precision.
The lunches. The phone calls. The coat. Your coffee. The security downstairs who somehow always recognised you. The reception staff who smiled before youād spoken. The meetings that always happened to include Damian, regardless of whether they had anything to do with Wayne Enterprises. The quiet, invisible way your life had bent around him until his presence no longer felt unusual.
You couldnāt remember when that had happened. Perhaps that was the point.
āā¦It was you.ā
It came out barely above a whisper. āThe whole time.ā
Damian crossed the room without hurry.
He stopped close enough that you could smell the familiar scent of mint clinging to his clothes. āI had intended to tell you.ā
āWhen?ā
āWhen it no longer frightened you.ā
You laughed. A small, broken sound that didnāt resemble amusement.
āYouāve been lying to me since the day we met.ā
āI omitted information.ā
āYou watched me tell you about my soulmate.ā
āYes.ā
āYou listened while I told you I wished Iād been born normal.ā
His expression changed then. Something softened around his eyes. āI know.ā
āI know,ā he repeated quietly. āI read every one of those thoughts long before you said them aloud.ā
He reached past you, lifting the notebook from the floor with surprising care before setting it back on the desk.
āI remember every message.ā His fingertips rested against the worn leather cover.
āāAre you there?āā
Your breathing caught.
āāPlease answer.āā
You couldnāt move.
āāI think somethingās wrong with me.āā
He recited them without looking.
He already knew them. Every single one.
āI was eight,ā you whispered.
āI know.ā
āI thoughtā¦ā Your voice failed.
āI know.ā
You stared at him. āYou donāt understand.ā
āNo.ā
He looked back at you with complete certainty. āI understand perfectly.ā There was no hesitation. No apology. No shame. āI know what you believed.ā
His gaze drifted briefly toward your forearm before returning to your face.
āI know how often you blamed yourself.ā
He lifted a hand, brushing an invisible crease from your sleeve with the same absent care heād shown a hundred times before.
āI know you stopped buying caramel because I preferred vanilla. I know you only pretend to like herbal tea. I know you sleep better if the room is colder. I know you become overwhelmed when supermarkets are crowded. I know you forget to eat whenever work becomes stressful.ā
A flicker of genuine confusion crossed his face. āI know you better than anyone.ā
āYouāve been watching me.ā
āOf course I have.ā The answer came so naturally that, for a second, it almost sounded ridiculous that youād asked.
āI lost so many years.ā His voice remained even. āI have been correcting that.ā
He looked around the room. At the books on the shelves. The chair by the window. The cup of tea growing cold beside the sofa. Your home.
Then he looked back at you. āI have spent every day since finding you making your life easier.ā He smiled softly. āYou call it manipulation because you insist on imagining the life you had before I arrived.ā He stepped closer. āSo do I.ā
There was no triumph in his expression. Only something devastatingly gentle. āI remember the person who apologised for taking up space. The person who believed fate had simplyā¦ forgotten them.ā
His hand settled lightly against your cheek. āI remember because I was the one reading it.ā
āYou keep looking at everything Iāve done and asking yourself how I could justify it.ā His forehead rested lightly against yours. āYouāve misunderstood.ā
His voice dropped into something almost unbearably soft. āIāve never had to.ā
There wasnāt the slightest doubt in him. Not after the notebook. Not after the messages. Not after so many years. In Damianās mind, heād already spent a lifetime loving you.
The only difference now was that you finally knew his name.
Please comment and reblog :)
13K+ words, 77K+ characters, 1K+ sentences, 1K+ paragraphs, 47 minute average reading time, 1 hour 11 minute average speaking time.
I lowkey really rushed this one to get it out before the end of the month, so I apologise if itās obvious
Bro, something about soundgasm is different, itās a need like I have to listen to it before bed. If you catch me not listening to anything just know that Iām dead and youāre seeing a ghost likeeeešļæ¼
A/n -Ā This series will include content warnings at the start of each chapter, so please be sure to read them before continuing.
Another requested fic that I was veryĀ excited to write! I'll admit, it took a bit of thinking (and some serious back-and-forth with myself) because I really wanted it to feel just right. Fingers crossed it lands the way I imagined x
Expect plenty of emotions, intrigue, a little spice, and lots of domestic Azris shenanigans because who doesn't love a little cosy chaos? :)
As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Your votes and comments mean the world to me <3
A/N: Hello everyone! This is an Azriel x Archeron!half-sister reader series, featuring a slow-burn romance, angst, and possibly a sad ending. Donāt worry, theyāll eventually get together even if it doesnāt have a happy ending. I donāt know how many parts itās going to have. It begins in ACOMAF chapter 24.
Chapters: 35/?
Summary: Y/n Archeron is a cold and sometimes cruel human who was turned fae against her will. As she navigates her life as a fae, she begins developing feelings for Azriel. Having never been in love makes her weary of these new found feelings. Whenever he gets closer than she anticipates, she pushes him away*.
*at least for first 30 chapters, the rest would be spoilers.
Chapter I: Summary: The eldest Archeron half-sister Y/n hates Fae kind, due to tragic past events. When she unexpectedly visits her sisters, she is met with the very race she hates.
II: Summary: To Y/n's dismay, the Illyrians keep coming to their home, and despite her initial reluctance to engage in war talks, she becomes entangled in the political world of the fae. This ends with her worst nightmare becoming a reality.
III: Summary: Y/n is adjusting to her new life in the Night Court, where she finds herself interacting with the Illyrians much longer than before, whether by chance or by force. An unexpected encounter with Azriel ignites something between them.
IV: Summary: Y/n is intrigued by a certain illyrian. They open up to one another one night, but she stops it from getting out of control. With Feyreās return, things get more tense.
V: Summary: Tension rises as Y/n only makes things harder for everyone around her. After moving into the Town House, she is attacked by the Kingās soldiers.
VI: Summary: Y/n decides to attend the meeting with the High Lords, where she is more open and relaxed than usual.
VII: Summary: Y/n chooses to remain at the Dawn Court, but Rhys allows her to stay for only three days, entrusting Azriel with her safety.
VIII: Summary: The Inner Circle prepares for war. Y/n and Azriel grow closer, and a shocking revelation unfolds on the battlefield.
IX: Summary: Y/n learns the truth about her powers. When Azriel is injured rescuing Elain, Y/n tends to his wounds.
X: Summary: Y/n struggles to hide her concern for Azriel while Cassian and Rhys tease her. As the final battle against Hybern approaches, Y/n and Azriel spend their last night together sharing a quiet moment before the fight.
XI: Summary: The day everyone dreaded has finally arrived. Facing impossible odds against Hybern, defeat seems inevitable- but nothing could have prepared Y/n for what's about to unfold.
XII: Summary: After the deaths of her fathers, Y/n past traumas resurface, leading her to do what sheĀ does best- push everyone away, including her sisters.
XIII: Summary: As Y/n spirals out of control, Feyre steps in, forcing a change that leaves the sisters at odds.
XIV: Summary: Cassian attempts to convince Y/n to train with him, but her stubbornness proves unshakable. However, when he leaves her with unexpected words, she finds herself grappling with an internal struggle over what to do next.
XV: Summary: Y/n slowly begins to recover, gradually warming up to Azriel and Cassian again. She agrees to train with Cassian but only under a few conditions.
XVI: Summary: An unexpected visit from Elain triggers Y/n, leading her to push everyone away again, but Azriel sees through her defenses. She begins to gain partial control over her powers after an emotional outburst and testing a new theory.
XVII: Summary: Y/n and Nestaās presence is required at the River House, where two important announcements are made. This time, Y/n decides to not interfere with the dangerous choices her sisters are making. Later, a sparring session between Azriel and Cassian sparks an idea in Y/n.
XVIII: Summary: Azriel and Y/n engage in an intense sparring session. Later, she experiences her first period since turning, with Azriel and Cassian stepping in to help.
XIX: Summary: Azriel continues to care for Y/n as she recovers from her first cycle. Later, her second power manifests, revealing an ability she never knew she had.Ā
XX: Summary: After a dangerous incident, Y/n and Nesta finally reconcile. Y/n is upset with Azriel for something he did.
XXI: Summary: Azriel takes Y/n out of the house, and the two share a few personal moments as heĀ reveals parts of his past. The next day, Nesta, Y/n, Cassian and Azriel venture into the Bog of Oorid.
XXII: Summary: Y/n and Azriel fight Autumn Court soldiers, arguing through most of it. Later, Y/n sets foot in Hewn City for the first time.
XXIII: Summary: Azriel takes Y/n out to see Hewn City, where his jealousy flares. When something triggers Y/nās emotions, he learns more about her past.
XXIV: Summary: Azriel gives Y/n an unexpected gift and glimpses a different side of her for the first time. Y/n is somewhat jealous during their next sparring, and by morning she joins the Valkyriesā training.
XXV: Summary: Y/n shares an almost normal breakfast with Azriel, Cassian and Nesta. In Hewn City, Helion teaches them how ward the mask. Y/n uncovers whatās really going on between Nesta and Cassian.
XXVI: Summary: Y/n learns new information that strains her relationship with Cassian and Azriel. While avoiding the others, she explores her powers further and slowly reconnects with Azriel.
I said "I love you". You say nothing back | John Logan
summary: the arrangement was simple: keep it casual, don't catch feelings, don't ask for more than what's on the table. 338 days later, you're starting to think simple was never really an option with john logan.
notes: hii, i'm back!! i was genuinely so overwhelmed by the response to my first one shot. you guys are so kind and it inspired me to keep writing. so here we are, back with more yearning, more angst, and more logan being an idiot about his feelings. my requests are open if you have any ideas or characters you want to see i'd love to hear from you. thank you so much for reading and enjoy ā¤ļøā¤ļø
warnings: swearing, alcohol, light angst, situationships, a puck bunny accusation and a confession in the rain.
word count: 8k
The thing with Logan had started exactly 338 days ago. Almost one year. One full lap around the sun. You knew because you had been counting, the days and the hours and even the minutes since this situationship from hell, as your dear friends had taken to calling it, had installed itself in your life like an antivirus app you hadn't downloaded and couldn't figure out how to delete.
It had started on Halloween, and at the time it hadn't seemed like a bad idea. It was just past eleven and the house off campus that your friends had dragged you to smelled like dry ice and weed, and you were tired and ready to leave, which was an anomaly. You were usually the last one standing, your friends had given you the nickname ending antagonist for a reason. In hindsight, that probably should have been a warning sign. The one night you wanted to go home early was the night everything started.
Though to be fair, things with Logan are not bad. That's the thing people don't understand when they hear situationship from hell. On the contrary, things with Logan are very good. Too good. Too good to look at directly without feeling something inconvenient shift behind your ribs, which is precisely why it's bad. Because he had been so genuinely, almost aggressively nice about the whole thing. He had found you at the edge of that party and sat next to you and talked to you for hours like you were the most interesting thing in the room, and he had made a real effort not to look at your boobs while you were talking, which in that particular environment was either extremely respectful or a sign that he was raised correctly, and either way it had done something to you.
And then you had woken up on his chest the next morning. His warm skin and steady heartbeat, the sort of light that meant it was too early to be awake, and done the awkward post-hookup shuffle of words, and heard: I'm not really looking for anything serious.
A bucket of cold water dropped directly on your head would have been less effective. More merciful, probably.
What else could you have done except agree? For god's sake, he was sitting there in black boxers holding a cup of coffee, extending it toward you like a peace offering, brown eyes looking at you with an expression that was genuinely, unfairly soft for seven in the morning. You took the cup. He readjusted against the headboard and looked at you with those eyes and said, simply: "So?"
So. So what? What were you supposed to say?
"Sure," you heard yourself say. "I'm interested in that too."
Sure. I'm interested in that too. Your internal voice repeated it back to you with the tone of a younger sibling trying to get a rise out of you. That was, objectively, the least true thing you had ever said out loud. You had been raised on Bridget Jones and every famous rom-com ever committed to film. You believed in love, in its inconvenience and its necessity and its complete refusal to be reasoned with. Casual did not cut it for you. It never had.
But god. If Bridget could have seen John Logan in that particular light, with that particular bed head, she would have understood completely.
So you agreed. And after that came the encounters.
At first they were private, almost secretive, you telling your friends you were going for a run and then actually running, just in the wrong direction entirely. Logan telling his that he was going to study somewhere, which was technically true, depending on your definition of anatomy. It gave everything a specific kind of thrill, the pleasant urgency of something that existed slightly outside the normal rules, and for a while that was enough.
But time has a way of dissolving things like that. Gradually, without either of you deciding to, you stopped hiding. And that was when the real problem arrived.
You and Logan became friends.
Not the convenient, surface-level kind, the real kind, the kind that builds without you noticing until one day you look around and realize that this person has become load-bearing in your life. You were always at the house. You knew the full taxonomy of Dean's recent romantic encounters, the specificity of Garrett's current problems, the ongoing narrative of Tucker's various endeavors. You didn't just know about them, you helped. You were involved. You had opinions and history and context, and they knew it, and they came to you with things.
And it went the other way too. Logan had gotten so close to your friends that he would voluntarily drive Marissa to her therapy appointments in Boston without being asked, would send Benny reels about topics they'd talked about the week before, remembered details that even you sometimes forgot. He had threaded himself into the fabric of your life so completely and so quietly that you could no longer locate the seam.
And finally, finally, things had started to feel like they were moving in the right direction. The direction they probably should have been heading since the morning after Halloween. Maybe the casual arrangement had just been a detour ā a scenic route to the same destination. All's well that ends well.
And then you and Logan would go to Malone's, and a waitress would glance between you with a smile and say what a nice couple you made, and Logan would laugh in that easy, noncommittal way of his and say: we're just friends.
And there it was. Bucket of cold water. Every time, without fail, like a reset button neither of you had agreed to keep pressing.
Every single time.
Which brings you to now.
You are sitting on Logan's couch, draped over him, legs intertwined, peppering kisses down his neck while he makes a valiant and increasingly unsuccessful effort to tell you about the new episode of some reality show he has gotten inexplicably invested in. Something about traitors in a castle. Who cares. Not you. Not when Logan smelled like that and the house was quiet and his hands were doing that thing where they moved without him seeming to notice.
You sank further into him. The kisses started to linger. His words got sparse.
"Are you even listening to me?" Logan murmured, his voice coming out considerably less steady than he had probably intended.
You hummed against his pulse point by way of answer.
The front door opened.
You both startled, pulling apart with the practiced efficiency of people who had been interrupted before, but the moment you registered it was Dean you settled back into exactly the position you'd been in. Dean didn't care about PDA. He actively encouraged it.
He dropped onto the opposite couch, looked at the ceiling briefly, then at you.
"Okay, I have a question," he said. "Logan, dude, this is for science, please don't be weird about it."
At this point you were sitting upright, Logan's arms still looped around you, his chin finding your shoulder, using you as a very comfortable shield against whatever Dean was about to say.
"Shoot," you said.
Dean took a breath with the energy of someone preparing to say something they had already decided to say regardless of the response. "Do you think I should buy a vibrator for a friend of mine?"
Logan laughed against your neck. You shivered slightly at the warmth of his breath.
"Are you the friend?" you asked. "Are you buying a vibrator for yourself?"
"What? No. I'm a man."
"That doesn't mean anything. Men are allowed to have vibrators."
"I know that. It's not for me."
"I really think you should get one though. For yourself. If you want to be the Samantha of the group you have to commit to the bit."
"I am the Samantha," Dean said, with genuine offense. "And it's not for me."
"Have you even watched Sex and the City?"
"Yes. I'm from New York, for god's sake and you're being such a Carrie right now."
You settled back against Logan's chest, his arms tightening around you automatically, like a reflex, like something he did without thinking about it anymore.
Yes, you thought. And my own Mr. Big is currently holding me on this couch.
Garrett and Hannah came down the stairs in what you assumed were their stay-at-home outfits: sweatpants, hockey jersey, the specific comfort of two people who had stopped performing around each other. The moment they came into view you felt Logan's hand still. Not move away just still. And then he shifted from behind you to sitting beside you, technically still touching but the warmth of it had changed completely. It was less person you are tangled up with and more person you happen to be sitting next to on public transport.
You knew that shift. You had felt it before.
The first time, you had told yourself you were imagining things.
It was a Tuesday, nothing special about it, the kind of evening that had become completely ordinary, you at the house, Logan beside you on the couch, his thumb making absent circles on your knee while Dean argued with Tucker about something that didn't matter. Hannah had stopped by to pick up something she'd left there the week before, and the moment the door opened Logan's hand had stilled. Not moved away. Just stilled. Like an animal that had heard something.
You hadn't said anything. You'd filed it away in the part of your brain reserved for things you weren't ready to look at yet.
The second time was at one of Garrett's games. You had been standing with Logan at the edge of the rink afterward, his jacket half around your shoulders the way it always ended up, and Hannah had appeared through the crowd. Logan had straightened. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, but you felt it the slight shift in his posture, the way his jacket had slipped back off your shoulders without him seeming to notice he'd let it go.
You'd picked it up off the floor and handed it back to him without a word.
The third time you stopped counting.
Malone's on a Friday night had a particular energy loud enough to feel festive, familiar enough to feel like home. Your usual table was in the corner, the big one that fit all of you without anyone having to pull up an extra chair, and the evening had been good. Genuinely good, the kind that reminded you why you had agreed to this arrangement in the first place, Logan's knee against yours under the table, his arm finding the back of your chair sometime around the second round of drinks, the easy warmth of being somewhere you belonged.
You were mid-story , a good one, the kind that had the whole table leaning in and you could feel it landing, the timing was right, and Garrett was already laughing before you got to the punchline and Dean had that look on his face that meant he was going to steal this story and tell it as his own later, and Tucker wasā
You glanced at Logan.
He wasn't laughing.
He was looking across the table at Hannah with an expression you recognized because you had spent the better part of a year learning every single detail of his face, and what was on it right now was something soft and slightly helpless the expression of someone watching something they had decided they couldn't have.
The story finished without you. Somewhere far away, the table laughed.
You picked up your drink. Set it down. Picked it up again.
"I'm going to step outside," you said. "Just ā smoke a bit."
"You don't even smoke, (Y/N)!" Tucker replied, laughing, and it killed you because all of Logan's friends had come to know you so well.
"You okay?" Garrett asked.
"Fine. Just air."
You were already standing. Already reaching for your jacket. Logan was on his feet before you made it two steps.
"I'll come with you," he said.
The parking lot outside Malone's was cold and poorly lit. You got about twenty feet from the door before you stopped walking. The noise from inside filtered out muffled and distant, everyone still laughing, completely unaware.
Logan stopped beside you. Waited. He had always been good at waiting, which was one of the things you had loved about him and one of the things that had slowly, quietly driven you insane.
"Don't," you said.
"Don't what?"
"Don't do the thing where you stand there and wait for me to calm down." You turned to face him. The cold air hit your face and you were glad for it. "I'm not going to calm down. So just talk to me. Tell me the truth. Please. Don't bullshit me right now, Logan, I am asking you to not bullshit me right now."
"Babyā"
"Don't baby me, Logan. Not right now"
He looked at you with that steady, unhurried patience of his, which tonight felt less like a quality and more like a weapon.
"What do you want me to say?" he asked.
"I want you to tell me if you have a crush on Hannah." The word crush felt absurdly small for the moment but you couldn't bear the weight of the more accurate alternatives.
Something shifted in his face. Not guilt exactly, something deeper than that. The specific expression of someone who had been quietly hoping a question wouldn't arrive and had known, somewhere underneath the hoping, that it always was going to.
"It's notā" he started.
"Logan."
He exhaled. Looked at the ground briefly. Looked back at you.
"It's not serious," he said. "It's nothing. She's with Garrett. It's not like I would everā"
"Oh my god." The laugh that came out of you had nothing to do with anything being funny. "Oh my god, you actually do. You actually have a crush on her."
"It's not a big dealā"
"You have a crush on your best friend's girlfriend and it's not a big deal." You repeated it back to him slowly. "I have been right here, Logan. For almost a year I have been right here, and you have a crush on Hannah."
"It's just a feeling. It doesn't mean anything." His voice had an edge to it now, something defensive sharpening underneath the calm. "And you don't get to be mad at me for it."
"Excuse me?"
"You don't get to be mad at me for having feelings." The words were coming faster now, the composure cracking in a way you almost never saw from him. "We said casual. That was the agreement. I can't be accountable to you for things I feel when you are not my girlfriend."
The word landed like a slap.
Girlfriend.
"Right," you said. Your voice had gone very quiet. "I'm not your girlfriend."
"That's not what Iā"
"No, you're right. I'm not." You looked at him. Really looked at him ā this person whose coffee order you knew by heart, whose nightmares you had talked him through at two in the morning, whose hand had reached for yours in his sleep so many times you had stopped counting. "Can I ask you something? And I need you to actually answer me. Not just wait until I stop talking."
He said nothing, which you took as a yes.
"What did you think this was?" Your voice was still quiet. Controlled. "Not what we agreed on in the beginning. What did you think it was last week? Last month? What did you think it was tonight when you had your arm around me at that table? When you picked me up from my house and kissed me in your truck?" You took a breath. "Because I need to understand how you look at what we have been doing and see something casual. I genuinely need you to explain that to me."
"It's complicatedā"
"It's not complicated. It's actually very simple. I just need you to say it out loud."
"You knew what this was when we startedā"
"I know what it was when we started. I'm asking what it is now." You crossed your arms against the cold. "Because from where I'm standing it looks a lot like a relationship. It looks like you drive my friends places and remember things about them they never told you twice, and I know every single thing about your life, and we spend more nights together than apart, and you reach for me when you're asleep like I'm something you don't want to lose." Your voice cracked slightly and you pushed past it. "So you'll have to forgive me for being confused about the casual part."
"I can'tā" He stopped. Started again. "It's not about not wanting to. It's about what I can actually give right now. Hockey takes everything. My family, my mother, I don't have money, I don't have stability, I don't have any of the things thatā"
"I'm not asking you for stability. I'm not asking you for money." Something in your chest had cracked open and you were past the point of closing it. "I'm asking you to admit what this already is. That's all."
"I am being honestā"
"Then be more honest." Your voice broke on the last word and you kept going anyway. "Because I'm in love with you."
The parking lot went completely silent.
Logan stared at you. The words sat between you in the cold air like something that had changed the temperature.
"What?" His voice came out barely above a breath.
"I'm in love with you." Steadier the second time. "I have been for a long time. And I know that's not what we agreed on. But I can't stand here and pretend I don't while you tell me it's not a big deal that you have feelings for someone else." You looked at him. "We are already a couple, Logan. In every single way that actually matters, we already are. The only thing missing is you admitting it."
Something moved across his face ā something large and unguarded and almost frightened.
"It's not that simple," he said, quieter now, the defensiveness gone out of it.
"I know it's not simple. I know about hockey. I know about your mom. I know all of it, Logan, because you told me, because that's what we do. But none of that changes what I just said." You took a breath. "So just tell me. Do you have feelings for me? Yes or no. That's all I'm asking."
Logan looked at you.
And said nothing.
The silence stretched between you, long and terrible. His jaw was tight. His eyes moved across your face like he was looking for something he either couldn't find or couldn't say, and the longer the silence went on the more clearly you understood that the silence was itself an answer.
"Wow," you said finally. Very quietly. "Okay."
You picked up your bag. Straightened your jacket. Looked at him one more time this person you had spent 338 days loving in whatever form he would accept.
"Don't follow me," you said.
He didn't.
You walked back toward the warm light spilling out of Malone's windows, past your friends still laughing, past the table that an hour ago had felt like home, and you kept walking. Past the door, past the window, down the street, into the cold.
Too angry to cry. Too tired to pretend. Too done to look back.
Behind you, in the parking lot, Logan stood very still and said nothing which was the thing he was best at, and the thing that had finally cost him everything.
It had been a hard couple of days. But the upside of a not-breakup in college was that you didn't get to wallow, no watching rom-coms until the wee hours, no doing the Bella, watching the months pass from your bedroom window. Life was as it had always been, minus the space Logan had occupied in your weekly schedule. Not a metaphysical space, a literal one. When you opened your Google Calendar you found his game days still blocked out in blue, his training days still marked, everything still there like a calendar that hadn't gotten the news yet.
Pathetic, you thought, and deleted them.
Your days now belonged entirely to yourself, which should have felt like freedom and mostly felt like a lot of unscheduled Tuesday afternoons. No more disappearing in the middle of the day, no more make-out sessions in the library during lunch break. Just you and your own company and the slow, unglamorous work of being fine.
You weren't fine. You were something adjacent to fine that required daily maintenance and the careful avoidance of certain songs.
Marissa had noticed, she called it being under the weather, which was such a specific and old-fashioned way of putting it that in the beginning you had found it strange and now found it completely endearing. Your own personal nanna, showing up with iced coffee and terrible ideas at exactly the right moments.
The terrible idea this time was an underground bar in Boston she had found, which was a surprise since Marissa was fundamentally a sports bar person. You had a strong suspicion the entire excursion was engineered entirely for your benefit and the benefit of your appetite for expensive, colorful drinks, and you loved her for it and didn't say so.
The drive took exactly long enough to hype yourself up.
I'm pretty. I'm smart. I'm a catch.
The bar was dimly lit in a way that felt intentional rather than neglected, all low ceilings and good music and the general atmosphere of a place that didn't need to try. You, Marissa and Benny settled into a corner booth and approximately ninety seconds later Benny's elbow was in your ribs.
"Cute guy. Nine o'clock," he said, in what he apparently believed was a whisper.
You glanced toward the bar. Tall, white jacket, the kind of easy posture that meant he wasn't thinking about his posture at all.
"I'm not really looking for anything," you said.
"You're single. He's cute. The bar has drinks. What exactly is the problem?" Benny tilted his head. "Go order our drinks and make some poor decisions. You've earned it."
"I didn't bring my ID."
Benny stared at you. "You came to a bar without your ID?"
"I forgot." You shrugged.
"(Y/N)." His voice had the specific tone of someone choosing their words carefully. "What is wrong with you. Go. Drinks. Now. The ID thing is a you problem, figure it out."
You slid out of the booth before he could say anything else.
The guy at the bar was, up close, even more irritatingly attractive than he had been from across the room. He glanced over when you appeared beside him, and then glanced again in a way that was not subtle and didn't try to be.
"You look like you're deciding something," he said.
"Whether to admit I forgot my ID at a bar."
He looked at you for a moment. Then he smiled easy and genuine. "Hunter," he said, and held out his hand.
"((Y/N))."
"I'll vouch for you," he said. "If you tell me what you're drinking."
You told him. He ordered both without being asked, which was either presumptuous or exactly right, and you decided it was exactly right.
By the time you made it back to the booth with four drinks and Hunter's number in your phone, Benny was looking at you with the expression of someone who had orchestrated something and was very pleased about it.
You didn't tell him he was right. But you didn't have to.
The thing about Hunter Davenport was that he was genuinely, irritatingly likeable.
You had not been thinking about Logan when you said yes to Hunter's suggestion of getting coffee. You had not been thinking about Logan when the coffee turned into a walk, and the walk turned into two hours of easy conversation that asked nothing from you and gave something back.
That was the point.
You had gotten very good at not thinking about Logan in the weeks since Malone's. It was a skill, like any other, it required practice and the occasional forcible redirection of your own brain, but you were nothing if not disciplined when the situation called for it. You had been showing up to things. Laughing at the right moments. Sleeping through the night, mostly.
You were fine. You were getting finer by the day, which was either progress or a very convincing impression of it, and right now you weren't examining the difference too closely.
Hunter was easy. That was the thing about him. He was warm and uncomplicated and he looked at you like you were worth looking at, which was something you had apparently needed more than you realized.
It was nothing serious. You had been very clear about that with yourself. You were not ready for serious. But his hand was warm when it found yours walking back from the coffee place, and you let it stay there.
You were almost believing it.
The team was at the rink for an open practice, one of the informal ones that sometimes drew a small crowd of friends and the generally affiliated. You had come with Marissa, which gave you plausible deniability about why you were there, and you had sat in the third row and watched without watching, which was a skill you had also been practicing.
Hunter had waved at you from the ice. You had waved back.
You had not looked at Logan. You had been extremely disciplined about not looking at Logan, which meant you were also extremely aware of exactly where he was at every moment without technically looking at him, which was its own kind of exhausting.
After practice, Hunter had come off the ice still in half his gear and found you immediately, easy and unhurried, and said something that made you laugh. Your hand had gone to his arm the way hands do when you're laughing at something someone said, and it had stayed there for approximately four seconds.
Four seconds.
You knew it was four seconds because you had counted them, which meant some part of you had been paying attention to something you were pretending not to pay attention to.
The locker room door swung shut behind Logan without him looking back.
You found a quiet corner of the rink lobby while Hunter went to get his bag. You were looking at your phone, not reading anything on it, when you heard footsteps and looked up.
Logan.
He had changed out of his gear. His jaw was doing the thing: the tight, controlled thing that meant something was happening underneath the composure that the composure was working very hard to contain. His eyes moved from your face to the door Hunter had gone through and back.
"Hey," you said carefully.
"You and Hunter," he said. Not a question.
"That's not really your business."
"You're spending a lot of time with him."
"Loganā"
"I'm just making an observation." His voice was very even. The voice he used when he was the least controlled.
"Make it somewhere else."
He laughed short and humorless. "Right. Okay." He looked at the floor. Looked back at you. "I just didn't think you were the type."
You went very still. "The type to?"
"To go after a guy because of who he plays for." Quiet. Measured. Like he had chosen this version of the sentence carefully. "I didn't think that was your thing."
The lobby was very quiet.
You looked at him for a long moment. Long enough to make sure you had heard what you thought you'd heard. Long enough to see something flicker in his expression, the immediate, unmistakable recognition that he had gone too far.
"Say that again," you said softly.
"I didn't meanā"
"No." Your voice was calm in a way that had nothing to do with being calm. "Say it again. I want to make sure I understood you. Are you calling me a puck bunny?"
Logan said nothing. The flicker had become something closer to horror.
"Because that's what you just said." You tilted your head slightly. "After everything. That's what you went with."
"I didn't ā that's not what I meantā"
"Then what did you mean?" You took a step toward him. "Because I have been patient, Logan. I have been so patient with you. I said the most honest thing I have ever said to anyone in that parking lot and you said nothing back, which I am trying. I am actively trying to make my peace with. But you do not get to say that to me. You don't get to do that."
"I know." His voice had lost all its evenness. "I shouldn't haveā"
"Why did you say it?"
He looked at you.
"Tell me why." Your voice cracked slightly and you kept going. "Because it wasn't an observation. So tell me why."
Something moved across his face the composure fracturing in a way you had only seen once or twice in all the time you had known him.
"Because I can'tā" He stopped.
"Can't what?"
"Because I can't watch you with him and notā" He stopped again. Pressed his mouth shut. Looked at the ceiling briefly.
"Not what?" Your voice was barely above a whisper.
He looked at you. Right at you. And for one unguarded, terrible second you could see everything, all of it, the whole enormous weight of everything he hadn't said in the parking lot outside Malone's, sitting right there on his face with nowhere left to hide.
And then he looked away.
"I'm sorry," he said. "It was wrong."
You looked at him for a long moment.
"Yeah," you said. "It was."
You picked up your bag. Hunter had reappeared at the far end of the lobby, jacket on, easy smile, completely unaware of the wreckage he had wandered back into. You walked toward him and did not look back at Logan.
But you heard him the sharp exhale of someone who had just watched something leave that they weren't sure was coming back.
Good, you thought.
And hated that you thought it.
Here was the thing about being called a puck bunny: it wasn't the word itself that got to you.
Puck bunnies weren't the worst thing a person could be.
Men were allowed their types, allowed to prefer blondes or brunettes or redheads, to have spent their teenage years watching anime and grown up to exclusively pursue Asian women, to want someone tall or short or with a specific laugh, or say things like "I have never been with a Brazilian before". They were allowed to say these things out loud, to Tinder-filter by height, and if it was possible they would do by weight too, to have opinions about bodies that they shared freely and without apology.
But god forbid a woman had a type. God forbid a woman found hockey players attractive or musicians, or academics, or anyone with a specific quality she was drawn to. Then she was something to be named and categorized and looked down upon. Then she was a bunny.
You were not offended by the word.
You were offended that Logan, who had been silent while you poured your heart out in a cold parking lot, who had said nothing when you asked him the most direct question you had ever asked another human being , had found his voice again specifically to say that. That of all the things he could have finally said to you, after all the silence, this was the one he chose.
That was what got to you.
Not the word. The timing. The source. The specific, devastating irony of a man who couldn't say I have feelings for you finding it very easy to say something that small.
You didn't tell anyone what he said.
That was the first decision you made, walking out of that rink lobby with Hunter's hand in yours and Logan's exhale still somewhere in your chest. You were not going to tell Dean, who would say something devastatingly accurate about it. You were not going to tell Marissa, who would want to talk about it for three hours. You were not going to tell anyone, because telling someone meant turning it over, examining it, and you were not ready to examine the specific shape of what Logan had said to you and what it meant that he had said it.
You knew what it meant. That was the problem.
You had known the moment you saw his face, that flicker of something before the composure reassembled itself, the way his eyes had moved to Hunter and back to you with an expression that had nothing casual about it. You had spent 338 days learning the map of Logan's face and you knew exactly what that look was. You had just also heard what came out of his mouth immediately afterward, which meant that what Logan felt and what Logan was willing to do about it were, as always, two completely different countries.
You were done trying to travel between them.
The week that followed was quiet and it felt different from the other times you had gone quiet. Before, the silence had always been temporary, a held breath. This felt more like an exhale. Like something had finally, after a very long time, finished.
You went to class. You had coffee with Hunter on Tuesday, which was easy and warm and asked nothing from you. You went to Marissa's on Thursday and watched something forgettable on her laptop and fell asleep on her couch, and she put a blanket over you without waking you up, which was the kindest thing anyone had done for you in recent memory.
You did not go to the house off campus. You did not text Logan. You did not check if he had texted you, which required leaving your phone face-down on your desk for approximately four days straight, which was its own kind of discipline.
You were fine. You were getting finer.
You were also absolutely not fine.
Dean found you on a Wednesday.
Not dramatically, he just appeared at the coffee shop near your building where you went on Wednesday mornings, which you had mentioned to him exactly once four months ago, which meant he had remembered it and filed it away and was now using it, which was such a Dean thing to do that you almost smiled.
He sat down across from you without asking if it was okay and stole a sip of your coffee before saying anything.
"He told me what he said," Dean said, without preamble.
You looked at your coffee. "Okay."
"He feels terrible."
"Good."
"I mean genuinely terrible. Like, I've known Logan for three years and I've never seen himā" Dean stopped. Seemed to decide something. "He's not sleeping. He's barely eating. He showed up to practice yesterday and coach pulled him aside after because his head wasn't in it, which has never happened, not once in three years."
"Dean." You looked up at him. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you deserve to know that it cost him something." His voice was straightforward, without manipulation. "I'm not asking you to forgive him. What he said was awful and he knows it. I'm just, you spent a long time showing up for him and I don't want you to think that none of it landed. It all landed. It's landing right now. It's just landing a little late."
You were quiet for a moment.
"A little late," you repeated.
"Okay, very late."
"Dean." You wrapped your hands around your cup. "He called me a puck bunny."
"I know." Dean had the grace to look genuinely pained. "He said it because he was jealous and scared and he handled it in the worst possible way and there is no defense for it. I'm not here to defend it."
"Then what are you here for?"
Dean looked at you across the table, this person who had been in your corner since before you had any idea how much you would need someone in your corner, and his expression was very honest.
"I'm here because he's my best friend and he's falling apart," he said. "And you're also my friend. And I hate watching both of you be miserable when I know exactly why you're miserable." He paused. "I'm not asking you to do anything. I just wanted you to know."
You looked out the window. The street outside was grey and unremarkable, the specific flatness of a Wednesday in November.
"How long has he known?" you asked quietly. "That he has feelings for me. How long has he actually known?"
Dean was quiet for a moment.
"A while," he said carefully.
"How long is a while, Dean."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"Since pretty much the beginning," he said.
You closed your eyes briefly. Opened them.
"Okay," you said.
"(Y/N)ā"
"I'm not angry." And you weren't, which was almost surprising. You were something quieter and more tired than angry. "I just needed to know." You picked up your coffee. "Tell him I said he needs to sleep."
Dean looked at you. "That's it?"
"That's it." You met his eyes. "I'm not ready for anything else right now. But tell him to sleep."
Dean nodded slowly. He finished stealing your coffee and stood up and put his jacket on, and then he stopped with his hand on the back of the chair.
"For what it's worth," he said. "The Hannah thing. It was never real. He told me that too. He said he thinks he latched onto it because it was safer than admitting what was actually happening."
You didn't say anything.
"Okay," Dean said. "I'll see you around."
He left. You sat there with your cold coffee and the grey Wednesday street outside and the specific, exhausting weight of loving someone who had known the whole time and chosen, over and over, to say nothing.
Since pretty much the beginning.
338 days. And he had known since pretty much the beginning.
You sat with that for a long time.
It had been raining since noon.
Not the dramatic, cinematic kind of rain that arrived with thunder and purpose, just the steady, grey, unrelenting kind that soaked through your jacket in the first thirty seconds and didn't apologize for it.
You were on your way back from the library, hood up, head down, thinking about nothing in particular, which you had gotten very good at recently. The art of thinking about nothing. Occupying your own brain with the immediate and the logistical the paper due Thursday, the coffee you were going to make when you got home, the question of whether you had remembered to charge your phone.
You had not been thinking about Logan.
You were almost at your building when you heard him.
"(Y/N)."
You stopped walking.
He was standing at the bottom of your building's front steps, which meant he had been waiting in the rain for some amount of time, which was evident from the state of him soaked through, hair flat, jacket dark with water. He looked like someone who had arrived with a plan and abandoned it somewhere on the walk over and was now operating on something more basic and less manageable.
He looked, for the first time in all the time you had known him, completely unguarded.
"Logan." Your voice came out carefully. "What are you doing here?"
"I need to talk to you."
"It's raining."
"I know."
"You're soaked."
"I know." He took a step toward you. "I've been standing here for forty minutes trying to figure out what to say and I still don't know, so I'm just going to say it badly and hope that counts for something."
You looked at him. The rain came down steadily between you.
"You have two minutes," you said.
He exhaled. Ran a hand through his wet hair. Looked at you with the expression of someone stepping off a ledge they had been standing on for a very long time.
"I have been in love with you," he said, "since pretty much the beginning."
The rain was very loud suddenly.
"I knew it when we agreed to casual. I knew it when we stopped hiding. I knew it every time I reached for you in my sleep and every time a stranger called us a couple and I laughed it off, and I knew it in that parking lot outside Malone's when you told me the truth and I stood there and said nothing back." His voice was steady but only barely, the steadiness of someone gripping something very hard. "I said nothing because I was terrified. Not of you. Never of you. Of what it meant. Of what I would owe you if I said it out loud. Hockey takes everything I have and my family situation is a disaster and I don't have money or stability or any of the things that a person is supposed to have before they ask someone toā" He stopped. "But Dean said something to me last week. He said that I was losing you anyway. That all my careful management of the situation had achieved was losing you slowly instead of all at once, and somehow I had convinced myself that was the better outcome."
You said nothing. The rain soaked through your hood and you didn't move.
"And then I said what I said to you at the rink." His jaw tightened. "I have replayed that moment every day since it happened. There is no version of it that I can make okay. I said it because I saw you with Hunter and something in me just broke. Not a good break. Not the kind that leads anywhere useful. Just ā I broke, and I said the cruelest thing I could think of, and I aimed it at you, and I have hated myself for it every single day since." He looked at you. "I'm not telling you that to make you feel sorry for me. I'm telling you because you deserve to know that it was never about you. It was never about who you are. It was about me being terrified and handling it in the worst possible way, and I'm sorry. I am so sorry."
The rain fell between you, steady and indifferent.
"You knew since the beginning," you said finally. Your voice came out quieter than you intended.
"Yes."
"A year."
"Yes."
"And you said nothing."
"Yes." He didn't flinch from it. "I said nothing, and I let you carry it alone, and I told myself I was protecting you from the complications of my life, but I think I was just protecting myself. From having to be as brave as you were in that parking lot." Something moved across his face. "You were so brave. You said the true thing and I just stood there. And I have thought about that every day since. About what it cost you to say it and what it cost me to say nothing back."
You looked at him. This person. Soaked through and unguarded and finally, finally saying the thing he had been not saying for 338 days.
"The Hannah thing," you said.
"Wasn't real." Immediate. Certain. "I think I needed it to be real because it was safer than admitting what was actually happening. She has what you and I have, what you and I were and I think I confused wanting that with wanting her. It was never her." He held your gaze. "It was always you. It has only ever been you."
The rain had soaked through your jacket completely now. You were cold in a way that had stopped being uncomfortable and become simply the condition of the moment.
"I'm not asking you to forgive me tonight," Logan said. "I'm not asking you to do anything. I just needed you to know that I heard you in that parking lot. I heard every word. And I should have said this then, and I'm sorry that I didn't, and I'm saying it now because Dean was right, I am losing you anyway, and I would rather lose you having finally told the truth than keep you at a distance by staying silent." He paused. "I love you. I have loved you for a long time. And I'm sorry it took me this long to be brave enough to say it."
The street was very quiet under the rain.
You looked at him for a long moment. Long enough to turn it over. Long enough to feel the full weight of 338 days, of every almost-conversation and loaded silence and reset button and bucket of cold water. Long enough to remember his hand going still when Hannah walked in, and the parking lot, and the rink lobby, and the specific sound of his exhale when you walked away.
Long enough to remember, underneath all of it, a Halloween party and a wall and two people waiting out the night from the edges of it, talking like they had nothing to prove to each other.
The beginning, before it got complicated. Before it got careful.
"You're an idiot," you said.
Something shifted in his expression. Not quite hope. Something more tentative than hope.
"I know," he said.
"You made everything so much harder than it needed to be."
"I know."
"I carried that alone for a very long time, Logan."
"I know." His voice broke slightly on it. "I know you did. I'm sorry."
The rain came down. You looked at him this soaked, unguarded, finally honest person standing at the bottom of your steps and felt something in your chest that had been braced for a very long time slowly, carefully release.
"You should have just said it," you said. "In the beginning. You should have just said it."
"I know." He took a step closer. Close enough that you could see the rain on his face, the wet dark of his hair, the expression underneath all the composure that had finally run out of places to hide. "I know. I'm saying it now."
You looked at him.
"Say it again," you said quietly.
"I love you." No hesitation. No composure. Just Logan, standing in the rain, finally saying the true thing. "I love you. I have loved you since pretty much the beginning and I am done pretending I don't."
The rain fell between you and neither of you moved and the street was quiet and everything was very still.
Then you closed the distance.
You kissed him in the rain, which was cold and slightly impractical and nothing like the careful, managed version of Logan you had spent 338 days trying to navigate. This was different. This was him kissing you back with both hands and no hesitation and none of the holding back, and it felt finally, finally like the true thing. Like the version of this that had been waiting underneath all the other versions the whole time.
When you pulled back you were both soaked and breathing slightly unsteadily and his forehead dropped to yours in the rain.
"I'm still mad at you," you said.
"I know." His arms tightened around you. "I know you are."
"The puck bunny thing is going to take a while."
"I know. Whatever it takes."
"And you have to tell me things." Your voice was muffled against his jacket. "When you're scared, when it gets complicated, when your brain does the thing where it decides silence is the safe option. You have to tell me instead."
"I will." He said it simply, without qualification, which was how you knew he meant it. "I will."
You stood there in the rain outside your building, soaked through and slightly ridiculous, and you thought about Halloween and 338 days and parking lots and rink lobbies and all the long, complicated distance between the beginning and right now.
Story Summary: You're out with your friends one night, celebrating finishing your finals, when suddenly you find yourself in a strange place, with no exit in sight. You wander the yellow hallways, feeling as though you're being followed at every turn. What happens when some of the inhabitants of this strange place take an interest in you?
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vaporwave
romaincrisis
pixelskylines
izzy806
theartofmadeline
