Hii can I request an smau with reader and the batboys where reader doesn’t refers to them as a petname like she normally does and they all just kinda 🤨
That’s probably not the best way to word it
Lots of love to you and your writing xx
Did I do something?
featuring: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Duke Thomas, Bruce Wayne
warning: fluff!
A/N: Obsessed with this Idea uhm hello??? Lots of Love back to you xx🫶🏻🫶🏻
jason todd who is gentle without even meaning to be.
he kisses the back of your hand while you’re walking side by side and smiles down at you when you startle. he stares like he can’t believe that you’re his and doesn’t hide it from you at all. instead he’ll rub the back of your hand with his thumb and put your hand in his pocket when it’s cold out. in the winter, he watches you shiver even in your coat and he’ll unzip his to hold you inside of it with him.
jason todd who is defensive on your behalf.
he’s attentive to what you like and what you don’t. he’s the type to excuse the both of you from a situation if he sees you’re even remotely uncomfortable. when someone makes a backhanded comment, he’s the first one to call it out. he has a little smile on his face while he throws it back at the other person and a shit eating grin when they cower at his comments.
jason todd who is more mindful of your habits than you are.
he’ll hold your hair back while you eat food to keep it from touching your plate and he’ll kiss you with your mouth full cause he just can’t resist it. after a long day at work he offers to rub your feet and often just gets on his knees to start working while you continue complaining about your boss. jason will talk to you about your cycle with genuine education and he’ll suggest period underwear when you have cramps. he doesn’t get grossed out. in fact, he embraces what would feel nasty or taboo and gets upset if you don’t feel the same.
jason todd who can’t stop spilling his guts out to you.
he follows you towards the bathroom and keeps the door open while you shower to keep talking. he’ll even ask to stay in the bathroom while you’re peeing and you’ll have to push him out only for him to continue his story through the door. if you’re exhausted, he just follows you into the shower and scrubs your back while he tells you all about something he witnessed today and turns around for you to do the same.
jason todd who has both a staring and a touching problem.
he doesn’t look away when you catch him staring. instead, he’ll tilt his head towards you and smile wider. if anything he just stares a little harder, leaning forward so his elbows are on his knees while he listens to you talk. maybe he’ll even cup your head and kiss the side of your face with a really wet sloppy kiss. he laughs when you wipe his spit from your cheek. he replaces it with another one but this time to your lips. the kiss holds tight, deepening and then suddenly softening until you’re breathless and forget to be mad at him.
ᯓ➤ "Just us two..." "Oh, that would be wonderful!" "…Three?"
← ʙᴀᴄᴋ. ⋮ ⌞ jason todd ✘ reader + platonic! damian wayne ✘ reader ⌝ .ᐟ .ᐟ
ৎׅ ׄ synopsis ⋮ Jason loves your alone time. Jason also loves Damian. Jason does not want to share your alone time. Damian loves you both. Damian will make him share your alone time.
aka ›››› "You can’t force me to participate in no-nut November." word cnt. 3.4k
You never quite understood why Jason was upset, even if you tried with all the patience you possessed. Most of your “dates” were not dates in the usual sense at all, but small, tender things done quietly within the four soft walls of home. They were evenings stitched together from the ordinary: the rhythmic sound of Jason’s knife against a cutting board while you perched on the counter, watching him cook and finding new, shameless ways to distract him; the slow comfort of cleaning together, your shared music low in the background as sunlight drifted across the floorboards; laundry dates that ended in laughter, with soap bubbles clinging to Jason’s hair; and movie nights, his favorites—the kind where you both ended up asleep before the film even reached its second act. Or...occupied with something else.
Movie nights without his little brother, that is. Because when Damian was there, movie nights somehow stopped belonging to Jason at all. They became something else entirely—soft, conspiratorial things between you and the boy. The two of you would sit wrapped in the same blanket, heads bent close, whispering about the film’s inaccuracies.
Laundry days became a battlefield when Damian joined in. He would stand beside you, arms crossed and unimpressed, as he scrutinized every item of Jason’s wardrobe like a disapproving tailor. “You wear this?” he’d ask, his voice flat with disbelief.
Cooking nights weren’t much better. You found yourself giving too much of your attention to Damian’s questions, explaining measurements and flavors and medical nutrition while Jason sighed and stirred and watched from a distance, half-amused and half-wounded.
Jason could never quite tell when it happened—when you and Damian stopped being polite strangers and somehow became… something else. Something closer.
All he knew was that one night, both of them were bloodied bone-tired, and he’d broken his own rule: no family in the apartment. But Damian needed help, and he trusted you. You had training, steady hands, and the kind of gentle patience that could coax a frightened little robin to rest.
You patched them both up that night. Bandages and soft voices, soup after that. It was supposed to end there.
It didn’t.
Somehow, after that night, the boy who once hissed at anyone who dared to touch him began to let you close. Damian—the child with the wary eyes and the spine made of quiet pride—let you ruffle his hair without complaint. He let you mend the tear in his sleeve, let you fuss over his meals, let you feed him soup when he was too tired to lift his arm.
Jason watched it all with a strange mix of awe and jealousy.
Damian even began to compliment you—though always hidden in insults aimed at Jason.
“I don’t know how you tolerate Todd,” he’d say airily. “You’d think you’d prefer someone who matches you intellectually.”
Jason would groan and roll his eyes. You’d only laugh.
There were other things, too. The tutoring sessions that had somehow become part of your week—Damian’s new interest in medicine, his newfound fascination with anatomy and physiology. You were his favorite teacher, though he’d never admit it outright.
You were also, much to Jason’s dismay, his doctor.
And Damian liked his “patient room”—your shared bedroom—kept quiet as a cathedral. No chatter, no movement, no sound but the clink of teacups and the rustle of papers.
Damian liked your apartment. Truly liked it. Liked the calm that hung in the air like a soft blanket. Liked that you didn’t speak unless you had something to say. Liked that you covered every window with those translucent suncatchers that painted colors across the floorboards when the light came through. Not the gaudy sort found in tourist shops—yours were delicate, old, a little imperfect, like melted drops of glass. Your home reminded him of a place he once called home.
Damian liked the kittens you fostered. He liked feeding them, brushing them, pretending he didn’t enjoy either. He liked making tea with you because you brewed it properly, just as it was made when he was small with the old servants, with patient hands and quiet dignity.
He did not like your choice in company.
And he told you so, in his usual unflinching way.
“I can find you a more adequate match,” he whispered one afternoon, low and confidential, though Jason heard every word from across the room.
You were kneeling beside the tub, sleeves rolled up, bathing a litter of kittens in a metal bucket from the hardware store. The poor things had fleas and ringworm, and your fingers were red from the warm water and soap. Damian crouched beside you, sleeves just as damp, as if he’d been born to this small ritual of care.
“I think he’s quite adequate,” you whispered back, soft enough not to wound his pride.
That was another thing Damian liked: the way you spoke to him. You matched his tone, measured and deliberate, the way someone might match a heartbeat. He knew it wasn’t how you spoke to everyone—he’d seen you with delivery men, with Jason—but with him, you were precise. Thoughtful. Gentle.
You spoke like he did.
And for a boy who’d spent years surrounded by voices that stumbled over his accent, who had grown used to repeating himself until the words felt wrong in his mouth, that meant more than he’d ever say aloud.
“Yeah, I think he’s adequate too!” Jason called suddenly from the doorway, grinning as he tightened a hinge on the bathroom door. You turned to glance at him, smiling despite yourself.
He was dressed in that white T-shirt with the sleeves cut off—his arms smudged with grease and his hair far too long, hanging just above his eyes. His clothes bore the familiar stains of oil and paint and everything else he’d fixed that week. His sneakers were worn down to their last thread, and yet somehow, standing there with a screwdriver in one hand and a crooked grin on his face, he looked steady.
His skin had color again, no longer the pale gray of sleepless nights. His back wasn’t as stiff as it used to be, his shoulders at ease. And though he grumbled endlessly about Damian’s visits, he looked softer when the boy was around. A little more human. A little more home.
Perfect, as always. Yours as always.
“You look like a turd,” Damian said flatly, scowling in Jason’s direction.
Jason didn’t even flinch. “Bro, you smell like a turd.”
“I wonder why,” Damian muttered, holding up a dripping kitten by the scruff, water trailing from its tiny paws.
Jason dropped the screwdriver and spun, pointing accusingly. “Damian, I swear to God—if you drip that medicine on the rug again, I’ll—”
Before he could finish, you reached forward, gently guiding Damian’s small hands back toward the bucket. “Let’s not test him,” you murmured, the edge of laughter in your tone. Damian’s lips pressed into a thin line, but he obeyed, his pride intact.
Half an hour later, the kittens were washed and dry, bundled in towels that smelled faintly of lavender. They lay in the wicker basket you used for your farmer’s market trips—the same one Damian sometimes carried with a reluctant sort of pride. The three of you sat together in the aftermath of the small chaos: Jason kneeling by the repaired door, you perched on the rug with a kitten in your lap, Damian cross-legged beside the basket, his expression unusually serene.
“What do you want for dinner?” Jason asked finally, testing the hinge one last time.
“Biryani,” Damian said immediately, still rubbing a towel over a kitten’s ears.
Jason didn’t look up. “I was asking my girlfriend.”
The room went quiet for a heartbeat. Then both of them turned to look at you—Jason with a weary sort of amusement, Damian with scandalized indignation.
You sighed, stroking a kitten’s damp fur. “I’d like biryani too.”
“Vegetable,” Damian added.
You paused, glanced down at him, then back up at Jason. “…Yes, vegetable.”
Jason blinked. For a long moment, there was silence. Then he muttered, “Lost to a vegan,” and wandered out of the bathroom, the sound of his boots fading down the hall.
When you looked back, Damian was smiling—just a small, quiet smile, the kind that didn’t reach his eyes but softened them all the same. You felt warmth bloom in your chest.
By the time dinner is ready, the kittens are all asleep, little bodies curled into soft commas in their basket. The faint hum of the radiator fills the silence between your breaths, and the apartment smells rich and warm—spices blooming in the air like memory.
The biryani sits steaming in the center of the low coffee table, bowls placed in an uneven triangle around it. Damian is already criticizing between bites.
“There’s too much cardamom,” he says with all the dignity of a food critic, squinting at his plate. “And the star anise—how am I supposed to chew on this?”
Jason looks like he’s aged five years in the span of the meal.
“Don’t eat it then,” he grumbles, though there’s no real bite to it.
Damian ignores him, of course, muttering something about “culinary atrocities” and “unsuitable textures” as he gets up to fetch salt from the kitchen. His footsteps fade down the hall, leaving a kind of hush behind him.
Jason exhales hard, running a hand over his face. “Gods, I—” He stops himself, then huffs again and reaches over to scoop a few extra vegetables into your plate. “I love the kid. I mean it, I do. But does he always have to be around?”
His voice drops low, almost conspiratorial. The firelight flickers against his face, softening the hard line of his jaw.
You smile, trying to keep your voice light, teasing. “Are you jealous?”
You hope to draw that familiar flush to his cheeks, to make him sputter and deflect because you don't want the risk of Damian hearing all of this and drawing back into himself.
But Jason doesn’t take the bait—at least not the way you expect.
“No,” he says, too quickly. Then, quieter, “Yes. No—I don’t know. I…” His gaze drops to his food, then to the floor. “I like having you to myself.”
There’s something naked in that confession. Something fragile, almost boyish. Jason, for all his rough edges and sharp words, has never learned how to admit loneliness without looking away.
He doesn’t need to pretend with you—not like he does with his family. Around them, he wears armor made of sarcasm and silence. Even now, years after coming back, Jason doubts he’ll ever fully relax in their company.
Especially not around Damian.
It isn’t the boy’s fault. Jason knows that. But every time he looks at Damian, he remembers.
Remembers standing in the League’s training yard, watching the child run until his small body trembled, his tutors shouting that failure was death. Remembers the look in Damian’s eyes when they handed him a knife and pointed to a chained dog. Remembers him crying—choking on his own breath, spitting his mother’s name like a curse—and then, finally, going still. Blade down.
Jason had watched from a distance, powerless to intervene. That memory lives in his bones.
He can’t relax around that kid. Not really. And yet Damian has learned to relax around you—and Jason knows how rare that is.
So it feels selfish, maybe, to resent it. But he does.
He misses you.
Misses you kissing his neck without warning, standing on tiptoe instead of asking him to lean down. Misses the way you’d curl into his lap whenever he finally sat down, the solid comfort of your weight grounding him in a world that never stops spinning.
He misses you walking around half-dressed and unbothered, so at ease in your skin that he felt human just watching you. Misses you sneaking up behind him while he cooks, arms slipping around his waist, the low hum of your laughter against his back.
Misses the smack you’d give him whenever he teased you about your inability to ever survive as a celibate.
Apparently, you could.
Apparently, you could rival a monk.
And Jason’s pretty sure you’d win, too.
Apparently he's the one who'd die if he was ever made celibate.
“…He needs a space,” you murmur finally, your voice as soft as the fire crackling in the grate. Your hand drifts to his thigh, a gentle anchor.
Jason sighs, leaning into the touch like it’s the first warm thing he’s felt all day. “I need a space,” he grumbles, sounding more like a sulking teenager than a grown man. He pokes at his food. “And I need meat.”
You roll your eyes, amused. “The chicken biryani you made last week tasted wonderful.”
“Yeah, well, apparently chickens are birds,” he mutters.
You blink, looking up at him. “Huh?”
“I always thought they were like… fat fish,” Jason says. “That’s what Dick told me when I was, like, ten.”
You stare for a second before laughter spills out of you, helpless and bright. “And you believed him?”
Jason just shrugs, reaching for another spoonful of biryani. “I believed everything my brother told me at that age.” He scoops some of his food into your mouth, shoveling most of his vegetables your way.
You chew, smiling around the bite. “You know who else believes everything his brother tells him?” you ask, voice sly.
Jason pauses mid-bite, suspicious. “…Damian calls me an idiot daily.”
“Yeah,” you hum. “But he still listens when you talk. He doesn’t do that with Tim.”
“That’s because no one can stand Tim talking.”
You groan, rolling your eyes again. “He does it with Dick, and no one can stand Dick talking either.”
Jason snorts. “He does not like me as much as Dick.”
“Me either,” you admit easily, your tone warm. “But he likes us as much as Dick. You don’t see him going to his apartment.”
“Yeah, because Kori brings out his worst habit,” Jason mutters, though there’s fondness hiding under his words. “All that god-awful rambling.”
You laugh quietly. “I think they’re sweet.”
He gives you a look, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“Tim and Kon, too,” you continue, ignoring it. “No matter how much you complain.”
“They need to learn how to get a room,” Jason groans, shoveling another bite into his mouth. “And I love Kori and Dick, I do, they’re just—”
“Loud,” you finish for him, gentle and knowing.
He chuckles, a low rumble in his chest. “Yeah. Loud.”
You both sit in the quiet that follows, the kind of quiet that’s easy, lived-in. The kind where every sound feels magnified—the slow ticking of the wall clock, the faint purrs of sleeping kittens, the crackle of birch wood in the fireplace.
Jason stares into the flames for a long time before muttering, “It’s not just them. The manor’s always so damn loud. Steph and—”
“Hm.” You hum softly, eyes thoughtful. “Yeah. So if I were Damian, I’d want to come here, too. To my brother’s quiet home. The one with tea, kittens, a bed for Titus, and a sweet older brother who actually makes ethnic food.”
Jason snorts. “Alfred can make him biryani.”
“Jason,” you say, laughter slipping into your tone, “I know you love him, but…”
You trail off, because you don’t need to finish it.
Jason already knows.
And somewhere in the kitchen, Damian’s voice drifts faintly back:
“You’re both eating without me—uncivilized.”
You and Jason exchange a look, trying not to smile too wide.
The kiddo comes back, and Jason immediately feels the loss of your hand on his thigh. The warmth that had anchored him to the moment is gone, and he notices it before he even thinks. Damian strides in, shoulders stiff, grinding salt onto his onion raita with a small scowl.
“Honey,” you murmur quietly, all knowing, “that’s your third bowl.”
Jason can’t help the small smirk that tugs at his mouth. He folds his arms in faux pride, chest puffed out like a rooster, though his eyes linger on your face and your hand brushing lightly over Damian’s, quietly correcting his angle with the spoon. You glance at him briefly, then pull back to focus on Damian, who has paused mid-grind, frowning at his food as though it’s betrayed him.
“You people will make me fat like Jason,” Damian declares, voice sharp, accusation hanging in the air.
“I am not fat!” Jason huffs immediately, scandal written across his features. He glances at you, eyes wide and pleading. “You’re the doctor! Tell him, babe!”
You pause for a moment, tilting your head thoughtfully. Technically, according to textbooks and clinical standards, someone of Jason’s size could be considered slightly overweight—but he carries it like armor, and your instinct is to reassure rather than lecture.
Damian’s grin grows impossibly wide at your pause. Jason’s jaw drops.
“HA! Told you! Fatson Todd over here is in denial!” Damian exclaims, triumphant, waving the onion raita spoon like a sword.
You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing, handing Damian a stack of empty dishes with a soft, indulgent smile. Begrudgingly, he gets up to collect them, still muttering, still scowling, but your quiet smile seems to soften him just enough.
“God, sometimes I think you play mom,” Jason mutters, leaning back slightly. He watches your expression—the soft, gentle tilt of your lips, the quiet care in your movements as you help Damian balance the plates—and he feels the warmth of it wrap around him. “You really want someone like him as a kid? Hey, if we had a kid like him, I’d toss it right back to Grandpa Bruce.”
Damian’s huff echoes faintly from the kitchen, scowling and stomping as he disappears from view.
You turn to Jason, your voice low, almost conspiratorial. “You’d love a kid like Damian.”
He looks at you, hesitant, unsure, because the concept of children has never been simple for him. And yet… the softness in your eyes, the gentle calm you exude, makes him pause.
“Yeah,” he mumbles finally, uncertain but open. “Sure.”
You lean closer, brushing a fingertip over his hand. “He looks like you,” you murmur, “your eyebrows and cheekbones.”
“Bruce’s eyebrows and cheekbones,” Jason corrects softly, then glances at your face, his eyes lingering. “Your eyes would suit them.”
You hum, leaning forward to kiss the side of his neck briefly, warm and comforting, and then you hear the faint rush of water as Damian starts washing dishes. Jason freezes slightly under the gesture.
“Oh, so now you kiss me?” he huffs, mock-indignant, a childish edge to his voice. “Go kiss his cheeks like I know you want to.”
You pinch the cheek unmarked by his scar gently. “I love him too, because he reminds me of you. Don’t forget that.”
“You also think raccoons remind you of me.” Jason says, smirk creeping in.
“Raccoons are adorable!” you reply, cheerful and soft.
“Well, this raccoon wants attention,” he huffs, mock-sulking.
You glance toward the kitchen, checking Damian’s progress, then lean in, pressing a quick kiss along the bicep you’ve been eyeing since he came back from fixing the door. “…Damian mentioned he has a sleepover with Jon on Friday. I can call off work too and…”
Your voice trails, hypnotic, and Jason lifts his gaze, caught in the light of your lashes and the quiet intensity of your expression. “…we can—”
“Have a sleepover?” Jason murmurs, small smile teasing the corners of his mouth.
“Oh, there won’t be any sleeping,” you whisper back, eyes sparkling with mischief.
He blinks, and a slow smirk spreads across his face, soft and fond, the apartment feeling warmer somehow. The smell of biryani, the faint crackle of the fire, the distant splash of water from Damian’s dishwashing—everything settles into a rhythm that feels like home.
Jason leans back slightly, still mesmerized by the faint glow of your eyes and the way your lips curl at the edges.
please please please let me know what you think it gives me so much motivation to write and you will be getting a new work sooner if you do ; (◞‸◟)
Summary: After figuring out that your boyfriend is Red Hood, you struggle to figure out a way to tell him you are aware of his “nightly activities.” When Jason finally introduces you to his family a week before Christmas, you are presented with the perfect opportunity to tell him
AKA: You give Jason Red Hood merch for a Secret Santa exchange, it goes about as well as you expect.
Word Count: 10.5k
Warnings/Tags: Pre-established relationship, Reader wears makeup and has a purse but I don’t go into much detail, Nosy reader lol, Crack fic treated seriously, Scenes jump around a lot, Fluff, Don’t think about canon when reading this, Probably ooc, Do not take this fic seriously, Convenient plot stuff had to occur for this story to work okay
A/N: Happy holidays guys! I actually can’t believe I finished this before Christmas (at least for me) enjoy this little fic. This will probably be my last fic before New Years :)
DC Masterlist , Fatson Todd Bonus Fic (Part 2)
—
Something was off about the Wayne family, and not in the way you might’ve expected from people as rich as they are.
What’s funny is that you had come to that conclusion in the most unconventional way. You didn’t mean to start investigating the Wayne family, but somehow you did. One might think that with a public imagine as widespread as their own, somebody would eventually slip up.
That was not the case here.
About half a year ago you had begun dating your boyfriend, Jason Todd. In your defense, you didn’t even think about that Jason Todd. While you knew some details about the Waynes, you didn't follow everything they did, and especially not back then. You were worlds apart. After all, who would assume that their boyfriend was the dead son of Bruce Wayne?
The idea had crossed your mind, but you didn’t give it any credibility. Many people have shared names and aren't related. In fact you had silently laughed at the coincidence. Oooh, what if your boyfriend was secretly hiding from the public because he was previously declared dead and can’t come back without making a fuss. Yeah, likely story.
Needless to say, it became a lot less funny when you started to actually figure out what was afoot.
—
You stared at Jason’s phone, the caller was just labeled “B” with no other explanation. Jason had been looking for his phone after misplacing it, and you had found it on top of your shared dresser.
“Uhh, somebody is calling you.” You carefully grabbed the device, careful not to answer it.
Jason’s footsteps grew louder as he approached the bedroom, the hollow floorboards echoing beneath his feet. “Who is it?” He asked casually, holding his hand out.
You shrugged, “I dunno, you just have then labeled ‘B.’” You placed the phone in his hand, and he froze. Immediately, he looked from the phone up to you.
“Did they say anything else? Texts?” He attempted to shield the phone from your view. A surge of curiosity washed over you, interested to know who he was talking to.
“Not that I saw? All I saw was the call.” You paused as the phone stopped ringing… before picking up again mere seconds later. “Anybody important? Boss or something?”
In hindsight, that was the funniest response you could’ve given. At the time you didn’t actually know what Jason did for work. When you asked, he’d just shrug, offhandedly respond “Security,” then quickly change the subject. Eventually, you let it go, realizing he was never going to go in depth about it with you. Which was understandable. Perhaps he wanted to separate his home life and work life.
However as time went on, you began to have more questions. His schedule was just too inconsistent.
There were days where he would just brush off his job, “I’m not the only one who works there, they can handle a night without me.” He would tell you. There were even times where he’d leave in the morning with no warning, just a couple messages on your phone telling you that "work called."
So you came to the conclusion: he must’ve been his own boss.
It made sense, he seems to get paid relatively well. His work schedule is evidently flexible. It’s a logical conclusion for a person to reach. After devising your theory, you didn’t think much of it, despite the nagging feeling in the back of your mind.
Well, you didn't think much of it… until a week later.
“Please, just cover for me this once. I’ll make it up to you.” You pause at the doorframe, breath hitching as you lean against the wall. You had woken up and noticed that Jason was not with you in bed. It’s not uncommon for him to leave in the middle of the night, but usually he left a note, message, just something to let you know that he would return. This time he didn’t, so you went to go look for him.
“I know…” Jason continued, a long moment of silence in between his answers. “Yes, I know, but please? I promised her that she’d have me this entire weekend.”
Your finger tapped absentmindedly against the wooden doorframe, and your other hand rubbed your eye, attempting to expel the sleepiness from your body. Okay, so he’s talking to somebody— definitely work related— about taking time off for you. Were you wrong about him being his own boss?
“I don’t care what Bruce thinks of it.” He scoffed, and you could imagine him rolling his eyes too. At his words, you lean closer to the living room entrance, all whilst ensuring you stayed hidden from his view. “He can think whatever he wants.” He paused before continuing, his tone more unsure than the fiery scorn he spoke with seconds ago. “You haven’t told the others, right?” His words were soft, hesitant. He sounded winded, as if merely speaking the words left him drained.
There was a long pause, and you held your breath in anticipation.
Jason sighed, and it’s somehow quieter than his previous words. “Thank you…” You could hear the cushions of the couch squeak slightly as Jason sat down. His words sounded dry, but you could hear the sincerity backing them. “Yeah, I know… I’ll…” He paused, a soft huff escaping him, “I’ll bring her to one of the dinners before the New Year.”
You sharply inhaled, immediately scurrying back to bed and throwing the blankets over yourself haphazardly. You compelled your breathing to slow, attempting to feign unconsciousness. It doesn’t work, but Jason wasn’t finished with his phone call; you can distantly hear his voice still on the phone if you strain your ears. You know you have at least a minute to get your act together before he returns. You force your eyes shut, and attempt to sleep.
Except, obviously, that does not work. All you could think about was the implications of what you just heard.
Everything you thought was wrong.
At first you were merely cataloging any important information he might’ve revealed: names, locations, anything that could clue you into what was going on. However, as you started listening, you came to a realization.
This isn’t him talking about his shifts.
“You haven’t told the others, right?”
This isn’t about work at all.
“I’ll bring her to one of the dinners before Christmas.”
This was about his family.
Now, you may have just woken up at two in the morning and eavesdropped on a conversation that you had no context of, but the message was abundantly clear. He’s planning to introduce you to his family. If the distress he displayed at the notion told you anything, it must be something he’s thought about for a while.
You didn’t know much about his family, he was always super vague about them. However he did tell you about his numerous siblings, and that he— along with the majority of them— are adopted.
At the time, your relationship was still new, and you didn’t want to pry into territory he was clearly uncomfortable with. You had expressed interest in meeting them, but assured him that if that’s something that makes him uncomfortable, then it can wait.
Now, usually you wouldn’t think too much about him being adopted, but there was one other thing that set off an immediate alarm in your head. The one name he mentioned, Bruce.
Now there’s probably millions of Bruce’s in America alone, but everybody in Gotham will immediately think of one man.
Bruce Wayne.
With literally any other person you know, you’d assume that they would be talking about a different Bruce. However, this was Jason. Jason took a while to share his last name with you, and you didn’t blame him. After all, when you found out his full name you had gone to search it up on your own soon after. You wanted to see if he has any social media posts, determine what kind of person he is online. Only, you didn’t find social media accounts.
You found articles.
Articles and articles filled talking about the death of “Jason Todd.” How he had died during a terrorist attack in Ethiopia in search of his mother. That Jason Todd had been adopted by— you guessed it— none other than Bruce Wayne.
Now, you were willing to chalk it up to an odd coincidence, after all that Jason Todd was dead. There was no way you were dating a dead guy when there are full on autopsies published detailing the horrific death of this child. It was an unfortunate coincidence. It makes sense why Jason wouldn’t want to share his last name if everyone immediately thought of a dead kid.
Now? You aren’t sure anymore. What are the chances that this “Bruce” is actually Bruce Wayne and Jason, your Jason, is actually the (previously?) dead Jason Todd.
With all that being said, you’ll be the first to say that you are no detective. Batman certainly won’t be finding competition with you…
However, this might be worth investigating.
At the time, you didn’t even think to truly consider the consequences if Jason found out about your snooping. However, in your defense, it was less of an “investigation” and more “attempting to notice details that may or may not prove that your insane theory is correct.”
You didn’t actively search the house for evidence that your Jason Todd was the Jason Todd (but really how many Jason Todd’s exist in Gotham, and are adopted, and know a Bruce?). However, to your surprise, you didn’t need to.
—
Narrowing your eyes, you widen your stride to evade the puddle of a mysterious viscous liquid on the ground, almost oil-like in nature. Your nose scrunches up at the smell, and you avoid making eye contact with anybody. Walking with purpose, you speed up your pace to avoid any confrontations.
You didn’t want to go through Crime Alley.
Jason had told you stories. He had made it clear that if you ever had reason to go there, you’d tell him, and he’d handle it. You weren’t about to argue since you never had a desire to go there.
You straighten your posture, walking with a confidence that you feel you currently lack. God, you absolutely hate the taxis in this city. All you asked was that he’d turn on the heater and close his window— it’s winter!
The driver absolutely lost it.
You had asked that he just stop right where you were, in the Upper East Side, but he didn’t. Instead, he drove north. It was only once you passed the Monarch Theater when you realized how screwed you were. The driver had yelled at you, threatening your life if you didn’t get out of the car.
So you got out of the car. Clutching your jacket and purse close to your chest as it speeds off, leaving you stranded in Crime Alley.
Stranded and terrified, you tried retracing the path the car had taken, attempting to leave. However, every alley, street, and crevice looked sketchy. While you had lived in Gotham for a long time, you’ve always avoided this part of town. So like it or not— the territory was unfamiliar, something that isn’t working in your favor.
Eventually, you find a small abandoned alleyway. While it was dirty and practically screaming “DANGER!” you noticed that it was completely abandoned. Ducking into the alleyway, you pull out your phone. Dead. What are the chances? Groaning, you lean against the graffitied wall, rubbing your temples.
Then you hear it. Footsteps. Slow, unhurried, sounds like heavy footwear.
Tensing up, you find an empty dumpster, using it as cover from the new figure. Fuck. You should’ve just kept moving. Now you’re just a sitting duck.
“You know I can still see you, right?” A heavily modulated male voice calls out, his voice echoes across the narrow backstreet. You press yourself further against the wall, knowing that it’s futile, but still desperately trying to stay hidden. You clutch your purse close to your chest. If you get out of here unscathed, Jason is going to kill you.
The newcomer is definitely not small. You aren’t able to see him, but just based off of his footsteps, you reckon that definitely somebody who could beat the shit out of you.
The footsteps get closer and closer, your heart pounds in your chest. Then, the sun vanishes. You look up to the looming figure above you. Red Hood.
It seems you both startle each other because both of you immediately jump back once you meet each other's eyes.
“What—” He calls out.
You hold your hands up in surrender. This guy only kills criminals, right? “I didn’t steal anything, I swear.”
It seems Red Hood is just as stunned by your presence as you are. He remains frozen, continuing to look down at you on the ground. You get up very slowly, making no sudden movements. The last thing you want is for him to think you have a gun.
“I…” His voice is quieter… Something about it is familiar. The tone. “I never said you did.”
You nod, slowly adjusting your clothes, “I didn’t kill anybody either…”
He nods slowly, “I would never assume you did.” He speaks slowly.
You blink taken aback. “Killers come in all shapes and sizes. Not saying I would— I would not. I’m just clearing my name.”
He releases a small huff of laughter, “…Fair enough.”
The two of you stare at each other for a long moment before you avert your gaze. You swallow, shifting uncomfortably. He is still looking at you.
“Do you—”
“How did—”
You both pause. Clearing your throat, you gesture at him, “You first.”
He shakes his head, “No, go ahead.” He mirrors your gesture, and you have to hold back a laugh at how ridiculous the situation is.
You pause before continuing, “Do you know how to get out of here? My phone's dead,” you hold up the device to show him, “I can’t really look up directions.”
Red Hood stares at you for a long moment, you’re curious what he’s thinking. “Of course.” He responds a lot softer than you thought he would. “I’ll guide you.”
You open your mouth to decline, but your brain tells you to accept the offer. Normally, you wouldn’t accept strange offers from men in Crime Alley.
However, it’s Red Hood.
While he’s technically a strange man from Crime Alley, Gotham’s vigilantes typically don’t harm innocents. So, against everything you’ve been taught since you were a child, you accept his offer. It seems that he is relieved at your acceptance, nodding before moving to your left. You blink at him as he holds his hand out expectantly.
“What?” You ask, looking from his hand, up to his mask, and back down to his gloved palm.
“I’ll hold your purse for you.” He says stoically.
You should get an Oscar for the poker face you gave him. Red Hood— feared vigilante— carrier of purses.
“Uh, it’s fine… I can carry it.” You purse your lips in order to refrain from laughing in his face. You don’t want to laugh at him for being kind. You’re reminded of the times where you asked Jason to hold your purse for you. Red Hood offers his services in a way that makes you wonder if he does this often.
The eyes of his helmet stare into your soul, “That’s your bad shoulder.”
Your smile falls, slowly turning to face him. “What?”
“You’re going to injure your shoulder.” He corrects.
You pause, feeling suspicion rise in your chest. That is not what he said the first time. He was telling you that your shoulder was injured. You had slept on it strangely all week, and you had complained to Jason about it. How could Red Hood know that?
A rush of adrenaline shoots through your system as you connect the dots of the situation. The tone of his voice. The casualness of how he offered his help to you. The shoulder comment. The odd work shifts…
You smile politely at Jason, “I suppose you make a good point.” You give him your purse.
—
Figuring it out hadn’t been the difficult part. Jason had been practically begging you to put the evidence together. Just by knowing his identity, you were able to piece the rest of the puzzle together.
His family? His work? The Bats? The Waynes? All of them were one in the same.
Now, while you figured it out, you still wanted him to tell you on his own. Perhaps you’d act a little surprised, and tease him about finding each other in Crime Alley. Then in a few years you’d tell him you figured him way before he told you.
Then one day, a week before Christmas, he asked you a question.
“Do you want to meet my family?”
You blink, looking away from the ads playing on the TV, “What?”
He shifts, tugging slightly at your shared penguin blanket. “They’re hosting dinner tonight.” He looks at you, “They’ve been wanting to meet you for a while.”
You nod in acknowledgment, “Do you want me to meet them?” It’s happening. This is what he was talking about on the phone.
Jason is silent for a moment, “I can’t hide you forever.”
You snort, “That’s not what I asked.” You reach for his hand, it’s warm.
He looks from your hand up to you, “Yeah,” he exhales, like it takes effort to admit.
You smile, “Then we’ll be there tonight.” You raise your hand to rub his shoulder. Normally, you’d be panicking over what to wear, especially to meet the Waynes, but you had already planned for this two weeks ago.
Jason’s anxiousness is evident throughout the day. You reassure him that you won’t be scared off. He laughs like he doesn’t believe you. Each time he brushes your reassurances off, you find yourself smiling. He doesn’t know that you know.
Tonight comes sooner than expected. You do your makeup nicely, taking your time with the familiar routine. Satisfied with your appearance, you meet Jason out in the living room. He’s glaring down at his phone.
“What’d it do to you?” You smirk, eying the object.
He turns it off, “Everything, and not enough.” He sighs, avoiding eye contact with you. “Hey, I should tell you about them…”
You blink, “You already gave me the rundown?”
“Yes— Well,” he releases a breathy chuckle, “a different rundown.” Sensing the seriousness of the situation, you drop your smile, nodding.
“Remember how I waited a long time to tell you my name— my full name?” He swallows, gauging your reaction. “You know the kid who has the same name as me?”
You nod slowly, “The one Bruce Wayne took in.” You feel your heart speed up, he’s really telling you.
“Yeah,” he huffs, “I know… I know it sounds crazy, and there are like dozens of articles saying that kid died…” He inhales, “But those rumors were exaggerated, and I don’t think it’s fair to drag you into this without telling you— Why… are you smiling?”
You chuckle softly, grabbing his hand. Before you even think about the consequences of revealing part of your knowledge, you begin speaking, “Jay, I’ve known that for a while.”
His hand stiffens in yours, “What?”
“I mean… You told me your name was Jason Todd.”
He furrows his eyebrows, “Both are common names.”
“Give me more credit than that.” You roll your eyes, the smile on your face growing. “It was hard not to notice after a certain point.”
Jason gapes at you, and you laugh at his shocked expression. Then he laughs softly, “This was supposed to be a big moment.” He sighs, “You aren’t… mad?”
“It is. I’m glad you trust me enough to tell me.” You lean to kiss him on his cheek, he relaxes under your touch. His shoulders droop as your hands reach to fix a few stray strands of hair. “I could never be mad. I understand that this is a big deal, and that trust isn't easy to come by.”
He returns the kiss, light, smiling through it. “God, I don’t deserve you. I was planning that speech for weeks, you know.”
You laugh at him, brushing a few stray strands of hair out of his face. “It was a very good speech.”
“Yeah?” He smirks at you.
“Yeah.” You reaffirm, grinning at him.
—
“Thank God you are here.” A young man— Duke, you recognize— throws the doors to the manor open before the doorbell is even rung. You don’t mask your surprise as he gestures for you two to get inside. “They’ve started making bets.”
Jason raises an eyebrow, “And you’re thankful for us being here why?”
“‘Cause I bet you’d show up with her!” He gestures between you two, before politely smiling at you. “Nice to meet you by the way, Duke Thomas.”
You shake his hand, introducing yourself as you remove your jacket. “Jason told me quite a bit about you guys.”
Duke laughs awkwardly before eying Jason, “Hopefully not too much.” He smiles.
You smirk, pretending you don’t understand the underlying message, “He said you were particularly tolerable.”
Duke shakes his head, a smile on his face, “The greatest of compliments.” He leads the two of you into the massive living room, probably one of many seeing as this manor is huge.
At your entrance, the room goes silent.
You scan the room, attempting to put names to the faces. Sitting on the maroon velvet couch you see Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon. Standing behind them is Stephanie Brown with Damian Wayne and Cassandra Cain on her sides. Tim Drake is settled casually on the armrest of the couch.
The table in front of them is littered with pieces of paper, empty energy drinks, a couple Batman mugs filled hot cocoa, and a black top hat. You turn your attention to Bruce Wayne, seated in a singular armchair with a poised elegance only somebody raised with wealth could have. At his right, is an older gentleman— Alfred, Jason told you.
Each person in the room is staring directly at you with varying degrees of surprise. Stephanie and Dick look thrilled at your appearance. The former looks ready to hug you, and you have a feeling that they bet money that you’d show up. Tim looks at you incredulously, staring at you as if you’ll disappear at any moment. Damian looks you up and down with a touch of distaste, as if assessing your value. You feel yourself straighten your stance under his examination. Cassandra Cain similarly appraises you, but you feel as if her judgment is less harsh. Barbara looks amused at your arrival, casually sipping one of the mugs on the table.
What truly unsettles you is Bruce Wayne.
You’ve heard stories of Brucie Wayne, how could you not? Those stories portray him as a ditzy billionaire playboy. Well-meaning, but frivolous. The eyes that stare into you aren’t the eyes of such a character. His gaze pierces into your own, and you find yourself faltering as you attempt to match the intensity. This isn’t some foolish playboy.
This is Batman.
Who knows what he’d do if he figures out you know about their secret? Jason, as if sensing your distress, situates himself at your side. He clears his throat, “This is my girlfriend,” he introduces you, offering your name to them.
The silence is palpable, an uneasy fog that rests in the atmosphere of the room. In spite of that, you offer them your best smile. “I know who you all are.” You nod to each person in the room. “Jason has told me about you. It’s a pleasure to meet you all.” Jason places a hand onto your shoulder, squeezing lightly.
For a moment, nobody says anything. Your eyes flicker between everyone, gauging their reactions. You take a gamble with your next comment, “I’m sorry for any cash lost at my appearance.” You smile softly, turning towards Tim and Damian. The two are staring at you as if you've personally wronged them.
Dick follows your lead, standing up from the couch to greet you. He mirrors your smile back at you as you shake hands, “I’m definitely not sorry. They could stand to get humbled every now and then.” He gestures his thumb back towards the couch.
You smirk, “Well, I’m glad to be of service then.” You release his hand, turning to Stephanie who approached you as you were greeting Dick.
“I’ve never been so happy to prove them wrong. Thank you for existing.” She shakes your hand gravely.
You can’t help the snort that escapes your mouth, “Of course, I will make sure I continue to do so.” She smiles at you, pulling you over to the couch to meet everyone. The tension dissipates as you begin to meet everyone. She brings you to meet Bruce first, after all it is his house.
You give his hand a firm shake, a small smile on your face masking your inner trepidation. He doesn’t offer much more than a polite smile and obligatory nicety, but Steph— she insisted you call her that name instead— reassures you that he’s just like that. She also introduces you to Alfred, who you match the politeness of. It seems that he approves of you. Soon after, she drags you over to the couch where the rest of the group resided.
“Does she know?”
Jason stares at you, laughing at something Cass says. Animatedly, you gesture as you speak, telling some story to the small group gathered near you. Steph laughs in response, grabbing Cass’ arm for support.
“Know what?” He asks. He doesn’t tear his gaze from you as you explain your story. For a brief moment the two of you make eye contact, and your eyes glint mischievously. You lean closer to his siblings positioned near you, whispering something to them. Jason can’t hear what you say, but whatever it is causes Tim to immediately perk up curiously. Steph matches your smirk, and even Cass and Damian lean closer to hear your words. Faintly, Jason can hear your soft whispers to them. In the middle of your storytelling, you look up at him. Your smile grows as you wink at him, he can’t help mirroring your expression.
Dick snorts, “So that’s a no.”
The smile falls from his face, Jason eyes Dick from the corner of his eye, “It’s harder than you think.” He swallows, watching as Steph covers her mouth at something you say. “Too much will change if I tell her.” He responds quietly.
Dick hums, crossing his arms, “Are you serious about her?”
Jason, affronted, spins to face Dick. “Yes.” He exhales slowly, nodding somberly.
Dick smiles gently, “Then tell her.”
Jason scoffs, “It’s not that easy.” His eyes veer to Bruce, who is pretending he is not listening to you from his chair.
Dick follows his gaze, “Since when did you care what he thinks?” He grins at Jason, glancing between him and Bruce.
Jason narrows his eyes at Dick, “I don’t. I just…” He huffs, his mouth set in a straight line. “I don’t want her getting involved.”
Dick’s gaze softens, a forlorn frown on his face. “It’s inevitable given what we do.”
Jason grunts, “I’m aware.”
Dick tentatively raises a hand, placing it on his shoulder. “I don’t say this to pressure you—”
“—Sure feels like it.” Jason interrupts, glaring down at Dick.
“But,” Dick continues as if interrupted, “I think you’ll find it to be a lot easier for you both if you do tell her.” They both look over to you. Jason watches as you raptly listen to something Tim explains. Jason sighs, shrugging Dick’s hand off his shoulder.
“Hm,” Jason hums, acknowledging his words, but not saying anything more.
“Okay, now that we’re all here.” Steph raises the top hat from the table, catching everybody’s attention. “It is time.”
Steph holds the top hat reverently, as if the object is sacred. “Secret Santa this year. Twenty dollar minimum. We will write our names down on these sheets of paper and draw them out from the hat. If you don’t like who you get, too bad. You can only redraw if you get yourself. Now, everybody fill these out, place your slip of paper into the hat, and we will begin to draw.”
“She seems really serious about this.” You whisper to Duke. He thanks Steph as she passes around a pack of purple sticky notes for everybody to take.
“You get used to it.” Duke takes a slip, handing you the pack. Slowly you take the purple note before passing it over to Cassandra on your right. Grabbing a pen, you scrawl your name down on the piece of paper. You feel your chest constrict with an uneasy weight.
Jason may have told you about his family, but you barely know anything about them. Favorite color? Food? Animal? He didn’t exactly divulge the details. You’ll probably have to ask his help on what to get, cause you’re essentially going in blind. He didn't warn you about Secret Santa.
You fold the sticky note, slipping it into the hat. You watch as the pen makes its way around the table, your foot bouncing as it finally approaches Bruce and Alfred. You watch as they silently write their name down, resigned. You have a feeling that they’ve been forced to do this for years.
As they place their names into the top hat, you consider the options of who you could get. A silent smile grows on your face as you think about it. Wouldn’t it be funny if you got Jason?
“Alright, I think that’s everybody.” Steph looks around the room. “Now to begin the drawing…” She lightly tosses the hat, jumbling the papers in it before turning to face you, smiling. “As the newest person here, you should go first.” She holds out the hat to you, and you are immediately aware of the eyes on you.
“Oh,” you look down at the folded papers, then back up at her, “sure…” You attempt to match her smile, slowly reaching in the hat without looking. You pick up one of the slips, taking it out. Everybody watches in anticipation as you unfold the sticky note, you attempt to school your face as you read the painfully familiar handwriting.
Jason
Holy shit.
You’ve used up all of your luck for the next five years. What are the chances you’d pull your boyfriend in a group this large? You were already planning on getting him gifts separately, but this was too perfect.
A stupid idea ran through your head. A really stupid, idiotic, foolish idea. Was it worth risking everything you’ve done not to incriminate yourself for this scheme?
You don’t even register the other people in the room drawing out names. You don’t even wonder who got you because all you can think of is the possibilities of what you could get Jason.
“Who’d you get?” The soft warmth of Jason’s breath brushes past your ear, sending shivers down your spine. He is resting his body against the back of the couch, leaning over it to invade your personal space. You attempt to hide your jolt by casually folding your paper, holding it out of his view.
“It hasn’t even been five minutes.” You smirk at him, pocketing the slip for later. You lower your voice, leaning closer to him. “Does this mean we’re returning for Christmas?” You can’t keep the excitement out of your voice.
He sighs, “I suppose.” He smiles at the way your eyes brighten up. If only he knew what fire he was fueling. “Now, who’d you get?” He asks, leaning to look over your shoulder. You shift so that your back is never facing him, placing a hand over your pockets to make sure he can’t grab the sticky note.
“I can’t tell you, it’s Secret Santa.” You furrow your eyebrows, frowning.
His eyes widen slightly, “Wait… You’re actually not gonna tell me? C’mon,” He huffs, leaning even closer, the two of you are practically face to face now. “I can keep a secret if it matters that much to you.”
You turn away from him, the smugness in your eyes never fading. “You’ll find out when we give the gifts.” You shrug, and you can feel eyes watching you both. Damian looks mildly disgusted by you two, and Duke is noticeably trying to avoid looking at you both. You clear your throat, looking up at Jason.
“Guess you’re gonna have to find out like everyone else.” You look away from him, propping your arm onto the armrest of the couch and leaning your face onto it.
Jason stares at you— you can feel it piercing the back of your skull. “You’ll need my help.”
You tilt your head to face him, “I actually have an idea what I’ll get my person.”
He narrows his eyes at you skeptically, “You… do?”
You smirk, “The perfect idea.”
“You know it’s not just joke gifts, it’s stuff they actually like, right?” He straightens up, crossing his arms as he looks down at you on the couch.
“Oh,” you bite your tongue to keep from smiling too wide, “they’ll like the gift.”
You both stare at each other for a long moment, he sighs. “Alright, if you say so.” He taps his arm thoughtfully. “If you need any help though…” He trails off.
“You’ll be the first person I call.” You nod, smiling. “You’ll always be the first person I call.”
His eyes soften, “I know.”
—
red hood merch
red hood keychain
red hood figure
You idly tap your finger on the keyboard of your laptop as you open up different tabs for each search. Surprisingly, there were actually quite a few results for Red Hood merch. You know he isn’t as popular as Batman or even Nightwing, but you are nothing if not determined.
You cycle through different websites, eventually landing onto Etsy. You snort as you see holographic stickers of Red Hood. You even find replicas of his helmet for sale. You smile, adding the latter to the cart. Continuing to scroll, you barely even notice the door to your apartment open. You chuckle as you see a cute Red Hood keychain. He’d hate this.
You add it to the cart.
“You’re still up?”
Freezing, you slowly shift your gaze from the screen to Jason. His hair is tousled, his skin has the sheen of sweat to it that tells you he was "exercising" (that's the excuse he always tells you, you know he's out patrolling). He tosses his jacket over a chair, running a hand through his hair. You subtly switch tabs, “Wanted to wait for you.” You half-lid the laptop.
He smiles, before moving to face plant onto your shared bed. You look down at him, frowning. “Have you taken a shower?”
“Nah,” his voice is muffled by the blankets.
You subtly nudge him with your knee, “I love you, but you’re sweaty. The bed is clean.” He groans, not budging at your gesture.
“Mmph,” he grunts, moving closer to you, crawling up the bed to where you’re seated underneath the covers. You yelp, moving away from him, slamming the laptop shut. Damn it, you wanted to order it before he came home. “I can’t spend time with my girlfriend?”
You snort, “You can spend time with me after you take a shower.” You lightly push his forehead, your hand brushing against his loose strands of hair. He leans into your touch, “Rough day?”
“Somethin’ like that.” He mumbles, slowly pulling away to stand up again.
You exhale, smiling softly. “I’m sure you’ll feel better after a shower.”
He snorts, “You’re just telling me I stink.”
You smirk, “Your words, not mine.”
He sighs, dragging himself to the bathroom. You can’t help the smile on your face. Once he is out of view, you slowly open your laptop again, navigating your browser back to your shopping cart. You go to the checkout, quickly paying. It’ll arrive a few days before Christmas.
You thought you'd stop there, but you end up going down a rabbit hole. Scrolling and scrolling endlessly.
Then you find it. It’s a collection of bootleg Red Hood merch— a package. You start cackling to yourself as you view the picture of the product. It’s a hoodie, blanket, water bottle, mug, wallet, and journal. The hoodie, water bottle, wallet, and journal have the red bat logo plastered on them. The blanket and mug have an actual photo of Red Hood on them. The quality of the image isn’t terrible, but it looks ridiculous nonetheless. Now, this would be a really stupid purchase. You’d be spending more money than you already have on merch.
You hum to yourself in contemplation, distantly noting that you can hear the water running from the bathroom. You tap your foot softly against the mattress of the bed, squinting at it. For a bundle with that many items, twenty dollars is not a bad deal, even if the images are laughable. You raise your hand up to your lip, rubbing your face.
Well, even if Jason hates it… You can still find some use out of the items. The blanket maybe? You doubt it’ll be a great blanket, but it could be a good backup. The mug and water bottle might also be usable. One of you can definitely use the journal… After all, twenty dollars is twenty dollars.
You buy it.
“You’re still working?” Jason emerges from the bathroom, changed into clean clothes, lightly rubbing a towel over his head.
Your eyes fall onto the receipt screen reading: “Order confirmed!” You nod, “Something like that.”
He gives you a puzzled expression, before plopping onto his side of the bed. The mattress cushioning his fall. “Are you almost done?” He lays down flat, tilting his head to look at you.
You smile, shutting the laptop. Mission accomplished. “Just finished actually.”
—
Neither of you mentioned Secret Santa. Honestly, you started to worry if he’d actually get a gift for his person. However, you didn’t bring it up out of fear of him asking about the gifts for your person. The remainder of the week progressed, the excitement of Christmas becoming more and more real each day. Either way, things are going smoothly. Each day you have to withhold yourself from telling Jason what you bought because you are dying to see his reaction. You hold yourself back, though. It’ll be so much better in front of his family.
It’s a few days before Christmas where panic struck your heart.
“Did you order something?” Jason asks, you hold your phone up to your ear as you walk to your car. You just got off of work, and were finally off for the holidays.
You swallow, “Perhaps, why?”
Jason hums, “Well, it’s here.” You feel your heart skip a beat for all the wrong reasons, “Do you want me to open—”
“No!” You cut him off, causing him to pause. You purse your lips, wincing, “Uh, no. It’s fine. It’s… personal.”
There’s a long pause of silence, “Personal…” He repeats, unconvinced.
“Yeah,” you nod, smacking your lips, “reallyyyy personal. I wouldn’t open it.”
He releases a huff of amusement, “Alright… You’re coming home right?”
“Yep, yep, on my way.” You walk faster down the sidewalk.
“Alright, don’t take too long.” He responds casually.
“Or what?” You smirk, using your shoulder to hold your phone up to your ear as you fish for your keys in your purse.
“Or I’ll open it.” He responds, matching the mirth in your tone.
You never drove home so fast.
Upon entering, you don’t even call out a greeting. Keys jingling, you frantically unlock the door. You twist the doorknob, pushing the door open with more force than necessary, causing you to stumble through the doorway.
You rip your shoes off your feet, throwing them haphazardly to the side as you toss your purse onto the couch. “Jason!” You call out. He’s likely in your bedroom. “Where is the package?” You speed over to your bedroom, yanking the door open.
Jason is laying down on his side, facing the door. His phone is held languidly in one of his hands. At your arrival, he doesn’t even flinch. “Hm?” He hums, still looking at the phone.
Your eyes narrow, “The package, Jay. Where is it?” You check behind the door as you begin your search— even checking under the bed.
“Oh, it’s over there.” He gestures absentmindedly to the top of your dresser. You blink, seeing the giant box there. How did you miss that?
“Oh,” you slowly reach from the box, checking to see if it was opened. “You didn’t open it right?” You turn back to face him; he still hasn’t moved.
Finally, he tilts his head to face you. “No?” He pauses, mischief crawling into his tone. “Should I have?” He sits up, putting the phone down and turning his entire body to face you.
“No.” You hold the box closer to you, glaring at him. “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re not peeking.”
He smirks, “Oh…” In a much softer tone he continues “… Is it for me?”
You grin, “Perhaps.”
He smiles at you, tension leaving his body. His eyes crinkle in fondness as he stares at you, not moving from his spot in the bed. He chuckles quietly, grinning even wider.
You blink, his genuine joy is contagious, “What?” You chuckle.
“Nothing.” He is still smiling as he turns around in bed. You can tell he is still smiling even if he isn’t facing you.
You snort, “Alright, sure.” You nod at his head, exiting the room, his eyes trailing on the box as your arms as you leave.
It’s your first Christmas together with him, so you can imagine that he is curious to know what you’ve got for him. You almost feel bad for what you’re doing. He looked so happy to be receiving a gift from you.
Could this potentially backfire on you? Absolutely. You’d be a fool not to consider the consequences of essentially telling your vigilante boyfriend in front of his vigilante family that you’re aware of their identities. However, you can’t imagine that it’ll be that bad. It’s not like you disapprove of them, you just… want to have a little fun with it.
You had waited for a months for Jason to say something. After all, you wanted him to tell you out of his own accord— you still do. However, you've gotten antsy waiting around. Not that it's an excuse, but the added anxiety into your life hasn't exactly been a joy. Does he not trust you enough? Either way, you can’t bring yourself to be mad; it’s not exactly a tiny secret. Every time he pulled you aside, you wondered if this was it. It never was.
Perhaps he was too scared to tell you?
It was a perspective you hadn’t really thought of. You’d been so focused on the excitement of getting the gifts and just waiting for him to say something, that you didn’t even consider that it could be equally as anxiety inducing for him.
You open a drawer in the kitchen, grabbing the box cutter. You make sure Jason hasn’t decided to follow you out before you start to open it. The sounds of the tape being ripped apart echo across your otherwise silent apartment.
Grinning, you reach into the box, gently pulling out the Red Hood helmet replica that laid inside. Despite your worries, you can’t help the thrill of excitement that runs through your body.
—
“Jesus, did you get enough gifts for your person?” Jason furrows his eyebrows at you as you carry two large wrapped gifts in your arms. He watches as you wiggle your way into the passenger seat of his car. “You know it was only required to get one, right?” He stares at the gifts, specifically the wrapping paper. You had deliberately made sure he never saw them until absolutely necessary.
A couple days after you bought the gifts, you had stumbled onto a shop that was selling Batman themed wrapping paper.
So, like any good vigilante girlfriend would do, you picked up a few rolls.
You practically locked yourself into another room in your apartment to wrap them in fear that Jason would see, but it was worth it. The way he is staring at the gifts as if they slapped him in the face? Priceless.
You click your tongue, “Give me a break, I wanted to be nice. It’s my first time celebrating Christmas with your family anyway.” You reach over the center console, placing the gifts gently in the backseat.
He huffs, “It’s a bit excessive.”
You dramatically raise a hand to your chest, affronted. “You’re just jealous I didn’t get you.” You blatantly lie with such a confidence that even you begin to question if you got Jason (you’ve checked that paper dozens of times).
He raises an eyebrow, “If that’s what you want to believe.” He shrugs.
You purse your lips into a thin line, shaking your head at him. “I know it. Now, let’s go, we’re gonna be late.” You buckle in, shutting the door. Jason rolls his eyes, and you nudge him with your elbow. He starts the car, and you pull down the sun visor mirror. As he starts the car, you double check your makeup.
“You still aren’t gonna tell me who you got?” Jason asks.
You turn to face him, “You’ve lasted this long, you’ll find out in like an hour anyway.” Flipping the sun visor back up, you relax against the back of the seat. A smile grows on your face, he even turned on the seat heating for you. “For someone so eager for me to share, you haven’t said anything.”
“I asked you first.” He furrows his eyebrows, frowning.
“That’s fine,” you recline the seat slightly, your Christmas sweater absorbing the warmth of the seat. “Just don’t get upset at me if I don’t tell you who I got.”
He scoffs, “I’m not upset.” He slows to a stop as you reach an intersection, “Just curious.”
“Mhm,” you hum contently, turning to face Jason with a gleeful smile on your face.
He spares you a quick glance before turning his focus back to the road, “What’s with that face?”
You raise an eyebrow, “That’s just my face? Am I not allowed to smile at my boyfriend?”
An small amused smile manifests onto his face, he gives you a fondly exasperated look. “I suppose you may.”
“You suppose?” You chuckle, leaning your head against the cool glass of your window. You tilt your head so that you can look at him, “What? Do I need your permission?”
He chuckles, “Is that not what you were asking?”
“Obviously not.” You lightly tap him with your hand.
His lips twitch in amusement, “My mistake.”
You laugh softly, turning your attention back to the road. Despite the teasing atmosphere, you can’t help but worry how this will go down. Did you get ahead of yourself? Was this a mistake? Perhaps you should’ve bought a backup gift just in case you chickened out.
Each second the car approaches the Manor causes your heart to speed up. By the time you’ve reached it, you’re fanning yourself with your hands to keep from sweating too much. Jason had noticed your distress halfway through the ride, silently turning off the seat warmer, but (thankfully) not saying anything. You presume that he believes that you’re afraid Christmas won’t go well. He's not exactly wrong.
As you carry your gifts up the stairs to the entrance, you shake the doubts away. Rolling your shoulders back, you exhale slowly. This will go well. You can’t imagine anything bad will happen over you giving Jason some bootleg merch of himself. You're stressing over nothing. This will be funny.
“There you are! We were about to call you.” Dick greets you both, moving aside to let you in. Just as you step through he lets out a muffled snicker, conspicuously looking at the wrapping paper you chose. Smiling, he turns to Jason who gives him a pointed look as if saying “Don’t even.”
“Sorry, we were running a bit late.” You smile at Dick, and he waves you off.
“No worries, they can wait five more minutes.” He gestures for you two to follow. Both of you follow him into the same room you were in last time. Everybody is dressed festively— though some look more merry than others. “Alright, you all ready to get started?”
There is a cacophony of mixed responses, but everybody settles into the same positions they were in last time. You have to wonder if this is normal. Did you somehow choose your permanent spot in this living room without even knowing? Nonetheless, you don’t mind.
Thankfully you aren’t first again.
Contrary to your doubts earlier, you feel the anticipation plaster a smile on your face, something you attempt to keep hidden from the others. You had practiced this day. You may not be an actor, but you had already anticipated the reaction of his family. Your worry wasn’t that they’d find you suspicious. It's that they'd laugh.
You knew that the moment somebody started laughing, you’d be a goner. There’s no way you’d be able to look at Jason with a straight face if you heard somebody giggling in the corner of the room. If you were doing this, you were going to commit to the act. You’ll likely tell him after, but you couldn’t breakdown into laughter halfway through the bit.
You had to be strong.
When Damian calls your name, you feel yourself sit up in shock. Everybody watches in anticipation as he walks over to you, placing a small bag and a wrapped flat rectangular gift onto your lap. You thank him, a grin stretching onto your face. He nods resolutely, before moving back to his spot.
Deciding to open the small bag first, you pull out a small package of your favorite goodies— he was no doubt assisted by Jason, but they’re filled with every possible candy and chip you enjoy. You grin at Damian, offering your gratitude with a heartfelt thank you.
Then you open the wrapped gift, and immediately gasp.
It’s a canvas. You delicately rip off the last piece of wrapping paper obscuring the artwork, unveiling the piece. It’s a gorgeous realistic painting of your favorite animal in its natural environment. You’d think that the piece was made by a professional who's been in the field for decades, not a teenager. Not a single mistake is found. All the colors work harmoniously to create a gorgeous setting with your favorite animal being the focal point.
“Damian…” You cover your mouth, turning to him. “I— This is phenomenal. You’re incredibly skilled, I can’t believe you made this for me.” You withhold tears as you speak. You didn’t think Damian liked you when you met him. He was quiet, and didn’t shy away from bluntness. After you met him, you told Jason about your worries. Jason reassured you that for Damian, that was normal, and not to worry about what he thinks.
Damian’s face is unreadable, but he stands up straighter. “I’m glad you find it satisfactory.”
“Satisfactory? This is exceptional. I’m speechless.” You look back down at the painting, gently holding the canvas. “Thank you, Damian.” You give him the most grateful smile you can muster. You would go and hug him, but based on what you’ve observed, you doubt he’d appreciate the action. His nods, decidedly pleased at your reaction, but not saying anything else.
Then the weight of the situation finally hits you. It is time.
You stand up, feeling the irresistible urge to smile, and you allow yourself the pleasure of doing so. “The person I got…” you spin around the room, before landing on your boyfriend, “is Jason.” You grin at him, and his mouth parts in surprise.
You delicately place the presents onto his lap, “Open this one first.” You point at the gift containing the package deal you bought.
He narrows his eyes at you, instantly suspicious, “Alright,” He waits until you’ve returned to your seat before slowly ripping the paper off, revealing an inconspicuous white box.
Slowly, as if afraid something would jump out at him, he pulls the top off and freezes. You see both his and Dick’s eyes widen as they look down at its contents. You can see Dick shut his eyes in order to steel his reaction.
“You gotta show us what you got, it’s part of the rules.” Steph adds curiously. At the moment, the only people who can see the gift are Dick and Jason himself.
Staring through the box desolately, he slowly turns it around for you all to see. There’s a beat of silence before Steph starts cackling. From her left, Tim smacks her, but he uses his free hand to cover his face. You think you can actually see him turn red from masking his reaction.
“I noticed that you seemed to be a Red Hood fan.” You calmly comment. Your words seemingly spur the others to start laughing cause now Duke’s shoulders are shaking with silent laughter.
“Oh, he’s a Red Hood fan alright!” Steph gives you a thumbs up with a blinding grin as if saying “You’ve done good!”
“Wh- Where did you even get it from?” Duke struggles to get the words out, smiling at you as he asks his question.
“Etsy,” you shrug, “they have a surprising amount of merch there for Red Hood. It made my job easy.” You smile at them before turning to Jason to gauge his reaction. He is still staring at the box blankly.
Slowly his eyes meet yours, “Is… Is this what all those deliveries were?” It is rare that you catch him off guard, and you can’t help but savor the moment, filing the image of his stunned expression into your brain.
“I wanted it to be a surprise.” You smile at him.
He laughs, the sound less out of amusement and more out of distress. “That’s… Yeah, I mean…” he swallows, “It’s a surprise.”
“You should open the other one.” You lean back into the couch.
Jason looks at the second gift with absolute horror in his expression. “Wait— Are all of the gifts Red Hood themed?”
You grin at him, not offering an answer.
He doesn’t take his eyes off of you as he warily tears off the Batman wrapping paper. It’s another white box, and you can see the defeat in his eyes. You smile innocently at him, biting your lip so as to not laugh. You really hope somebody is recording his reaction.
He glares at Dick, who is curiously looking over his shoulder, before raising the box to his face to peek inside of it. Jason must immediately know what it is because he silently settles it to his side, covering his face with his hands. You almost feel bad.
Dick, eager to see what it is, takes the abandoned box and lifts the lid. He instantly breaks out into laughter as he looks down at the Red Hood helmet replica inside of it. He actually leans into the couch for support as he attempts to control his breathing.
The action garners even Damian’s curiosity. He silently leans over to the box, ignoring Jason’s crisis and Dick nearly hyperventilating on the couch. He raises the lid, and his eyes widen seeing the item inside. He looks up to you, and you smile at him. He narrows his eyes and the two of you silently stare at each other both coming to the same conclusion.
Yeah, you know.
Hesitantly, as if afraid of the uproar your gift would cause, Damian holds the helmet up. He holds it away from his face, almost as if it’s a bomb about to explode.
Everybody.
Loses.
Their.
Mind.
Steph and Tim are both immediately gone. They aren’t even attempting to mask their laughter. Duke is, similar to Dick, leaning against the couch’s armrest for support. Cass is covering her mouth, her eyes betraying her amusement. Barbara has fully taken off her glasses, covering her face with her hand as she quietly laughs into it.
Then you turn to Bruce.
The two of you make eye contact, and for a long moment you forget about the laughter that racks nearly every person in the room. You swallow, but don’t break eye contact. You knew it was a gamble, revealing that you are aware of Red Hood’s identity to Batman himself.
Neither of you blink as you pray that he concludes you have no ill intentions— after all you don’t.
A long pause ensues. You don’t shift your gaze from him— not even to look at Jason. You know that if you get Bruce on your side, then everything will be okay. Then, slowly, he nods at you. The action is minuscule, something you wouldn’t even see if you weren’t looking. His face does not even change, but you understand the weight the action carries. He understands, and he knows you aren’t a threat.
You smile at him, feeling the biggest wave of relief imaginable wash over you. You turn back to everybody else, feeling a renewed sense of joy.
“This… This is surprisingly accura- high quality!” Tim cuts himself off, clearing his throat as he corrects himself. Tim, Duke, Steph, Damian, and Dick are all gathered around the helmet, scrutinizing it. Cass has moved next to Barbara, and they are both whispering to one another. You can’t hear their words, but you are curious.
You get up, slowly making your way to Jason who looks absolutely distraught. You decide it’s your time to intervene. “…Don’t like the gift?”
Jason— as if your voice snaps him out of a trance— shifts his gaze to you blearily. At the disappointment in your tone, he frantically shakes his head, “No! It’s not that I don’t like them— I just—” He opens his mouth before closing it, struggling to find the words. “How… How’d you know I like Red Hood?”
You settle your hand onto his, gently rubbing your thumb over it. “Jay,” you begin softly, “I know.”
He sputters, looking down at the ground. His frustration is evident, as if the last piece of a puzzle doesn’t fit. “I’m aware you know I like him. I’m just confused how you figured it out. I don’t think I ever mentioned—”
“Jason,” you cut him off, and his eyes dart to your hands clasped in his, “I know.”
His hand tenses under your grip, and he sharply inhales, chest shuddering. “What?” He looks at your reassuring smile, the first gift he opened, then to the helmet. You can see him slowly piece it together.
You know he is Red Hood.
“You… You know.” He repeats, blinking at you as if you’ll suddenly vanish in between blinks.
You nod, “I know.” You repeat.
He opens his mouth, exhaling as he attempts to form sentences. “How?” He asks softly, “How long?”
“Since you saved me in the alley.” You smile sheepishly at him.
His eyes widen, “Are you serious? That long?” He openly gapes at you, and you scoot closer to him. “Are you not mad at me or anything? Why haven’t you said something?”
You frown, “Why would I be mad at you?” You shake your head at him, as if the idea is absurd.
He looks at you like you’ve lost it, “I lied to you, for months.”
You nod, “True, but I understand why. If I was a crime fighting vigilante I wouldn’t go around telling every single person I know my identity.”
Jason shakes his head, “You’re not ‘every single person,’ though. You’re my girlfriend.”
Your shoulders relax, fondness melting your heart. “Jason, you don’t have to justify yourself. I am not mad at you for not telling me. It hasn’t even been a full year since we met. If anything, I’m just mad that you’ve probably been hiding injuries from me since the start.”
You must’ve hit the mark with that comment because Jason winces, muttering a soft apology. “I didn’t do this to make you think I’m mad at you. I did this because I thought you’d feel better knowing I’m not mad at you.” You look at his eyes. “This doesn’t change anything.”
Jason stares at you, mouth agape before pulling you closer. He gently cradles your face as his lips meet your own. Instinctively, you begin to kiss him back, placing a hand onto his shoulder as you close your eyes, savoring the moment. Slowly, he breaks the kiss, slowly pulling away. “You bought all of this,” he grabs the Red Hood PNG mug from behind him, holding it up to your chest, “just to show me you know?”
You smirk, your arms still rested around his shoulders, “Okay… Maybe I thought it was funny. You should’ve seen me laughing as I ordered everything.”
He huffs, but smiles at you nonetheless, “I’m sure you did, didn’t you?”
You laugh as you slowly pull away from him, “I think I found our new favorite mug.” You reach to grab it out of his hand.
He laughs sharply, “‘Our?’”
You grin, “Are you kidding? I paid good money for this. You gotta use it.”
He shakes his head, “The helmet too?”
You snap your fingers, “Especially the helmet.”
“Jason, you gotta add this to your collection.” Dick moves around the couch to place the helmet onto Jason’s lap.
“No need for that. She knows.” Jason deadpans, and Dick, Tim, Steph, and Duke turn to you wide-eyed.
“I also know that the rest of you are vigilantes.” You chime in helpfully, Jason nods unsurprised.
The four of them stare at you, but everybody else in the room is unsurprised. It seems that Cass and Barbara figured it out soon after Bruce and Damian did.
“Wait, so you did all of this knowing we’d all panic?” Duke asks, pressing his palms together and pointing his hands at you.
You nod, “Yeah, pretty much. For the record, I won’t tell anybody your identities,” you nod to Bruce, “and your guys’ reaction was probably the second best gift I received all year.” You nod to Damian, after all, his gift deserved the top spot.
“Damn,” Dick whistles, “you didn’t know about this either?” He looks down at Jason on the couch.
“Nope.” Jason deadpans. Dick and Steph immediately start cackling, Tim and Duke quickly following suit. Both you and Jason watch with varying degrees of glee on your face. “I do not want to see this ever again.” Jason whispers to you, grabbing a small scrap of the Batman wrapping paper.
You chuckle, “Aw, I thought you’d like it? Is it not on theme?” You take the scrap from him, running your fingers over it.
He snorts, “No, I’m serious.” The amusement drops from his face, “Please get rid of it.”
Chuckling, you delicately place a kiss on Jason’s cheek, “Anything for you.” You lean your head onto his shoulder, a smile on your face. “Love you.”
He huffs, but you can see the hint of a smile peek through his face, “Love you too.”
-> Fatson Todd Bonus Fic
ㅤ
A/N: I'd like to imagine you give the wrapping paper to Dick or something, and it’s used by EVERYBODY in the manor for the next 3 years (basically until it runs out). Jason is not happy when you all return for Christmas next year and EVERY SINGLE GIFT is covered in that Batman wrapping paper lmao.
Also guys, I’ve actually NEVER gotten second hand embarrassment from WRITING before (surprising, I know). During the scene where reader gives him the gift I had to cover my mouth with one hand as I continued to type.
Jokes aside, merry Christmas/Christmas Eve/happy holidays to you all! I hope you enjoyed this silly fic :). As always feel free to let me know about any mistakes! Have a wonderful day <3!
Requests are still open (rules here) ! Feel free to send them in :)!
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ৎׅ ׄ synopsis ⋮ You get kidnapped and branded by the joker on christmas. The bat-family sees Jason unravel.
word cnt. 14.6k
cw ›››› torture, branding, suicidal language, violence, blood, gore
Something is wrong.
Jason feels it like a pressure change—subtle, almost polite—but it crawls under his helmet and settles behind his eyes. It hasn’t clicked, not cleanly. Not yet. He hasn’t asked. Hasn’t said a word through the harbor sweep, through the cold iron stink of saltwater and oil and Christmas rot. A small job. The kind that should feel easy. The kind that still manages to choke the air out of his lungs anyway.
Everyone’s moving like the night might shatter if they stop.
Tim keeps choosing his words too carefully, syllables slowed and smoothed like he’s sanding down sharp edges. Dick’s doing that thing where he smiles first and speaks second—but the timing’s off, the warmth a fraction too late, like a recording lagging behind the video. Damian watches Jason more than the perimeter, eyes sharp, calculating, guarded. Stephanie hasn’t joked once. Not even a cheap jab to him, not even under her breath. That alone feels wrong enough to tilt the world sideways.
Bruce didn’t come.
That absence is loud. A hollow where a presence should be, echoing through comms and instinct alike. The Cave, he’d said. As if that explained anything. As if Bruce ever sits things out without a reason that claws.
Cassandra says nothing—but she’s closer. Close enough that Jason can feel her awareness like static along his spine. When the group splits, she falls into step beside him without discussion, without a glance. Just there. Solid. Protective in a way that feels less like trust and more like vigilance. As if she’s guarding him.
That’s when unease really sinks its teeth in.
Bruce didn’t need all of them.
Didn’t need six sets of boots scraping concrete, six heartbeats crowding the same dark. Dick alone could’ve dismantled this whole thing with half the effort. Hell, Jason himself could’ve wrapped it up fast and bloody and been home already. Instead, they’re stacked together, overlapping, slowing each other down like they’re afraid to let him out of their sight.
He agreed because no one argued about his presence. Because no one questioned whether he was needed. Because the silence around that decision felt intentional.
That should’ve been his first real warning.
Between two groups of thugs, he had ducked behind a row of shipping containers, Gotham’s lights bleeding gold across the black water. He had pulled out his phone and called you, already rehearsing the apology in his head. Late for presents. Again. You’d tease him, pretend to scold, maybe force him to wrap some gifts for your co-workers.
You didn't answer.
Probably a bath, he told himself. You’d mentioned one. Candles. The fancy bath salts you bought. Something soft to push the cold out of your bones. The thought settles him, briefly. He sends a text instead—short, careful. An apology. An I love you so much that he doesn’t overthink, because with you, he never has to.
You always know what he means.
The phone stays quiet in his pocket.
No buzz. No vibration brushing against his thigh like it usually does, grounding him, tethering him back to something warm and real. He told himself it’s nothing. That you’re relaxed, distracted, asleep. That the night is just heavy, that Gotham is doing what Gotham always does—making ghosts out of shadows and dread out of coincidence.
Still.
When he looks back at the others, he notices the way Dick avoids his eyes now. The way Tim’s gaze flicks to Jason’s pocket and away again. The way Damian’s jaw tightens when Jason shifts his weight, like he’s bracing for impact. Cassandra meets his eyes once—just once—and there’s something there that twists low and sharp in his chest. Not fear. Not exactly.
Knowing. Jason doesn’t ask. He doesn’t press.
But the harbor feels too quiet, the night stretched thin and listening, and for the first time since he sent that text, a cold, irrational thought curls in his gut—
That whatever is wrong didn’t start here.
And that somewhere far from the water, far from the mission, something precious has already slipped out of reach.
“That was the last of them,” Jason says, voice rough through the helmet, as Tim finishes cinching zip-ties around the final goon and anchors him to a rust-flaked shipping container. The plastic bites down with a sharp click that echoes too loudly across the concrete. The man mumbled insanities through spit.
The harbor exhales around them—cold wind off the water, carrying brine and diesel and something rotten that’s been sitting too long. Sodium lights flicker overhead, casting everything in jaundiced gold and long, distorted shadows that stretch and tangle at their feet. The concrete is damp beneath Jason’s boots, slick with mist and old oil, the kind of surface that never really dries no matter how many ‘sunny’ days Gotham pretends to have.
“We should do another check around the harbor,” Dick says.
He’s already kneeling, already breaking the man's phone in half with practiced efficiency, grinding it into the concrete with his heel until the screen spider webs and dies. He doesn’t look up when he says it. Doesn’t grin. Doesn’t even sound casual about it.
Jason lifts an eyebrow, slow, deliberate. His gaze slides to Damian automatically—because Damian is usually the first to shoot an idea like that down, sharp and impatient and blunt as a blade.
Instead, Damian just mutters, “Tim could be wrong.”
Mumbles it. Like he’s afraid the words might carry.
That alone sends a small, unpleasant chill up Jason’s spine.
Tim doesn’t argue. Doesn’t bristle. He straightens from the goon and dusts his gloves together, eyes flicking—not to Jason—but to Stephanie. The movement is quick, practiced, like muscle memory.
“Do you want to take the gates with me?” Tim says, too smooth. Too rehearsed. “Jason and Dick could go along the—”
“What?” Jason cuts in before he can finish, blinking once. “You two were perched on the gates the entire op. What’re you talking about?”
The wind gusts harder, rattling loose chains and setting a tarp snapping somewhere down the dock. Water slaps against concrete pylons in a slow, hollow rhythm.
Jason suddenly feels like the sound is counting something down.
“It wouldn’t hurt to double-check,” Tim says, rising to his feet.
He still won’t meet Jason’s eyes.
Jason’s jaw tightens. He shifts his weight, the concrete cold and unforgiving through the thinning soles of his boots, and for a split second his mind drifts—unbidden—to you. To the warmth of your kitchen lights. To the way you’d probably be halfway through setting out plates by now, humming something low and off-key, waiting for him in that way that makes him want to claw his soul out and hand it over to you.
The thought lands soft, intimate, grounding—and then slips through his fingers when he remembers his phone, silent and heavy in his pocket.
“…You guys don’t need me for that,” Jason says, firmer now. There’s an edge to it, something protective and stubborn. He already has plans. A timeline. A promise he intends to keep. “Seriously. If you want to sweep again, even one person could—”
Dick finally looks up.
It’s just a glance, quick and loaded, the kind Jason’s learned to read over a lifetime of almosts and unsaids. Cassandra shifts closer at the same moment, her shoulder nearly brushing his, her presence steady and deliberate. Jason doesn't think she's ever willingly touched him in his life. Stephanie opens her mouth like she’s about to say something—anything—then closes it again.
The harbor feels tighter suddenly. Smaller. Like the stacks of containers have leaned in, hemming them closer, their corrugated sides looming like silent witnesses. The wind cuts sharper off the water, needling through the seams of Jason’s jacket, and somewhere deep in his chest, that pressure builds again.
Jason turns fully to Damian.
“Kid, I swear to God, tell me what—”
Damian snaps at the exact same moment Cassandra moves. Her hand closes around Jason’s shoulder, firm and sudden, fingers digging in through armor like she’s trying to anchor him to the concrete before he does something irreversible. The contact is intimate in a way that feels wrong, alarmed.
“How the hell should I know? They didn't tell me—” Damian bites back, voice sharp, flaring too fast, too hot.
“Damian!” Dick hisses, the sound cutting through the night like a blade dragged too quickly from its sheath. He’s already moving, stepping between them without quite committing to either side, hands up in a placating gesture that lands closer to panic than calm. He turns to Jason almost immediately, words tumbling over each other. “Come on, dude, let’s just go check the security towers and—”
“That’s going to take another hour,” Jason cuts in.
The words come out flat, but there’s steel underneath. He shrugs Cassandra’s hand off—not rough, but final—and reaches into his pocket. The harbor lights blur for a second as his fingers close around his phone, the familiar shape of something that connects him to you grounding him. It’s 10:20. He knows that without looking but checks anyway. He’s been counting the minutes since the mission dragged past its supposed end.
“I had plans,” he says, quieter now, but more dangerous for it. “Let me at least—”
The batarang whistles through the air.
Jason barely has time to register the movement—Damian’s arm snapping forward, wrist precise, expression tight and furious—before metal slams into his hand. The impact jars up his arm, sharp and biting, and the phone slips free, spinning once before it hits the concrete.
Crack.
The screen fractures instantly, a spiderweb of dead glass blooming beneath the sodium lights before the device skids to a stop near Jason’s boot. The harbor seems to hold its breath. Even the wind falters, the water’s slap against the pylons momentarily muted, as if the night itself is listening.
Jason stares down at it.
At the dark screen. On the way his reflection breaks apart in the shattered glass.
Jason’s gaze lifts slowly from the ruin at his feet.
It settles on Dick.
“Call Bruce.”
The words aren’t loud. They don’t need to be. They cut anyway—clean, controlled, edged with something that’s starting to slip. Dick falters under it, hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck, eyes flicking anywhere but Jason’s face. The harbor lights stutter overhead, one of them buzzing like it’s about to give out, bathing Dick in a sickly gold that makes him look younger.
Guilty.
“What, you gonna tattle?” Dick says, trying for levity and missing it by miles. His laugh lands wrong, brittle against the cold. “C’mon, Damian's just in a mood. I was going to surprise you with burgers but I thought the kid would spill. I’ll buy you a new phone, okay? Just—”
“Call Bruce,” Jason repeats.
This time it’s a hiss, dragged out through clenched teeth, something feral and fraying around the edges. The wind picks up again, slicing between the containers, rattling loose metal and carrying the sharp tang of rain that never quite falls in Gotham. Jason turns his head, slow and deliberate, until his eyes find Cassandra.
She hasn’t moved. She’s watching him like she’s afraid he might break.
“…He’s busy,” Cass says.
Her voice is barely there. Smaller than usual. Soft enough that Tim, standing a good ten feet away, doesn’t hear it at all. The words dissolve into the night almost as soon as they leave her mouth, swallowed by wind and water and distance—but Jason hears them. Every syllable.
Busy.
Something inside him tightens, winding down to a thin, dangerous thread.
His hand comes up to his comm without conscious thought. He adjusts it once, fingers steady despite the way his pulse thuds too hard, too fast. The harbor seems to lean in again—the stacked containers looming like watchful giants, the river below churning black and endless.
Gotham breathes around him, damp and unforgiving.
“B,” Jason says.
Sharp. Precise. A single syllable fired into the dark like a flare.
Static answers him. Wind whistling through steel corridors. The distant cry of something alive and miserable echoing off the water. No voice. No correction. No irritation crackling back through the line.
Just silence. It stretches. Pulls thin. Grows teeth.
Jason exhales through his nose, a humorless breath that fogs faintly in the cold air. He thinks of you again—too vividly now. The way your voice softens when you say his name. The way you always pick up, even when he thinks you shouldn’t. The way silence has never belonged between the two of you.
His jaw locks. Fuck this shit, I should be at home with her.
Jason moves before anyone can stop him—before anyone even realizes he’s decided something.
He’s across the concrete in three long strides, boots splashing through shallow puddles that mirror Gotham’s jaundiced lights in broken pieces. Damian doesn’t flinch when Jason grabs his comm. Doesn’t pull back. Doesn’t protest. That, more than anything, makes Jason’s teeth grind.
He clicks the emergency signal to the Batcomputer—once, twice, a break, two clicks hard enough that it hurts his thumb—then rips the comm free. His helmet follows, clattering against the concrete with a hollow, echoing crack that ricochets between the shipping containers. The sound feels too loud, too exposed. Jason presses the comm to his bare ear, cold metal biting into skin.
No one stops him.
Not Dick. Not Tim. Not Stephanie. Cassandra watches with that same quiet intensity, hands flexing like she’s bracing for impact. They stand there and let it happen, like this is how it was always meant to go—like they’ve already accepted that Jason finding out is inevitable, but telling him would be worse. Like this is some twisted test, or penance, or family tradition he never agreed to.
The harbor hums low and restless. Wind slides through steel corridors, rattling chains, carrying the stink of oil and brine and rain-soaked concrete. Gotham feels awake in that way it only does when something bad is already in motion.
“Robin?” Bruce’s voice cuts through the static, sharp and immediate. Too immediate. There’s an edge to it Jason hasn’t heard in years—tight, almost nervous, parental. “Robin, what’s wrong?”
Jason almost laughs.
Instead, his mouth twists.
“I’m going home, old man,” he hisses, already turning away from Damian. “What was this? Ya trying to tire me out, or did you get mind-controlled again? ‘Cause everyone here apparently likes you enough to not tell me the truth.”
“Jason—”
“Red Hood,” Jason snaps, the correction coming fast and mean. He bends, scoops his helmet up by the chin guard, and starts walking toward the exit between the containers where the harbor opens up to the road. “What happened to keeping hero names on comms? Or are you the only one allowed to break rules tonight?”
“Red Hood, just give me—”
“It’s a lousy gang!” Jason shouts, voice tearing loose now, bouncing off steel and concrete and dark water. “They don’t even crack the top twenty. Damian could’ve done this shit by himself.”
He doesn’t look back, but he knows they’re following him. He can feel it—the weight of their footsteps, the way they trail just close enough to intervene if he breaks. Later, it’ll hit him why Tim made sure every single goon was double zip-tied, wrists biting white beneath plastic. Insurance.
Tim knew Jason would find out.
Knew none of them would be coming back to clean this up.
“Red Hood—”
“Merry Christmas, B,” Jason cuts in, bitter and sharp as broken glass. “Please don’t call.”
“JASON—”
Bruce’s voice snaps through the comm like a gunshot, dragging Jason straight back into another life, another night, another version of himself that answered to that tone. “She’s in danger. And if you want any chance of seeing her again, get to the Batcave—”
The line goes dead.
Not static. Not interference.
Bruce cut it himself.
Jason stops, because there's only one person he could be talking about to send all five of them with him.
The harbor seems to lurch, the world tilting just enough to make his balance feel theoretical. The wind howls between the containers, louder now, like Gotham exhaling something foul and satisfied. Water slaps hard against concrete pylons below, relentless, counting seconds Jason no longer owns.
Slowly—too slowly—he turns.
He looks at them. At Dick’s pale face. At Tim’s clenched jaw. At Damian’s rigid stillness. At Stephanie, eyes bright with unshed panic. At Cassandra, whose gaze is already on him, steady and mournful, like she’s watching something crack.
They look at him like he’s glass.
Like he’s a bomb they’re waiting to defuse—or clean up after.
Jason doesn’t give them the chance.
“Fuck all of you,” he spits, the words coming out broken and small despite his best efforts.
Then he runs.
Out of the harbor. Out of the sodium lights and rust and the weight of too many eyes. Jason runs like Gotham itself is on his heels, boots striking concrete in a brutal rhythm that drowns out thought—or tries to. The city stretches around him in jagged silhouettes and wet stone, skyscrapers looming like blackened ribs against a low, churning sky. Clouds hang heavy and swollen, bruised purple and gray, threatening rain they never quite release. Gotham loves the anticipation of pain more than the act itself.
His blood is loud in his ears. Too loud. Every heartbeat punches through his ribs, frantic and unforgiving, as if his body already knows something his mind refuses to accept.
Toward the manor. Toward answers.
Toward the awful, creeping certainty settling into his bones that whatever Gotham has taken this time, it didn’t take lightly—and it didn’t take something he can afford to replace.
He takes the shorter way.
Fire escapes. Rooftops slick with mist. Narrow alleys that smell like old rain and older sins. He vaults gaps without slowing, coat snapping behind him like a torn banner, the city blurring into streaks of shadow and light. This route cuts close to your place. Too close. He doesn’t consciously choose it; his body does, muscle memory dragging him along a path his heart has memorized better than any map.
And then—
Mid-leap, suspended between one rooftop and the next, he sees it.
Your building sits quiet against the skyline, dark in a way it never is. Your lights are off. All of them. The windows—your windows—are shattered, glass glittering weakly under the city’s glow like fallen stars. The balcony rail is smeared with something darker than shadow.
Blood.
The word doesn’t form. Not fully. His brain skids around it, refuses to give it weight. At most, he tells himself, you’re hurt. Something small. A cut. A scrape. A stupid accident that looks worse than it is. You’ll laugh it off when he gets there, scold him for worrying, tell him he’s being dramatic again.
Because you’re untouchable.
That’s the rule his mind has always clung to. Gotham can drown him in filth and violence and rot, but you—you—are clean. Untarnished. Something soft the city hasn’t learned how to bruise yet. You exist outside its reach, outside its hunger. Gotham takes things like Jason. It breaks people like him. It doesn’t get to put its hands on you.
It can’t have you.
Because if you’re hurt—if you’re really hurt—then everything Jason has built inside himself caves in at once. Every fragile structure, every careful compromise, every promise he’s made to stay standing for you. There’s no version of the world where you’re broken and he survives it intact.
He lands hard, barely absorbing the impact before he’s running again, lungs burning, throat raw. The manor rises ahead of him through the trees like a dark monument, windows glowing warm and oblivious against the night. Too slow. The gates are too slow. The doors are too slow.
Jason doesn’t bother.
He barrels straight for a ground-floor window and drives his elbow through it without hesitation. Glass explodes inward, sharp and screaming, biting into skin. He doesn’t feel it—not really—until he’s inside, boots skidding onto the polished floor, breath tearing out of him in harsh, uneven pulls.
Blood runs freely down his forearm, drips onto the pale carpet in dark, blooming stains.
It looks wrong there. Violent. Out of place, just like the blood on your balcony.
Jason stares at it for half a second too long, chest heaving, and something in him splinters quietly—because now he knows. The city has already touched you and it has never, not once, let go without breaking something in return.
Jason doesn’t slow down in the Cave.
The platform is still lowering when he’s already moving, boots striking metal too hard, too fast, the sound ricocheting off stone and steel. The Batcave yawns around them—vast and echoing, all cold water and colder rock, computer screens throwing pale blue light across jagged walls. The waterfall roars like it’s trying to drown the night itself, a constant, punishing noise that usually steadies him.
Tonight it only sharpens the edges.
Bruce turns at the last possible second. His eyes flick first to Jason’s face, then to the blood smeared down his arm, dripping steadily onto the pristine metal floor. Bruce’s mouth tightens. Not in anger. In calculation. In fear he refuses to name.
Jason shoves him.
Hard.
Bruce’s back slams into the Batcomputer console, screens rattling, data stuttering for half a heartbeat. A lesser man would’ve been airborne. Bruce Wayne could have thrown Jason across the Cave without effort—could have ended this in a clean, controlled second.
He doesn’t.
Jason knows he won’t.
“Where is she,” Jason spits, the words tearing out of him raw and shaking. His hands fist in Bruce’s cape, knuckles white, trembling despite the strength coiled beneath them. The fabric bunches beneath his grip like it might rip if he pulls any harder. “Where is she?”
Bruce lifts his hands slowly, carefully—not in surrender, but in containment. Like approaching a live wire. His voice, when he speaks, is measured to the point of pain.
“…Jason.”
The name alone is an attempt. An anchor. Bruce is already running scenarios, already gauging angles and exits and how much damage Jason could do if this slips another inch. He knows Jason’s tells. Knows the way his breathing has gone uneven, the way his eyes are too bright, too fixed. Knows this isn’t rage yet.
This is terror.
“Don’t,” Bruce says quietly. Not commanding. Pleading, buried deep beneath control. “Just—listen to me.”
Jason laughs once, short and broken, the sound scraping his throat raw. “No. You don’t get to slow this down. You don’t get to prepare me.”
Bruce swallows. “…Joker—” he begins.
And the world fractures.
The word lands heavy and obscene between them, fouling the air of the cave like poison gas. Joker. The name crawls under Jason’s armor, past muscle and bone, straight into the place where you live inside him.
Suddenly, you’re not untouchable.
You’re not the one clean thing Gotham never got its hands on. Not the soft place Jason runs to when the city claws at him too hard. Not the warmth in his bed, the light in his kitchen, the voice that says his name like it belongs to something human.
You’re not safe.
You’re not distant.
You’re not protected by the simple, impossible belief that the worst things in the world know better than to touch you.
You’re real.
You’re fragile.
You’re reachable.
Jason’s grip tightens without him meaning to, breath hitching violently in his chest. His mind fills with images he refuses to finish forming—broken glass, blood on pale surfaces, your windows shattered open to the night the same way his chest feels split open now. He thinks of your hands. Your laugh. The way you look at him like he’s something worth keeping.
And now—
Now you’re the blood he’s already wearing.
The blood he’s going to feel soaking into his gloves tonight.
Bruce sees it happen. Sees the moment Jason slips past anger and into something far more dangerous. His own heart lurches, sharp and traitorous. This—this is what he’s been afraid of since the second he knew Joker was involved. Not Jason lashing out blindly.
Jason focused.
Emotional.
Unanchored.
“Jason,” Bruce says again, softer now, steady as bedrock despite the fear tightening his chest. “I need you to stay with me. I need you here. Because if you go out there like this—”
Jason’s eyes snap back to him, glassy and feral and devastatingly alive.
“If I don’t go,” Jason says hoarsely, “she dies.”
“If you go,” Bruce says, low and sharp, the words cutting through the roar of the Cave, “you die—and you could lose her at the same time.”
The Batcave hums around them, fluorescent light washing the rock walls in cold blue, computer screens flickering with restless data. The waterfall crashes endlessly behind Bruce, mist clinging to the air, dampening everything it touches. It feels like the Cave is breathing—slow, heavy, watchful.
Bruce moves closer and grips Jason’s jacket with both hands, fingers clutching the leather like it’s the last solid thing in the world. He holds on the way a man holds a ledge he’s already slipping from, hoping friction alone might be enough to keep someone from falling.
It isn’t.
“Where is she,” Jason says.
His voice is flat. Too controlled. His eyes have already left Bruce, already slid to the Batcomputer, to the glowing map littered with red and yellow pings like open wounds across Gotham’s body. Each marker pulses faintly, alive and accusing.
He doesn’t notice his siblings closing in—Dick’s careful steps, Tim’s rigid stillness, Damian hovering sharp and coiled like a drawn blade.
“She’s alive,” Bruce says quickly, desperately. “She wasn’t the only one—at least four other children and three women—”
Jason turns his head.
The look he gives Bruce is devastating in its emptiness. Eyes glassed over, jaw set too tight, brows drawn together like the world has narrowed to a single, unbearable point.
“Do you honestly think I give a damn about them right now?”
The words aren’t shouted. They don’t need to be. They land heavy, obscene in their honesty, and Bruce’s grip tightens reflexively, knuckles whitening against Jason’s jacket.
“I know you don’t,” Bruce snaps back, frustration bleeding through control. “Which is why I didn’t tell you she was taken. Because we need a plan that keeps everyone who was captured safe—”
“At the risk she dies in the process?” Jason cuts in.
Then—he stills.
Something shifts. His hands loosen, falling away from Bruce’s cape as if the fabric has suddenly burned him. His gaze slides, sharp and intentional, and locks onto Tim.
“How long,” Jason says.
The question is steady. Solid. Frighteningly calm.
Tim swallows and flicks a glance at Bruce—a silent check, a plea, a habit Jason has seen a thousand times. Jason shoves Bruce’s hand aside and crosses the distance in two strides, grabbing Tim by the shoulders, fingers digging in through armor.
“Don’t,” Jason hisses, thumbs pressing hard, grounding, painful. “Don’t look at him.”
The words aren’t just for Tim. They’re for Jason too.
He vaguely registers Dick saying his name, Stephanie’s voice tight with panic somewhere behind him, but it all dissolves into a dull ringing as he stares down at Tim. Tim doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away. He meets Jason’s gaze head-on.
“How long,” Jason repeats. “Where.”
Tim exhales, slow and controlled, the way he does when delivering bad news. “Two hours,” he says quietly. “Warehouse two blocks from Crime Alley. Behind that busted playground.”
Crime Alley.
The name echoes through the Cave like a curse, sinking into Jason’s chest and blooming outward, cold and malignant. Of course it’s there. Of course Joker chose that place—layers of history piled atop rot, a shrine built from other people’s pain.
Jason releases Tim slowly, hands trembling now, control finally beginning to crack.
Two hours.
Two hours of you alone with the man who taught Gotham how to laugh while it kills.
The Batcomputer hums on, indifferent. Gotham’s skyline glows faintly on the monitors—jagged towers under a bruised sky, rain finally starting to smear the camera feeds, streaking the city in gray. Somewhere out there, windows are broken. Somewhere out there, that cashmere scarf he wrapped and placed under your tree stays un-wrapped.
Jason understands then—with a clarity so sharp it almost feels merciful—that plans are a luxury meant for people who still believe time is something they own.
Time has never belonged to him.
Because you—you—aren’t alone. You’re trapped with seven other people. Four of them children, Bruce had said, like that word didn’t rearrange Jason’s insides completely. His mind does something traitorous then, something he hates himself for even acknowledging: it calculates. It knows how these things go. It knows Joker’s sense of theater, his appetite for cruelty, his fondness for leaving one survivor behind as punctuation.
And the last one standing is never the strongest.
It’s the smallest.
You would be dying before those kids.
Jason’s breath stutters, just once.
“Jason,” Bruce says from the Batcomputer, voice tight, forced into calm the way it always is when he’s terrified. The blue glow paints him hollow, all sharp angles and restraint. “Don’t make me stop you. The cops are on their way. Joker just wants cash.”
For the first time since the harbor, the noise in Jason’s head goes quiet.
Not peaceful—focused.
Everything narrows down to Bruce. To the way his shoulders are squared like a barricade. To the way his hands hover, uncertain, like he’s trying to decide whether to reach out or brace for impact. Jason’s heart hammers so hard it hurts, louder than the waterfall, louder than any threat Batman could ever make.
“If you even try, Bruce,” Jason says.
He doesn’t look at him when he says it. He can’t. The name comes out wrong in his mouth—too raw, too intimate, scraped down to bone. Instead, he keeps his eyes on Tim, standing rigid in front of him, small in a way Jason suddenly can’t stop seeing. He hopes—distantly, uselessly—that he isn’t glaring at his little brother. Hopes Tim understands this isn’t anger.
Just pure desperation. His last attempt, his last shot.
“Ill fucking shoot myself. I’ll make sure you know it’s your fault,” Jason continues, voice low and shaking despite his effort to keep it steady. “I’ll use my gun. And if you tie me up today, I’ll wait until next week. If you lock me down for a week, I’ll wait a month. I’ll do it.”
He swallows.
Because that’s the only thing that’s ever worked. The only language Bruce Wayne never ignores.
Dick moves fast—too fast—grabbing Jason’s arm where it’s still braced near Tim, fingers digging in hard. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he shouts, panic cracking straight through his anger.
Jason turns on him then, eyes blazing, voice breaking loose at last.
“Would you be this still?” Jason yells back. “If that was me with Joker again? If it was me instead of her—would you have left me there for the police to find? Again?”
The word hangs between them, heavy and damning.
Again.
Jason knows Dick well enough to see it land. To watch his brother’s grip falter, fingers loosening like they’ve forgotten what they were holding onto in the first place. Dick’s face goes pale, mouth parting uselessly, and Jason twists the knife—not because he wants to hurt him, but because he needs them to understand.
“This,” Jason snaps. “This is why none of you fucking knew about her.”
He looks at all of them now—really looks. At Bruce, frozen behind the console like a man staring down a live bomb. At Dick, wrecked with guilt.
“If you can’t even see me beyond a mistake you made,” Jason says, voice hoarse, “there was no way you wouldn’t have seen her as that too. And I love her too much for that.”
The words leave him hollowed out.
Then he’s gone.
The Cave swallows the echo of his footsteps, leaving only the roar of the waterfall and the hum of machines that suddenly feel pointless. No one moves to stop him. No one even tries.
It takes Tim a full minute to cross the platform and reach the Batcomputer, fingers hovering uselessly over keys he knows by heart.
It takes Cassandra four times as long to find a part of Bruce that still moves—some small, human place in his arm or shoulder that isn’t locked rigid like a man bracing for an explosion he knows is already ticking down.
Dick follows Jason’s trail almost immediately. And Damian follows Dick.
You don’t remember the last five hours.
They’re gone—hollowed out—like someone reached into your head and scooped the time away with a careless hand. The last thing you have is small and warm and ordinary: the coffee table between the couch and the window, set for two. Plates aligned just so. The new glasses you bought with Jason on that stupidly perfect thrift-store date, thin and elegant and impractical. You’d laughed about them, about how easy they’d be to break. Jason had pretended to scold you, fingers warm around yours as he tugged you toward the bookshelves, already stacking paperbacks in his arms like treasure.
You’d bought homeware. A vintage mirror with a gold edge, slightly warped, the kind that makes everything look softer than it is.
Jason always said you needed better locks. You realize it numbly.
He always said it gently, like a suggestion instead of a warning. Like he was talking about replacing a lightbulb or buying better coffee. You brushed him off every time, smiling, pressing a kiss into his shoulder, telling him Gotham wasn’t that bad. That you were fine. That you were safe.
And you were right. You always are.
Because an extra lock wouldn’t have stopped the man with the red smile.
It wouldn’t have stopped hands tangling in your hair, fingers tight and merciless as he dragged you across your rug, skin burning where it scraped against the fibers. It wouldn’t have stopped the way your mirror shattered when he slammed you against it, glass singing as it broke, your own reflection splintering into a hundred terrified pieces that stared back at you with wide, unbelieving eyes.
It wouldn’t have stopped the way he looked at you.
He crouched in front of you like this was intimate. Like this was a secret. His smile stretched too far, paint cracked and smeared, eyes bright with something wrong and delighted and ancient.
Joker tilted his head, studying you the way a child studies an insect pinned to cork.
“Here’s the other lovebird,” he murmured, voice lilting, almost fond. “Ohhh… how cute you are.”
You remember thinking—absurdly, desperately—that Jason would hate that word. That he’d bristle at it, roll his eyes, pull you closer just to prove a point. You remember the ache of missing him hitting harder than the pain at first, your mind reaching for him the way it always does when the world goes wrong.
Jason would know what to do.
Jason would make this stop.
The thought is a comfort even now, curled tight in your chest, fragile but stubborn. You cling to it as the man stands, as one of the shadows behind him passes up an old, rusted crowbar. The metal is pitted and dark, flaking with age and something older still. It smells like iron and damp and rot.
It doesn’t take a lock to stop that.
It doesn’t take a security system to stop the sound your bones make when he brings it down.
The pain comes in blinding flashes—white-hot, nauseating, wrong. Your legs scream before you do, nerves lighting up in protest, your body trying to fold in on itself, trying to protect something already broken. You taste blood, copper and thick, your teeth chattering even as your throat burns raw from crying out.
Through it all, you think of Jason.
Of his hands—gentle despite their strength. Of the way he says your name like it’s something precious, something he’s afraid to drop. You think of his laugh, low and surprised, the way he softens when it’s just the two of you and Gotham can’t see him. You think of the books still stacked on the table, waiting to be read, of the glasses that shattered just like the mirror did.
Of how he warned you.
Of how he would be here already if he knew.
The room feels wrong—tilted, smeared with shadow, the air thick and sour. Blood pools where it shouldn’t, dark against your floor, soaking into the rug you picked out together. The city hums outside your broken windows, indifferent and vast, neon bleeding into the night like nothing is wrong at all.
You breathe when you can. You hold onto Jason’s name like a prayer you’re afraid to say out loud.
Because if he comes—when he comes—you need to believe there will still be something left of you for him to find.
Your consciousness returns in fragments, drifting in and out the same way you remember nights with him. Not clean breaks. Not mercy. Just gaps.
A void of sleep.
Jason easing your window open like the city might hear him, hands raised in mock surrender, voice low and careful. I didn’t mean to wake you… shh… go back to bed. The mattress dips, familiar weight settling beside you, warmth bleeding into your back.
A void of sleep.
Jason in your bathroom, the light too bright, the mirror fogged. Gotham’s blood and grime rinsed down the drain while he rubs his hair dry with one of your soft, ridiculous pink towels. He smiles at you through the doorway, sheepish and fond, promises he’ll be there in a second. He always is.
A void of sleep.
Jason shifting beside you, breath warm against the delicate skin beneath your ear. His arm tightens in his sleep, possessive without knowing it, like even unconscious he’s afraid the world might take you if he lets go. He murmurs your name—broken, reverent.
A void of sleep.
White hands. Cracked paint. Fingers threading through your hair, slick and tangled with blood. The touch is intimate in the worst way, scalp burning as he hums—no, sings—a childish tune about robins, voice lilting and wrong, laughter bubbling beneath it like rot under sugar.
A void of sleep.
Concrete tearing at your skin as you’re dragged, knees bouncing, spine jolting with every crack in the ground. A van door yawns open, metal teeth waiting. A child sobs near your ear, small and hiccuping. A woman screams at the child to shut up—panic sharp and desperate—until a gunshot rings out like punctuation. The woman goes silent. The child doesn’t. The word mommy repeats, thin and broken, drilling into your skull.
A void of sleep.
You wake choking on pain.
Your body is bound to a chair, wrists cinched tight, ankles screaming. Barbed wire coils around you like something alive, biting deep with every involuntary twitch. The metal is rusted, flaking, cruel—tearing skin open in ragged kisses that burn and throb and never quite stop bleeding. Your legs are numb in places, screaming in others. You can feel blood soaking into fabric, sticky and cooling as it trails downward.
He’s in front of you.
Smiling.
Head cocked, eyes bright with interest, like you’re a puzzle he’s just started enjoying. He steps closer, crouches until he’s eye-level with you, hands clasped together as if in prayer.
“You do love your sleep, don’t you?” he says, voice almost gentle.
Your vision swims. The room smells like iron and oil and damp concrete. Somewhere nearby, something drips steadily—water, or blood, or both. The walls feel too close, the shadows stretching and curling like they’re listening.
“The other birdy,” he continues, grinning wider, “wouldn’t even sleep if I cracked his skull. Such a shame.” He sighs theatrically, tapping the barbed wire with one gloved finger, delighted by the way you flinch. “I suppose I’ll have to find a way to keep you awake.”
Through the haze, through the pain, one thought stays stubbornly intact.
Jason is coming.
And you cling to that like a lifeline, even as the horror closes in, even as the night tries to peel you apart—because if you let go of that belief, if you let the void take everything—There will be nothing left for him to save.
You can’t see farther than four feet in front of you.
Anything beyond that dissolves into smears of color and motion, the edges of the room bleeding into one another. When you try to focus, your vision tilts violently, the world pitching sideways as warm blood slips down from your temple, sticky and insistent. It drips into your eye, blurring everything further, each blink making it worse. The ceiling swims. The walls breathe.
He notices.
Of course he does.
He steps into what little clarity you have left, face snapping into focus like a nightmare finally deciding to be seen. His hand comes up fast, fingers prying your jaw open with impatient familiarity. Something chalky presses against your tongue.
You gag immediately.
Your throat spasms around his fingers, saliva thick and useless as panic claws up your chest. Your head jerks instinctively, barbed wire biting deeper in protest, fresh pain flaring white-hot along your wrists and ankles. He doesn’t pull away. He shoves the pill back, past your tongue, past your resistance, until your body betrays you and swallows.
You choke.
Tears spill from your eyes, hot and humiliating, streaking through the grime on your cheeks. Your lungs burn as you suck in air in sharp, broken pulls.
Jason, you think, distantly, desperately. The name is a reflex now. A prayer you don’t dare say out loud.
His hand withdraws at last.
Then—
Smack.
Your head snaps to the side, vision exploding into sparks. Before you can react—
Smack.
The second strike lands harder, ringing through your skull, teeth clacking together as pain blooms anew. The world steadies just enough to be cruel about it.
“That’ll keep you awake, birdy,” he croons, pleased.
Your heart slams against your ribs, frantic and trapped. Already you can feel it—the way the haze pulls back just a little too much, the way your thoughts sharpen against your will. Your eyelids burn, heavy but refusing to close, nerves screaming as the drug seeps in and denies you even the mercy of darkness.
“Now.”
He leans back into his own chair like this is a rehearsal, like he’s bored of waiting for his cue. The legs scrape loudly against the concrete, the sound sharp enough to hurt. He reaches forward and adjusts the camera in front of you with careful precision. A small red light blinks every few seconds—steady, patient. Watching.
“We’re going to make a deal, okay?”
You don’t answer.
Your eyes refuse to cooperate, swimming uselessly as you blink through blood and tears. Every attempt to focus sends a wave of nausea through you, the room tilting, your pulse roaring in your ears louder than his voice. Your jaw trembles. Your tongue feels thick, wrong in your mouth.
“Okay?”
Nothing comes out.
The barbed wire strung cruelly across your throat digs in deeper with every breath you take, a quiet reminder that sound would cost you skin. Air hisses past your teeth in shallow pulls. You can feel your heartbeat there, fluttering and frantic against metal.
His smile thins.
He stands.
The rusty crowbar tightens in his grip as he rises from a stupid, bright orange folding chair—out of place, obscene against the filth of the warehouse. He steps into frame, then closer, until the camera, until you, are all that exist. He hooks two fingers under your chin and lifts your face, forcing your eyes up.
“Answer.”
You try.
Your mouth opens. Nothing happens.
All you can see is him—cracked white makeup creasing around his eyes, green hair greasy and limp, age showing in the lines around his mouth where smiles have lived too long. He smells like oil and metal and something sour beneath it all. The warehouse stinks of rust, damp concrete, old fuel. It crawls into your lungs.
And then—
You hear it.
A sound that doesn’t belong to him.
Crying.
Your head turns slowly, painfully, vertebrae protesting as the wire shifts against your throat. The movement costs you another sharp breath. Your vision blurs again—but this time, shapes resolve.
A cluster of bodies huddled together against a dented equipment container. Two teenage girls with their knees pulled tight to their chests, faces streaked with dirt and tears. Four little boys wedged between them, shaking, hands bound too tight, mouths open in silent sobs like they’ve already learned screaming doesn’t help.
Something in your chest caves in.
You don’t even see the crowbar move.
The impact comes out of nowhere—white-hot, brutal. The hooked end of the bar slams into your shoulder with a wet, tearing sound, metal biting deep as it pierces flesh. Pain detonates through you, ripping the air from your lungs. He yells as he does it, manic and delighted, like the violence startled even him.
Your body jerks against the restraints.
Barbed wire bites deeper. Blood spills warm and fast down your arm, soaking into your sleeve, dripping to the floor in thick, uneven drops. Your vision fractures, stars bursting behind your eyes.
You clamp your teeth down hard on your lip to keep from screaming.
You taste iron immediately—sharp and overwhelming—as skin breaks beneath your bite. Tears spill freely now, blurring everything, mixing with the blood already clinging to your lashes. It burns. It hurts. Your whole body shakes with the effort of staying quiet.
Behind you, the crying gets worse—fractured, panicked.
“Okay,” you choke out.
The word scrapes your throat raw on the way out, barely more than a breath. It tastes like blood and rust and surrender.
Immediately, the pressure is gone.
The crowbar pulls free with a wet sound that makes your vision white out, pain screaming down your arm as the hooked metal tears away from muscle and skin. You shudder hard, a broken gasp ripping out of you despite your best effort to swallow it down.
He steps back like a magician deciding on the next trick.
Then he leans in again—careful, deliberate—and pats at the wound where the bar pierced you. Not gentle. Never gentle. His palm presses just enough to make you flinch, fingers smearing warm blood across your torn clothes.
“See?” he says brightly, turning slightly so the camera gets a better angle. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Your breath comes shallow and fast, chest stuttering against the wire. Every inhale sends a fresh bloom of pain through your shoulder, the edges of it pulsing in time with your heart.
His hands come up next.
Dry. Cracked. Too warm.
He grabs your face, fingers digging into your cheeks, thumbs pressing at your jaw as he tilts your head from side to side. The movement drags the skin of your neck against the barbed wire, a searing, intimate pain that makes your eyes flood instantly.
“What a dumb dumb birdy you are,” he croons, affectionate in the way predators are. “It’s okay. Joker can teach you.”
Your body trembles uncontrollably now. Your fingers spasm uselessly against the wooden arms of the chair, nails scraping shallow grooves into the surface. You can feel blood slicking your palm and you don't even want to think about how you got hurt there too.
He releases your face.
Pats your head once.
The gesture is almost worse than the violence.
“Now,” he says softly, pleasantly, “say thank you.”
Your vision swims. The room feels too loud, too close. Somewhere behind you, one of the children sobs so hard it turns into hiccupping gasps. You swallow around the wire, throat burning.
You look up at him with shaking eyes, lashes heavy with tears and blood. Your mouth opens. Your lips quiver.
“Thank—” Your voice breaks completely. You force it back together, dragging the word out of yourself like it’s being pulled through glass. “Thank you.”
His smile spreads slow and satisfied, stretching the cracks in his makeup wider.
“Good birdy,” he coos, pleased. “So much more compliant than your love bird already!”
“Now—” Joker announces, voice lifting into a theatrical lilt, like he’s stepped beneath a spotlight instead of flickering warehouse fluorescents. He turns toward the camera, gives it a jaunty little nod, then looks back at you, grin splitting wider. “I was gonna let you go for some cash. Thought your little boy bird might get scared shitless—just a fun little bonus, really—buttt—”
He drifts away from you, footsteps light, almost playful. You can’t turn your head far enough to see what he’s doing. The wire bites when you try. Your vision pulses, dark at the edges.
Then—
A scream.
Sharp. High. A girl’s voice.
It cuts off halfway through, collapsing into a thin, broken cry that echoes far too long in the hollow space of the warehouse.
Something in you fractures.
Joker reappears at your side, breath brushing your ear, laughter bubbling out of him like it’s a private joke the two of you share. “Got lucky with a rich bitch on the road,” he cackles, delighted. “Gotham really does keep on givin’.”
Your stomach twists violently. You taste bile. The crying behind you swells again, panicked and animal, and you can feel your own body trying to fold in on itself despite the restraints, like if you curl inward hard enough you might disappear.
His hands slide to your throat and at the same time your eyes land onto his hands. Diamond earrings.
He ripped her earrings out of her ears.
Before you can flinch at the sight of pieces of skin in his open hand, he yanks.
The chain snaps free with a sharp tug, metal biting into your skin as the necklace tears away. You gasp, the wire at your neck punishing you for it, and the sudden cold where the chain used to rest feels obscene—too exposed. You feel lucky that you took off your earrings when you were doing your hair.
He dangles it in front of the camera, letting it glint under the harsh light, gemstones smeared faintly red from your blood. “This could go for a couple hundred too!” he sings. “Ohhh, how delightful!”
He leans closer, eyes alight, savoring every tremor that runs through you. “At least one of the birdies knows how to decorate their nest. Found a few rings at your place as well.”
Joker pockets the necklace with a satisfied hum.
“Well, now that I don’t need the money,” he croons, voice lilting, playful, like he’s deciding which joke to tell next, “what should I do with you?”
His fingers drag along your cheek again, slower this time, the pad of his thumb pressing just hard enough to bruise. His touch leaves heat behind, a crawling sensation that makes your stomach revolt. You feel contaminated where he’s touched you, like your skin is remembering something it shouldn’t.
“…I’ll give you more,” you whisper. Your voice fractures around the word, splintering into something pitiful and thin. “However much you want—just—”
“Oh, I don’t need money.”
The change is instant. His tone drops, sharp and venomous, and when he leans in his eyes are blown wide and empty, pupils swallowing the green like oil slicks. A hawk spotting movement. A blade finding flesh.
“I was looking for some fun, love bird,” he hisses. “You can’t give me that?”
You whimper around the grip on your jaw as his fingers tighten, nails biting into your skin. The wire at your throat digs deeper when you gasp, its teeth kissing something vital. Pain blooms hot and bright, stars bursting behind your eyes.
“Jason— Jason will—”
He doesn’t even flinch at the name.
Maybe that’s mercy.
His fingers move higher, rough and invasive, smearing through the makeup you’d put on hours ago with careful hands. The eyeshadow burns as it’s ground into your skin, sweat and blood turning it into a dark, ugly paste. His thumb drags through the faint blush on your cheeks, erasing it like it was a mistake.
“How pretty you are,” he murmurs, almost tender. “I do makeup on myself too, you know.”
Then his hands leave you entirely.
He grabs his own face, fingers digging into the cracked greasepaint, stretching the red grin wider, tearing at the corners until the white creases and flakes. For a second you think you see real skin underneath—white, lined, angry. Horrid.
“Do you like mine?” he asks brightly. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
Your mind blanks.
Your eyes flick helplessly to the camera instead—the blinking red light pulsing steadily, patiently. Recording. Waiting. You try to speak, to say yes or no or anything that might stop what’s coming, but your throat locks around the wire and all that comes out is a wet, useless sound.
Then—
“Very pretty!”
The voice is behind you.
Too young.
A teenage girl, no older than seventeen. Her voice trembles, thin and frantic, the words tumbling over each other. “So—so pretty—”
You feel something inside you tear open.
She’s trying to survive. You can feel that hope radiate off of her. The hope of throwing words into the dark and praying it lands somewhere safe.
Joker’s head snaps toward her.
His eyes narrow, sharp and wrong, smile freezing into something predatory. “You think so?”
There’s a frantic nod you can hear more than see—the quick intake of breath, the shuddering little sob that follows.
Joker bends down.
The crowbar scrapes loudly as he lifts it, metal screaming against concrete. You catch a glimpse of it as he moves past you—rusted, pitted, darkened in places where it’s already been used tonight.
Then he’s gone from your line of sight.
The scream that follows is immediate and unbearable.
It’s not just pain—it’s shock, terror, the sound of someone realizing too late that they were wrong. The metal wall amplifies it, throws it back at itself until it feels like the warehouse is screaming with her.
There’s a wet, sickening crack.
A sound like meat hitting concrete.
“Why don’t we match?” Joker coos from behind you, voice light and delighted. “I did one side, now the other!”
The crowbar hits again.
You hear bone give this time—feel it in your teeth, in your chest. Her scream fractures into something animal, then into choking sobs, then into a raw, bubbling sound that makes bile rush up your throat.
Your own crying breaks free, ugly and uncontrollable. Your body jerks against the restraints, fingers cramping, nails tearing uselessly into the wood of the chair. Hot tears spill down your face, mixing with blood, dripping off your chin in thick, dark drops.
The camera’s red light blinks again.
Once.
Twice.
It taunts you by matching every sound that breaks out of you.
Every gasped sob, every wet, hitching breath. The camera’s red light blinks in time with your chest, like it’s learned your rhythm, like it’s decided to breathe with you instead of for you.
And then the Joker comes back.
You smell him before you see him—iron-thick blood, old rust, sweat gone sour. His hands are slick, red to the wrist, fingers shining under the warehouse lights. The crowbar hangs loose in his grip, darker now, clotted, strands of hair caught cruelly in its curve.
He crouches in front of you, bringing himself eye-level, like he’s talking to a child.
“Well,” he hums thoughtfully. “I can’t give you her look, can I?”
Your vision swims. You can’t stop shaking. Tears slide down your face in hot, unstoppable streams, carving clean paths through blood and grime. Your mouth opens, but nothing coherent comes out—just a broken, animal sound that folds back in on itself.
His smile twitches.
“What should I do with you?” he asks softly. “Hm?”
You don’t answer. You can’t. You just cry harder, chest stuttering against the wire, throat raw and burning.
That seems to irritate him.
He clicks his tongue, disappointed, and lifts the crowbar. The cold metal taps against your cheek once—tap—just enough to make you flinch violently. He pauses, head tilting.
“Oh—”
His eyes light up.
“Oh yes, that’s wonderful! Oh—” He erupts into laughter, sudden and explosive, clutching his stomach as if the joke is too much to bear. Spit flies from his mouth, warm and disgusting as it lands in your hair, streaking through blood-matted strands. “Oh, isn’t my brain just splendid?”
He straightens, still laughing, wiping his eyes like he’s genuinely amused. “You bats are all poetry, I say—pure poetry!”
Then he turns.
Walks away.
His footsteps fade, echoing hollowly through the warehouse, until there’s only the hum of the lights, the distant crying behind you—and the camera.
You’re alone.
One last sob claws its way out of your throat, wet and choking. Blood follows it, dribbling down your chin, splashing darkly against your chest. You force your eyes open, drag them upward, lock them onto the camera.
You don’t know who’s watching. You don’t know if anyone is.
Your voice comes out steadier than it has any right to be.
“How—”
“Shut up!” someone whisper-yells behind you, frantic and terrified. “There’s other men!”
Your mouth snaps shut.
And the red light keeps blinking.
The metal door slams open with a shriek of abused hinges, the impact shuddering through the warehouse floor and straight up your spine. Dust rains down from the rafters in a thin, dirty veil, catching in your hair and sticking to the blood already drying there.
He’s laughing before you even see him.
Not distant laughter—close. Moving. Each step accompanied by a wet, dragging sound, like something heavy being pulled across concrete. His cackle ricochets off the shipping containers, off the steel beams, off the low ceiling that traps the sound and forces it back into your skull.
A little boy cries out behind you as Joker passes him. A sharp, panicked sound that fractures into a sob and then cuts off abruptly, like someone clamped a hand over his mouth.
The air grows hotter.
Through the warped reflection in the camera lens, you see it clearly now: a long metal bar burning red-hot, so bright it hurts to look at directly. Heat ripples distort the image around it, the glow painting the walls in feverish streaks of crimson. The smell hits you next—burning iron, scorched metal, something faintly organic beneath it that makes bile crawl up your throat.
Joker taps the brand against the concrete behind you.
It doesn’t clang.
It hisses.
The sound is sharp and alive, like meat on a skillet. Tiny sparks spit outward where it kisses the floor, leaving blackened scars in the cement. The red glow doesn’t dull. Doesn’t cool. It stays furious and bright, as if fed by something endless.
Whatever fragile hope you were clutching evaporates in that moment, leaving you hollowed out, lungs burning as you exhale something that feels like your last prayer.
He’s behind you in the next second.
Joker’s hand comes out of nowhere, clamping over your mouth, palm slick and hot. The copper taste floods you as his fingers press into your cheeks, nails digging in just enough to hurt—just enough to remind you that restraint is a choice he’s making. Your head is forced back, neck screaming as the wire saws deeper, the barbs biting into tender skin.
“Would you like to match your birdy?” he murmurs.
His voice is serene. Gentle. Almost affectionate.
He angles the brand around the arm of the chair so you can see it clearly. The letter is unmistakable now, its edges glowing white-hot, heat radiating off it in suffocating waves.
A ‘𝙹’.
Your body reacts before your mind can—your stomach convulses, gagging against his hand, breath stuttering uselessly through your nose. Your skin feels too tight, like it’s already shrinking away from what’s coming.
“We’re going to make the deal now,” he coos.
In the camera’s reflection, you can see his eye—wide, bright, utterly focused on the blinking red dot. Performing. Enjoying the audience if there even is one.
“You either get a matching look…” The brand drifts closer, close enough that the heat kisses your cheek, nerves screaming in anticipation, sweat instantly breaking out along your spine. “…or you tell me who you hate.”
His hand peels away from your mouth.
Air rushes in too fast. You choke on it, coughing hard enough that the wire grinds into your throat, pain blooming hot and blinding. Your voice comes out shredded. “Who… who I hate?”
“Who put you here?” he hums thoughtfully, as if the answer delights him. “It wasn’t me.”
The brand pauses, hovering inches from your skin. You can feel the heat burrowing inward, like it’s already memorizing you.
“Why do you think I found you?” he continues lightly. “Do you know how sloppy he is?”
Silence stretches, thick and oppressive.
You stare at the glowing red letter, your mind drifting somewhere distant and numb to survive. Absurdly, irrationally, you think of Jason’s helmet—the same violent red, the same defiant color. You wonder if he’s thinking of you right now. If he can feel this, somehow.
“Tell me who you hate.”
The words don’t just reach you—they enter you, heavy and cold, sinking past bone and settling somewhere deep and irreversible. They press the air flat, make the warehouse feel smaller, closer, like the walls are leaning in to listen.
He stands before you in all his wrongness, and up close there is nothing theatrical left. The Joker’s makeup has melted into something corpse-like, white cracked and flaking into the grooves of his face as though his skin is trying to shed it. The red smile is no longer a grin so much as a wound, smeared unevenly, darker where blood has mixed in, the corners dragged downward by age and use. His hair hangs limp, green dulled to the color of mold, clinging to his scalp in greasy strands. His eyes are too bright—glass-bright, feverish—never still, never soft, reflecting the warehouse lights like knives.
The space around you hums with misery. The concrete beneath your feet is slick with blood and oil, cold seeping up through the chair and into your bones. Shipping containers loom like coffins, their metal sides scarred and rusted, shadows pooled so thick between them it feels like something could step out at any moment. The air reeks—burnt iron, old sweat, copper, rot—and every breath feels like inhaling something alive and hostile.
You look at the camera.
That red eye blinks steadily, rhythmically, a heart that isn’t yours. It sees the way your chest shudders, the way your fingers twitch uselessly against the bindings, the way your body is already bracing for pain it knows is coming. Your thoughts drift, slow and exhausted, slipping through your hands like water you can’t quite hold.
You think of Jason.
Not the helmet. Not the blood. But his hands—warm, callused, careful when they touch you. The way he looks at you like the world might soften if you stay. The way he says your name like it’s something solid.
You could say his name now.
You could offer it up like a sacrifice and pray that this monster believes in deals, that you might walk out of here broken but breathing. You could lie and hope he lets you go.
Or you could say Jason’s name and watch Joker’s smile vanish as he switches off the camera and kills you quietly, preserving this horror to show your sweet boy later.
Or you could stay silent and take the brand—feel your skin burn, your body marked, watch the ecstasy bloom in Joker’s eyes as he claims you like an object he’s improved.
None of them feel survivable.
Something inside you twists—not courage, not bravery, but love sharpened into something desperate and ugly and defiant. You gather what spit you can in your blood-wet mouth and turn your head as far as the wire allows.
You spit in his face.
It lands wet and unmistakable, dragging a slow line through the cracked white paint, cutting through the red smile like an insult carved in flesh.
For a heartbeat, everything freezes.
The Joker goes utterly still, his expression emptying out in a way that is far more frightening than his laughter. Then his eyes widen, pupils dilating, fury flaring bright and feral—pleased.
You lean forward, neck screaming as the wire bites deeper, and you whisper because your voice will not survive being louder.
“You know,” you murmur, breath shaking despite everything you do to steady it, “he’s never mentioned you before.”
His breath stutters.
“You must not have left quite an impression.”
It’s a lie. A reckless, transparent lie.
You have lived in Gotham long enough to know exactly what he is—his name written in blood across the city’s history—but lies can still cut, and you see it land. You see the way his smile stretches wider, hungry and thrilled.
You’ve given him a reason.
A reason to prove himself.
A reason to keep you alive.
A reason to make you hurt longer.
His hand tangles in your hair and yanks your head back violently. Your neck slams into the barbed wire, spikes tearing in with a wet, intimate sound that makes you sob despite yourself. Warm blood spills down your throat, choking you, slicking your chest.
Then the brand descends.
The heat is indescribable—ancient, total, a pain so vast it consumes thought itself. Your flesh screams as it burns, the smell of seared skin rising thick and sweet, smoke curling upward as the letter is carved into you slowly, deliberately. Your body arches uselessly against the restraints, every nerve on fire, and the sound that leaves you is not a scream so much as something torn out of your soul.
You hate that he hears it. And when that drug denies you the void of sleep you so desperately need, you allow yourself to think numbly as the man pulls it away that at least Jason can't dwindle his appearance anymore.
Your tears stripe down your cheeks, burning as they touch your skin.
We match. You think numbly, Atleast we match.
He strokes over the brand with more delicacy than he has ever had in this whole nightmare, mumbling, “This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.”
When you wake again, it’s to the weight of tears landing on your face—warm, uneven drops that pull you out of the dark in slow, reluctant pieces. For a moment you don’t know where you are. The world rocks gently, like it can’t decide whether to keep moving or stop altogether. There’s the low hum of an engine beneath you, vibration traveling through bone and bruised muscle, and the smell of old leather surrounds you—worn, familiar, grounding in a way that makes your chest ache.
Leather is good.
Leather is not acid.
Leather does not burn your lungs on the way in.
“Hurts,” you mumble, the word barely surviving the journey out of your throat. You offer it up like an apology, like a peace offering, half-expecting pain to answer you back.
Instead, the crying breaks harder.
It comes undone above you, raw and ugly, and through the haze you realize you aren’t lying flat on concrete, waiting for the Joker to press a cinder block to your stomach. Your body is stretched across someone, your legs draped over another set of knees, your weight distributed carefully, reverently, like something fragile that might shatter if shifted wrong.
An arm is braced beneath your neck, steady and strong, keeping your head from lolling, and your cheek presses into a leather jacket that smells unmistakably like gun oil, sweat, rain—
Jason.
The knowledge hits softer than it should, cushioned by exhaustion and shock, and when your eyes finally manage to open, everything swims. Light smears at the edges, colors bleeding into one another, but his face is there anyway, hovering close, carved with terror and relief and something so naked it almost scares you more than the warehouse did.
“Am I in heaven?” you mumble.
He lets out a sound that isn’t quite a sob and isn’t quite a laugh, choking on it as his chin trembles. “You don’t even believe in heaven.”
“Well,” you murmur, trying—and failing—to pull your mouth into something that resembles a smile, “what else could you be?”
Your jaw burns when you speak. Everything burns. It feels like your body has been filled with broken glass and lit from the inside, and you’re dimly aware of warm liquid slipping from your mouth, darkening the leather beneath your cheek every time you breathe wrong. You hate that you’re staining him. You hate that you can’t stop.
“I’ll kill him,” Jason whispers, like a prayer he’s been holding onto with both hands. His fingers shake as they brush your hair back, careful to avoid places he knows are hurt. “I’ll kill him. I promise.”
“Can I have hot chocolate first?” you mumble. The words feel distant, like they belong to someone else. “I bought that expensive kind… from Finland. Asshole knocked it all over my carpet…”
Jason’s breath fractures completely at that. He nods too hard, tears spilling freely now, dropping onto your cheeks, your neck, your collarbone. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll buy you hot chocolate. I’ll buy you all of it.”
Somewhere near your feet, another voice cuts in, low and strained with concern. “Hey, Jay—breathe—”
Jason doesn’t hear them. Or maybe he does and simply can’t afford to listen. His chest is rising too fast beneath you, breaths sawing in and out like he’s drowning on dry land, his eyes glassy and unfocused, the green in them shifting with every frantic blink.
Or maybe that’s just your vision still failing you. That would make sense. The powder. The smoke. The way light hurts now.
“Stop crying,” you murmur weakly. “I can’t die with you looking like that.”
That breaks him.
His face crumples completely, grief spilling over into something fierce and desperate as he bends closer, forehead almost touching yours. “Good,” he chokes. “Fuck you. I’ll cry even more, so–so stay with me, yeah?”
“No,” you whisper, your voice scraping raw against your throat. “Wanna sleep.”
“You slept an awful lot,” he snaps, but there’s no anger in it—only terror wearing sharp edges, only love clawing its way out however it can.
“Well,” you murmur, your voice thin but soft, like you’re afraid of startling him, “You show up in my dreams an awful lot.”
That does it.
Whatever fragile control Jason had left fractures clean through. He folds over you instinctively, shoulders caving as he tries—fails—to hide the sound of it. His breath comes apart against your hair, his forehead dipping close to your temple like if he presses himself near enough, he can keep you here by force alone. You feel the tremor of him through your whole body, every hitch of his chest echoing in your ribs.
You smell blood on him then. Copper and iron, sharp beneath the leather and sweat and rain. For a distant, numb second you think it’s yours again—until the scent is too heavy, too layered.
Oh.
Was this—
“Did I interrupt family bonding?” you whisper.
Your lips barely move. The words slip out half-asleep, half-dreaming, and they earn you a startled huff from somewhere behind you. Jason doesn’t answer. He can’t. His arms tighten instead, one hand splayed carefully at your back like he’s afraid even breathing too hard might hurt you more.
A voice comes from the seat behind, dry and unimpressed, because Jason is currently incapable of speech and whoever has your legs resting in their lap is rubbing slow, grounding circles into his back.
“If this is what you think family bonding is, you’ll fit right in.”
“Damian, be quiet,” another voice snaps.
“She’s the one shamelessly flirting with him in front of all of us, Tim” Damian continues anyway, undeterred. “And Father isn’t even saying anything, so—”
“Well she’s the one dying!” Tim blurts, voice cracking sharp with fear.
Jason chokes on the words that come from Tim’s mouth, breath stuttering hard, and a deeper voice cuts in from the front seat—controlled, measured, holding itself together by sheer will.
“She’s not going to die, Tim.”
“I want hoya bellas on my grave,” you interrupt softly.
Jason lets out a broken sound that might have been a laugh in another universe. He shakes his head over you, forehead brushing your hair, and through your blurry vision you think you catch a gloved hand popping up behind him in a solemn thumbs-up.
“Got it.”
Another voice joins in from the front, exasperated and strained. “Cassandra, she’s not being serious.”
“I’m sorry,” Jason whispers, over and over, like a mantra, like something he’s trying to carve into reality. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” His thumb strokes your hair away from your forehead again, impossibly gentle, avoiding the places he knows hurt, the places he doesn’t want to know at all.
“I’m gonna sleep now,” you murmur. It takes effort to shape the words. The dark is getting heavier again, tugging at you, warm and deep. “Can one of you give Jason water?”
“Hey—” Jason breathes, panic flaring sharp as his voice cracks. “Hey, no—no, no, no, stay with me, come on—”
But you’re already slipping.
Your eyes flutter closed despite him, despite the warmth of his arms, despite the way his heart is racing beneath your ear like it’s trying to outrun fate itself. His glove comes off hurriedly and you feel his bare fingers press to your pulse, grounding himself in the steady beat there, in the fact that it’s still happening.
After a few minutes, Dick leans forward and taps Jason’s shoulder gently, offering a water bottle. His uniform is torn and scorched like the rest of them, a thin cut bright against his cheek, but his voice is soft when he speaks.
“Drink.”
Jason doesn’t look up. He doesn’t let go. He just nods once, tight and shaky, eyes fixed on you like if he looks away for even a second, the world might take you again.
He forces himself to take a full gulp of water, the plastic bottle crinkling loudly in the too-quiet car, his throat working like it has to remember how swallowing goes. His hands are still shaking when he passes it off to Tim.
“Hey, I don’t need any—”
Jason looks at him.
Not sharp. Not angry. Just steady in a way that leaves no room for argument, the kind of look that says do this or I will fall apart next.
Tim takes a long swig immediately. Somewhere in the background, Damian lets out a low, satisfied cackle.
The digital clock on the Batmobile reads 4:00 a.m.
The numbers glow cold blue against the dark interior, reflected faintly in the windshield like a second set of eyes staring back at them. Gotham outside is hollow and half-dead at this hour—streetlights flickering, rain-slick asphalt stretching endlessly, buildings slumped together like they’re exhausted too.
Bruce’s voice is calm as he calls Alfred, clipped and precise, already listing supplies like this is something he can control if he names enough of it out loud.
Jason doesn’t listen.
He keeps his focus on you.
On the shallow rise and fall of your chest. The warmth is still clinging stubbornly to your skin. On the way your weight settles into him like it belongs there, like it always has. One hand stays firm at your neck, holding you upright because you need it—because you need him steady, and that knowledge anchors him harder than anything Bruce could ever say.
You need him here. You need him present. You need him not to break.
He knows that, because once—once—that was all he ever wanted too.
And that’s the cruel part of it.
Because the weight of you in his arms has only ever meant safety. Home. Sleep curling warm and heavy in his bones. His body doesn’t know the difference between holding you safe and finally being allowed to rest.
Jason Todd passes out with his forehead dipping gently toward yours, his grip loosening only by a fraction, like even unconscious he’s afraid to let you go.
The last thing he hears before everything goes dark is Tim’s voice, sharp with panic and disbelief.
“Dude—what the fuck—”
“Hold his head up—don’t let him fall on her!” Bruce barks from the front, voice cracking sharp through the Batmobile like a snapped cable.
All at once, everyone moves.
Damian fists the back of Jason’s T‑shirt, knuckles white as he yanks him upright with a strength born of panic he’d never admit to. Dick stretches impossibly from the passenger seat, arm braced awkwardly as he cups the back of Jason’s head, careful, reverent, like he’s afraid one wrong angle will shatter him. Tim presses a steadying hand to Jason’s chest, feeling the uneven rise and fall beneath his palm, grounding him the way he’s learned to do with bombs and brothers alike.
Jason is dead weight. Heavy. Still clinging to you even in unconsciousness, his arm slack but stubborn around your shoulders, like muscle memory alone refuses to let you go.
The Batmobile hums on, tires slicing through wet streets, Gotham blurring past in streaks of sodium light and rain-slick concrete. The city feels distant now, muffled, like it’s holding its breath with them.
“…Did someone check if the Joker was—uh—breathing?” Stephanie asks from the back, her voice small in a way it rarely ever is.
She hadn’t stayed for the end. Her job had been triage—getting the kids out, shouting orders, dragging civilians through blood and broken glass while the rest of them stayed behind in the warehouse with the laughter and the screaming. She’d smelled the aftermath on them when they regrouped. She didn’t need details then but...
Bruce doesn’t look back. His hands tighten on the wheel.
“Jason didn’t hit any vital points,” he says quietly, like he’s reciting a report he’s already memorized. “Just… ah—”
“Carved his face like a jack‑o’‑lantern,” Damian supplies, entirely too calm. “Heated up a crowbar to do it too. Very effective.”
There’s a beat of silence.
The city lights flash over Bruce’s face—old stone and deep eyes that are hollowed by relief he doesn’t let himself feel yet.
“…Yeah,” Bruce exhales, short and rough. “That.”
The Batmobile keeps moving.
Jason breathes.
You breathe.
And for now, that’s enough to keep the night from swallowing them whole.
You wake up in bed.
Not the thin, borrowed kind your body has learned to tolerate at your apartment, but something deep and indulgent—clean sheets tucked tight, the mattress yielding just enough to cradle you instead of swallowing you whole. The pillow beneath your cheek feels stupidly expensive, cool and smooth, smelling faintly of detergent and something old and comforting, like cedar and money and quiet hallways that echo.
For a moment, you think you’re dreaming again.
Then you feel him.
Jason is asleep beside you, solid and unmistakable. You don’t need to move—you can’t really anyways—to know it’s him. The arm wrapped around your waist is heavy with familiar strength, protective even in unconsciousness. His hair brushes against your arm every time he breathes, soft, tickling your skin in a way that makes your chest ache.
He’s breathing.
That fact alone nearly undoes you.
God. You really need to raise your standards, you think hazily. You’re reduced to this—listening to him breathe, feeling the slow rise and fall of his chest, and already you want to curl into him and coo like nothing in the world has ever gone wrong.
Then you see Bruce.
He’s standing near the bed, still as a statue, watching you with the careful intensity of someone afraid to spook a wild animal. It takes effort to focus on his face, your vision dragging itself into clarity inch by inch.
When you try to lift your head—manners resurfacing before sense—your body protests sharply.
Bruce moves instantly.
“Hey, hey—no,” he murmurs, hands gentle but firm as he presses you back into the mattress. “Relax. It’s okay. You’re safe.”
Your head sinks back into the pillow, and the moment stretches. You swallow thickly before managing a small, hoarse sound of politeness.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Wayne. Jason—”
“Hasn’t told you much about me,” Bruce finishes for you, a faint, tired chuckle slipping out. “That’s alright. I just need you to sleep right now.”
You glance downward as best you can, feeling something sharp dig into your side.
“…I can’t sleep if your son’s elbow is in my ribs.”
Bruce blinks.
Actually blinks—surprised enough that it breaks through the carefully assembled calm. “Ah—” he starts, then reaches for Jason, trying to rearrange him with the same precision he uses on everything else.
It doesn’t work.
Jason huffs in his sleep, a low, irritated sound, and somehow manages to make it worse—his arm tightening, his leg hooking over yours possessively, like you’re something he’s afraid the world might steal back if he lets go.
Bruce freezes.
You mumble, exhausted but soft, “It’s alright. I’m sure he hasn’t slept… I’ve gotten quite a lot, so…”
Bruce looks like he wants to argue. His jaw tightens, then loosens, the fight draining out of him. He exhales and sits back in the chair by the bed, elbows on his knees, hands clasped tightly together.
“It’s the 26th,” he says quietly.
Oh.
You missed Christmas.
What a shame.
After a moment, Bruce speaks again, and his voice is heavier now—careful, deliberate, like every word costs him something.
“I… want to apologize to you.” His fingers interlace, knuckles whitening. “I knew you’d been taken. And I didn’t tell him. Possibly… he could have been there sooner. But I needed to make sure the others would be saved as well.”
“Well,” you murmur, the word barely more than breath, “I don’t exactly blame you for that.”
It isn’t forgiveness exactly—nothing so grand—but it’s honest, and it lands heavier than anger ever could.
Bruce doesn’t relax. If anything, his shoulders pull tighter, like he’s bracing for a blow that never quite comes. He’s spent his whole life learning how to de‑escalate men with guns, gods with vendettas, cities with teeth—but you unsettle him in a quieter, more dangerous way. You’re calm. You’re lucid. You’re something Jason had threatened to shoot himself for.
He clears his throat, trying to give you something solid, something measurable. Facts are safer.
“Jason… got him,” Bruce says carefully. “Badly. I think—” He hesitates, eyes flicking once toward Jason like he’s checking for movement. “I think the Joker may be blind now. Or at least permanently impaired.”
“You let him?” you ask.
Still no accusation. Just a soft, stunned curiosity, as if you’re piecing together a story you were never meant to survive.
Bruce nods. Once. The motion costs him. “I did,” he admits. “But I—”
“Then that’s enough,” you whisper, interrupting him gently, like you’re afraid the words themselves might hurt. “Jason will realize that too.” Your lashes flutter; exhaustion tugs at you like a tide. “I mean… he probably won’t. He’ll still try to kill him.” A faint, crooked exhale. “But you did everything you could yesterday.”
Your gaze drifts—not to Bruce, but to Jason. To the way his arm is still locked around you, even in sleep. To the stubborn set of his jaw, the crease between his brows that never fully smooths out anymore.
“Thank you,” you add quietly. “For finding me.”
That’s when Bruce goes still.
Not rigid. Not defensive.
Still.
Because he’s been looking at you, yes—but now you realize he hasn't been looking you in the eye while he speaks. His eyes have been caught in one place, drawn there again and again like a bruise you can’t help but press.
Your cheek.
The skin there is angry beneath the bandage’s edge—raw, faintly swollen, discolored in a way he winced at while he bandaged it. Bruce didn't let anyone else tend to it, not even Alfred.
Because this was a wound he inflicted, one that he needed to tend to.
“It’s still fresh,” he says, softer now, stripped of the Bat and the rules and the fear. Just a man speaking carefully around something fragile. “I’ll get you better medicine. The pigment should fade.” A pause. His voice lowers. “I can’t promise about the texture.”
You don’t look away. You don’t flinch.
“That’s okay,” you say.
And Bruce doesn’t know if you mean the scar, or the pain, or the fact that you’ll carry this forever—but Jason shifts in his sleep then, brow tightening, arm drawing you closer like he sensed the weight of the moment and refused to let it settle on you alone.
Bruce watches that. Watches how Jason anchors himself to you without waking, how his breathing steadies when yours does, how it pauses even in sleep when yours hitches.
“He loves you a lot.” Bruce mumbles.
“...And you too Mr.Wayne.”
jason peter todd tag-list (check pinned post for info on how to be added .ᐟ ) :@justamarsbar, @peridotnature854, @nayy-a, @that-willowtree,
The apartment smelled like vanilla, cinnamon, and burnt sugar at 2:17am.
You were in the kitchen again, sleeves rolled up, hair tied back with a pencil, surrounded by mixing bowls and scattered flour like a battlefield. The oven hummed warmly. A tray of chocolate chip muffins was cooling on the counter, another batch of banana bread was in the oven, and you were already measuring ingredients for lemon poppy seed cookies.
Stress baking had become your ritual.
Exams. Work deadlines. The general chaos of living in Gotham while trying to pretend you were a normal person with a normal life. When the anxiety got too loud, you baked. It was productive. It was soothing. It filled the apartment with something warm and sweet when everything else felt cold and sharp.
The front door clicked open.
Jason stepped in, still in his Red Hood gear, other than the helmet, white-streaked hair messy, shoulders tense from whatever the night had thrown at him. He paused in the doorway, taking in the scene - you covered in flour, the counter a disaster zone, the oven light glowing like a beacon.
“Again?” he asked, voice rough but not unkind. He kicked off his boots and shrugged off his jacket, hanging it by the door. “What’s got you stress-baking at two in the morning this time?”
You didn’t look up from the mixing bowl. “Everything. Midterms. My boss being a jerk. The fact that I burned the last batch because I was thinking too hard. Take your pick.”
He crossed the room, leaning against the counter beside you. Up close, you could see the faint bruises on his knuckles and the tired lines around his eyes. He looked like he’d had a rough night too.
“You know you don’t have to bake the entire bakery every time life sucks, right?” he said, but there was a hint of a smile in his voice. “We’re running out of counter space.”
You shrugged, stirring the batter a little too vigorously. “It helps. Keeps my hands busy. Makes the apartment smell nice. And you eat everything I make, so don’t complain.”
Jason huffed a laugh, reaching over to steal a still-warm muffin from the cooling rack. He took a bite, eyes closing for a second like it was the best thing he’d tasted all night.
“These are good,” he admitted. “Better than the last ones. Less… charcoal.”
You swatted his arm with the wooden spoon. “One time. And you still ate them.”
“Because you made them.” He said it casually, but his eyes lingered on you a little longer than necessary. “You always make them when you’re worried. So what’s really going on?”
You paused, spoon hovering over the bowl. The truth felt too heavy to say out loud, but Jason had a way of looking at you like he already knew.
“Everything feels too much lately,” you said quietly. “School. Work. The city being… Gotham. I just needed something that makes sense. Measuring cups. Recipes. Things that turn out right if you follow the steps.”
Jason was quiet for a moment. Then he set the half-eaten muffin down and stepped closer, gently taking the spoon from your hand.
“You don’t have to carry it all alone,” he said, voice low. “I know I’m not exactly the easiest person to live with. I come home late. I leave blood on the towels sometimes. I don’t talk about the shit I see out there. But I’m here. If you need me to be.”
Your chest tightened. You looked up at him - the white streak in his hair, the scars on his hands, the way his green eyes softened when they met yours. Jason Todd was a lot of things. Brooding. Guarded. A walking storm of trauma and sarcasm.
But with you, he tried.
“I know,” you whispered. “You’re here. That helps more than you know.”
He reached out, brushing a streak of flour from your cheek with his thumb. The touch was surprisingly gentle for someone with hands like his. His fingers lingered, tracing your jaw for a second before he pulled back, like he’d caught himself doing something too soft.
“Tell me what to do,” he said. “I’m shit at baking, but I can follow directions. Let me help.”
You smiled, small and grateful. “You can stir the next batch. And maybe chop the nuts without turning them into dust this time.”
He rolled his eyes, but there was a faint smile on his lips. “Smartass.”
You worked side by side in the small kitchen, shoulders brushing occasionally, the quiet filled with the clink of bowls and the hum of the oven. Jason was surprisingly focused, following your instructions with careful precision. Every so often he’d glance at you, like he was checking that you were really okay.
When the latest batch was in the oven, you both leaned against the counter, sharing a stolen warm muffin between you. Jason broke off a piece and held it out for you to take a bite. His fingers brushed your lips, sending a little spark down your spine.
“You’re good at this,” he said quietly. “Taking care of things. Taking care of me, even when I don’t ask. I don’t say it enough, but… thank you.”
Your heart did a slow, warm roll in your chest. You leaned into his side, resting your head on his shoulder. He didn’t pull away. Instead, his arm came around your waist, pulling you closer.
“You don’t have to thank me,” you murmured. “I like taking care of you. Even when you’re grumpy and covered in flour.”
He chuckled, the sound low and warm. His hand stroked slow circles on your hip, thumb brushing under the hem of your shirt just enough to make your skin tingle. The touch was comforting, but there was a quiet heat in it too - a suggestion of more that neither of you rushed.
“You make the bad nights easier,” he admitted after a while. “Coming home to the smell of whatever you’re baking. Seeing you in my hoodie with flour on your nose. It feels… normal. In a good way.”
You tilted your head up, smiling softly. “You make the long nights easier too. Even when you come home at 4am and steal half the cookies before I wake up.”
He grinned, caught. “Guilty.”
The oven timer dinged. Jason reluctantly let you go so you could pull out the latest batch. He watched you, eyes soft in the warm kitchen light, like you were the best thing he’d seen all night.
When everything was cooling on the counter, he pulled you back into his arms, wrapping you up in a hug from behind. His chin rested on your shoulder, breath warm against your neck.
“Stay with me tonight?” he murmured. “Not for anything else. Just… don’t want to be alone after the shit I saw out there. And I sleep better when you’re around.”
You leaned back against his chest, nodding. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
He pressed a soft kiss to the side of your neck, then another to your temple. His hands stayed on your waist, warm and steady, holding you like you were something precious he didn’t want to break.
In the quiet kitchen, surrounded by the smell of fresh baked goods and the steady warmth of Jason’s body behind you, the stress of the day finally started to fade.
And every late-night baking session, every stolen muffin, every quiet hug in the kitchen felt like proof that maybe - just maybe - the two of you were building something good in the middle of all the chaos.
Something that felt a lot like home.
a/n : based on the fact my friend let himself into my house only to see me baking my third batch of cookies for a party..! yay.
he knows it's petty. yet, that does nothing to abate the furrow of his brows and the pout on his lips.
your mii is refusing to date his mii. the stubby big-headed character he poured way too much effort into making it look like you using the face paint and tinkering with the facial placement— though it is but a pittance compared to the real deal. not to mention the fact that he had to make you based off memory since he had been too shy to confess that he made both of you as miis on his island and wanted a reference.
the only two residents on his island, in fact.
and he's still getting rejected.
if he was lucky you'd let him talk to you whilst sitting together on the fountain. only for his mii to vaguely ask to hang out and make things awkward.
he had even made place holder miis, before unceremoniously removing them, until he got the island expansions! the restaurant. photo booth. pawn shop. hell, even the ferris wheel! yet, no juice could be made from the fruit of his labor.
your mii had been adamant in constantly rejecting his advances, even having the gall to fall in love with one of the placeholder miis.
and after every rejection, his own mii kept falling back in love after a trip to europe to subside his despair. after the first few times the love bubble inevitably popped up, jason had told his mii-self that it was too soon to ask your mii out only for that equally big-headed bunch of pixels refuse his advice and ask you out anyway. rinse and repeat.
perhaps it was a cruel joke on him for even trying. was it because your mii wasn't accurate enough? jason swears to himself that he'll keep a small photo of you in his wallet from this day forth.
perhaps it was poetic. that, no matter what happens to him, he'll always come to love you.
Note: at the bottom of this post you will have 2 options with consequences on how to proceed!
Minor note: BnD/Books and Daggers refers to the Café Jason mentions in his profile!
Notification: Would you like to...
-> ⌞ghost Jason⌝
⤷ consequence: he sends you a message at night that reads:-
"Hey, I'm sorry if I acted rude/weird/offensive in any way and caused you to be uncomfortable. I genuinely thought we were connecting, but if that was something one-sided and you felt pressured to speak with me, I apologise. I wish you well and hope you have a nice day."
-> ⌞meet up with Jason⌝
⤷ consequence: have a friendly hangout at Books And Daggers
SFW compilation | Fluff (and toxic if you squint) | Modern AU | MY OWN headcanons | bf!jasontodd x f!reader | +small bonus at the end
⋆˚࿔ᝰ.ᐟ jason todd is the kind of guy who tries to be the best boyfriend for you, despite his lack of experience. He takes the initiative in planning dates with you. It's hard for him (and it doesn’t happen without Dick’s help) but he tries! That's the main thing.
⋆˚࿔ᝰ.ᐟ jason todd is the kind of guy who wears scars on his body as proof of everything he had to go through before the best thing in his life happened — meeting you. He is not ashamed of them, he wears them like an armour. Plus, he likes it when your delicate fingers subconsciously stroke these scars.
⋆˚࿔ᝰ.ᐟ jason todd is the kind of guy who is a big motorcycle enthusiast. He can spend hours cleaning, polishing, and maintaining his bike. Either it’s raining outside, a heat, a tornado— At least once a week Jason makes sure to spend some time on his bike, treating it like something precious. He easily gets excited when he talks about motorcycles.
⋆˚࿔ᝰ.ᐟ jason todd is the kind of guy who constantly needs to have his hads on you. It could be a simple gesture, like holding your hand on public, or having his hands wrapped around your waist when he approaches you from behind. But sometimes you might find it too much when he does it in the most inappropriate moment. Everyone needs some space once in a while, right? But Jason often gets overly defensive about it, because he “can touch his partner whenever he wants to, it’s not a crime.”
⋆˚࿔ᝰ.ᐟ jason todd is the kind of guy who’s an overthinker. He isn’t ‘controlling’, and he doesn’t get petty when he’s feeling jealous. But his mind won’t stop racing until you answer at least one of his texts. (check the end for bonus)
⋆˚࿔ᝰ.ᐟ jason todd is the kind of guy who’s a night person. Waking him up in the morning is big challenge. All day long he's like a walking dead man, doing everything on automatic. After it gets dark outside, he finds a second wind. Oh, he also remembers to keep you up all night. Someone has to keep him entertained while he’s so full of energy.
⋆˚࿔ᝰ.ᐟ jason todd is the kind of guy who unintentionally has his gaze focused on you all the time. He stares on you like on something he admires, out of pure love. How can he not stare on someone so beautiful and kind? He loves to see your eyes sparkle with joy when you do something you enjoy. He loves to watch you grin when you try to wipe off some remains of ice cream on the corner of your mouth. He loves you.
⋆˚࿔ᝰ.ᐟ jason todd is the kind of guy who will drop anything he’s doing if you need his help. When you ask him to help around the house, he puts down his favorite book and rushes to you for further instructions (and he almost never lets anyone interrupt his ‘reading time’, not even when his brothers talk to him! You are the exception.)
⋆˚࿔ᝰ.ᐟ jason todd is the kind of guy who is a very sympathetic person when it comes to you. He can’t bear a thought of you getting hurt by an accident. And he hates to see you in any amount of pain— he tries his best to help you any way he’s able.
⋆˚࿔ᝰ.ᐟ jason todd is the kind of guy who is a cat lover. One night at your guys flat, after a patrol, he unzips his jacket to reveal a small kitten inside his pocket, his calloused hands carefully picking it up to hold it against his chest. — “We can’t leave it out there, it’s raining.“ — The same situation with rescued stray cats keeps happening over and over.
⋆˚࿔ᝰ.ᐟ jason todd is the kind of guy who walks a little slower when you’re by his side, so you don’t have to keep up with his fast pace. Your comfort is his priority. I think he would also lean down to your level to hear you better when you try to tell him something in a crowded space.
+SMALL BONUS
AUTHOR’S NOTE this was requested by a nice anon so here u go x
Whether it's a quick peck on the cheek or a long messy kiss on the mouth, he always needs to have his lips on you as soon as he sees you. He says 'hello' by grabbing your face and planting a soft kiss on your mouth. That very quickly turns into something messy, as he sticks his tongue inside your mouth (a welcoming, expected intrusion you suppose). It doesn't matter if you're around other people, his greeting is the same as always, which is probably why Roy and Jade stopped asking you guys to babysit. He kisses you with the intention of turning it into something raunchy. Tongues clashing in each others' mouths, your lipgloss transferring to his lips, hands grabbing your backside and squeezing, giving everyone a show. You don't even get embarrassed anymore, in fact you've grown to crave it.
He can't not kiss you during sex. He swears that he needs to do it, otherwise he won't be able to finish. He'll put you in a mean mating press, your legs pushed against your chest, making you feel a delicious stretch, just so he can put his mouth on yours. During prone, he'll push your back down onto the covers but will grab your head to turn it and face him. If it's not the lips on your mouth, it's the lips between your legs. He'll take his time, kissing and sucking for hours as you cry out in pain and pleasure.
He can't help it, he just loves kissing you!
a/n: im actually so pissed at myself for deleting that baby daddy!jason post by accident. i wrote this in my physical journal instead of the next part..... dw once i get over myself i will be back with more of that family...hopefully
as always thank you for reading, i hope you enjoyed!
BEWARE OF GLIMMER!!!! ARTISTS AND FANFICTIONERS!!!!!
ITS AI!!!!!!!
You might think omg fun a choices based fanfic, the writer must have spent so much time on this! but NO IT IS GENERATIVE AI SLOP.
It requires a person to write a bit of story to get an idea then it just goes for it and generates a story around either the og “writer’s” prompts or the ones you make yourself. You can pick up on the inconsistencies right away. DO NOT FALL FOR IT!!!!!
It’s sickening to see. Ai is NOT fanfiction and it never will be!
I really wish there was a fanfic site out there that you could do this with akin to the games episode or choices but ,unfortunately, no luck as of now. And with generative ai on the rise we might never see the day we get a true, passionate, choose your own adventure fanfiction website. Unless it comes as a rebellious act against ai. (Which I am 100% down for)
The company behind glimmer claims to be ethical, they are NOT. If they truly believed in human creation and that ai could never replace the human writer, they would program a PROPER website that the user can program their own story on with preset choices MADE BY A PERSON WITH HOURS OF HARD WORK GOING INTO IT.
BEWARE OF GLIMMER.
It’s super sad to see how people on here on tumblr are actually posting their glimmer stories like it isn’t a crime against the artist.
lizzie’s yapping 𐙚 : English is not my first language, so there may be some grammatical errors.
The way you tend to his wounds is gentle—so delicate it feels like you’re afraid that even the slightest extra pressure might break him.
That night, with Gotham wrapped in its heavy darkness and the distant police sirens reminding you both that you still lived in the bat’s city, wasn’t any different from the other times he had let you touch his battered skin. Once again, he had the privilege of feeling another body close to his, warming parts of his soul he thought he’d never get back. Your closeness made him feel vulnerable, and he hated that, but he still dialed your number every time he felt himself slipping back into that same pit of pain and uncertainty.
“Why do you always look at me like that?” you asked, the corners of your mouth lifting into a small smile. Jason barely heard you. You were sitting on his lap, held there by his hands as they absentmindedly slid over your thighs, your hips, and your lower back.
He liked touching you because it reminded him that you were real—that the warmth of your body under his palms wasn’t something his mind had fabricated. It helped him feel at home. His hands still trembled every time he touched you, afraid of hurting you. “Like what?” he muttered, frowning.
You flashed a wide smile, and he allowed himself to smile back. He liked you. A lot. Jason had warned you from the beginning that it would be difficult, that he carried too many wounds. You cared for him anyway, and you were aware of everything he had lived through—everything he had suffered. So you were patient with him, and he appreciated that more than he could say.
“Like that,” you insisted, pulling the cotton away from the corner of his lips. You shouldn’t even be sitting on his lap, with the wound on his side surely throbbing painfully, but he insisted. He needed you close.
Jason let out a small sigh and swallowed hard, keeping his eyes on you—on your soft features. The world and its problems faded whenever he had you this close, faces only inches apart. He could count your eyelashes and memorize the exact color of your eyes, just in case you ever realized how bad he was for you, how you deserved someone better than a broken man.
“’m looking at you the same as always,” he grumbled, turning away with feigned annoyance, a faint blush dusting his cheeks.
And same as always meant that when he looked at you, even for a second, his eyes regained their spark—silently begging you not to give up on him. It meant Jason Todd looking at you like you were the love of his life. A longing he couldn’t hide.
Because you were—but he was terrified of giving himself completely and getting hurt.
“Mhm, just don’t move,” you teased, pressing a kiss to his cheek—one he would carry with him for the rest of the night.
“Yes, ma’am.”
He stayed still, letting you tend to his wounds, letting you in against his will, yet savoring every soft brush of your hands against his skin.
