Summary: How Jason takes care of you when you've had a little too much fun!
Pairing: Jason Todd x Fem!Reader
Word Count: 0.7k
Content Warning: fluff, slice of life, drunk/tipsy!reader, reader has hair, domestic jason, no use of y/n, not beta read
A/N: HAPPY BIRTHDAY JASON PETER TODD, it's my husband's birthday😝 i cooked this up because this was very much what i needed last night, as always i hope you enjoy :)
"I don't feel good."
The words come out muffled in the crook of your boyfriend's neck. His arms wrap around you a little tighter and a smirk tugs at the corner of his lips.
"I know baby," his fingers trace soothing circles into your skin in an attempt to comfort you, "it'll go away soon."
"The world's spinning."
"Well, that tends to happen when you drink your body weight in tequila."
Pushing off him, your head sways on your shoulders. He almost cracks when your eyes narrow, a very much failed attempt to try and look menacing. You brace yourself by slapping your hands on his chest, he's almost surprised that you don't slur your words, "Are you sassing me right now Jason Peter Todd?"
Jason pulls his lips between his teeth. There was a punctuated pause between each of his names that he's not entirely sure was intentional. With a deep inhale and thinly concealed amusement, he responds, "Wouldn't dream of it doll."
It was a guilty pleasure of his, but he loved it when you got a little tipsy. It was -for lack of better words- funny.
The night would follow the same path every time. You'd get ready for a fun night out, wearing a dress Jason would drop to his knees to rip off you. He'd fill up your water bottle to take to the pre with your friends, and he'd make you promise that you would drink at least half of it. You'd give him a kiss that was too sensual for the moment to seal the promise and as a thank you. Right before you slipped out the door, he'd make you drink a teaspoon of olive oil to coat your stomach.
Then after about two hours passed, you'd call him saying you felt too dizzy at the bar.
That was the moment Jason Todd dropped everything he was doing. Because if there was one thing you hated, it was being dizzy.
About this time was when the favorite part of his night started; you got needy. It wasn't in the typical sense, it was more so needy for him. You just wanted him to be close and hold you for the rest of the night. The second you got back to the shared apartment, you'd curl into him for the rest of the night. Jason would sit on the couch and you plopped yourself right on top of him. Your legs would cage his in a straddle position, and your arms would wrap around his shoulders as your face buried itself in his neck. Hours would pass in that same position and Jason knew he could die happy there.
Occasionally, when the universe was on his side, he could convince you that a shower would help. You would stumble to the bathroom and he finally got to indulge in taking your dress off. He'd hold you up as the water ricocheted off your bodies and he'd steal barely there kisses under the warm light. If he was really lucky, you'd be so gone that he could convince you to take ibuprofen.
Tonight, however, he wasn't granted either of those options.
"I still think you should take some Advil."
Throwing your head back to the roof, your eyes close in tandem to your whine. "Jayyyyyy."
"You know it'll make you feel better, and you won't wake up with a headache."
"And you know, I don't like taking pills."
Oh he knew that alright. He couldn't even list all the times you didn't feel well and refused to take any form of pain killers or medicine, just because they were in pill form. Jason had declared it a losing battle. He always suggested the medicine, but stopped fighting you on it when you said no.
Your head drops back down and he lets himself fully smile this time. The expression on your face might just be his favorite thing on the planet. The half-lidded eyes, barely parted mouth, and cheeks that are more flushed than normal, rivals every exhibition at MoMA.
"I just don't want you to feel hungover tomorrow."
"I'll cross that bridge when I get there." You mumble before cocooning yourself back into his warm embrace.
And for once, Jason allows himself to lose. If you being tipsy for a little while longer meant that he got to hold you close; well, who was he to deny you that.
summary: the first time you and jason met. (you two are in hs)
notes: hii! i’m still improving soooo..enjoy! (yes, that is a pride and prejudice reference at the end)
something more masterlist.
books. that’s all jason came for. but as he stepped inside the library, he came out with something different.
the door’s bell rang, and jason stepped in. he offered a quick nod to the librarian out of respect, and made his way to the literature aisle.
sitting there, nose in your book, you peeked up to spot him.
some random guy, about six foot tall, carrying an air of bloody knuckles and bruised sides, stands in between the shelves, head buried a little deeper in a leather bound copy of…pride and prejudice?
noticing you, he cleared his throat, looked away, and sat on the stool beside you, book leaning on the shared table. for about a while, you both stayed like that, sitting in comfortable silence.
it..wasn’t silence for jason, though.
as you skipped to another page in your book, jason’s heart was pounding with every second, the hand that tapped against the table now paused.
the moment he spotted you, all coherent thoughts he had just simply…walked away.
the only thing on his mind now, (and probably forever) was you. awkwardness creeped into the library, and jason’s mouth moved before he could register it.
“uh..you come here a lot?”
you turn your head to him.
“..pretty often, you?”
he smiles, tentative and warm. “only when i’m free. i’m waiting for someone here, and work takes up my life, so this,” he gestured to the books, “is my getaway.”
you tilt your head, a smile creeping on your face. “what do you do for work anyway?”
he hesitates, “uh-nothing important. just..it’s a part time international thing is all.” he looks away while talking, only making eye contact at the end of his sentence. “you? what do you do for work?”
“oh, i work part time in a bar. it isn’t far from here though, about across the street, so that’s why i’m here pretty often.”
“..cool. i’ll check it out.”
you both went back to your respective books, before the silence was broke once again, by none other than you.
“..you go to school in gotham central?”
he freezes. like, visibly stops moving. “how’d you know?”
you point to his id. his shoulders drop, relaxing.
“ah, yeah, that explains it.”
“are you in section five, perhaps?”
jason’s eyes narrowed. “yes..”
you smiled.“cool! we’re in the same section so,” you stuck your hand out for him to shake. “it’s nice to meet you,” you peeked his id, “jason.”
well, you’ve done it now. the moment you smiled at him, his brain short-circuited. his hand instinctively shook yours, the contact sending sparks to his heart. as his smile built up even more, words (as coherent as he tried to make them) tumbled out of his mouth.
“yeah-um, yeah. my name’s jason and uh-wow, you’re pretty. pretty social, i mean! yeah, uh, it’s nice that we’re going to the same class. we’ll get to know each other, and-“
“jason.”
he looked up so quickly it could give him whiplash. “yeah?”
“breathe,” you offered him a soft smile again, which made his breath stutter even more.
his hand rubbed the back of his neck, “yeah, uh, sorry. i don’t usually act like this.”
you nodded. “me neither.”
he looked at you–really looked at you–and quiet understanding washed over him. a few minutes in again, the silence popped by the “ding!” of your phone. you picked it up, squinting at the screen before fixing your things and returning your book. jason looked…visibly concerned.
“where you going?”
“start of shift.” you smiled at him again. “i’ve got to go.” you paused, slinging your bag back over your shoulder, “it was nice meeting you, jason. see you at school?”
he smiled back. “yeah..yeah, see you.” you walked out of the library, and jason sat there, watching you get into the bar across the street.
a few minutes later, the library’s bell chimed again. roy harper, looking way too tired for this, walked in. jason didn’t even bat an eye at him, eyes still on you. roy followed his gaze, a smirk widening as he saw you and jason’s lovestruck gaze. “who’s she?”
he paused, “..i never got her name.”
“..you look like a creep, jason.”
jason got, up, clearing his throat and scoffing. “speak for yourself.”
roy stepped out of the library, jason following soon after, his eyes still on the bar.
jason didn’t know your favorite colour, or where you lived. hell, he didn’t even know your name. but he knew one thing.
hello!! i love ur writing sm... i was wondering if i could request damian wayne x spidey!reader 👀
Hey, baby, won’t you look my way?
Aged up! Damian Wayne x Spidey! Reader
I got u bae and I made the reader pretty gender neutral but kind of leaning on the feminine side
Yo this got a bit angsty but don’t worry it’s mostly fluff
˚₊𓆩༺🕷༻𓆪₊˚ You and Damian met when he was in his civilian persona. He was caught in the middle of a mugging he was about to deal with before you swooped in, webbed the perpetrators to a wall, and then proceeded to pick him up and swing him away from the crime scene.
˚₊𓆩༺🕷༻𓆪₊˚ It was a very interesting first impression for him. Meeting the infamous web slinging vigilante that has recently shown up in Gotham made him determined to find out your secret identity. So of course he tried to find you in the bat computer just to find nothing.
˚₊𓆩༺🕷༻𓆪₊˚ So like any normal person he started basically stalking you as Robin well to be fair it’s normal in his family. He thought you were just a quippy and almost full of your self hero but he soon realized you weren’t like that at all. He saw you save cats, children, and anyone who needed help. Even saw you help a kid track down their lost dog.
˚₊𓆩༺🕷༻𓆪₊˚ You of course knew he was following or that at least someone was so you made it a point to never go home or take of your mask until your senses tell you they are gone.
˚₊𓆩༺🕷༻𓆪₊˚ That all comes crashing down one day when you are badly injured by one of your villains and you find out the person following you was Robin. He swoops in to save you and you give him the directions to your apartment. You tell him you know he was following you and he asks why you didn’t try to stop him and all you say is “I didn’t sense danger from you”.
˚₊𓆩༺🕷༻𓆪₊˚ After that you both become close friends and Damian realizes just how lonely you actually are and how you put all of yourself into your hero work leaving little for yourself out of the mask.
˚₊𓆩༺🕷༻𓆪₊˚ The grand reveal of both of your identities is actually not that big. Just a quiet night where you tell him your troubles and he offers to take off him mask with yours. You recognize him as the person you saved that one day and he recognizes you as the spidey of his dreams.
˚₊𓆩༺🕷༻𓆪₊˚ You both date soon after that night and you both help each other with realizing you both aren’t monsters but human.
Summary: Tim is aware that a vigilante known as Spider is beloved by New York, and that his girlfriend cancels a lot of dates. When he finds Spider unconscious in a Gotham alley, he begins questioning what he knows both about the vigilante and his girlfriend.
A/N: I have very little practice writing for Tim, so apologies if he's OOC! I love him, though, and I plan to write more for him in the future!!
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“I,” you begin as you lean back to dodge a punch.
“Have,” you continue, twisting into a roundhouse kick that catches Hyena’s jaw.
“A… date!” you conclude.
Panting for air, you look down at the unconscious foe, tapping your toes against the bipedal killer. Sirens are approaching quickly, so you have to leave behind the villain you thought was from a time when you were lacking both common sense and spider sense. Now you have one of those. Most days.
“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” you murmur, aiming your extended fingers toward the looming roof of the New York skyline. “Or bothering Firestorm?”
Swinging high above the crowded city streets, you shoot a web with your left hand as you unlock your phone with your right. Someone once told you texting and swinging was a bad idea, but you assured him you’d never crash into a building (like some people have). You’re very late, you find, as expected.
“Please don’t hate me,” you whisper as the dial tone trills in your ear.
“Hey,” Tim greets. He yawns, then asks, “What’s up?”
“I’m so sorry,” you begin, pulling yourself up to sit on a rooftop. “I got caught up at work and traffic heading out of the city is awful. I don’t think I’m going to make it.”
“No worries,” Tim replies. “Reschedule for, uh, Saturday?”
Dropping your head back, you close your eyes against the setting sun and think. There’s a fight in Hell’s Kitchen late Friday night, and a new ride is opening at Coney Island Sunday.
“Saturday works,” you answer. “I’m really sorry, Tim.”
“Hey, I get it,” he assures you. “I love you.”
You pinch your eyes closed tighter, guilt weighing down your chest. “I love you.”
“Oh, I found something cool to show you. I’ll come to you Saturday?”
“Sounds good. Thanks, Timmy.”
Tim pulls his phone from his ear and squints at the video that resumes playing. The spider vigilante stealing the hearts of New Yorkers has gained a lot of popularity on social media. Jason even stumbled upon a fanfiction someone wrote about the Spider beating Batman in a fight — he’ll never admit he read it, but if he did, Tim might have found it entertaining. He saves the video to show you the comments your neighbors are making, then turns his comms back on.
“Yo, Red Robin!” Jason barks. “Stop flirting and give B some backup!”
“What makes you think I was flirting?” Tim questions as he stows his phone in his belt.
“Because we warned you against a long-distance relationship,” Dick answers. “And now every free moment you have is spent on your phone.”
“Your girlfriend is from a different planet,” Tim deadpans. “Hypocrite.”
“New York City is not long distance, Grayson,” Damian scoffs. “One can hire a civilian driver, pay a meager fee, and be in the city in less than two hours.”
“How do you know that?” Batman rasps.
“Uh… Superman informed me of the details,” Damian mutters. “Perhaps I should give my attention to Killer Croc.”
“Perhaps,” Bruce agrees. “And if you choose to take a trip to New York, don’t Uber.”
“Steal a car,” Jason agrees.
Bruce’s sigh seems to shake the very foundation of Gotham before he utters, “No.”
“I’m going to New York Saturday,” Tim offers. “We were supposed to meet tonight, but she got stuck in the city.”
“Again?” Dick, Jason, and Barbara, safe in the watchtower, ask.
“I’m not going to fault her for cancelling dates at the last minute when I’ve missed just as many because of this,” Tim counters.
“No, just…” Jason exhales heavily, then asks, “Don’t you wonder if there’s something she isn’t telling you?”
“I love her,” Tim defends.
“That’s not an answer, Tim,” Barbara points out softly. “It’s okay to want answers.”
“I always tell her it’s fine,” Tim replies. After a breath, he admits, “But, yeah, I’m getting suspicious.”
“She’s not the type to cheat on you,” Dick adds. “And as someone who has had my fair share of relationships while hiding part of my own life from them, I’d suggest you have a mature conversation before it’s too late.”
“Suspicious how?” Barbara inquires.
“I can’t justify asking her questions when she doesn’t know I’m Red Robin,” Tim decides, putting an end to the conversation. “When there’s something to talk about, we’ll talk about it.”
“Well, if you’re back on the clock, maybe you could come help me get out of Pammy’s vines,” Jason suggests.
“Call Harley,” Barbara jokes.
Jason’s voice is so soft it’s nearly inaudible when he says, “She sent me to voicemail.”
Surprisingly, the Friday night fight didn’t end in the bloodshed you expected. When the former mayor’s Fisk Shipping company was announced as one of the event’s sponsors, you expected the worse. But Hell’s Kitchen was quiet… as quiet as it gets, at least.
So, you stumble into your apartment just after 1 a.m., eager to get some sleep but excited to see Tim tomorrow. It’s been nearly three weeks since your last date. You had several scheduled in that time, but you were late to the first and he’d already left for a family emergency, then you cancelled the next two. The simple fact of living in a different city than Tim does complicates things, but the suit you don, and the powers and responsibilities you have make it even more difficult to maintain a secure relationship. Yet Tim has never been anything but understanding. That doesn’t make it any easier to sneak around and lie when you love him.
You’ve just pulled your mask off when a blue light flashes in the bedroom entry behind you.
“Shock it!” a familiar voice exclaims before the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the floor thuds.
“Hi, Miggy,” you greet without turning.
“It’s Miguel, kid,” he grumbles, pushing up to his feet. “Year?”
“Same as last time.”
“Any reason I should be here?”
Shaking your head, you move to face him. His mask is off, the gloves of his suit torn. The left side reveals a simple gold band on his ring finger.
“Actually,” you decide, putting on your best friendly smile.
“No,” he interrupts. “I don’t like when you do that.”
“You don’t like anything,” you argue. “It’s not going to put anyone in danger.”
“You saying that scares me.”
“I need some advice,” you confess. “I… I’ve been seeing someone, and I love him. I do. But I also really love helping people.”
Miguel drags a hand down his face, then asks, “This guy seem bothered by the constant excuses?”
“How do you know I give him excuses?”
Miguel simply looks at you, because he knows exactly what you’re dealing with. Even when he’s been around other spiders, there have been things he couldn’t — or simply wouldn’t — share.
“He’s really busy too, so I think he understands and it works out. So far, he hasn’t acted suspicious… not to my face at least.”
“There’s this novel idea where you meet in the middle,” Miguel says. “You tell him what he needs to know and ask the same in return.”
“What if… What if he doesn’t like what I tell him?” you whisper.
“Then you dodged a bullet.” Miguel shrugs and counters, “Maybe you won’t like what he tells you. But you won’t know until you stop letting your situation control you.”
“Right. Well, he’s coming here later today, so I guess I could consider your advice. Wait, why are you here?”
“No clue.” He points over his shoulder but doesn’t have to ask.
“Couch is all yours,” you answer. “There’s leftover pizza in the fridge or the Thai place around the corner is still open. Thank you, Miggy.”
“Whatever, kid,” he grumbles, rolling his shoulders as he walks out of your room.
You decide to take Miguel’s advice under consideration for a while longer. When you open your door to see Tim holding a bag of food and a box from your favourite store, you decide you would rather have the mature conversation in Gotham. That way, Tim doesn’t have to find his way home knowing that you have been lying to him for the entirety of your relationship.
“Are you free Friday?” you check after the door is closed and everything he was carrying is stowed on your counter.
Tim checks his phone quickly, then nods.
“Can I come to Gotham? I’ve been wanting to go to that diner again.”
“Sure,” Tim agrees. “They just added a new dessert menu.”
“I should move,” you sigh dreamily.
“Then who would give me excuses to buy overpriced chocolate on 7th Avenue?”
Wrapping your arms around his waist, you kiss his shoulder and whisper, “You could still do that for me.”
“How kind of you.”
Nearly a week after Tim had to cut your evening in New York short because his brother called, you make your way to Gotham. You’re three hours early, but it seems like a nice buffer to actually ensure you make your date this time. It’s getting late, but the heavy clouds above you blot out the sun, making it seem closer to dusk than it is.
Walking through Newtown, which separates one of the most crime-ridden areas of Gotham from the bridges, you look at the businesses lining the streets. It seems as if someone is trying to make this side of the city more welcoming than it once was. You pass by a glass blowing shop, then stop and incline your head toward the alley on the other side of the street. A familiar tingle buzzes at the base of your skull as your heart rate increases.
Carefully, you cross the street, as if you’re interested in the seasonal menu of a mom-and-pop ice cream parlor.
“No, no, please,” someone pleads in the alley.
“Just hand it over!” another voice demands.
A single glance around the corner confirms that you sensed something. Three large men have a defenseless girl who looks to be several years your junior pinned in the alley. She’s clutching her bag to her chest as tears streak down her cheek.
“Let’s do this one more time,” you murmur to yourself before slipping into the shadows.
When you emerge in the alley, you’re in your suit and looking to make this fight as short as possible. Without making yourself known, you shoot a web toward the man who appears the be the leader. It wraps around his ankles and allows you to pull his legs out from under his. His face collides with the damp asphalt, which muffles his pained groan.
“Who is that?!” the other man demands, turning and revealing a knife in his grasp.
The third man inches forward then, becoming visible to you. Riddler, you recognize from all the posters around Gotham. He narrows his eyes at you and spins the small cane by his side.
“I spin a silky web so neat, to catch the bugs I like to eat, with eight long legs I creep with pride, in dark corners I like to hide,” he calls. “What am I?”
The man you knocked down clambers to his feet and pulls a heavy crowbar from the wall behind him. Maybe, you realize, this isn’t a fight I shouldn’t have picked on my own.
“You are a crazed lunatic,” you answer. “I am a spider.”
The next web you shoot connects Riddler’s co-conspirators by the shoulders, temporarily rendering them incapable of fighting.
“Get out of here!” you tell the girl as you move toward Riddler.
She obeys your command and runs out of the alley. The odds of her sending someone to help you seem slim.
“You should go too,” you tell Riddler. “While you still can.”
“It is worldwide, but once only a spider could weave one,” he says. “Gotham is no place for spiders.”
The others separate themselves, and you rock your weight back onto your heels. Of all the times for Miguel to not show up unannounced.
The sun set hours ago, and Tim needs to get ready to meet you at the diner for your date. But Jason needed ‘a minute,’ so Tim is covering Newtown briefly. He leaps from one rooftop to another, slowing when he sees something in the alley beneath him. Tim drops to one knee and realizes that the lump he saw is a person.
He lands soundlessly in the alley and approaches the individual cautiously. When he’s close enough to make out details, he stops.
“What are you doing in Gotham?” Red Robin mutters, lifting New York’s spider vigilante’s arm, which falls uselessly back to her side.
He’s seen enough videos and read enough stories about the spider to know that, by all accounts, she’s good. But that doesn’t explain why someone who can carry their own against New York’s biggest and baddest is lying unconscious in a Gotham alley.
“That’s not good,” Tim muses softly when he sees blood darkening a sleeve of Spidey’s suit. “B, I’ve got a situation in Newtown.”
“I left for five minutes!” Jason groans.
“The spider from New York?” Tim begins. “She’s here.”
“Doing?” Bruce inquires.
“Nothing. She’s hurt, unconscious.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Me too,” Jason offers. “You need someone who doesn’t trust anyone about anything if this girl wakes up.”
“She needs to get patched up, not be interrogated,” Tim argues, pressing his thumb to the side of Spidey’s neck to check her pulse.
“If I’m lucky, there’ll be time for both.”
Your mask is firmly in place when you wake, but someone is prodding at your arm and the damp concrete that you landed on has been replaced by a dry sheet beneath you. You jerk upright, ready to fight Riddler and the two goons he had with him. They won’t get the jump on you again, and you know to protect yourself from whatever it was Riddler used against you. Though you remain unsure why he had a weapon that powerful and chose to mug an unarmed girl.
“Oh,” you mutter when you realize you are face-to-face with Batman and Red Robin. Glancing toward your now-bandaged arm, you see that Red Hood is lurking in the corner with his arms crossed.
“What are you doing in Gotham?” Batman demands.
Red Robin steps forward and lays one hand on your shoulder while the other circles your wrist. He directs your arm up, then toward your chest.
“Who are you?” Red Robin inquires.
You look at your wrist where he’d touched you, convinced you’ve felt his touch before.
“Um, most people call me Spider,” you offer, dropping your voice. “It was supposed to be Spider-Girl or something, but the whole thing never stuck.”
“What are you doing in Gotham?” Batman asks again. “Who brought you here?”
Red Robin moves behind you, rubbing the blade of his palm down your neck and to the base of your spine. You had no idea the bats had medical training. The idea of Batman sitting in a lecture hall makes you smile beneath your mask, but then Red Robin spreads his hand against your shoulder.
Suddenly, you’re no longer in Gotham being interrogated. You’re in New York, looking up at billboards in Times Square with Tim Drake lingering at your side and whispering comments in your ear. Red Robin’s touch seemed familiar because it is.
You glance at Red Robin, searching his face. What’s visible certainly looks like Tim Drake.
“You come into our city announced, pick a fight, and find yourself unprotected and vulnerable,” Batman says. “Justify that.”
“I didn’t pick a fight,” you defend. “I saved someone. It’s what I do.”
“It’s what you do in New York,” Red Hood interjects. “Why are you here?”
Glancing up, you realize that you’re in a real cave. There’s got to be a way out because there’s a way in.
Pretending to stretch your shoulder, you aim your hand toward the rafters and murmur, “Maybe I was never here.”
Just as a spider disappears from its web in a breath, you leave Batman, Red Robin, and Red Hood alone, with no idea as to where you are. They search the expanse of the cave, shine a spotlight along the rafters, but find no trace of you.
“Well, I doubt she’ll be back,” Jason decides. “Now that she knows we’re here and we want answers.”
“But why was she here at all?” Bruce wonders, removing his cowl. “Who took her down in that alley?”
“It’s suspicious,” Tim agrees. “Gotham isn’t exactly a destination, so I doubt it was a convenience thing.”
“She said she saved someone,” Jason remembers. “Any reports of crimes in that alley tonight?”
Bruce falls into his chair at the Batcomputer to check, leaving Jason and Tim behind him to speculate.
Tim’s phone chimes, and he reads the text from you quickly, then locks his phone. Then, when he truly realizes what you said, he opens it again.
“What?” Jason asks.
“My girlfriend cancelled our date,” Tim mumbles.
“The date that’s supposed to start in… seven minutes?” Jason sighs, then checks, “You suspicious enough to talk about it yet?”
“She’s been acting weird,” Tim says, moreso to himself than to Jason. “She’s been late or cancelling dates the whole time we’ve been dating. I never really thought about it, because I’d call them off last-minute too when Batman stuff came up.”
“Okay,” Jason drawls. “And?”
“But I’m pretty sure someone had slept on her couch before I visited her in New York last weekend and she didn’t say anything. And… and there’s something about the Spider.”
“Found it,” Bruce announces. “Store at the end of the alley has surveillance.”
He presses play on the video, showing Riddler and two unfamiliar men cornering a young girl.
“When did Riddler get a team?” Jason wonders.
“After Joker taunted him for working alone,” Bruce answers flatly.
The video shows the moment Spider steps out into the dim light in the alley and pulls the first man off his feet.
“Ooh,” Jason murmurs. “That hurt.”
“She saved the girl,” Tim muses when she runs out of the alley. “So, she wasn’t lying about that.”
They quiet as the video continues. When Riddler lunges toward Spider, she reaches both hands out and grasps his upper arm, flipping him over her shoulder. He pulls something out of his blazer pocket, slams it against her arm, and then Spider collapses. Riddler ushers the men out of the alley, though they clearly want to take advantage of her unconscious state.
“Wait, whoa,” Tim interrupts, slapping the back of Bruce’s chair lightly. “Go back?”
“Wondering when Riddler took up purse snatching?” Jason jokes.
Bruce drags the mouse until Tim tells him to stop. In slow-motion, they watch Spider grasp Riddler’s arm, then how she staggers back as she tries to fight off whatever he did to her.
“It’s a variant of the Joker toxin with traces of Scarecrow gas,” Oracle says through the comms system. “Other than that, her bloodwork looks fine.”
“He injected it?” Jason questions.
“He’s prepping for something big,” Oracle suggests.
“I know who Spider is,” Tim admits, staring at the paused video. Spider’s hands are on Riddler’s arm, one hooked beneath his tricep and the other manipulating his forearm. Tim has been in the same hold on more than one occasion, but he’s never actually been tossed like Riddler was. He had no idea before now that it was a possibility.
“What?” Jason exclaims. “Who?”
“I have to go,” Tim murmurs, moving toward the staircase that leads to the manor.
“Where?” Jason calls. “To do what?”
“Watch videos of Spider fighting that green guy in New York!”
Bruce turns and watches Tim go, then asks Jason, “Do you know who she is?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps you should consider updating his world’s okay-est detective trophy.”
“Sure,” Jason deadpans, “I’ll get right on that. Maybe I’ll buy the demon spawn a new sword, too.”
Tim spends the next twenty hours watching every video of Spider he can find online. Running on adrenaline and caffeine, he’s more convinced that he’s right about her true identity. So, he travels to New York and stakes out on the roof of a building that Spider seems to frequent.
Less than an hour later, you land on the edge of a roof and straighten when you see you aren’t alone.
“Uh, hello,” you greet, waving awkwardly at Red Robin, who you’re pretty sure is also your boyfriend. “Look, if this is about last night—"
Red Robin interrupts you and says your name. Not Spidey. Your actual name. Tonight, he’s speaking like himself, not using that raspy tone you assume he learned from Batman. He sounds like Tim Drake, and your stomach twists at the idea this will be the last time you hear him say your name.
With a heavy sigh, you pull your mask off. “Tim, I’m sorry,” you begin.
“Don’t bother,” he interrupts, causing your heart to drop to your stomach. He pushes his cowl back and smiles, calming the building storm inside you. “Call it even?”
“You’re not breaking up with me?” you check, clutching your mask in your hands.
“Are you kidding!? The Spider and Red Robin are unbreakable.”
“The Spider and Red Robin just met.”
“I’m not breaking up with you,” Tim promises, taking your hand. “And I have an idea for how you can beat that Goblin guy.”
You open your mouth to ask how he knows about the villain and your fights but then remember you’re talking to Tim Drake. What little he doesn’t know he can find quickly.
“It’d be nice to have someone in my corner,” you reply. “Teach me how to fight Gotham rogues, too?”
“Sure. Then we can switch cities and freak everybody out,” Tim suggests.
You laugh, then lean forward and kiss Tim’s cheek before you put your mask back in place.
“Who are we fighting tonight?” Tim inquires.
“It’s been pretty quiet so far,” you say. “Oh, if you could figure out how to keep Miggy from spawning in my bedroom when he time travels, that’d be great.”
Tim nods, following you toward a fire escape, then catches your wrist to stop you and yells, “Time travel?!?”
Tim Drake & x reader Taglists🏷️ @fireriyu @lortheswiftie @noble-17 @kmc1989 @anonymousmuffinbear @outpostsworld
summary: peter’s new arachnid senses often leave him disoriented—hibernating and waking up in places he doesn’t recognise. it’s a small problem, one he's willing to deal with on his own, till he wakes in your apartment with his arms wrapped around you.
pairing: peter parker x reader
content: no bnd movie spoilers (feel free to read if you haven't seen bnd), FLUFF, clingy! peter parker, comfort, light banter, arachnid! peter, peter goes through it, yearning
Peter hates most of the new developments that arrived with the enhanced levels of his arachnid half—and migraines are definitely top of the list. Particularly the ones that start early in the morning, muffling his senses and rendering him a zombie slob for the entire start of the day. He stirs in his sleep, a soft, pounding ache burrowed in the back of his skull. It's an irritating sensation, one he's already grown familiar with, worsening the overheating, the sensitivity that comes with his overloaded senses, the pull of nerves behind his eyeballs.
His nose burrows deeper into a comforting scent, arms tightening around something soft. Letting out a dragged sigh, low against his throat, the pain fades into something barely noticeable. A sort of relaxed relief that hasn't hit him in years, with his entire body growing slack and heavy, the kind that only comes after a restful sleep. One he hasn't achieved since—his gaze peers open, blinking heavily as his eyes adjust to his surroundings.
The first thing he catches sight of is a familiar bundled sight of hair, and the curve of a shoulder. He must be dreaming. The sunlight stings the sensitivity of his eyes, and he blinks harsher in an effort to recollect himself. His brows furrow as he loosens a hand, parting from his tight grip to run his fingers gently over the loosened hair.
He wasn't dreaming. Somehow, he was laying in your bed, hugging you like an oversized koala.
"What?" He mumbles, the word falling soft out of his cotton mouth.
You stir slightly in response to the grazing of his touch, and it kicks Peter-Tingle on high-alert that this was not a figment of his imagination. He's quick to un-hand you, scooting backwards towards the edge—and tumbling harshly onto the floorboards with a loud thump, snatching the sheets with him.
The noise echoes in his eardrums, curls splaying out over the floorboards, and Peter is completely frozen. In absolute cold, drowning terror, he watches you stir fully, turning around and stretching at your limbs—a dissatisfied frown perched in your lips at the sudden loss of warmth.
What has he done?
"Spider-Man?" You mumble, voice groggy, almost muffled as your nose dips deeper into the pillow, the one he occupied seconds ago.
Your gaze finally peers open, one palm coming to rub at your undereyes—before meeting his own widened, nearly terrified expression.
"You're awake." You state, as if his existence within the walls of your apartment is a daily, common occurrence. Even if he hasn’t stepped foot into his most favourite apartment, in years. "Hm, you've got brown eyes, who would've thought?"
Why is he here? Why are you so calm about this?
“I’m—so, so sorry.” His words fumble over each other, ears reddened at the tips. Feeling awfully exposed, he wraps his arms around his knees as he lifts himself into a sitting position, caving in on himself as he averts his gaze. “I don’t know why—or how—oh god. Was I hugging you? How did I even—I’m so sorry, I swear I have no clue on how I ended up here.”
Worse, he wasn't wearing a mask. Or much of anything really, aside from an old t-shirt, and Hello Kitty shorts that barely fit his thighs. As his fingers grip at the edge of the shirt, running over the hem, it hits him that these are his clothes. Ones he never stole back from your place, that he had merely assumed was lost to time.
Nothing could have prepared him for this situation, no prep-time or warnings from E.V.I.E.. He didn't have the protection of being Spider-Man and the mask that's become his second skin. No, he had landed bottom-first as bare-faced, shell-shocked Peter.
"You really don't remember how you got here?" You question, lashes fluttering shut as you struggle to stir awake. "Damn, I was wondering if you could tell me."
"No—I swear, I completely blacked out." He scrambles for a response. "Next thing I knew, I was in your bed—I can't believe I just said that."
Running a hand past the bridge of his nose, he hides pathetically behind his fingers, his best attempt of a mask against the chaotic churn of nerves bundling through his gut. He had promised to keep you safe by staying as far away as he could—aside from the daily checking of your social media pages and the occasional swing down your usual coffee shop just to see if your favourite order remained the same, but this? How was he ever going to forgive himself for it?
He hears shuffling, in the normal sense and not the heightened echoes he’s used to ever since his arachnid side started spinning out of control. Strangely, his senses have been dialed down to normal since he regained consciousness—and he can’t dumb it down to just a good rest. It has to be cause of you.
His lashes flutter against the pads of his fingers as he meets your gaze through the gaps. You face him head-on, sitting cross legged right in front of him, head tilted in innocent curiosity.
“You’re a cuddler.” You hum in acknowledgment.
He was genuinely going to be the first Spider-person to ever die of shame, not that he's met many, but he's sure Peter 1 and Peter 2 have never unknowingly climbed into the bed of their special someone because they couldn't control their own DNA evolution. A low sound escapes his throat, clenched through his teeth—completely at a lost for words.
He has no clue on what he’s supposed to do, not when there's no routine or steps to fall back on. Be Spider-Man (Mask's gone). The man the city actually wanted (One who preferably doesn't have panic attacks wearing Hello Kitty pants). Stay far away from his previous life (Scored a huge FAIL here). Get flowers for May (Done). Scroll through your social media pages (..Done). Feel the thrumming vibrations of the washing machine after patrols (Skipped, was too nauseous). Rinse and repeat.
There’s no coming back from this, and it wasn’t even in his control. He hadn’t meant to find you. The last thing he could recall before passing out in his apartment was—he had just wanted to go home. He swore that was all he intended.
“Hey.” Your voice, soft and warm, finally coaxes him out of his thoughts. He hadn’t even realised just how tight he had been clenching his eyes shut—as his gaze takes a few seconds to adjust back into colour with you in his full view.
Slowly and gently, your own fingers raise to pry his away from his face. He’s sure he has hand marks all over his skin, but you look at him with such a soft expression—he nearly keens.
“I got you. You're safe.” You reassure, repeating it as a mantra. “You’re safe here.”
His Adam’s apple bobs harshly, and he feels the tightening of his chest nearly burst at the seams. God, he missed you. All he wanted was to hug you, and tell you he was sorry—for all of it. That he hadn’t gone a single day without wanting to hear your voice, to be exactly where he was right now—that this was all he needed if he wasn’t so weak. If he wasn’t cursed.
“Sorry.” That’s all that comes out, a croak in his voice that he failed to swallow back.
Your lips quirk into a soft smile, and you look like home. He feels his muscles physically deflate in tension at the sight, something no inhibitor or invention could ever replicate. His life has been spinning out of control, and you've just set the needle aside without even blinking.
“You’re all good, Spidey.” Your voice is warm, comforting. “Aside from hogging the blankets, it wasn’t half-bad for my first sleepover with a vigilante.”
His lips part, a laugh caught in his throat—half shattered, half hopeful.
“Could you—I don’t know, explain to me what happened?” He raises his hands, gesturing to your apartment. “I can’t believe I lost control—I don’t remember anything.”
Your lips part, a small grin tucked between your lips. "If you insist."
A loud crash resounds behind you, kick-starting your frightened senses. Head whipping to the window, you spot your window ledge shoved half-way with brutal force, and a body covered in deep reds and blues on your wooden floorboards.
"Holy shit." You mutter to yourself, skillet pan still in hand, the oil coating its surface bubbling into tiny pops.
Spider-Man is in your living room. Spider-Man is spread out across your floorboards, seemingly knocked out cold, in your apartment.
Another sizzling pop snaps you out of your stump, and you realise the collapsed vigilante is your responsibility. Your fingers fumble to switch off your stove with a click, skillet haphazardly placed over the stove burner—apron still hanging around your neck as you rush towards the body. God, you hope it wasn't an actual body.
"Spider-Man?" You call out tentatively, and you're struck by how his body moves in response, the stretch of his back with that familiar logo disappearing to reveal a mop of dark brown curls.
He wasn't wearing a mask. You didn't know what you expected from a hero who seemed nearly indestructible on the news, even when in the process of being smashed into buildings by tanks, but Spider-Man looks much younger than you expected, ahead of you by at most a couple years—bearing a youth that is almost frightening.
He certainly did look battered. Bruises littered his cheek, as if he had slammed himself into bricks or concrete on the way, before he had landed himself in your apartment. Dark circles pooled as a dark shadow under his eye-bags, and his hair was a wet, clumped mess from the rain.
You didn't know where to begin—if you were even allowed to touch him to check if he's hurt, or to call a professional. Did the professionals even know who he was, of his true identity? What if you doomed New York City's most beloved vigilante to his fate, just because you made the wrong call?
Your knees meet carpet, hands trembling in indecision and nerves, coming to rest on his shoulder. At your touch, a hiss escapes his lips and you immediately snatch your hand back, clutching it at the wrist. Who were you kidding, you were the last person equipped to save a person's life—much less a hero's.
You rise halfway, head swinging around to locate your phone—when you feel an insistent pull of your apron, tripping you back to land on the carpet.
"Don't go." He whispers.
Your gaze snaps back to his face, and find his eyes open. Or at least, that's where his pupils should've been. He must be half-unconscious, with the way his eyes are blown into a darkened void, lips parted in some sort of daze.
"I'm going to get help." Your words form despite the panic arising in your chest at the state of him. Is this poisoning? What else could explain the blackened sclera, the way darkened veins coated his skin in an almost bluish-purple. "I'll be right back." You promise.
He shakes his head, almost insistently stubborn, jaw clenching in panic. "No, don't go." His grip tightens almost instantly, and you're swept by his abnormal strength with a sudden tug, tumbling on top of him. "Please."
You freeze, feeling the wet raindrops from his suit seep into the cotton of your apron. Before you even have a chance to push yourself off, his arms wrap around you protectively. Squashed between his broad chest and the tight grip of his hold, your nose is buried into the crook of his shoulder. You smell fresh detergent, sweat, and something so achingly familiar—it churns your senses into mush that it takes you a few seconds to register.
He's shaking, and almost feverishly warm.
"Spider-Man." You plead. "Listen to me. You don't look good. And I do not want a dead Spider on my conscience, so please—you have to let me go so I can find some professionals, just someone to check if you're alright."
His touch is a sizzling heat as the warmth envelopes you, almost like a weighted, heated blanket.
"No. Stay." He pleads. "Please, I don't want—I just need you."
He sounds so exhausted. Why wouldn't he be? Before he had suffocated you into this strange circumstance of a hug, his entire face had been dull in colour, sweat pooling at the curls over his forehead, and he just looked—fragile. Completely unlike the hero of the city you're used to seeing on screen, whether it be receiving the keys to the city or those cheerful quips that make its frequent rounds through the internet when he swoops in to save the day.
"Spidey." You call him gently, trying to think of how to persuade him. "—I won't leave you alone, I promise. Just let me get up, to at least fetch you a change of clothes. You're soaked."
The seconds passing by without a response, or the loosening of his muscles, feel like the longest beats of your life. Your own heart thumps along with the rise and fall of his chest, waiting with bated breath.
"Promise?" He murmurs weakly.
"I promise." You whisper. "I'm not going anywhere."
You feel the slow release of warm breath against your skin, the way his fingers tremor over the small of your back. Something in him relaxes just enough, and his arms give in, thumping heavily at his sides. You rise instantly, palms pushing at his chest and falling back onto the carpet. Feeling the wet residue of the rain coat your apron, and the side of your cheek that had been buried in his shoulder—your cheeks grow impossibly hot.
You need to snap out of it. He needs clean clothes. Yeah, that's a start.
Stumbling in your step, you rush towards your wardrobe—digging through the unorganised mess for a bag of clothes you had kept hidden in the most corner nook. One you hadn't thrown out since your first discovery of its existence, containing Hello Kitty shorts, some old, faded T-shirts—choices you would've never purchased for yourself but had for as long as you could remember.
You had run through a list of reasons for its existence, seemingly packed for an overnight guest. Maybe from that house-warming party you had thrown once before deciding you much preferred your space being reserved for only you, and someone had left their clothes mistakenly. Despite whatever plausibility or excuse—you never found the strength to throw them away. Even when you had every reason to, your mind instinctively buries the thought and the bag remained exactly where it was, kept in a zip-locked bag for it to be used by someone.
Apparently, today was its much-needed day.
Hoisting the bag over to the living room where he still laid, cheek pressed to the carpet, you’re relieved that the tension that previously consumed his expression has faded somewhat, with his lips parted slightly in slow exhales. His body seemed to be recalibrating, instinctively calming down right in the centre of your home.
Your hand comes to rest on his cheek, tapping it gently. Although his eyes with that dark void don't open, a low rumble escapes his throat—convincing you that he's still somewhat conscious.
"Hey, Spidey." You whisper. "I brought some clothes. Do you have the energy to change?"
He doesn't respond, and you poke your tongue into your cheek, analysing the length of him with dawning dread. It's no big deal, you just have to peel off this ridiculously tight suit with no zipper in sight without making it weird, and attempt at successfully pulling a T-shirt over his head.
Making your choice of a 'I Survived My Trip To NYC' graphic tee found at the top of the pile inside, your gaze switches back to the sprawled vigilante. From how heavy his arms had been earlier, rendering you immobile when pinned under them, you wouldn't dare make the mistake of assuming his weight would be easy to flip over. You could attempt to at least expose his back for you to take off that suit—assuming the costume even had a zipper.
Your long calculation apparently does the job for you as Spider-Man senses you near, and his arm curls protectively around your thigh, burying his nose into the crook below your knee. Your entire body stills, a tight grip over the tee as he gently rests his head over your knee, the soft texture of his curls brushing goosebumps against your skin. HIs body turns just enough to expose the expanse of his back—and the sight of a hidden zipper beneath that familiar symbol is a good sign.
Okay, sure. You could work with that.
He was ripped. You should've expected that, but the slow rise and fall of his chest expands the muscles across his exposed torso. You force yourself to tear your gaze away from the sight, reassuring yourself that your eyes were purely looking for possible injuries. You wouldn't go that low to check out a vigilante who was passed out in your living room.
Your fingers press into the sides of his cheeks, maneuvering his head so you could fit the opening of the tee over his head. Curls run through the white fabric before landing over his shoulder blades. It's strangely intimate, the way he's easily pliable in your hands—trusting you so completely. His lashes flutter once every few seconds, but he remains exactly where he is, body wrapped almost completely around yours—acting as a human barrier to you and the outside world—as you dress him in something soft and clean.
He's not supposed to be here, and you're not supposed to feel this protective over a stranger who dresses in two primary colours. Yet, seeing him at rest—makes you feel calm. The quiet of the apartment is a low hum rather than the empty chasm you’re used to, and your fingers run through his hair almost habitually.
You can't just leave him on the floor. There's also the latter half of his suit you don't want to deal with.
"Spidey." You whisper.
He lets out a low groan, wincing as his eyes shut tighter—burying himself deeper into your skin.
"No-no." Your hands come up to gently cup his cheek, coercing him.
His lashes part, and you're met with that same, expansive void, finding your own reflection in his gaze. He's still not quite himself, you believe—but he is able and willing to listen to you.
"I need you to put on these shorts." You gesture to the Hello Kitty pants you laid out for him. "Then, I need you to come to bed."
His brows furrow, lashes fluttering slowly as he processes your request. "Bed."
"Yes." You repeat. "You're exhausted, and I'm not leaving you on my floorboards. It's not too far, so please—help me out a little, Spidey."
His gaze doesn't blink, but you feel the shift in his muscles at your command. He stumbles as he raises himself, body slumping into you—but you steady him with your own grip. His nose buries itself once more into a crook to inhale your scent, this time being your shoulder.
"Okay." You mutter. "That's progress. Come on, up."
It takes you a couple minutes, mostly because he clings to you with every step and he is made of heavy weight. Whatever they feed the heroes of New York, it was clearly something out of limits from your measly grocery bill. By the time he managed to slip himself into those Hello Kitty shorts while you kept your gaze heavily fixated on the ceiling, making sure only to look when the waistband was tight around his torso, it wasn't long before he tripped himself face-first into your blankets. Your own body collapses beside him—equally tired as he is.
You attempt to form a pillow fort in your daze, a barrier of sorts. More for him than you, as you're sure in the morning once this side of him disappears—he'll have a much different reaction to waking up in an apartment with a stranger he doesn't know.
It gets demolished within seconds.
As if the pillows have formed a personal vendetta against him, they're thrown aggressively onto the floorboards. Your hand reaches out to grab them because you had just put them in the laundry—but your wrist is snatched too and you're tugged into his embrace.
You land back into the sheets, cheek smothered against his chest, and there he goes again, wrapping himself around you like a cocoon.
Here in your bed with his arms wrapped around you like you're his only anchor, brows furrowed tight—Spider-Man looked so human. Soft, and incredibly vulnerable. His arm still grips limply onto you even if you can feel his consciousness fading, as if the lack of contact would have you disappearing completely from his reach.
"Those pillows were meant for you, y'know." You mutter, unable to hide your amusement.
His lips curl into a stubborn pout. "Don't want them." He grumbles, words nearly incoherent with the small parting of his lips. "In my way."
You snort softly, before noting the dirt that coats his cheeks. With such a close proximity, you see everything. The soft lines at the corners of his eyes, the bridge of his nose, and just how beautiful he was.
"You've got dirt on your face." You whisper softly. "I should help you with that."
His grip tightens considerably, and you're dragged up so close to his face that your noses nearly bump into one another.
"Okay-okay. I'm not going anywhere." You feel the need to remind him, hand slowly lifting to press against his bruised cheek.
If the press of your finger-pads against the bruise was painful, he didn't show it—only burrowing his face deeper into the curve of your palm, a relieved sigh escaping his lips. The crease between his brows finally unfolds, and the years coated on his expression fades with it—leaving him looking impossibly young.
"Smells like you." He grumbles lowly, pressing the tip of his nose deeper into your palm.
Your heart skips a beat, traitorously even when you're sure he won't remember any of this by the morning.
“Do you have anyone?” You ask gently. “Someone I need to call?”
It’s heart-breaking, the way he immediately shakes his head, his curls ruffled against the sheets. For someone so beloved by the city, even in such a weakened state, he still believes that he has no one.
"Why are you here?" You murmur more for yourself, gazing openly over the fanning of his lashes over his darkened circles.
If it weren't for the expansive heat seeping from his broad chest through the cotton tee you tugged over his head, you would've believed yourself to be in the thick of a sweet, non-sensical dream.
You expect him to be fully asleep, but you hear it, low and almost inaudible. "Home."
Your heart tremors, barely able to comprehend it. "What?"
His words grow muffled against the sheets, the mess of his curls sinking deeper into the pillows—but you hear it. “Wanted to come home.”
Peter watches as you wring a cloth of its excess water over the sink, and the familiarity is dangerously luring. How many times has he sat here on your couch, watching as you prepped a medicine kit or a towel after his patrols? It’s almost unfathomable how quickly the new routines, rigorous with repetition and duty, all that control—that responsibility that leashed him tight falls apart the second he is in your proximity. Where old overpowers the new, because there is nothing he craves more than this. The past—the memories that became more present than reminder, when his own life had pressed ‘pause’ the moment he lost you.
He should’ve insisted on leaving when you offered to clean up the dirt that still coated his face. He should’ve shattered the hope that gleamed in your eyes when he gave you the barest nod, knowing how dangerous that fleeting belief could be when his own had never held value.
He did none of what he was supposed to do—and he didn’t even have the gull to feel ashamed for it, taking in the sight of you with unconditional hunger, absorbing every trace of movement and the way your voice resonated in the hearth of your home. He belonged in your life once, the same way the remains of his old t-shirts were kept in your wardrobe, or how the bathroom door still has the replaced hinges he fixed once on your third home date. There’s him all around, and the sight was its own guilty pleasure that the universe hadn’t completely stripped away the parts of him that used to exist in your life.
"You didn't do anything." You reassure him from across the kitchen counter. "Trust me, when you showed up in my apartment—you weren't in a state of anything other than being near-collapse."
His expression contorts. As if he needed more reasons to hate these new changes to his body—messing up all that is predictable. Predictable is good. It's safe. What isn't within even the remote levels of safe, is forcing you to look after him the entire night because he isn't even in control of his own body.
You stop in front of him, brushing some magazines and half-littered candy wrappers to the side as you sit on the coffee-table, knees brushing against his.
"Breathe." You murmur softly, eyes crinkling with a soft teasing expression.
He hadn't even realised he was holding his breath, being so close to you that it makes him feel faint. Oxygen swoops back into his lungs, his chest rising and falling as he stares at you openly with his mouth slightly gaped.
The cloth in hand raises to press against his cheek, and he feels the slight sting of its cool temperature against the warmth of his skin, the bruise above his cheekbone.
It doesn't truly register for him, not when you're staring at him so keenly he feels the need to ask. "What?"
"I just didn't expect Spider-Man to be so—" You struggle to find the words. "Human. I don't know. I suppose that sounds stupid, but you could pass by me in a coffee shop and I'd just sum you up as a cute stranger I'd never see again, not an actual crime-fighting vigilante."
The two of you were together, so it shouldn’t have struck him with elated surprise to hear it, but the admission that you still found him—he feels sixteen again, taken back to when you had first pressed a kiss onto his cheek and he understood immediately on what it meant to fall in love so completely that you could never look back.
You're too focused on dapping the wet cloth to notice his widened gaze, or the way he swallows dryly—licking at his lips. "You think I'm cute?"
"I mean—this entire time, I half-expected Spider-Man to be at least half-spider. Plus, I have eyes." You tease, your fingers gently brushing the wet cloth over the darkened soot across his cheek, rubbing off the marks. "I meant to do this last night, but you kept protesting when I tried to leave the bed. Clinging onto me—"
"Okay, okay." He raises his hand, catching you by the wrist. He's definitely flustered now. "I don't need to hear the details. I believe you."
You snort softly. "Thought you wanted the full story."
"Yeah, summed up—minus the details." He splutters. "I'm already dying inside from shame, and I've definitely ruined my impression with you forever."
"That's not true." You hum.
He blinks slowly, processing your words.
"There's no shame in reaching out for help, hero or not. I know you’re under a lot of public scrutiny but—it doesn't change who you are, y'know? You're deserving of support, just as much as everyone else. Even if the world expects you to be a hero—" You state. "You're still a person, and it seemed like you really needed someone."
He stiffens, jaw tightening as his eyes avert from yours to pinpoint his focus elsewhere—anywhere but you.
"You're not just someone." He mumbles lowly.
The press of the cloth against his cheek falters. "What?"
"You're—" His voice trails off, jaw clenching tight. “You weren’t scared of me?”
He understands how he can get when he loses control. The way his vision blacks out, and how his mind caves into silence—with his body moving on instinct rather than command. The reflection of a monster in the mirror, everything he swore not to be. The version of him that snuck into your apartment, clinging onto you as a lifeline—was stripped of the rules and promises he had made to keep everything together.
It was him at his most selfish—doing what his instincts pleaded—no, begged for him to do, and he had caved in for all of it. That's why he's here, and why you're staring with an expression he didn't dare uncover.
“I think you’re a lot more scared of yourself right now than I am.” You answer truthfully. “You were in a lot of pain. The last thing I would be was scared, when all you needed was someone to look out for you. Even if it's just for a little while.”
"I—" What is he supposed to say to that? That you're right on, and you've always been even without knowing who he is, and that he's been losing himself ever since he lost you? He swallows thickly. "I haven't been myself lately."
Your fingers tighten imperceptibly, grounding him. "You're still you, maybe you've just been putting aside what reminds you of that. I'm no vigilante, but working yourself to the bone and collapsing in a stranger's apartment—I think that's a signal for a horrible work-life balance."
"I have been resting." He argues. "I get enough hours, I have proof."
"Yeah, that's definitely why you slept like a log last night."
His lips part, gaze finally meeting yours, staring at you wordlessly. Eventually, a laugh escapes his lips, deepening the lines near the corners of his eyes. It's a little sad, and you wonder just how much he had to carry on his own—for a laugh to sound that broken.
"This is hard. I'm not supposed to—" He mutters, and that's the closest thing to raw honesty that you've pulled out of his mouth. "You're way too good for me."
Your smile deepens, and your fingers trace gently over his cheek where the bruise was finally fading. That must've been the mistake of it—the familiarity of muscle memory after a long patrol. He leans in, pressing a soft kiss to your cheek in thank you.
It’s only when he spots your frozen expression that he realises what he's done.
"I was not supposed to do that." He mutters to himself, widened eyes locked onto the spot where he left the kiss.
You blink, and he follows the movement—staring at each other in complete silence. His expression contorts, and you can't help the giggle that bubbles out of you.
"That was—wow." You choke back on your laughter. "I think you're running out of things you're not supposed to do, Spidey."
His own gaze crinkles into a smile, abashed. "I'm sorry, I just—I wanted to thank you. It was out of habit."
"Habit—you crash into people's apartments often and give out these free kisses?" You tease. "Is it part of the job description?"
He shakes his head immediately, terrified by the suggestion. "No—no. I swear this is my first time ever doing anything like this. I got the habit from my aunt, she used to—um..."
His expression dampens considerably. "Kiss my cheek for good luck."
Your gaze softens. "She sounds sweet."
"Yeah." His laugh churns awkwardly with a wince. "You would've loved her."
You watch him, and you sense it again—that chasm that ran deeper than the surface of his winced smiles. The way he shook his head when you asked if he had anyone, and even now, the way he fumbled with his fingers as if he didn't quite know what to do with himself in your gaze—and how he hadn't suggested once since waking up that he wanted to leave.
He was waiting, the way one waits for permission to exist in a room when they haven't been invited in one for years.
"Spidey." You call out.
He whips his head to look at you, pupils still widened in some perpetual disbelief, over the fact that he was in your apartment—that you were right in front of him.
"I'm going to make breakfast." You start, not leaving room for argument. "And you're going to help me."
He blinks once, then twice in astonishment. He swallows dryly. "O-Okay."
Your smile loosens into something reserved for a vigilante you had stayed up all night checking his temperature for.
You find that Spider-Man is pretty good in making pancakes, and that he easily maneuvers himself around your kitchen as if he had already memorised the layout. Of where your favourite mugs are, and how he didn't question twice when taking out the ice-cream tub without you needing to say it.
You could narrow it down to Spidey-senses, or whatever theories that's come up on your feed for his inhuman capabilities—but could it really just be that? Could his super-human abilities be the only reason behind why the warm hazel of his eyes light into the tiniest fireworks as he watches you scourge on your pancake, smiling at him with butter at the corner of your lips—as if the sight of you eating breakfast was the most beautiful thing he's ever seen?
Or why he picked you as his destination for home, or the slip of his tongue on how you meant a great deal more to him than just a someone who so happened to let him stay the night.
You have so much to uncover, but for now, he's just a boy in a NYC graphic tee that’s his exact size, and fluorescent shorts that do nothing for his thighs. He catches your gaze on his peculiar outfit, and his own lips purse in amusement.
"Any reason for the outfit choice?" He murmurs, a knowing smile covered by his fist as he rests his chin over his wrist, head tilting slightly as he gazes at you. "It's inventive."
"Oh—" You blink. "I don't know. I kinda always had them. They don't belong to me, but I just didn't see a need to throw out free clothes."
Your lips quirk up, teasing. "Suits you though. Think you'll keep it?"
He shrugs. "I don't know. I think I'll have to return it."
"Why?"
"So I can borrow it again." He suggests slowly.
You stare at him, unable to hide your growing grin. "Smooth, Spidey. Real smooth."
His gaze lights up. "Better than the cheek kiss?"
"Tons better. You could try it again—I'll see if I can adjust the scores." You tease.
"Really?" He stutters, akin to a flustered high-schooler.
"Yeah, but you'll have to tell me your name." You gesture with a point of your fork. "Can't go around giving free kisses without ID."
You meant it as a joke. You're no expert in superhero protocols, but you're sure the codenames meant no personal information spilled outside their work-life. Even when you've already seen his face, and shared a bed with him, and let him take your second favourite mug though he can't possibly know that last one. There's lines you've certainly crossed, but his name?
You part your lips to take back your impulsive request, to brush it off—only to find genuine consideration forming in his expression. Your smile falls slack in wonder. No, he wouldn't. He couldn't possibly.
Yet, he looks at you, almost peering deep into your soul. He looks at you as if he knows you, all boyish and unguarded. Whatever he sees, past the bed-hair and ice-cream smothered lips—it's worth it to him. It's worth something honest, and sacred—a truth he'll never be able to take back. It's a genuine, soft thing—a precious smile that lifts his lips, one you have no idea how brave he is for keeping. He has made his choice, and you're a part of it, always.
Peter looks at you, and he sees the only present he'll ever want. Past spells and starting-overs and stupid choices—at the centre of it all, it all becomes so simple. You—who his body sought out of instinct, who inhabited his mind with your own personal island, who had taken his heart from the first time he saw you. You're home, and no rules or lines drawn could've stopped him from returning back to you. His everything.
"Peter. Peter Parker."
likes, reblogs and comments are always appreciated <3!!
marvel masterlist - coming soon! (do let me know if you'd like to be added to a peter parker taglist, i may be making one as i have more fics coming up for him <3).
That's what you told yourself, in the beginning. When Bruce came home with reports about Gotham's crime rates spread across the dining table and his eyes passed over you like you were part of the furniture. When Dick ruffled your hair and said "Hey, squirt" on his way to somewhere more important. When Tim looked up from his laptop and said "Yeah, totally, I'll help you with that later" — and later never came.
You told yourself: they're busy. They're saving lives. You're not more important than Gotham.
You believed it for a long time.
---
You were six when Bruce found you.
Your mother was already gone by then — taken in a way that left marks on you that had nothing to do with bruises. You didn't understand all of it, not then. You just knew that the world was dark and cold and that sometimes men could do things that made you feel like you'd never be clean again, even when they hadn't touched you. You'd only watched. Hidden inside the closet, eye pressed to the crack in the door, too small and too terrified to make a sound.
That was your first fear: being trapped somewhere small and dark while something terrible happened and nobody came.
Bruce Wayne looked at you across a sterile hospital room and something moved behind his eyes — recognition, maybe. The shape of a child who had seen too much. He signed the papers three weeks later.
You had a home. You had a father. You had brothers.
For a while, you thought that meant you were safe.
---
Dick was twenty when you arrived, already Nightwing, already brilliant. He smiled at you like sunlight and called you little sister and the first time he did, your chest cracked open with something warm and desperate and enormous. You followed him everywhere. You learned his footsteps. You memorized the way he laughed.
He was kind to you. He just wasn't there. Not really. Not in the way that counted.
Dick existed in flashes — a weekend visit, a quick call, a laugh across the comms. He was the brother who said "I'm so proud of you" without asking what he was proud of. He saw the shape of you, the outline, and he loved that outline genuinely. He just never looked close enough to see what was inside it.
You stopped telling him things when you were nine. He always listened with one eye on his phone.
--
Tim was different. Tim noticed things — that was his whole thing, observation, deduction, detail. He noticed when Bruce's sleep patterns shifted. He noticed when Damian's training scores dropped two percent. He built files on everything.
He never built one on you.
Not because he didn't care. Because you were never a variable in any equation he was trying to solve. You were just... there. Present. Assumed. Like background noise that didn't require analysis.
You asked him once to help you with your combat assessment. You were twelve, newly suited up, still figuring out your footing. He said "Absolutely, let's do Tuesday." Tuesday came. He forgot. You reminded him. He said "Sorry, this week's bad, next week for sure." Next week came and went. You stopped asking after the fourth time.
What hurt wasn't the forgetting. It was that he never noticed he'd forgotten.
---
Jason.
Jason is a wound that never healed right.
Before he died, he was the one who saw you. Really saw you. He'd find you in the library at two in the morning when you couldn't sleep and he'd sit beside you without asking why, and somehow that was enough. He called you kid but it didn't feel dismissive — it felt like a claim. Like you're mine to look after.
He died when you were eight.
You grieved him in a way you didn't grieve your mother, because with your mother you'd been too small to understand permanence. With Jason you were old enough to know that gone meant gone. You put flowers outside his old room for a year. Bruce told you once, gently, to stop. It upset him.
You stopped.
Jason came back when you were thirteen, angry and sharp-edged and burning with something you didn't have a name for yet. You ran to him. You actually ran, across the cave, heart hammering, because he was alive, he was back, he was—
He stepped around you.
Not deliberately. Or maybe deliberately — you never knew. He looked at Bruce and the look between them was so full of history and fury and grief that there was simply no room for you in it. You stood there with your arms half-extended and slowly let them fall.
He never really came back. Not to you. The Jason who sat with you in libraries was buried in the pit somewhere. This Jason looked through you on a good day and said something cutting on a bad one — "Shouldn't you be in bed?" or "You're in the way" or once, terribly, "You're not actually his daughter, you know. You're just the latest project."
You didn't cry in front of him. You'd learned by then not to cry in front of any of them.
---
Damian arrived like a verdict.
He was Bruce's blood. His actual blood, and you understood immediately — with the cold clarity of a child who had learned to read rooms — what that meant for you. Not consciously. Bruce never said it. Nobody said it. But the shift was there, subtle and tectonic, and you felt it the way you felt changes in weather.
Damian didn't like you. He made that clear within the first week. "You were adopted out of pity," he told you, seven years old and vicious with inherited confidence. "I am a Wayne by birth. There is a difference."
You were thirteen. You already knew there was a difference. You just hadn't wanted to hear it said aloud.
You tried, for years, to reach him. You left his favorite tea outside his door. You covered for him with Bruce twice. Once, when he was injured on a mission and Bruce was unreachable, you sat with him in the med bay for four hours and held his hand when he was too delirious with painkillers to tell you to let go.
The next morning he told you to stay out of his room.
You did.
--
You became a vigilante at fifteen.
Bruce didn't exactly give you permission. You didn't exactly ask. You trained in the cave when nobody was there — which was often, because the cave was only crowded when there was something important happening, and you had learned you were rarely part of what was important. You built your own suit from components in the supply room that nobody had catalogued yet. You chose a name nobody had claimed.
Your first night out, you stopped a mugging and a convenience store robbery and helped a woman whose car had broken down on the highway find a signal to call for help. Small things. Unglamorous things.
You filed a report in the cave's system. Standard format, the way Tim had shown you once, two years ago, in a moment of actual attention. Case numbers. Location coordinates. Incident details.
Nobody responded.
You filed another one the next week. And the next.
After six months, you stopped filing reports. You just went out and came back and put your suit away and went to bed. Nobody asked where you'd been. Nobody noticed the mileage on the bike.
You had a symbol, a territory, a growing list of informants. You had a reputation in three of Gotham's worst districts. You had solved four cases that had gone cold in the GCPD for years.
The Batfamily did not know your case number. They did not know your informants' names. They did not know about the apartment you'd quietly rented in Crime Alley with the money from your trust fund — not to live in, just to have somewhere that was yours, somewhere your things weren't adjacent to theirs, somewhere you could breathe without waiting to be overlooked.
You were sixteen when you understood that you loved them and that loving them was making you disappear.
---
You tried, once, to say it.
Seventeen years old. Family dinner — one of the rare ones where everyone was present, even Jason, even Dick, even Alfred who watched everything with sad knowing eyes and sometimes touched your shoulder in a way that made you want to collapse.
Bruce was talking about a new lead on Scarecrow's operations. Dick was animated, leaning forward, offering tactical suggestions. Tim had his tablet out despite Alfred's pointed look. Jason was eating with the focused aggression he brought to everything. Damian was correcting Tim's analysis with the particular smugness of someone who knew he was right.
You had information. Relevant information — you'd spent three weeks building a profile on Scarecrow's new chemist, traced his supply chain to a warehouse in the Narrows. You had coordinates. You had a window.
You opened your mouth.
"I actually have—"
"The eastern route makes more sense," Dick said, talking over you without realizing it. "If we split the team into—"
You closed your mouth.
You sat there for the rest of dinner. You passed the bread when it was near you. You answered when Alfred asked if you wanted more water. Nobody else spoke to you directly.
After, you went to your room and sat on the floor with your back against the bed and breathed very carefully for a long time. Not crying. You'd mostly stopped crying by then. Just breathing. Waiting for the feeling to pass.
It passed. It always passed.
That was almost worse.
The accumulation of small things:
Tim promising to spar with you seventeen times over two years and canceling sixteen of them. The seventeenth time he simply didn't show up and when you asked later he said "Oh, was that today? Sorry, I had a thing."
Dick sending you a birthday message three days late with seventeen exclamation points, clearly composed in thirty seconds.
Bruce looking at your patrol report — one of the rare times he actually opened the file — and saying "Good work" with the tone of someone who had not actually read it.
Damian telling a visiting hero that there were "four" Batfamily members when you were standing six feet away.
Jason, once, when you were eighteen and tried to check if he was okay after a bad mission: "I don't need you to babysit me. Go back to playing house with Bruce."
The way none of them ever asked about your fear.
You'd mentioned it once, years ago, to Dick — that small spaces made you cold, that being trapped made your vision go white, that you'd had nightmares since you were six about a closet door and sounds you couldn't stop hearing. He'd said "Oh, that's rough, I'm sorry" and then his phone had rung and that was the end of it.
None of them knew. Not really. Not the shape of it, the weight of it, the way it lived in your chest like a stone.
---
You were nineteen when the Riddler's new syndicate took you.
It wasn't careless on your part. You'd been careful — you were always careful, you'd had to be, operating without a net, without backup, without anyone monitoring your comms. You'd tracked the syndicate for four months. You knew their patterns. You knew their safehouses.
What you didn't know was that they knew yours.
They'd been watching you watch them. Waiting. Patient in the way that only people with something to prove could be patient.
They took you on a Tuesday. Gray sky, cold rain. You were two blocks from your apartment in Crime Alley and then you weren't anywhere you recognized.
---
The room was small.
That was the first thing. That was the thing that split you open before anything else had even happened — the dimensions of it, the closeness of the walls, the single bare bulb, the door with no handle on the inside. The smell of damp concrete and something metallic.
You pressed your back against the wall and breathed.
They'll find me, you thought. They'll notice I'm gone. Bruce will pull up my tracker—
Your tracker was in your suit. Your suit was in your apartment. You'd been taken in civilian clothes.
They'll notice I'm missing from the cave. Tim monitors the system—
Tim had not responded to a single report you'd filed in six months. The system showed your last check-in as four days ago.
Dick will—
Dick didn't know your patrol schedule. Nobody did.
You sat in the small dark room and understood, with a clarity that was almost peaceful, that no one was coming.
Not because they didn't love you. Maybe they did, in the abstract, in the way you love furniture that's always been in a room. But love without attention was just sentiment. Sentiment didn't open doors.
---
They came eventually. Riddler's people, with questions you didn't answer and methods that made the room feel smaller. You held on to what you could. Your name. Your breathing. The memory of a library at two in the morning and a boy who sat beside you without asking why.
That Jason was gone. But the memory wasn't.
You held onto it.
On the third day you stopped counting hours. On the fifth day you stopped being surprised by the pain. Somewhere in there — you couldn't have said exactly when — you stopped waiting.
Not because you gave up, exactly. More because waiting required believing, and you had run out of the particular kind of belief that made waiting possible. You had spent thirteen years waiting to be seen. This was just the last version of the same thing.
You thought about your mother, in the end. Not the way it happened — you didn't let yourself go there. Just her face, which you barely remembered, which had mostly dissolved into impressions: something warm, something that smelled like cedar, something that had loved you before the world got its hands on you.
You thought: at least I know what that felt like.
The bulb flickered. The room was very small. The door did not open.
---
They found your apartment six weeks later.
Tim, actually — following a thread on a case that had nothing to do with you, a lead that happened to pass through Crime Alley and a building registry that happened to have your name on it. He stood in the doorway of the small apartment and looked at your things — the books stacked by the window, the mug on the counter, the suit folded on the table because you'd always been neat, always been careful, always cleaned up after yourself — and something shifted in his face.
He called Bruce.
Bruce came. Then Dick. Then Jason. Damian stayed in the car for a long time before he came upstairs.
They stood in your apartment and looked at your life, the one you'd built without them, the one that had existed in the negative space of their attention. There were case files on the wall. Years of them. Cases solved, territories mapped, informants catalogued. There were notes in your handwriting — careful, precise — cross-referencing their operations with yours. All the times you'd been working parallel to them, unseen.
There was a folder on the table labeled, in your handwriting: Reports — Unfiled.
Dick opened it.
It was everything you'd never said. Not a journal, not a letter — you hadn't written it for them, you'd written it for yourself, the way you wrote everything, because writing was the only place you'd ever been fully heard. Patrol notes. Case summaries. And threaded through them, small and unadorned, the record of being invisible: Tim canceled again. Dick called, didn't ask how I was. Bruce said good work without looking up. Damian said four.
And at the very end, dated two weeks before you disappeared: I think I'm going to stop waiting. Not for them — for anyone. I think I've been waiting my whole life and I'm tired and I think that's okay. I think it's okay to be tired.
I love them. I just don't think they'll notice I'm gone.
Dick sat down on your floor.
Jason stood very still in the doorway of your bedroom for a long time.
They found you three days later. What was left of you.
The Riddler's syndicate had moved on, left no living witnesses, covered their tracks with professional efficiency. The GCPD report was clinical. Bruce read it in the cave at three in the morning with Alfred's hand on his shoulder and did not speak for a very long time.
You had been afraid of small spaces. They had put you in one. They had known — somehow, because you'd never told your family but you'd mentioned it once to an informant who'd been compromised — what you were most afraid of.
You had died in the exact shape of your greatest fear.
Waiting for someone to open the door.
They held a service. Small, private. Alfred cried in the way Alfred cried — quietly, with dignity, with the devastation of someone who had seen this family make the same mistakes over and over and had never been able to stop them.
Nobody said we should have known. That was perhaps the most honest thing.
Dick didn't speak at the service. He'd tried to write something and hadn't been able to finish it. He kept thinking about the phone calls where he hadn't asked how you were. He kept thinking about how he'd loved the shape of you without ever learning the contents.
Tim thought about seventeen canceled sparring sessions. He thought about the reports sitting unread in the system. He thought about how he'd built files on everything — everything except you.
Jason thought about what he'd said. You're not actually his daughter, you know. You're just the latest project. He thought about it with the particular torture of someone who cannot take words back. He thought about a library and two in the morning and a small girl who had run toward him with her arms out and he had walked around her like she wasn't there.
He thought about that for a long time.
Damian stood at the graveside and looked at your name on the stone and thought about a mug of tea left outside his door. He had not thanked you. He had not acknowledged it. He had told you to stay out of his room.
He had been seven. He did not think that excused him.
---
Bruce went back to the cave that night. He opened your file — your real file, the one Tim had built after, pulling together everything, trying too late to see you whole. He read every report. Every case. Every small careful note.
He read the line: I love them. I just don't think they'll notice I'm gone.
He sat in the cave for a long time.
Then he closed the file.
He went upstairs. He stood in the hallway outside your room — your old room, the one you'd kept because you'd never officially moved out, the one with your books and your drawings and your second-best mug because your favorite was in the apartment in Crime Alley. He stood there and he put his hand flat against the door.
He did not open it.
He stood there for a very long time, in the dark, in the quiet.
And then he went to bed.
Because Bruce Wayne had always been better at grieving in retrospect than preventing it. Because the people he failed were always, in the end, the ones already inside the house.
xxx. you think you are possessing me but ive got my teeth in you
summary: it was supposed to be a meet cute. it was supposed to be easy. it was supposed to be Kori. it was supposed to, supposedtosupposedtosupposedto- you're beautiful. everyone always tells Dick not to stare directly at the sun. it's too bad he can't stop himself.
You stare at the giant menu in front of you, wrinkling your nose as you mull over the endless options.
Dick glances over at you before turning, his hand gently brushing your hair back. “What’s wrong?”
“I want two different drinks and I can’t decide which one I want more.” You lean back into his touch, your hand reaching to tug at his sweatpants pocket. Dick lets you pull him closer, humming quietly in response to your predicament.
“Which ones were you looking at?” He takes another glance at the menu.
“Um…” You point at a corner of the menu. “I want a banana butter matcha, but I also want a dark brown sugar latte.” You pout, turning to face him before falling forward into his chest. You rest your chin on his sternum, looking up at him through your lashes. “This is such a terrible problem. What should I do?”
Dick stifles his laugh, nodding along. His hand gently circles your waist, rubbing his thumb soothingly along your hips. “This is a real predicament, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” You sigh into his chest.
“I guess we’ll just have to get both, won’t we?”
You blink. “Really? You’re going to help me drink it all?”
Dick nods, already reaching into his pocket for his Saint-Laurent wallet. “Whatever you want.”
You brighten, leaning up onto your tiptoes to press a kiss onto his cheek, cheering. Dick can’t stop the bright red blush from appearing across his face, the spot tingling from where you pressed your lips onto his skin long after you pull away.
The cashier gives him a smile when he steps up to the register. “Cute.”
Dick blinks, staring blankly at her before she gives him a little laugh, gesturing to the two of you. “You guys are really cute together.”
“Oh.” Dick’s lips stretch up before he can stop himself. “Thank you, but it’s really all her.”
The cashier shakes her head. “Well, regardless, you guys make a cute couple.”
Dick glances back at you, his heart skipping a beat when you look up, waving.
“Yeah?” He laughs, turning back towards the till and tugging his platinum American Express out the wallet. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”
x.
Kori sighs, resting her chin on her palm as she listens to her professor drone on and on. She glances up at the clock hung above the blackboard, resisting another sigh when the clock seemingly refuses to change time.
Her professor changes the slide on the powerpoint, a litany of words that Kori felt her eyes glazing over as she tries to read. She sighs, glancing over at Donna’s empty seat beside her.
Doctor’s appointment, Donna had said.
Kori lets out a puff of air, her bangs fluttering. Lucky.
She looks over towards the door, eyes staring unseeingly out the little window before widening her eyes and sitting up straight. She glances at the clock again, cheering internally when the clock had finally shifted a few minutes closer to the end of the lecture before looking out the little window again.
Just hidden from her view, students going back and forth in the hallways despite the fact that classes were in session forcing her to crane her neck a little more, Kori spots a flash of black hair.
Was that Dick?
She swallows, hurriedly dropping her gaze down to her laptop where the group chat messages were left open on the screen.
No new messages.
Kori hurriedly looks out the window again — and there’s no mistaking it.
He looks up, just briefly, just enough for Kori to see the brilliance of his blue eyes shining beneath the hallway lights. Her heart beats a little faster in her chest and she instinctively smooths her hands over her hair, her hands already reaching for her lip gloss.
She glances at the clock one more time. Class was almost over now — just a few more minutes left.
She untwists the cap, already swiping a layer over her plump lips. It’s only when she’s carefully applying the finishing touches does she realize what she’s doing and her blood runs cold in her veins.
Her hands, once steady in their movements, turn shaky and clammy. Kori misses the lip gloss tube once, then twice, as she tries to screw the applicator back on.
She shouldn’t have done that.
She doesn’t know why she’s doing this — why she’s been acting like this, why her feelings have been so much stronger lately, even though they were supposed to be gone.
Kori pushes her lip gloss back into her bag, slowly settling her hands back onto the keyboard like she could type away all her thoughts, but like the professor had made a pact to ruin her life, she had already dismissed the class a few minutes earlier than normal.
Kori watches as the rest of her classmates rush out the door, their chatter about weekend plans lost in her ears as she slowly walks out with them. The classroom door closes shut behind her, quiet yet definite.
Dick looks up as she approaches, giving her an easy smile.
She hates how it makes her heart beat a little harder against her ribs.
“Hey.” He greets her, slipping his phone back into his pocket. “Done with classes?”
Kori nods. “Yeah. What are you doing here?”
Dick juts his chin out towards the hallway behind them. “Class ended early. Thought I’d come by and wait for you so we could walk together to the cafe and meet up with everyone else.”
She can’t stop herself from the grin that spreads across her face. “You remembered I had class here?”
“Yeah.” Dick gives her a little confused smile. “We talked about it before, remember?”
“I just wasn’t expecting you to remember.” Kori admits, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. “But that’s… really nice of you.”
Dick shrugs, leading the way down the hall towards the library. “Isn’t that what friends do?”
Her smile falters, but she doesn’t refute. Instead, she focuses on the way her steps naturally match his as they walk across the linoleum floors and out the doors towards the cafe – the same way they did on their first date.
Kori tightens her grip on her bag, wishing she didn’t remember that at all.
“So, anyways,” Kori looks up at Dick, “How’s [Name]?” She forces herself to wiggle her eyebrows playfully when Dick looks away, smiling bashfully. “How’s stealing my best friend?”
He laughs. “Sorry about that.”
Dick steps in front of her, holding the door open for her to pass through as they step towards the little cafe in the Student Union.
“It’s been good.” Dick continues, glancing over towards Kori.
She hates that she notices the pink dusting his cheeks. She should be happy for you, not… whatever this is.
Kori nods, letting her hair fall over her shoulders to hide her face. “Great! That’s good. I’m so happy for you guys.”
“That sounds so sarcastic.” Dick grins, his hands in his pocket. He looks away from the menu to face Kori. “Is this weird? Talking about this?” His blue eyes search her face for any signs of distress. “I know we went on a few dates and everything, so I just–”
Dick stops himself at the twitch of her mouth, the exasperated raise of her eyebrows, rolling his eyes at himself. “Okay, nevermind.” He laughs softly.
Kori gives him a little smile. “You always do that, you know? The little overcorrection.”
He laughs. “And you always do that little scrunch in your eyebrows whenever someone asks you a question you find annoying.”
“Always paying attention to me, huh?”
Dick lets out another laugh, gently bumping her shoulder with his. “Call me observant.”
She wishes that even such a small statement didn’t make her heart flutter. Kori clears her throat, immediately clamping down on the smile threatening to form.
She looks ahead, staring unseeingly at the menu. “I’m happy that you guys are happy.”
Dick nods, unable to hide his smile. “Yeah.” He says softly, “I’m really happy.”
He clears his throat, rubbing the back of his neck as they near the register. “Anyways, have you decided what you want?” Dick glances at the menu, eyes settling on the strawberry refresher. “You like the strawberry drink, right?”
Kori nods hesitantly.
“Cool.” He smiles, taking a step closer towards the register as the person ahead orders. “I’ll get that for you.”
“What?” Kori straightens in a rush, eyes widening. “You really don’t have to do that! I can get it for myself–”
Dick shakes his head, already reaching for his wallet. “Nah. I got you.”
Kori watches him for a moment, the sound of the espresso machine sighing in her ears. Dick flips open his wallet easily, the smooth leather of the wallet shining underneath the lights as he pulls out his metal credit card, tapping his finger on it as he waits for his turn.
She can’t stop herself.
“Still not letting girls touch the bill?”
Kori hates herself immediately for saying it, wishing she could rewind time and clamp her mouth shut.
Dick pauses, his hand stilling on his wallet.
And then he smiles, still the same friendly smile he gives to everyone, just paired with a slight crease in between his eyebrows that makes Kori want to run away in shame.
“Yeah. I guess I do that, don’t I?” Dick shrugs. He turns slightly to face her, blue eyes meeting her green ones. They stare at each other, a lingering look that makes Kori shift on her toes under his steady gaze.
He finally turns away.
Kori exhales slowly, her eyes resting on the tips of her white sneakers.
The cashier looks up, gesturing for the pair to step forward. Dick’s already moving, only looking back slightly when Kori stays rooted to her spot. Her fingers curl around the strap of her bag, her pulse fluttering in her throat.
Dick’s brows lift, a silent ‘come on’ , the kind of easy gesture he always made – the kind that made her feel chosen.
Now, it just makes her feel like she’s wanting something that she wasn’t allowed to have.
She forces herself to move, stepping forward until she’s beside him again. Dick shifts slightly when her bag bumps into his forearm, an unconscious courtesy that should make her feel better, but all it does is make her chest ache.
The cashier smiles brightly. “What can I get for you two?”
“One strawberry refresher.” Dick answers before Kori can open her mouth, tilting his head towards her. “With extra ice, right?”
He glances at her, waiting.
Kori swallows. “Yeah. Just how I like it.”
Dick nods, satisfied that he could still remember, before turning back to the cashier. “And a vanilla cold brew.”
The cashier nods, tapping away on her little pad. “Will that be all for the two of you?”
Dick nods, pushing his hand forward for the cashier to take his card but another hand stops him, pale pink chrome painted nails dragging lightly across his forearm, platinum bell ringing as it swings on their bracelet.
Kori stiffens.
Dick turns around, the confused expression on his face relaxing into a soft smile as you pluck his card from his hand before he can stop you. “Can we add an iced lavender hojicha with oat milk to that, please? Less ice.”
The cashier nods, stifling her smile.
“Hi friends.” You grin, blowing a kiss towards Kori. “Best.”
You lift up onto your tiptoes, hooking a perfectly manicured finger into the silver chain necklace adorning Dick’s neck, pressing your lip-gloss covered lips onto his cheek, leaving a shiny imprint that glistens in the fluorescent light. “Boy.”
Kori manages a small wave. Dick keeps on smiling, pressing a kiss onto your cheek when you let go, his arm wrapping around your waist. “Hi.”
“Is that everything?” The cashier looks up, your energy contagious as she matches your smile. You shake your head, pointing at the pastries in the display window.
“Can we add a pistachio croissant too?”
Dick raises his eyebrow. “Trying to rob me? Who is this for?”
“For me.” You answer, handing Dick’s card over to the cashier. “I got out of lecture early, so I have a slightly longer gap than usual before I go over to Hawrys – who puts a theory class in a rec center, by the way? – and I am absolutely starving.”
The card reader lets out a small ‘beep’. You turn your head to face the cashier, your hand already out to take back Dick’s card like it was yours to carry, yours to hold, yours to claim.
With a start, Kori realizes — it was.
Because she wasn’t dating him anymore.
Because you were.
You were his girlfriend and she was… just someone that he tried to be with.
Dick reaches for the receipt while you slip your fingers into his pocket, fishing for his wallet.
He gives you a little smirk. “Are you sure you’re trying to touch my wallet?”
You roll your eyes, lips curved in a smile. “Don’t be gross in front of Kori.” You pull his wallet out, slipping his card back into the proper slot.
You pull him down again, whispering something in his ear that makes his face turn the color of Kori’s hair before letting go.
Kori pretends like she doesn’t notice, holding her hand out towards the counter as the barista hands her a tray full of drinks.
She steadies the tray in her hand, the cold drinks shaking slightly in her grasp.
You light up, leaving Dick behind as you bounce over to her. “Thank you, beautiful!” You press a kiss on her cheek, picking your drink up from the tray.
Kori gives you a small smile, eyes soft at the corners. “Don’t forget your croissant.”
You nod as you take a sip from your drink, the straw stuck in your mouth. Dick grabs the paper bag Kori’s holding, their fingers brushing – barely, accidentally – but it makes her flinch all the same.
He doesn’t notice.
He’s already turning towards you with the stupid, soft smile that still makes her stomach flip, already holding up the croissant to your lips for you to take a bite.
Your eyes light up as you sink your teeth into the pastry. “Yummy.” You say through a mouthful. Dick nods, reaching up to brush a crumb away from the corner of your mouth. “That’s good to hear.”
You swallow, taking the paper bag from him. “Okay! Sustenance has been acquired and now I have to go.” You wave goodbye towards Kori, your hand already blowing her a kiss and she catches it, pressing her fingers onto her cheek. “Goodbye beautiful.”
You turn towards Dick, but he’s already bending down, his hand pulling you closer in by the waist as he presses his lips against yours.
“I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Can’t wait, handsome.” You press one more kiss onto his lips before pulling away, waving goodbye.
Dick watches, his eyes set on the doors long after you’ve disappeared into the throng of students rushing to their next classes before slowly turning back to Kori.
He blinks, the dazed look in his eyes slowly fading. “Well,” he takes the tray from her, balancing it on his hand. “Shall we?”
Kori nods. “We shall.”
Dick leads the way down to Kane Memorial Library, steady footsteps that walk with the grace of someone who knows exactly what they want, leading towards the doors.
Kori pushes her hand out the same time he does, their hands hovering over each other, both outstretched onto the glass door.
It feels like muscle memory.
Kori bites the inside of her cheek when Dick simply just moves his hand upwards, careful not to touch hers, his palm pressed against the glass as he pushes the door open for the both of them.
It feels like a ghost.
x.
You hear them before you see them.
You pause outside the swinging doors of the student cafe, neck craning as you look past the crowd of customers inside, all desperate for their mid-afternoon caffeine kick.
Your eyes light up when you finally see who you were looking for, Kori and Dick standing side by side in the ever-growing line. You open the door, taking a step inside the cozy cafe before stopping in your tracks.
Dick’s shoulders are relaxed, his head tilted slightly to hear Kori better over the hissing espresso machine and the hundreds of conversations overlapping all at once.
And then he laughs – not the one he does in crowded rooms, no. This was something quieter, unguarded, relaxed.
Kori says something, her eyebrows raised and he rolls his eyes before leaning towards her without thinking, nodding along to her sentence.
You stare at them for a minute.
Your hands tighten on your phone, the corners digging into your fingertips.
It doesn’t hurt.
It just… fits.
You watch them for a moment longer before shaking your head, schooling an easy smile on your face.
Kori said it was okay.
Dick had chosen you.
So, what was there to worry about?
And with that, you walk over and refuse to think about it any longer.
Dick turns around when you reach them, his posture straightening immediately. His arms reach for you like he couldn’t go a second longer without feeling you in them. The easy curve of his mouth turns into something brighter, more alive.
“Hi.” He leans in, pressing a soft kiss to your cheek. His blue eyes rest on yours, his attention locking onto you in a way that makes you feel like you’re the only one in the room for him.
The cashier says something else and you look over, the uneasy feeling in your stomach gone as quickly as it came, dissipated the moment Dick’s hands settled over your waist, warm and certain.
Behind you, Kori looks away, her smile faltering – but you don’t see it.
Or maybe, you just choose not to.
a/n: wow…. 3 weeks & this is all i could write…. smh…… still fighting through that writers block so pls forgive me <//3
Summary: you accidently called Nightwing a "good boy". In your defense, you're used to working with dogs..not people!
“C’mon,” you sigh, crouched halfway under the Batmobile while Dick attempts to hand you a wrench that is very obviously the wrong size. “Not that one. The— yeah, there you go. Good boy.”
Silence.
You slide out from beneath the car slowly, confused as to why Dick stopped talking.
Nightwing is frozen.
One knee bent where he’d been crouching, blue eyes blown wide behind the domino mask, wrench still dangling from his fingers like his brain has temporarily disconnected from his motor functions.
Bruce asks, “What exploded?” knowing that the only time his kids were quiet was if someone fucked up.
Dick clears his throat.
Then immediately chokes on absolutely nothing.
“You okay there?” you ask carefully.
“Fantastic,” he says instantly, voice cracking straight through the middle of the word.
Oh no.
Oh no.
Jason, seated nearby cleaning one of his guns, looks up with the slow delight of a man witnessing the beginning of a natural disaster.
“…Did she just call you a good boy?”
Dick points at him violently. “Don’t.”
“OH my God,” Jason breathes, eyes shining. “OH, this is bad.”
“It was a joke,” you say quickly.
Dick nods too fast. “Totally. Obviously. Completely normal joke. Happens all the time.”
“Right,” you agree.
“Totally unaffected.”
“Clearly.”
Dick stands up so abruptly he slams his head directly into the underside of the Batmobile. CLANG.
There’s a beat.
“…Fantastic recovery,” Jason starts.
Dick, still folded in half from the impact, gives a weak thumbs up.
The problem should’ve ended there, and it would've given any normal circumstance. But you work with vigilantes, so your normal is pretty different from most people's.
Nightwing proceeds to lose every remaining shred of composure over the next three weeks.
Not in obvious ways, but Dick Grayson’s problem is that he’s trying very hard to act normal. Which makes him one thousand times worse.
Because suddenly he’s everywhere.
You mention being hungry once? Dick appears holding your favorite takeout sheepishly. You casually say your phone’s about to die? Charger lands in your lap before you finish the sentence. You offhandedly mention liking a sweater in a store window? Three days later it mysteriously appears folded on your bed in Titans Tower with no note except a sticky tab reading:
'saw this :) '
Which would already be suspicious enough. Except every single act of service is followed by this unbearable look on his face. It's that wide-eyed look of hope.
Like he’s waiting for something.
You don’t understand it until the fourth week.
It’s movie night at the Tower. Everyone’s there.
Garfield is upside down on the couch, and Kory is attempting to explain why alien horror films are scientifically inaccurate and this is not how her people act. Tim is asleep sitting upright somehow. Jason’s eating cereal directly from the box with a serving spoon.
Dick walks in carrying snacks for everyone.
“You remembered the chocolate-covered pretzels?” you ask.
Dick brightens instantly. “Yeah.”
You grin. “Aw. Good boy.”
Dick stops moving entirely.
The bowl of popcorn slips from his hands.
Jason drops dead onto the floor laughing before the popcorn even hits the ground.
“Oh my GOD,” he wheezes. “HE LIKES IT.”
“I do not—”
“You practically wagged your tail!”
“I DID NOT WAG ANYTHING.”
Kory tilts her head thoughtfully. “Actually, your posture did become notably more eager.”
Dick looks like he wants the earth to open beneath him.
Garfield is crying laughing into a throw pillow.
Tim wakes up just long enough to mumble, “Knew it,” before immediately falling back asleep.
And you stare at Dick, who is now aggressively avoiding eye contact while turning the color of a fire hydrant. He is suddenly very interested in cleaning up popcorn one kernel at a time, as he mutters, “It’s not my fault,” under his breath like a man on trial.
Oh.
Oh, this is hilarious.
“You know,” you say slowly, “this explains a lot.”
Dick points a popcorn kernel at you accusingly. “You explain a lot.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It made sense in my head.”
Jason is still dying on the carpet. “He’s so pathetic. This is the best day of my life.”
“Jason,” Dick snaps.
“No, no, keep going,” Jason says delightedly. “Maybe he’ll do a trick. Wanna fetch, good boy?”
Dick throws popcorn at his head.
Jason throws it back.
Garfield joins in.
Within thirty seconds, a full-scale food fight erupts across Titans Tower.
Kory starts launching popcorn, and Tim wakes up again solely to throw an M&M directly at Jason’s forehead before passing out for a second time. Someone knocks over an entire soda.
In the middle of the chaos, Dick grabs your wrist and pulls you backward out of the war zone.
“Come on,” he says, laughing despite himself.
You stumble after him into the hallway, both of you breathless.
The noise from the living room muffles behind the closing door, and suddenly it’s quieter.
Dick’s still holding your wrist ridiculously tight.
You look up at him, amused. “You know they’re never letting you live this down.”
“I know,” he groans.
“You’re kind of making it worse.”
“I know.”
“You literally dropped the popcorn.”
“In my defense,” he says solemnly, “you treated me like a dog!”
You laugh. Dick looks at you for a second too long. Then a fond expression sneaks onto his face before he can stop it. And there it is again, that look of hope.
Like he’s waiting.
You raise an eyebrow.
Dick immediately looks away. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“You know what.”
You absolutely do.
Which is why you grin and lean slightly closer.
“Good boy.”
Dick Grayson actually, physically malfunctions.
His head drops against the wall with a quiet thud.
“Oh, you are NEVER surviving this,” you inform him cheerfully.
From the other room, Jason’s voice echoes
“DID HE SHORT-CIRCUIT AGAIN? CYBORG! ARE YOU SURE YOU'RE THE HUMANOID?”
come as a lover, come as an executioner // j. todd
summary: you are a ghost as i am a ghost, but i am banging cabinets and tv static and all you’ve ever been is silent // in which Bruce's spoiled daughter is loved beyond measure and jason is unsure where he fits in a world that she isn't allowed to know exists. But he's has never been good at walking away from things that could break him.
content warning(s): canon-compliant, psychological torture, alcohol usage, suicidal idealation - non graphic (literally for only 2 chapters and v v v briefly but still thought was worth mentioning), kidnapping, captivity, medical horror imagery (needles, restraints, injections), non-consensual drugging, torture, drug-induced hallucinations, manipulation and gaslighting, forced compliance/self-mutilation (nothing graphic), blood, mild bodily harm, claustrophobia, emotional distress, profanity, violence
- chapter warnings will be available when applicable. reader discretion is advised.
i. pilot
ii. all i do is search and not find
iii. love's all. love's all i know
iv. i am heartbroken over no one, over having nobody to wish for, nobody to hope for
v. four seasons but i live in a fifth one, which is your time and space
vi. we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about who we pretend to be
vii: just five more minutes so i can pretend time has not run out on me
viii: i don't care.you are my daughter and i am your father and that's how it started and that's how it's going to end
ix. writing you here, i give the death i take
x. the way someone comes back, but only in a dream
xi. i miss you more than i remember you
xii. you can talk to the dead but they can't talk back
xiii. not every haunting is for horror. sometimes it's just for company
xiv: the center of the self is the grief i thought i could not overcome
xv: if you're heaven, then tell me, and i will kneel to every god
xvi: when they ask you for your favorite moment, you will say her. you will always say her
xvii: for you, there is always time. i dont mind if you take some of mine
xviii: there is no absolution for the fallen
xix: this is not a love story, but there is love inside it
xx: remnant of two bodies
xxi: haunted by ghosts, now become one
xxii: there is no way to win. there is only a way to lose slowly
xxiii: you love him, the story still ends
xxiv: grief is a circular staircase. i have lost you
xxv: i cant explain the state im in. the state of my heart, he was my best friend
xxvi: i do not belong here. i come from somewhere else.
xxvii: to say that i was abandoned, and at times, horribly, is true
xxviii: I no longer love. to prove this, i have cut off my hands
xxix: nothing hurts! except remembering!
xxx: it is june and i am tired of being brave
xxxi: i have always belonged to you. and for that, i suffer
xxxii: here it is, the dark thing. the dark thing you have been waiting for
xxxiii: why can't you see me? why can't i stop needing you to see me?
xxxiv: i told no one, i had no one to tell
xxxv: fate has already staked its claim the moment they appeared onscreen
xxxvi: i mourn what could have been, what will be, what I can’t save
xxxvii: do you hear me? GET UP.
xxxviii: and all of my devotion turns violent
xxxix: now i fear i have fallen from grace
xxxx: you can say anything and i will not abandon you
xxxxi: my love, my love, my love, why have you left me?
xxxxii: all my grief says this isn't how it's supposed to be, but the world holds my hope by the throat and says this is how it is
xxxxiii: in lieu of flowers, send her back
xxxxiv: you love each other you do - and here's the tragedy: it's not enough
xxxxv: oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued
xxxxvi: i’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell
xxxxvii: the end of the after, the weight of the war, the kindness has gone to bed
xxxxviii: the beginning of the rest of your life
xxxxix: you’re going to have to learn how to live with this
xxxxx: of course the love is there – still, still, still
xxxxxi: choose: your hand on my neck, soothing or violent
xxxxxii: the love was there. it didn’t change anything. it didn’t save anyone. but it still matters that the love was there
xxxxxiii: sometimes i really believe it, that i am going to save my life a little
finale: this is a story about seeing, this is a story about being seen
status: completed
a/n: likes, reblogs and comments, as always, are appreciated!
it was supposed to be a meet cute. it was supposed to be easy. it was supposed to be Kori. it was supposed to, supposedtosupposedtosupposedto-
you're beautiful.
everyone always tells Dick not to stare directly at the sun. it's too bad he can't stop himself.
[inspired by One Tree Hill]
request silly anon 🍭 bruce, tim, dick, and jason with a reader who's a "hero" of kinds??? their hero name being pigeon, which sounds ridiculous-until they explain their job! they're a like, fourteen year old kid who knows damn well messages online are nooot protected, so they came up with the plan to become a personal pigeon carrier! they go from team to team and relay everything by mouth from written letters that they get rid of! funny scenario additionally: they catch reader getting irritated from constantly burning and shredding papers to just eating the last piece they have.
content platonic batfam x gn!teen!reader, hero!reader, pigeon inspired powers
masterlist
The first time Pigeon appears in the Batcave, Bruce assumes someone has breached the manor’s security.
This is not an unreasonable assumption. The unreasonable part is that the intruder is approximately fourteen years old, wearing battered trainers, a grey hoodie beneath a homemade tactical vest, and carrying three sealed envelopes in a cross-body satchel decorated with a tiny embroidered bird.
You stand in front of the Batcomputer, entirely unimpressed by the collection of masked vigilantes surrounding you.
“Message from the Titans,” you announce.
Tim folds his arms. “Why didn’t they send it through the secure server?”
“Because your secure server is only secure until someone smarter than you finds it.”
Tim looks personally wounded. Bruce looks interested. Dick looks delighted. Jason immediately decides he likes this kid.
You, Pigeon, explains that your entire job is transporting sensitive information between hero teams without leaving a digital trail. You memorise the contents of handwritten letters, deliver the information verbally, and then destroy the originals. No servers. No transmissions. No metadata. No intercepted calls. Just one teenager with a frighteningly good memory, a bus pass, and absolutely no respect for conventional communication methods.
“So,” Dick says carefully, “you’re a carrier pigeon.”
You point at him. “Exactly.”
“That’s incredible.”
“Thank you.”
“The name is still ridiculous.”
“Your name is Nightwing.”
Dick concedes the point.
bruce wayne
Bruce hates the arrangement immediately.
Not because it is ineffective. In fact, that is part of the problem. Yorur system is alarmingly effective.
You vary your routes, never travel in costume, change coats halfway through journeys, memorise emergency exits, use coded check-in phrases, and destroy every written message after reading it. Yoi can repeat several pages of operational information almost word for word, even hours later.
You have also somehow created a communication network involving half the teenage heroes in the country, three librarians, a retired postman, and a woman who owns a bakery in Bristol.
Bruce has questions. You refuses to explain the bakery.
“You are fourteen,” Bruce says, in the grave tone he usually reserves for planetary threats.
“Allegedly.”
“You should not be transporting classified intelligence.”
“Then stop putting classified intelligence on hackable servers.”
Bruce opens his mouth. Closes it. Tim quietly turns away so no one sees him smile.
Bruce insists on evaluating every aspect of your operation. He examines your routes, tests your recall, reviews your emergency procedures, and discovers that you have somehow planned for everything except being grounded.
“What happens if your guardian takes your phone?” he asks.
“I don’t use my phone for work.”
“What if they prevent you from leaving the house?”
“I say I’m studying with friends.”
Bruce stares at you. You stare back.
“You should not lie to your guardian.”
“You dress as a bat and tell the public Bruce Wayne sleeps through earthquakes.”
“That is different.”
“It literally isn’t.”
Bruce tries to establish rules. You respond by negotiating like a tiny union representative.
No messages involving active combat zones. No carrying information that could make you a direct target without knowing the risk. Mandatory check-ins through coded public channels. Emergency trackers sewn into your shoes, although you make Bruce promise they will remain inactive unless a scheduled check-in is missed.
Bruce agrees because it is better than having no oversight at all.
He tells himself he is merely protecting a young operative.
Then he starts packing food into your satchel. You discover protein bars, bottled water, a compact first-aid kit, emergency cash, and a handwritten list of safe houses.
“You put snacks in my bag.”
“You require adequate nutrition.”
“You packed the expensive granola bars.”
“They have a higher protein content.”
You squint at him. “Are you trying to parent me?”
“No.”
“You’re doing a terrible job of hiding it.”
Bruce becomes particularly intense whenever you arrive late. He will remain perfectly still beside the Batcomputer, jaw tight, while Alfred calmly serves tea as though Bruce has not checked the manor’s exterior cameras fourteen times.
You eventually learn to announce yourself the second you enter.
“Pigeon in the nest,” you call one evening.
Bruce looks up sharply. “I am never calling the cave a nest.”
“You understood me.”
“That is irrelevant.”
He never admits that he adds PIGEON PROTOCOL to the Batcomputer’s emergency systems. He also never admits that the protocol prioritises finding you above almost every non-apocalyptic mission.
When Bruce catches you eating a message, you have had a long day. Your lighter is empty. Your portable shredder is jammed. The sink in the safe house has no garbage disposal, and the final piece of paper contains information too sensitive to throw away intact.
Bruce enters the room just in time to see you tear off a corner, put it into your mouth, and begin chewing with the exhausted determination of someone eating a particularly disappointing sandwich.
He stops walking.
You freeze.
Bruce looks at the paper. Then at you. “Explain.”
“The shredder broke.”
“You are eating classified intelligence.”
“I’m destroying classified intelligence.”
“That is not an approved disposal method.”
“It’s biodegradable.”
“Stop chewing.”
You chew faster.
Bruce crosses the room and holds out his hand. You slowly surrender the damp remains of the note.
Bruce’s expression does something complicated when he realises you have already swallowed half of it. “Was the ink toxic?”
You pause.
Bruce’s eyes narrow. “Was. The ink. Toxic?”
“I’m going to be so real with you, I did not check.”
You spend the next four hours under medical observation while Bruce orders industrial-grade document-destruction equipment for every safe house you use.
He also starts supplying you with edible rice paper for genuine emergencies.
You tells everyone Batman invented snackable espionage. Bruce deeply regrets everything.
dick grayson
Dick thinks you are the funniest thing that has happened to vigilantism in years. He takes your name completely seriously, which somehow makes it worse.
The first time you arrivesin Blüdhaven, Dick greets you by throwing open a window and saying, “The bird has landed!”
“I used the door.”
“Pigeons are adaptable.”
“Never do that again.”
Dick does it every single time.
He calls your satchel a mailbag, your missions “flights,” and any snack break “pecking time.” You threatens to blacklist him from the communication network.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me, Discowing.”
Dick immediately behaves. For approximately six minutes.
Beneath the teasing, he is one of your strongest supporters. He understands that telling you to stop will not work. They believe in what they are doing, and worse, they are good at it.
So Dick focuses on making sure you come home. He teaches you how to escape restraints, how to fall without breaking bones, and how to recognise when someone is subtly steering them toward a secondary location. He makes you practise shouting for help, even though you complains that stealth messengers are not supposed to shout.
“Stealth is great until stealth fails,” he tells you. “Then you get loud.”
Dick is also the easiest person to talk to. You spends hours travelling between teams, carrying everyone else’s secrets while rarely being asked about your own. Dick notices.
He asks about school. Your friends. Whether you have eaten. Whether anyone is pressuring you into missions you do not want.
At first, you answer with jokes. Dick waits.
Eventually, you tell him the truth. Sometimes the work scares you. Sometimes you worry you will forget one crucial word. Sometimes you lie awake imagining what could happen if you were captured. Sometimes you feel important only when someone needs a message delivered.
Dick listens without interrupting.
“You’re important when you’re sitting on my couch stealing my cereal too,” he says.
“I don’t steal it.”
“You ate half the box.”
“You left it unsecured.”
Dick laughs, but his expression remains soft.
From then on, whenever you deliver something to Blüdhaven, he makes you stay for at least twenty minutes after the job is done. No messages. No missions. No debriefing.
Just a terrible film, a bowl of cereal, and the chance to be fourteen.
When Dick finds you eating a message, he enters his living room and sees you seated cross-legged on the floor, glaring at a handwritten note. Your lighter has refused to ignite.
There are already several bite marks along the paper’s edge.
“Pigeon,” he says slowly. You look up. “Please tell me you aren’t about to eat that.”
You tear off a piece.
Dick launches himself across the room. “No!”
You dodge behind the sofa. “It has to be destroyed!”
“Not by your digestive system!”
“It worked for goats!”
“You are not a goat!”
“You don’t know what happened in Nanda Parbat!”
Dick chases you around the furniture while you continue ripping off pieces and cramming them into your mouth. It would be terrifying if it were not also the stupidest pursuit he has ever participated in.
Eventually, Dick catches you around the waist and lifts you off the ground.
You kicks uselessly. “Release me!”
“Spit it out!”
“Never!”
Dick turns you upside down. The chewed paper drops onto the carpet.
You both stare at it.
“That was undignified,” you say.
“You ate a mission report.”
“The mission report started it.”
Dick laughs so hard he nearly drops you.
He later tells Jason the story. You respond by refusing to carry Dick’s messages for three days.
Dick begins sending handwritten apology notes through Jason.
You eat those too, purely out of spite.
jason todd
Jason understands the logic immediately.
“Kid’s right,” he says when Bruce objects. “Every system has a door. Doesn’t matter how many locks you slap on it.”
Tim points at him. “Do not encourage them.”
“I’m not encouraging them. I’m appreciating the hustle.”
You and Jason become friends through mutual irritation. You both hate being underestimated. You both know Gotham’s less glamorous streets better than Bruce would like. You both have strong opinions about authority, surveillance, and rich people designing safety plans for neighbourhoods they have never walked through.
Jason is the first person to question whether you are being paid.
You stare at him. “Paid?”
“You’re doing specialist work for half the capes on the East Coast.”
“I get free food sometimes.”
Jason’s expression darkens.
By the end of the week, every hero organisation using your services has received a sharply worded notice outlining minimum compensation, transport coverage, meal requirements, and hazard pay.
The notice is unsigned. Everyone knows Jason wrote it.
You suddenly have a savings account. Jason pretends this means nothing to him.
He also becomes extremely territorial about your safety. If you is travelling through Crime Alley, Jason knows about it. He never visibly escorts you, because you would complain, but Red Hood sightings mysteriously increase along your route.
Anyone attempting to follow you finds a six-foot vigilante waiting at the next corner.
Jason teaches you which shop owners can be trusted, which rooftops are unstable, and which alleys flood after heavy rain. He gives you a spare key to one of his safe houses and claims it is only because he does not want you “standing around outside looking like a lost Victorian orphan.”
You start stopping by even when they have no messages.
Jason complains every time. Then he makes enough food for two.
He is the one who takes their hero name most seriously.
He never laughs at it after the first explanation.
“Pigeons are survivors,” he tells you. “People brought them everywhere, used them for everything, and then acted shocked when they adapted. They remember faces, find their way home, and hold grudges.”
You look delighted. “You’ve researched pigeons.”
“Shut up.”
“You think my name is cool.”
“I think you’re annoying.”
“You think I’m cool and annoying.”
“Eat your fries.”
Jason walks into his kitchen at two in the morning and finds you chewing thoughtfully on a folded piece of paper.
He stops. You stop.
He looks at the empty lighter beside you. Then at the broken shredder. Then back at your face.
“Is that paper?”
“No.”
Jason raises an eyebrow.
You swallow. “No longer.”
There is a beat of complete silence.
Then Jason turns around, grips the counter, and begins laughing.
Not a polite laugh. Not a controlled chuckle. He folds in half, shoulders shaking, wheezing so hard he has to remove his helmet.
You look offended. “I was improvising.”
“You—” Jason points at you, unable to finish. “You just—classified—”
“The information is gone.”
“You ate it!”
“I completed the mission!”
Jason slides down the cabinets until he is sitting on the kitchen floor.
You cross your arms and wait for him to recover.
He does not.
Ten minutes later, he is still periodically breaking into laughter.
“Are you done?” you demand.
Jason wipes his eyes. “Not even close.”
He eventually checks the type of ink, makes you drink water, and orders you never to do it again.
The following morning, he gives you a small metal tin. Inside are several sheets of edible paper and a food-safe pen.
You look at him.
Jason shrugs. “For emergencies.”
“You’re enabling me.”
“I’m reducing the chance of you poisoning yourself.”
You take out one of the blank sheets and bite into it.
Jason watches. “How is it?”
“Like communion wafers but sadder.”
“Excellent. Exactly what espionage should taste like.”
tim drake
Tim is offended by you on a professional level. Your entire existence is built around the belief that digital security cannot be trusted, and unfortunately, you are not entirely wrong.
“My encryption has never been broken,” Tim says during your first proper conversation.
“That you know of.”
“It would take years to get through.”
“That still counts as getting through.”
“There are layers of authentication.”
“There are also people who can phase through walls and aliens who can read minds.”
“That isn’t a cybersecurity issue.”
“It becomes one when they steal your laptop.”
Tim spends the next week trying to prove that your system is inefficient.
Instead, he discovers that it is resistant to remote interception, leaves almost no forensic footprint, and cannot be compromised through a central server because there is no central server.
He hates how elegant it is.
He becomes obsessed with improving it.
You arrive at the Nest one afternoon to find an entire digital map of Gotham covered in colour-coded routes.
“What’s this?”
“Your delivery network.”
“I don’t have a delivery network.”
“You have seventeen regular locations, six rotating dead drops, and four preferred transit routes.”
You look at him slowly. “Have you been tracking me?”
“Analysing.”
“That word is not helping.”
Tim equips you with encrypted emergency beacons, shoes with concealed compartments, smoke capsules disguised as lip balm, and a pair of glasses that can scan a room for recording devices.
You become his favourite intellectual argument.
You will sit beside him at the Batcomputer, swinging your legs while Tim explains some new encryption standard. You listen seriously, ask annoyingly good questions, and then say something like, “Or you could write it down and give it to me.”
Tim has considered throwing you out of the cave on several occasions.
He never does. Mostly because you brings him coffee.
Not good coffee. Horrific vending-machine coffee purchased from bus stations at ungodly hours.
But you remember exactly how he takes it.
You also start carrying verbal reminders between Tim and the rest of the family.
“Dick says sleep.”
“No.”
“Dick predicted you’d say that. His response is, and I quote, ‘Timothy Insomniac Drake, I will come over there.’”
“That isn’t my middle name.”
“He knows. He said it adds authority.”
Another time, you arrive with a message from Jason. “Jason says you left your charger at his apartment.”
“I have six chargers.”
“He says, ‘Then stop stealing mine, you little freak.’”
“Tell him I didn’t steal it.”
You nod solemnly. “Would you like me to include the lie exactly as stated?”
Tim secretly appreciates having someone else around who treats paranoia as common sense rather than a personality defect.
He teaches you memory-palace techniques, counter-surveillance, and enough basic coding to recognise when someone is attempting to use you as a weak link.
You teachesTim how to navigate Gotham’s bus system. He considers this an unequal exchange.
Tim walks into the kitchen one day and finds you leaning over the sink, chewing a narrow strip of paper.
He blinks. You blink back.
“What are you doing?”
“Minding my business.”
“You’re eating a document.”
“No evidence of that.”
“There’s paper hanging out of your mouth.”
You suck the remaining edge between your lips like a noodle.
Tim stares in fascinated horror. “Was that the League report?”
“Mhm.”
“The one written in permanent marker?”
You stops chewing.
Tim immediately pulls out his phone.
“Don’t call Bruce.”
“I’m calling Poison Control.”
“Tim.”
“You consumed permanent marker.”
“It said non-toxic.”
“So do crayons. That doesn’t mean you should eat a box of them.”
You crosses your arms. “You don’t know my life.”
Tim spends the rest of the night researching portable incinerators, chemical dissolving kits, and water-soluble spy paper.
Two days later, he presents you with a custom-built disposal unit small enough to fit in their satchel.
You presse the button. The machine makes a sad grinding noise and launches shredded paper directly into Tim’s face.
There is a long silence.
You looks at the scraps covering his hair.
“So,” you say, “back to eating it?”
Tim redesigns the machine before sunrise.
extra thoughts
You become part of the family before anyone formally acknowledges it.
There is a perch-shaped hook for your satchel beside the Batcomputer. Alfred keeps your preferred snacks stocked. Tim maintains your equipment. Dick manages your emotional check-ins. Jason ensures everyone pays you.
Bruce pretends none of this means you have effectively been adopted by committee.
The family also begins using you for increasingly mundane messages.
“Bruce says the League meeting moved to eight.”
“Tim says someone used his mug.”
“Dick says he loves you all.”
“Jason says to tell Dick that emotional manipulation does not excuse eating his leftovers.”
You deliver every message with the same grave professionalism, regardless of whether it concerns an alien invasion or missing yoghurt.
You are trusted with information that could destabilise governments.
You are also frequently asked to tell Damian that dinner is ready.
No enemy ever manages to compromise the Pigeon Network. The closest anyone comes is when a villain captures you and demands that you reveal Batman’s latest plans.
You stare at him for several seconds. Then you begin reciting the entire script of The Bee Movie.
By the time the Batfamily arrives, the villain is begging you to stop.
Bruce frees you from the restraints. “You memorised that intentionally?”
“It’s my anti-interrogation protocol.”
Tim looks impressed. Dick looks horrified. Jason looks like he has never been prouder.
Later, while Bruce lectures you about the risks you took, you reache into your satchel, remove the last written copy of the villain’s communications, and discovers that their disposal lighter has once again run out.
a completely harmless amount of power - damian wayne
request anon could you please maybe do damian wayne x reader where they're low key all powerful but constantly insists they're not evil and the hero teams can trust her like queen whateveriwannabe from the lego movie (request so key inspired by her song not evil totally go give it a listen if you wanna get in the headspace) even they totally sound like they're lying about being completely innocent and trustworthy they're not and literally just tone deaf 🥲
content aged up!damian wayne x gender neutral!reader, cosmic entity reader kinga, mutual pining, oblivious reader, sorta crack, slightly ooc damian sorry, mild violence, psychic attacks, temporary memory loss, existential/cosmic horror imagery, threats of reality destruction played for humour, brief fear of death, near-sacrifice, injury/recovery, mentions of kidnapping/forced marriage as jokes
wordcount 7.9k
masterlist | damian masterlist
The first thing you said upon entering the Justice League Watchtower was, “Before anyone becomes alarmed, I would like to make it explicitly clear that I am not evil.”
Every person seated around the conference table became alarmed.
Batman’s expression did not noticeably change, but the muscles beneath his cowl tightened by a fraction. Superman’s shoulders drew back. Wonder Woman’s hand shifted closer to the golden lasso hanging at her hip. The Flash stopped tapping his fingers against the table.
Damian, standing at his father’s right shoulder, merely stared at you.
You stood at the opposite end of the room with your hands folded neatly in front of you. You had arrived without triggering the Watchtower’s alarms, without using a Boom Tube, and apparently without requiring oxygen. The enormous observation windows behind you framed the curve of the Earth in brilliant blue, making the edges of your silhouette shimmer like something cut from the fabric of the universe itself.
Your clothing looked harmless enough. Soft trousers, boots with silver buckles, a loose shirt beneath an embroidered coat that seemed to change colour depending on the angle of the light. There were stars woven into the cuffs.
Actual stars, Damian suspected.
They pulsed.
“I understand,” you continued, with the solemn patience of someone explaining a simple concept to particularly nervous children, “that appearing unannounced within your fortified orbital headquarters could be interpreted as threatening.”
“You think?” Green Lantern muttered.
You smiled at him. “Yes. That is why I am clarifying my intentions before anyone makes an unfortunate decision.”
There was a faint creak as Superman’s chair shifted beneath the sudden tension in his posture.
You glanced around the table and added, “An unfortunate decision such as attacking me, which would force me to defend myself and potentially erase this entire station from the timeline.”
Silence descended.
The stars on your cuffs twinkled cheerfully.
You tilted your head. “But I would not enjoy doing that.”
“That,” the Flash said slowly, “did not make it better.”
You frowned, genuinely troubled. “It did not?”
“No,” Batman said.
“I see.” You looked down at your hands, considering. “Perhaps I should have begun with the baked goods.”
A plate appeared on the conference table. It did not teleport in. It did not shimmer into existence or emerge from a portal. Reality simply seemed to remember that there had always been a plate of iced biscuits sitting between Batman’s files and Green Lantern’s elbow.
The Flash recoiled hard enough to nearly tip over his chair.
“They are not poisoned,” you said quickly. Green Lantern leaned away from them. “They also do not contain any parasitic organisms, mind-altering spores, concealed tracking devices, or fragments of my consciousness.”
Green Lantern leaned farther away.
You looked helplessly at Superman. “I am making it worse again.”
“A little,” Superman admitted.
Damian pressed his lips together. It took considerable effort.
His father turned his head slightly. Damian knew that look. It was the silent warning Bruce had used since Damian was ten years old and discovered that openly mocking frightened diplomats was considered impolite.
Damian was not mocking you.
Not yet.
He was, however, beginning to suspect that you were the strangest person he had ever encountered.
Considering the company he kept, that was almost impressive.
Batman placed both gloved hands on the table. “Start again. Who are you?”
You straightened, apparently grateful to be given a question with a clear answer.
You spoke your name.
The lights flickered.
Somewhere beneath Damian’s boots, the Watchtower groaned as if the metal itself recognised the sound.
You winced. “Apologies. Your current reality is somewhat sensitive to my full designation.”
“What are you?” Wonder Woman asked.
“That is more complicated.”
“Try us,” Green Lantern said.
You glanced at him. “Once, before the first stars formed, there was a thought.” Green Lantern closed his eyes. You continued, oblivious. “The thought became lonely, and therefore divided itself so it might have someone with whom to converse. One half became time. The other half became possibility.”
Damian watched your expression rather than listening to the quiet calculations happening around the room. You did not appear proud. You did not appear threatening. If anything, you seemed faintly embarrassed, as though your ancestry were an inconvenient childhood story your parents insisted on telling at dinner.
“Which half are you?” Superman asked.
“Possibility. Mostly.”
“Mostly?” the Flash echoed.
“I misplaced several pieces of myself during the collapse of the Seventh Continuum.”
The Flash stared at you.
You added, “I recovered most of them.”
Damian’s mouth twitched.
Your gaze immediately snapped toward him.
For an instant, the entirety of your attention settled over Damian like the gravity of a star. The room remained unchanged, but he could feel the weight of you—the vastness concealed beneath skin, cloth, and carefully folded hands.
“You are amused,” you said.
It was not an accusation. You sounded fascinated.
Damian lifted his chin. “Your attempts at reassurance require improvement.”
“I practised.”
“I find that difficult to believe.”
“I stood before a mirror for three hours.”
That did it.
A quiet sound escaped Damian before he could stop it. Not quite a laugh, but close enough that every person at the table looked at him.
His father’s stare became distinctly disapproving.
You brightened. It was a small change, but impossible to miss. Your entire face softened, delight blooming across it like dawn breaking over a dead planet.
“Oh,” you said. “You find me funny.”
“I find your lack of self-awareness astonishing.”
“Is that similar?”
“No.”
“Perhaps it could become similar with time.”
Damian narrowed his eyes. You smiled at him.
Batman deliberately shifted the conversation away from whatever had just occurred. “Why are you here?”
“A hostile force has entered this universe.”
Every trace of levity vanished from the room.
You lifted one hand. A miniature image formed above your palm: a twisting mass of black tendrils surrounding something that resembled a fractured moon. Countless pale eyes opened and closed along its surface.
“It calls itself the Sovereign of Silence,” you explained. “It consumes consciousness. Entire civilisations disappear without physical destruction. Their cities remain. Their machines continue operating. Their bodies remain alive, but empty.”
“How long until it reaches Earth?” Superman asked.
“Thirty-one days.”
“Can you stop it?” Wonder Woman said.
“Yes.”
Everyone waited.
Your image of the creature folded in on itself and vanished.
“But?” Batman prompted.
“I have been informed that solving every conflict through unilateral reality alteration is ethically troubling.”
Damian’s attention sharpened.
You said the words with the weary cadence of someone reciting a lesson after being repeatedly scolded.
“Who informed you?” Superman asked.
“A coalition of intergalactic governments. They were very loud.”
“Did they have a point?” Wonder Woman asked.
You looked offended. “I restored the planets afterwards.”
Damian folded his arms. “After what?”
“After temporarily transforming the invading armada into decorative glass.”
The Flash leaned toward Superman. “I think we should circle back to the not-evil thing.”
“I returned them to their original state,” you said. “Most of them.”
“Most?”
“One vessel was accidentally made into a chandelier.”
Green Lantern stared at you. “Accidentally?”
“It was an extremely complicated chandelier.”
Against all reason, Damian wanted to laugh again.
You seemed to notice.
Your eyes flickered toward him, hopeful. Damian maintained his expression with the discipline of a trained assassin.
The corners of your mouth turned down.
Something unpleasant tugged beneath his ribs.
Ridiculous. He did not know you. You were an incomprehensible cosmic entity who had invaded the Watchtower, threatened to erase it, conjured suspicious biscuits, and apparently committed acts of military interior design.
He should not care that you looked disappointed.
“Why involve us?” Batman asked.
“Because I wish to demonstrate that I can cooperate with mortal heroes without dominating, manipulating, imprisoning, transmuting, unmaking, remaking, absorbing, or marrying anyone against their will.”
There was a pause.
“Marrying?” the Flash asked.
“A misunderstanding involving a moon kingdom.”
Batman rubbed two fingers against his temple.
Damian finally reached for one of the biscuits.
His father caught his wrist.
“They are safe,” Damian said.
“You don’t know that.”
“If they intended to kill us, Father, we would already be dead.”
You nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly.”
Batman’s grip tightened.
“That was not comforting,” Superman said gently.
You sighed. “I thought that one was better.”
Damian took the biscuit anyway.
It tasted of orange, honey, and something warm he could not name. A memory, perhaps. Sunlight on the manor’s library floor. Alfred setting tea beside his elbow without interrupting his sketching. Titus asleep across his feet.
His jaw went rigid.
You watched him anxiously. “Is it acceptable?”
Damian swallowed. “Adequate.”
You beamed as though he had declared it a masterpiece.
That was the moment, though he would deny it for months afterwards, that Damian Wayne’s downfall began.
It started with biscuits.
Most catastrophes did not.
Then again, you were not a catastrophe. You simply sounded like one.
The League agreed to accept your assistance under several conditions.
You were not to alter anyone’s mind. You were not to restructure inhabited planets without permission. You were not to reverse time unless the League approved it. You were not to resurrect anyone. You were not to create sentient life aboard the Watchtower. You were not to consume anything with a soul.
You had objected to the final condition on the grounds that you did not consume souls.
“Not intentionally,” you had clarified.
Batman added three more restrictions.
You accepted every rule with grave sincerity. A glowing contract appeared in the air before you, written in a language that caused Green Lantern’s ring to issue an error message.
You signed it using a quill made of blue flame.
“Completely harmless,” you assured them as the contract vanished into your chest.
Damian heard Nightwing whisper, “Oh, this is going to be incredible,” from the back of the room.
Because the approaching threat affected thought itself, Batman decided to involve several younger hero teams. The Titans, Young Justice, and a rotating group of magical specialists were brought aboard the Watchtower for training and strategic preparation.
Damian, as one of the most experienced Titans and one of the few people aboard who did not appear terrified of you, was assigned as your primary liaison.
“You mean babysitter,” he said when Bruce informed him privately.
“I mean liaison.”
“You wish for me to observe them.”
“I wish for you to help them integrate with the team.”
“Because I ate a biscuit.”
“Because they respond well to you.”
Damian stared at his father. Bruce stared back.
They both knew what had happened during the second meeting.
The League had been discussing potential containment measures when you politely informed them that no prison in this universe could hold you.
Batman had produced six theoretical designs.
You had examined each one with growing delight.
“These are very creative,” you had told him. “Would you like me to pretend they could work?”
Bruce had gone silent.
Damian had laughed aloud.
You had looked at him as if he personally hung the stars embroidered in your sleeves.
“They like you,” Bruce said.
“They have known me for less than forty-eight hours.”
“You like them.”
“I tolerate them.”
Bruce’s expression became insufferably knowing.
Damian scowled. “Do not.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You have adopted Grayson’s habit of lying poorly.”
Bruce leaned back against the Batcomputer. “Just keep an eye on them.”
“They have eyes on several galaxies simultaneously. I doubt my surveillance will prove useful.”
“They’re powerful, Damian.”
“So are you.”
“That isn’t the same.”
“No,” Damian agreed. “They are far more polite.”
Bruce’s stare flattened.
Damian left before his father could reassign him.
He found you in one of the Watchtower’s training rooms, surrounded by half the Titans.
Beast Boy had transformed into a green mouse and was currently perched upon your shoulder. Blue Beetle’s armour was scanning you so aggressively that the scarab’s warnings had become audible. Raven stood at a cautious distance, her dark eyes narrowed.
Starfire floated in front of you, beaming.
“You are saying that you can become any form you desire?” she asked.
“Within reason.”
“You became a mountain yesterday,” Raven said.
“A small mountain.”
“You blocked out the sun.”
“Only locally.”
Damian stepped into the room. “What are you doing?”
Everyone turned.
You lifted a finger to your lips.
“Do not be alarmed,” you whispered.
Damian immediately became alarmed. “What did you do?”
“Nothing evil.”
The Titans collectively groaned.
Beast Boy scrambled from your shoulder as your body began to ripple. Your outline stretched upward, then outward, bending like reflected light on water. For one brief second, Damian glimpsed something vast beyond comprehension: branching limbs holding galaxies like fruit, thousands of eyes gleaming through endless dark, a crown fashioned from collapsing stars.
Then you became a cat. A very small cat.
You sat in the centre of the training room, blinking up at him with enormous eyes. Your fur was midnight black except for faint constellations scattered across your back.
Starfire clasped both hands beneath her chin. “Glorious.”
Beast Boy transformed back into himself. “Okay, that’s adorable.”
Raven’s mouth softened by a fraction.
Damian looked down at you.
You chirped.
“No,” he said. Your ears lowered. “You cannot gain my approval by becoming a feline.”
You walked across the floor and sat directly on his boot.
“Manipulation will not work.”
You placed one paw against his shin.
Behind him, Blue Beetle made a strangled sound.
Damian glared over his shoulder. “Silence.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
Damian bent and lifted you.
Your small body settled immediately against his chest. You weighed almost nothing, though he was deeply aware that the creature purring beneath his hand could probably fold the moon in half.
He scratched beneath your chin. Your purr became loud enough to vibrate through his armour.
“This proves nothing,” Damian informed the room.
“Of course not,” Raven said.
He turned his glare on her.
Raven’s expression remained perfectly blank.
You stayed a cat for the rest of the meeting.
Damian did not put you down.
You were not evil. This became apparent within the first week.
It also became apparent that convincing anyone of this fact would remain an ongoing struggle.
You assisted Superman in diverting an asteroid away from a populated world. When the alien government thanked you, you responded, “Your continued survival benefits my long-term plans.”
The entire delegation paled. You had meant that you wanted to remain friends.
You brought emergency medical supplies to a planet experiencing an epidemic. Upon presenting the cure, you announced that no one would die “unless I permitted it.” You meant that the medicine was highly effective.
You rescued a school bus from falling through a collapsed bridge, suspending it in midair with a gesture. When frightened children asked whether you were a superhero, you smiled and told them that resistance was unnecessary. You meant that they were safe.
The public relations department developed headaches. Damian developed a private collection of recordings.
He told himself he kept them for training purposes. It was, after all, useful to review your mistakes so he could correct them. There was nothing sentimental about the folder hidden on his personal computer labelled Diplomatic Incidents.
There was especially nothing sentimental about his favourite clip, in which you attempted to reassure a group of diplomats that their children would remain untouched.
“The young ones are beneath my notice,” you had said.
Damian had turned away from the camera because his shoulders were shaking.
You found him afterwards in the Watchtower corridor, arms folded and expression wounded. “You laughed at me.”
“I did.”
“I was attempting compassion.”
“You informed several parents that their children were insignificant.”
“I said they were beneath my notice.”
“That is worse.”
“I meant I would not harm them.”
“Then say that.”
“I thought it was implied.”
“It was not.”
You fell into step beside him.
By then, the two of you had spent enough time together that your presence no longer set every instinct in Damian’s body on edge. He had learned the subtle tells of your power: the way shadows leaned toward you when you were annoyed, the faint glow beneath your skin when you were pleased, the static taste in the air when you concealed fear.
He had learned other things, too.
You loved Earth’s oceans but disliked sand. You considered ice cream one of humanity’s finest inventions. You did not sleep, but sometimes lay down and pretended because you enjoyed being included. You could hear music from dying stars. You had witnessed the birth of Saturn’s rings. You adored pigeons.
This final revelation had nearly destroyed Damian’s remaining patience.
“They are resilient,” you had said, scattering birdseed across a Gotham rooftop. “Adaptable. Social. They thrive despite widespread contempt.”
“They are vermin.”
“So have I been called.”
Damian had looked at you sharply.
You were still watching the pigeons. A grey one hopped onto your knee, cooing as your fingers carefully stroked its feathers.
Something old and quiet had moved in your face. Something too human for a being who claimed to predate stars.
Damian had not insulted the pigeons again.
Now, walking beside him through the Watchtower, you twisted your fingers together.
“I should prepare written statements,” you said. “That may reduce misunderstandings.”
“You attempted that yesterday.”
“The phrase ‘your world remains unburned by my mercy’ sounded better on paper.”
“It did not.”
You sighed.
Damian glanced at you. Your gaze remained fixed on the floor. The lights overhead flickered as you passed beneath them, reacting to the slow dimming of your mood.
“Why does it matter?” he asked.
You looked at him. “Why does what matter?”
“Their opinion.”
You slowed.
Damian stopped with you.
Beyond the observation window, Earth turned silently below them. Clouds curled over blue oceans. City lights shimmered on the darkened half of the planet, fragile and distant.
You looked toward it.
“Because I like them,” you said.
Damian waited.
“I like this place. I like that humans make small spoons specifically for stirring tea. I like that your species writes songs about feelings too complicated to say aloud. I like umbrellas, though I have no need for them. I like that you name machines and speak to animals as if they understand.”
“Many do understand.”
“I know. They have much to say.”
Damian made a mental note to ask you about that later.
You pressed your fingertips to the glass. “I have spent a very long time entering worlds only when something terrible has happened. By the time anyone sees me, they are already afraid. I thought perhaps if I explained immediately that I was not evil, it would prevent that fear.”
“It does the opposite.”
“I am becoming aware.”
“You also threaten people while attempting to reassure them.”
“I do not mean to.”
“I know.”
The words emerged more softly than Damian intended.
You turned your head. Your eyes were not any unusual colour. They could have been brown, or green, or grey depending on the light. Yet something moved deep within them, an endless scattering of possible worlds that appeared and vanished with every blink.
“You know?” you asked.
“Yes.”
“How?”
Damian frowned. “Because I pay attention.”
The air changed. It became warmer, carrying the scent of rain against hot stone. Somewhere inside the observation window, impossible flowers bloomed across the glass before fading.
You stared at him.
“No one has said that before,” you murmured.
“That is because the people around you are easily frightened.”
“You were not.”
“I am rarely frightened.”
You smiled faintly. “That is untrue.”
Damian’s spine stiffened.
“You are frightened frequently,” you continued. “You simply do things while afraid.”
He should have resented the observation. He should have bristled at the suggestion that you could see through him so easily. Most people required years to understand the distinction between Damian’s courage and fearlessness. Even those who loved him sometimes mistook the sharpness of his voice for certainty.
You had known him for two weeks.
“How dare you,” he said.
Your smile widened.
Damian looked back toward Earth before you could see his own.
The first time you came to Wayne Manor, you promised Bruce that you would not bring about the end of the world while inside his home.
Bruce had replied, “That wasn’t one of my concerns until you said it.”
You considered this. “Then I have helped you identify a potential security flaw.”
Bruce looked at Damian. Damian walked past him into the foyer.
“Pennyworth will expect us for dinner,” he said.
You followed immediately.
Alfred, unlike every superhero, diplomat, and government official you had met, displayed no fear whatsoever. He accepted your coat, informed you that reality-altering powers were not an excuse to neglect table manners, and asked whether you had any dietary restrictions.
“I can consume any substance,” you said.
“I shall avoid serving any substances not generally considered food.”
“That is wise. The previous table did not survive.”
Alfred’s eyebrow rose.
You hurried to clarify. “That was several centuries ago.”
“I am relieved to hear it.”
Damian had to leave the room.
Grayson cornered him in the hallway. He was grinning.
Damian continued walking.
“Oh, no, you don’t.”
Grayson caught Damian by the shoulders and steered him toward the library, ignoring his protests.
“You brought a date home.”
“They are not my date.”
“A cosmic entity met Dad, threatened the architecture, and followed you into the dining room like a duckling.”
“They are our guest.”
“Your guest.”
“They are working with the League.”
“And apparently flirting with you.”
Damian went still. Grayson’s grin became unbearable.
“They are not flirting with me.”
“They made you a sword out of a meteor.”
“It was a practical gift.”
“They engraved your name on it.”
“So others would not mistakenly claim it.”
“They engraved little hearts around your name.”
“Those were not hearts.”
“They were anatomically accurate human hearts, which is somehow more romantic and deeply unsettling.”
Damian shoved Grayson’s hands away. “You are projecting meaning onto meaningless details.”
“Sure.”
“There is no romantic interest between us.”
“Of course.”
“You are insufferable.”
“And you’re blushing.”
Damian struck him.
Grayson dodged, laughing as Damian chased him through the library.
They returned to the dining room several minutes later to find you speaking with Alfred.
You had taken the seat beside Damian’s.
Not across from him, where Bruce had originally placed your name card. Beside him.
Your expression brightened the moment he entered.
It happened every time. It should not have affected him.
It did.
“Damian,” you said. “Alfred has explained the concept of childhood photographs.”
“No.”
You looked at Alfred.
Alfred calmly poured wine into Bruce’s glass. “I made no promises.”
“Pennyworth.”
“It seems only fair that our guest be given the full family experience.”
Jason leaned back in his chair. “I’m suddenly loving family dinner.”
Tim was already opening an album.
Damian crossed the room with murder in his heart.
You watched the photographs with astonishing focus.
You admired every picture. Damian scowling in formal clothes. Damian asleep beside Titus. Damian at thirteen, covered in mud after attempting to relocate an injured fox from the manor grounds. Damian glaring at the camera while Grayson hugged him from behind.
“You were very small,” you said.
“I was a child.”
“I know. It is strange to imagine.”
“You have seen civilisations develop from single-celled organisms.”
“Yes, but I was not fond of any of them.”
The table went quiet.
You looked around. “Was that inappropriate?”
Jason coughed into his fist. Tim looked down at his plate. Dick’s shoulders began shaking.
Damian leaned closer to you. “You implied that you are fond of me.”
Your face changed.
The stars embroidered across your collar flared brilliantly.
“I did,” you said.
“Was that intentional?”
“I am uncertain.”
Damian stared. You stared back.
Neither of you noticed the exchange of money beneath the table.
Alfred did.
He collected his winnings after dessert.
Preparation for the Sovereign of Silence intensified. The creature moved faster than expected. Entire outposts vanished from communication networks. Ships were discovered drifting through space, their crews breathing but unresponsive.
Magic provided little protection. Technology failed to identify the method of attack. Even telepaths could not locate the minds stolen by the creature.
You attended every strategy session. You answered questions patiently. You accepted restrictions even when they frustrated you. Most importantly, you did not attempt to take control.
Damian knew how difficult that must have been.
He had been raised to believe that power justified authority. Competence meant leadership. If others could not accomplish a task, then the duty fell to him. It had taken years to learn that teamwork was not merely several people following his commands simultaneously.
You possessed enough power to solve almost any problem through force. Yet you asked permission before using it.
Sometimes badly.
“May I obliterate the hostile vessel?” you requested during one confrontation.
“No,” Superman said.
“May I frighten the occupants until they flee?”
“No.”
“May I cause them to experience a brief but educational vision of their own mortality?”
Wonder Woman paused.
“No,” Batman said.
You looked at Damian. He shook his head.
You sighed and disabled the vessel’s engines instead.
Afterwards, Damian found you seated alone in the Watchtower’s botanical garden. Several flowers had turned toward you despite the artificial lighting.
“You are sulking,” he said.
“I am reflecting.”
“You transformed Green Lantern’s coffee into a liquid that whispered his childhood secrets.”
“He said I lacked subtlety.”
“That was not subtle.”
“It only whispered.”
Damian sat beside you.
The garden was empty. Most of the League had returned to Earth for the night, leaving only essential personnel and those preparing for the Sovereign’s arrival.
You drew your knees toward your chest.
“I am trying,” you said.
“I know.”
“I could stop it.”
“You have said.”
“I could reach into the empty space between moments and remove the Sovereign before it ever formed. Every mind it consumed would return. Every planet would be restored. No one would remember that it existed.”
“Except you.”
“Yes.”
“And what would that cost?”
You were silent.
Damian turned his head.
“What would it cost?” he repeated.
The flowers around you closed.
“A portion of this universe,” you said at last.
“How much?”
“I do not know.”
“Then it is not an option.”
“I could choose which portion.”
“No.”
“I would avoid inhabited systems.”
“No.”
“I could select realities already approaching collapse.”
“You would still be destroying them.”
“They are possibilities, Damian. Some outcomes are born only to become suffering.”
“That does not give you the right to erase them.”
Your jaw tightened.
For a moment, Damian remembered what you were.
The air darkened. The garden walls disappeared beneath an endless expanse of stars. Your shadow spilled across the floor, rising behind you in shapes too large and complex for his eyes to understand.
“You speak confidently for someone whose existence occupies less than a heartbeat of mine,” you said.
Damian did not move.
The words should have sounded cruel. Instead, they sounded wounded.
“You are correct,” he said.
Your eyes flickered.
“My life is insignificant compared to yours. You could end it before I drew breath.”
The shadow behind you shuddered. “Do not say that.”
“It is true.”
“I would never harm you.”
“Then listen to me.”
The stars around them stilled.
Damian leaned forward, resting his forearms against his knees. “You came here because you wished to be trusted. Trust is not earned by possessing the ability to control every outcome. It is earned by allowing others to choose, even when their choices frighten you.”
Your voice became quiet. “And if their choices lead to death?”
“Then we face the consequences together.”
“I do not want you to die.”
The confession struck him more forcefully than any threat could have.
You looked furious about it. Furious and frightened and unbearably alone.
Damian’s chest tightened.
He understood then. You did not crave control because you believed yourself superior.
You craved it because you had lived too long. You had watched people die across centuries. Civilisations rose, flourished, and vanished while you remained. Every attachment became another future grave. Every person you loved was a fragile, temporary thing.
Power had taught you that loss was optional. Loneliness had taught you that love was not.
Damian shifted closer. “I do not intend to die.”
“You cannot guarantee that.”
“Neither can you.”
“I can.”
“No. You can preserve my body. You can alter history. You can build another version of me from memory and starlight, but you cannot guarantee that the person returned would be precisely the one you lost.”
Your expression crumpled by a fraction.
It was enough.
Damian reached for your hand.
You stared down at his fingers around yours.
The shadows withdrew. The garden returned.
“I have rules,” he said.
“You have many.”
“Do not interrupt.”
“Apologies.”
“You will not erase anything without the League’s agreement.”
You nodded.
“You will not sacrifice yourself without telling me.”
Your brow furrowed. “That sounds unfairly specific.”
“It is.”
“Why only you?”
Damian’s grip tightened.
Because the thought of you vanishing into the spaces between worlds made something inside him feel flayed open.
Because he had begun measuring his days by the sound of your voice.
Because he kept finding you in every room, as though his body had become a compass designed solely to point toward yours.
Because you looked at him and saw fear without weakness, saw tenderness without shame, saw a man rather than a weapon or heir or impossible child.
Because when you smiled at him, the universe seemed briefly smaller.
Manageable. His.
“You respond well to me,” Damian said.
You considered this. “That is true.”
“It is therefore efficient.”
“Of course.”
“You are smiling.”
“I find your lies endearing.”
Damian glared.
You leaned your head against his shoulder. He allowed it.
After a moment, he rested his cheek against your hair.
Neither of you mentioned it.
The Sovereign arrived three days early.
It came without warning. One moment, Damian was aboard the Watchtower reviewing evacuation plans. The next, every screen went black.
A low sound moved through the station. It was not audible. It appeared directly within the mind, a vast and hollow note that made Damian’s thoughts scatter like birds beneath gunfire.
People collapsed.
Superman struck the floor first, hands clamped over his ears. The Flash staggered into the wall. Wonder Woman fell to one knee, teeth bared as she fought against an enemy no strength could touch.
Damian remained upright for six seconds.
Then memories began disappearing.
He forgot the name of his first dog. He forgot the colour of his mother’s eyes. He forgot why the symbol on his chest mattered.
Panic surged.
He fought it, grasping for fragments of himself as they slipped away. Names scattered. Faces blurred. His father became a shadow. Grayson’s laugh vanished. Todd’s voice. Drake’s tired smile. Alfred’s hands.
Damian stumbled.
Someone caught him.
You.
Your arms wrapped around him as the Watchtower trembled.
The power beneath your skin was no longer subtle. Light poured from your eyes and mouth. Your shape flickered between human and something endless, something made of every path reality might take.
“You came,” the Sovereign spoke through every unconscious person aboard the station.
Their mouths moved simultaneously.
“You who contain possibility.”
Your hold tightened around Damian.
The Sovereign’s presence pressed against his mind. It wanted emptiness. Silence. A universe freed from the pain of thought.
“You cannot take them,” you said.
Your voice shook the station.
Metal warped. Glass cracked. Earth’s atmosphere rippled below them.
The Sovereign laughed through a hundred stolen voices. “You could stop me.”
You went still.
Damian forced himself to focus.
The garden. Your hand in his. Rules.
Do not erase anything. Do not sacrifice yourself.
The Sovereign showed you something. Damian could not see it, but he saw the reaction on your face. Horror. Longing. Temptation.
It was offering you a solution.
“Do not,” Damian managed.
You looked down at him.
For one terrifying instant, there was no recognition in your eyes.
Then your expression softened.
“Beloved creature,” you whispered.
Despite everything, Damian felt offended. “Do not call me that.”
A broken laugh escaped you.
The Sovereign pressed harder.
Damian’s knees buckled. You lowered him carefully to the floor, one hand cradling the back of his skull.
“I can end this,” you said.
“Not alone.”
“It is already inside their minds.”
“Then go into mine.”
Your eyes widened.
Damian could feel pieces of himself crumbling. His memories were rooms with the lights going out one by one.
He seized your wrist.
“You said minds are possibilities,” he forced out. “Every decision. Every memory. Every path not taken.”
“Yes.”
“Use mine as a doorway.”
“It could destroy you.”
“You will not allow it.”
The faith in his own voice surprised him. It surprised you more.
The Sovereign screamed through the station.
Damian held your gaze. “I trust you.”
Something in you broke open.
Power exploded outward.
The Watchtower disappeared.
Damian found himself standing in a forest.
Not a real forest. His forest. The grounds of Wayne Manor stretched beneath an impossible sky. Trees grew from memories. Each branch held moments in place of leaves: his father wrapping a bandage around his hand, Alfred teaching him to bake, Grayson catching him during a fall, Todd handing him a book without comment, Drake falling asleep at the Batcomputer beside him.
The Sovereign moved between the trunks like smoke. Where it passed, leaves withered.
You stood beside Damian.
Here, inside his mind, you looked different. You wore no coat. No embroidered stars. Your body was formed from silver light, your edges shifting through a thousand possible versions of yourself. In some, you wore armour. In others, a crown. In one, you had no human shape at all.
Yet your hand felt warm when Damian took it.
“How do we kill it?” he asked.
“We cannot.”
“Then how do we stop it?”
“The Sovereign feeds upon isolated minds. It silences each consciousness by separating it from every other connection.”
Damian looked at the memory-trees. “Then give it too many connections.”
You stared at him.
Understanding flashed across your face. Then delight.
“Oh,” you breathed. “You are brilliant.”
“I am aware.”
You lifted your joined hands.
Every branch in Damian’s forest ignited.
Not with fire.
With connection.
The memory of Dick laughing linked itself to the memory of Bruce’s exhausted smile. Jason’s anger joined Tim’s loyalty. Alfred’s grief wound through Talia’s pride. Jon’s friendship, the Titans, the League, every animal Damian had saved, every person he had protected, every enemy who had shaped him.
Damian was not one mind. He was a constellation of every life that had touched his.
The Sovereign recoiled.
You reached through him. Through every bond Damian possessed. The power travelled outward, passing from mind to mind across the Watchtower. Superman’s love for humanity. Wonder Woman’s devotion to truth. Batman’s impossible, terrible hope. The Flash’s joy. Green Lantern’s will.
The Sovereign drowned in connection.
It shrieked as millions of thoughts surged through it at once. It had consumed isolated consciousness for so long that it could not withstand people choosing one another.
You could have destroyed it. Damian felt the possibility open beneath your feet: a bottomless void, ready to swallow the Sovereign and everything it had touched.
You closed it.
Instead, you separated the stolen minds from the creature one by one.
You returned them.
Every civilization. Every crew. Every person emptied and abandoned.
The work tore through you.
Damian felt your pain as cracks of darkness spread across your silver body.
“You are sacrificing yourself,” he said.
“I am not.”
“You are lying.”
“I am revising my structure.”
“You are breaking apart.”
“Temporarily.”
“Stop.”
“Not yet.”
He pulled you toward him.
The Sovereign thrashed overhead, shrinking as stolen consciousness poured away from it.
“You promised,” Damian said.
“I promised to tell you.”
“That is not sufficient.”
“It was your rule.”
“I am changing it.”
Your smile was faint. “You cannot change agreements during execution.”
“I am Robin. I can do as I please.”
“That is not how agreements work.”
“I will find you.”
Your smile vanished.
Damian pressed his forehead against yours. “If you break apart, I will find every piece.”
“You do not know where they will go.”
“I do not care.”
“Some may fall beyond time.”
“Then I will go beyond time.”
“Some may become new stars.”
“I will search every one.”
“Damian.”
“You do not get to make me love you and then disappear.”
The world went still.
Even the Sovereign seemed to pause.
You stared at him.
The silver light of your body flickered violently.
“You love me?”
Damian’s face burned. “This is not the appropriate moment.”
“You love me.”
“I will rescind the statement if you continue behaving foolishly.”
“You cannot rescind love.”
“I can certainly rescind admitting it.”
The Sovereign lunged.
You turned. With one raised hand, you sealed the creature inside a sphere no larger than a pearl.
The forest returned to silence.
Damian stared at the tiny sphere floating above your palm. “You said you could not kill it.”
“I did not.”
“What did you do?”
“I placed it inside a harmless pocket reality where it will experience the combined internal monologues of every person who has ever lived.”
Damian considered this. “That seems cruel.”
“It will be released once it learns empathy.”
“So never.”
“Possibly never.”
You closed your fingers around the sphere.
It vanished.
Then your knees gave way.
Damian caught you.
The forest dissolved.
Damian woke in the Watchtower infirmary.
His father sat beside the bed. He looked terrible.
Damian pushed himself upright. “Where are they?”
Bruce placed one hand against his shoulder. “Damian.”
“Where?”
“They’re alive.”
Air returned to Damian’s lungs.
Bruce’s eyes softened.
“They’re stable,” he continued. “As stable as anyone can determine. Their physical form was damaged during the separation process.”
“I need to see them.”
“You suffered a significant psychic attack.”
“I am aware.”
“You need rest.”
“I will rest in their room.”
“Damian.”
“Father.”
Bruce stared at him. Damian stared back.
Bruce sighed.
Some battles were decided by experience. Others were decided by having the more stubborn son.
You were lying beneath enough monitoring equipment to track the vital signs of an entire army.
None of it seemed particularly useful. Your heartbeat changed every few seconds. Sometimes it stopped entirely. Your body temperature moved between freezing and fever-hot. The machine attempting to measure your brain activity had begun displaying weather forecasts for planets that did not exist.
Damian sat beside you.
Your face appeared peaceful. Too peaceful.
He hated it.
“I know you can hear me,” he said.
Nothing happened.
“You are attention-seeking.”
The lights flickered.
Damian leaned forward. “If you wished for flowers, you could have asked.”
A vase appeared beside the bed. It contained black roses with silver thorns.
Damian’s chest tightened. “You are awake.”
Your eyes remained closed.
“You are avoiding me.”
A small line appeared between your brows.
“You heard what I said.”
Your eyes opened.
The universe moved inside them.
“Which part?” you asked weakly.
Damian’s face heated. “Do not test me.”
“You said many things.”
“You remember them.”
“I sustained extensive damage.”
“You imprisoned a cosmic predator inside the collective annoyance of all sentient life.”
“It seemed appropriate.”
“You remember.”
Your gaze slid away.
Damian stared at you. You, who had stood before gods and armies without flinching, suddenly seemed deeply interested in the infirmary ceiling.
“I did not expect you to say it,” you murmured.
“I had not intended to.”
“That is somewhat less romantic.”
“You were disintegrating.”
“I was reorganising.”
“You were dying.”
“Only in certain interpretations.”
Damian took your hand. Your fingers were cool.
“You are impossible,” he said.
“I have been described as inevitable.”
“That is worse.”
“I know.”
He traced his thumb across your knuckles. “You frightened me.”
Your expression changed immediately. “I am sorry.”
“I do not require an apology.”
“I frightened you.”
“And I remained.”
You looked at him.
Damian brought your hand to his mouth, pressing his lips against your knuckles.
The monitors began producing sparks.
He glanced at them.
You smiled sheepishly. “Apologies.”
“Control yourself.”
“You kissed me.”
“I kissed your hand.”
“You have never done that before.”
“You nearly ceased existing.”
“Would you do it again if I remained intact?”
“Perhaps.”
Your eyes brightened. “Would you consider kissing somewhere else?”
Damian’s eyebrows rose.
You looked horrified by your own words. “I meant my face.”
“I assumed.”
“Not that I would object to—”
“Stop speaking.”
You immediately closed your mouth.
Damian leaned closer.
For all your power, you trembled.
That endeared you to him more than he could express. You could tear holes through dimensions. You could transform armies into chandeliers. You could hold collapsing stars between your hands.
Yet you were nervous because Damian Wayne might kiss you.
He cupped your jaw.
“Before you become alarmed,” he murmured, “I would like to make it explicitly clear that I am not attempting to kill you.”
Your mouth fell open.
Damian kissed you before you could respond.
For one perfect moment, nothing happened.
Then every flower in the Watchtower bloomed at once. The station’s artificial gravity failed. Somewhere in the distance, Green Lantern shouted.
Damian floated several inches above the floor, still holding your face between his hands.
You pulled back, eyes wide. “I lost focus.”
“I noticed.”
“I can fix it.”
“Do so.”
Gravity returned.
Damian landed neatly.
A tray crashed in the corridor.
You covered your face. “This is humiliating.”
“You brought the entire Watchtower to a halt by being kissed.”
“I have never been kissed before.”
Damian stilled. “You have existed since before the first stars.”
“I have been busy.”
His mouth curved.
You peeked at him through your fingers. “You are amused.”
“Very.”
“Is that bad?”
Damian lowered your hands. “No.”
You searched his face. “You find me strange.”
“Yes.”
“Frightening.”
“Occasionally.”
“Tone-deaf.”
“Constantly.”
Your mouth twisted.
Damian kissed the corner of it.
“And,” he added, “endearing.”
The room brightened. Not the electrical lights. The world itself seemed to soften around you, colours becoming warmer, shadows gentler.
“You find me endearing,” you repeated.
“Do not force me to say it twice.”
“I would never force you to do anything.”
“I know.”
There it was again.
Those two words.
I know.
Trust given without fear.
Your eyes filled with something endless and tender.
“I love you,” you said.
Damian inhaled.
“You need not say it in return,” you continued quickly. “I understand that mortal courtship traditions contain complicated stages. There may be rituals. Gifts. Battles against rival suitors. The kidnapping of relatives.”
“There will be no kidnapping.”
“Of course. Because I am not evil.”
Damian closed his eyes.
You looked wounded.
He laughed.
Not quietly this time. Not hidden behind a hand or turned shoulder.
The sound filled the infirmary, bright and helpless.
You stared at him in awe.
Damian pressed his forehead against yours, still laughing as you began to smile.
“I love you,” he said.
The Watchtower trembled.
You winced. “Sorry.”
Three weeks later, Damian took you on what you insisted on calling a strategic interpersonal meeting.
“It is a date,” he said.
The two of you were walking through Gotham Botanical Gardens after closing hours. Damian had obtained permission. You had offered to temporarily remove every other person from the city.
He had refused.
“A date implies romantic intentions,” you said.
“Yes.”
“And the possibility of physical affection.”
“Yes.”
“And potentially a formal union if compatibility is established.”
Damian stopped.
You stopped beside him.
“Do not propose to me on our first date.”
“I was not proposing.”
“You created a ring.”
You looked down.
A ring had appeared around Damian’s finger. It was made from dark metal, set with a stone containing a tiny rotating galaxy.
You stared at it.
“I did not do that intentionally.”
Damian examined the ring. “Your subconscious is proposing.”
“It is enthusiastic.”
“I can see that.”
“I will remove it.”
Damian curled his hand into a fist. “No.”
Your eyes widened.
“I will keep it,” he said. “For now.”
The garden lamps flickered. Flowers unfolded along the path despite the midnight hour.
You walked beside him in silence for several moments.
Then you said, “I should clarify that the ring does not contain surveillance magic.”
“Good.”
“It does not bind your soul to mine.”
“Excellent.”
“It does not mark you as my property to predatory entities.”
Damian looked at you. You smiled nervously.
“Does it do anything?”
“It will protect you from most forms of psychic intrusion, temporal displacement, molecular disintegration, possession, accidental dimensional exile, and moderate curses.”
“Moderate?”
“Powerful curses require the matching bracelet.”
“Of course they do.”
The bracelet appeared around his wrist.
Damian sighed.
You reached toward him, then paused. “May I hold your hand?”
He looked at you.
The question still came carefully. Despite all your power, despite knowing he loved you, you asked.
Always.
Damian threaded his fingers through yours. “Yes.”
You continued through the garden together.
Above you, Gotham’s clouds parted to reveal a sky full of impossible stars.
Damian glanced upward. “You are doing that.”
“I thought the natural sky lacked drama.”
“It is sufficient without your interference.”
The additional stars vanished. The ordinary night returned.
After a moment, Damian squeezed your hand. “You may restore some of them.”
The sky burst into colour.
Damian rolled his eyes.
You smiled.
Anyone watching might have found the sight alarming: Gotham’s most severe vigilante walking hand in hand with a being capable of remaking creation, both surrounded by flowers blooming out of season.
Perhaps you were dangerous. Damian had never doubted that. You were vain without realising it, dramatic by accident, catastrophically bad at reassurance, and powerful enough to make gods reconsider their life choices.
You also cried during animated films. You carried injured insects out of buildings. You remembered everyone’s preferred tea. You once paused a battle because you noticed Damian had skipped lunch. You loved mortals despite knowing you would outlive them. You chose restraint even when destruction would have been easier.
You had been feared for so long that you announced your goodness before anyone could accuse you of its absence.
Damian understood that. He had spent much of his own life insisting he had changed before anyone believed him. Sometimes the truth sounded most suspicious when spoken by someone desperate to be trusted.
You rested your head against his shoulder as you walked.
“I am very pleased,” you said.
“With the date?”
“With you.”
Damian looked ahead to hide his expression. “You should be.”
“I am also pleased that I resisted the urge to eliminate all potential romantic competition.”
Damian stopped walking.
You stopped with him.
A pigeon landed on a nearby statue.
You glanced toward it. Damian stared at you.
“That was a joke,” you said. He narrowed his eyes. “I have been practising.”
“A joke.”
“Yes.”
“You have not eliminated anyone.”
“No.”
“Or imprisoned them.”
“No.”
“Transformed them.”
“Certainly not.”
“Married them against their will.”
“That only happened once.”
Damian’s stare sharpened.
You lifted both hands. “Not evil.”
The pigeon cooed.
Damian exhaled through his nose. Then he pulled you closer by the front of your coat and kissed you beneath a sky you had rearranged solely because you thought he deserved prettier stars.
You melted against him.
The garden lifted three feet into the air.
Neither of you noticed for several minutes.
When the League questioned you about it later, you promised that the levitation had been entirely harmless.
Hey girl I love your workkk like LOVE IT and can I ask another Nicole/ Jecka like reader but like more… cannon accurate? Like don’t get me wrong I LOVE the independent reader but if you play the game you know that reader would rather sell crack then get a job on a dinner lol and they would more then gladly accept Damian’s money, hell, shamelessly ask for more, or go and try to blackmail Bruce with what they think faux information (him being Batman) only to be right at the end and then being like… oh shit. We can make a bank out of this. Like those girls would be jorking (badly mind you) for a villain if the pays good enough lol like those girls are UNHINGED. And while I do adore that fic you did it’s a bit OoC. Please please do not take this badly. I’m being genuine when I say i love your fics.
Okay I am CACKLING because you are so right and I love you for this correction. Nicole/Jeka coded reader is a completely different beast and I was writing her too soft.
Net Positive
navigation , dc navigation
requests are open
dividers by @cafekitsune
You meet Damian Wayne because he throws a birdarang at someone two feet from your head, and you drop your groceries.
Specifically, you drop the eggs.
Six dollars and forty cents, gone. Splattered on the Crime Alley pavement like a tiny yellow tragedy.
The guy he was aiming at — some low-level something, you don't ask questions in this neighborhood, it's a survival trait — runs. Damian lands from wherever he came from with the particular energy of a very small person who has been trained to kill since before he could read, looks at the egg situation, and then looks at you.
"You were not supposed to be there," he says.
"I live here," you say.
"Crime Alley is an active patrol zone."
"Crime Alley is where I buy my groceries because the bodega on Fifth doesn't have the good hot sauce." You look at the eggs. You look at him. "That's six forty."
He stares at you.
"My eggs," you clarify. "You owe me six forty. And actually, the bag ripped when I dropped it, so let's call it an even ten because there was bread in there too, and now it's on the ground."
Damian Wayne, aged seventeen, heir to one of the largest fortunes in the continental United States, looks at you for a long moment with an expression you will come to recognize as his recalibrating face.
He reaches into his utility belt.
He produces a hundred-dollar bill.
You take it immediately.
"Keep the change," he says, like he's read that line somewhere and is trying it out.
"Obviously," you say, already picking up the non-destroyed groceries. "Same time next week if you want to make it a regular thing."
You walk home.
Behind you, you are almost certain Robin is standing in the middle of Crime Alley, having some kind of experience.
He comes back.
Not next week — three days later, which you note but don't comment on. He lands on your fire escape at ten PM like this is a normal thing people do, and you open the window because your apartment has no air conditioning and it's August and the window was already open.
"You live here alone," he says, looking at the apartment with the expression of someone who has never seen water damage before.
"Congratulations on your detective skills."
"It's not safe."
"Yeah, Crime Alley's rough. I've noticed." You're making ramen because it's Tuesday and Tuesday is ramen night, not because you can't afford other things, mostly, but because you like ramen. "Did you come back to tell me that, or did you want something?"
He looks at you.
"I don't want anything," he says, in the tone of someone who wants something.
"Okay." You stir the ramen. "Fire escape's yours then."
He stays for two hours.
You don't ask him to leave because, honestly, the company is fine, and he's seventeen and clearly has some kind of rich kid socialization issue, and also at one point he fixes the latch on your window that's been broken since March, and you weren't going to turn down free labor.
He leaves at midnight.
He comes back on Thursday.
The blackmail attempt happens at the three-month mark.
In your defense, you'd been putting pieces together for a while. The Robin visits. The Wayne name. The way Damian moved, the way he talked about his family, the very specific comment he'd made once about his father's crusade, like it was a real thing and not a metaphor.
You'd done some research.
Publicly available research. You hadn't hacked anything. Technically.
You present your findings on a Tuesday over ramen because the timing feels right.
"I know your dad is Batman," you say.
Damian's chopsticks stop moving.
"That's a significant accusation," he says, carefully.
"I have a whole thing." You gesture at the folder on the table. "Timeline of Batman sightings versus Wayne family public appearances. Photo analysis — your dad's jaw is very distinctive; someone should tell him about that. Plus, you literally showed up here in a Robin costume, and your last name is Wayne, so."
Damian looks at the folder.
He looks at you.
"What do you want?" he says, flatly.
And here is where a normal person might say nothing, I just wanted you to know that I know, we can trust each other now, something emotionally intelligent and relationship-forward.
"Forty thousand dollars," you say.
Damian blinks.
"That's — "
"I've done the math. That covers my rent for two years, gets me out of this apartment, pays off my remaining debt, and leaves me a cushion." You fold your hands on the table. "I'm not greedy. I'm not asking for a million. Forty thousand is reasonable."
"You're blackmailing me," Damian says, slowly, like he's testing the word.
"I'm presenting you with a mutually beneficial arrangement. I keep your family secret. You compensate me for the service."
"That's blackmail."
"It's a service fee."
He stares at you.
You wait.
Damian Wayne, who has been trained by the League of Assassins and the Batman, and arguably Alfred Pennyworth, who is scarier than both, looks at you across a bowl of ramen in a Crime Alley apartment with water damage on the ceiling and says, slowly:
"You're serious."
"As a heart attack."
"You could be arrested."
"For what, having a folder? This is all public information." You tap it. "I haven't hacked anything. I've done journalism."
"This is not journalism."
"It's investigative."
Another silence.
"I need to make a call," Damian says.
Bruce Wayne arrives at your apartment at eleven-thirty PM in civilian clothes with the particular energy of a man who has heard something unbelievable and come to assess it personally.
He looks at you.
He looks at the folder on the table.
He looks at Damian, who is sitting on your couch, eating the rest of your ramen with the expression of someone who has decided this is no longer his problem.
"You," Bruce Wayne says to you, "put together a dossier on my identity from public information."
"Folder," you correct. "Dossier sounds like I work for someone. I'm freelance."
"And you attempted to blackmail my son."
"Attempted implies failure. I'm still at the table."
Bruce Wayne looks at you for a very long time with an expression you genuinely cannot read, which doesn't happen to you often and is mildly alarming.
Then he pulls out a chair and sits down.
"Walk me through the timeline analysis," he says.
"...Sorry?"
"The sighting timeline." He nods at the folder. "Walk me through it. I want to know where the gaps are."
You stare at him.
Damian, from the couch, says, "I told you" to no one in particular.
You walk him through it.
Bruce Wayne listens. He asks three questions, all of them specific, all of them smart. At one point, he takes out a pen and makes a note, which means you've correctly identified an actual pattern gap in their public appearance management, and Bruce Wayne is taking notes from your ramen table research.
"The charity gala cross-reference is good," he says, almost to himself. "We've been sloppy about the October window."
"November too," you say. "There's a cluster."
"Mm." He looks up. "You have good instincts."
"I know."
"The blackmail attempt was stupid."
"The blackmail attempt was financially motivated, and I stand by the reasoning even if the execution needed work."
Bruce Wayne almost smiles. It's very brief. You clock it, though.
"Here's what I'm going to do," he says. "I'm going to write you a check."
You sit up straighter.
"Not forty thousand," he says.
You sit back down.
"Sixty," he says. "Because the November cluster is genuinely concerning and you found it from a Crime Alley apartment with no resources, which means you're either very good or we're very bad, and I prefer to believe the former." He looks at you steadily. "In exchange, the folder goes away, you sign an NDA, and you never do this again."
"Define this."
"Blackmail. My family specifically."
"What about consulting?" you say.
A pause.
"What?"
"If I found this much from public information in three months," you say, "imagine what I could find if I was actually trying. For you. Paid." You look at him. "I'm just saying there's a version of this conversation where you walk away with an asset instead of just a liability management situation."
Bruce Wayne looks at you.
Damian, from the couch, says "she has a point" in a tone that implies he's been thinking this for a while.
"You tried to blackmail me," Bruce says.
"And now I'm pitching you. It's called a pivot."
The silence stretches.
"The NDA covers everything," Bruce says finally. "What you know, what you find, what you're paid. Everything."
"Understood."
"You report to Alfred for administrative matters. To me for assignments."
"What about Damian?"
They both look at you.
"He's here every Tuesday and Thursday," you say. "That's just a fact we should probably acknowledge."
Damian looks at the ceiling.
Bruce looks at Damian.
"Alfred will contact you tomorrow," Bruce says, standing. He picks up the folder. "This comes with me."
"I made copies," you say.
"I assumed." He tucks it under his arm. "Burn them."
"After the check clears."
He stops.
Turns.
Looks at you with the Batman face, which he is technically not wearing but is absolutely making.
"After the check clears," you say again, pleasantly.
Bruce Wayne leaves your apartment.
Damian stands up, puts the empty ramen bowl in your sink, and says: "I told him you'd do that."
"Told him I'd do what?"
"Hold the copies over him. He thought I was underestimating you." He picks up his helmet. "I wasn't."
"That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
"It's a statement of fact."
"Still counts."
He leaves through the fire escape.
You sit at your ramen table in your Crime Alley apartment and look at the space where Bruce Wayne just was.
Sixty thousand dollars, you think.
Plus a salary, presumably.
You pick up your phone.
The check clears on Thursday.
You burn the copies on Friday.
You keep one. Obviously. But that's just good practice and also insurance, and also you're not entirely sure you trust a billionaire vigilante whose son you technically blackmailed, so.
It lives in a safety deposit box at a bank that is not in Gotham.
Just in case.
Alfred calls Saturday morning at nine sharp, which tells you something about Alfred before you've even met him.
"Miss," he says, "I understand we'll be working together."
"Looks like it."
"I've prepared the necessary paperwork. There are a few items I'd like to discuss regarding professional conduct expectations." A pause, perfectly timed. "And I understand you're in the market for a new apartment."
You sit up. "I am."
"I've taken the liberty of identifying several options in a slightly less — " another pause, gracious this time — "dynamic neighborhood. If you'd like to review them."
"Alfred," you say.
"Yes?"
"I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
"Indeed," Alfred says, with the warmth of someone who has decided something. "I rather think it might be."
Three months later, Damian is on your new couch — nicer building, no water damage, the good hot sauce from the bodega on Fifth is a twenty-minute walk but worth it — and you're showing him what you've found on an Intergang cell that Bruce had assigned you last week.
"This connection is circumstantial," he says, pointing at your laptop screen.
"It's not circumstantial, it's triangulated."
"Those are different things."
"They can be both."
"They — " He stops. "No. They cannot be both."
"I'm going to need you to trust my process."
"Your process found my father's identity from a ramen table."
"And got me sixty thousand dollars, so."
He makes the face. The recalibrating face. You know all his faces now.
"The connection is interesting," he allows, which, from Damian Wayne, is basically a standing ovation.
"Thank you."
"Don't be smug."
"I'm always smug when I'm right."
"You're always smug."
"I'm right a lot."
He looks at the screen. At your notes. At the work, which is good, genuinely good, the kind of work that has made Bruce Wayne say hm and good catch twice in the past month, which Alfred has informed you is high praise.
"You're useful," Damian says.
"To the Wayne family crime-fighting operation."
"Yes."
"For a salary."
"Obviously."
"This is the best job I've ever had," you say.
"You tried to blackmail us into giving it to you."
"And it worked." You pick up your coffee. "That's just good initiative."
Damian is quiet for a moment.
"Don't tell anyone how you got this position," he says.
"I'll tell anyone who pays me more to keep quiet about it."
"That's — that's blackmail again — "
"It's a service fee." You smile at him. "You should know the difference by now."
He steals your coffee.
You let him, because you've found, over time, that Damian Wayne's version of you're my favorite person in a given room is expressed entirely through property theft and mild insults, and you have apparently become fluent in it without meaning to.
Outside, Gotham does what Gotham does.
Inside, you find a second Intergang connection that isn't circumstantial or triangulated, but is both, and send it to Bruce with a note that says you're welcome before he's even asked.
He sends back: good work.
You send back: annual review is next month. Just a reminder.
xxviii. i never know what to do with my hands at parties
summary: it was supposed to be a meet cute. it was supposed to be easy. it was supposed to be Kori. it was supposed to, supposedtosupposedtosupposedto- you're beautiful. everyone always tells Dick not to stare directly at the sun. it's too bad he can't stop himself.
Wally lets out the loudest ‘hell yeah’ you have ever heard the second he sees you with Dick in the library, long after Dick had finished his meeting with Audra and James.
Dick groans, closing his eyes as his best friend bounds over to the table, but nothing hides the smile on his face. You laugh, hiding your own smile behind your palm before raising your finger to poke Dick’s pale pink cheeks.
“I knew this was coming.” Wally says excitedly when he finally reaches the table. “I knew it!”
Dick’s hand shoots out, smushing it into Wally’s cheek to get him to shut up, forcing him down into the seat next to him. “Oh my god, bro, you’re so loud.”
“I can’t help it!” Wally’s enthusiasm slowly rubs off on Dick, their laughter intermingling with one another. “I’ve been watching your lovesick ass for months–”
“Alright, alright.” Dick hastily interrupts him, casting a glance towards your surprised expression. “You need to shut up before you embarrass me even more.”
You lean into him, his hands automatically lifting your legs to let you rest them on his thighs. “So,” you wiggle your eyebrows, “months, huh?”
Dick twists his head away from you, suddenly interested in the art on the library wall. “I have no idea what he’s talking about.”
“You had a crush on me.” You sing, poking his cheek again. “You thought I was super cute and pretty, and you were all like ‘oh my gosh, i like her’”
Dick stifles his smile, the tips of his ears turning a dark red. He lets out a dramatic sigh, throwing his head back before he rolls his head over to peek at you. “You’re getting a big head right now, aren’t you?” He squints his eyes.
You tilt your head to bump your forehead against him. “If I had a big head, I bet you’d still have that super debilitating huge crush on me.”
He pauses for a moment, blue eyes seemingly swallow you whole before his lips stretch, soft and slow across his face, eyes hazy. “Yeah.” He whispers.
You swallow, your chest very warm.
“I’d still have that crush on you.” Dick finishes his sentence, his hand rubbing small circles on your knee.
From next to Dick, Wally pretends to throw up. You catch the redhead’s green eyes and pull back, smiling shyly.
The chair next to you scrapes on the library floor.
“Oh?” Roy’s teasing voice floats through the air to your ears as you turn around, the boy pulling out the chair next to you “Looks like Dick finally grew some balls?”
You turn to look at him over your shoulder. “I actually made the first move.”
Dick yelps, hurriedly covering your mouth with his hand. “That’s not– I thought we weren’t going to tell anyone about it!”
You laugh, sticking your tongue out to lick his palm. Donna appears from behind you with Kori in tow, the two of them pulling out the empty chairs across from you and Dick.
“What’s this I hear about Dick not making the first move?” Donna smiles teasingly, slipping her bag off her shoulder. She looks towards you, shaking her head with a smile on her face. “Always taking the lead, aren’t you?”
“Is that how you see me?” Dick asks Donna, who only winks and sits down.
Kori watches the both of you, a strained smile on her face as she pulls a chair out in between Wally and Donna. Her eyes dip to the hand Dick was using to brush away a strand of hair from your face and her chest tightens involuntarily.
She coughs. “I didn’t know Dick had a shy side– I mean, he made the first move with me.”
You blink. Dick goes very, very still, his eyes darting to Kori. His hand tightens over yours on his knee, hidden beneath the table, suddenly very scared of how you might react.
Wally shifts uncomfortably in his chair, holding his breath. Donna glances at Kori, an eyebrow raised but Kori continues to stare down at the table, her smile twitching from the effort. Roy crosses his arms, leaning back in his chair, his lips set in a thin line.
The entire table holds their breath.
For a second, you don’t move a muscle, frozen in place – and then you relax, shrugging as you reach for the strawberry lemonade refresher Dick had bought for you. “Well, we all know I’m the more assertive one in any relationship anyways.”
Dick’s shoulders droop slightly, his thumb making concentric circles on your knee again. Wally exhales loudly, exchanging a glance with Roy while Donna laughs along, careful to keep her voice light.
Kori finally looks up from the table, meeting your eyes.
You tilt your head, eyes soft at the corner with a small smile tugging at your lips. You carefully slide your drink towards her, the plastic cup leaving droplets of water in its wake. “Want some? It’s the strawberry lemonade drink from the cafe by McCombs Hall.”
Kori forces herself to nod, reaching for the drink and you finally look away, turning to grin at something Dick says.
She stares at her reflection in the darkened screen of her open laptop, her hand holding on to the cup you had given her, the sound of your voice floating through the peaceful library air and Dick’s laughter mixing with yours.
Her fingers tighten around the sweating plastic cup when she hears the way Dick holds your name in his mouth, the sweetness of the strawberry lemonade reminding her of afternoons that used to be uncomplicated.
She doesn’t look at Dick, but she doesn’t need to – some things have a way of staying with you, whether you ask them to or not.
x.
Dick hates the hallway outside your apartment door, specifically the space right outside your door.
In other words, he doesn’t want you to leave.
You hold your hands out expectantly, pink cat-eye nails shining underneath the fluorescent hallway lights. “My bag, please.”
Dick scrunches his nose, his hand tightening on the brown leather straps digging into his shoulder. “And if I said no?”
“You want to get my degree for me?” You say jokingly, taking a step forward to hook your finger into his belt loop, tugging him forward. He lets himself get pulled in, your hips fitting snugly against his.
He shakes his head, a smile on his face.
You narrow your eyes playfully. “You just want to spend more time with me, don’t you?”
Dick rolls his eyes, falling forward to rest his head on your shoulder. “Oh no, you caught me.”
“You are so dramatic.” You giggle, tangling your fingers with the soft hairs at the base of his neck. You gently tug, pulling his head up until he meets your gaze. “Do you want to just come inside? We’ll have dinner together?”
Dick stares up at you through his lashes, blinking slowly before exhaling, One hand lets go from where he’s gripping onto your handbag straps to wrap around your waist. “Can I?” He whispers, fingers tightening on your waist slightly. “Please?”
“Of course you can, handsome.”
The words slide out of your mouth so easily, it makes his chest ache – like he was always going to be a part of your life.
He looks away, cheeks warm as he straightens. “Then inside we go.”
You pinch his cheek lightly before turning the doorknob, the two of you slowly falling inside the warmth of your cozy apartment.
x.
The light of your lamp shines bright in the dim apartment, the soft golden glow making his shadow dance along the walls.
Dick folds his legs underneath him, carefully raising a hand to rest on the leg that you’ve draped over his thighs, your back leaning against the armrest of the couch. The TV in front of you flickers as a re-run of ‘Roman Holiday’ ’ continues to play on the giant screen.
He takes a breath, his chest falling as he exhales slowly.
You glance up.
“Are you nervous?”
He looks over towards you, hands clammy. “What? Why would I be nervous?”
You sit up, untangling your legs from his. “You tell me.” You slide your hand across his shirt, right above where his heart lay before tapping twice above it. His pulse jumps with every touch. You tilt your head, leaning forward to rest your chin on his shoulder. “Why are you so jumpy?”
“Did something happen?”
He shakes his head. “No, nothing at all.” Dick’s eyes dip to the curve of your lips before he clears his throat again, hurriedly looking away. “Nothing at all.”
You frown. “Clearly not.” You turn him to face you properly and press your palm flatter against your chest. “Your heart is beating like crazy and you can’t meet my eyes– oh.”
You pause, suddenly understanding what he’s been looking at. You pull your hand away, a sly smile on your lips. You raise an eyebrow, leaning in close, “You want to kiss?”
Dick scoffs, doing his best to keep his gaze steady on the TV screen like Audrey Hepburn was the most interesting thing in the world. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Are you sure?” You shuffle closer, practically in his lap now. Dick wiggles his arm out, wrapping it around your waist to steady you. His thumb brushes soft against the sliver of skin as your shirt rides up slightly.
“C’mon Dickie.” Your eyes glance down to his lips before flicking back up to his eyes. Dick exhales slowly, keeping his gaze trained on the TV despite seeing nothing.
You grin teasingly, your cheeks aching from how badly you wanted to laugh. “Baby.”
Dick finally drops his gaze on you, blue eyes darting across your face as he watches your lashes brush across the top of your cheeks every time you blink. He flexes his hand around your waist once before relaxing, pulling you in closer.
“You’re being unfair.” He whispers, resting his forehead against yours.
“How am I being unfair?” Your breath caresses his mouth, the skin of his lips tingling. You hum softly, your hand reaching up to tangle themselves in his shirt. “I’m just asking if you want to kiss.”
You look up at him through your lashes. “I don’t know if you can tell, but I’d really liked to be kissed by my boyfriend.”
He can’t hold back his smile. “You know exactly what you’re doing to me.”
“No I don’t.” You shake your head. “Why don’t you show me?”
Dick doesn’t move.
The sounds of the Roman Holiday continue to play around the two of you, wrapping you in your own little bubble, He looks at you – really looks – committing every little inhale you took, the warmth of your skin against the palm of his hand and the smell of your perfume intoxicating him, to memory.
Like he was afraid you would disappear if he blinked.
Dick gives you the tiniest nod, his shoulders drooping.
Your eyes flutter shut.
You lean in closer, slow and unhurried, waiting. Dick’s eyes trace over the curve of your lip once more before he meets you halfway, his lips soft against yours before he curls his arm tighter around your waist, pressing harder. You sigh into the kiss, eagerly pulling him in. The bell on your bracelet rings softly, a low chime that reverberates in his chest, when you clutch his shirt a little tighter.
You hum against his lips before pulling apart, gently biting down on his bottom lip before letting go.
Dick shudders against you, his eyes fluttering open.
“Oh.” He murmurs, mostly to himself.
You smile, brushing your nose against his. “Am I that good of a kisser?”
A quiet laugh slips out of him and he nods. “Yeah. Really, really, really good. The best I’ve ever had.”
“Oh?” You raise an eyebrow. “So you’ve kissed other girls?”
“Oh hush.”
Dick dips his head again, pressing another kiss to your lips, slower this time. There’s no stopping the fireworks that explode under his eyelids with every touch.
“Seriously,” Dick whispers when he finally pulls away, “the best I ever will have.”
summary: you're convinced your betrothed, damian wayne, despises or at most—tolerates you for the sake of his duty. it takes only one moron to try and steal your hand to prove that damian takes the promise of being your future husband as a role he will never let anyone else fulfill.
pairing: damian wayne x fem! reader
content: arranged marriage, protective and jealous damian!
"There you are, Beloved."
A trying suitor's expression falters at the sight of Damian, tall and imposing, wrapping his arm around your waist as if it had always belonged there.
"I was worried I had lost you." Damian murmurs aloud, though his gaze never leaves the suitor, sharpened into a knowing taunt.
It doesn't take long, it never does. Like a scurrying rat, he was gone in the blink of an eye.
"There's no need to call me that." Your plastered smile doesn't falter when your hand graces Damian's arm, leaning into his ear. To the other guests, it merely seems as if you were a fiancée whispering sweet nothings to your lover. "Your patronizing tone is more than enough to send them running away."
Damian's lips finally form its familiar, scathing smirk. "Would you rather I say it outright that you are to be my wife? I assume you'll find that more displeasing."
He is right. It infuriated you that he knew where to push your buttons.
"To-be." You remind him. "I wouldn't get so comfortable with addressing me as your wife so soon."
"Ah." He drawls. "Shame. I was ecstatic at the thought of rifling the crowd."
Rifling was an understatement. Despite his cold demeanour, Damian was a fan of dramatics. After all, the first time you had met your betrothed, he nearly ended your life.
You still remember your first glance of his forest green eyes, when he had pinned you down with a blade to the throat, believing you were an outsider to his territory. If the apprehending voice of Damian's grandfather had been a second later, he wouldn't have had a fiancée and you wouldn't have lived to see your seventh birthday.
His gaze when he had looked down at you all those years ago clings like an aching, never healing wound. Disappointment. He must've expected someone greater, who rivalled him in his physical prowess and intelligence. Instead, he had you pinned to the ground, shame colouring your features that silently screamed burden.
The worst part was that it was the complete opposite for you— because you admired him greatly. It didn't matter which version of him. Damian Al Ghul, who sharpened himself into a living weapon—a cold-blooded ruler, before he became the Bat's new protege. Damian Wayne, who somehow eased his way into less begrudging smiles, who fails to notice his pets' fur still clinging to the cuffs of his sleeves, who makes ill-timed jokes from his catalogue stolen from his older siblings.
That rare warmth he found here in Gotham hasn't and never will be extended to you. Still, you refuse to remain a burden, not to him.
You play your part as a useful shield in the one arena Damian still struggles to conquer—the social world. Despite his striking looks and quick wit, Damian's always held a shared disinterest in the politics of social snakes who mingled solely for their own selfish gains.
Maybe it was a guilty pleasure. For one single night, Damian was your betrothed, and you were his. Even if his fake smiles were plastered on too tight, or the brush of his fingers over yours set the scene of young lovers much too convincingly, you could let your mind rest and rely on his presence just this once.
His hand extends, placed at the small of your back as he leads you through the room to somewhere less crowded. Unconsciously, he occasionally rubs his thumb in comforting circles, sending goosebumps down your skin. It's easy to smile and exchange repetitive niceties while Damian's gaze remains locked ahead of his path. The polite act engraved into your bones, functions as your greatest defence for the both of you, slithering your way through.
You had already memorised the layout of the room before even entering it, and you know he knows that. So, Damian's decision to keep his skin in contact with yours, guiding you, must be purely performative. Skin-ship to lure the wolves into falling for the bait, as you eye many envious onlookers distancing themselves from Damian at the unseemly sight of his arm wrapped around your frame.
"Have you chosen a city for your further education?" Damian murmurs into your ear.
You have. Though you could never predict his line of thinking that could’ve possessed him to show vague interest in your decision. This wasn’t the first time his impulsive questions took you off guard from the routine you’re used to.
Your gaze narrows on him, trying to find his reasoning. "How I take my coffee in the morning wasn't enthralling enough for you?"
"Is Gotham one of your options?" He asks briskly.
Ah. Your gaze drops to the swallow in his throat, the tension in his question. He must be hoping you'd say no. Lesser the chances to be stuck in a suffocating room with you, performing duties for a faceless audience.
"If I say it is?" You test.
His gaze flickers, surprise adorning his features. It wipes itself away as quickly as it comes, and he gives a brief, imperceptible nod. "There are adequate institutions in the city. I can provide recommendations."
You raise a brow. "Of course, a future doctor already providing unneeded advice."
His expression thickens. “You think my chosen field does not suit me."
It blurts out before you can stop it. "No, I think it does."
He pauses. You wince.
"You do?" He asks, almost disbelieving.
"Is it that hard to believe?" You mutter, eyes fleeting around for a much-needed drink.
"I only wish to understand your sudden agreement." He pushes, unsatisfied with your vague answer.
"Damian." You sigh. "Of course you'll be an amazing doctor."
He watches you, trying to detect any deceit. His immediate suspicion triggers your nerves. You may not be able to stand him, but that didn't mean you were blind to his abilities or the empathy he tries to hide behind his permanent frown.
If he hadn't held a semblance of a heart, he wouldn't be here plastering on a fake mask much to his displeasure so you wouldn't bear the night alone.
He wouldn't be out at ungodly hours, working himself to the bone to ensure that there was always a protector in the night, to save someone's life so they could make it home.
He wouldn't have signed up for the most brutal course at Gotham's top medical university despite already having an inhuman schedule.
"If I thought you lacked the heart to save others, I would've laughed at your decision to remain with your father in Gotham." You don't know why you feel this need to explain yourself. It hardly mattered if you understood his decision. He wasn't someone who needed the approval of others before making his own.
"Gotham has changed you." You answer. "For the better. If I had to put my bets on anyone to be the best doctor in this entire city, it'd be you."
If it had been anyone else other than you, maybe they wouldn't have caught the parting of his lips, the rare astonishment in his eyes. It's brief, but enough to tell you that you have spouted enough nonsense for it to feel as if you ripped open a gaping wound for him to spit at.
"I need a drink." You mutter. "I'll be right back."
Your quick escape seems to have finally sent the message for a much-needed break from his presence. Compared to other occasions, he was—you wouldn't use the word 'clingy', but he was certainly acting as a guard dog around you tonight. Then again, there were newcomers at this ball who seem to be unaware that you're Damian's betrothed, opting to try for your hand whenever he was separated from you for too long. It should be a relief that he bothered to protect you—but it distracted your senses, being around him for too long.
It still stings that even after all these years, your complete belief in him hasn't faded at all. Or maybe it was the fact that he didn't even try to consider the possibility of you having faith in him.
Your glued frown finally serves a purpose, contrary to your mother's nagging, as it scatters the fidgety chickens around you to distance themselves, along with their prodding questions. Downing a glass of wine, it doesn't do its mandatory job of easing the vulnerability still pattering around in your chest.
"If it isn't the future Mrs. Wayne!"
It seems one wolf in particular has blinded senses of walking into the wrong territory.
Joaquin Reanes. A filthy, money-laundering jerk who pawns off his father's money from an instable empire that takes advantage of its many debtors to use as animals for unpaid labour.
"Reanes." You greet shortly, not even bothering to turn your body fully to grace him with your attention.
"I'm not surprised Damian's left you all alone, miserable at the bar." He sneers. "He's never been good company."
Your brow lifts slightly. "And what gave you the impression that you could talk down on my fiancé in front of me?"
"Admit it." He mocks coldly. "He's never going to go through with the engagement. Your finger will remain bare for as long as he desires, and from the looks of it, he doesn't seem so keen on having you as his."
Your grip on your glass tightens. A flash of his corroded hair, dead from extensive bleach, drowned in wine, appears in your mind. You swirl your glass once, considering.
"I, on the other hand—" His teeth gleams with predatory intent. "—wouldn't mind taking second-hand scrapes. How would you like to be a Mrs. Reanes?"
Your laughter, cold and piercing, echoes through the air. His smug expression falters.
"Over my dead body." You hiss, slamming down your glass to push your palm roughly into his chest, sending him stumbling back. "Even if Damian hadn't been my betrothed, I would rather die alone than end up with the miserable likes of you."
His mask drops, revealing an ugly wrath that matched his true colours. His hand swipes a free glass from the bar on instinct, as if he's done it many times before.
In a blink, a cold sensation drenches your shoulders. Your gaze drops down, unable to hide your disgusted shock. The bastard purposely spilled wine on you.
Your expression darkens, meeting his narrowed eyes that were filled with wicked intent.
"Oh, my apologies." His act doesn't even come close to the twisted excitement in his gaze. "My hand slipped."
To cause this display in a Wayne charity ball is declaring war. You didn't wait for any passersby to notice—no, you're fully prepared to start this alone. You can already imagine his rotten, bleached head smashed with glass and wine to match the stain on your shoulder, ruining his gleeful expression—only for a firm hand to wrap around your waist, brushing your drenched shoulder against a broad chest.
"Reanes." Damian's greeting barely registers past the goosebumps that spread along your exposed skin when you dare a glimpse of his expression. His eyes, swallowed by his darkened pupils and narrowed into sharpened blades, is filled with such loathing that even you're rendered speechless.
"Wayne." The slimy git greets, carefully manoeuvring his glass to hide his mocking smirk. "I was just having a lovely talk with your wife."
"Oh, wait." His pretence is an awful act. "My mistake. She is merely your fiancée. Has been for awhile according to the papers."
Damian's grip unconsciously tightens around you, puling you back discretely, his shoulder shielding you from the creep's intentional gaze.
"Having doubts, Wayne?" He taunts. "I've made my own concerns clear, though she seems to have mistaken my empathy. I was only conveying that if you take any longer to put a ring on her, it might suggest to others that she's easy to snatch away."
The atmosphere freezes. To say you're astounded at his audacity, his utter foolishness to not be terrified of Damian's wrath isn't enough. You're sure this moron has a death wish.
"Your confidence in your lacklustre charm is worth applause, Reanes." Damian's tone is so unbearably cold that it even makes you flinch. "Let's see if your will to survive is stronger than your pride."
"Is that a threat?" Reanes muses, but you detect his hesitation. "As the next Wayne heir, I doubt your decision to threaten me, a useful business partner, is particularly clever."
"You mean your tycoon built off your father's buried scandals and contributions to corruption with the previous Minister?" Damian announces casually.
Several figures within hearing distance have shifted their heads towards Reanes at the sound of Damian's accusation. Finally, sweat has begun to pool at the rat's brows.
"How did—" Reanes's attempt at recovery is poor, his face seizing into an awful mess in realisation of his mistake of trying to find Damian's weakness. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Yes, of course." Damian's glare has narrowed into what could only be his hunting eyes. "Hypothetically, let's say you were to ever come near my betrothed again. I will have every piece of evidence—invoices, letters, emails, phone calls—all prepared into a file sent to the GCPD by tomorrow morning. How long do you think your family has before they come knocking down the doors?"
Reanes's face has lost all its colour.
"You're bluffing." He stammers.
It was satisfying to see all of his obnoxious confidence shrink into oblivion.
"You made an advance on my wife. You made a pathetic attempt of a threat against me." Damian hisses. "I haven't thought of all the possible ways to make you suffer just yet, Reanes. Stripping you of your stolen power is only the start."
"Unlike your father and his poor disguise of power as his empire collapses on itself." Damian taunts. "I protect what is mine."
Dread fills Reanes's expression. "Wayne, I misspoke. I won't so much as look at her."
Damian doesn't look close to satisfied. There's a want in his gaze, to torment him further. "Apologise to her."
Reanes grits his teeth, shame flooding his vile features. Forcing himself to look at your feet—not daring to meet your eyes, he spits it out. "I'm sorry."
"You are to never show yourself in front of us again." Damian declares. "Consider your offered partnership declined."
Reanes's entire expression sours, but one flick of Damian's brow has him scurrying off into the crowd, not even bothering with apologies when dirty looks are casted on him for pushing his way out to escape.
Damian's glare is still pinned into the crowd, and you sense his restrained bloodlust, something you haven't felt to this degree in years. The boy you once knew, who harnessed the blade better than anyone in its ability to end a beating pulse, has sprung out with his fangs and claws.
You unconsciously place one hand onto his chest in an attempt to soothe him, guide his attention back to his own body. He flinches, as if he had forgotten he was in the very room.
His nearly feral expression finds its way to the state of your ruined dress, the stain on your shoulder. He lets out a short breath, rationality kicking the gears in his mind. "We need to get you cleaned up."
You nod discreetly, at a loss for words as his hand comes up to grab yours, intertwining your fingers together and leading you away to a desolate hallway.
His fingers, covered in rough scars from countless battles, are caressing yours more gently than you could ever imagine. He's still refusing to look at you, gaze pinned straight ahead to the nearest bathroom.
Pushing open a door with a sudden force, you're dragged in with such a swift movement, that you barely have time to scout the room before your vision is blocked by his gaze pinning you down.
The barely visible green in his eyes are swarmed by his dilated pupils, filled with bitter rage and conflict. You've never seen him this—unguarded. The events that unfolded earlier seems to have affected him more than you expected.
His lips part to say something, but his eyes flicker down to your drenched shoulder, covered in red. His eyes narrow into a vicious glare, and he lifts himself off the door, pulling something out of his pocket.
A napkin. He must've snatched it on the way without you noticing.
There's not enough shock generated in your veins to truly comprehend what just happened. Damian just called you his wife. It still rings in your ears like some prank that's been orchestrated to throw you off your beliefs on everything you were convinced he's thought about you.
"Damian."
He's turned towards the sink, running the napkin over running water, but his entire posture is off. Tense. Coiled into restraint that's bound to burst.
"I am fine." Even as the uncomfortable feeling of dried wine lingers on your skin, there's something about Damian's change in demeanour that pushes you to reassure him. You're not used to being unable to read him. "There’s no point of putting on an act here. I am perfectly capable of cleaning up after myself."
"Is that what you think this is?" He spits out, still refusing to look at you.
You freeze. His tone, which has always carried the Al Ghul's familiar patronisation, has descended into a cold rage that's never been directed on you before.
He exhales slowly, his mask slipping back into place as he turns around, cloth in hand as he approaches you slowly. Stopping in front of you, his eyes are narrowed—and the light in them has nearly extinguished. Leaving behind a darker shade of green that consumes you whole.
"He was looking at you like you were a piece of meat to consume." His voice has dropped several octaves, and his gaze is unfocused—still trapped in his wrath. "As if you weren't mine."
Your eyes widen, steps instinctively moving backward but his arm wraps around your waist before you can retreat any further.
He doesn't make a single sound as his fingers wrapped around the napkin comes to touch your shoulder, stained with dried wine. His touch is frighteningly gentle as he wipes your stained skin, his lip curled in displeasure.
It's horrifyingly intimate, and the sound of your own quickened breathing is mortifying on your senses—knowing he could hear the effects of his strange, impulsive behaviour on you so clearly.
"I can do it myself." It sounds weak coming out from your mouth, even to your ears.
"Yes, you would like that, wouldn't you?" He mutters, sounding desolate. "Never letting yourself depend on me."
You scowl. "Why would I depend on you?"
"As much as you would like to pretend it doesn't matter." He grits. "I will be your husband. I will be the one who will lay down my promises and swear my life to yours. Now and even in death."
Leaning in, you feel his breath tingle against your skin as he whispers into your ear. "Do you think I am someone who takes my promises lightly?"
You resist a shudder, your lashes fluttering involuntarily. "No."
He scoffs. "Yet, you question my choice to defend you."
His breath lingers over your skin, right over the spot he's just cleansed free of wine, still cool to the touch from the dampness of the cloth. The tension is thick, making it difficult to think clearly when he's all but crowded the remaining space between the two of you.
He's only irritated that he's been indirectly insulted when Reanes pulled that ploy on you. You know how this will go. He'll wake from his delirious temper, fold back into the cold statue you know to be your betrothed, and remember the line that has been established.
He won't cross it. The boundary that's been drawn by you from the very beginning, in respect for whatever remaining autonomy the two of you had left in this arrangement. You're sure of your predictions... till you spot his expression. It seems that only now—the lack of distance has kicked in for him. The sudden stillness of his frame reveals something you never thought you'd see in your betrothed. Hesitation.
Nothing could've prepared you for what comes next. Damian's entire body leans in, caging you against the door. Tentatively, he places a soft, almost imperceptible kiss on your shoulder.
The oxygen in your lungs vanishes. Speechless, you can do nothing but stare at him with widened eyes, unable to comprehend what he just did. What it means.
"If you still have doubts about my loyalty." He mutters, pulling back just enough to meet your gaze, an unfamiliar intensity sealed in his. "Consider that my mark of a promise, which I intend to fulfil for the rest of my life. It was my mistake to make it seem as if you were easy to steal—because that will be impossible starting today."
This up close, you can count the freckles dotted under his eyes. He's always been dangerously tempting, but now, after he's defended your honour and stands before you looking the most wrecked you've ever seen him—you want to do something foolish.
Something you might regret but have been wanting to do from the moment he marked you as his.
It's instinctive, almost natural when your lips press against his. It's brief, slotted at the wrong angle from his height that automatically has you wincing. You're quick to pull away, unprepared and desperately trying to come up with some excuse to forget the ordeal ever happened, when you see it.
The crack in his mask, over the single action of your lips pressed against his, unravels a devotion you've never seen before. Laying right in front of you, bared in the open. That is not the look of a man who despises you. If anything, he looks as if his restraints have finally snapped.
That brief glimpse is all you see before he pulls you in. His arms cage your body, drawing you towards him until your bodies press together. With no sense of hesitation from earlier when he had marked your shoulder, he presses you back against the door, and kisses you.
No, how could you have hallucinated his hesitation? The way he kissed you now, mapping your lips with devout intention, it's as if he's been wanting—waiting to do it for ages.
You didn't realise it either—how starved you've been for him till this very moment. You had been so focused on how trapped you felt under the expectations of your family, the firm belief that he felt the same way, that you buried the attraction that ran deep in your veins.
You hated it, that this kiss was the admission of how he was your weakness in the first place. That he knew exactly how to unravel you, turn your world upside down with his decisive behaviour that commanded the entire room. That the match between the two of you pleased you more than it should, driving you to push him away because... only he could invoke such insanity from your shattered composure.
"A few minutes ago, you couldn't even stand me." You manage out against a brief pause for breath, pushing your palm against his chest.
He pulls away just enough to cast you a look of frustration.
"What I couldn't stand was my betrothed always attempting to push me away." He reveals. "Do you understand the frustration you've caused me?"
His gaze flickers between your bitten lips and your half-lidded gaze, hunger bleeding through his eyes. "You see all of me. Without even trying to, it was as if you were placed in my life to be my one, singular weakness. You already had me wrapped around your finger, drawing all of my attention—making it impossible to forget you even for a moment."
"My wife." He says it slowly, as if savouring it. "It is only because of you, that it feels as if I've been waiting my whole life to say those words. So, forgive me, for finding it difficult to restrain my displeasure when the woman of my devotion acts as if she would rather be paired with any other man than me."
Your brows furrow together at his words. "Why would I want to be paired with anyone else?"
His gaze locked onto you, narrows. "You claimed our match was a disaster waiting to happen."
"Yes." Averting your gaze, your admission comes out frail. "...Because I was compromised from the beginning. Even before our families put us together, I admired you. When my personal feelings got involved, the arrangement felt like a punishment."
"To be paired with someone for life that wasn't of my choosing was one thing, but for that person to be someone that actually mattered?" You swallow. "I pushed you away, because it hurt less if I made the decision to do so, rather than having to see your disappointment. Instead of being left to wonder that if you ever had the choice, would you even glance twice in my direction?"
He stares at you incredulously. "You believed that I did not want you?"
You pause at his tone. You didn't know what to believe, not with his actions just mere minutes ago contradicting everything in your system. You had been so focused on keeping your walls high, that you never thought to truly look into his gaze and search for what he saw in you instead.
"There isn't anyone else in the world that I would've sworn my life to." He declares abruptly. "If I had been given the choice in the first place, I would still be here before you. Yours."
"If you want my decision, I'll state it outright." He says, fingers coming up to grasp your chin, forcing you to look into his eyes. "I choose you. I had long erased myself of the expectations of what others want from me. My life is led by what I envision for myself, and you are in it. You always have been."
“I don’t believe that the choices of others define us.” He answers. “Even if this marriage hadn’t been arranged, I would have chosen you. I would’ve come back for you over and over—and asked for your hand. If you had other suitors, I would’ve rid your mind of all possibilities but me, because there is no one for me but you.”
"So, tell me." He says, and there's a vulnerability you never thought possible in him, echoed in the softening of his tone. "If you will choose me too."
Had he always looked at you this way, in such a soft, yet unyielding manner, as if his gaze had already been attuned to you in habit?
“If you feel unsure, I won’t force you to decide.” He offers, but his crestfallen expression pleads otherwise. “I won’t let you be bound by the obligations of our families. I want you to choose me—willingly—just as I have chosen you."
Has that ever been a question for you? Even in your denial, your fear of being rejected by the one person you were meant to spend the rest of your life with, you never doubted that the side of your heart had already engraved his name in secrecy.
You had always been his, even when you weren't sure if he was yours.
"I choose you, Damian." Your answer feels akin to offering your beating heart, only to reveal that it had always known the very same truth uttered through your lips. "That's never been a question. It's always been you, from the start."
His expression, tightened in exact preparation of being wounded, finally softens. He lets out an unsteady breath, his forehead dropping to rest on yours. In the quiet of this moment, you realise Damian looks devastatingly beautiful like this. Soft, vulnerable, and completely yours.
"I would very much like to kiss you again." He admits. "May I?"
You finally break out your own smile, and you sense the tension in his shoulders drop at the sight. "Only because you asked nicely."
His fingers still caressing your chin gently lifts your lips to his. This kiss is different from the first. It wasn't an explosion, a burst of restrained emotions over years of pining. No, it was softer. Gentle, in a true attempt to memorise your lips against his, shaping into a quiet whisper of a promise that this won't be the last.
When he parts, there's a soft quirk in his lips, as if he can't help himself from feeling that warmth in his chest.
"I still can't believe you called me your wife." You mutter, still unable to wrap your mind around it. Lifting your empty hand, you can't help but tease. "You're going to start a rumour on how a Wayne can't afford to gift his own wife a ring."
"You are right." He mutters in displeasure, and you suspect his mind has already wracked on another situation steps ahead just from your words alone.
"I suppose we'll have to arrange a marriage ceremony soon." Damian decides casually. "The last thing we need is more wolves thinking they have even a chance of your hand."
You think he's joking. You certainly were.
Yet, looking at his gaze which has now flickered to your ring finger, already analysing the measurement, you think there's a miscalculated understatement about your soon-to-be husband's proactiveness.
"What's going to happen to Reanes?"
Damian's merciful act earlier did nothing to fool you. He wasn't the type to leave loose ends.
His gaze darkens immediately, but his expression doesn't so much as shift when he says. "He'll be dealt with."
"The Al Ghul way?" You lift a brow. "Or the Wayne way?"
His lips quirk up imperceptibly. "I'm sure my siblings have creative interrogation methods they've been meaning to find an outlet for."
Pressing a soft kiss to your forehead, he mutters. "...I'll just have a leading hand for tonight's patrol when we infiltrate Reanes's warehouse."
"So, the worst of both worlds."
A dark smirk crosses his lips. "Only what he deserves, Beloved."
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