summary after telling him you made a playlist that reminded you of him, you accidentally send him the wrong one
content 1k words, fluff, suggestive, lotta lana del rey, reader has no idea how tech works (me)
“How do I send this shit?” you mumble, tapping aimlessly on your phone. “It’s not working,” you complain, your voice filtering through his comms.
Jason had found a way to connect your phone to his helmet, which meant you were now free to bother him whenever you wanted. It was a power you wielded with absolutely no regard for his sanity. The constant random messages popping up on the screen inside his helmet would've driven anyone else crazy.
Just yesterday, part of his vision was filled with:
You know if anyone would have a Jane the Virgin situation, it'd be you
Theres a easier way tho
I could take one for the team and get you pregnant
I'll be strong for you
It's hard rasing a kid on your own
To all of that, he'd simply replied, It's raising, then went right back to patrol like you hadn't just offered to impregnate him.
"Sweetheart, there's a send button," he replies with the patience of a saint. Gunshots erupt in the background and there's a curse thrown carelessly.
You were attempting to send him the playlist you had made. It was a mix of songs perfectly curated to ones that reminded you of your best friend. There was a lot of dad music, a touch of heavy metal. You were tempted to throw in a love song, but dealing with the aftermath of doing so held you back.
"Don't sweetheart me, the fucking thing isn't loading now," you groan, tapping aggressively.
"You know, that doesn't make it go faster, right?" He grunts. There's a loud boom from his side.
"Says the guy who broke my TV because he thought hitting it would bring it back to life," you retort, squinting at your phone screen. You go to turn the brightness down.
"'M still better at technology than you," he says, then shouts, "Robin, I said on my left!"
You hear Robin's voice, but you can't make out the words. Something insulting, probably.
"Little shit can't even listen to basic instructions."
"Me or Damian?" you ask without missing a beat.
"Both."
Once the playlist loads, you tap the send button without much thought. "Kay, I did it, listen to it now," you demand, lying back down on your bed.
"Sure thing, doll. Lemme just stop the Joker from turning Gotham into his playground."
"Gotham's already his playground," you mumble.
For a while, you're quiet, listening as Jason occasionally shouts orders through the comms. It should be unsettling. The gunfire, the crashes, the constant danger he's in. Instead, it lulls you to sleep. He's here, breathing, and on call with you like he didn't want to part either.
"You done yet?"
"I'm putting it on. Happy now?" His hoarse voice brings you out of your thoughts. It's deeper than it was before. Nicer, too.
You grin, sitting up as your blanket pools around your hips. "Only if you come over too."
"Demanding little thing," he scoffed. But you know he's already on his way.
A few minutes pass. You can hear the distant hum of his motorcycle through the comms.
Then he clears his throat. "Baby making music?"
Horror crashes over you. You snatch your phone off the bed so fast it almost slips from your hands. "Shit,' you whisper, frantically searching for what you sent.
And lo and behold, it's that playlist, not the one you'd carefully curated for Jason. "Jay, I can explain—
"Fucked my way up to the top reminds you of me?" There's laughter in his voice now.
"No!"
"Guilty as sin?" He snorts.
"Oh my god, Jason, stop." Your hands are covering your warm face, phone lying on your bed. You're never living this down.
He pauses. "There's a lot of Lana Del Rey,"
You swallow, your fingers curl around your blanket. "Well," you start quietly. "Don't get it twisted, you're pretty Lana Del Rey, but your dad? He embodies a Lana Del Rey song—
"Stop talkin' about Bruce like that," he groans.
"Your dad's hot."
"You're trying to change the subject, baby."
"Your older brother's also hot." You muster up the courage to add, "and don't call me that."
"Doll," His voice isn't teasing anymore. It's lower, like all the humor's been taken by that one comment.
"I've run out of age appropriate family members," you swallow. Except Jason. But you couldn't exactly say that. "Does Kate count? Bruce's exes? cause they're fine as hell too."
He grumbles under his breath. "Open the fucking window."
"You're here?" You freeze, voice coming out breathless.
The window snaps open with a sharp bang. The sound travels all the way to your room. You close your eyes. Why did it feel like you were in trouble?
The thump of boots echoes through the room. When it finally stops, you open your eyes to find Jason leaning against your doorframe, arms crossed in a way that makes his muscles more defined under the fabric. He’s taken off his helmet, his hair slightly damp, strands falling messily over his forehead.
And his eyes.
They’re on you, fierce and darker than what you're used to, like he’s a second away from hauling your ass straight to Arkham. It sends a pleasant feeling through you.
You laugh nervously. "Heyyyy, you're not still mad about me finding your brother—what the fuck are you doing—
He stalks over to you until he’s standing right in front of you, close enough that you have to tilt your head back to keep eye contact.
"You're acting weird," you tell him, trying to keep yourself still.
"That playlist—
"Was a random one I accidentally sent!"
He tilts his head. “So. You wanna play me the right one now?"
He shifts, sliding onto the bed beside you, his shoulder bumping yours as he settles in. You grimace. No way he’s had time to shower, but you don’t move away. Not when he’s this close.
You give him one of your wired earbuds.
Your head bumps his when he puts his on. You bite back a smile at sharing earbuds with him.
You hit play on your phone, sneaking a glance at him, trying to read his reaction.
He’s already looking at you. Then he rolls his eyes and looks away.
“Can’t believe I remind you of a Radiohead song.”
“Would you prefer Fucked My Way Up to the Top?”
masterlist
once again i’m not sure what i wrote
also yk cola by lana del rey? i was gonna add in the “my pussy taste like pepsi cola” line in and have jason be like “damn, does it?” but idk it didn’t feel like him. 100% something roy would ask tho
vampire!jason who comes back from the dead with a thirst that can’t quite be quenched. he’s horrified with himself the first time he grabs a graveyard worker and drains him of his blood. his hands soaked in crimson, he falls on his ass in a panic, blinking and breathing hard.
vampire!jason whose first thought is to find you, his best friend. he’d had a crush on you, sure, but that was before he was kidnapped and killed in an explosion. before someone had coaxed him into drinking some red wine that he didn’t know was laced with vampire blood. before he had died with it in his system in that very same explosion.
vampire!jason who watches over you for the first day. shivering with a jacket he took from a clothing line, he watches you move throughout your day. noticing how the light had seemed to leave your life in the same way his had. watching you walk home by yourself through the shadows. watching your routine and yearning to touch your soft skin. he averted his gaze when you changed your clothes but he felt his desire growing stronger than it had ever been before he died.
from across the street he swore he could smell you, just faintly. shutting his eyes as his imagination peaked and the cold winds did nothing to soothe the deep heat he felt. the clothes you changed into draped over your body and he recognized the shirt as his own. with a heavy gulp he made his way closer without realizing it.
oh how he wanted and needed you dearly.
vampire!jason who comes into your home while you’re sleeping. he hasn’t seen you in over two years and when you wake up with him crowding over you, you scream at the top of your lungs. eyes wide in a panic as you thrash and he places a firm palm over your lips. his eyes shone a bright green and his lips were stained an unnatural red, still dripping down his chin. his eyes sunken in as he pleads with you despite having the upper hand.
“please help me,” he practically cries before inching closer. when you don’t move, he collapses onto your chest, letting his weight rest on you and burying his face there for comfort.
still reeling from your bestfriend coming back to life, you hold him there against you. hand smoothing back his tangled hair and a new tuft of white that took home on his bangs. you keep him close like he could leave you again.
vampire!jason who explains what happened vaguely because even he didn’t understand. he tells you he just woke up like this. that he’s sorry to scare you and clenches his fists like he’s afraid to see what he’d do if he touched you any more than he already was. afraid to move his hands.
vampire!jason who tries to fight the urge to sink his teeth into your plush neck, but he fails. his head moves from your chest to your shoulders, then his lips kiss your neck. you jolt in his grip and gasp his name, your body betraying you with how much you’d wanted this. never imagining that you’d get a chance with him since you never got to tell him you loved him. he takes a deep breath from the crook of your neck and moans.
“you smell exactly how i remember.” breath ghosting over your skin, “even better now.”
you gulp as his fingers curl around your neck and apologies begin to slip past his perfect lips.
“i’m so sorry. i need to. i have to do this.”
before you could question what he meant, the veins around his eyes suddenly become darker and your eyes widened again. he leaned further into you and breaks your skin with his teeth. the scream quickly dies in your throat as a stinging pleasure takes form. you gasp his name but hold him closer. thankful to have him back in any way.
vampire!jason who moans egregiously while he sucks your blood. the sound echoes from your throat, dancing by his ears while he continues cursing himself for feeling this way about you. you don’t miss how he inches himself closer to you, hands at either side of your head digging in and ripping the sheets. he mewls as he pulls from your neck, his mouth relentless against your skin. his eyes roll to the back of his head as he stuffed himself further ontop of you.
vampire!jason who begs you for forgiveness afterwards. on the verge of tears, he stares down at you and whimpers your name. he pulls your limp body upright in his lap and cradles your head close.
“fuck— i didn’t mean to take so much. i’m sorry. i’m so fucking sorry.”
but you’re smiling in a blissful state because it felt like you were staring at yourself from outside of your body. almost as if you were high from this. floating in a exhilarating way you hadn’t felt in a really long time.
vampire!jason who feeds you his blood while you’re half conscious. something told him this was the cure to him losing control and keeping you alive. in the back of his mind he knew he was teetering with life and death and that you were the only person he needed. the only person he thought of when he awoke. not bruce, not joker, but you. all he wanted was you and nothing could stand in his way now or ever again.
vampire!jason who doesn’t sleep until you gasp awake hours later. he holds a damp towel to your forehead and still has your dried blood on his face, not caring for it but only you. he sighs as you grab at him in confusion, pulling him closer to smell the tasteful nectar that no longer ran through your veins. the scent suddenly gaining appeal as you grasp as him.
you breathe his name back and ask him for some of it without truly understanding the implication. without a second thought, he keeps your gaze and bites at his wrist, holding it to your parted lips.
vampire!jason who thinks he could’ve came from the sight of you like this. his lips part and moan, watching your eyes glow a low red as you wrapped tight fingers around his wrist. a breathless gasp escapes him and a growing heat emerges.
“don’t do this with anyone else okay?” he suddenly says. “just with me.”
you’re too far gone to have register anything but the sweet warmth on your tongue.
vampire!jason who quickly understands the intimacy of this moment. he immediately sees how much of you he wanted and badly he needed you just like this. he held your head close, cradles you in his arms as he leaned against the headboard. his hips mindlessly bucking and stilling like he were holding back. he doesn’t stop you from taking what you wanted and he smiles throughout it all.
“if i had to die to have you,” his green eyes gleaming bright as they watch yours, “i’d do it all over again.”
Summary: The days leading up to your birthday, you move through a world that feels rather gentle. Your family however, don't know they're counting down to the last moments they'll ever have with you.
CW: ANGST, you die bro rest in pieces. death, sustained injuries, description of blood and bodily harm, mention of suicide, grieving, nausea, vomit, swearing, tears (the whole shabang) If any of these tags are triggering, please click off for your own wellbeing.
WC: 6.3k (my longest fic to date)
READ PART 2 HERE - READ PART 2.5
The manor is warm in that quiet, lived-in way it only gets late at night.
Someone left a mug in the sink.
Damian’s boots are by the stairs, kicked off without care.
Tim’s PC hums faintly somewhere it shouldn’t be.
Titus is chewing on someone's bowtie, probably your fathers, instead of his toys.
Alfred has turned down most of the lights, leaving pools of gold along the hallways.
You’re in your room, standing in front of the mirror, smoothing your hands over the fabric of the dress again.
White. Soft. Elegant.
Something you don’t usually pick—but it made Dick’s eyes widen when you stepped out earlier, made Steph whistle, made Cass tilt her head and smile in approval.
Bruce had looked up from the Batcomputer when you’d come downstairs, mid-briefing, and stopped talking entirely.
“That’s what you’re wearing?” he’d asked.
“For my birthday,” you’d said, turning once. “Is it too much?”
He’d shaken his head slowly. “It’s perfect.”
You remember that now, as you leave the dress folded neatly on your bed instead of putting it away. You’d tried it on again after everyone went to bed, just to make sure. Just to feel excited.
Your birthday is coming up, precisely 23 days. There’s a party. You don’t know the details, but you know something’s being planned. You can feel it.
You hum to yourself as you change, utterly unaware of how fragile the moment is.
Bruce doesn’t know either.
The Batcave hums like a living thing.
Screens flicker to life one by one, bathing the stone walls in cold blue light. The air smells faintly of ozone and oil, familiar enough to be comforting—if not for the tension threaded through it. You’re already in suit, cowl down, standing near the Batmobile with your arms folded, weight shifted to one hip. The rest of your family wait for the instructions.
Babs’s voice cuts in before anyone else can speak.
“Alright,” she says, calm but sharp, the way she gets when the stakes are ugly. “Listen up.”
Every screen syncs to her feed. A schematic blossoms across the displays—an industrial complex sprawled beneath Gotham’s east docks, layered with red warning markers like open wounds.
“This isn’t a smash-and-grab,” she continues. “This is a pressure cooker.”
She highlights the lower levels.
Power grids. Structural supports. Something pulsing faintly at the centre.
“That core?” she says. “
Experimental energy converter. If it destabilises, we’re not talking a building-level blast. We’re talking a radius. People live three blocks out.”
Jason swears under his breath.
Tim leans closer to the screen, eyes scanning. “They’re running it hot.”
“They’re running it desperate,” Babs replies. “Someone wants it activated tonight. Whether it’s finished or not.”
Dick crosses his arms. “So we shut it down.”
“Yes,” Babs says. “But not cleanly.”
The map shifts again—automated turrets, drone patrols, reinforced bulkheads.
“Security is layered,” she explains.
“Mechanised response systems tied to motion and heat. Cass, Steph—you’re crowd control topside. Duke, you’re cutting exterior power relays. Jason, Dick—goons and internal lockdowns. Tim, you’re with me on system overrides.”
Her cursor pauses.
“Nightingale,” Babs says, and your name in her mouth feels heavier than usual. “You’re the linchpin.”
You straighten slightly.
“You’ll breach the lower level,” Barbara continues. “
Manual access only. The failsafe is old tech—analog switches buried behind the core housing. You’ll have to get close.”
“How close?” Damian asks, sharp.
She exhales. “Close enough that if the converter surges before shutdown… you won’t have time to clear the blast zone.”
Silence.
You don’t move.
Don’t flinch.
You just nod once.
“I can do it,” you say.
Not bravado.
Not arrogance.
Just certainty.
Bruce’s gaze snaps to you. “We’ll find another way.”
“There isn’t one,” Babs cuts in gently but firmly. “I checked. Thrice.”
The screens dim slightly, as if the cave itself is holding its breath.
“The window is narrow,” she continues. “If Nightingale doesn’t flip the failsafe, the blast hits residential zones. Hospitals. Schools.”
She pauses.
“This mission succeeds,” she says quietly, “or people die.”
Your fingers curl into a fist at your side.
“Then we succeed,” you say.
Bruce’s jaw tightens. “Everyone moves fast. No heroics.”
You glance at him, softening just a fraction. “Always do.”
Babs's voice lowers, more human now. “Comms will be open the entire time. I’m with you every step.”
You look up at the screens.
At the red markers.
At the stakes laid bare in light and lines.
“Let’s go,” you say.
The cave roars to life.
And somewhere deep in your chest, something tightens—quiet, unnameable—as the mission begins to move toward you.
Gotham’s industrial quarter is alive with danger—steel skeletons of half-built towers, conveyor belts still humming, floodlights cutting harsh white lines through the dark.
This isn’t a smash-and-grab.
It’s coordinated.
Compartmentalised.
Everyone has a role.
Everyone moves at once.
Dick is already airborne, flipping down a corridor, cracking jokes he doesn’t quite believe. Jason tears through goons with this brutal efficiency, rage tightly leashed. Tim’s fingers fly over a portable console, muttering something under his breath. Steph and Cass move like ghosts, silent, lethal. Duke’s light cuts through darkness as he takes out turret after turret.
You’re everywhere at once—covering Damian, flanking Bruce, moving where you’re needed most.
The stakes are high.
Hostages on-site.
You get it.
The drive is heavy in your hand when you pull it free.
Mission accomplished. The relief is sharp, fleeting.
That’s when the floor shudders.
Not from the main charges.
This is deeper.
Hidden.
A failsafe.
“Oracle—” Bruce starts.
“I didn’t see that—oh god—delayed detonation, structural—Nightingale, MOVE—”
You shove Damian hard, sending him sprawling behind cover.
The explosion tears through the building like it’s made of paper.
You don’t feel pain at first.
Just impact.
Weightlessness.
Then the ground slams into you, breath ripped from your lungs as something punches through your side.
Your suit absorbs some of it. Not enough.
You don’t scream.
You force yourself up.
The building is collapsing in sections, alarms screaming, fire licking at broken beams. You stagger away from the blast zone on pure instinct, every step slower than the last.
Your vision blurs.
Your leg drags.
Something inside you is wrong—wet, hot, spilling.
“Nightingale, respond!” Oracle’s voice cracks for the first time.
He’s there almost immediately, cowl off, dropping to his knees in front of you. His breath leaves him in a sharp, broken sound when he sees you.
“No,” he says. “No, no, no.”
He presses his hands to your wound, tries to apply pressure, tries to be Batman about it—but it’s slipping through his fingers.
There’s too much blood.
Your skin is already going cold.
“You finished the mission,” he says desperately. “You did it. Help is coming.”
You look at him, really look at him.
Your dad. The man who’s always saved everyone.
Your thoughts then return to the state of your body.
You’re so tired.
The world feels distant, almost like you’re underwater.
You think, fleetingly, about Jason—about how he died scared and alone, about whether this is how it felt.
You reach for your father, arms weak, wrapping around his neck the way you did when you were little.
Childlike. Instinctive.
He pulls you closer immediately, a hand behind your head, holding you like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he lets go.
Your breathing stutters.
Your heart flutters, then slows.
Bruce rocks you slightly, forehead pressed to yours, tears streaming unchecked.
“I’m here,” he sobs. “I’ve got you.
You manage the ghost of a smile
Fear crashes into you then, raw and haunting. “I’m scared.”
“I know,” he whispers, breaking. “Stay with me.”
“Daddy,” you breathe, the word slipping out like a prayer.
“Am I gonna die?”
The comms are silent.
Everyone hears it.
“No,” he says, lying badly.
“Promise?”
He doesn't answer
You smile faintly. “I did it though, right?”
“You saved them,” he chokes. “You saved everyone.”
“That’s good,” you whisper. Your breath rattles. “That’s… really good.”
Damian skids in, dropping beside you, hands shaking as he grabs your arm.
“Do not leave,” he says fiercely, his voice breaking, trying to remain stoic but the sight of you bleeding out makes a rare breed of horror blossom in his chest.
“I forbid it.”
You look at him.
Your little brother.
So angry.
So scared.
You gaze at his face a little while longer, he glares back.
“You’re… so strong,” you murmur. “You’re gonna be better than all of us.”
“Say it later,” he pleads, he was getting desperate. He held your gloved hand in his.
“Say it when we’re home.”
You try to breathe again.
You can’t.
Your chest tightens, a string of wheezes comes out of you. Your vision starts to go dark at the edges. You give Damian's hand one last squeeze.
“I love you,” you say—to all of them. “Hey, uh tell, tell Alfred I—”
Your heart stutters.
Once.
Twice.
Then stops.
A sigh escapes your lips, followed by your eyes closing, your grip loosening on Damian's hand.
Bruce feels it happen in his arms.
“No,” he whispers. “No—no—baby please—”
Your body goes limp.
The first thing they see is the blood.
Your blood.
It’s dark against the concrete, soaking into the cracks of the floor, smeared across Bruce’s gloves, streaked along the edge of your suit. It doesn’t look real at first—too much, too still.
Bruce is on his knees, cowl off, hunched over you like a shield, your body folded against his chest, your head tucked beneath his chin the way it used to be when you fell asleep on long flights.
For one suspended, awful second, no one moves.
Dick is the first to arrive—and the first to understand.
He skids to a stop a few feet away, boots scraping against debris, escrima sticks dropping to the ground, breath leaving him in a broken sound that doesn’t quite qualify as a word. His eyes track slowly, unwillingly, from Bruce’s face down to your limp arm hanging at an unnatural angle, fingers slack, utterly unresponsive.
“Oh,” he whispers. “No. No, no—Y/” He couldn't bring himself to speak your whole name. Babs tears are heard over the comms, not loud, but there.
Jason comes in hard behind him, ready for violence, already braced for another fight. The rage drains from his face in an instant. He freezes mid-step, dropping his gun, helmet tilting as if his brain can’t process what his eyes are telling him.
Bruce looks up.
His face is wrecked—blood, tears, something raw and unrecognisable carved into his expression.
He doesn’t say anything.
Because he doesn’t have to.
Jason’s breath punches out of him. “Bruce…?” His voice is hoarse, disbelieving, his helmets in-built voice modulator doing little to hide his heartbreak. “Why isn't—why—what happened?”
Tim arrives next and stops so abruptly he nearly trips over himself. His gaze snaps to the ground first—always the details—a crimson pattern, blast residue, the sickening scent of gunpowder, the way Bruce’s arms are locked around you too tightly, too desperately.
He turns away suddenly, hands braced on his knees, his chest heaves as his body betrays him. The sound of him getting sick, his retches, echoes too loud in the ruined space, obscene in its normalcy. The sight of your lifeless body was nauseating, that combined with the smell of iron in the air made something churn in his stomach.
Stephanie stumbles in, already breathless from running.
She sees Dick on his knees.
Jason frozen.
Tim retching.
Then she sees you.
Her hands fly to her mouth.
“Oh my god,” she gasps, the words fracturing into a sob. “Oh my god, no—no—”
Her breathing goes erratic, shallow and fast, chest hitching as panic sets in. Cass is there immediately, silent and steady, gripping Steph’s wrists to ground her, forehead pressed briefly to her temple. Cass’s own face is pale, eyes dark and glassy, fixed on the way your head lolls against Bruce’s shoulder, lifeless.
Duke arrives last, light flickering uselessly across the devastation.
He takes one look and goes very, very still.
“She was just—” he starts, then stops.
Swallows.
“She was just talking.”
Damian makes a noise from beside you.
“Father,” he says, voice cracking. “Why is she not responding?”
Asking even though he knows the answer.
After all, Damian is rather accustomed to death.
Just not when it's someone he loves.
Bruce finally moves then—just enough to adjust you in his arms, to tuck you closer like he can still protect you from the world if he holds on tight enough.
“She saved the mission,” Bruce says, hollow. “She saved everyone.”
The silence is foreboding, so suffocating, that everyone can hear a couple drops of your blood hit the pool already on the floor as Bruce stands.
Damian shakes his head sharply, denial flashing hot and violent across his face. “That is not an answer.”
No one has one.
The sirens in the distance fade.
The fire dies down.
Gotham keeps breathing.
You however, don’t.
The Batcave has never felt so big.
Every footstep echoes too loudly as Bruce carries you down the platform, your weight slack against his chest. Alfred stands at the base of the stairs, posture perfect out of sheer habit, but his hands tremble violently at his sides.
He takes one look at you and his composure shatters.
“Oh,” Alfred breathes, stepping forward despite himself.
His voice breaks completely. “My dear child…”
Bruce doesn’t stop.
He doesn’t look at anyone.
He lays you down on the central platform with a care so reverent it hurts to watch.
Your cowl is removed. Your hair spills loose. You look peaceful in a way that feels wrong—like a lie, it looks like you'll wake up at any second.
Everyone stands around you in a loose, broken circle.
Tim sinks down against a console, head in his hands, shoulders shaking. Steph paces in tight circles, muttering under her breath, eyes wild, trying not to scream. Duke leans against the Batmobile, staring at the floor like if he looks up, something inside him will fracture permanently. Cass stands closest to you, silent tears sliding down her face, fingers curled into fists at her sides.
Jason doesn’t move at all. He stands in the shadows, arms crossed tight over his chest, jaw clenched so hard it might crack.
His eyes never leave your face.
Dick finally rises, unsteady, and steps closer. He reaches out like he’s going to touch your shoulder—then stops himself. His hand falls uselessly back to his side.
“I was supposed to get there faster,” he says softly. “I should’ve—”
Bruce lets out a sound that is barely human.
Alfred places a hand on Bruce’s shoulder, gentle, devastating.
“Master Bruce,” he murmurs. “You may let her rest now.”
Bruce doesn’t respond.
He doesn’t move.
He just stares at you, eyes hollow, arms empty for the first time since he carried you out of the ruins—like if he looks away, the truth might finally sink in.
And none of them are ready for that.
Damian does not collapse when it happens.
Not in the tunnel.
Not in the Cave.
Not when Alfred’s voice breaks.
Not when Bruce doesn’t move.
He stands beside the platform where your body lies, blood cleaned away, hands clenched so tightly his gloves creak. He watches Bruce like he’s waiting for him to fix it. To undo it. To do something impossible, because Batman always does. But tonight, he's just Bruce Wayne, a father.
When no one does—when no one can—Damian simply turns and leaves.
No one stops him.
He opens the door to your room.
It still smells like you.
It’s subtle—fabric softener, shampoo, something sweet he can’t place, the inviting scent of your perfume. Damian closes the door behind him and stands very still, like the air might shatter if he moves too fast.
Your dog, Elizabeth Taylor lifts up her little head from her luxury velvet dog bed you insisted on getting her, expecting you, but looking rather dejected at the sight of Damian, regardless, she trots over to him in a sleepy state and demands to be held.
Damian holds her to his heart reverently.
Your bed is made.
Too neatly.
Alfred must have done it.
The dress is gone.
He notices that immediately.
For a split second, irrational hope flares—you’re wearing it. Then reality crashes back in, merciless.
Damian walks to your vanity, putting Elizabeth on your bed. Your things are still there: lip gloss, a hair tie, the stupid pen you stole from him and never gave back. He opens the drawer without thinking.
That’s when he sees it.
The Polaroid.
It’s crooked, half-slid under a soothing face mask.
He pulls it free with shaking fingers.
It’s the two of you, squeezed into the frame. You’re perched on the edge of the vanity, grinning like you’ve just gotten away with something. Damian is scowling, arms crossed, but his shoulder is pressed into yours. He remembers this—remember you laughing because he “looked like a pissed-off cat.”
His breath stutters.
He sits down hard on the floor, back against the vanity, Polaroid clutched to his chest like it might burn a hole through him.
“You promised,” he whispers.
His voice cracks on the second word.
The sound that comes out of him next is raw and small and nothing like Robin. It echoes in the room, swallowed by silk curtains and expensive furniture that suddenly feels obscene.
Damian Wayne cries alone on his older sister’s bedroom floor, forehead pressed to his knees, the Polaroid trembling in his hands.
Damian Wayne was accustomed to death.
But not to grief.
The world doesn’t find out right away.
For thirty-two hours at least, everything stays contained in the cave—sealed behind stone, firewalls, and the kind of silence only grief can produce.
Bruce doesn’t release a statement.
Wayne Enterprises goes dark.
The Watchtower runs on autopilot.
Dick is unreachable.
Phones ring and ring and ring until they stop.
In those thirty-two hours, the city keeps moving.
People go to work.
Kids go to school.
News cycles churn through politics and markets and weather.
Your name doesn’t exist on the ticker.
Yet.
And then, suddenly, it does.
The screen fades in from black to the familiar set of the Central City Citizen Evening News broadcast.
The television is already on when it happens.
Dinah isn’t really watching it—just background noise while she wipes down the kitchen counter, humming softly to herself. Ollie’s voice drifts in from the living room, sharp and animated as he argues with someone from Queen Industries on the phone about patrol rotations, about coverage, about things that still assume the world is intact.
The anchor changes.
Dinah glances up without thinking.
It’s Iris.
She’s dressed in black.
Something cold drops straight through Dinah’s chest before a single word is spoken.
Iris’s hands are folded on the desk, fingers interlaced too tightly, her engagement ring gleaming, knuckles pale under the studio lights. Her expression—usually warm, composed, unshakeable—is fractured.
There’s a pause.
Too long.
Long enough for dread to bloom and take root.
“It is with a heavy heart,” Iris begins, and her voice is already unsteady, “that I inform you all that one of America’s most beloved young women—”
Dinah’s hand stills on the counter.
“—daughter of Bruce Wayne, philanthropist, women's rights activist, and humanitarian, Y/N Wayne—”
The room tilts.
The cloth slips from Dinah’s fingers and hits the floor soundlessly.
“—has tragically passed away.”
Dinah stares at the screen.
The words don’t make sense.
They slide past her, wrong and unreal, like a language she doesn’t speak. Her ears ring, a high, thin sound drowning out everything else.
Iris swallows hard, eyes shining.
“According to officials,” she continues, slower now, careful, “Her death has been ruled a suicide. She was found dead in her bedroom approximately thirty-two hours ago. Authorities have stated there is no evidence of foul play at this time.”
Suicide.
The word lands like a gunshot.
Dinah’s breath leaves her all at once. “No,” she whispers, the denial automatic, instinctive. “No, that’s not—”
Iris presses on, voice trembling but determined.
“Y/N Wayne was more than a public figure,” she says. “She was… she was a light. A young woman who used her platform not for vanity, but for service. For change.”
Her voice breaks on the last word.
Dinah’s knees buckle.
She reaches for the counter and misses, sinking down onto the kitchen floor as if gravity has suddenly doubled. Her back hits the cabinet, the impact sharp but distant. Her chest aches, tight and hollow at the same time.
Iris looks down at her notes, then back up—and she’s crying now.
She doesn’t hide it.
Tears spill freely, tracking down her face as she struggles to breathe evenly.
“Those of us who knew her personally,” Iris says, choking, “knew her kindness. Her humor. Her unwavering belief in the good of people—especially heroes who never thought of themselves that way.”
“I loved her,” Iris admits, voice barely holding together. “She loved my family. And today—today the world is quieter without her.”
Iris lifts a hand to her mouth as the tears finally overwhelm her. The camera lingers—not cruelly, but honestly. A nation watching a woman grieve in real time.
The broadcast fades to footage of you.
Photos.
Videos.
You laughing at a gala.
You and Cassandra in your father's arms .
You standing between Dinah and Ollie, grinning wide, arms slung around them like you belonged there—because you did.
Dinah makes a broken sound, somewhere between a sob and a gasp.
Ollie is there suddenly, phone forgotten, kneeling in front of her. His face is white, eyes fixed on the screen behind her.
“That’s—” His voice cracks. “Dinah, that’s not real. That’s not—”
She shakes her head, tears streaming unchecked. “She was here,” Dinah whispers. “Ollie, she was here two nights ago.”
Ollie freezes.
The memory hits them both at once.
You sprawled across their couch, feet kicked up on Ollie’s lap despite his protests. Dinah braiding your hair absentmindedly while you gossiped about nothing and everything. You laughing when one of your AirPods slipped out and vanished into the cushions.
I’ll grab them after a mission, you’d said, waving it off because your father called you home to get ready for Damian's piano recital. Promise.
Dinah’s gaze snaps to the side table.
The AirPods case sits there.
Exactly where you left it.
“Oh my god,” Dinah sobs, clutching it to her chest like it might shatter. “She was coming back.”
Ollie pulls her into his arms, holding her tight, his own breath hitching as he presses his forehead to hers. His voice is raw when he speaks.
Ollie pulls her into his arms, holding her tight, his own breath hitching as he presses his forehead to hers. His voice is raw when he speaks.
“She was supposed to come back.”
The television keeps playing in the background—other anchors now, other networks, all saying your name, all using the same words: tragic, shocking, suicide, beloved.
The world keeps turning.
But in the penthouse, time stops.
The Watchtower meeting room is stalled.
Not delayed—stalled.
Bruce’s chair is empty, again.
At first it’s irritation.
Subtle, restrained, but there. Hal keeps glancing at the chrono on the wall. Guy’s already leaned back, arms crossed, foot tapping, irritation buzzing off him like static.
“We can’t keep waiting,” Guy mutters. “The agenda’s stacked, and Bats doesn’t own the clock.”
“He owns this room,” Hal replies automatically—then stops. Because even he doesn’t fully believe that right now.
Something feels wrong.
Clark has been uneasy since he arrived. He hasn’t said it out loud, because saying it would make it real, but his hands haven’t stopped clenching and unclenching at his sides. His hearing keeps drifting, involuntarily, searching for a sound that should exist.
A heartbeat.
A familiar one.
It stopped a day and a bit ago.
Abruptly.
Completely.
While he was in his sleep.
He told himself it was interference.
Space does weird things to sound.
Magic does worse.
He told himself anything except the truth clawing at the base of his throat.
J’onn feels it before the screen turns on.
The emotional temperature of the room drops—sharp, sudden, like oxygen being sucked out.
Fear, confusion, dread. A collective intake of breath that never quite releases.
The broadcast flickers to life.
Iris West.
Black dress.
Hands folded too tightly.
The shock is deafening.
Every single one of them locks in.
Barry is already on his feet. “Why is Iris—”
The name hits.
The ruling hits harder.
Suicide.
No one moves.
No one breathes.
It’s like every sound has been sucked out of the Watchtower at once.
Hal’s boots hit the floor with a sharp clang. “That’s—no. That’s not—” He drags a hand down his face. “Oh God, that’s Bruce’s kid.”
Arthur mutters a curse under his breath, ancient and furious. Diana’s eyes widen—not in disbelief, but in something far worse: recognition.
Clark staggers back half a step.
He doesn’t speak at first.
Then, quietly—devastatingly—
“I felt it.”
Every head snaps toward him.
Superman's voice shakes. “I didn’t know what it was at first. Just… silence. Like something vanished from the world.”
His hands curl into fists. “Her heart stopped. I heard it. And I couldn’t get there in time.”
Barry swallows hard. “Clark…”
Diana finally speaks, a hand on her heart, voice low and steady and cracked straight through the middle.
“This world does not spare the gentle.” She says solemnly.
No one argues.
They all look, again, at Bruce’s empty seat.
“That’s why,” Hal says hoarsely. “That’s why he hasn’t answered. That’s why Dick vanished.”
Diana closes her eyes. “He has lost a child.”
The Watchtower remains silent.
No Bats.
No Batman.
Only the echo of something irreplaceable gone.
At Titans Tower, the mood curdles into something heavy and sick when they get a glimpse of the TV.
Before that though, the Titans’ tower felt wrong.
Too quiet.
Too still.
Like the air’s gone bad.
Dick hasn’t answered in days.
That alone has everyone on edge.
Wally’s pacing, too fast even for him. Kori stands near the window, staring out into the night sky like she’s waiting for it to explain itself. Roy’s sitting on the arm of the couch, bouncing his knee. Garth hasn’t moved in ten minutes.
Donna’s phone buzzes.
Once.
She glances down without thinking.
And then she gasps—sharp, loud, visceral.
“What?” Roy asks immediately.
Donna doesn’t answer. Her face drains of colour as she stares at the screen, fingers trembling.
“Oh no…no, no, no, no” she whispers.
They’re on their feet before she even says it.
She turns the phone so they can see.
Y/N WAYNE DEAD.
GOTHAM HEIRESS COMMITTED SUICIDE
BRUCE WAYNE LOSES A DAUGHTER
Someone turns on the TV. It doesn’t matter who.
Every channel.
Every headline.
Every word is unbearable.
The understand now why Dick went off the grid.
His sister was dead.
Lois is already crying when Jon walks into the room.
The volume is low, but it doesn’t matter. He sees Iris. He sees the black. He sees your picture on the screen.
“No,” Jon says immediately. “No, that’s not—”
Lois pulls him into her arms as the words land.
His big sister.
Gone.
“She wouldn’t,” he sobs. “She wouldn’t leave. Mom that's not fair.”
Lois’s voice breaks. “I know, sweetheart.”
“They said she did it to herself,” Jon cries, devastated, angry, confused. “Why would she do that? Why didn’t she tell us?”
Lois holds him tighter, tears soaking into his hair. “Sometimes people hurt in ways they don’t know how to explain.” She couldn't tell him what all the other heroes knew, what Clark had called her to tell.
You died in combat.
Jon looks back at the screen, chest heaving. “She was my big sister,” he whispers. “She was supposed to be there.”
Lois can’t answer that.
No one can.
The day of your funeral, the city feels muted the moment people begin to arrive.
Not quiet—muted.
Like someone turned the saturation down on the world and left only grey behind. Gotham’s skyline looms in the distance, blurred beneath swollen, low-hanging clouds that threaten rain but never quite deliver.
Outside the funeral hall, black cars line the street in perfect, somber symmetry. Drivers wait with hands folded over steering wheels. Security stands still, eyes forward, expressions carefully neutral.
Inside, the air is heavy enough to press against the lungs.
Every step echoes too loudly.
Every whisper feels like an intrusion.
The hall itself is vast, elegant, suffocating in its stillness.
Black drapery cascades from the ceiling, broken only by soft white light trained on the front of the room. Your casket rests there—closed, polished, devastating. White lilies and roses surround it in excess, their scent thick and cloying, curling into throats until breathing feels like work.
A slideshow plays silently on a massive screen behind the podium.
You as a child, perched on Bruce’s shoulders, laughing.
You with Dick, missing teeth and scraped knees.
You between Steph and Cass, arms slung around their waists.
You holding Damian when he was younger, his scowl already perfected.
You sprawled on the floor of the library with Tim and Jason, surrounded by books.
You holding Elizabeth Taylor the day you got her.
You at galas.
You with your family.
You alive.
Steph sits in the front row, clutching Elizabeth Taylor to her chest. Your dog is wrapped in a warm blanket, donning small black ribbons at her ears, her body trembling slightly as she whines under her breath, confused by the absence she doesn’t understand. Steph’s jaw is clenched tight, tears streaking silently down her face as she buries her nose briefly into the soft fur.
Cass sits beside her, rigid, eyes locked on the casket like if she looks away, something worse might happen. Duke’s hand grips hers so tightly his knuckles threaten to pop. Tim sits just beyond them with his friends, shoulders slumped, gaze unfocused, like he’s only halfway present in his own body.
Jason stands behind Dick, close enough that his presence is felt even when neither of them speaks. Dick hasn’t stopped shaking since he walked in.
The Justice League fills row after row—Clark, Lois, and Jon seated together. Jon’s face is blotchy and red, eyes fixed on the floor, fists clenched in the fabric of his suit pants. Diana sits tall and unmoving, grief carved into the stillness of her posture, Steve mirroring that. Barry’s leg bounces uncontrollably; Iris keeps one hand wrapped around his wrist like an anchor. Hal stares straight ahead, jaw tight. Arthur’s massive hands rest on his knees, fingers flexing slowly, Mera's face hasn't changed from one of sorrow. J’onn sits quietly, his presence heavy with emotion he cannot shut out. Zatanna and John, Shayerah, Ted and Michael, all grieving in their own ways.
The Titans occupy an entire section—Donna’s expression is carved from stone, Wally’s leg jittering as he presses his palms together, Kori’s eyes glowing faintly with restrained grief, Roy’s jaw set hard, Kyle staring blankly at the slideshow as if he’s afraid to blink.
Members of the GCPD, Commissioner Gordon and Babs, WE Board members, Luke and Lucius, all present.
When Bruce enters, the room changes.
He walks slowly, deliberately, dressed in black so severe it feels ceremonial.
He holds Damian’s hand, his grip firm, grounding. Damian walks beside him, spine straight, chin lifted, his green eyes glassy but unblinking. The room rises instinctively, respect and grief pulling them to their feet.
Bruce does not look at anyone.
He looks at you.
At the casket.
At the photos.
At the life he is being asked to survive.
He and Damian take their places in the front row.
Bruce does not let go of his son’s hand.
The service begins.
Words are spoken—formal, respectful, distant.
Achievements are listed.
Foundations named.
Your kindness, your generosity, your advocacy spoken of like a legacy carved in stone.
But it’s the slideshow that breaks people.
Photo after photo of you woven between speeches, proof that you were here. That you mattered.
Dick is the first to stand.
He makes it three steps before he stops, hand braced on the podium like he needs it to stay upright. He looks out at the room, at the heroes, the family, the people who loved you. His mouth opens. Closes.
“Y/N was my sister,” he says, voice already splintering. “My baby sister.”
A photo flashes behind him—Dick at eight years old, grinning proudly with you balanced on Bruce’s arm, two years old and giggling.
“I was supposed to protect her,” Dick continues, tears spilling freely now. “That was my job. I thought— I really thought I’d always be there in time.”
His shoulders collapse inward.
“She was everything good,” he sobs. “Everything bright. And I couldn’t— I couldn’t save her.”
He can’t finish.
Wally and Roy are beside him instantly, arms around his shoulders, guiding him gently away as Dick clings to them like he’s drowning.
Tim stands next.
He hesitates before speaking, eyes flicking briefly to the casket, then away.
“In the beginning,” Tim says quietly, “me and Y/N didn’t actually get along that well.”
“I thought she was too stuck up,” he continues, voice shaking. “She thought I was trying too hard to impress Dad.”
A few sad, breathless laughs ripple through the room.
He swallows.
“I’m happy to say we don’t think like that anymore.”
His fingers grip the edge of the podium. He stumbles over his next words.
“Y/N wa—” He stops. He couldn't bring himself to say 'was'
Breath hitching.
“Is— is, Y/N is the greatest of all time.”
A photo flashes—Tim and you sprawled on the Batcave floor, surrounded by schematics and snacks.
“She isn’t just my sister,” Tim says, tears slipping down unchecked now, “she’s my friend. And I think her presence in my life is one of the greatest blessings I’ve ever had. I think I’m so privileged to have known her personally.”
His voice breaks completely.
“I think— I think losing someone you love this much,” Tim continues, “it’s like losing a tooth. At first there’s blood. Panic. Pain. But after it fades, there’s just… this empty space.”
He presses his tongue to the inside of his cheek unconsciously.
“And you feel it every time you move. Every time you breathe, every time you eat. And it hurts. A lot.”
The slideshow changes—your handwriting on a sticky note, a book left unfinished on the coffee table, a pair of Crocs abandoned by Tim’s bedroom door, your sweater draped over a chair.
“I see her everywhere,” Tim whispers. “In the pictures on the walls. In the book she didn’t finish reading. In the sweater she left on my chair. I tried to play Minecraft to get away from it… but all I could think about was the world we built together.”
He steps away, shoulders shaking.
Damian follows.
He stands stiffly, hands clasped behind his back, eyes forward.
“This morning,” Damian says, voice quiet but razor-sharp with control, “I walked into my ukhti’s room expecting her to be there.”
A photo appears—Damian sitting on your bed, scowling while you grin at the camera.
“I went there instinctually,” he continues. “I thought I would hear her say, ‘Damian, what do you want?’”
His throat tightens.
“But there was nothing.”
His eyes flick briefly to Bruce.
“Her room is next to mine,” Damian says. “Normally in the evenings, I hear her closet shuffling. Her telling Elizabeth off for… defiling couture and chewing on her shoes. Or the girls causing chaos.”
Silence stretches.
“I heard nothing.”
Bruce stands last.
The room feels like it caves inward.
“My daughter,” he begins.
The word lands like a blow.
“I buried my parents,” Bruce continues, voice steady but frayed at the edges. “And now I am burying my child.”
The room breaks.
Quiet sobs. Hands to mouths. Iris presses her face into Barry’s shoulder.
“She made this world better,” Bruce says. “And I will live every day knowing it no longer has her in it.”
The burial at Wayne Manor is quieter.
Smaller.
More devastating.
The casket is lowered beside Thomas and Martha Wayne. Damian steps forward and places something small atop it. Bruce remains standing long after everyone else steps back.
Alfred approaches him, eyes red, hands trembling.
“I am so very sorry, Master Bruce,” he says softly.
Bruce exhales, shoulders sagging.
“I wasn’t supposed to outlive her,” he whispers.
Alfred bows his head.
Damian stares at the grave, silent, shattered.
The world moves on.
But something essential has ended.
And nothing will ever recover from it.
A/N: got yo ass heheheheh nah but i feel like i did rlly well on this one, super happy with how it came out. lmk what you guys think! i have this feeling im gonna gate death threats in my inbox idk. ill get back to my 2k event trust. give me ideas for part 2 guys.
★ SYNOPSIS: Contrary to popular belief, Dick's not stupid. He's seen the way his own brother looks at you—the way Jason's very eyes seem to light up when you're in the room—and he. fucking. hates. it.
★ TAGS: jealousy, established relationship, possessive behaviour, his brother is crushing on his girl—let him be a bit possessive guys, background!jason todd x dick's gf!reader, oblivious!reader, love triangle
★ A/N: ugh guys, i'm such a sucker for the guy into his brother's gf trope it's not even funny. the angst potential is through the roof. anyway, this is technically part two to this oneshot but it can be read as its own separate thing!!
line divider by @cafekitsune
Now, Dick likes to think of himself as a reasonable sort of guy.
When Wally pranks him, he laughs it off with nothing but a big smile and a wave of his hand. When Babs lectures him, he chuckles sheepishly and all but promises to do better next time. When Bruce decides to be particularly difficult while working with him, he clenches his jaw and shoves all his annoyance back down the pit it came from before continuing on like it never bubbled out in the first place.
So yeah, all in all, Dick's a pretty reasonable guy—
—except, of course, when it comes to you.
In particular, when it comes to the way his brother looks at you.
He isn't blind. He's seen it. The way Jason's eyes seem to have all the life flood back into them the moment they land on you; the way his hands seem to twitch after you finish tending to his wounds and pull away, as though desperate to pull you back in.
Dick's seen it and he doesn't like it.
In fact, he fucking hates it.
It makes his skin crawl; has spiders flood his veins like he's an island straight after a tsunami, like he's an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. Still standing. Still hoping. Still praying.
Perhaps for the moment he doesn't have to come home to his little brother eye-fucking his girl.
Dick's gaze narrows, sharpening straight into a blade ready to slice through skin. "Oh hey, didn't realise we had company."
Your lips turn up at the sight of him, and his eyes soften just a bit. "Dick! You're home!"
Then his lips curve up for a split second, only to immediately fall flat the very next one as movement catches the corner of his eye.
Jason shifts in his spot on the couch next to you, gaze darting to the side like he just got caught doing something he shouldn't be.
Something like flirting with his brother's girlfriend.
"Jay came over with an injury, so I'm just patching it up for him."
Dick hums, eyes leaving you in favour of narrowing again at his brother. "He seems to be doing that a lot more lately."
Jason refuses to meet his eyes.
"I know." You frown. "I'm really worried."
Ever the kind heart, you truly don't see what's really going on here, do you?
"Babe," Dick starts, reverting his attention towards you and letting his lips curve up once more, "do you think you can make me some of your special tea? My throat's a bit sore."
Immediately, you get up from your position on the couch, moving towards him so swiftly and with such care, he can't help but flash his gaze to the man behind you and let his lips quirk up just a tad bit more.
"Oh no... I told you to start wearing a scarf out. Winter's right around the corner."
You move to graze a hand over his throat, your brows scrunched in that sweet way they always are when you're concerned for him, and suddenly, as his hands slip right around your waist and he pulls you close, all he sees is you.
"I know, I know." He chuckles, squeezing your hips. "I'll wear one next time. Promise."
He won't, but he can't bring himself to turn you down.
Your lips tug down, almost as if you know this, know him (because you're his girlfriend, not Jason's), but you ultimately leave it alone, pulling away to head to the kitchen.
But then Dick catches the way his brother looks at you—that stupid puppy dog-eyed look Jason probably doesn't even realise he's doing—and he moves to catch your arm again, pulling you straight into a kiss.
Your eyes widen at first, but then you melt into him, and he's making his way into your mouth with his tongue, and you're pulling away not a moment later in both surprise and your own fluster.
A string of saliva is the only evidence that you two were connected further than just an innocent peck. But it's all the evidence he needs as he flicks his gaze back to his brother, sitting there now with a slight frown on his face.
"Dick," you scold him halfheartedly, lips curved up a little at the corners. "Not in front of your brother."
He only smirks back at you, causing you to roll your eyes and pull away to head to the kitchen, mumbling something under your breath and smiling all the while.
As soon as you're gone however, his smirk falls flat.
The room is quiet, a special kind of quiet, one you can cut through with a knife. The tense kind.
Dick's gaze is piercing through Jason, and Jason's is nowhere near Dick's.
How telling.
The older man crosses his arms, and just like that, the silence is shattered.
"So," he starts in a drawl almost too casual for the circumstance, "when were you gonna tell me you're into my girl?"
"Don't know what you're talking 'bout."
Dick scoffs. "Really?"
"Yeah, really."
His jaw ticks, teeth grinding so hard he's worried they'll shatter as Jason still makes no move to return his gaze.
"I'm not blind, Jason," he tries again in a near growl, "I've seen the way you look at her."
This time it's Jason's turn to scoff, and he finally turns his head to meet Dick's own. "Oh yeah? And how's that?"
How do I look at her? he adds with just his eyes.
"Like you want her," Dick shoots back quickly. "Like you love her."
Jason sits up a little, and now it's his turn to narrow his gaze at his brother. "So what if I do?"
At that moment, Dick feels something white, hot, and dangerously close to flames riddle his veins, and suddenly, shattering his teeth is the least of his worries.
"So, she's my girlfriend," he hisses through gritted teeth. "So, you back. off."
Jason scoffs again, but Dick doesn't let him get another word in, the older brother narrowing his gaze into slits as he takes a step forward in a silent warning.
"I want you out of my fucking house by the time she gets back."
Jason stands up. "Or what?"
Another flash of white hot flames.
"Or I'll fucking beat your feelings for her out of you."
The two of them stand there, nothing but tense silence filling the gap between them for a few long moments.
Then Jason lets out another scoff, and he passes by Dick with a particularly harsh shove that has the older man's mouth opening up to speak again before he can stop himself.
"Oh, and do us both a favour: lose her number and start getting someone else to patch you up."
heyyyyyy! *slides into dms* may i request a drabble with bruce wayne proposing to (y/n)? like the jason todd fic. because i absolutley adored your jason drabble. it was so incredibly sweet. i coulnt stop grinning while reading it. your writing is so cozy. ykyk? i want to read moreeeeeeee. i want to read some tooth rotting bruce fluff. i just love your writing style and could not help but ask. this is my first time requesting. so i am kind of nervous.
⁺༝ ꒰১ 𝒟𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠’𝐬 magical mailbox ໒꒱ ༝⁺: omg! my first anon letteeeeer. you have no idea how much this tiny milestone means to me! thank you so so much for your kind words anon. plus it only makes it even more speacial, that this is also your first request. gladly i will try to meet your wishes and write a tiny snippet. regarding the tooth rotting fluff: i think i kind off drifted into another direction story wise. sorry... anyways- here is your tiny story hihi <33 hope you will enjoy it, honey.
i tried my best hihi. please like and comment if you enjoy this tiny ficlet. anywayyyyssss ૮ ྀིᴗ͈ . ᴗ͈ ྀིა i should stop rambling.
𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐎𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐒: Subsequent to Selina leaving him, even before walking down the aisle, Bruce ceased believing in his very own happy ever after for the Dark Knight. That is, until he met his very own Lampyridae, his sweet firefly, his Seirēn. A wonderful young woman who illuminated his seemingly gloomy and arcane labyrinthine path of self destructional vengeance, lucring him inro a sweet yet secret sanctuary. Now, brucce finally allowed his weary heart to fully embrace a new person, vowing never to let her go again. To offer her his last name, and with it, his entire weeping soul.
₊˚⊹* ₊⊹ 𝐛𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐧𝐞 x reader
warnings & tags .ᐟ: sfw. pure fluff. no use of y/n. written with fem! reader in mind. no reader description. maybe ooc? no beta reader. Bruce being all over the place. Bruce having a few dark thoughts (?). i did not know how to end this sorryyyy. wrote this till almost 4 am. could be trash haha. selina mentioned. selina still burned in Bruce's mind (not too positive tho). Still learning how to tag!!. English is not my first language.
a little sticky note .ᐟ: This is a little ficlet based on this post by the lovely sentrybites: "i saw someone saying on twitter about a woman who said that her boyfriend was so nervous when propose her that he forgot everything and ended up just getting on his knees saying “please”." you may find my original post (jason todd x reader) here .૮ ྀིᴗ͈ . ᴗ͈ ྀིა This time, I wrote directly in English instead of first drafting a rough sketch in my native language. I think I like it better this way; the text resembles my natural writing style much more closely.
word count: approx 1873
Ambrosia and citrus fruits hung in the air. Ice cream cones glided slowly down the ever warming pavements, the melting straberry and vanilla milky cream bleeding slowly along the cracks of the hot paving stone. For once , silence reigned at the lakeshores.
Even though the villa boasted a small private beach, teenagers would invariably hop the fence or clamber down the stone wall to party until dawn. "Il proprietario non c'è mai," they would hum whenever the Polizia peered over the fence.
"Let the young people enjoy their summer," she had said, just as he was on the verge of chasing the group away with a fine walking stick clutched in his fierce hand.
She was so lenient. He never understood why.
Windows flung wide open, an orchard of peach trees with wind chime breez through the leaves and branches shimmering with the early heat haze. A timeless oil-painting or polaroid-worn-away-at-the edges-with-fading-faces kind of beauty about this dream. It had to be one. Bruce Wayne was never lucky. This could not be real.
And her? Soft light spattered on her soft skin, her and her and her.
i want to live like this forever. I want to rip my teeth into this very moment and never let go. i want to feed on this very image. i want to die here.
Always intertwined, feeling the silken sheets shifting around us like white snakeskin as i sought for your body's warmth. Never quiet sated.
The golden light, filtered through the leaves, bathed her skin in gentle marble textures. Bruce traced curve after swirl, searching for those tiny imperfections in her skin that made her feel human. Less than the thalassic siren he saw within her.
Her muscles rippled in the same rhythm the gentle waves of the lake, soft, persistent, soft.
Bruce was scared. Scared that in this life, it would start raining the second he whispered her name into her ear. The second she called for him. Afraid that a storm would break, instead of time standing still, after they had kissed for the millionth time.
The house was filled with the smell of the last misshaped, sweet heavy, almost drunken peaches of the season. Slowly loosing shape from their ripeness. All summer long the peach-trees had begged to get picked. When their skin had still been plush, full of life as if frozen in them; smooth as marble.
Bruce pushed his nose into the back of her neck. Her warm, soft hair tickling his nose, while his lips savoured the faintly salty taste of her skin. He tried to purge the heavy ripe scent from his nostrils, trying to inhale her youthfulness. Hoping she was secretly not yearning for the light. That she did not feel as though her lips rested upon a fruit: a fruit that was scarcely lovable, less plump, and all too easily bruised.
He traced a tiny mole on her shoulder, sighing deeply. His eyes flickering towards an old bureau. Wooden vines adorned its otherwise simple form. Inside a tiny secret drawer lay a ring - cradled in silk and kept safe within a silver seashell jewelry box. A silver ring enclosing a genuine saltwater pearl, held fast by curving forms and filigree that evoked the beautiful, almost ethereal appearance of sea foam.
The ring of his mother. The ring of his father's mother. And hopefully soon the ring of his future children's mother.
Selina.
A name that haunted his mind like a ghost. He avoided mirrors, too afraid to catch the reflection of her cat like green eyes. Her gaze, staring back at Bruce like a blinding light in the darkness. Scars reminded him that Bruce Wayne would never find solace without becoming entangled in a web of hazy thoughts, thoughts he called love. Thoughts of straying from the righteous path of his predetermined, solitary road of vengeance, of abandoning the very safety of an already godforsaken city.
A name that had haunted him again for months, ever since a tiny green glimmer of hope had taken root in his heart. Hope for a more domestic life.
His spiraling thoughts were interrupted as she stirred beside him. The Bat blinked; his eyes felt dry after having zoned out for so long, his heavy eyelids unmoving. She turned over, still half-asleep, and buried her face against his bare chest. He felt her legs shift between his, yet she showed no sign whatsoever of waking up. "My sleeping beauty…" he murmured, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. He inhaled her scent and the light oil of her scalp.
"Hmmm... does my pretty lady want to grace her humble knight with her waking presence?", he sighed gruffly. His voice was laced with a heavy raspy note. Another sleepless night for the vengeful knight, she noted. The young woman felt him shift his head,and felt, once again, how he was staring at that damned table for the umpteenth time. She didn't even have to open her pretty eyes to sense that tense gaze.
She heard him think, zoning out agian, for a tiny second. He heard her mumbel before he could once again loose him again.
"No...", she breathed, her refusal barily audible. He let out a soft, throaty laugh and scattered a thousand kisses across her jawline and cheek. His two days worth of stubble pricking her delicate face. "Let me see your pretty eyes...", he mumbeled between kisses, gently cupping her cheeks with one large hand. His palm was deliciously rough from the work as a viligante and the rigorous training. The skin scarred from training all the different skills he now commanded.
She opened her eyes only a tiny slit, her long lashes brushing expectantly against her slightly squished tissue of her cheekbone. He purred with contentment, pursed his lips, and pressed a childlike kiss to her mouth. "My pretty little fawn… just look at you—so displeased, and your day hasn't even begun yet," he murmured.
He laughed again, as if his words had been immensely amusing.
"I'm sorry, little angel—I'm so sorry I woke you," he cooed tenderly, kissing first her eyelids, then her nose. "Forgive me, my little apple."
He had left the bed, tucked his beloved back snugly into the silken cocoon of their sheets, and then set off for the kitchen. Ready to brew coffee and bring back some pastries from the tiny bakery downtown. Just a few miles away from this villa. The young woman slowly sat up, her eyes staring, almost gawking at the bureau. She tried to figure out what Bruce could possibly have found so interesting there.
After all, she hadn't simply stumbled into the Batcave last winter just because she had bumped her head one too many times as a child. She pushed the duvet off her legs and crept slowly, on tiptoe, toward the piece of furniture. Hesitantly, she glanced toward the open double doors. She could smell the fresh aroma of Italian coffee being brewed over on the stove.
Her hands felt along the underside; her fingertips sensed every tiny irregularity, every little imperfection in the wood. Her index finger glided over a strange spot. She pressed against the wood, and a tiny compartment sprang open. With a soft click, the drawer slid out.
For a moment, she simply stared inside. Lying there was a small silver shell, nestled within the folds of pale silk. The morning light caught on its curves, making it gleam like something dredged from the bottom of the lake by a mermaid's careful hands.
Slowly, she reached for it. The shell felt cool in her palm. Older than the house. Older than summer. The hinge gave way with barely any resistance. And there it was, a ring. Not gaudy not enormous. Not the sort of thing displayed behind spotless glass windows on Fifth Avenue.
The pearl seemed alive. Cream-white and luminous, carrying the soft glow of moonlight trapped beneath water. Silver swirls held it in place, delicate and wild at once, like sea foam frozen by magic. Her thumb brushed over the metal.
The realization settled slowly within her. For several seconds she simply sat there on the floor, cross-legged before the bureau, holding the ring between her fingers as though it might disappear. The world outside continued uninterrupted.
The floorboards groaned softly. Bruce appeared in the doorway carrying a tray balanced awkwardly in one hand.
Bruce almost dropped the tray. The pure silver was not particularly heavy, nor because the polished wooden floor beneath his bare feet was uneven, but because the sight that greeted him as he stepped through the doorway struck him with the same strange, disorienting force as waking from a nightmare and realizing it had followed you into daylight.
His Darling sat on the cool floor before the bureau, the tin ysecret drawer open; and between ger fingers, caught in a shaft of golden morning sunlight that pouzred through the open windows and turned every speck of durst into drifting flecks of amber, rested the ring.
The ring he had carried across contonets, hidden away in safes, vaults and secret compartments, protecting it with care that bordered on reverence, because some small and embarrassingly hopeful part of him had knoen for years that if therfe was ever going to be a woman standing again beside him at the end of all things, then it would be her.
For one terrible moment, Bruce could only stare.
Months. Months of planning collapsed in on themselves like a wet paper card house. Sogging into one big clump.
The little island in the middle of the lake appeared before his eyes, the old castle perched upon it like something stolen from a fairytale, its stone walls glowing honey-gold at sunset. He remembered the owner laughing when Bruce had first approached him, convinced the billionaire was attempting to buy the property outright rather than merely borrow it for an evening. He remembered checking out flower shops, stupid decoration and bills of online shopping of fairylights, so high no one could actually imagine one would buy so many.
He puffed, feeling suddenly so unsure.
The speech- God the speech!
Entire patrols had been spent composing it in his head. He had rewritten it while literally hanging upside down from gargoyles. Rewritten it while bleeding. Rewritten it while pretending to pay attention during board meetings. Every sentence carefully chosen. Every word measured.
Because there were things he wanted her to understand: That she had saved him. That he still woke up some mornings convinced she was going to disappear. That every dream he had ever dared entertain for himself somehow had her standing at the center of it.
And now she had found the ring while wrapped in a bedsheet. Like a magpie digging through cupboards after flying into a room through an open window.
The Bat nearly laughed, oh he almost wept. He stepped hesitantly towards her, sank to his knees , slowly taking her delicate hands, and kissed ever singly inch of them. The ring lay cradled between her hands. "Please…" he murmured amidst his adoration. His eyes closed as he murmured "Please" once more.
ৎׅ ׄ synopsis ⋮ You get kidnapped and branded by the joker on christmas. The bat-family sees Jason unravel.
word cnt. 14.6k
cw ›››› torture, branding, suicidal language, violence, blood, gore
Something is wrong.
Jason feels it like a pressure change—subtle, almost polite—but it crawls under his helmet and settles behind his eyes. It hasn’t clicked, not cleanly. Not yet. He hasn’t asked. Hasn’t said a word through the harbor sweep, through the cold iron stink of saltwater and oil and Christmas rot. A small job. The kind that should feel easy. The kind that still manages to choke the air out of his lungs anyway.
Everyone’s moving like the night might shatter if they stop.
Tim keeps choosing his words too carefully, syllables slowed and smoothed like he’s sanding down sharp edges. Dick’s doing that thing where he smiles first and speaks second—but the timing’s off, the warmth a fraction too late, like a recording lagging behind the video. Damian watches Jason more than the perimeter, eyes sharp, calculating, guarded. Stephanie hasn’t joked once. Not even a cheap jab to him, not even under her breath. That alone feels wrong enough to tilt the world sideways.
Bruce didn’t come.
That absence is loud. A hollow where a presence should be, echoing through comms and instinct alike. The Cave, he’d said. As if that explained anything. As if Bruce ever sits things out without a reason that claws.
Cassandra says nothing—but she’s closer. Close enough that Jason can feel her awareness like static along his spine. When the group splits, she falls into step beside him without discussion, without a glance. Just there. Solid. Protective in a way that feels less like trust and more like vigilance. As if she’s guarding him.
That’s when unease really sinks its teeth in.
Bruce didn’t need all of them.
Didn’t need six sets of boots scraping concrete, six heartbeats crowding the same dark. Dick alone could’ve dismantled this whole thing with half the effort. Hell, Jason himself could’ve wrapped it up fast and bloody and been home already. Instead, they’re stacked together, overlapping, slowing each other down like they’re afraid to let him out of their sight.
He agreed because no one argued about his presence. Because no one questioned whether he was needed. Because the silence around that decision felt intentional.
That should’ve been his first real warning.
Between two groups of thugs, he had ducked behind a row of shipping containers, Gotham’s lights bleeding gold across the black water. He had pulled out his phone and called you, already rehearsing the apology in his head. Late for presents. Again. You’d tease him, pretend to scold, maybe force him to wrap some gifts for your co-workers.
You didn't answer.
Probably a bath, he told himself. You’d mentioned one. Candles. The fancy bath salts you bought. Something soft to push the cold out of your bones. The thought settles him, briefly. He sends a text instead—short, careful. An apology. An I love you so much that he doesn’t overthink, because with you, he never has to.
You always know what he means.
The phone stays quiet in his pocket.
No buzz. No vibration brushing against his thigh like it usually does, grounding him, tethering him back to something warm and real. He told himself it’s nothing. That you’re relaxed, distracted, asleep. That the night is just heavy, that Gotham is doing what Gotham always does—making ghosts out of shadows and dread out of coincidence.
Still.
When he looks back at the others, he notices the way Dick avoids his eyes now. The way Tim’s gaze flicks to Jason’s pocket and away again. The way Damian’s jaw tightens when Jason shifts his weight, like he’s bracing for impact. Cassandra meets his eyes once—just once—and there’s something there that twists low and sharp in his chest. Not fear. Not exactly.
Knowing. Jason doesn’t ask. He doesn’t press.
But the harbor feels too quiet, the night stretched thin and listening, and for the first time since he sent that text, a cold, irrational thought curls in his gut—
That whatever is wrong didn’t start here.
And that somewhere far from the water, far from the mission, something precious has already slipped out of reach.
“That was the last of them,” Jason says, voice rough through the helmet, as Tim finishes cinching zip-ties around the final goon and anchors him to a rust-flaked shipping container. The plastic bites down with a sharp click that echoes too loudly across the concrete. The man mumbled insanities through spit.
The harbor exhales around them—cold wind off the water, carrying brine and diesel and something rotten that’s been sitting too long. Sodium lights flicker overhead, casting everything in jaundiced gold and long, distorted shadows that stretch and tangle at their feet. The concrete is damp beneath Jason’s boots, slick with mist and old oil, the kind of surface that never really dries no matter how many ‘sunny’ days Gotham pretends to have.
“We should do another check around the harbor,” Dick says.
He’s already kneeling, already breaking the man's phone in half with practiced efficiency, grinding it into the concrete with his heel until the screen spider webs and dies. He doesn’t look up when he says it. Doesn’t grin. Doesn’t even sound casual about it.
Jason lifts an eyebrow, slow, deliberate. His gaze slides to Damian automatically—because Damian is usually the first to shoot an idea like that down, sharp and impatient and blunt as a blade.
Instead, Damian just mutters, “Tim could be wrong.”
Mumbles it. Like he’s afraid the words might carry.
That alone sends a small, unpleasant chill up Jason’s spine.
Tim doesn’t argue. Doesn’t bristle. He straightens from the goon and dusts his gloves together, eyes flicking—not to Jason—but to Stephanie. The movement is quick, practiced, like muscle memory.
“Do you want to take the gates with me?” Tim says, too smooth. Too rehearsed. “Jason and Dick could go along the—”
“What?” Jason cuts in before he can finish, blinking once. “You two were perched on the gates the entire op. What’re you talking about?”
The wind gusts harder, rattling loose chains and setting a tarp snapping somewhere down the dock. Water slaps against concrete pylons in a slow, hollow rhythm.
Jason suddenly feels like the sound is counting something down.
“It wouldn’t hurt to double-check,” Tim says, rising to his feet.
He still won’t meet Jason’s eyes.
Jason’s jaw tightens. He shifts his weight, the concrete cold and unforgiving through the thinning soles of his boots, and for a split second his mind drifts—unbidden—to you. To the warmth of your kitchen lights. To the way you’d probably be halfway through setting out plates by now, humming something low and off-key, waiting for him in that way that makes him want to claw his soul out and hand it over to you.
The thought lands soft, intimate, grounding—and then slips through his fingers when he remembers his phone, silent and heavy in his pocket.
“…You guys don’t need me for that,” Jason says, firmer now. There’s an edge to it, something protective and stubborn. He already has plans. A timeline. A promise he intends to keep. “Seriously. If you want to sweep again, even one person could—”
Dick finally looks up.
It’s just a glance, quick and loaded, the kind Jason’s learned to read over a lifetime of almosts and unsaids. Cassandra shifts closer at the same moment, her shoulder nearly brushing his, her presence steady and deliberate. Jason doesn't think she's ever willingly touched him in his life. Stephanie opens her mouth like she’s about to say something—anything—then closes it again.
The harbor feels tighter suddenly. Smaller. Like the stacks of containers have leaned in, hemming them closer, their corrugated sides looming like silent witnesses. The wind cuts sharper off the water, needling through the seams of Jason’s jacket, and somewhere deep in his chest, that pressure builds again.
Jason turns fully to Damian.
“Kid, I swear to God, tell me what—”
Damian snaps at the exact same moment Cassandra moves. Her hand closes around Jason’s shoulder, firm and sudden, fingers digging in through armor like she’s trying to anchor him to the concrete before he does something irreversible. The contact is intimate in a way that feels wrong, alarmed.
“How the hell should I know? They didn't tell me—” Damian bites back, voice sharp, flaring too fast, too hot.
“Damian!” Dick hisses, the sound cutting through the night like a blade dragged too quickly from its sheath. He’s already moving, stepping between them without quite committing to either side, hands up in a placating gesture that lands closer to panic than calm. He turns to Jason almost immediately, words tumbling over each other. “Come on, dude, let’s just go check the security towers and—”
“That’s going to take another hour,” Jason cuts in.
The words come out flat, but there’s steel underneath. He shrugs Cassandra’s hand off—not rough, but final—and reaches into his pocket. The harbor lights blur for a second as his fingers close around his phone, the familiar shape of something that connects him to you grounding him. It’s 10:20. He knows that without looking but checks anyway. He’s been counting the minutes since the mission dragged past its supposed end.
“I had plans,” he says, quieter now, but more dangerous for it. “Let me at least—”
The batarang whistles through the air.
Jason barely has time to register the movement—Damian’s arm snapping forward, wrist precise, expression tight and furious—before metal slams into his hand. The impact jars up his arm, sharp and biting, and the phone slips free, spinning once before it hits the concrete.
Crack.
The screen fractures instantly, a spiderweb of dead glass blooming beneath the sodium lights before the device skids to a stop near Jason’s boot. The harbor seems to hold its breath. Even the wind falters, the water’s slap against the pylons momentarily muted, as if the night itself is listening.
Jason stares down at it.
At the dark screen. On the way his reflection breaks apart in the shattered glass.
Jason’s gaze lifts slowly from the ruin at his feet.
It settles on Dick.
“Call Bruce.”
The words aren’t loud. They don’t need to be. They cut anyway—clean, controlled, edged with something that’s starting to slip. Dick falters under it, hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck, eyes flicking anywhere but Jason’s face. The harbor lights stutter overhead, one of them buzzing like it’s about to give out, bathing Dick in a sickly gold that makes him look younger.
Guilty.
“What, you gonna tattle?” Dick says, trying for levity and missing it by miles. His laugh lands wrong, brittle against the cold. “C’mon, Damian's just in a mood. I was going to surprise you with burgers but I thought the kid would spill. I’ll buy you a new phone, okay? Just—”
“Call Bruce,” Jason repeats.
This time it’s a hiss, dragged out through clenched teeth, something feral and fraying around the edges. The wind picks up again, slicing between the containers, rattling loose metal and carrying the sharp tang of rain that never quite falls in Gotham. Jason turns his head, slow and deliberate, until his eyes find Cassandra.
She hasn’t moved. She’s watching him like she’s afraid he might break.
“…He’s busy,” Cass says.
Her voice is barely there. Smaller than usual. Soft enough that Tim, standing a good ten feet away, doesn’t hear it at all. The words dissolve into the night almost as soon as they leave her mouth, swallowed by wind and water and distance—but Jason hears them. Every syllable.
Busy.
Something inside him tightens, winding down to a thin, dangerous thread.
His hand comes up to his comm without conscious thought. He adjusts it once, fingers steady despite the way his pulse thuds too hard, too fast. The harbor seems to lean in again—the stacked containers looming like watchful giants, the river below churning black and endless.
Gotham breathes around him, damp and unforgiving.
“B,” Jason says.
Sharp. Precise. A single syllable fired into the dark like a flare.
Static answers him. Wind whistling through steel corridors. The distant cry of something alive and miserable echoing off the water. No voice. No correction. No irritation crackling back through the line.
Just silence. It stretches. Pulls thin. Grows teeth.
Jason exhales through his nose, a humorless breath that fogs faintly in the cold air. He thinks of you again—too vividly now. The way your voice softens when you say his name. The way you always pick up, even when he thinks you shouldn’t. The way silence has never belonged between the two of you.
His jaw locks. Fuck this shit, I should be at home with her.
Jason moves before anyone can stop him—before anyone even realizes he’s decided something.
He’s across the concrete in three long strides, boots splashing through shallow puddles that mirror Gotham’s jaundiced lights in broken pieces. Damian doesn’t flinch when Jason grabs his comm. Doesn’t pull back. Doesn’t protest. That, more than anything, makes Jason’s teeth grind.
He clicks the emergency signal to the Batcomputer—once, twice, a break, two clicks hard enough that it hurts his thumb—then rips the comm free. His helmet follows, clattering against the concrete with a hollow, echoing crack that ricochets between the shipping containers. The sound feels too loud, too exposed. Jason presses the comm to his bare ear, cold metal biting into skin.
No one stops him.
Not Dick. Not Tim. Not Stephanie. Cassandra watches with that same quiet intensity, hands flexing like she’s bracing for impact. They stand there and let it happen, like this is how it was always meant to go—like they’ve already accepted that Jason finding out is inevitable, but telling him would be worse. Like this is some twisted test, or penance, or family tradition he never agreed to.
The harbor hums low and restless. Wind slides through steel corridors, rattling chains, carrying the stink of oil and brine and rain-soaked concrete. Gotham feels awake in that way it only does when something bad is already in motion.
“Robin?” Bruce’s voice cuts through the static, sharp and immediate. Too immediate. There’s an edge to it Jason hasn’t heard in years—tight, almost nervous, parental. “Robin, what’s wrong?”
Jason almost laughs.
Instead, his mouth twists.
“I’m going home, old man,” he hisses, already turning away from Damian. “What was this? Ya trying to tire me out, or did you get mind-controlled again? ‘Cause everyone here apparently likes you enough to not tell me the truth.”
“Jason—”
“Red Hood,” Jason snaps, the correction coming fast and mean. He bends, scoops his helmet up by the chin guard, and starts walking toward the exit between the containers where the harbor opens up to the road. “What happened to keeping hero names on comms? Or are you the only one allowed to break rules tonight?”
“Red Hood, just give me—”
“It’s a lousy gang!” Jason shouts, voice tearing loose now, bouncing off steel and concrete and dark water. “They don’t even crack the top twenty. Damian could’ve done this shit by himself.”
He doesn’t look back, but he knows they’re following him. He can feel it—the weight of their footsteps, the way they trail just close enough to intervene if he breaks. Later, it’ll hit him why Tim made sure every single goon was double zip-tied, wrists biting white beneath plastic. Insurance.
Tim knew Jason would find out.
Knew none of them would be coming back to clean this up.
“Red Hood—”
“Merry Christmas, B,” Jason cuts in, bitter and sharp as broken glass. “Please don’t call.”
“JASON—”
Bruce’s voice snaps through the comm like a gunshot, dragging Jason straight back into another life, another night, another version of himself that answered to that tone. “She’s in danger. And if you want any chance of seeing her again, get to the Batcave—”
The line goes dead.
Not static. Not interference.
Bruce cut it himself.
Jason stops, because there's only one person he could be talking about to send all five of them with him.
The harbor seems to lurch, the world tilting just enough to make his balance feel theoretical. The wind howls between the containers, louder now, like Gotham exhaling something foul and satisfied. Water slaps hard against concrete pylons below, relentless, counting seconds Jason no longer owns.
Slowly—too slowly—he turns.
He looks at them. At Dick’s pale face. At Tim’s clenched jaw. At Damian’s rigid stillness. At Stephanie, eyes bright with unshed panic. At Cassandra, whose gaze is already on him, steady and mournful, like she’s watching something crack.
They look at him like he’s glass.
Like he’s a bomb they’re waiting to defuse—or clean up after.
Jason doesn’t give them the chance.
“Fuck all of you,” he spits, the words coming out broken and small despite his best efforts.
Then he runs.
Out of the harbor. Out of the sodium lights and rust and the weight of too many eyes. Jason runs like Gotham itself is on his heels, boots striking concrete in a brutal rhythm that drowns out thought—or tries to. The city stretches around him in jagged silhouettes and wet stone, skyscrapers looming like blackened ribs against a low, churning sky. Clouds hang heavy and swollen, bruised purple and gray, threatening rain they never quite release. Gotham loves the anticipation of pain more than the act itself.
His blood is loud in his ears. Too loud. Every heartbeat punches through his ribs, frantic and unforgiving, as if his body already knows something his mind refuses to accept.
Toward the manor. Toward answers.
Toward the awful, creeping certainty settling into his bones that whatever Gotham has taken this time, it didn’t take lightly—and it didn’t take something he can afford to replace.
He takes the shorter way.
Fire escapes. Rooftops slick with mist. Narrow alleys that smell like old rain and older sins. He vaults gaps without slowing, coat snapping behind him like a torn banner, the city blurring into streaks of shadow and light. This route cuts close to your place. Too close. He doesn’t consciously choose it; his body does, muscle memory dragging him along a path his heart has memorized better than any map.
And then—
Mid-leap, suspended between one rooftop and the next, he sees it.
Your building sits quiet against the skyline, dark in a way it never is. Your lights are off. All of them. The windows—your windows—are shattered, glass glittering weakly under the city’s glow like fallen stars. The balcony rail is smeared with something darker than shadow.
Blood.
The word doesn’t form. Not fully. His brain skids around it, refuses to give it weight. At most, he tells himself, you’re hurt. Something small. A cut. A scrape. A stupid accident that looks worse than it is. You’ll laugh it off when he gets there, scold him for worrying, tell him he’s being dramatic again.
Because you’re untouchable.
That’s the rule his mind has always clung to. Gotham can drown him in filth and violence and rot, but you—you—are clean. Untarnished. Something soft the city hasn’t learned how to bruise yet. You exist outside its reach, outside its hunger. Gotham takes things like Jason. It breaks people like him. It doesn’t get to put its hands on you.
It can’t have you.
Because if you’re hurt—if you’re really hurt—then everything Jason has built inside himself caves in at once. Every fragile structure, every careful compromise, every promise he’s made to stay standing for you. There’s no version of the world where you’re broken and he survives it intact.
He lands hard, barely absorbing the impact before he’s running again, lungs burning, throat raw. The manor rises ahead of him through the trees like a dark monument, windows glowing warm and oblivious against the night. Too slow. The gates are too slow. The doors are too slow.
Jason doesn’t bother.
He barrels straight for a ground-floor window and drives his elbow through it without hesitation. Glass explodes inward, sharp and screaming, biting into skin. He doesn’t feel it—not really—until he’s inside, boots skidding onto the polished floor, breath tearing out of him in harsh, uneven pulls.
Blood runs freely down his forearm, drips onto the pale carpet in dark, blooming stains.
It looks wrong there. Violent. Out of place, just like the blood on your balcony.
Jason stares at it for half a second too long, chest heaving, and something in him splinters quietly—because now he knows. The city has already touched you and it has never, not once, let go without breaking something in return.
Jason doesn’t slow down in the Cave.
The platform is still lowering when he’s already moving, boots striking metal too hard, too fast, the sound ricocheting off stone and steel. The Batcave yawns around them—vast and echoing, all cold water and colder rock, computer screens throwing pale blue light across jagged walls. The waterfall roars like it’s trying to drown the night itself, a constant, punishing noise that usually steadies him.
Tonight it only sharpens the edges.
Bruce turns at the last possible second. His eyes flick first to Jason’s face, then to the blood smeared down his arm, dripping steadily onto the pristine metal floor. Bruce’s mouth tightens. Not in anger. In calculation. In fear he refuses to name.
Jason shoves him.
Hard.
Bruce’s back slams into the Batcomputer console, screens rattling, data stuttering for half a heartbeat. A lesser man would’ve been airborne. Bruce Wayne could have thrown Jason across the Cave without effort—could have ended this in a clean, controlled second.
He doesn’t.
Jason knows he won’t.
“Where is she,” Jason spits, the words tearing out of him raw and shaking. His hands fist in Bruce’s cape, knuckles white, trembling despite the strength coiled beneath them. The fabric bunches beneath his grip like it might rip if he pulls any harder. “Where is she?”
Bruce lifts his hands slowly, carefully—not in surrender, but in containment. Like approaching a live wire. His voice, when he speaks, is measured to the point of pain.
“…Jason.”
The name alone is an attempt. An anchor. Bruce is already running scenarios, already gauging angles and exits and how much damage Jason could do if this slips another inch. He knows Jason’s tells. Knows the way his breathing has gone uneven, the way his eyes are too bright, too fixed. Knows this isn’t rage yet.
This is terror.
“Don’t,” Bruce says quietly. Not commanding. Pleading, buried deep beneath control. “Just—listen to me.”
Jason laughs once, short and broken, the sound scraping his throat raw. “No. You don’t get to slow this down. You don’t get to prepare me.”
Bruce swallows. “…Joker—” he begins.
And the world fractures.
The word lands heavy and obscene between them, fouling the air of the cave like poison gas. Joker. The name crawls under Jason’s armor, past muscle and bone, straight into the place where you live inside him.
Suddenly, you’re not untouchable.
You’re not the one clean thing Gotham never got its hands on. Not the soft place Jason runs to when the city claws at him too hard. Not the warmth in his bed, the light in his kitchen, the voice that says his name like it belongs to something human.
You’re not safe.
You’re not distant.
You’re not protected by the simple, impossible belief that the worst things in the world know better than to touch you.
You’re real.
You’re fragile.
You’re reachable.
Jason’s grip tightens without him meaning to, breath hitching violently in his chest. His mind fills with images he refuses to finish forming—broken glass, blood on pale surfaces, your windows shattered open to the night the same way his chest feels split open now. He thinks of your hands. Your laugh. The way you look at him like he’s something worth keeping.
And now—
Now you’re the blood he’s already wearing.
The blood he’s going to feel soaking into his gloves tonight.
Bruce sees it happen. Sees the moment Jason slips past anger and into something far more dangerous. His own heart lurches, sharp and traitorous. This—this is what he’s been afraid of since the second he knew Joker was involved. Not Jason lashing out blindly.
Jason focused.
Emotional.
Unanchored.
“Jason,” Bruce says again, softer now, steady as bedrock despite the fear tightening his chest. “I need you to stay with me. I need you here. Because if you go out there like this—”
Jason’s eyes snap back to him, glassy and feral and devastatingly alive.
“If I don’t go,” Jason says hoarsely, “she dies.”
“If you go,” Bruce says, low and sharp, the words cutting through the roar of the Cave, “you die—and you could lose her at the same time.”
The Batcave hums around them, fluorescent light washing the rock walls in cold blue, computer screens flickering with restless data. The waterfall crashes endlessly behind Bruce, mist clinging to the air, dampening everything it touches. It feels like the Cave is breathing—slow, heavy, watchful.
Bruce moves closer and grips Jason’s jacket with both hands, fingers clutching the leather like it’s the last solid thing in the world. He holds on the way a man holds a ledge he’s already slipping from, hoping friction alone might be enough to keep someone from falling.
It isn’t.
“Where is she,” Jason says.
His voice is flat. Too controlled. His eyes have already left Bruce, already slid to the Batcomputer, to the glowing map littered with red and yellow pings like open wounds across Gotham’s body. Each marker pulses faintly, alive and accusing.
He doesn’t notice his siblings closing in—Dick’s careful steps, Tim’s rigid stillness, Damian hovering sharp and coiled like a drawn blade.
“She’s alive,” Bruce says quickly, desperately. “She wasn’t the only one—at least four other children and three women—”
Jason turns his head.
The look he gives Bruce is devastating in its emptiness. Eyes glassed over, jaw set too tight, brows drawn together like the world has narrowed to a single, unbearable point.
“Do you honestly think I give a damn about them right now?”
The words aren’t shouted. They don’t need to be. They land heavy, obscene in their honesty, and Bruce’s grip tightens reflexively, knuckles whitening against Jason’s jacket.
“I know you don’t,” Bruce snaps back, frustration bleeding through control. “Which is why I didn’t tell you she was taken. Because we need a plan that keeps everyone who was captured safe—”
“At the risk she dies in the process?” Jason cuts in.
Then—he stills.
Something shifts. His hands loosen, falling away from Bruce’s cape as if the fabric has suddenly burned him. His gaze slides, sharp and intentional, and locks onto Tim.
“How long,” Jason says.
The question is steady. Solid. Frighteningly calm.
Tim swallows and flicks a glance at Bruce—a silent check, a plea, a habit Jason has seen a thousand times. Jason shoves Bruce’s hand aside and crosses the distance in two strides, grabbing Tim by the shoulders, fingers digging in through armor.
“Don’t,” Jason hisses, thumbs pressing hard, grounding, painful. “Don’t look at him.”
The words aren’t just for Tim. They’re for Jason too.
He vaguely registers Dick saying his name, Stephanie’s voice tight with panic somewhere behind him, but it all dissolves into a dull ringing as he stares down at Tim. Tim doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away. He meets Jason’s gaze head-on.
“How long,” Jason repeats. “Where.”
Tim exhales, slow and controlled, the way he does when delivering bad news. “Two hours,” he says quietly. “Warehouse two blocks from Crime Alley. Behind that busted playground.”
Crime Alley.
The name echoes through the Cave like a curse, sinking into Jason’s chest and blooming outward, cold and malignant. Of course it’s there. Of course Joker chose that place—layers of history piled atop rot, a shrine built from other people’s pain.
Jason releases Tim slowly, hands trembling now, control finally beginning to crack.
Two hours.
Two hours of you alone with the man who taught Gotham how to laugh while it kills.
The Batcomputer hums on, indifferent. Gotham’s skyline glows faintly on the monitors—jagged towers under a bruised sky, rain finally starting to smear the camera feeds, streaking the city in gray. Somewhere out there, windows are broken. Somewhere out there, that cashmere scarf he wrapped and placed under your tree stays un-wrapped.
Jason understands then—with a clarity so sharp it almost feels merciful—that plans are a luxury meant for people who still believe time is something they own.
Time has never belonged to him.
Because you—you—aren’t alone. You’re trapped with seven other people. Four of them children, Bruce had said, like that word didn’t rearrange Jason’s insides completely. His mind does something traitorous then, something he hates himself for even acknowledging: it calculates. It knows how these things go. It knows Joker’s sense of theater, his appetite for cruelty, his fondness for leaving one survivor behind as punctuation.
And the last one standing is never the strongest.
It’s the smallest.
You would be dying before those kids.
Jason’s breath stutters, just once.
“Jason,” Bruce says from the Batcomputer, voice tight, forced into calm the way it always is when he’s terrified. The blue glow paints him hollow, all sharp angles and restraint. “Don’t make me stop you. The cops are on their way. Joker just wants cash.”
For the first time since the harbor, the noise in Jason’s head goes quiet.
Not peaceful—focused.
Everything narrows down to Bruce. To the way his shoulders are squared like a barricade. To the way his hands hover, uncertain, like he’s trying to decide whether to reach out or brace for impact. Jason’s heart hammers so hard it hurts, louder than the waterfall, louder than any threat Batman could ever make.
“If you even try, Bruce,” Jason says.
He doesn’t look at him when he says it. He can’t. The name comes out wrong in his mouth—too raw, too intimate, scraped down to bone. Instead, he keeps his eyes on Tim, standing rigid in front of him, small in a way Jason suddenly can’t stop seeing. He hopes—distantly, uselessly—that he isn’t glaring at his little brother. Hopes Tim understands this isn’t anger.
Just pure desperation. His last attempt, his last shot.
“Ill fucking shoot myself. I’ll make sure you know it’s your fault,” Jason continues, voice low and shaking despite his effort to keep it steady. “I’ll use my gun. And if you tie me up today, I’ll wait until next week. If you lock me down for a week, I’ll wait a month. I’ll do it.”
He swallows.
Because that’s the only thing that’s ever worked. The only language Bruce Wayne never ignores.
Dick moves fast—too fast—grabbing Jason’s arm where it’s still braced near Tim, fingers digging in hard. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he shouts, panic cracking straight through his anger.
Jason turns on him then, eyes blazing, voice breaking loose at last.
“Would you be this still?” Jason yells back. “If that was me with Joker again? If it was me instead of her—would you have left me there for the police to find? Again?”
The word hangs between them, heavy and damning.
Again.
Jason knows Dick well enough to see it land. To watch his brother’s grip falter, fingers loosening like they’ve forgotten what they were holding onto in the first place. Dick’s face goes pale, mouth parting uselessly, and Jason twists the knife—not because he wants to hurt him, but because he needs them to understand.
“This,” Jason snaps. “This is why none of you fucking knew about her.”
He looks at all of them now—really looks. At Bruce, frozen behind the console like a man staring down a live bomb. At Dick, wrecked with guilt.
“If you can’t even see me beyond a mistake you made,” Jason says, voice hoarse, “there was no way you wouldn’t have seen her as that too. And I love her too much for that.”
The words leave him hollowed out.
Then he’s gone.
The Cave swallows the echo of his footsteps, leaving only the roar of the waterfall and the hum of machines that suddenly feel pointless. No one moves to stop him. No one even tries.
It takes Tim a full minute to cross the platform and reach the Batcomputer, fingers hovering uselessly over keys he knows by heart.
It takes Cassandra four times as long to find a part of Bruce that still moves—some small, human place in his arm or shoulder that isn’t locked rigid like a man bracing for an explosion he knows is already ticking down.
Dick follows Jason’s trail almost immediately. And Damian follows Dick.
You don’t remember the last five hours.
They’re gone—hollowed out—like someone reached into your head and scooped the time away with a careless hand. The last thing you have is small and warm and ordinary: the coffee table between the couch and the window, set for two. Plates aligned just so. The new glasses you bought with Jason on that stupidly perfect thrift-store date, thin and elegant and impractical. You’d laughed about them, about how easy they’d be to break. Jason had pretended to scold you, fingers warm around yours as he tugged you toward the bookshelves, already stacking paperbacks in his arms like treasure.
You’d bought homeware. A vintage mirror with a gold edge, slightly warped, the kind that makes everything look softer than it is.
Jason always said you needed better locks. You realize it numbly.
He always said it gently, like a suggestion instead of a warning. Like he was talking about replacing a lightbulb or buying better coffee. You brushed him off every time, smiling, pressing a kiss into his shoulder, telling him Gotham wasn’t that bad. That you were fine. That you were safe.
And you were right. You always are.
Because an extra lock wouldn’t have stopped the man with the red smile.
It wouldn’t have stopped hands tangling in your hair, fingers tight and merciless as he dragged you across your rug, skin burning where it scraped against the fibers. It wouldn’t have stopped the way your mirror shattered when he slammed you against it, glass singing as it broke, your own reflection splintering into a hundred terrified pieces that stared back at you with wide, unbelieving eyes.
It wouldn’t have stopped the way he looked at you.
He crouched in front of you like this was intimate. Like this was a secret. His smile stretched too far, paint cracked and smeared, eyes bright with something wrong and delighted and ancient.
Joker tilted his head, studying you the way a child studies an insect pinned to cork.
“Here’s the other lovebird,” he murmured, voice lilting, almost fond. “Ohhh… how cute you are.”
You remember thinking—absurdly, desperately—that Jason would hate that word. That he’d bristle at it, roll his eyes, pull you closer just to prove a point. You remember the ache of missing him hitting harder than the pain at first, your mind reaching for him the way it always does when the world goes wrong.
Jason would know what to do.
Jason would make this stop.
The thought is a comfort even now, curled tight in your chest, fragile but stubborn. You cling to it as the man stands, as one of the shadows behind him passes up an old, rusted crowbar. The metal is pitted and dark, flaking with age and something older still. It smells like iron and damp and rot.
It doesn’t take a lock to stop that.
It doesn’t take a security system to stop the sound your bones make when he brings it down.
The pain comes in blinding flashes—white-hot, nauseating, wrong. Your legs scream before you do, nerves lighting up in protest, your body trying to fold in on itself, trying to protect something already broken. You taste blood, copper and thick, your teeth chattering even as your throat burns raw from crying out.
Through it all, you think of Jason.
Of his hands—gentle despite their strength. Of the way he says your name like it’s something precious, something he’s afraid to drop. You think of his laugh, low and surprised, the way he softens when it’s just the two of you and Gotham can’t see him. You think of the books still stacked on the table, waiting to be read, of the glasses that shattered just like the mirror did.
Of how he warned you.
Of how he would be here already if he knew.
The room feels wrong—tilted, smeared with shadow, the air thick and sour. Blood pools where it shouldn’t, dark against your floor, soaking into the rug you picked out together. The city hums outside your broken windows, indifferent and vast, neon bleeding into the night like nothing is wrong at all.
You breathe when you can. You hold onto Jason’s name like a prayer you’re afraid to say out loud.
Because if he comes—when he comes—you need to believe there will still be something left of you for him to find.
Your consciousness returns in fragments, drifting in and out the same way you remember nights with him. Not clean breaks. Not mercy. Just gaps.
A void of sleep.
Jason easing your window open like the city might hear him, hands raised in mock surrender, voice low and careful. I didn’t mean to wake you… shh… go back to bed. The mattress dips, familiar weight settling beside you, warmth bleeding into your back.
A void of sleep.
Jason in your bathroom, the light too bright, the mirror fogged. Gotham’s blood and grime rinsed down the drain while he rubs his hair dry with one of your soft, ridiculous pink towels. He smiles at you through the doorway, sheepish and fond, promises he’ll be there in a second. He always is.
A void of sleep.
Jason shifting beside you, breath warm against the delicate skin beneath your ear. His arm tightens in his sleep, possessive without knowing it, like even unconscious he’s afraid the world might take you if he lets go. He murmurs your name—broken, reverent.
A void of sleep.
White hands. Cracked paint. Fingers threading through your hair, slick and tangled with blood. The touch is intimate in the worst way, scalp burning as he hums—no, sings—a childish tune about robins, voice lilting and wrong, laughter bubbling beneath it like rot under sugar.
A void of sleep.
Concrete tearing at your skin as you’re dragged, knees bouncing, spine jolting with every crack in the ground. A van door yawns open, metal teeth waiting. A child sobs near your ear, small and hiccuping. A woman screams at the child to shut up—panic sharp and desperate—until a gunshot rings out like punctuation. The woman goes silent. The child doesn’t. The word mommy repeats, thin and broken, drilling into your skull.
A void of sleep.
You wake choking on pain.
Your body is bound to a chair, wrists cinched tight, ankles screaming. Barbed wire coils around you like something alive, biting deep with every involuntary twitch. The metal is rusted, flaking, cruel—tearing skin open in ragged kisses that burn and throb and never quite stop bleeding. Your legs are numb in places, screaming in others. You can feel blood soaking into fabric, sticky and cooling as it trails downward.
He’s in front of you.
Smiling.
Head cocked, eyes bright with interest, like you’re a puzzle he’s just started enjoying. He steps closer, crouches until he’s eye-level with you, hands clasped together as if in prayer.
“You do love your sleep, don’t you?” he says, voice almost gentle.
Your vision swims. The room smells like iron and oil and damp concrete. Somewhere nearby, something drips steadily—water, or blood, or both. The walls feel too close, the shadows stretching and curling like they’re listening.
“The other birdy,” he continues, grinning wider, “wouldn’t even sleep if I cracked his skull. Such a shame.” He sighs theatrically, tapping the barbed wire with one gloved finger, delighted by the way you flinch. “I suppose I’ll have to find a way to keep you awake.”
Through the haze, through the pain, one thought stays stubbornly intact.
Jason is coming.
And you cling to that like a lifeline, even as the horror closes in, even as the night tries to peel you apart—because if you let go of that belief, if you let the void take everything—There will be nothing left for him to save.
You can’t see farther than four feet in front of you.
Anything beyond that dissolves into smears of color and motion, the edges of the room bleeding into one another. When you try to focus, your vision tilts violently, the world pitching sideways as warm blood slips down from your temple, sticky and insistent. It drips into your eye, blurring everything further, each blink making it worse. The ceiling swims. The walls breathe.
He notices.
Of course he does.
He steps into what little clarity you have left, face snapping into focus like a nightmare finally deciding to be seen. His hand comes up fast, fingers prying your jaw open with impatient familiarity. Something chalky presses against your tongue.
You gag immediately.
Your throat spasms around his fingers, saliva thick and useless as panic claws up your chest. Your head jerks instinctively, barbed wire biting deeper in protest, fresh pain flaring white-hot along your wrists and ankles. He doesn’t pull away. He shoves the pill back, past your tongue, past your resistance, until your body betrays you and swallows.
You choke.
Tears spill from your eyes, hot and humiliating, streaking through the grime on your cheeks. Your lungs burn as you suck in air in sharp, broken pulls.
Jason, you think, distantly, desperately. The name is a reflex now. A prayer you don’t dare say out loud.
His hand withdraws at last.
Then—
Smack.
Your head snaps to the side, vision exploding into sparks. Before you can react—
Smack.
The second strike lands harder, ringing through your skull, teeth clacking together as pain blooms anew. The world steadies just enough to be cruel about it.
“That’ll keep you awake, birdy,” he croons, pleased.
Your heart slams against your ribs, frantic and trapped. Already you can feel it—the way the haze pulls back just a little too much, the way your thoughts sharpen against your will. Your eyelids burn, heavy but refusing to close, nerves screaming as the drug seeps in and denies you even the mercy of darkness.
“Now.”
He leans back into his own chair like this is a rehearsal, like he’s bored of waiting for his cue. The legs scrape loudly against the concrete, the sound sharp enough to hurt. He reaches forward and adjusts the camera in front of you with careful precision. A small red light blinks every few seconds—steady, patient. Watching.
“We’re going to make a deal, okay?”
You don’t answer.
Your eyes refuse to cooperate, swimming uselessly as you blink through blood and tears. Every attempt to focus sends a wave of nausea through you, the room tilting, your pulse roaring in your ears louder than his voice. Your jaw trembles. Your tongue feels thick, wrong in your mouth.
“Okay?”
Nothing comes out.
The barbed wire strung cruelly across your throat digs in deeper with every breath you take, a quiet reminder that sound would cost you skin. Air hisses past your teeth in shallow pulls. You can feel your heartbeat there, fluttering and frantic against metal.
His smile thins.
He stands.
The rusty crowbar tightens in his grip as he rises from a stupid, bright orange folding chair—out of place, obscene against the filth of the warehouse. He steps into frame, then closer, until the camera, until you, are all that exist. He hooks two fingers under your chin and lifts your face, forcing your eyes up.
“Answer.”
You try.
Your mouth opens. Nothing happens.
All you can see is him—cracked white makeup creasing around his eyes, green hair greasy and limp, age showing in the lines around his mouth where smiles have lived too long. He smells like oil and metal and something sour beneath it all. The warehouse stinks of rust, damp concrete, old fuel. It crawls into your lungs.
And then—
You hear it.
A sound that doesn’t belong to him.
Crying.
Your head turns slowly, painfully, vertebrae protesting as the wire shifts against your throat. The movement costs you another sharp breath. Your vision blurs again—but this time, shapes resolve.
A cluster of bodies huddled together against a dented equipment container. Two teenage girls with their knees pulled tight to their chests, faces streaked with dirt and tears. Four little boys wedged between them, shaking, hands bound too tight, mouths open in silent sobs like they’ve already learned screaming doesn’t help.
Something in your chest caves in.
You don’t even see the crowbar move.
The impact comes out of nowhere—white-hot, brutal. The hooked end of the bar slams into your shoulder with a wet, tearing sound, metal biting deep as it pierces flesh. Pain detonates through you, ripping the air from your lungs. He yells as he does it, manic and delighted, like the violence startled even him.
Your body jerks against the restraints.
Barbed wire bites deeper. Blood spills warm and fast down your arm, soaking into your sleeve, dripping to the floor in thick, uneven drops. Your vision fractures, stars bursting behind your eyes.
You clamp your teeth down hard on your lip to keep from screaming.
You taste iron immediately—sharp and overwhelming—as skin breaks beneath your bite. Tears spill freely now, blurring everything, mixing with the blood already clinging to your lashes. It burns. It hurts. Your whole body shakes with the effort of staying quiet.
Behind you, the crying gets worse—fractured, panicked.
“Okay,” you choke out.
The word scrapes your throat raw on the way out, barely more than a breath. It tastes like blood and rust and surrender.
Immediately, the pressure is gone.
The crowbar pulls free with a wet sound that makes your vision white out, pain screaming down your arm as the hooked metal tears away from muscle and skin. You shudder hard, a broken gasp ripping out of you despite your best effort to swallow it down.
He steps back like a magician deciding on the next trick.
Then he leans in again—careful, deliberate—and pats at the wound where the bar pierced you. Not gentle. Never gentle. His palm presses just enough to make you flinch, fingers smearing warm blood across your torn clothes.
“See?” he says brightly, turning slightly so the camera gets a better angle. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Your breath comes shallow and fast, chest stuttering against the wire. Every inhale sends a fresh bloom of pain through your shoulder, the edges of it pulsing in time with your heart.
His hands come up next.
Dry. Cracked. Too warm.
He grabs your face, fingers digging into your cheeks, thumbs pressing at your jaw as he tilts your head from side to side. The movement drags the skin of your neck against the barbed wire, a searing, intimate pain that makes your eyes flood instantly.
“What a dumb dumb birdy you are,” he croons, affectionate in the way predators are. “It’s okay. Joker can teach you.”
Your body trembles uncontrollably now. Your fingers spasm uselessly against the wooden arms of the chair, nails scraping shallow grooves into the surface. You can feel blood slicking your palm and you don't even want to think about how you got hurt there too.
He releases your face.
Pats your head once.
The gesture is almost worse than the violence.
“Now,” he says softly, pleasantly, “say thank you.”
Your vision swims. The room feels too loud, too close. Somewhere behind you, one of the children sobs so hard it turns into hiccupping gasps. You swallow around the wire, throat burning.
You look up at him with shaking eyes, lashes heavy with tears and blood. Your mouth opens. Your lips quiver.
“Thank—” Your voice breaks completely. You force it back together, dragging the word out of yourself like it’s being pulled through glass. “Thank you.”
His smile spreads slow and satisfied, stretching the cracks in his makeup wider.
“Good birdy,” he coos, pleased. “So much more compliant than your love bird already!”
“Now—” Joker announces, voice lifting into a theatrical lilt, like he’s stepped beneath a spotlight instead of flickering warehouse fluorescents. He turns toward the camera, gives it a jaunty little nod, then looks back at you, grin splitting wider. “I was gonna let you go for some cash. Thought your little boy bird might get scared shitless—just a fun little bonus, really—buttt—”
He drifts away from you, footsteps light, almost playful. You can’t turn your head far enough to see what he’s doing. The wire bites when you try. Your vision pulses, dark at the edges.
Then—
A scream.
Sharp. High. A girl’s voice.
It cuts off halfway through, collapsing into a thin, broken cry that echoes far too long in the hollow space of the warehouse.
Something in you fractures.
Joker reappears at your side, breath brushing your ear, laughter bubbling out of him like it’s a private joke the two of you share. “Got lucky with a rich bitch on the road,” he cackles, delighted. “Gotham really does keep on givin’.”
Your stomach twists violently. You taste bile. The crying behind you swells again, panicked and animal, and you can feel your own body trying to fold in on itself despite the restraints, like if you curl inward hard enough you might disappear.
His hands slide to your throat and at the same time your eyes land onto his hands. Diamond earrings.
He ripped her earrings out of her ears.
Before you can flinch at the sight of pieces of skin in his open hand, he yanks.
The chain snaps free with a sharp tug, metal biting into your skin as the necklace tears away. You gasp, the wire at your neck punishing you for it, and the sudden cold where the chain used to rest feels obscene—too exposed. You feel lucky that you took off your earrings when you were doing your hair.
He dangles it in front of the camera, letting it glint under the harsh light, gemstones smeared faintly red from your blood. “This could go for a couple hundred too!” he sings. “Ohhh, how delightful!”
He leans closer, eyes alight, savoring every tremor that runs through you. “At least one of the birdies knows how to decorate their nest. Found a few rings at your place as well.”
Joker pockets the necklace with a satisfied hum.
“Well, now that I don’t need the money,” he croons, voice lilting, playful, like he’s deciding which joke to tell next, “what should I do with you?”
His fingers drag along your cheek again, slower this time, the pad of his thumb pressing just hard enough to bruise. His touch leaves heat behind, a crawling sensation that makes your stomach revolt. You feel contaminated where he’s touched you, like your skin is remembering something it shouldn’t.
“…I’ll give you more,” you whisper. Your voice fractures around the word, splintering into something pitiful and thin. “However much you want—just—”
“Oh, I don’t need money.”
The change is instant. His tone drops, sharp and venomous, and when he leans in his eyes are blown wide and empty, pupils swallowing the green like oil slicks. A hawk spotting movement. A blade finding flesh.
“I was looking for some fun, love bird,” he hisses. “You can’t give me that?”
You whimper around the grip on your jaw as his fingers tighten, nails biting into your skin. The wire at your throat digs deeper when you gasp, its teeth kissing something vital. Pain blooms hot and bright, stars bursting behind your eyes.
“Jason— Jason will—”
He doesn’t even flinch at the name.
Maybe that’s mercy.
His fingers move higher, rough and invasive, smearing through the makeup you’d put on hours ago with careful hands. The eyeshadow burns as it’s ground into your skin, sweat and blood turning it into a dark, ugly paste. His thumb drags through the faint blush on your cheeks, erasing it like it was a mistake.
“How pretty you are,” he murmurs, almost tender. “I do makeup on myself too, you know.”
Then his hands leave you entirely.
He grabs his own face, fingers digging into the cracked greasepaint, stretching the red grin wider, tearing at the corners until the white creases and flakes. For a second you think you see real skin underneath—white, lined, angry. Horrid.
“Do you like mine?” he asks brightly. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
Your mind blanks.
Your eyes flick helplessly to the camera instead—the blinking red light pulsing steadily, patiently. Recording. Waiting. You try to speak, to say yes or no or anything that might stop what’s coming, but your throat locks around the wire and all that comes out is a wet, useless sound.
Then—
“Very pretty!”
The voice is behind you.
Too young.
A teenage girl, no older than seventeen. Her voice trembles, thin and frantic, the words tumbling over each other. “So—so pretty—”
You feel something inside you tear open.
She’s trying to survive. You can feel that hope radiate off of her. The hope of throwing words into the dark and praying it lands somewhere safe.
Joker’s head snaps toward her.
His eyes narrow, sharp and wrong, smile freezing into something predatory. “You think so?”
There’s a frantic nod you can hear more than see—the quick intake of breath, the shuddering little sob that follows.
Joker bends down.
The crowbar scrapes loudly as he lifts it, metal screaming against concrete. You catch a glimpse of it as he moves past you—rusted, pitted, darkened in places where it’s already been used tonight.
Then he’s gone from your line of sight.
The scream that follows is immediate and unbearable.
It’s not just pain—it’s shock, terror, the sound of someone realizing too late that they were wrong. The metal wall amplifies it, throws it back at itself until it feels like the warehouse is screaming with her.
There’s a wet, sickening crack.
A sound like meat hitting concrete.
“Why don’t we match?” Joker coos from behind you, voice light and delighted. “I did one side, now the other!”
The crowbar hits again.
You hear bone give this time—feel it in your teeth, in your chest. Her scream fractures into something animal, then into choking sobs, then into a raw, bubbling sound that makes bile rush up your throat.
Your own crying breaks free, ugly and uncontrollable. Your body jerks against the restraints, fingers cramping, nails tearing uselessly into the wood of the chair. Hot tears spill down your face, mixing with blood, dripping off your chin in thick, dark drops.
The camera’s red light blinks again.
Once.
Twice.
It taunts you by matching every sound that breaks out of you.
Every gasped sob, every wet, hitching breath. The camera’s red light blinks in time with your chest, like it’s learned your rhythm, like it’s decided to breathe with you instead of for you.
And then the Joker comes back.
You smell him before you see him—iron-thick blood, old rust, sweat gone sour. His hands are slick, red to the wrist, fingers shining under the warehouse lights. The crowbar hangs loose in his grip, darker now, clotted, strands of hair caught cruelly in its curve.
He crouches in front of you, bringing himself eye-level, like he’s talking to a child.
“Well,” he hums thoughtfully. “I can’t give you her look, can I?”
Your vision swims. You can’t stop shaking. Tears slide down your face in hot, unstoppable streams, carving clean paths through blood and grime. Your mouth opens, but nothing coherent comes out—just a broken, animal sound that folds back in on itself.
His smile twitches.
“What should I do with you?” he asks softly. “Hm?”
You don’t answer. You can’t. You just cry harder, chest stuttering against the wire, throat raw and burning.
That seems to irritate him.
He clicks his tongue, disappointed, and lifts the crowbar. The cold metal taps against your cheek once—tap—just enough to make you flinch violently. He pauses, head tilting.
“Oh—”
His eyes light up.
“Oh yes, that’s wonderful! Oh—” He erupts into laughter, sudden and explosive, clutching his stomach as if the joke is too much to bear. Spit flies from his mouth, warm and disgusting as it lands in your hair, streaking through blood-matted strands. “Oh, isn’t my brain just splendid?”
He straightens, still laughing, wiping his eyes like he’s genuinely amused. “You bats are all poetry, I say—pure poetry!”
Then he turns.
Walks away.
His footsteps fade, echoing hollowly through the warehouse, until there’s only the hum of the lights, the distant crying behind you—and the camera.
You’re alone.
One last sob claws its way out of your throat, wet and choking. Blood follows it, dribbling down your chin, splashing darkly against your chest. You force your eyes open, drag them upward, lock them onto the camera.
You don’t know who’s watching. You don’t know if anyone is.
Your voice comes out steadier than it has any right to be.
“How—”
“Shut up!” someone whisper-yells behind you, frantic and terrified. “There’s other men!”
Your mouth snaps shut.
And the red light keeps blinking.
The metal door slams open with a shriek of abused hinges, the impact shuddering through the warehouse floor and straight up your spine. Dust rains down from the rafters in a thin, dirty veil, catching in your hair and sticking to the blood already drying there.
He’s laughing before you even see him.
Not distant laughter—close. Moving. Each step accompanied by a wet, dragging sound, like something heavy being pulled across concrete. His cackle ricochets off the shipping containers, off the steel beams, off the low ceiling that traps the sound and forces it back into your skull.
A little boy cries out behind you as Joker passes him. A sharp, panicked sound that fractures into a sob and then cuts off abruptly, like someone clamped a hand over his mouth.
The air grows hotter.
Through the warped reflection in the camera lens, you see it clearly now: a long metal bar burning red-hot, so bright it hurts to look at directly. Heat ripples distort the image around it, the glow painting the walls in feverish streaks of crimson. The smell hits you next—burning iron, scorched metal, something faintly organic beneath it that makes bile crawl up your throat.
Joker taps the brand against the concrete behind you.
It doesn’t clang.
It hisses.
The sound is sharp and alive, like meat on a skillet. Tiny sparks spit outward where it kisses the floor, leaving blackened scars in the cement. The red glow doesn’t dull. Doesn’t cool. It stays furious and bright, as if fed by something endless.
Whatever fragile hope you were clutching evaporates in that moment, leaving you hollowed out, lungs burning as you exhale something that feels like your last prayer.
He’s behind you in the next second.
Joker’s hand comes out of nowhere, clamping over your mouth, palm slick and hot. The copper taste floods you as his fingers press into your cheeks, nails digging in just enough to hurt—just enough to remind you that restraint is a choice he’s making. Your head is forced back, neck screaming as the wire saws deeper, the barbs biting into tender skin.
“Would you like to match your birdy?” he murmurs.
His voice is serene. Gentle. Almost affectionate.
He angles the brand around the arm of the chair so you can see it clearly. The letter is unmistakable now, its edges glowing white-hot, heat radiating off it in suffocating waves.
A ‘𝙹’.
Your body reacts before your mind can—your stomach convulses, gagging against his hand, breath stuttering uselessly through your nose. Your skin feels too tight, like it’s already shrinking away from what’s coming.
“We’re going to make the deal now,” he coos.
In the camera’s reflection, you can see his eye—wide, bright, utterly focused on the blinking red dot. Performing. Enjoying the audience if there even is one.
“You either get a matching look…” The brand drifts closer, close enough that the heat kisses your cheek, nerves screaming in anticipation, sweat instantly breaking out along your spine. “…or you tell me who you hate.”
His hand peels away from your mouth.
Air rushes in too fast. You choke on it, coughing hard enough that the wire grinds into your throat, pain blooming hot and blinding. Your voice comes out shredded. “Who… who I hate?”
“Who put you here?” he hums thoughtfully, as if the answer delights him. “It wasn’t me.”
The brand pauses, hovering inches from your skin. You can feel the heat burrowing inward, like it’s already memorizing you.
“Why do you think I found you?” he continues lightly. “Do you know how sloppy he is?”
Silence stretches, thick and oppressive.
You stare at the glowing red letter, your mind drifting somewhere distant and numb to survive. Absurdly, irrationally, you think of Jason’s helmet—the same violent red, the same defiant color. You wonder if he’s thinking of you right now. If he can feel this, somehow.
“Tell me who you hate.”
The words don’t just reach you—they enter you, heavy and cold, sinking past bone and settling somewhere deep and irreversible. They press the air flat, make the warehouse feel smaller, closer, like the walls are leaning in to listen.
He stands before you in all his wrongness, and up close there is nothing theatrical left. The Joker’s makeup has melted into something corpse-like, white cracked and flaking into the grooves of his face as though his skin is trying to shed it. The red smile is no longer a grin so much as a wound, smeared unevenly, darker where blood has mixed in, the corners dragged downward by age and use. His hair hangs limp, green dulled to the color of mold, clinging to his scalp in greasy strands. His eyes are too bright—glass-bright, feverish—never still, never soft, reflecting the warehouse lights like knives.
The space around you hums with misery. The concrete beneath your feet is slick with blood and oil, cold seeping up through the chair and into your bones. Shipping containers loom like coffins, their metal sides scarred and rusted, shadows pooled so thick between them it feels like something could step out at any moment. The air reeks—burnt iron, old sweat, copper, rot—and every breath feels like inhaling something alive and hostile.
You look at the camera.
That red eye blinks steadily, rhythmically, a heart that isn’t yours. It sees the way your chest shudders, the way your fingers twitch uselessly against the bindings, the way your body is already bracing for pain it knows is coming. Your thoughts drift, slow and exhausted, slipping through your hands like water you can’t quite hold.
You think of Jason.
Not the helmet. Not the blood. But his hands—warm, callused, careful when they touch you. The way he looks at you like the world might soften if you stay. The way he says your name like it’s something solid.
You could say his name now.
You could offer it up like a sacrifice and pray that this monster believes in deals, that you might walk out of here broken but breathing. You could lie and hope he lets you go.
Or you could say Jason’s name and watch Joker’s smile vanish as he switches off the camera and kills you quietly, preserving this horror to show your sweet boy later.
Or you could stay silent and take the brand—feel your skin burn, your body marked, watch the ecstasy bloom in Joker’s eyes as he claims you like an object he’s improved.
None of them feel survivable.
Something inside you twists—not courage, not bravery, but love sharpened into something desperate and ugly and defiant. You gather what spit you can in your blood-wet mouth and turn your head as far as the wire allows.
You spit in his face.
It lands wet and unmistakable, dragging a slow line through the cracked white paint, cutting through the red smile like an insult carved in flesh.
For a heartbeat, everything freezes.
The Joker goes utterly still, his expression emptying out in a way that is far more frightening than his laughter. Then his eyes widen, pupils dilating, fury flaring bright and feral—pleased.
You lean forward, neck screaming as the wire bites deeper, and you whisper because your voice will not survive being louder.
“You know,” you murmur, breath shaking despite everything you do to steady it, “he’s never mentioned you before.”
His breath stutters.
“You must not have left quite an impression.”
It’s a lie. A reckless, transparent lie.
You have lived in Gotham long enough to know exactly what he is—his name written in blood across the city’s history—but lies can still cut, and you see it land. You see the way his smile stretches wider, hungry and thrilled.
You’ve given him a reason.
A reason to prove himself.
A reason to keep you alive.
A reason to make you hurt longer.
His hand tangles in your hair and yanks your head back violently. Your neck slams into the barbed wire, spikes tearing in with a wet, intimate sound that makes you sob despite yourself. Warm blood spills down your throat, choking you, slicking your chest.
Then the brand descends.
The heat is indescribable—ancient, total, a pain so vast it consumes thought itself. Your flesh screams as it burns, the smell of seared skin rising thick and sweet, smoke curling upward as the letter is carved into you slowly, deliberately. Your body arches uselessly against the restraints, every nerve on fire, and the sound that leaves you is not a scream so much as something torn out of your soul.
You hate that he hears it. And when that drug denies you the void of sleep you so desperately need, you allow yourself to think numbly as the man pulls it away that at least Jason can't dwindle his appearance anymore.
Your tears stripe down your cheeks, burning as they touch your skin.
We match. You think numbly, Atleast we match.
He strokes over the brand with more delicacy than he has ever had in this whole nightmare, mumbling, “This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.”
When you wake again, it’s to the weight of tears landing on your face—warm, uneven drops that pull you out of the dark in slow, reluctant pieces. For a moment you don’t know where you are. The world rocks gently, like it can’t decide whether to keep moving or stop altogether. There’s the low hum of an engine beneath you, vibration traveling through bone and bruised muscle, and the smell of old leather surrounds you—worn, familiar, grounding in a way that makes your chest ache.
Leather is good.
Leather is not acid.
Leather does not burn your lungs on the way in.
“Hurts,” you mumble, the word barely surviving the journey out of your throat. You offer it up like an apology, like a peace offering, half-expecting pain to answer you back.
Instead, the crying breaks harder.
It comes undone above you, raw and ugly, and through the haze you realize you aren’t lying flat on concrete, waiting for the Joker to press a cinder block to your stomach. Your body is stretched across someone, your legs draped over another set of knees, your weight distributed carefully, reverently, like something fragile that might shatter if shifted wrong.
An arm is braced beneath your neck, steady and strong, keeping your head from lolling, and your cheek presses into a leather jacket that smells unmistakably like gun oil, sweat, rain—
Jason.
The knowledge hits softer than it should, cushioned by exhaustion and shock, and when your eyes finally manage to open, everything swims. Light smears at the edges, colors bleeding into one another, but his face is there anyway, hovering close, carved with terror and relief and something so naked it almost scares you more than the warehouse did.
“Am I in heaven?” you mumble.
He lets out a sound that isn’t quite a sob and isn’t quite a laugh, choking on it as his chin trembles. “You don’t even believe in heaven.”
“Well,” you murmur, trying—and failing—to pull your mouth into something that resembles a smile, “what else could you be?”
Your jaw burns when you speak. Everything burns. It feels like your body has been filled with broken glass and lit from the inside, and you’re dimly aware of warm liquid slipping from your mouth, darkening the leather beneath your cheek every time you breathe wrong. You hate that you’re staining him. You hate that you can’t stop.
“I’ll kill him,” Jason whispers, like a prayer he’s been holding onto with both hands. His fingers shake as they brush your hair back, careful to avoid places he knows are hurt. “I’ll kill him. I promise.”
“Can I have hot chocolate first?” you mumble. The words feel distant, like they belong to someone else. “I bought that expensive kind… from Finland. Asshole knocked it all over my carpet…”
Jason’s breath fractures completely at that. He nods too hard, tears spilling freely now, dropping onto your cheeks, your neck, your collarbone. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll buy you hot chocolate. I’ll buy you all of it.”
Somewhere near your feet, another voice cuts in, low and strained with concern. “Hey, Jay—breathe—”
Jason doesn’t hear them. Or maybe he does and simply can’t afford to listen. His chest is rising too fast beneath you, breaths sawing in and out like he’s drowning on dry land, his eyes glassy and unfocused, the green in them shifting with every frantic blink.
Or maybe that’s just your vision still failing you. That would make sense. The powder. The smoke. The way light hurts now.
“Stop crying,” you murmur weakly. “I can’t die with you looking like that.”
That breaks him.
His face crumples completely, grief spilling over into something fierce and desperate as he bends closer, forehead almost touching yours. “Good,” he chokes. “Fuck you. I’ll cry even more, so–so stay with me, yeah?”
“No,” you whisper, your voice scraping raw against your throat. “Wanna sleep.”
“You slept an awful lot,” he snaps, but there’s no anger in it—only terror wearing sharp edges, only love clawing its way out however it can.
“Well,” you murmur, your voice thin but soft, like you’re afraid of startling him, “You show up in my dreams an awful lot.”
That does it.
Whatever fragile control Jason had left fractures clean through. He folds over you instinctively, shoulders caving as he tries—fails—to hide the sound of it. His breath comes apart against your hair, his forehead dipping close to your temple like if he presses himself near enough, he can keep you here by force alone. You feel the tremor of him through your whole body, every hitch of his chest echoing in your ribs.
You smell blood on him then. Copper and iron, sharp beneath the leather and sweat and rain. For a distant, numb second you think it’s yours again—until the scent is too heavy, too layered.
Oh.
Was this—
“Did I interrupt family bonding?” you whisper.
Your lips barely move. The words slip out half-asleep, half-dreaming, and they earn you a startled huff from somewhere behind you. Jason doesn’t answer. He can’t. His arms tighten instead, one hand splayed carefully at your back like he’s afraid even breathing too hard might hurt you more.
A voice comes from the seat behind, dry and unimpressed, because Jason is currently incapable of speech and whoever has your legs resting in their lap is rubbing slow, grounding circles into his back.
“If this is what you think family bonding is, you’ll fit right in.”
“Damian, be quiet,” another voice snaps.
“She’s the one shamelessly flirting with him in front of all of us, Tim” Damian continues anyway, undeterred. “And Father isn’t even saying anything, so—”
“Well she’s the one dying!” Tim blurts, voice cracking sharp with fear.
Jason chokes on the words that come from Tim’s mouth, breath stuttering hard, and a deeper voice cuts in from the front seat—controlled, measured, holding itself together by sheer will.
“She’s not going to die, Tim.”
“I want hoya bellas on my grave,” you interrupt softly.
Jason lets out a broken sound that might have been a laugh in another universe. He shakes his head over you, forehead brushing your hair, and through your blurry vision you think you catch a gloved hand popping up behind him in a solemn thumbs-up.
“Got it.”
Another voice joins in from the front, exasperated and strained. “Cassandra, she’s not being serious.”
“I’m sorry,” Jason whispers, over and over, like a mantra, like something he’s trying to carve into reality. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” His thumb strokes your hair away from your forehead again, impossibly gentle, avoiding the places he knows hurt, the places he doesn’t want to know at all.
“I’m gonna sleep now,” you murmur. It takes effort to shape the words. The dark is getting heavier again, tugging at you, warm and deep. “Can one of you give Jason water?”
“Hey—” Jason breathes, panic flaring sharp as his voice cracks. “Hey, no—no, no, no, stay with me, come on—”
But you’re already slipping.
Your eyes flutter closed despite him, despite the warmth of his arms, despite the way his heart is racing beneath your ear like it’s trying to outrun fate itself. His glove comes off hurriedly and you feel his bare fingers press to your pulse, grounding himself in the steady beat there, in the fact that it’s still happening.
After a few minutes, Dick leans forward and taps Jason’s shoulder gently, offering a water bottle. His uniform is torn and scorched like the rest of them, a thin cut bright against his cheek, but his voice is soft when he speaks.
“Drink.”
Jason doesn’t look up. He doesn’t let go. He just nods once, tight and shaky, eyes fixed on you like if he looks away for even a second, the world might take you again.
He forces himself to take a full gulp of water, the plastic bottle crinkling loudly in the too-quiet car, his throat working like it has to remember how swallowing goes. His hands are still shaking when he passes it off to Tim.
“Hey, I don’t need any—”
Jason looks at him.
Not sharp. Not angry. Just steady in a way that leaves no room for argument, the kind of look that says do this or I will fall apart next.
Tim takes a long swig immediately. Somewhere in the background, Damian lets out a low, satisfied cackle.
The digital clock on the Batmobile reads 4:00 a.m.
The numbers glow cold blue against the dark interior, reflected faintly in the windshield like a second set of eyes staring back at them. Gotham outside is hollow and half-dead at this hour—streetlights flickering, rain-slick asphalt stretching endlessly, buildings slumped together like they’re exhausted too.
Bruce’s voice is calm as he calls Alfred, clipped and precise, already listing supplies like this is something he can control if he names enough of it out loud.
Jason doesn’t listen.
He keeps his focus on you.
On the shallow rise and fall of your chest. The warmth is still clinging stubbornly to your skin. On the way your weight settles into him like it belongs there, like it always has. One hand stays firm at your neck, holding you upright because you need it—because you need him steady, and that knowledge anchors him harder than anything Bruce could ever say.
You need him here. You need him present. You need him not to break.
He knows that, because once—once—that was all he ever wanted too.
And that’s the cruel part of it.
Because the weight of you in his arms has only ever meant safety. Home. Sleep curling warm and heavy in his bones. His body doesn’t know the difference between holding you safe and finally being allowed to rest.
Jason Todd passes out with his forehead dipping gently toward yours, his grip loosening only by a fraction, like even unconscious he’s afraid to let you go.
The last thing he hears before everything goes dark is Tim’s voice, sharp with panic and disbelief.
“Dude—what the fuck—”
“Hold his head up—don’t let him fall on her!” Bruce barks from the front, voice cracking sharp through the Batmobile like a snapped cable.
All at once, everyone moves.
Damian fists the back of Jason’s T‑shirt, knuckles white as he yanks him upright with a strength born of panic he’d never admit to. Dick stretches impossibly from the passenger seat, arm braced awkwardly as he cups the back of Jason’s head, careful, reverent, like he’s afraid one wrong angle will shatter him. Tim presses a steadying hand to Jason’s chest, feeling the uneven rise and fall beneath his palm, grounding him the way he’s learned to do with bombs and brothers alike.
Jason is dead weight. Heavy. Still clinging to you even in unconsciousness, his arm slack but stubborn around your shoulders, like muscle memory alone refuses to let you go.
The Batmobile hums on, tires slicing through wet streets, Gotham blurring past in streaks of sodium light and rain-slick concrete. The city feels distant now, muffled, like it’s holding its breath with them.
“…Did someone check if the Joker was—uh—breathing?” Stephanie asks from the back, her voice small in a way it rarely ever is.
She hadn’t stayed for the end. Her job had been triage—getting the kids out, shouting orders, dragging civilians through blood and broken glass while the rest of them stayed behind in the warehouse with the laughter and the screaming. She’d smelled the aftermath on them when they regrouped. She didn’t need details then but...
Bruce doesn’t look back. His hands tighten on the wheel.
“Jason didn’t hit any vital points,” he says quietly, like he’s reciting a report he’s already memorized. “Just… ah—”
“Carved his face like a jack‑o’‑lantern,” Damian supplies, entirely too calm. “Heated up a crowbar to do it too. Very effective.”
There’s a beat of silence.
The city lights flash over Bruce’s face—old stone and deep eyes that are hollowed by relief he doesn’t let himself feel yet.
“…Yeah,” Bruce exhales, short and rough. “That.”
The Batmobile keeps moving.
Jason breathes.
You breathe.
And for now, that’s enough to keep the night from swallowing them whole.
You wake up in bed.
Not the thin, borrowed kind your body has learned to tolerate at your apartment, but something deep and indulgent—clean sheets tucked tight, the mattress yielding just enough to cradle you instead of swallowing you whole. The pillow beneath your cheek feels stupidly expensive, cool and smooth, smelling faintly of detergent and something old and comforting, like cedar and money and quiet hallways that echo.
For a moment, you think you’re dreaming again.
Then you feel him.
Jason is asleep beside you, solid and unmistakable. You don’t need to move—you can’t really anyways—to know it’s him. The arm wrapped around your waist is heavy with familiar strength, protective even in unconsciousness. His hair brushes against your arm every time he breathes, soft, tickling your skin in a way that makes your chest ache.
He’s breathing.
That fact alone nearly undoes you.
God. You really need to raise your standards, you think hazily. You’re reduced to this—listening to him breathe, feeling the slow rise and fall of his chest, and already you want to curl into him and coo like nothing in the world has ever gone wrong.
Then you see Bruce.
He’s standing near the bed, still as a statue, watching you with the careful intensity of someone afraid to spook a wild animal. It takes effort to focus on his face, your vision dragging itself into clarity inch by inch.
When you try to lift your head—manners resurfacing before sense—your body protests sharply.
Bruce moves instantly.
“Hey, hey—no,” he murmurs, hands gentle but firm as he presses you back into the mattress. “Relax. It’s okay. You’re safe.”
Your head sinks back into the pillow, and the moment stretches. You swallow thickly before managing a small, hoarse sound of politeness.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Wayne. Jason—”
“Hasn’t told you much about me,” Bruce finishes for you, a faint, tired chuckle slipping out. “That’s alright. I just need you to sleep right now.”
You glance downward as best you can, feeling something sharp dig into your side.
“…I can’t sleep if your son’s elbow is in my ribs.”
Bruce blinks.
Actually blinks—surprised enough that it breaks through the carefully assembled calm. “Ah—” he starts, then reaches for Jason, trying to rearrange him with the same precision he uses on everything else.
It doesn’t work.
Jason huffs in his sleep, a low, irritated sound, and somehow manages to make it worse—his arm tightening, his leg hooking over yours possessively, like you’re something he’s afraid the world might steal back if he lets go.
Bruce freezes.
You mumble, exhausted but soft, “It’s alright. I’m sure he hasn’t slept… I’ve gotten quite a lot, so…”
Bruce looks like he wants to argue. His jaw tightens, then loosens, the fight draining out of him. He exhales and sits back in the chair by the bed, elbows on his knees, hands clasped tightly together.
“It’s the 26th,” he says quietly.
Oh.
You missed Christmas.
What a shame.
After a moment, Bruce speaks again, and his voice is heavier now—careful, deliberate, like every word costs him something.
“I… want to apologize to you.” His fingers interlace, knuckles whitening. “I knew you’d been taken. And I didn’t tell him. Possibly… he could have been there sooner. But I needed to make sure the others would be saved as well.”
“Well,” you murmur, the word barely more than breath, “I don’t exactly blame you for that.”
It isn’t forgiveness exactly—nothing so grand—but it’s honest, and it lands heavier than anger ever could.
Bruce doesn’t relax. If anything, his shoulders pull tighter, like he’s bracing for a blow that never quite comes. He’s spent his whole life learning how to de‑escalate men with guns, gods with vendettas, cities with teeth—but you unsettle him in a quieter, more dangerous way. You’re calm. You’re lucid. You’re something Jason had threatened to shoot himself for.
He clears his throat, trying to give you something solid, something measurable. Facts are safer.
“Jason… got him,” Bruce says carefully. “Badly. I think—” He hesitates, eyes flicking once toward Jason like he’s checking for movement. “I think the Joker may be blind now. Or at least permanently impaired.”
“You let him?” you ask.
Still no accusation. Just a soft, stunned curiosity, as if you’re piecing together a story you were never meant to survive.
Bruce nods. Once. The motion costs him. “I did,” he admits. “But I—”
“Then that’s enough,” you whisper, interrupting him gently, like you’re afraid the words themselves might hurt. “Jason will realize that too.” Your lashes flutter; exhaustion tugs at you like a tide. “I mean… he probably won’t. He’ll still try to kill him.” A faint, crooked exhale. “But you did everything you could yesterday.”
Your gaze drifts—not to Bruce, but to Jason. To the way his arm is still locked around you, even in sleep. To the stubborn set of his jaw, the crease between his brows that never fully smooths out anymore.
“Thank you,” you add quietly. “For finding me.”
That’s when Bruce goes still.
Not rigid. Not defensive.
Still.
Because he’s been looking at you, yes—but now you realize he hasn't been looking you in the eye while he speaks. His eyes have been caught in one place, drawn there again and again like a bruise you can’t help but press.
Your cheek.
The skin there is angry beneath the bandage’s edge—raw, faintly swollen, discolored in a way he winced at while he bandaged it. Bruce didn't let anyone else tend to it, not even Alfred.
Because this was a wound he inflicted, one that he needed to tend to.
“It’s still fresh,” he says, softer now, stripped of the Bat and the rules and the fear. Just a man speaking carefully around something fragile. “I’ll get you better medicine. The pigment should fade.” A pause. His voice lowers. “I can’t promise about the texture.”
You don’t look away. You don’t flinch.
“That’s okay,” you say.
And Bruce doesn’t know if you mean the scar, or the pain, or the fact that you’ll carry this forever—but Jason shifts in his sleep then, brow tightening, arm drawing you closer like he sensed the weight of the moment and refused to let it settle on you alone.
Bruce watches that. Watches how Jason anchors himself to you without waking, how his breathing steadies when yours does, how it pauses even in sleep when yours hitches.
“He loves you a lot.” Bruce mumbles.
“...And you too Mr.Wayne.”
jason peter todd tag-list (check pinned post for info on how to be added .ᐟ ) :@justamarsbar, @peridotnature854, @nayy-a, @that-willowtree,
Summary: Nightwing and Spidey always have each other's backs.
pairing: Dick grayson x spidergirl!reader
open request - dick masterlist
The pump's hum was high-pitched, almost electric. .
00:10... 00:09... 00:08...
“Everyone out. Now.” Nightwing’s voice boomed over the communicator. His tone was firm, determined as ever.
You were already moving, helping Blue Beetle pull an unconscious civilian from the underground warehouse. You felt like everything was coming apart. The air was thick, the concrete creaked with every passing second, but when you looked back, he wasn't with you.
Your heart leapt, and then you saw it, through the internal cameras still active on your visor: Dick, kneeling in front of the control panel, his fingers flying over the codes. Alone.
00:06... 00:05...
“Nightwing, get out of there now!” Aqualad shouted through the communicator.
But Dick didn't move. He remained kneeling in front of the panel, his brow furrowed, his fingers dancing among the wires, trying to short the correct circuit.
You saw her from above, standing on one of the ceiling beams, your muscles tense, the web loaded on your wrists.
00:04...
“He’s not going to arrive,” you muttered to yourself.
00:03...
You jumped without thinking.
"Spidergirl, don't go!" Aqualad tried to stop you, but without thinking, you shot a web at the edge of the upper access and launched yourself back into the warehouse.
You shot through the skylight, just as the countdown reached three, you didn't call out his name this time. You looked for it with your eyes.
He turned around slightly, surprised, but it was too late.
With perfect momentum, you shot a web straight at his torso, wrapped him in a dense net, and dragged you both upwards.
Dick's feet left the ground just as the bomb exploded.
The blast wave threw you into the air. The skylight glass shattered, you fell together onto the warehouse roof, rolling, covered in smoke and dust.
Your forearm was bleeding from a cut. Both were covered in debris, it was painful to breathe, your chest felt tight, and the ringing was still in your ears, but your head immediately turned toward him, and he was already looking at you.
His eyes were open, alert, just a little disoriented, but he was alive. He struggled to his feet and crawled over to you. “Are you okay?” he asked, his brow furrowed, his voice raspy.
"Are you kidding me?" you replied with an incredulous laugh, unable to hide the trembling in your hands. "You almost exploded into a thousand pieces and asked for me!"
Then Dick leaned slightly toward you. He rested his forehead against yours. He closed his eyes. “Thank you,” was all he said. His voice was barely audible, heavy with relief, guilt, and affection.
The silence fell heavy between the two, broken only by the distant sound of the building still creaking inside, and the static of the communicator where the rest of the team confirmed they were safe.
Your fingers sought his hand again, firmer this time. “Don’t fall behind again, don’t do that to me.”
Dick opened his eyes, looking down at you. His eyes were red, not from the smoke, but from everything he didn't dare say. "I'm not leaving you alone in this world."
“Then don’t scare me like that again.”
── 🕸
You were running along the ledge of a building when you were hit in the head, a sharp blow you didn't see coming at all. The world spun around you, everything became a blur. Your balance was completely lost, and when you tried to shoot a web, dizziness made you fail, sending you tumbling off the tall building. You thought you'd never screamed as loud as that time. You were free falling at least 40 meters. You felt the wind crashing against your body, which intensified your dizziness.
Dick didn't think twice as he threw himself after you. His arms caught you midair, holding you tightly against his chest. One of his hands shot his grappling hook line into the nearest building. The impact was violent; you both spun around, the cable going taut, and your bodies crashed into a wall before dangling more than twenty stories above the ground.
you struggled for air, adrenaline pumped, their sneakers euphoric and a bit nervous. Silence weighed heavily between you, interrupted only by the rain that pounded steadily.
“You’re copying my posts,” you muttered, your voice breaking, trying to laugh, even though you were still shaking.
“I liked yours.” Dick held it a little tighter. “I just wanted to feel what it felt like.”
But this wasn't a joke to him, he watched you as if he couldn't believe you were in his arms, as if that fall had lasted an eternity, because if he had reacted two seconds later...he would have thought he would have lost you.
Dick looked down, squinting for a second. His breathing was still labored, not only from the exertion, but from the fear still gripping his chest. “Don’t do that again,” he murmured.
“Fall?” You tried to lighten the moment, but your voice sounded more fragile than you expected.
He shook his head, barely. His fingers slid down your back, searching for a place to hold, as if he still needed confirmation that you were there. “Scaring me like that.” His voice came out low, barely a whisper through the rain. “I don’t want to go home without you.”
Your lips parted. The world was still spinning beneath you, but in that instant, everything stopped. “You won’t have to.” Your hand slid down his neck, warm despite the cold, and you looked him straight in the eyes. “Never.”
── 🕸
The roof collapsed with a crash, sending debris flying in all directions. The fight had escalated too quickly. There were more of them, they were armed, and the building wasn't going to hold much longer. You twirled between enemies, shooting webs in all directions, covering the team's backs, when a sound paralyzed you completely:
A stifled scream, a loud bang.
Dick.
Your gaze turned just in time to see him fall from the ledge, his body skidding through the rain and smoke. The blast had thrown him backward. He wasn't holding onto anything. Just... falling. "Dick!" you yelled, without thinking.
In pure reflex, you shot out a web. It caught on his ankle just before he disappeared between floors. The jerk jarred your arm, but you held on. He hung there, upside down, the rain hitting his face, panting. His eyes moved slowly up to meet yours.
You were still kneeling on the ledge, clutching the dripping cobweb, your heart in your throat. “I’ve got you,” you murmured, almost breathless.
He chuckled faintly, stunned. "Thank you for... not letting me die honey."
“You haven’t finished training anyone to replace you yet.”
The rain continued to fall, the sky roared in the distance. And then, as if the universe aligned in that perfect instant, he looked at you with a different intensity. “I'm on the ground now, come closer…” he murmured.
With a swift motion, you shot out a new web and slid down from the ledge. You hung upside down right in front of him, suspended by a single strand, your body swaying gently in the breeze.
You stood face to face, both of you hanging in the air, you upside down, your hair dripping in the opposite direction of gravity. Your eyes dropped to his face, to his lips, to the way the rain trickled down his chin.
Dick leans down, his large hands slowly rising, and with the same delicacy with which one treats something precious, Dick took the edge of your mask and lowered it until your lips were uncovered. His fingers lingered there for a second longer, as if he didn't want to let go of the image of you, hanging in front of him, completely his for an instant.
And then he kissed you, his mouth finding yours with a care that belied the urgency of the moment. It's an awkward kiss because of the position. But it's also honest and intense.
When you separate, you're still inches away. Breathing the same air. You, hanging upside down, and him, his cheeks flushed as if he were fifteen again.
When you broke apart, he leaned his forehead against yours. Your voice came out low. Barely a whisper through the rain. “Well…”
Dick smiled at her expression. "Let's go home, honey."
SUMMARY: damian wayne hates strawberries, so why does he suddenly love them?
"okay relax, it's probably nothing," dick tries to compromise as he and his brothers hide behind a bookshelf and spy on their youngest brother, damian.
"uh dickhead, the kid hates strawberries, so it's not nothing," jason retorts, craning his neck from behind the bookshelf to get a better look at the youngest wayne.
damian wayne, a current junior in high school, was currently laying on the couch in the wayne manor library, curled up with a good book and eating strawberries.
it was not that eating strawberries is a problem, damian wayne eating strawberries is a problem.
"to be fair, he does think they are the most repulsive fruit on the planet, and banned them from his vicinity the moment he stepped foot into the manor," dick says thoughtfully.
"cut the kid some slack," tim claims, "he said that six years ago, a lot can change in six years."
dick, jason, and tim then got so caught up in their arguing, they only then realized damian was standing right in front of them, arms crossed, and looking terribly displeased.
"you know i could hear your conversation right?" damian deadpans, "and for the record, i was just expanding my palate, there's nothing revolutionary about me eating a fruit."
with that, damian slams his book shut and turns on his heel, leaving the library.
oh what a lie that was.
EARLIER THAT MONTH
damian wayne leads a giggling you into his bedroom, you jump onto his bed, instantly inviting him to come join you.
you were the light of his life, you've been his secret girlfriend for the past few months, and this was the happiest he's ever been.
it's not that he was embarrassed of you, never that, it was just he wanted a few months to savor you all to himself. besides, his family would have a field day if they knew, and he would be teased relentlessly.
damian pulls out his sketchbook and leans against his headboard, while you rest your head in his lap, looking up at him.
"whatchu drawing?" you ask, looking up at him through your lashes.
"mm nothing qalbi, still deciding." he replies, leaning down and giving you a kiss on your forehead.
licking your lips, you instantly feel how dry they are. you sit up against the headboard next to damian and reach into your tote bag to grab some chapstick.
using your phone as a camera, you remove the cap and instantly feel the soothing sensation against your cracked lips.
damian looks over from his sketchbook where he started the guidelines of his drawing, "what's that?"
"oh just some chapstick," you reply, "you want some babe? it's strawberry flavored."
damian shrugs he isn't the biggest fan of strawberries but why not, "sure hayati."
an idea comes to mind and you grab his cheeks, pull him down and press a firm kiss to his mouth. he instantly relaxes against you, kissing you back, pulling you from his side and onto his lap.
damian smirks barely pulling away, "can i get some more?"
your laugh is all the confirmation he needs before he pulls you in closer, breathing you in.
You grab Tim by his tie, dragging him behind you as your high heels click against the floor and god help him he’s into it.
“Wait-“
“I said follow me. You didn’t listen.”
And you’re still dragging him. Don’t help that man he’s exactly where he wants to be. You shove him in an empty meeting room.
“You. You lied.” You back him to the wall.
“You let me handle them alone, you said you’d show up to the meeting, you did not.” You continue, a finger poking his chest accusingly. The tips of his ears go bright red.
“I wanted you to have your moment- it’s your project.” And he also wanted you at his throat but he won’t really say that.
“So you play me?”
“That’s not-“
You shush him with your index on his lips.
“Don’t cut me off, Drake.” He flushes further, letting out a little ‘mm’.
“I’m sorry.” He murmurs, his arms wrapping around your waist, pulling you impossibly closer. You try not to smile.
“What was that? Didn’t hear you.”
He drops to his knees, arms wrapped around your body, his chin on your stomach.
“I’m sorry. Won’t do it again. I love you, baby. I’m sorry.. Forgive me..” He murmurs, half lidded blue eyes staring up at you, so freaking desperate it has you biting your lip.
You grab his face, squishing his cheeks in the process, staring down at him before laughing, leaning down and kissing him despite the awkward angle.
He’s on cloud nine.
—————————————————————————
inspired by a clip i saw of a kdrama where the fmc drags a guy by his tie,, i thought it was so tim heh..
Summary & CW: fluff, slice of life, best friends brother, tim takes a nap, he’s also a recovering touch starved man, conversation about suggestive behavior, second person, no use of y/n
Pairing: Tim Drake x Fem!Reader
Word Count: 1.0k
A/N: Another piece out the Kiln! Thank you to @bat2nsignia for requesting (ily dada). This was supposed to be 400 words but here we are LMAO, I hope you all enjoy <3
“Aw man c’mon,” a voice that is all too familiar whines behind you. “I don’t want to see this.”
Tilting your head all the way back on the arm rest, you see Duke Thomas and Stephanie Brown walking into the room. It was shocking, truly, how there seemed to be a thousand rooms in this manor, and you still managed to get found.
Tim had dragged you to the east wing for a nice relaxing afternoon a little over an hour ago.
He compromised by sleeping four hours last night when you woke up for your midnight pee and called him. When he answered the phone, you promptly told him to go to bed or you wouldn’t be coming over today.
Safe to say he was under his sheets shortly after you hung up.
This part of the manor tended to be quieter, there were more libraries and offices that weren’t inhabited often.
On the second floor study, there was the most comfortable couch you’d ever sat on. One thing led to another and now, Tim was draped across you like a blanket, snoring quietly as he settled into your neck. His arms were locked around your waist with an iron grip, despite being asleep, and he hadn’t moved in forty five minutes.
“Shhh,” you moved the fingers that were carding through is hair to your mouth. “He’s sleeping.”
Thankfully, the whisper yell didn’t wake him. The absence of your fingers did cause him to bury his face further into your neck, missing your soothing touch even in his dreams.
Stephanie’s signature smirk grew on her lips, which had your stomach sinking. Seeing as you were currently trapped under your boyfriend, you were just going to have to sit and suffer whatever terror she felt like inflicting. When she took her phone out of her back pocket, you only managed to bite back a groan for Tim’s sake. You knew where this was going.
She came around the couch and snapped the photo while you frowned, fingers returning to his hair. Duke followed right behind her with his arms crossed and a faux expression of disgust on his face.
“I’m never going to get used to seeing you two together.” He muttered while Stephanie looked way too proud of herself for the blackmail she just acquired.
Rolling your eyes, your head shifts to side landing on the plush arm rest. Raising an eyebrow, you decide to give him a little reminder. “I don’t know why you’re whining, you introduced us.”
“Yeah because I thought you guys would get along, not because I wanted you to suck face.”
Your jaw drops at the tease. “For the record,” you raise a hand to point at him. “I wouldn’t dare to suck face in a shared space of this house. There’s too many cameras in here, and the last thing I need is another uncomfortable conversation with Mr. Wayne.”
Duke bites his lip to hold back a laugh while Stephanie’s hand flies to her mouth, a small action showing that they do genuinely care for Tim’s rare rest breaks. The horrific memory that you tried to burn out of your mind was sure at the front of theirs.
Getting caught by Bruce was in the top ten most humiliating moments of your life. You didn’t return to the manor for a month, and didn’t look Bruce in the eye for three.
Tim and the rest of his family found it funny. You did not.
Then, the air in the room depletes as Tim started shifting around, burying himself deeper into your neck. It was as if someone hit the mute button, even the random noises that occasionally echoed through the manor stopped. The only sound was the small groan Tim let out while moving, probably from shifting the weight onto the shoulder that’s been bothering him for a few weeks.
When he settled back into place and a solid thirty seconds passed without him moving, you looked back at Stephanie and Duke. They unfreeze at your movement and mouth, “we’re going to go” while pointing at the door.
Sparing them a small wave and nod, they practically float out the room. The second the door clicks behind them, you move your head back slightly to look at Tim. He looked so peaceful like this, almost like he was taken out of an oil painting.
Dropping a quick kiss to the beauty mark next to his eyebrow, he hums quietly. You should’ve known that he woke up.
“That’s why you won’t kiss me in the manor anymore?” His voice is groggy and muffled from being pressed against you, but you couldn’t hold back the small laugh you attempted tp mask with a scoff.
“Go back to sleep,” you drop another kiss to his cheek. Hoping to distract him from his initial question, your free hand slips under his shirt and starts scratching his back.
He hums again, his eyes still shut but unrelenting. “I told you, Bruce doesn’t care. He’s caught Dick and Jason doing far worse.”
If it wasn’t for this being a topic of conversation you really didn’t care for, this would’ve been the cutest thing ever.
Your favorite version of Tim was always when he woke up. His eyes were half-lidded from sleep and he was still mumbling all his words. It was a little secret you kept for yourself, but he was also more physical when he was freshly conscious. He pulled you closer to him in bed, kissed you slower, whispered praises into your skin while cataloguing every part of you to his brain.
Not wanting to feed the conversation anymore, you merely hummed again.
That didn’t seem to satisfy him.
“Baby c’mo-”
“If I kiss you, will you go back to sleep?”
You felt the grin against your neck and sighed.
Propping himself up over you, he has the smile that he wore on the night you met. The smile that made you fall in love with him. And all of the sudden, any reason you had for not wanting to kiss him in shared spaces disappeared.
summary: damian wayne is at a total loss in the matters of love and winning over your heart, so much so that he dreadfully ends up on each brother’s doorstep seeking love advice.
pairing: damian wayne x fem! reader (featuring dick, tim & jason)
content: flufff, absolute chaos and only one bat brother comes out on top in teaching damian the ways of yearning, not that he needed help for that in the first place.
“You—” Dick’s grin is barely repressed, chest puffed in pride of being the first confidant Damian thought of. “—seek dating advice?”
Damian makes a non-committal shrug. “I admit that I may harbour feelings towards her that differ from my usual disdain to the average person.”
Dick’s laugh escapes his lips, but quickly conceals itself into an overly serious nod when Damian’s glare pierces through him.
“And you… travelled all the way to Blüdhaven to ask me for help?”
Damian would much rather be stabbed with a jagged-edged blade than admit that. There was always a price to pay for relying on others, especially when it came to his tooth-grinning brothers.
“Would you like to tell her.. about these feelings?” Dick tries again, settling for a more emphatic approach.
Damian winces, averting his gaze—trying to displace the sudden lodge in his throat. “I assumed there were more steps that entail to a courtship. You’re clearly well-versed in them.”
Dick clears his throat. “It isn’t like a routined dance, Damian.” At Damian’s furrowed brow, he continues. “Falling in love—dating, it comes naturally between two people. It’s the million little moments, built upon each other that no practiced motion can recreate. It happens regardless of choices, and that’s the beauty of it.”
“Naturally.” Damian tests the word on his tongue, but like he suspected, it ran off with a bitter taste. While he has been deemed a prodigy, a perfect weapon—being a normal human was not something trained into his veins, but rather suppressed.
“Maybe it is for you, Grayson—but where I was raised, details of courtship and emotional connection with another person were never discussed. My body is not programmed to have these natural decisions come forth to my mind, and I-”
It feels like swallowing glass when he mutters. “I require your assistance to explain it to me.”
Dick’s gaze softens in pity, which weighs heavier, worse than his laughter earlier. “Hey, we actually started off on the same boat. If anything, at least you didn’t have to experience Bruce’s attempt at explaining it. He’s more an expert than any of us when it comes to emotional suppression.”
“Love..” Dick ponders. “It hits you when you least expect it, but spending time together does test if the feeling is reciprocated.”
“I suppose there are some steps that you could follow.” Dick murmurs, thumb trailing his chin in thought. “Alright, here’s the plan.”
Damian may not be well-versed in the matters of courtship. However, standing stiffly in competition with the street lamp beside him, his nose buried into his green scarf more so to hide his shame rather than from the winter cold, his regret grows tenfold with every passing minute for even agreeing to this.
You're bound to arrive at any moment, and he'd rather suffer in his regrets than leave you stranded on a date his brother suggested. Not that he used that term, he could barely handle deeming it a hang out.
In his earpiece, Dick’s voice echoes with irritating amusement.
“Damian, you need to relax. You look like an assassin waiting for your target to appear.”
“Train to be one from the moment you were born with a family legacy on your shoulders and see how that affects your posture.” Damian grumbles.
“It’s okay if you’re nervous. I’ll guide you if you freeze, remember?”
“I’m not nervous—”
His peripheral vision recognises your silhouette before he can even finish his retort. All sound seems to fade past the stuttering in his chest, including his brother’s teasing, and maybe time slows too—he wouldn’t put you below that possibility. You’re busy with your scarf that’s loosened enough to reveal your lips, and you don’t even notice that you’re speed-walking right towards him.
It’s instinctive, not at all pleasing when his hands reach out just in time to grab onto your shoulders before you slam face-first into his coat.
Your eyes widen comically, but it doesn’t appease the thundering of his pulse, not especially when you smile at him like that, bashful and sweet. “Damian! Fancy bumping into you here." You tease.
“Perfect meet-cute.” Dick whispers to himself. “Tell her it’s fine—that you actually think it’s cute.”
“What?” He snaps, feeling ashamed at the mere suggestion.
You blink twice at his sudden reaction. He needs to recover quickly, say something.
“Watch where you’re going.” He slips out.
He can hear the sound of Dick slapping his own forehead, echoing in his eardrums.
Thankfully, you don’t seem deterred by his slow-witted response, grin still in-tact. “Apologies for almost ruining your luxurious scarf. Though I’ll must say, green looks really good on you.”
He tenses. This is the moment, he must say something right this time.
“Brings out the colour of my eyes.” Dick offers through a sigh.
Perfect. Something witty, and completely appropriate for the situation.
“Brings out the colour of my eyes.” Damian’s delivery is completely robotic, unlike the one he heard in his ears, carrying none of the light-hearted tone that made it sound right.
Miraculously, it only cracks a laugh out of you.
“She’s an angel.” Dick groans, almost pitifully.
He winces, letting you go before offering his hand. “The snow’s slippery.” His excuse is well-rehearsed, recovering back into the steps Dick gave him.
Your expression brightens, taking ahold of his hand. It’s a perfect fit, your glove in his and a warm glow is forming behind his ribs—an unsteady, pleasant feeling, almost enough to forget the mistake he made.
“Smooth recovery.” Dick comments in approval. “Bring her to the next location.”
If Damian could, he’d mute Dick's channel immediately if he was going to be reminding him every second. It was distracting and nerve wracking to be multi-tasking two tasks at once, especially when you easily compelled him to lose all train of thought.
The skating rink is crowded, more than he’d like, but he wasn’t up for improvisation after his earlier attempt. It’ll have to do, and he’s sure his withering glare can clear enough space for the two of you.
“I’ve always wanted to try ice skating.” You’re brimming with glee with your gaze glued to the ice, and his eyes trail over your excitement with a tender patience. He’d like to sketch it out when he was back home, but even the thought of ending this moment was incomprehensible, so he settles on bending down to tie your skating shoes.
”Just to warn you—” Your joyful glimmer falters into a rare bundle of nerves. “I’ve never skated—like ever. You’ll need to teach me the ropes.”
His lips quirk the slightest lift. “You have the best teacher in all of Gotham.”
“Really?” You tease, leaning down slightly that he feels the warmth of your breath over his nose, sending goosebumps down his arms. “That’s a bold claim.”
“I was raised on snow mountains since I was an infant. A skating rink in Gotham is a small feat for me, and it shall be for you.”
“Less bragging, more swooning.” Dick’s voice echoes in his eardrums.
Damian’s expression clamps shut as he leads you towards the ice. He takes the first step and balances himself perfectly on the naturally formed ice. You enter immediately on the wrong angle, and slip. He doesn’t think, his free hand wrapping around your waist before you fall.
He freezes, and you do too. Caught at the entrance of the rink in the corner where no one is watching, you’re wrapped so closely in his embrace—his body instinctively shielding and protecting you. He feels his entire face burning up from the lack of distance.
“Maybe ice and me are less compatible than you think.” You whisper, as if the ice would crack and swallow you whole if it heard you.
It’s enough to kick him back into his senses, and he quickly lifts you back up to your feet. Gently letting go of your waist, he ignores the jittering in his fingers by taking hold of your hands instead.
“Hasn’t been proven yet.” He answers, looking down at your feet. “Mirror my stance.”
Your own gaze shifts down, and you adjust the blades of your shoes into the same V position. You’re shuffling less, which is already a sign of improvement.
“Alright, now one step forward, and the other leg lifts like a kick.” Damian instructs.
You try, but your feet wobble at your first kick, making you fall into his arms again. Not that he minds.
“You’re lifting too early.” He notes. “You’ll have to glide with your other foot first.”
Your brows furrow together, an adorable concentration creased in the centre as you try again. You manage it the second time, and he finds it despite himself, vulnerable to smiling when you let out a huff of joyous laughter as you glide with him, his hands still holding onto you.
“I guess you proved yourself right.” Your focus is still on your feet, but when you lift your gaze, you’re leaning close to him just like before when he had caught you—with such pure, content bliss that the word ‘beautiful’ fails to describe your features. “You are a good teacher.”
Dick’s muttering something in his ear, but the erratic signals shooting through his brain fries all comprehension of what he’s supposed to do next other than stare at you speechless like a bumbling fool.
He messes up his next step, and before he knows it, he’s tumbling down to the ice, and you fall down with him through your connected limbs. His body shields you from the freezing ice, but nothing protects him from the shame that drowns his entire conscience—of falling onto the ice which he has never done in his lifetime, and dragging you down with him.
He hears Dick clearly now, laughing so hard that it stings his eardrums from the high frequency.
“Damian!” You call out, and your gaze is half worry, half shock. “Are you okay?”
His ears flush with blood at your question, most likely reddened as if there wasn’t enough to mope about.
“I would very much like for the ice to swallow me whole.” He mutters dryly. “Other than that, I am uninjured.”
“I so have that captured.” Dick howls through the earpiece. “I’m calling it, this is going to be the topic of discussion for our next family dinner.”
Damian discreetly rips his ear-piece out and shoves it into his coat’s pocket when your gaze averts to an elderly couple stopping by the two of you like his fall is some tourist attraction, asking if he needed any help to get back to the entrance.
He is never asking Grayson for help ever again.
The Bat-Cave, Wayne Manor
(Drake’s Secondary Home)
“You sure you have the right person?” Tim guffaws, his expression a mixture of horror and fascination. “Haven’t you tried—”
“Grayson, yes. He has failed.” His scowl has dug deeper if possible, the faint memory of Dick’s laughter still penetrates his eardrums when he isn’t preoccupied with his responsibilities.
Pointing an intrusive finger to his new prey, he speaks. “You are to prove yourself more worthy than he is, as the next best in line for successful courtships.”
Tim raises a brow. “Didn’t know you kept track.”
Damian scowls. “Your methods are unconventional, but there are no other better alternatives.” Imposing and distracting with his crossed arms, casting a shadow over the littered papers, his presence eventually forces Tim to detach from the case he was working on.
“Alright, what’s her name?” Tim sighs, his fingers switching to a new tab where the identity search bar flickers.
Damian stiffens, defensive. “Why would you require her name?”
“To search for her, genius.” Tim comments as if it’s obvious that an illegal identity search is the best course of action. “I can have her interests, dislikes, and her entire profile mapped out in less than five minutes.”
“That’s dishonourable.”
“It’s efficient.” Tim fires back. “Or else we’ll be here all day. Why waste time on the uncertainties when you can already mould everything to go perfectly?”
“My respect for you shrinks by the second, Drake.”
Tim snorts. “As if you had any in the first place. Don’t act like you haven’t done your own illegal searches. Suddenly, it’s your crush and I’m not allowed to look into it?”
The back of Damian’s neck grows hot at the mere use of the word ‘crush’, dumbing his feelings down to something so.. pathetic. “Fine, I’ll do it myself. You’re not allowed to so much as glance at her.”
Tim’s hands raise in mock surrender. “I would never.”
As Damian settles into the seat, given the privacy as Tim launches himself into the spare chair, spinning it backward with his back facing the Bat-computer, he can feel the latter brewing with something to say.
“Spit it out.” Damian huffs.
“I just—” Tim starts. “Never thought I’d live to see the day of you softening up for someone. I mean—it’s even made you come all the way for my assistance.”
“I did not come for assistance.”
“Advice is practically the same thing.” Tim remarks. “You may have called it dishonourable, but can you truly claim you love a person if you don’t know them fully? I think falling in love means having a curiosity so strong for someone that you would like to know them as deeply as they know themselves. Isn’t that what it means to love?”
Damian’s gaze flickers to Tim who yawns widely, tucking his head into his elbows over a long drought from sleep after staying up for two days straight. It… resonated with him, his never-ending greed to learn the intricacies of your emotions and actions, to know the depths behind each story you held in your mind.
He’s spent long, treacherous months avoiding even the mention of your name anywhere outside the confinements of his mind, aside from the occasional scribble and tear of his paper, and his hunger has become an obstacle that even he can’t tackle any longer. With a mental push, the mere action of typing your name numbs his fingers from the anticipation.
Your social media accounts pop up—one is public with your name listed, and another is a photography account. There’s not many photos, but there’s enough that it feels like he’s peeking into something intimate, a catalogue of your life that has his heart quickening.
He remembers vividly of you asking to exchange social media accounts when you had first met, before he quickly shut it down, commenting that he refused to have such useless applications.
Yet, here he was—frozen, mesmerised at the sight of your smile captured on your digital camera, unable to scroll further past your most recent post. It didn’t capture the true essence of your joy like he remembered so clearly from that failed date, but it still struck him all the same.
Even his denial falls silent when he’s looking at you, because he’d be a fool to pretend away the quick pattering of his heart, or the small smile etched into his lips caused by you. His mind has formed a despicable habit—a quiet, dreadful longing whenever he envisions even a frame of you in his mind.
He has fallen for you quietly—strongly, and even as he scrolls further, to the latest bookstores you’ve frequented, or your blurred snapshots of sunsets along the Gotham horizon, he’s not satisfied. What is the use of seeing these images if he wasn’t there to witness it or hear from you in person?
He wants to be in your life, not just a mere bystander, but he doesn’t know how to say it.
“You’ve been deathly silent for ten minutes.” Tim comments. “It’s kind of making me curious—”
“I will gouge out your eyes myself, Drake.”
There’s only one person he has left to ask, and as he pierces a coffin-burying glare into Tim’s prying gaze, he wasn’t sure if he’d get the answer he needed.
89, Skirley Apartments, Park Row (Crime Alley)
(Todd’s Rebellious Man-Cave)
Jason whistles, leaning against the door to his mess of an apartment. “You must be desperate if you’ve come to see me.”
The disgruntlement in Damian’s expression comes mostly from embarrassment and partly from the state of disarray he finds from one single swipe past the gap of Jason’s shoulder and the door frame. Motorcycle gear is splayed out over the scratched floorboards, signaling another random side project.
Barely lived in, and somehow a complete mess that would have Alfred over in a snap with his emergency cleaning set.
“Grayson’s overly optimistic and Drake’s downright creepy.” Damian huffs.
“And that leaves me..?” Jason’s brow raises, a taunting smirk on his lips.
“As the last option.” Damian grits.
Jason steps back, his back pushing against the wood to allow Damian into his less-than-adequate living quarters.
“Well, sorry to break it to you, kid—” Jason plops down onto the couch, and the pillow-seat sinks under his weight. “But my understanding of love is barely any better than yours.”
“You’re still the second oldest.” Call it desperation, Damian isn’t sure if he’s above that anymore after the failure of his two other brothers. “You must’ve had some experience.”
“Now, age matters?” Jason mocks. “Well—if you want my two cents, I suppose I can give it.”
“There’s no point beating around the bush.” Jason states. “If you really like her, you just have to say it. Even if it hurts, especially if you’re scared it’ll hurt. That means there’s something worth to lose, and to never ask, it’s always gonna hurt worse than knowing.”
“That’s the whole point of love. It takes being brave, and realising the possibility of something real right in front of you—and fighting for it. You only have so few chances in the world to experience it, and you’re going to waste something like that over fear of what—rejection?”
“Have a heart-to-heart. That’ll always mean more than some hidden message, hoping she’ll notice and give in first.” Leaning back, Jason eyes Damian with a rare look he doesn’t recognise, because there is no possibility in the world that wisdom could exist in that big-head of his. “If she doesn’t return how you feel, that sucks. You’ll live barely, then it’ll heal and you move on. If you never answer the question? It’s gonna haunt you for life. The one that got away.”
The thought of losing you to cowardice, of being a permanent outsider to your life, nearly ruins him. Damian can’t afford that, not when there’s never been a person he desired for more than you. This week has made sure of that.
Even more of a horrifying realisation is that of all people, Jason Todd was the one that got through to him. His trained eyes scan the perimeter for any signs of a secret partner, a reason for this sudden shift in his usual, thick-headed sibling. “Where did you obtain such knowledge?”
Jason’s lips quirk up. “Jane Austen, you should try her sometime.”
135, Kane Street, Otisburg
(Damian's Last Resort)
Damian has only felt the urge to puke on two occasions this past year. Firstly, when he discovered old photos of Dick’s first Nightwing costume in an old album, and had to wash his hands twice with anti-bacterial soap. Secondly, when a rare poison seeped into his bloodstream that he had not already trained to be immune to.
Never had the nauseating feeling of nerves scale till the point of trembling fingers and stiff legs. He just needed to tell the truth, so why did the matter seem so petrifying?
He’s been standing outside your door, letting the winter frost bite at his exposed skin—like a pathetic loser for the past fifteen minutes and if he stood there any longer, he might as well brand himself as one. His hand comes up to knock in three measured beats, and he waits with the patience of Dick’s pit-bull for a belly rub.
The door unlocks, and your tousled hair greets him first. His heart tugs at the sight of you in your home attire, with your loosened shirt and pajama pants dragging against the floor. You’re utterly beautiful, even as you’re slapping your cheeks lightly to coerce yourself awake. It takes a few seconds for the realisation to hit your half-asleep features before your eyes nearly pop out.
“Damian? It’s five in the morning! What are you doing here?”
“I have romantic feelings for you.” He blurts with the subtlety of a ramming gun.
“If you reciprocate, I would like to..” He pauses, his thoughts competing with the rapid pace of his heartbeat. “Wait, I didn’t think this through.”
You blink slowly, shock blasted over your face, before a soft, warm smile creeps over your lips. “No-no, go on.”
He wants it to be perfect, but his words were too direct, too harsh. He wasn’t like Dick, who was naturally charismatic with others, or Tim who thought two steps ahead for every interaction, or Jason who bulldozed through without a care in the world. He doesn’t want to risk losing you over his own incompetence. “No, I feel like I’ve started it all wrong.”
“It’s five in the morning, even Damian Wayne is human enough to mess up his words at this hour.” You tease. His shoulders sag in relief at the sound of your comforting voice, which he suspects is the purpose of your teasing. To calm him, tell him it’s okay.
“Right.” He mutters. “May I start over?”
“I’m all ears.” You grin.
He cracks a soft smile in return. It is difficult for him to be human, to feel his faults bubble to the surface, but in front of you, he is willing to try. “I am unfathomably, undoubtably.. and completely in love with you. Romantic feelings don’t even come close to describing the knowing in my heart that it has chosen you from the very moment you entered my life.”
“When I am around you, it’s as if the world disappears, and all I envision is you.” He admits. “From the moment you approached me with your maddening smile and charming wit, I don’t believe I could have ever fought against it, against you.”
“Your laughter brings joy to me, your sadness distracts me of all my senses, and your very existence is a gift in my life that I cherish deeply and.. I’m terrified at the idea of losing that, losing you.”
“Love..” He hesitates. “..is a difficult concept for me to understand, because it has never been shown to me outright. So when I felt this desire—this constant want to be in your presence, I sought for understanding.”
“I see now—that love can’t be explained in just mere words. It is the shared moments between us that I replay in my mind, the small details I find myself noticing of you and cherishing deeply, and the fear of losing that privilege of knowing you. I realised.. that I can’t fathom continuing my life without you in it.”
“I don’t know if I deserve to be by your side, but I would like to try.” His gaze finds yours, and he hopes. So desperately, he hopes. “Would you have me, even if I am a fool who doesn’t know the right things to say?” His plea is quiet against the silent rustle of the trees, the dark twilight sky that watches over them.
Your eyes soften, filled with warmth and that same, brimming happiness he has memorised from the time spent on the ice. “You’re only an idiot if you think you didn’t say all the right things, Damian.”
His chest, tight till the point of rupturing, feels like it’s finally able to breathe.
Leaning in slowly, right across the barrier of the doorstep that separates you from him, you gift him with a soft kiss pressed against his lips and his entire world falls apart, not that it ever truly existed before you.
He takes you into his arms, lifting your feet off the doorstep as his boots crunch against the melted snow when he kisses you back. He has never kissed anyone before, but the feeling of wanting you so close to his soul only feels natural when you’re here in his arms.
It’s sweet, clumsy—and out of all the moments he’s spent with you, he truly wished he could replay this over and over.
When you break the kiss, he has to remind himself to not follow after you when you whisper softly against his lips. “You never finished. What did you want to do if I reciprocated?”
Visions, blurred and incoherent, flash through his mind but it’s nothing compared to the real thing right in front of him. “Everything. As long as you’re mine, the possibilities are endless.”
“Of course I’m yours, Damian.” Your eyes crinkle into that puddle of warmth that melts through all his defences. “No one has ever come to my doorstep, at five in a winter morning, professing their love before.”
His brows furrow, lips nearing to a pout. “Has anyone ever tried professing their love in other ways?”
You laugh, and he can get used to that. Making you smile and laugh as if it’s his one purpose on this planet. “No—I think my heart was too busy being taken by the person in front of me, who just conveyed what love is so perfectly that I can never think of anyone else.”
He relaxes at that, feeling his own smile deepen at the relief of finally having you in his arms, and in the comfort of the warmth shared under the dim streetlights, he thinks he’ll have to temporarily bump Jason to the number one spot in his long line of siblings.
Not that he’d ever tell him that—but he supposes if a limited edition of Jane Austen's collection ends up at Jason's doorstep tomorrow, it would have simply been the universe's divine gift.
likes, reblogs, and comments are highly appreciated! <333
𖥔 ✴️ . ノ His brothers like to crash at your place . . .
with JASON TODD ◜ content ⸝⸝ short n' sweet . i didn't mention the girls :( ! ୧ head empty just batfamily ♡
It's quiet when you both turn in to sleep ― warm, comfortable ... shielded from the filth of Gotham. His heavy duty and your deep-rooted fears, far from your guys mind. Your face is turned towards his, head nestled comfortably under his chin, and ... Jason breathes softly, in n' out ... It's calm ... quiet ... Maybe even a little too quiet ? You hear the faint noise of the city below your apartment complex and all the way down the streets. Traffic, sirens ― it's all a familiar sound that would usually lull you right to sleep. Even the light rumbling of your partners' chest ― not quite snoring, but something close ― normally has you knocked out in under five minutes. But ...
The doorbell. It's a sharp tone in the otherwise silent apartment, that has your eyes wide open again, and Jason on his last nerve. You hear him sigh. Annoyed, yes, but also in a way that tells you ― he has an idea of who that might be. It's still dark, and you can barely see just what he's really doing, but you feel how he peels his side of the blanket away, muttering something like 'jus' sleep, i'll check' which is barely audible by how sleep drunken he sounds. Then, he's already out of the bedroom, lazily walking towards the door, already dreading which bat will greet him at such an hour ...
When he finally opens it, it's ... Richard Grayson, grinning. The sight has another heavy sigh escape him. "Yeah?" Jason liked to pretend that it was unusual for his brothers to show up ― which it wasn't. He also liked to pretend that he never lets them stay ― but he does. And it ― embarrassingly so ― never even takes that long to convince him. When asked, though, Jason claims it's because he rather gets right back to sleep than argue with any of his brothers.
Everyone believes him. Not.
So, Jason just steps aside and lets a much too triumphal looking Dick crash on the couch.
You hear them talk, hushed, comfortable, and soon enough, Jason is back in your bedroom, making sure to close the door behind him as he crawls back to you and underneath the sheets. "S' he okay?" You ask softly, shifting back into your previous position, flush against his chest as you breathe out, content. You're used to Richard coming over and crashing, so you're more concerned on why. Wouldn't be the first time he came over bloodied and beaten, much more eager to let you patch him up than have the batman give him a lecture. "He's fine. Will be gone in the morning."
'He doesn't want to deal with Bruce today' is what he wants to say, but he doesn't want his father to be the last thing he thinks about before going back to sleep. So he just presses a kiss against your forehead and tells you to go back to sleep.
You do, for maybe a minute, then there's a loud crash somewhere, and you're obviously wide awake again. This time, Jason doesn't even pretend to 'go check' because it's one of two people ― and he has this vague idea that it must be Tim, by how stupid his landing was. Probably came through the wrong window and fell right into that new Vase you bought.
Great.
You quietly follow behind when he leaves the bedroom again. You carry a blanket and a smaller pillow that you know is more comfortable than whatever pillows you keep in the living room, handing both to a drowsy Dick when he opens one eye ― not even bothering to check what caused such a loud noise in your guys' apartment. He just thanks you, turns around and goes right back to snoring. It's sweet, you think, how he feels more at ease here, than the large Mansion of his father...
"Go home, Tim," You hear your boyfriend mutter and follow his voice to the kitchen. His brows are furrowed as he watches the boy ― still glad in his suit ― try and puzzle the vase back together. "It's fine, we'll clean it tomorrow..." you find yourself saying, offering the kid a reassuring smile when he sheepishly lets it all fall back together. You know why he's here ― Jason knows too... and it goes without saying that he, too, is always allowed to stay. Even when Jay plays the annoyed older brother, grumbling and huffing when you show Tim the foldable sofa in your bedroom ( the one you guys bought specifically for nights like this ... )
He gets the last spare blanket, and a pillow, and he's good to go, bright smile and rosy cheeks when he thanks you so genuinely, you almost tear up a little. Your boyfriend grunts something about it being 'the last damn time' and Tim just nods. It won't be the last time. Jason acts like his brothers are intruding ― you know better.
Then everything slowly settles. It gets quiet again, there is the occasional shifting of blankets and pillows ― but, everyone seems asleep. Jason is cuddled against you, you can hear the faint snoring of Dick, and even Tim smacks his lips in deep content.
Yet, you can't help but feel like something is still not right. And like the universe agrees with you because ― of course, someone is still missing ― you hear the noise of your window being shoved open, with careful, skillful little hands... and soon enough, a smaller body wedges itself right between you and Jason as if it belongs. You don't say anything, and neither does he ― Damian Wayne fits right in the middle, barely three apples, yet he gets comfortable as if he owns the place. And you know Jason is rolling his eyes, deeply annoyed and beyond done with having so many siblings seeking him out when he just wants to spend time at his apartment with his partner. But even he is quiet and settles easy, his arm lazily thrown over his youngest brother and you, shifting the blanket so that all three of you are warm.
It's the sounds of a full apartment that finally lets you find comfortable sleep ― the warmth of two bodies right next to you ( of which the smaller keeps his hand laced with yours, as if you would ever even dare leave during the night ).
When morning comes, your sofa is empty, the vase glued back together and one demon child can't even look at you because he knows you're aware he's been clinging. He's embarrassed, you ruffle his hair, and together with Jason you bring him back to the Manor. You know it won't be the last time... and you honestly don't mind.
someone take " ... " away from me / i wrote this for myself honestly ―
i saw someone saying on twitter about a woman who said that her boyfriend was so nervous when propose her that he forgot everything and ended up just getting on his knees saying “please”.
i hope every writer who reads this makes the best of it
warnings & tags .ᐟ: sfw. pure fluff. no use of y/n. written with fem! reader in mind. no reader description. maybe ooc? no beta reader. mild language. stupid jason. a tiny bit lovesick Jason. Still learning how to tag. English is not my first language.
a little sticky note .ᐟ: I thought this tiny tumblr post is as cute as a bug's ear. i had to give it a shot (i tried my best) ;P. please like and comment if you enjoy this tiny ficlet. anywayyyyssss enjoy ૮ ྀིᴗ͈ . ᴗ͈ ྀིა
word count: approx 994
𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐎𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐒: Jason has been in a relationship for a long time with the reader, she is the perfect woman for him. Now he wants to take the next step, but proposing seems so muuuuuuuch harder than imagined.
Jason nervously toyed with the small box in his trouser pocket. It was perhaps the size of a peculiar walnut, yet despite its light weight, it felt so heavy in his hand. He let the lid snap open briefly, tracing the delicate stone with the pad of his thumb, before gently closing it gently.
Or perhaps he thought he was closing the lid gently.
He cursed softly when the stupid lid pinched his thumb. Surely it couldn't be that hard - why was he worrying? He didn't even shit his pants when he had the Black Mask standing right in front of him. But that hadn't been Jason. It had been Red Hood who faced the frightening reality of Gotham.
Maybe that was a lie. Maybe he was shitting his pants a little. He took a deep breath before exhaling slowly; his sweaty hands were already getting on his nerves.
For weeks - if not months - he had planned this evening. Down to every teeny tiny element. Meticulously: every single detail, every single scenario. A little too Bruce for his taste. But good God, what would he do if this evening went wrong? He would never be able to handle loosing his darling.
And how long had she been with him by now? No one would put up with his problems for five years unless they wanted to get married. Right?
He tugged at his shirt. He was Jason Peter Todd, for fuck's sake! Who wouldn't want to marry him, right? Right? He rose from his chair and cleared his throat.
Could it really take that long just to wash one's hands?
He turned in a semicircle, his heart pounding in his throat. What the hell was he doing here? He tugged once more at the table decorations and stared down at the bustling streets of Gotham. Up here on the roof, it almost seemed peaceful, silent. The small garden radiated an almost soothing atmosphere.
Dinner went well. Not just well or good, it was great. He had noticed that she had done her nails. Had she, perhaps, suspected after all what his plans for today was? That was a good sign, right? A woman caring about her nails, maybe even expecting a proposal.
His loud thoughts came to a halt when he heard the door open. Seeing her step out into the soft light of the lanterns (which he had lit specifically for the occasion) in her pretty dress, with those stupid kitten heels that somehow turned him crazy. Perhaps it was the way her legs stretched just a tiny bit more, that struck him as even more alluring.
She had reapplied her glossy lipstick. A broad smile was on her face as she walked towards him.
" 'M sorry, that took longer than expected."
He hummed in acknoledgement. He stepped a tiny bit closer and took her hand in his. Slowly, he rubbed his thumb over her soft knuckles.
"Did you like it?" he asked slowly, leaning down to plant a kiss on her cheek. "The food, I mean. I also have dessert downstairs in the fridge."
She smiled and leaned slightly toward him, nodding slowly. The meal had been simple. Jason Todd’s culinary skills left something to be desired - but pasta al pomodoro with Parmesan? That was something he aced.
"Hmmm, nothing compares to Jason Tood's spaghetti."
For a second he just stared at her and runs a hand through his hair.
"Great, good," he murmured, playing with the small box in his trouser pocket. "Fantastic."
She glanced at him, somewhat confused, and blinked toward his trouser pocket.
"You've been fiddling with your hand in your pocket all evening. What's in there?" she snorted, reaching out to tug his wrist curiously. He wriggled gracefully and gently out of her reach and chuckled softly. A tiny, displeased sound left his throat, but still soft. "It's a secret," he grunted.
"You're stupid," she said, her gaze following his. He took a glimpse at her so gently through his long lashes, as if she herself had hung the stars in the evening sky. He kissed her again on her temple.
"Wanna know?"
His words were barely more than a hum. The moment was perfect. They stood close to one another, amidst that familiar banter that so often passed between them. He had written a text of epic length, spanning from the very first moment he had laid eyes on her, and secretly, deep down, knew that she would become his wife.
Even though his mind told him that he shouldn't open up. Who would want to marry a man like Jason? With his many issues and mild aggression problems? From their first date right up to their first fight, after which he spent an entire evening in his apartment (before they moved in together) crying his eyes out.
He slowly sank to his left knee, yet did not let go of her hand. He watched as her eyes widened and her own hands grew warm. His own heart pounded in his throat. He felt as though he could not breathe. And not a single word of his memorized monologue would come to mind.
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out except a hoarse "I-" His hands were sweaty, trembling slightly as, with his free hand, he pulled the ring from his trouser pocket; and nearly dropped it onto the concrete of the roof.
"Sweetheart-"
He never claimed to be a nervous wreck or a helpless simp. But the way she looked at him, so full of anticipation, while barely holding back her own tears of joy… and the ring, looking a little lost inside its box, sparkled in the soft glow of the lanterns.
"Please...", he almost whimpered.
She laughed softly through a few tears that escaped her eyes. She herself couldn't manage to utter a coherent sound - only a wild nod - before leaping into his arms and sobbing, in broken gasps,
i saw someone saying on twitter about a woman who said that her boyfriend was so nervous when propose her that he forgot everything and ended up just getting on his knees saying “please”.
i hope every writer who reads this makes the best of it
𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 ✷ established relationship. domestic arguments. fluff & angst. financially reckless behavior. independent!reader. morally gray income sources. soft!red hood. bickering. slightly clingy jason. implied violence. criminal interrogation. protective behavior. unhealthy coping mechanisms disguised as acts of service. rich boyfriend problems.
Dating an independent woman, Jason had learned, was an exercise in chronic frustration. Not the exhausting kind—the kind that settled warm beneath his ribs, irritating and addictive in equal measure. The kind that made him want to grind his teeth one second and kiss her stupid the next. Because loving y/n was easy. Christ, it was the easiest thing he’d ever done. Existing around her, however, was another story entirely.
She refused help with the same ferocity Jason usually reserved for gunfights and emotional repression.
And that was saying something.
Jason liked taking care of people. It was buried somewhere deep beneath the violence, the sarcasm, the helmet, the terrifying reputation, and the lifetime’s worth of anger issues, but it was there. Raw and instinctive. He liked memorizing what people needed before they asked for it. He liked patching wounds, carrying heavy things, walking on the outside of the sidewalk, checking locks twice before bed. Maybe it came from a childhood where nobody took care of him properly. Maybe it came from being Robin once upon a time, before the world had split him open and rebuilt him meaner. Whatever the reason, taking care of someone he loved felt as natural to him as breathing.
Unfortunately for him, y/n would rather throw herself into oncoming traffic than accept assistance gracefully.
Which was deeply inconvenient considering Jason Todd had money now. Not respectable money, obviously. Not “stocks and mutual funds” money like Bruce. Jason’s finances existed in a morally gray area populated by terrified drug lords, black-market deals, confiscated cash, and the occasional envelope Bruce shoved into his hands disguised as “mission funding” when they both knew it was guilt money.
Jason accepted all of it without shame.
And when he got a girlfriend? Jesus Christ.
He immediately developed the overwhelming urge to spend every cent on her.
Not in an obnoxious way. Not because he thought she couldn’t survive on her own. If anything, y/n surviving independently despite Gotham actively trying to eat people alive was one of the things he admired most about her. She worked herself ragged, paid her own bills, handled her own problems, and carried herself with this stubborn, infuriating pride that made Jason want to simultaneously shake her and marry her.
But he loved her. Of course he wanted to make her life easier.
Apparently that made him public enemy number one.
Every single attempt at paying for something turned into a war of attrition.
Coffee dates were the worst. Jason would buy their drinks with the smug satisfaction of a man fulfilling his divine purpose as a boyfriend, only for his phone to buzz ten minutes later.
Y/N SENT YOU $10.00
Jason would stare at the notification with pure resentment.
Once, after their fourth argument about it that month, he’d deliberately paid for dinner while she was in the bathroom, thinking he’d finally outsmarted her.
The next morning she’d transferred him exact reimbursement down to the tax.
Psychotic behavior.
Another time, he’d tried being direct about it.
“You know normal girlfriends let their boyfriends spoil them,” he muttered while leaning against her kitchen counter.
Y/n, sitting cross-legged on the counter eating a banana with the confidence of a woman impossible to embarrass, looked unimpressed. “Normal boyfriends don’t source their income like Batman’s most wanted.”
“That’s hurtful.”
“That’s accurate.”
Jason narrowed his eyes before pulling a thick stack of cash from his jacket pocket and tossing it onto the counter beside her. “Take it.”
She glanced at the money, then at him, then back at the money. “I don’t want your guilt money from your daddy.”
“It’s not guilt money,” Jason corrected immediately. “It’s drug money.”
Y/n stared at him slowly, banana halfway to her mouth, looking genuinely uncertain whether she should kiss him or book him a therapist.
Jason had shrugged like that clarified everything.
Because to him, honestly, it did.
Then there were the bills.
God, the bills argument nearly killed him.
It had been late evening, rain tapping softly against the apartment windows while Gotham drowned itself in neon and smog outside. Y/n’s apartment wasn’t terrible, but it was small in that distinctly Gotham way—thin walls, unreliable heating, pipes that screamed like dying animals whenever someone showered. Jason practically lived there anyway despite technically owning a much nicer place. Mostly because he preferred her cluttered little apartment over any penthouse money could buy.
She was sprawled on top of him on the couch, wearing one of his hoodies and soft sleep shorts, her cheek pressed into his neck while he worked on his laptop balanced precariously against her lower back. One of his arms rested around her waist automatically, hand underneath the hoodie, fingertips tracing absent patterns against her skin while he typed with the other hand.
“Ugh,” she groaned suddenly into his throat. “My landlord is up my ass about rent.”
Jason’s fingers paused over the keyboard instantly.
“How much?”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was gonna say.”
“You were gonna offer money.”
“I was gonna offer money.”
She made a triumphant sound against his skin. “Exactly. Denied.”
Jason clicked his tongue in annoyance, shifting slightly beneath her. “Baby, I basically live here anyway. Let me help with bills.”
“No.”
“You’re working doubles.”
“I’ll survive.”
“You shouldn’t have to survive,” he muttered.
That made her lift her head slightly. Her expression softened around the edges when she looked at him, because no matter how much they argued about this, she knew where it came from. Jason wasn’t controlling. Wasn’t condescending. He wasn’t trying to own her.
He just loved hard. Recklessly. Like a man who never learned moderation.
“I wanna do things myself,” she said quietly. “I need to prove I can.”
Jason looked at her for a long moment.
Most people saw anger first when they looked at him. Violence. Volatility. But underneath all of that, Jason understood pride better than almost anyone. Understood what it meant to claw your own survival out of the dirt with bloody hands. Understood how humiliating dependence could feel.
So instead of arguing, he just sighed softly through his nose and kissed the top of her head.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Okay.”
Which should’ve worried her.
Because when Jason Todd stopped arguing, it usually meant he’d already decided to do something significantly worse.
The next afternoon, while Jason was in the middle of interrogating a weapons trafficker, his phone vibrated in his pocket.
He glanced at the caller ID and immediately smiled beneath the Red Hood helmet.
“Hey, gorgeous.”
“You paid my fucking rent?”
Jason leaned casually against the damp brick wall beside him while the criminal tied to the chair whimpered quietly in the background.
“For the next six months, yeah.” He checked his gun lazily. “Oh, and your car’s in the shop. Your brakes sounded like a dying walrus. Figured I’d get them replaced.”
There was silence on the other end.
Then came one long inhale that positively radiated fury.
Jason grinned harder.
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Yeah?”
“You are insane.”
“You still love me though.”
“I’m considering arson.”
“That’s my girl.”
The line went dead with an aggressive beep.
Jason stood there for another second staring at the phone in his hand, helpless affection spreading warm through his chest before he could stop it. The kind that made him feel seventeen again. Human again. Soft in places he usually kept armored shut.
If anyone ever saw the look on his face right now, Jason would actually have to kill them.
With a sigh, he slid the phone back into his jacket and finally turned toward the terrified criminal still zip-tied to the chair in the abandoned warehouse.
“You know,” he muttered while pulling another zip tie tighter around the guy’s wrists, “I buy one woman six months’ rent and suddenly I’m the bad guy.”
The guy had apparently developed a death wish.
“F-females,” he laughed nervously, sweat dripping down his temple. “Am I right?”
Jason’s smile vanished instantly.
Gone was the lovesick idiot paying for brake repairs. This was the man criminals whispered about in panic.
Jason grabbed the chair sharply, yanking it forward until the man nearly choked on his own breath.
“That,” Jason said quietly, “is my girl you’re talking about.”
The criminal went pale.
“And trust me,” Jason continued, voice calm in the way that scared people most, “you do not wanna disrespect the woman willing to date me voluntarily.”
“R-right. I’m sorry. Sorry.”
Jason stared at him another second before sighing heavily and releasing the chair.
