A collection of my writings, all in one convenient location (AKA the root of all things posted on my blog):
DC Comics:
Leather and Blood - Completed
Summary: Jason never imagined falling in love, so when he fell, he fell hard. He couldn't deny her anything, not even the leather jacket he'd tried burying in the back of his closet along with the rest of his secrets. But he'll soon realize the crucial mistake he made when he lets the love of his life walk out with Red Hood's signature leather jacket.
Call of Duty:
The Graveyard Shift - Completed
Summary: Simon Riley is a lonely grave keeper in Victorian England who puts a marriage proposal ad in the London newspaper. He's ready to make his house a home, but can he convince his new wife that he can be her safe space, or will the secret she carries threaten their newfound happiness?
Credit goes to @gloomwitchwrites and this specific post for inspiring this fic!
ACOTAR:
The Shadowsinger and the Inkbird - Completed
Summary: Y/n's clairvoyance is a gift from the Mother, but it feels more like a curse. With the power to gain knowledge through touch alone, Y/n holes herself up in The Alcove and hopes her powers and parentage will remain a secret. But things will change after the Summer Solstice ball and a chance encounter with a certain Shadowsinger.
The Wisp Between Worlds - on hiatus
Summary: Have you ever wondered what you would do (and do differently) if you found yourself trapped in the fantasy world of your dreams? For Nora, this fantasy of hers is about to play out when she finds herself portaled away to the Moral Lands south of Prythian. But all is not as it seems. Feyre Archeron is missing and the deadline to break Amarantha’s curse draws near. Who will save Prythian now?
Flame, Shadow, Beast - Completed
Summary: Years after Eris frees you from his father’s prison, you’ve managed to find a new love, new friends, and build a life for yourself in Autumn. But when a certain Shadowsinger stumbles upon your home, dragging in painful memories of betrayal and longing, you’ll have to face the things you left in the past and make choices about the future you want.
The Artificer: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV - Azriel x Reader
Club Rats & Cigarettes: Part I | Part II - Azriel x Reader
Prim and Proper - Azriel x Reader
To Sleep at Your Back - Azriel x Reader
Bedsides and Breakfasts - Azriel x Reader
He Feels Safe With You - Azriel x Reader
Take it off - Azriel x Reader
In a Year's Time - Azriel x Reader
Let them find us here - Azriel x OC
Heads will roll - Azriel x Reader
Please remember me - Azriel x Reader
The Ballad of the Shadowsinger - Azriel x Reader
Brown Eyed Beauty - Lucien x Reader
Ashes - Eris x Reader
Spiderverse:
Hummingbird - Completed
Summary: What if the Earth-1610 (Miles’s universe) version of Miguel’s wife was actually Miles’s AP Art teacher?
I am ok! I just started med school and I've been... busy to say the least 😅. It's been a whirlwind and won't be able to write much, but I will be lurking on Tumblr as usual
"The ground shifted beneath you and within you. Power rushed over the land in a sweep of blistering heat that had all creatures magical and mundane, powerless and powerful, shuddering in awe. It was the kind of power that only came to Prythian when a new High Lord had come into his own."
Warnings: canon typical descriptions of violence/gore, light smut at the end
Author's note: This has been sitting in my WIPs for a while, but I finally got around to finishing it! Also, I feel like the logistics of being with a High Lord aren't explored enough and Eris Vanserra deserves more love
You froze in the doorway, smelling the blood before Lucien even came into view. A pale, bloody body sagged against Lucien’s side, limbs hanging like leaves in the breeze. Mud and dirt matted the stranger’s hair and colored his beard a deep brown, illuminating the paleness of his sharp, scarred cheeks. Watercolor bruises — purple, blue, and yellow — swam across his temples and over his bent nose.
“Help him,” were the only words that escaped Lucien’s lips. “Please.” He groaned beneath the weight of his brother’s battered body. Tight muscles stretched until they nearly snapped and Eris was dropped, rather unceremoniously, on your doorstep. Lucien fell to his knees, sinking against the stoop with a wet cough that shook his bones. He pressed his forehead against the warm stone that had been baking in the spring heat.
“Lucien…what have you done?” You breathed in disbelief. Someone had nearly beaten the both of them to death. Lucien cringed at the accusation in your voice.
“He’s still my brother,” he whispered, eyes drifting down to Eris. “And I didn’t know where else to go.” Lucien knew he’d doomed you. No one was meant to know you existed… no one. And now he’d dropped the most infamous heir of Autumn on your doorstep with a pack of bloodhounds and his father’s wrath on their heels.
“Please,” Lucien said again. He clasped his hands together and closed his eyes. He was begging now. Tears streamed down his cheeks, cutting rivers through the filth that coated his skin. He didn’t open them again until you gripped his chin with a gentle, but firm, touch.
“Get inside,” you ordered not unkindly. “I’ll take care of him.”
Eris Vanserra stirred, urged to consciousness by the warmth that spilled out of your home. He could taste the fires burning in your hearth, feel the warmth in your voice that promised salvation as you bent low to touch his brow.
You heard his slow heartbeat, felt the sluggish press of blood through arteries and veins. The rattle of air in his punctured lungs concerned you, as did the blood pooling in the spaces between poisoned, sickly organs, but you had practice in pulling people back from the brink of death — and Eris Vanserra was not dead yet.
Moisture stuck your hair to your forehead and the slippery slide of sweat down your back was enough to make you squirm with discomfort, but you drew closer to the fire, dragging Eris Vanserra into your lap. You threw a handful of cardamom pods and ground wyndworm teeth into the fireplace, speaking ancient words that slithered around your tongue like medicine. The flames spit and roared, growing ten-fold and slamming against the grate so hard even Lucien recoiled from the burst of heat.
Eris’s hand twitched on the floor, subconsciously reaching for the power that was already beginning to spill color back into his skin. The fire seemed to reach for him too. Cinders popped angrily and smoldered on the rug, burning into tiny balls of light that wrapped around Eris’s fingers and curled around his throat like smoke. His lips, normally pulled back in a sneer, parted with labored breaths, tinged blue from bloodlessness. Lucien and him had trekked through Winter together and the cold had stolen much from them — power, safety, and blood — until he could still feel the tendrils of ice on his hands like the touch of death.
You reached out, gently caressing his chest and feeling your powers fan out from you with a sigh. You mapped out his body, letting your powers seep and expand into his skin until there wasn’t a heartbeat, sharp intake of breath, or rush of blood out of a punctured vessel unknown to you. Wordlessly you urged his body to heal. You imagined the wounds in his organs, laid out by a violent hand, stitching shut and sealing over. You imagined his blood sliding out of his lungs and back into veins, arteries, and capillaries until his chest didn’t rattle. You imagined broken bones fusing together and bruises disappearing like a stone beneath water.
You heard Lucien gasp, eyes blown wide with wonder as every broken piece of his brother reset itself and healed with barely a scar. You forgot that for all Lucien knew about you, he’d never actually seen you heal someone.
“Will he be alright? We were in Winter so long, I—”
You hissed for him to be quiet, “I’m concentrating.” He shut his mouth immediately.
There were hundreds of smaller aches and pains littering his body — wounds old and new and scars that not even your power could reverse — but when Eris finally opened his copper coin eyes, you knew you’d done enough. For now…
“Eris!” Lucien lunged forward, nearly knocking away the hand you had laid on his chest.
You frowned, nose twitching against the stink that weeks spent in the wilderness had imparted on Lucien’s body, and would have moved away had Eris not decided then and there to grab hold of your hand.
You blinked in surprise, gaze dropping down to the Autumn Lord laid out in your lap. Dull eyes, sluggish and slow, moved up the path of your arm, catching ever so briefly on the flash of exposed collarbone from where your robe had slipped off your shoulders, before landing on your face. His lips parted, a sound of shock rushing out in a relieved sigh.
“It’s you.” He whispered. He dragged your hand languidly up to his cheek, turning his face into your palm and kissing your wrist.
You gasped at the hot touch of his lips and something in your ribs twisted and snapped into place. Heat flooded your chest, blazing and powerful — a shot of whiskey in the dark.
The moisture evaporated from your skin with a burst of heat and the fireplace that had seemed so scorching only moments ago now felt like nothing more than a blanket — comforting and familiar — as Eris’s own power flooded into your chest.
You knew your mouth was agape and you feared that moving would make this moment crack like ice over water. But then Lucien shifted and the crust of mud on his jacket crinkled and fell to the carpet in little pieces.
You and Eris both snapped at him.
“Just go take a bath you—”
“Leave us,” Eris growled. His free hand flung out to your waist, flattening against the small of your back to draw you closer to his chest and further away from his brother.
Lucien blinked in surprise, feeling the radiating power of the bond like a wave of heat. Already your powers were beginning to meld together, strengthened by the recent act of healing. Eris gritted his teeth and forced himself into a sitting position, looping his arm protectively around your waist and curling into the hollow of your throat. There was a feral glint in his eye, strengthened by hunger after two weeks in the wild and the sweet scent of his mate under his nose, the warmth of your skin as you rubbed circles against the inside of his wrist. You were still healing him, urging the aches and pains to subside. To melt like centuries of loneliness.
“I’ve got him, Luc.” You toyed with the sharp curve of Eris’s ear, sending a shiver down his body as you looked at him. “You know where the bath is. Feel free to use whatever you need.”
Lucien glanced once more at the pair before silently disappearing down the hall to scrub himself clean of his ordeals.
Eris sank into your arms, too exhausted to put up the front of the Heir of Autumn. He let you brush the worst of the mud from his hair, leaving whispers of magic that closed every scratch that lingered on his skin. It was Dawn Court healing. He could taste it in the air, feel it radiating off your skin in a shimmer that set you aglow. You cradled him close to the flames, coaxing them to grow stronger and feed his magic with every handful of herbs you tossed onto the simmering coals.
He took the time to examine you. The lush color of your eyes and the way the firelight tangled in the dark of your pupils and reflected in the whites. The slope of your ears and nose and the bend of your neck as you attended to him. Every ridge of your palms and fingertips as your hands wandered over him.
“Are you this handsy with all of your patients?” He dared to joke.
“Only the handsome, problematic ones who have the audacity to be dropped on my doorstep.”
“So you find me handsome?”
A smile toyed with the corner of your lips, matching the foxy grin that found its way onto Eris’s face. “I find you problematic.”
He clicked his tongue in distaste, then fell sober. “What is your name?” He whispered, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. His knuckle brushed against the curve of your cheek, sliding down to your jaw and resting there.
“Y/n L/n,” you breathed, captivated by the strong, yet graceful fingers that strayed so close to your lips.
Eris’s brows furrowed. The surname was familiar to him — a royal surname belonging to the family that had once ruled Dawn Court long before Thesan’s time, before ultimately being absorbed into the clan of faeries that would come to lead the court. You waited for him to parse apart your lineage, taking in the host of freckles that darkened the skin across his nose. Through the cut of his shirt you could count dozens, perhaps hundreds more, scattered across his chest like stars across the sky.
“You’re Thesan’s family, but I’ve never heard of you before. Never seen you before. I would have remembered if I had.”
You smiled warmly. With a flick of your fingers a bowl of warm water appeared at your side along with a soft cloth you used to slowly clean the grime clinging to his beard and neck. “Thesan likes to keep as many of us hidden as he can. It’s safer this way.”
Thesan’s sole preference for males — namely his lover, Herades — was a terribly kept secret across Prythian, and the question of his lineage had always been cause for concern. The answer for Thesan had been to protect the quietest, most powerful members of his family. To cast them across Prythian to hide in plain sight so that should he and Herades ever fall, there would be a host of potential members for the power of the land to choose as his successor. You happened to be one of them.
Eris fell quiet, puzzling over the implications of your existence and the brilliance in Thesan’s choice. It was a choice he suddenly wished he’d been offered — to go into hiding, to disappear from court life and the vultures that hovered wherever they believed power lay. But that would have required his family to be fundamentally different from what they were.
His eyes flickered up to yours. “I’m Eris Vanserra.”
You snorted. “I know very well who you are.”
Eris smiled, as vicious and loyal as a wolf. “I figured, but I was raised to be a gentleman.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
His smile flickered in and out of sincerity, hiding hosts of knowledge and experience you couldn’t quite understand. But you already knew more of him than most, could feel the elements of his soul as intrinsically as your own. It’s how you knew he was safe, even if he attracted danger.
Lucien emerged from the bath, hair still soaking wet so that the spare set of clothes he’d last left in your cottage were already translucent with water, sticking to his chest and back.
You quietly nudged Eris’s side, dipping your lips to his ear to ask, “Can you stand?” He nodded and though he grunted in pain, leaning against your side as he arose, it wasn’t because of his injuries but the bone-deep exhaustion of being on the run for his life.
“I’ll keep the fire going,” Lucien said.
“There’s food in the pantry. Pies, breads, jams, meats. Help yourself.” You glanced down at the Heir of Autumn currently glaring at his brother. “And please prepare a plate for Eris as well.”
Disappointment curled in Eris’s stomach as you led him to the bath and waited for the enchanted tub to fill. It was an intentional move to have Lucien prepare his meal and the message was clear — you would not be accepting the bond tonight.
You forced Eris to sit on the edge of the tub and after a moment’s hesitation, began unbuttoning his shirt. It clung to him, fused to his skin with grime and blood as you peeled it off of him.
“I am very capable of taking off my own clothes, Y/n.” Eris dipped his head down to yours, staring unabashedly at your lips. Your hands ghosted over his ribs, tracing the faint scars from where he’d met arrows and blades and whips. There was one mark on his chest that made you pause. A handprint burned into the space over his right ribs, like someone had grabbed him as he turned to flee.
“I won’t be accepting the bond tonight,” you declared. A flash of sadness came and went across Eris’s honey-brown eyes before being replaced by a practical acceptance. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to,” you added, hands drifting to the waistband of his trousers. You undid the buckles quickly, forcing the blush away from your cheeks as you stripped him of his clothes. And surprisingly, Eris let you.
“I promise, I am usually better kept than this.” He scratched at the stubble that had trickled down his neck, hiding the sharpest edges of his face. “If that is what gives you pause.”
“What gives me pause is less your stint in the woods and more the danger your father presents.” You helped him into the bath, seeing the water boil as his hot skin made contact. He sank beneath the floral waters with a groan of contentment and a flash of pleasure pooled in your stomach. “I imagine that he’s the reason Lucien dragged you to my door. There have been whispers that you plan to overthrow him. Take the crown for yourself.”
Eris grimaced, teeth set on edge as he sat up in the tub. His hands tightened around the porcelain edge, drawing him up and close to your face. “It’s not the crown I want. I just want — no, I need — him dead. The only peace I’ll find in this life is knowing he’s buried somewhere no one can ever find him again.” His eyes studied you. “Perhaps not the only peace,” he amended, daring to hope.
You helped him bathe, scrubbing at his scalp with handfuls of soap that had sinful sounds escaping his lips. You positioned yourself at his back, leaning forward to wrap your arms around his chest, soapy water be damned. “I won’t be much use to you in a fight, Eris. I’ve never been built for it.”
“I wouldn’t ask that of you,” he hissed, as if the very thought of you in harm’s way was akin to drinking poison. “I wouldn’t want that of you.”
Now that he was clean you were shocked at the paleness of his skin, the sheer amount of freckles that left no corner of skin uncovered and the scars that were almost as numerous. His hair and beard were as bright as fire and his body frighteningly hot to the touch, as if he’d been born from coals. “Then I will wait for you, either in the healer’s tents off the battlefield or here. Whichever will cause you less concern. I will wait for the day you bring me your father’s head.”
Eris stared and stared and stared, teasing apart the lies from the truth on your lips. Then his voice caught, some strangled sound of hope and disbelief slipping out as he realized you were completely serious. Whatever his past, the poison that seemed to run from his father into him, you cared not. You wanted him. You wanted your mate.
With renewed confidence and strength he pulled you to the side of the tub where you could face him fully and he surged forward, capturing your lips and drenching the front of your dress. You cared not and allowed yourself to be held flush against his bare chest. It was like falling into fire without the pain, just the warmth and the pressure of strong arms around your sides, the taste of smoke and cinnamon on your tongue.
“I’ll bring you his head,” he promised. “Then you will be mine and I will be yours.”
“It’s a deal,” you murmured against his lips.
Both Lucien and Eris knew the longer they lingered the greater chance Beron would find you, but they also couldn’t deny they were in no condition to travel. Not yet.
They risked one night, and when you led Eris into your bedroom, leaving Lucien to his own devices on the couch, no one made any noise of disapproval.
It should have been uncomfortable having Eris squeeze into your bed, to have his long, wiry body press you into the mattress with his arms locked protectively around your waist, but all you felt was comfort and safety. Even in sleep he wouldn’t leave you vulnerable and exposed, burying his freshly shaved face into the soft hollow of your throat where his breath could fan over your pulse and lull you to sleep.
For the first time that day you felt fear run through your body like a match set on fire — a sudden burst followed by a low, ever present simmer. Here you were, drinking in the feel of your mate not knowing if tomorrow he’d be hunted and killed. You didn’t want to lose this warmth — this heat. Maybe you could protect him. Maybe—
Eris sighed, shoulders rising and falling like a great mountain. His lips tickled your ear as he whispered. “I have so little that belongs to me, Y/n, so don’t entertain any ideas of putting yourself in harm’s way. I won’t stand for it and I won’t be the one to lose you. Sleep now and know that I will do whatever it takes to come back to you.” You swallowed thickly and nodded. This battle was one you could concede.
It had been nearly a year. A year of silence. A year of practical waiting and unbearable longing with only a promise keeping you grounded to your home. Eris had sworn to come back and so long as you felt the bond humming in your chest, you knew there was a chance that he would.
You were cooking dinner, eyes trained on the hound that guarded the garden in front as he stalked the edges of the woods. His sleek, steel-grey body twisted in and out of trees like smoke, black eyes so deep they seemed endless. It was the only thing Eris had dared bring you in the dead of night when Prythian was on the brink of tipping into war.
“Soon.” He’d promised. “Soon we’ll be together.”
You clung to that promise. To that hope.
The ground shifted beneath you and within you. Power rushed over the land in a sweep of blistering heat that had all creatures magical and mundane, powerless and powerful, shuddering in awe. It was the kind of power that only came to Prythian when a new High Lord had come into his own.
You blinked, hand flying up to your chest where the tight coil of the bond coiled even tighter until it was a hot coal lodged just beneath your heart. You waited for hours, food untouched on the table and your stomach in your throat until finally you heard the faint barking of the hound. Excited. Joyous.
You flung open the door to a gruesome, welcome sight.
Eris.
Bloody, but whole and standing. He smiled so wide it split the gore on his face in two, bronze armor half-melted off his form to expose luminescent skin that glowed with new found power. He was frightening, feral and drunk off power, and desperate. But you didn’t shy away from it. There was a metal box clutched between his hands and you already knew what was in it.
A prize.
A prize for his mate and proof of a promise fulfilled.
You ran towards him and he tossed the box aside carelessly, flinging wide his arms as you came sailing into them. He was nearly knocked over by your power and his breath was stolen as you slammed your lips into his, nearly bruising in their strength.
Together you stumbled into the house, tripping over furniture and leaving scorch marks on the wood floors as you went. It mattered not. None of it mattered anymore. Not really.
He took one bite of the meal you’d left on the table — just enough to dispense with the ceremony of accepting a mating bond — and then he descended upon you. Hungry. Starving. Ravenous.
That was what he was — ravenous. He swallowed the noises slipping past your lips like they were honey. Touched you. Licked you like you were food. At some point in the chaos you became aware of his newfound power. Flames peppered his skin, twisting around you with warmth and vitality. Never burning. Only warm against your flesh as you twisted with him in the sheets, leaving scorched handprints on the walls and on the bedframe.
“I imagine—” You began before his lips found the hollow of your throat and sucked. You stuttered. “I-I expect you to replace all of this when this is over.” Eris chuckled, teeth grazing against your collarbone. His tongue was hot and wet against you and it made you smile.
“My darling,” he whispered, voice low and rumbling, “I will give you anything you could possibly want.” The bond sang in your chest, pleased at the attention. But even you could tell that Eris was holding back. There was fire in him stronger than anything he’d shown yet. You felt it burning beneath every muscle and sinew like a hot coal smothered beneath ash.
“Anything?” You ventured to ask. There was a corkscrew curl that split down his forehead and you languidly twisted it around your finger, giving it an experimental tug. Eris groaned into your mouth, hips stuttering against yours.
“Anything.”
You hummed. “I moved everything of importance to me into the woods.” Eris froze, lifting his head from where he’d buried it into your neck. His eyes were alight with curiosity and lust. You leaned into him, nose brushing against his cheekbone as you whispered against his lips, “I couldn’t give a damn if this house is reduced to ash.” His lips curled back, wicked as sin. His teeth glinted, sharpened into fangs. “So don’t hold back.”
Eris erupted in flame, nails digging into your hips as he rolled against you, chasing a high that you’d both indulged in for hours but still felt new with every inward press. You were glowing. Happy. Feral. A shining sun to rival the heat of his flames.
You had the vague awareness of the mattress catching fire, the smoke billowing out the windows after they’d exploded into the yard, but you couldn’t care. Your focus had narrowed into two pinpricks of light in the vast universe — your pleasure, and Eris’s.
The roof fell the next time you and Eris came together, a mix of light and fire rendering it into ash — dark and clean and soft as snow as it settled around you. You trembled around Eris, twitching as you felt every tense muscle loosen one by one. The power that had erupted from you, twisting and writhing its way into the open air, cooled and fell like a blanket. Eris was a blanket too, a welcome heaviness over your frame as you slowly caught your breath.
Maybe you should have both eaten more before the kitchen went up in flames. Fulfilling the desires of a new mating bond was hard work on the body. You smiled to yourself, reveling in the pleasant soreness that touched every muscle, every crevice. The ash was warm beneath you, shifting to cradle your body in malleable hands. When your eyes finally flitted shut, carrying you off into a dreamless slumber, you saw the faint glow of stars still mapped on the inside of your eyelids.
“Gods.” Lucien sat amazed atop his horse. The creature he rode pawed nervously at the ground, feeling the heat waver above scorched earth. Where the house had once stood — your house — there was nothing but a smoking pile of ash. Even the clearing surrounding it, once teaming with life and carefully manicured rows of herbs, was blackened and smoking. The trees swayed in the air, nursing their broken branches and singed leaves like bones. “Eris? Y/n?”
The ash shifted, slow and lazy. An arm appeared first, pale as moonlight. Then a flaming head of hair. A figure curled protectively around another body, still languid with pleasure.
You instinctively pressed yourself into the ground, letting Eris hover over you protective and fox-like — a beast stalking the mouth of its cave; a dragon protecting its hoard.
Lucien smirked at the sight of his brother and friend tangled in the ash, then whistled low and cheeky. “I leave you alone for three days and this is what you get up to?” No one else had wanted to investigate the fire roaring between Dawn and Winter, and Lucien was suddenly grateful he’d been assigned the task by a very amused Thesan. Eris might have killed anyone else who stumbled upon your… activities.
“Go.” The voice that left Eris’s lips was powerful. Old. Ancient. And pissed.
Lucien tipped his head in a sketch of a bow. It took little convincing for the horse to back away from the clearing. Lucien dropped a bag on the forest floor, safe and away from the ring of fire that had already begun to erupt around the clearing. “For when you’re finished!” He shouted over his shoulder. “Save us all the sight of your pale, naked self!”
There came a disgruntled roar followed by a high, female laugh and Lucien couldn’t help but chuckle to himself. It would seem he’d chosen the right place to bring his brother after all.
I was just wondering if you were going to continue Club rats and cigarettes? I don’t mean this to be pressuring you or demanding anything. I love your writing and I’m very interested in seeing where the story will go 💕💕
Hello!
Thank you for reading and I'm glad you enjoyed it. Unfortunately I've been super busy with work and academics and just... life. I've lost steam on that particular writing project so for the time being there won't be any updates. Sorry!
Hi luv! I found your blog through your Ghost story, and although I'm not into the DC or Acotar fandom, I've read more of your work because I truly love your writing! You're so talented ❤️️
Summary: Jason never imagined falling in love, so when he fell, he fell hard. He couldn't deny her anything, not even the leather jacket he'd tried burying in the back of his closet along with the rest of his secrets. But he'll soon realize the crucial mistake he made when he lets the love of his life walk out with Red Hood's signature leather jacket.
Warnings: angst, fluff
This is the last chapter y'all!
Leather and Blood Masterlist
Masterlist of Masterlists
<- Previous chapter
In all her years, Y/n had never gotten around to testing the limits of her power. Certainly there were moments where she’d stare at her arms and legs, a sharp object, and wonder just how much she could survive — moments where she’d come across a patient at work, dead or alive, and think to herself, “what if this happened to me? Would I live to tell the tale?” But then she had to acknowledge how gruesome an endeavor it would be to systematically test the limits of what she was capable of. So, when she finally woke up in a bed of cool, black satin, some monitor beeping close beside her, she was pleasantly surprised to find she could add “gunshot to the head” to the list of things she could handle.
This bed was obviously not hers. It was too lush and she sank too deeply for it to be her mattress at home. The sheets were too fine, threadcount in the hundreds, and the kind of dark black you only found in the homes of billionaires. And there were fucking curtains drawn back from four posters carved from deep, rich wood. For a moment she felt like a Victorian heiress dying of consumption in a fashionable way until she remembered that she was very much not dying.
Jason.
She sat up carefully, pulling at the wires and IV line that kept her attached to a bag of fluids. It was a quiet, dark room — too pristine to feel lived in. There were no trinkets on the dresser across from her, no fingerprint smudges on the mirror above it from which she could see the sleepless bruises tugging at the skin beneath her eyes, her makeup on the wrong side of ruined. The only sign of life was a duffle bag sitting at the edge of the bed, open and containing a handful of clothes she recognized as hers and Jason’s.
Jason.
She swung her legs to the side and her feet had just dropped to the cool, marble floor when she caught sight of Jason. He sat just off to the side of the curtains, leaning back in a recliner and fast asleep with his head angled up, throat exposed. A frown graced his lips, eyebrows tugging forward in a troubled sleep. He was on the right side of raw, beautiful even with the bruises painting his cheeks a pale green.
Y/n pulled from her power, feeling it warm her fingertips as she ran them along Jason’s cheeks, his jaw, and down his chest. The green bruises faded to flush skin, pale from sleeplessness. Jason’s frown deepened even as the pain in his chest lifted, and that was when he jerked awake, vibrant green eyes circling the air above him before settling on a familiar, comforting face.
He grabbed her wrist. “Don’t,” he commanded. “Don’t you dare. Did you heal me again?” He dug his fingers into his skin, into his ribs feeling nothing of the bruises and fractures that had plagued him the last two days. “Dammit.” He ran his fingers through his hair, a mixture of rage and relief coating the inside of his mouth and his heart. His eyes flashed up and he tugged her into his lap, arms circling around her like wings. One hand smoothed over her waist, gripping her hip before settling at the small of her back. The other sank up and into her hair, cradling the sensitive back of her head and neck like a warm weight. “Never do that again. Promise me.”
Y/n rolled her eyes even as she nuzzled her way into his chest, fingers smoothing over the crinkles in his shirt and tracing the curve of his collarbones beneath it.
“A thank you would have sufficed.”
“I’m not going to thank you for dying for me.”
“Clearly I didn’t die, Jason. I—”
“Don’t do that.” His voice was pained now and Y/n pulled away just enough to catch the flickers of anguish in his gaze. “Don’t pretend like this was nothing.” His fingers twisted in her hair, ghosted over the nape of her neck. Someone had cleaned her as she slept, washed the gore from her hair and her skin before clothing her in her comfiest pair of shorts and t-shirt, and she knew it was Jason.
He hadn’t let anyone near her except Alfred, and even then he’d barely trusted the old man to hook her up to the monitors as proof of what her healing abilities had already demonstrated. “She will be alright, Master Todd,” Alfred had reassured him, as if reassurance could erase the nightmare now burned behind Jason’s eyes.
Jason drank in the sight of her, whole and safe in his arms. “Are you hungry?”
Y/n nodded, feeling the acute pinch of hunger in her stomach. Jason leaned over to the night stand, picked up the phone — one of the old style telephones with coiled wire and turn wheel — and dialed the kitchen. Normally Jason was loathe to take advantage of any of the excesses of Wayne Manor, but this time he decided it was more important that he stay by Y/n’s side.
“Master Todd,” a posh voice sounded from the other end, distinctly British. “Has the lady awoken?”
“She has, and she’s understandably hungry. Could you please bring up food?”
“Certainly, Master Todd.”
Y/n felt bewildered ordering room service from a butler — a real life, British butler — but was so thankful for the full breakfast of eggs, sausages, bacon, tomatoes, and french toast that she would have kissed Alfred’s cheeks if Jason hadn’t maintained his loose grip around her waist.
“Thank you,” she murmured shyly when the cart of food had been rolled in front of her. Alfred had only closed his eyes and bowed — bowed — before slinking out the door. The moment he was gone, Y/n descended on the food like a vulture to death.
Jason looked at her in relief, stealing only a few bites for himself before wrapping his arms around her waist and settling into the curve of her back.
“So…” she licked the maple syrup from her lips — the kind they’d imported from Vermont. None of the corn syrup shit that she still dearly loved. “I think we have a lot to talk about.”
Jason stiffened against her back, breath coming out in one sharp exhale. “You should go first. I have a feeling my story will be longer.”
Y/n was inclined to agree, because all she had to say was, “I don’t know what there is to say except that I’ve always been like this. Always able to heal myself and others. I think my parents tried to ignore that fact about me — to chalk it up to a strong immune system or luck. It wasn’t until I was about ten and healed my friend’s broken arm that I realized how powerful and dangerous it could be. How it could be taken advantage of once they kept coming back to me over and over again for everything from a paper cut to a cold to broken ribs.”
Jason nodded in understanding. His hands found their way under her shirt, splaying comfortably over her stomach where they rubbed soothing circles over her hip bones.
“But I thought you did get sick?” Jason questioned. “I remember days where you’d sleep in late, barely able to get up.”
“Healing myself is easier than healing others. It… it can take a lot out of me.” Jason thought back to all those nights where he’d crawl into bed convinced something had broken inside of him, only to wake up to the pleasant surprise that it was only a bad bruise.
“You’ve healed me before. Healed people at work, haven’t you?”
Y/n nodded and blushed, glancing behind at him. “You never could hide it well, not from me. I always knew your line of work could get you into trouble. I just never realized how much.”
Now it was Jason’s turn to be bashful, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, about all of—” He gestured to the Manor around them. To the closet where he’d hidden his now ruined Red Hood armor, “—this. I meant to, but… I didn’t know how you’d take it. If you’d understand the kind of danger I could put you in.”
She grasped his chin in between her thumb and forefinger. “You thought I would leave you.”
Jason hesitated, then nodded. “I wouldn’t have blamed you if you did. I still—I still wouldn’t blame you.” He swallowed thickly, refusing to meet her eye as he blinked away the emotion that was bubbling up in his throat, constricting like a noose.
He closed his eyes at the soft feel of her lips against his temple, slightly tacky from syrup. “I’m not leaving you, Jason. Not now. Not ever.” He shuddered in relief, burying his face in her hair as quiet cries of solace left him. “Besides,” she reminded him, kissing his temple, “I’m kind of invincible. If anything, I’m a great girlfriend for someone like you to have.”
Despite himself, despite the fear that still clung to his body like a second skin, he had to laugh at the irony of it all. The impossibility of having met someone who could meet the end of a gun and walk away.
“Let’s… let’s wait a little longer before you make those kinds of jokes, yeah?”
“Fair enough,” Y/n whispered.
When she finally pushed away the tray, too full to move, he carried her all of two steps back to the four-poster bed, crawling under the covers beside her until they were fused together.
He shared his side of the story with her — the Batman, his Robin Hood days, Red Hood, the pit, everything. And she listened with the same quiet understanding she’d done for everything else. She traced the autopsy scar that split down his chest, kissed it better in a way Jason didn’t know was possible.
Somewhere else in the Manor Damian and Tim were busy scrubbing away the knowledge of the day. Tying up loose ends like they were nothing more than fabric unraveling. And while Jason would have much to answer for, it would wait another day. For now, all he cared about was the living, breathing body of his lover beside him and the promise of more days than he realized with her under his arm.
Summary: Jason never imagined falling in love, so when he fell, he fell hard. He couldn't deny her anything, not even the leather jacket he'd tried burying in the back of his closet along with the rest of his secrets. But he'll soon realize the crucial mistake he made when he lets the love of his life walk out with Red Hood's signature leather jacket.
Warnings: angst, fluff
This is the last chapter y'all!
Leather and Blood Masterlist
Masterlist of Masterlists
<- Previous chapter
In all her years, Y/n had never gotten around to testing the limits of her power. Certainly there were moments where she’d stare at her arms and legs, a sharp object, and wonder just how much she could survive — moments where she’d come across a patient at work, dead or alive, and think to herself, “what if this happened to me? Would I live to tell the tale?” But then she had to acknowledge how gruesome an endeavor it would be to systematically test the limits of what she was capable of. So, when she finally woke up in a bed of cool, black satin, some monitor beeping close beside her, she was pleasantly surprised to find she could add “gunshot to the head” to the list of things she could handle.
This bed was obviously not hers. It was too lush and she sank too deeply for it to be her mattress at home. The sheets were too fine, threadcount in the hundreds, and the kind of dark black you only found in the homes of billionaires. And there were fucking curtains drawn back from four posters carved from deep, rich wood. For a moment she felt like a Victorian heiress dying of consumption in a fashionable way until she remembered that she was very much not dying.
Jason.
She sat up carefully, pulling at the wires and IV line that kept her attached to a bag of fluids. It was a quiet, dark room — too pristine to feel lived in. There were no trinkets on the dresser across from her, no fingerprint smudges on the mirror above it from which she could see the sleepless bruises tugging at the skin beneath her eyes, her makeup on the wrong side of ruined. The only sign of life was a duffle bag sitting at the edge of the bed, open and containing a handful of clothes she recognized as hers and Jason’s.
Jason.
She swung her legs to the side and her feet had just dropped to the cool, marble floor when she caught sight of Jason. He sat just off to the side of the curtains, leaning back in a recliner and fast asleep with his head angled up, throat exposed. A frown graced his lips, eyebrows tugging forward in a troubled sleep. He was on the right side of raw, beautiful even with the bruises painting his cheeks a pale green.
Y/n pulled from her power, feeling it warm her fingertips as she ran them along Jason’s cheeks, his jaw, and down his chest. The green bruises faded to flush skin, pale from sleeplessness. Jason’s frown deepened even as the pain in his chest lifted, and that was when he jerked awake, vibrant green eyes circling the air above him before settling on a familiar, comforting face.
He grabbed her wrist. “Don’t,” he commanded. “Don’t you dare. Did you heal me again?” He dug his fingers into his skin, into his ribs feeling nothing of the bruises and fractures that had plagued him the last two days. “Dammit.” He ran his fingers through his hair, a mixture of rage and relief coating the inside of his mouth and his heart. His eyes flashed up and he tugged her into his lap, arms circling around her like wings. One hand smoothed over her waist, gripping her hip before settling at the small of her back. The other sank up and into her hair, cradling the sensitive back of her head and neck like a warm weight. “Never do that again. Promise me.”
Y/n rolled her eyes even as she nuzzled her way into his chest, fingers smoothing over the crinkles in his shirt and tracing the curve of his collarbones beneath it.
“A thank you would have sufficed.”
“I’m not going to thank you for dying for me.”
“Clearly I didn’t die, Jason. I—”
“Don’t do that.” His voice was pained now and Y/n pulled away just enough to catch the flickers of anguish in his gaze. “Don’t pretend like this was nothing.” His fingers twisted in her hair, ghosted over the nape of her neck. Someone had cleaned her as she slept, washed the gore from her hair and her skin before clothing her in her comfiest pair of shorts and t-shirt, and she knew it was Jason.
He hadn’t let anyone near her except Alfred, and even then he’d barely trusted the old man to hook her up to the monitors as proof of what her healing abilities had already demonstrated. “She will be alright, Master Todd,” Alfred had reassured him, as if reassurance could erase the nightmare now burned behind Jason’s eyes.
Jason drank in the sight of her, whole and safe in his arms. “Are you hungry?”
Y/n nodded, feeling the acute pinch of hunger in her stomach. Jason leaned over to the night stand, picked up the phone — one of the old style telephones with coiled wire and turn wheel — and dialed the kitchen. Normally Jason was loathe to take advantage of any of the excesses of Wayne Manor, but this time he decided it was more important that he stay by Y/n’s side.
“Master Todd,” a posh voice sounded from the other end, distinctly British. “Has the lady awoken?”
“She has, and she’s understandably hungry. Could you please bring up food?”
“Certainly, Master Todd.”
Y/n felt bewildered ordering room service from a butler — a real life, British butler — but was so thankful for the full breakfast of eggs, sausages, bacon, tomatoes, and french toast that she would have kissed Alfred’s cheeks if Jason hadn’t maintained his loose grip around her waist.
“Thank you,” she murmured shyly when the cart of food had been rolled in front of her. Alfred had only closed his eyes and bowed — bowed — before slinking out the door. The moment he was gone, Y/n descended on the food like a vulture to death.
Jason looked at her in relief, stealing only a few bites for himself before wrapping his arms around her waist and settling into the curve of her back.
“So…” she licked the maple syrup from her lips — the kind they’d imported from Vermont. None of the corn syrup shit that she still dearly loved. “I think we have a lot to talk about.”
Jason stiffened against her back, breath coming out in one sharp exhale. “You should go first. I have a feeling my story will be longer.”
Y/n was inclined to agree, because all she had to say was, “I don’t know what there is to say except that I’ve always been like this. Always able to heal myself and others. I think my parents tried to ignore that fact about me — to chalk it up to a strong immune system or luck. It wasn’t until I was about ten and healed my friend’s broken arm that I realized how powerful and dangerous it could be. How it could be taken advantage of once they kept coming back to me over and over again for everything from a paper cut to a cold to broken ribs.”
Jason nodded in understanding. His hands found their way under her shirt, splaying comfortably over her stomach where they rubbed soothing circles over her hip bones.
“But I thought you did get sick?” Jason questioned. “I remember days where you’d sleep in late, barely able to get up.”
“Healing myself is easier than healing others. It… it can take a lot out of me.” Jason thought back to all those nights where he’d crawl into bed convinced something had broken inside of him, only to wake up to the pleasant surprise that it was only a bad bruise.
“You’ve healed me before. Healed people at work, haven’t you?”
Y/n nodded and blushed, glancing behind at him. “You never could hide it well, not from me. I always knew your line of work could get you into trouble. I just never realized how much.”
Now it was Jason’s turn to be bashful, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, about all of—” He gestured to the Manor around them. To the closet where he’d hidden his now ruined Red Hood armor, “—this. I meant to, but… I didn’t know how you’d take it. If you’d understand the kind of danger I could put you in.”
She grasped his chin in between her thumb and forefinger. “You thought I would leave you.”
Jason hesitated, then nodded. “I wouldn’t have blamed you if you did. I still—I still wouldn’t blame you.” He swallowed thickly, refusing to meet her eye as he blinked away the emotion that was bubbling up in his throat, constricting like a noose.
He closed his eyes at the soft feel of her lips against his temple, slightly tacky from syrup. “I’m not leaving you, Jason. Not now. Not ever.” He shuddered in relief, burying his face in her hair as quiet cries of solace left him. “Besides,” she reminded him, kissing his temple, “I’m kind of invincible. If anything, I’m a great girlfriend for someone like you to have.”
Despite himself, despite the fear that still clung to his body like a second skin, he had to laugh at the irony of it all. The impossibility of having met someone who could meet the end of a gun and walk away.
“Let’s… let’s wait a little longer before you make those kinds of jokes, yeah?”
“Fair enough,” Y/n whispered.
When she finally pushed away the tray, too full to move, he carried her all of two steps back to the four-poster bed, crawling under the covers beside her until they were fused together.
He shared his side of the story with her — the Batman, his Robin Hood days, Red Hood, the pit, everything. And she listened with the same quiet understanding she’d done for everything else. She traced the autopsy scar that split down his chest, kissed it better in a way Jason didn’t know was possible.
Somewhere else in the Manor Damian and Tim were busy scrubbing away the knowledge of the day. Tying up loose ends like they were nothing more than fabric unraveling. And while Jason would have much to answer for, it would wait another day. For now, all he cared about was the living, breathing body of his lover beside him and the promise of more days than he realized with her under his arm.
Summary: Jason never imagined falling in love, so when he fell, he fell hard. He couldn't deny her anything, not even the leather jacket he'd tried burying in the back of his closet along with the rest of his secrets. But he'll soon realize the crucial mistake he made when he lets the love of his life walk out with Red Hood's signature leather jacket.
Warnings: angst, fluff
This is the last chapter y'all!
Leather and Blood Masterlist
Masterlist of Masterlists
<- Previous chapter
In all her years, Y/n had never gotten around to testing the limits of her power. Certainly there were moments where she’d stare at her arms and legs, a sharp object, and wonder just how much she could survive — moments where she’d come across a patient at work, dead or alive, and think to herself, “what if this happened to me? Would I live to tell the tale?” But then she had to acknowledge how gruesome an endeavor it would be to systematically test the limits of what she was capable of. So, when she finally woke up in a bed of cool, black satin, some monitor beeping close beside her, she was pleasantly surprised to find she could add “gunshot to the head” to the list of things she could handle.
This bed was obviously not hers. It was too lush and she sank too deeply for it to be her mattress at home. The sheets were too fine, threadcount in the hundreds, and the kind of dark black you only found in the homes of billionaires. And there were fucking curtains drawn back from four posters carved from deep, rich wood. For a moment she felt like a Victorian heiress dying of consumption in a fashionable way until she remembered that she was very much not dying.
Jason.
She sat up carefully, pulling at the wires and IV line that kept her attached to a bag of fluids. It was a quiet, dark room — too pristine to feel lived in. There were no trinkets on the dresser across from her, no fingerprint smudges on the mirror above it from which she could see the sleepless bruises tugging at the skin beneath her eyes, her makeup on the wrong side of ruined. The only sign of life was a duffle bag sitting at the edge of the bed, open and containing a handful of clothes she recognized as hers and Jason’s.
Jason.
She swung her legs to the side and her feet had just dropped to the cool, marble floor when she caught sight of Jason. He sat just off to the side of the curtains, leaning back in a recliner and fast asleep with his head angled up, throat exposed. A frown graced his lips, eyebrows tugging forward in a troubled sleep. He was on the right side of raw, beautiful even with the bruises painting his cheeks a pale green.
Y/n pulled from her power, feeling it warm her fingertips as she ran them along Jason’s cheeks, his jaw, and down his chest. The green bruises faded to flush skin, pale from sleeplessness. Jason’s frown deepened even as the pain in his chest lifted, and that was when he jerked awake, vibrant green eyes circling the air above him before settling on a familiar, comforting face.
He grabbed her wrist. “Don’t,” he commanded. “Don’t you dare. Did you heal me again?” He dug his fingers into his skin, into his ribs feeling nothing of the bruises and fractures that had plagued him the last two days. “Dammit.” He ran his fingers through his hair, a mixture of rage and relief coating the inside of his mouth and his heart. His eyes flashed up and he tugged her into his lap, arms circling around her like wings. One hand smoothed over her waist, gripping her hip before settling at the small of her back. The other sank up and into her hair, cradling the sensitive back of her head and neck like a warm weight. “Never do that again. Promise me.”
Y/n rolled her eyes even as she nuzzled her way into his chest, fingers smoothing over the crinkles in his shirt and tracing the curve of his collarbones beneath it.
“A thank you would have sufficed.”
“I’m not going to thank you for dying for me.”
“Clearly I didn’t die, Jason. I—”
“Don’t do that.” His voice was pained now and Y/n pulled away just enough to catch the flickers of anguish in his gaze. “Don’t pretend like this was nothing.” His fingers twisted in her hair, ghosted over the nape of her neck. Someone had cleaned her as she slept, washed the gore from her hair and her skin before clothing her in her comfiest pair of shorts and t-shirt, and she knew it was Jason.
He hadn’t let anyone near her except Alfred, and even then he’d barely trusted the old man to hook her up to the monitors as proof of what her healing abilities had already demonstrated. “She will be alright, Master Todd,” Alfred had reassured him, as if reassurance could erase the nightmare now burned behind Jason’s eyes.
Jason drank in the sight of her, whole and safe in his arms. “Are you hungry?”
Y/n nodded, feeling the acute pinch of hunger in her stomach. Jason leaned over to the night stand, picked up the phone — one of the old style telephones with coiled wire and turn wheel — and dialed the kitchen. Normally Jason was loathe to take advantage of any of the excesses of Wayne Manor, but this time he decided it was more important that he stay by Y/n’s side.
“Master Todd,” a posh voice sounded from the other end, distinctly British. “Has the lady awoken?”
“She has, and she’s understandably hungry. Could you please bring up food?”
“Certainly, Master Todd.”
Y/n felt bewildered ordering room service from a butler — a real life, British butler — but was so thankful for the full breakfast of eggs, sausages, bacon, tomatoes, and french toast that she would have kissed Alfred’s cheeks if Jason hadn’t maintained his loose grip around her waist.
“Thank you,” she murmured shyly when the cart of food had been rolled in front of her. Alfred had only closed his eyes and bowed — bowed — before slinking out the door. The moment he was gone, Y/n descended on the food like a vulture to death.
Jason looked at her in relief, stealing only a few bites for himself before wrapping his arms around her waist and settling into the curve of her back.
“So…” she licked the maple syrup from her lips — the kind they’d imported from Vermont. None of the corn syrup shit that she still dearly loved. “I think we have a lot to talk about.”
Jason stiffened against her back, breath coming out in one sharp exhale. “You should go first. I have a feeling my story will be longer.”
Y/n was inclined to agree, because all she had to say was, “I don’t know what there is to say except that I’ve always been like this. Always able to heal myself and others. I think my parents tried to ignore that fact about me — to chalk it up to a strong immune system or luck. It wasn’t until I was about ten and healed my friend’s broken arm that I realized how powerful and dangerous it could be. How it could be taken advantage of once they kept coming back to me over and over again for everything from a paper cut to a cold to broken ribs.”
Jason nodded in understanding. His hands found their way under her shirt, splaying comfortably over her stomach where they rubbed soothing circles over her hip bones.
“But I thought you did get sick?” Jason questioned. “I remember days where you’d sleep in late, barely able to get up.”
“Healing myself is easier than healing others. It… it can take a lot out of me.” Jason thought back to all those nights where he’d crawl into bed convinced something had broken inside of him, only to wake up to the pleasant surprise that it was only a bad bruise.
“You’ve healed me before. Healed people at work, haven’t you?”
Y/n nodded and blushed, glancing behind at him. “You never could hide it well, not from me. I always knew your line of work could get you into trouble. I just never realized how much.”
Now it was Jason’s turn to be bashful, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, about all of—” He gestured to the Manor around them. To the closet where he’d hidden his now ruined Red Hood armor, “—this. I meant to, but… I didn’t know how you’d take it. If you’d understand the kind of danger I could put you in.”
She grasped his chin in between her thumb and forefinger. “You thought I would leave you.”
Jason hesitated, then nodded. “I wouldn’t have blamed you if you did. I still—I still wouldn’t blame you.” He swallowed thickly, refusing to meet her eye as he blinked away the emotion that was bubbling up in his throat, constricting like a noose.
He closed his eyes at the soft feel of her lips against his temple, slightly tacky from syrup. “I’m not leaving you, Jason. Not now. Not ever.” He shuddered in relief, burying his face in her hair as quiet cries of solace left him. “Besides,” she reminded him, kissing his temple, “I’m kind of invincible. If anything, I’m a great girlfriend for someone like you to have.”
Despite himself, despite the fear that still clung to his body like a second skin, he had to laugh at the irony of it all. The impossibility of having met someone who could meet the end of a gun and walk away.
“Let’s… let’s wait a little longer before you make those kinds of jokes, yeah?”
“Fair enough,” Y/n whispered.
When she finally pushed away the tray, too full to move, he carried her all of two steps back to the four-poster bed, crawling under the covers beside her until they were fused together.
He shared his side of the story with her — the Batman, his Robin Hood days, Red Hood, the pit, everything. And she listened with the same quiet understanding she’d done for everything else. She traced the autopsy scar that split down his chest, kissed it better in a way Jason didn’t know was possible.
Somewhere else in the Manor Damian and Tim were busy scrubbing away the knowledge of the day. Tying up loose ends like they were nothing more than fabric unraveling. And while Jason would have much to answer for, it would wait another day. For now, all he cared about was the living, breathing body of his lover beside him and the promise of more days than he realized with her under his arm.
Summary: Jason never imagined falling in love, so when he fell, he fell hard. He couldn't deny her anything, not even the leather jacket he'd tried burying in the back of his closet along with the rest of his secrets. But he'll soon realize the crucial mistake he made when he lets the love of his life walk out with Red Hood's signature leather jacket.
Warnings: violence, angst
If you'd like to be added to the taglist, please leave a comment on the L&B Masterlist or feel free to message me. This just helps me stay organized so I don't miss anyone's request!
Leather and Blood Masterlist
Masterlist of Masterlists
<- Previous chapter Next chapter ->
Y/n lay gasping on the ground, waiting for her ribs to slide back into place and for her knee to pop into its socket. The helmet had caved in at the temple, squeezing against her head until she finally fumbled the buckle and threw it off. It was an attack on the senses. Sirens blaring in the distance. Smoke stinging at her eyes. Everything smelled of rubber and burning.
But Jason.
She grasped at her chest, feeling the hard kevlar that wrapped around her tighter than guilt. He’d given her his body armor. His jacket. His helmet. What had he been left with when he’d been thrown from the bike?
Y/n didn’t wait for her injuries to finish healing. She crawled to her feet, limping towards the flames and blinking through her smoke-stained tears.
Cars were coming their way. Huge, black SUVs barreling through the rain like it was a game and they were the targets.
Something moved through the smoke and haze. Jason’s black clothes bled into the asphalt and he melted with them, nothing but a smudged form struggling to stand — a word written in ink and then wiped away. But she would recognize that flash of white hair anywhere. Y/n ran to him, collapsing to her knees and smoothing back his hair. Her hands came away sticky and red with blood.
His arms were bleeding, skin ripped away like he’d been shaved by a cheese grater and a slash across his cheek cut the corner of his lip in two.
“Can you stand? Jason, can you stand?!”
Jason gripped her hands once, then shoved her away. “Run!”
She held on fast, throwing herself over him and pouring all she could into her touch.
She didn’t know how it worked, didn’t know why it worked. All she knew is that ever since she was a child she had never gotten sick. Never gotten struck down with the flu or the seasonal stomach bug. Never got a paper cut or broke an arm. Any injury healed itself within minutes, at most overnight, and if she concentrated hard enough — so long as she was touching them skin to skin — she could heal anyone.
“Baby, you gotta go. Baby, you gotta go. Please, Y/n.” Jason begged, trying to push her away.
She did it now. She imagined every torn vessel sealing over until blood stopped collecting where it shouldn’t. She reached for the feeling of his broken bones, visualizing them sliding over one another like cracks in the earth and fusing back together. The skin at his elbows, the back of his head, and his cheek knitting closed.
Jason gasped, half in surprise and half in pain as his internal organs rearranged. The splitting pain in his skull disappeared. The ringing in his ears quieted.
“Y/n?”
Her eyes were wide as coins, pupils blown open by fire and smoke, tears cutting through the grime on her cheeks. Even now, even like this, she managed to take his breath away.
“Jason, I—”
A gunshot rang out.
Her head snapped forward.
She slumped over his chest, nose pressing into the soft curve of his neck like she was sleeping. They’d laid like this before countless times. In bed. On the couch. On the floor. Always with her curled over his body, her breath against his throat lulling him to sleep.
She wasn’t breathing now.
Blood flowed down her neck, dampening her hair and trickling onto Jason’s cheek.
He felt the world burn around him.
“Y/n…Y-Y/n?” He cradled her head, gently rolling to his knees and holding her in his lap. She remained limp and unmoving. “No. No, no, no, baby. Baby—Baby, please!” The bullet hadn’t gone through. It remained hidden somewhere he couldn’t see. He could only feel the blood pouring out from the back of her head like a cracked teacup.
Her eyes were open, blank and unseeing and still watery from smoke. Jason clawed at his stomach. His arms. His face. Searching for wounds that he knew had existed before she’d laid her hands on him. But he remained perfect.
Healed.
He couldn’t stand for it.
“Take it back, Y/n. TAKE IT BACK!” He screamed. He grasped her head in between his hands, bowing over her body. “No! NO! TAKE IT BACK!”
He didn’t want this. He didn’t want this fucking trade of lives. She should’ve run. She should’ve run when he’d told her to. She should’ve run years ago.
“Baby,” he begged, running his hand down her cheek. “Baby, please.”
When he heard the click of the gun against his temple, he thought — for the briefest of moments — that he should let it go off. But then he saw Y/n in his lap, his jacket closed around her like a blanket, like safety, and that overwhelming grief lit up and became rage.
He twisted his head to the side, letting the bullet fly past him at the same time he grabbed the gunman’s wrist and broke it in one clean move. He twisted the gun, aimed it at a pair of terrified blue eyes and blew off the man’s head.
A body could make a decent shield, as Jason would come to find, hauling the dead man up with one arm and running towards the rain of gunfire.
It was a miracle he wasn’t dead. Maybe he would be soon. Maybe, hidden somewhere he couldn’t see and couldn’t feel, was a bullet lodged close to a vital organ just waiting for the right move, the right time, to slip a little deeper and leave a wound Jason could never heal from.
Jason couldn’t care less if it did or not. His focus was zeroed in on the one form left moving apart from him. The Penguin, crawling away from the wreckage of an SUV with its tires blown out. The driver lay slumped over the wheel, his image fractured by the spray of bullets puncturing the windshield like lace. Somewhere in the distance. Close. Far. He couldn’t tell. Someone was screaming his name.
Names held power.
The Batman.
The Joker.
The Penguin.
Red Hood.
Y/n L/n.
But it was Jason Todd that held the gun aimed at the back of Oswald Cobblepot’s head and he made sure his victim was staring him in the eye, mask long forgotten, when the final bullet went off.
Jason dropped to his knees and with disgust pooling in his stomach, reached into the bloody tissue of Oswald Cobblepot’s head and retrieved the bullet that had ended him. A souvenir. A promise.
“Red, stop! Fucking stop!” Dick slammed into Jason’s side, throwing him off Oswald Cobblepot’s motionless body. He’d been expecting some push back from his brother. Gritted anger as cold and precise as steel. Maybe for Jason to turn around and punch him so hard his jaw would crack.
What he wasn’t prepared to see was Jason sway on his feet, then drop back down to his knees, fists closed.
All night, Jason had been fighting like he was running out of time — racing to get home, racing to get to Y/n, then racing to get to the Manor. But now the clock had run out, and there was no rest in sight.
He was vaguely aware of Dick’s arms holding him up. Vaguely aware of familiar, heavy footsteps in black leather and steel falling into view like a curtain.
“Jason…” The Batman looked around at the carnage. Smoke and heat wavered in the air like flags at half mast, distorting the darkness that enveloped them all. “Jason what have you done?”
Jason’s eyes flickered with something like shame, then went cold. “You’re too late,” he muttered lifelessly. “She’s already dead.”
There were nearly a dozen bodies, all of them dark and identical in the night, slumped like puppets with their strings cut.
Y/n felt a blinding pain behind her eyes like the worst migraine in the world. Healing was no painless thing. She was convinced at times that healing hurt worse than the original injury.
Her awareness of her body came in pieces. A wiggle of her toes here and a twitch of her fingers there. Numbing tingles fading as her blood started to sing in her veins, reaching out from her chest with a flood of warmth. There was the acute itch of something being pushed out of her brain. The odd sensation of bones sliding back into place so close to her ears.
It was her skull. Plates of bone melting together again, sealing over tender flesh as brain tissue filled the gaps left by the bullet.
The bullet.
Y/n forced her eyes open and reached behind her with hands that felt heavy as lead. It was like pulling out a splinter when she felt the slender, flattened bullet give way and drop into her palm.
A bullet to the head.
She’d just survived a bullet to the head.
Her hands dropped, fingers curling protectively around the coin-sized reminder of her power.
Her lungs were still on fire, smoke seeping into her eyes and throat like sandpaper.
“Jason,” she croaked. She rolled onto her side, spitting blood and phlegm onto the pavement. “Jason!”
His head snapped up at the same time Dick and Bruce’s did. That’s how he knew he wasn’t dreaming it. He shoved Dick away from him, crawling, then running towards the sound of coughing and strangled calls of his name.
“Y/n!” He scooped Y/n up into his arms, feeling her tremble beneath his touch as he crushed her to his chest. His hand found its way to the back of her head, feeling for a wound that didn’t exist anymore. Nothing but the sticky cling of blood pasting her hair to her head served as proof that she’d ever been hurt. “What the fuck? What the actual fuck?” He breathed in awe. Then he laughed, wet and a little crazed, the sound quickly transforming into broken sobs as he cradled her impossibly closer to his chest.
“I know right? Fucking crazy,” Y/n murmured into the crook of his neck. She inhaled deeply, feeling breath fill her lungs. There were aches and pains everywhere, her power reaching to heal little by little along some unknown hierarchy.
Jason’s arms never left her, even as his legs brought them somewhere she didn’t know. She shut her eyes tight, squeezing herself into the warmth of Jason’s body until she felt safe and protected again. He was like a snake around her, holding her together until she was certain she’d no longer break apart into a million pieces.
There were two unfamiliar voices, low and gruff in the same way as Red Hood’s, that filtered in and out of her consciousness. The sound of a door closing. The low hum of an engine.
Y/n focused only on Jason’s voice washing over her ear, filling her up with comfort and love like she was an empty cup and he was water. “I’m going to take you somewhere safe, baby. Somewhere to rest and we’ll figure everything out ok? I’m not going to let anything happen to you again.”
She was too tired, her head too full of cotton and pain, to respond. She only nodded into his neck, hand gripping onto a scrap of his t-shirt before it all became too much and she sank into a dreamless sleep.
Summary: Jason never imagined falling in love, so when he fell, he fell hard. He couldn't deny her anything, not even the leather jacket he'd tried burying in the back of his closet along with the rest of his secrets. But he'll soon realize the crucial mistake he made when he lets the love of his life walk out with Red Hood's signature leather jacket.
Warnings: violence, angst
If you'd like to be added to the taglist, please leave a comment on the L&B Masterlist or feel free to message me. This just helps me stay organized so I don't miss anyone's request!
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Masterlist of Masterlists
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Y/n lay gasping on the ground, waiting for her ribs to slide back into place and for her knee to pop into its socket. The helmet had caved in at the temple, squeezing against her head until she finally fumbled the buckle and threw it off. It was an attack on the senses. Sirens blaring in the distance. Smoke stinging at her eyes. Everything smelled of rubber and burning.
But Jason.
She grasped at her chest, feeling the hard kevlar that wrapped around her tighter than guilt. He’d given her his body armor. His jacket. His helmet. What had he been left with when he’d been thrown from the bike?
Y/n didn’t wait for her injuries to finish healing. She crawled to her feet, limping towards the flames and blinking through her smoke-stained tears.
Cars were coming their way. Huge, black SUVs barreling through the rain like it was a game and they were the targets.
Something moved through the smoke and haze. Jason’s black clothes bled into the asphalt and he melted with them, nothing but a smudged form struggling to stand — a word written in ink and then wiped away. But she would recognize that flash of white hair anywhere. Y/n ran to him, collapsing to her knees and smoothing back his hair. Her hands came away sticky and red with blood.
His arms were bleeding, skin ripped away like he’d been shaved by a cheese grater and a slash across his cheek cut the corner of his lip in two.
“Can you stand? Jason, can you stand?!”
Jason gripped her hands once, then shoved her away. “Run!”
She held on fast, throwing herself over him and pouring all she could into her touch.
She didn’t know how it worked, didn’t know why it worked. All she knew is that ever since she was a child she had never gotten sick. Never gotten struck down with the flu or the seasonal stomach bug. Never got a paper cut or broke an arm. Any injury healed itself within minutes, at most overnight, and if she concentrated hard enough — so long as she was touching them skin to skin — she could heal anyone.
“Baby, you gotta go. Baby, you gotta go. Please, Y/n.” Jason begged, trying to push her away.
She did it now. She imagined every torn vessel sealing over until blood stopped collecting where it shouldn’t. She reached for the feeling of his broken bones, visualizing them sliding over one another like cracks in the earth and fusing back together. The skin at his elbows, the back of his head, and his cheek knitting closed.
Jason gasped, half in surprise and half in pain as his internal organs rearranged. The splitting pain in his skull disappeared. The ringing in his ears quieted.
“Y/n?”
Her eyes were wide as coins, pupils blown open by fire and smoke, tears cutting through the grime on her cheeks. Even now, even like this, she managed to take his breath away.
“Jason, I—”
A gunshot rang out.
Her head snapped forward.
She slumped over his chest, nose pressing into the soft curve of his neck like she was sleeping. They’d laid like this before countless times. In bed. On the couch. On the floor. Always with her curled over his body, her breath against his throat lulling him to sleep.
She wasn’t breathing now.
Blood flowed down her neck, dampening her hair and trickling onto Jason’s cheek.
He felt the world burn around him.
“Y/n…Y-Y/n?” He cradled her head, gently rolling to his knees and holding her in his lap. She remained limp and unmoving. “No. No, no, no, baby. Baby—Baby, please!” The bullet hadn’t gone through. It remained hidden somewhere he couldn’t see. He could only feel the blood pouring out from the back of her head like a cracked teacup.
Her eyes were open, blank and unseeing and still watery from smoke. Jason clawed at his stomach. His arms. His face. Searching for wounds that he knew had existed before she’d laid her hands on him. But he remained perfect.
Healed.
He couldn’t stand for it.
“Take it back, Y/n. TAKE IT BACK!” He screamed. He grasped her head in between his hands, bowing over her body. “No! NO! TAKE IT BACK!”
He didn’t want this. He didn’t want this fucking trade of lives. She should’ve run. She should’ve run when he’d told her to. She should’ve run years ago.
“Baby,” he begged, running his hand down her cheek. “Baby, please.”
When he heard the click of the gun against his temple, he thought — for the briefest of moments — that he should let it go off. But then he saw Y/n in his lap, his jacket closed around her like a blanket, like safety, and that overwhelming grief lit up and became rage.
He twisted his head to the side, letting the bullet fly past him at the same time he grabbed the gunman’s wrist and broke it in one clean move. He twisted the gun, aimed it at a pair of terrified blue eyes and blew off the man’s head.
A body could make a decent shield, as Jason would come to find, hauling the dead man up with one arm and running towards the rain of gunfire.
It was a miracle he wasn’t dead. Maybe he would be soon. Maybe, hidden somewhere he couldn’t see and couldn’t feel, was a bullet lodged close to a vital organ just waiting for the right move, the right time, to slip a little deeper and leave a wound Jason could never heal from.
Jason couldn’t care less if it did or not. His focus was zeroed in on the one form left moving apart from him. The Penguin, crawling away from the wreckage of an SUV with its tires blown out. The driver lay slumped over the wheel, his image fractured by the spray of bullets puncturing the windshield like lace. Somewhere in the distance. Close. Far. He couldn’t tell. Someone was screaming his name.
Names held power.
The Batman.
The Joker.
The Penguin.
Red Hood.
Y/n L/n.
But it was Jason Todd that held the gun aimed at the back of Oswald Cobblepot’s head and he made sure his victim was staring him in the eye, mask long forgotten, when the final bullet went off.
Jason dropped to his knees and with disgust pooling in his stomach, reached into the bloody tissue of Oswald Cobblepot’s head and retrieved the bullet that had ended him. A souvenir. A promise.
“Red, stop! Fucking stop!” Dick slammed into Jason’s side, throwing him off Oswald Cobblepot’s motionless body. He’d been expecting some push back from his brother. Gritted anger as cold and precise as steel. Maybe for Jason to turn around and punch him so hard his jaw would crack.
What he wasn’t prepared to see was Jason sway on his feet, then drop back down to his knees, fists closed.
All night, Jason had been fighting like he was running out of time — racing to get home, racing to get to Y/n, then racing to get to the Manor. But now the clock had run out, and there was no rest in sight.
He was vaguely aware of Dick’s arms holding him up. Vaguely aware of familiar, heavy footsteps in black leather and steel falling into view like a curtain.
“Jason…” The Batman looked around at the carnage. Smoke and heat wavered in the air like flags at half mast, distorting the darkness that enveloped them all. “Jason what have you done?”
Jason’s eyes flickered with something like shame, then went cold. “You’re too late,” he muttered lifelessly. “She’s already dead.”
There were nearly a dozen bodies, all of them dark and identical in the night, slumped like puppets with their strings cut.
Y/n felt a blinding pain behind her eyes like the worst migraine in the world. Healing was no painless thing. She was convinced at times that healing hurt worse than the original injury.
Her awareness of her body came in pieces. A wiggle of her toes here and a twitch of her fingers there. Numbing tingles fading as her blood started to sing in her veins, reaching out from her chest with a flood of warmth. There was the acute itch of something being pushed out of her brain. The odd sensation of bones sliding back into place so close to her ears.
It was her skull. Plates of bone melting together again, sealing over tender flesh as brain tissue filled the gaps left by the bullet.
The bullet.
Y/n forced her eyes open and reached behind her with hands that felt heavy as lead. It was like pulling out a splinter when she felt the slender, flattened bullet give way and drop into her palm.
A bullet to the head.
She’d just survived a bullet to the head.
Her hands dropped, fingers curling protectively around the coin-sized reminder of her power.
Her lungs were still on fire, smoke seeping into her eyes and throat like sandpaper.
“Jason,” she croaked. She rolled onto her side, spitting blood and phlegm onto the pavement. “Jason!”
His head snapped up at the same time Dick and Bruce’s did. That’s how he knew he wasn’t dreaming it. He shoved Dick away from him, crawling, then running towards the sound of coughing and strangled calls of his name.
“Y/n!” He scooped Y/n up into his arms, feeling her tremble beneath his touch as he crushed her to his chest. His hand found its way to the back of her head, feeling for a wound that didn’t exist anymore. Nothing but the sticky cling of blood pasting her hair to her head served as proof that she’d ever been hurt. “What the fuck? What the actual fuck?” He breathed in awe. Then he laughed, wet and a little crazed, the sound quickly transforming into broken sobs as he cradled her impossibly closer to his chest.
“I know right? Fucking crazy,” Y/n murmured into the crook of his neck. She inhaled deeply, feeling breath fill her lungs. There were aches and pains everywhere, her power reaching to heal little by little along some unknown hierarchy.
Jason’s arms never left her, even as his legs brought them somewhere she didn’t know. She shut her eyes tight, squeezing herself into the warmth of Jason’s body until she felt safe and protected again. He was like a snake around her, holding her together until she was certain she’d no longer break apart into a million pieces.
There were two unfamiliar voices, low and gruff in the same way as Red Hood’s, that filtered in and out of her consciousness. The sound of a door closing. The low hum of an engine.
Y/n focused only on Jason’s voice washing over her ear, filling her up with comfort and love like she was an empty cup and he was water. “I’m going to take you somewhere safe, baby. Somewhere to rest and we’ll figure everything out ok? I’m not going to let anything happen to you again.”
She was too tired, her head too full of cotton and pain, to respond. She only nodded into his neck, hand gripping onto a scrap of his t-shirt before it all became too much and she sank into a dreamless sleep.
Summary: Jason never imagined falling in love, so when he fell, he fell hard. He couldn't deny her anything, not even the leather jacket he'd tried burying in the back of his closet along with the rest of his secrets. But he'll soon realize the crucial mistake he made when he lets the love of his life walk out with Red Hood's signature leather jacket.
Warnings: violence
If you'd like to be added to the taglist, please leave a comment on the L&B Masterlist or feel free to message me. This just helps me stay organized so I don't miss anyone's request!
Leather and Blood Masterlist
Masterlist of Masterlists
<- Previous chapter Next chapter ->
Y/n licked her lips tasting smoke and menthol and city exhaust. The neon blue lights from the bodega on the corner flickered weakly, sprinkling glitter on the rain-soaked pavement. Somewhere in the distance cop sirens and fire truck horns were blaring, cutting through the faint drizzle of rain and the mist that followed. In Gotham these sounds were as familiar as bird calls.
Her friends liked to ask why she didn’t leave the city. For a while it was because she couldn’t afford to move out. Couldn’t afford one of the white picket-fence houses in the suburbs with an HOA that belonged on 90s sitcoms. Then she used the excuse that she was used to it. That it was her own laziness and force of habit that kept her confined to a shitty apartment toeing the line between the bad and less bad sectors of the city. Then she’d woken up under Jason’s arm one day to the realization that Gotham had crawled its way into her heart and latched onto it. She liked the hustle and the grit. Like that when you peeled back its ugly layers you found something worth protecting beneath it. She liked that Jason was here. That they had scavenged together a life here that made her smile.
She kept switching her hands, one bundled in the length of Jason’s shirt and the other balancing her cigarette as she blew out clouds of smoke.
Her phone buzzed, jittering across the rusty fire escape. Jason’s crooked, sleepy smile popped up on the caller ID.
Speak of the devil and he shall appear, Y/n mused.
She ground out the cigarette butt on the railing, blowing out the last of the smoke. “Heyyy baby—”
“Y/n, get inside. NOW!”
She dropped her cigarette, blood freezing at the terror in his voice. Without a second thought she flung herself inside, feeling the edges of the window catch on the skin of her torso before landing with a jolt of pain on the wooden floors.
There was a whistle. Something struck her cheek like a hot knife as she went down. The sting of pain when she got her ears pierced with a piercing gun. A piece of the floor erupted with a pop of splinters.
Y/n scrambled back, pressing herself beneath the window and out of sight of the gunman. Or at the very least she hoped she was out of sight of the gunman. Blood trickled down her cheek and she raised trembling fingers up to wipe away the blood as it slowed, then disappeared entirely. Her flesh knit itself back together before she could swallow her first breath.
If she’d been any slower the bullet would have entered her brain. She didn’t want to think about what could have happened then. How Jason would have to be the one to clean up what remained of her skull from the floor.
She thought of Marie Kondo. Cleanliness.
This does not spark joy.
Jason’s frantic calls were muffled and far away to Y/n’s ears. Overshadowed by the roar of blood in her ears as her heart tried clawing its way out of her chest.
“Baby! Baby, if you’re there you gotta say something. Y/n! Y/N!”
“I’m ok.” Her voice came out quiet and fractured, whispered into the receiver. Jason was screaming over the phone. “I’m-I’m ok. I-” Y/n gasped for breath, “I’m hiding under the window.”
“Stay there! Stay on the line with me.” His motorbike roared in the background, wind roaring as he swerved down back alleys. “Baby tell me exactly where you are in the apartment.”
“Just under the window to the fire escape. I was-I was smoking.” In any other scenario Jason might have scoffed. She gave him so much shit for his own bad habit only to turn around and do the same thing.
There was shouting happening downstairs. The sound of a rusty metal ladder being pulled down and hitting a pothole in the sidewalk.
“Jason,” Y/n tried to calm her breathing, “They’re coming up the fire escape and I can’t close the window without getting my head blown off.”
“My armchair. Check the leather lining towards the bottom. There’s a zipper there and a gun hidden behind.” Y/n followed his instructions mechanically, wiping away at her nose and eyes until she felt the heavy weight of the Beretta 92 in her hand. Of course Jason had been hiding firearms in the house.
“I’ve-” She swallowed. “I’ve got it.”
“You remember what I taught you?”
Y/n checked that it was loaded. Turned off the safety and fit it in the palm of her hand. She cocked the gun. Her pointer finger rested on the trigger. “Yeah, baby, I remember.”
“I’m two minutes away. Just hold on!”
But two minutes was too long. Y/n looked at the ceiling. Watching the curtains flutter in the cold Gotham wind like ghosts. When the first unfortunate soul grabbed onto the window and hauled themselves inside, they didn’t see Y/n hiding below. Didn’t see it when the bullet hit them in the chin and blew their head back. Their body slumped over, the windowsill catching their hips until they were swinging like a door hinge, hands brushing against the ground.
Y/n scrambled out of the way, crawling as quickly as she could towards the bedroom door as the windows exploded with gunfire. Her palms were bloody, eating glass as the floor dipped down ever so slightly. She kicked the door shut, locked it, then gritted her teeth as she shoved the dresser and tv stand in front of the door. The curtains were already drawn, fluttering over an open window that she didn’t have the courage to close. She’d grown used to safety ever since she started living with Jason. She hoped it wouldn’t come back to bite her in the ass.
She ran to the bathroom next. Locked the door. Turned off the lights. Sat in the bathtub. And waited. Her breath was shaky, but her hands stayed still as she trained the gun towards the door. The shower curtains brushed against her skin. Everything smelled of plastic and shampoo.
There was chaos over the line. The static sound of bodies being thrown off a roof. Fists meeting flesh. Gunshots ringing. Then she started hearing in doubles. First the muffled crack of a gunshot in the street, then its echo over the phone.
Jason was coming.
“Get the girl! GET THE FUCKING GIRL! FOR FUCK’S SAKE!”
The door burst open and Y/n instinctively pulled on the trigger. Once. Twice. A thir—
Her arm was wrenched to the side and she felt something twist, then shatter. She screamed, grabbing onto the man’s wrist with her good arm as he grabbed her by the back of her neck and hauled her back into the bedroom. The pressure was unbearable, her breath cut off as he drew her up to her feet and pressed her back against his front.
A shield. She was nothing more than a shield with a gun trained against her temple. She cringed as the stranger’s arm tightened around her waist, holding her up. Jason’s touch was always soft, no matter how close he held her, but this… this was a violation. Whiskey-coated breath sailed past her ear, threatening to blow a hole in the side of her head if he didn’t drop his fucking gun.
She came back to her body in pieces. The adrenaline had shattered her focus in places she didn’t expect. The smell of blood pooling on the bathroom tiles came to her first, along with the sight of two bodies slumped against the wall like dolls with their strings cut. Then the crackling of her arm as the bones reset and the swelling went down. The stench of sweat and weed and cheap perfume mixed into something that made her gag.
Then him.
Red Hood.
He was in the bedroom, silhouetted by the outline of a cracked door frame like he’d burst through a comic book page. Pearly white eyes, unblinking, stared at the two of them, a gun trained on the man who held her like she was nothing.
“I said drop the fucking gun or I swear to God I’ll drop her.”
Y/n stared and stared and stared. Under all that kevlar, leather, and body armor, even under the mask, she could have recognized Jason anywhere. She knew his body like the back of her hand. Could trace every line of tension in his shoulders because she was the one who helped unwind those lines before bed. Even the way he stood was so… so Jason. She’d just never known it was also so.. Red Hood.
She gently stretched her neck, leaning as far away from the man as she could. Then she nodded.
Her eardrum burst with a spray of blood and all at once she felt the pressure at her back disappear. A limp hand slid down her side, then fell away.
Jason crossed the room in two steps, arms wrapping around her waist in a way that felt right. His body folded over hers. His hand cradled the back of her head, smoothing her hair and pressing her until their outlines matched. But he was gone just as quickly, wiping at the blood on her cheek and neck with shaking hands.
“Baby.” The name sounded strange when whispered through his modulator. “Baby we got to go.” He tugged off his jacket, then ripped off the first layer of body armor from his chest, red bat symbol splashed across the front like a bullseye. He threw it over Y/n’s body, wrapping her safe in his jacket, before pulling her towards the door. “Don’t look. Baby, don’t look.”
But Y/n did look. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a dead body. Certainly not the first time she’d seen a bullet wound or so much blood. But before it’d always been at the hospital. Red splashed across disinfected walls and floors. Red and pearly white. It felt wrong seeing it in her living room and kitchen with window glass sprinkled everywhere like a shower of deranged confetti.
She passed by a body sitting upright in the hallway, just barely noticing the crowbar stapling him to the wall like a pushpin through paper before Jason was leading her into an emergency stairwell and locking the door behind her.
The lights flickered above them, the bodies of dead flies showering the ground with their tiny shadows. For one moment they breathed together in the silence. A brief hiatus in what had been nothing short of absolute madness.
Jason — Red Hood — looked at her, words frozen by the mask sitting like a cage over his head. He reached out, brushing at her cheek. Wordlessly, she leaned into his touch, closing her eyes and rubbing into the worn palm of his leather riding gloves.
“Talk about this later, yeah?”
His breath came out short and harsh. It could have been a laugh if it didn’t sound so strangled and full of pain. “Yeah.”
Then they were running again, taking the stairs two steps at the time through concrete stairwells until they spilled out into the alley behind the apartment. She followed Jason through stinking, narrow gaps in the city, squeezing through chain linked fencing until they came across his motorbike. All the lights on the block were turned off. Neighbors had drawn their curtains, blown out candles, and switched off lamps. They’d all heard the gunfire and knew to hunker down, melting into Gotham’s darkness until the danger passed. Y/n heard only stray dogs barking in the night and the screeching of tires from further away.
Backup was coming. But she didn’t know who it was coming for.
She threw her legs over his bike like it was second nature, sliding forward in the seat until she was curled over his back like a comma, hands wrapping around a familiar torso and locking at his waist. The engine hummed beneath her, soothing but new at the same time. This wasn’t Jason’s bike. It was Red Hood’s.
Without thinking twice, Jason took off his helmet, pulling his neck guard up to hide the lower half of his face. With the modulator gone, it was Jason’s voice that called for her to “Put this on.”
Y/n blinked in surprise. With nothing but a domino mask on he looked frighteningly vulnerable. Too easy to recognize. “Jay—”
“We don’t have time to argue, darling, and I’ll be damned if anything happens to you.”
When she hesitated again, he snatched the helmet from her hands, forcing it over her head and buckling it tight under her chin.
“Wait, Jason.” Her voice came out foreign and muffled, but no less panicked. “I don’t need this like you do. I can—”
He didn’t want to hear it. Wouldn’t take any chances. He brought her hands back to his waist and sped down the street, taking off so quickly she had no choice but to grip him tight and bury her face against his back.
The wind whipped past them as they curved and bent around the streets with the lights off, filling up the empty space between her and Jason’s large jacket until the fabric fluttered around her like wings. It was quiet inside the helmet though. All the chaotic sounds of screaming air and engine rumbling filtered out so she could hear what was important. Like the faint reassurances Jason spoke under his breath — how they only needed to get to the manor. How he was going to fix everything. Keep you safe.
Y/n heard the whistling of the projectile before Jason did but could do nothing as it slammed into the front tire and exploded. Her body was flung forward. She vaguely remembered Jason screaming her name, reaching back for her hand. The brush of leather gloves against her wrist before it was ripped away. Then she hit the ground with a shatter of bones, her legs twisting painfully beneath her as she was sent tumbling over asphalt, and she forgot everything.
Summary: Jason never imagined falling in love, so when he fell, he fell hard. He couldn't deny her anything, not even the leather jacket he'd tried burying in the back of his closet along with the rest of his secrets. But he'll soon realize the crucial mistake he made when he lets the love of his life walk out with Red Hood's signature leather jacket.
Warnings: violence
If you'd like to be added to the taglist, please leave a comment on the L&B Masterlist or feel free to message me. This just helps me stay organized so I don't miss anyone's request!
Leather and Blood Masterlist
Masterlist of Masterlists
<- Previous chapter Next chapter ->
Y/n licked her lips tasting smoke and menthol and city exhaust. The neon blue lights from the bodega on the corner flickered weakly, sprinkling glitter on the rain-soaked pavement. Somewhere in the distance cop sirens and fire truck horns were blaring, cutting through the faint drizzle of rain and the mist that followed. In Gotham these sounds were as familiar as bird calls.
Her friends liked to ask why she didn’t leave the city. For a while it was because she couldn’t afford to move out. Couldn’t afford one of the white picket-fence houses in the suburbs with an HOA that belonged on 90s sitcoms. Then she used the excuse that she was used to it. That it was her own laziness and force of habit that kept her confined to a shitty apartment toeing the line between the bad and less bad sectors of the city. Then she’d woken up under Jason’s arm one day to the realization that Gotham had crawled its way into her heart and latched onto it. She liked the hustle and the grit. Like that when you peeled back its ugly layers you found something worth protecting beneath it. She liked that Jason was here. That they had scavenged together a life here that made her smile.
She kept switching her hands, one bundled in the length of Jason’s shirt and the other balancing her cigarette as she blew out clouds of smoke.
Her phone buzzed, jittering across the rusty fire escape. Jason’s crooked, sleepy smile popped up on the caller ID.
Speak of the devil and he shall appear, Y/n mused.
She ground out the cigarette butt on the railing, blowing out the last of the smoke. “Heyyy baby—”
“Y/n, get inside. NOW!”
She dropped her cigarette, blood freezing at the terror in his voice. Without a second thought she flung herself inside, feeling the edges of the window catch on the skin of her torso before landing with a jolt of pain on the wooden floors.
There was a whistle. Something struck her cheek like a hot knife as she went down. The sting of pain when she got her ears pierced with a piercing gun. A piece of the floor erupted with a pop of splinters.
Y/n scrambled back, pressing herself beneath the window and out of sight of the gunman. Or at the very least she hoped she was out of sight of the gunman. Blood trickled down her cheek and she raised trembling fingers up to wipe away the blood as it slowed, then disappeared entirely. Her flesh knit itself back together before she could swallow her first breath.
If she’d been any slower the bullet would have entered her brain. She didn’t want to think about what could have happened then. How Jason would have to be the one to clean up what remained of her skull from the floor.
She thought of Marie Kondo. Cleanliness.
This does not spark joy.
Jason’s frantic calls were muffled and far away to Y/n’s ears. Overshadowed by the roar of blood in her ears as her heart tried clawing its way out of her chest.
“Baby! Baby, if you’re there you gotta say something. Y/n! Y/N!”
“I’m ok.” Her voice came out quiet and fractured, whispered into the receiver. Jason was screaming over the phone. “I’m-I’m ok. I-” Y/n gasped for breath, “I’m hiding under the window.”
“Stay there! Stay on the line with me.” His motorbike roared in the background, wind roaring as he swerved down back alleys. “Baby tell me exactly where you are in the apartment.”
“Just under the window to the fire escape. I was-I was smoking.” In any other scenario Jason might have scoffed. She gave him so much shit for his own bad habit only to turn around and do the same thing.
There was shouting happening downstairs. The sound of a rusty metal ladder being pulled down and hitting a pothole in the sidewalk.
“Jason,” Y/n tried to calm her breathing, “They’re coming up the fire escape and I can’t close the window without getting my head blown off.”
“My armchair. Check the leather lining towards the bottom. There’s a zipper there and a gun hidden behind.” Y/n followed his instructions mechanically, wiping away at her nose and eyes until she felt the heavy weight of the Beretta 92 in her hand. Of course Jason had been hiding firearms in the house.
“I’ve-” She swallowed. “I’ve got it.”
“You remember what I taught you?”
Y/n checked that it was loaded. Turned off the safety and fit it in the palm of her hand. She cocked the gun. Her pointer finger rested on the trigger. “Yeah, baby, I remember.”
“I’m two minutes away. Just hold on!”
But two minutes was too long. Y/n looked at the ceiling. Watching the curtains flutter in the cold Gotham wind like ghosts. When the first unfortunate soul grabbed onto the window and hauled themselves inside, they didn’t see Y/n hiding below. Didn’t see it when the bullet hit them in the chin and blew their head back. Their body slumped over, the windowsill catching their hips until they were swinging like a door hinge, hands brushing against the ground.
Y/n scrambled out of the way, crawling as quickly as she could towards the bedroom door as the windows exploded with gunfire. Her palms were bloody, eating glass as the floor dipped down ever so slightly. She kicked the door shut, locked it, then gritted her teeth as she shoved the dresser and tv stand in front of the door. The curtains were already drawn, fluttering over an open window that she didn’t have the courage to close. She’d grown used to safety ever since she started living with Jason. She hoped it wouldn’t come back to bite her in the ass.
She ran to the bathroom next. Locked the door. Turned off the lights. Sat in the bathtub. And waited. Her breath was shaky, but her hands stayed still as she trained the gun towards the door. The shower curtains brushed against her skin. Everything smelled of plastic and shampoo.
There was chaos over the line. The static sound of bodies being thrown off a roof. Fists meeting flesh. Gunshots ringing. Then she started hearing in doubles. First the muffled crack of a gunshot in the street, then its echo over the phone.
Jason was coming.
“Get the girl! GET THE FUCKING GIRL! FOR FUCK’S SAKE!”
The door burst open and Y/n instinctively pulled on the trigger. Once. Twice. A thir—
Her arm was wrenched to the side and she felt something twist, then shatter. She screamed, grabbing onto the man’s wrist with her good arm as he grabbed her by the back of her neck and hauled her back into the bedroom. The pressure was unbearable, her breath cut off as he drew her up to her feet and pressed her back against his front.
A shield. She was nothing more than a shield with a gun trained against her temple. She cringed as the stranger’s arm tightened around her waist, holding her up. Jason’s touch was always soft, no matter how close he held her, but this… this was a violation. Whiskey-coated breath sailed past her ear, threatening to blow a hole in the side of her head if he didn’t drop his fucking gun.
She came back to her body in pieces. The adrenaline had shattered her focus in places she didn’t expect. The smell of blood pooling on the bathroom tiles came to her first, along with the sight of two bodies slumped against the wall like dolls with their strings cut. Then the crackling of her arm as the bones reset and the swelling went down. The stench of sweat and weed and cheap perfume mixed into something that made her gag.
Then him.
Red Hood.
He was in the bedroom, silhouetted by the outline of a cracked door frame like he’d burst through a comic book page. Pearly white eyes, unblinking, stared at the two of them, a gun trained on the man who held her like she was nothing.
“I said drop the fucking gun or I swear to God I’ll drop her.”
Y/n stared and stared and stared. Under all that kevlar, leather, and body armor, even under the mask, she could have recognized Jason anywhere. She knew his body like the back of her hand. Could trace every line of tension in his shoulders because she was the one who helped unwind those lines before bed. Even the way he stood was so… so Jason. She’d just never known it was also so.. Red Hood.
She gently stretched her neck, leaning as far away from the man as she could. Then she nodded.
Her eardrum burst with a spray of blood and all at once she felt the pressure at her back disappear. A limp hand slid down her side, then fell away.
Jason crossed the room in two steps, arms wrapping around her waist in a way that felt right. His body folded over hers. His hand cradled the back of her head, smoothing her hair and pressing her until their outlines matched. But he was gone just as quickly, wiping at the blood on her cheek and neck with shaking hands.
“Baby.” The name sounded strange when whispered through his modulator. “Baby we got to go.” He tugged off his jacket, then ripped off the first layer of body armor from his chest, red bat symbol splashed across the front like a bullseye. He threw it over Y/n’s body, wrapping her safe in his jacket, before pulling her towards the door. “Don’t look. Baby, don’t look.”
But Y/n did look. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a dead body. Certainly not the first time she’d seen a bullet wound or so much blood. But before it’d always been at the hospital. Red splashed across disinfected walls and floors. Red and pearly white. It felt wrong seeing it in her living room and kitchen with window glass sprinkled everywhere like a shower of deranged confetti.
She passed by a body sitting upright in the hallway, just barely noticing the crowbar stapling him to the wall like a pushpin through paper before Jason was leading her into an emergency stairwell and locking the door behind her.
The lights flickered above them, the bodies of dead flies showering the ground with their tiny shadows. For one moment they breathed together in the silence. A brief hiatus in what had been nothing short of absolute madness.
Jason — Red Hood — looked at her, words frozen by the mask sitting like a cage over his head. He reached out, brushing at her cheek. Wordlessly, she leaned into his touch, closing her eyes and rubbing into the worn palm of his leather riding gloves.
“Talk about this later, yeah?”
His breath came out short and harsh. It could have been a laugh if it didn’t sound so strangled and full of pain. “Yeah.”
Then they were running again, taking the stairs two steps at the time through concrete stairwells until they spilled out into the alley behind the apartment. She followed Jason through stinking, narrow gaps in the city, squeezing through chain linked fencing until they came across his motorbike. All the lights on the block were turned off. Neighbors had drawn their curtains, blown out candles, and switched off lamps. They’d all heard the gunfire and knew to hunker down, melting into Gotham’s darkness until the danger passed. Y/n heard only stray dogs barking in the night and the screeching of tires from further away.
Backup was coming. But she didn’t know who it was coming for.
She threw her legs over his bike like it was second nature, sliding forward in the seat until she was curled over his back like a comma, hands wrapping around a familiar torso and locking at his waist. The engine hummed beneath her, soothing but new at the same time. This wasn’t Jason’s bike. It was Red Hood’s.
Without thinking twice, Jason took off his helmet, pulling his neck guard up to hide the lower half of his face. With the modulator gone, it was Jason’s voice that called for her to “Put this on.”
Y/n blinked in surprise. With nothing but a domino mask on he looked frighteningly vulnerable. Too easy to recognize. “Jay—”
“We don’t have time to argue, darling, and I’ll be damned if anything happens to you.”
When she hesitated again, he snatched the helmet from her hands, forcing it over her head and buckling it tight under her chin.
“Wait, Jason.” Her voice came out foreign and muffled, but no less panicked. “I don’t need this like you do. I can—”
He didn’t want to hear it. Wouldn’t take any chances. He brought her hands back to his waist and sped down the street, taking off so quickly she had no choice but to grip him tight and bury her face against his back.
The wind whipped past them as they curved and bent around the streets with the lights off, filling up the empty space between her and Jason’s large jacket until the fabric fluttered around her like wings. It was quiet inside the helmet though. All the chaotic sounds of screaming air and engine rumbling filtered out so she could hear what was important. Like the faint reassurances Jason spoke under his breath — how they only needed to get to the manor. How he was going to fix everything. Keep you safe.
Y/n heard the whistling of the projectile before Jason did but could do nothing as it slammed into the front tire and exploded. Her body was flung forward. She vaguely remembered Jason screaming her name, reaching back for her hand. The brush of leather gloves against her wrist before it was ripped away. Then she hit the ground with a shatter of bones, her legs twisting painfully beneath her as she was sent tumbling over asphalt, and she forgot everything.
Summary: Jason never imagined falling in love, so when he fell, he fell hard. He couldn't deny her anything, not even the leather jacket he'd tried burying in the back of his closet along with the rest of his secrets. But he'll soon realize the crucial mistake he made when he lets the love of his life walk out with Red Hood's signature leather jacket.
Warnings: violence
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“Why the fuck didn’t you call me?!” Jason leaned against the kitchen island, palms pressing into the wood so hard Y/n wondered if it would buckle under his strength. His fingertips turned white and bloodless.
Here we go again. Y/n thought with a sigh of resignation. She drank the last of her morning coffee in a bitter swig and turned towards the sink.
“Jason, you were at work. I’m not going to bother you on the job.”
“You’re more important than the job.” Jason stalked towards her, still in his all black uniform and sporting a line across the bridge of his nose from where his mask had been laid down all night. Bloodshot eyes bore into her and there was a mint rolling around in his mouth to disguise the sour taste of another sleepless night.
“You should have called me the moment you sensed trouble.”
Y/n only turned on the sink, rinsing her dishes like there was nothing wrong with the world. “It’s Gotham, baby. There’s trouble everywhere. Plus the shuttle was just a couple minutes away and I knew Leonor was driving.”
“It only takes a couple minutes, Y/n, you know this.” His hand shot out, turning off the water before gently twisting her to face him. She was already in her scrubs, the front of her shirt now damp with dish soap and water as she wiped her hands dry.
Y/n grasped Jason’s face in her hands, feeling the chip on his shoulder melt ever so slightly. “I do know this. But I was being careful. I had my knife on me and an escape plan. I know how to handle a couple drunks.”
Jason rubbed his face with a groan. It had been a rough night for him too. She’d only just woken up from a restless sleep to the grey light of dawn when he’d arrived home, stumbling in crooked with gear weighing down his overnight bag. He didn’t like to go into detail about work. All she knew was that his security job at Wayne Enterprises kept him on his toes late into the night and paid enough for the apartment and the security system he’d had installed immediately after moving in.
“Fuck,” he muttered beneath his breath. He craned his neck back, stretching out tight muscles and shaking the worst of his agitation out of his head. It was late for him. He’d barely slept in twenty-four hours and he didn’t want to say goodbye to Y/n angry. “What time are you working until tonight?”
“My shift’s scheduled to end at midnight, but you know we’re short-staffed and they might hold me for longer.”
“Promise me that you’ll call when you’re done. I’ll pick you up and drop you off at home.”
“Jason—”
“Promise me.” He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against Y/n’s with a desperation in his eyes that pulled the fight out of her. “Promise me you’ll call,” he whispered. “Please, baby. Please.”
She could never deny him anything when he was like this — open and wanting and scared. “Alright,” she whispered back. “I’ll call the moment I’m done.”
He sighed in relief, wrapping his arms around her waist and just holding her for a moment in silence. Arguments were infrequent but heated, and they almost always had to do with her safety and Jason’s anxieties surrounding it.
For his sake, she answered all his questions about the three men she’d seen the night before. What they looked like. What kind of clothes they were wearing. What their names were. Only after a thorough questioning did he help her finish getting ready for work and kiss her goodbye, his hand lingering around her waist before finally letting her slip through his fingers.
Fourteen hours and three coffees later she was hugging the heating vent by the employee entrance, burrowing into Jason’s jacket anytime someone came inside with the winter chill trailing after them. She fiddled with her phone, itching for a cigarette and wondering if she should risk the winter air and call Jason again when her phone started to ring.
“Hey, baby.” Jason’s voice was tense and tired.
“Jason? What’s wrong? Where are you?”
“I’m ok, baby, just… I got caught up at work. I called in a favor with a friend and he should be there to pick you up now.” Y/n looked out the window, searching for the sleek black car Jason described, breath fogging up the dirty glass.
A car was pulled up by the entrance, headlights on and windows down. A guy in a yellow hoodie nodded his head to music, seemingly unperturbed by the danger that lurked in Gotham’s crevices, especially late at night. Deep set brown eyes atop a broad nose lit up when Y/n walked close, bending down to look into the car.
“Um… Duke?”
His head swiveled around in surprise, eyes glinting in the lamplight. “Yeah! Oh my gosh you must be Y/n.” He stuck his head and arms out the window, going in for a hug that didn’t quite reach fruition before shoving himself back into the warmth of his car. “It’s nice to meet the girl Jason’s been so tight-lipped about.”
“Watch it, Duke.” Jason’s scowl could be heard over speaker phone. Something must have tipped over in the background, metal crashing against metal and echoing. “Baby, I gotta go. Duke, take care of her alright? Make sure she gets home safe.”
Duke saluted the air, leaning over the center console to open the door for his guest. A half-drunk can of cola vibrated in the cup holder and a few abandoned water bottles lay crushed on the floor of the car. Y/n felt another poor soul crack beneath her sneakers as she slid into the car and drank in the smell of old coffee, sandalwood, and coconut.
Duke was absolutely buzzing with excitement. Jason hadn’t kept his girlfriend a secret, but he’d been damn private about everything down to her last name. Duke couldn’t help but steal glances as he drove through familiar streets stained dark by the night sky, memorizing as much as he could to relay to the others when he got back to the manor.
“So… how do you know Jason?” Y/n asked gently.
Duke couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old with close-cropped hair and smooth, dark skin. His smile and kind eyes made him look even younger.
“Oh we uh… work together.”
“Really? I’m sorry he’s just never mentioned you. He doesn’t like to talk about work.”
“I work the day shift,” he answered quickly. Perhaps too quickly. “And there’s a lot of stuff we’re not supposed to talk about. Security clearances and all that. A lot of us prefer to leave work out of our personal lives for safety.”
“Right. Right.” Y/n nodded, letting the conversation settle into safe topics of conversation: her job, the latest tv shows they’d binged, and pets mostly.
She assumed Duke would drive off after dropping her at the apartment, but he lingered in the street, watching her walk the steps and disappear inside. When she was finally in her apartment, she peered through the window to the street below empty. Nothing but plastic bags rolling along like tumbleweeds and flattened cigarette buds blinking like white drops of paint. She propped the window open, perching on one of the armchairs she and Jason had set up as their reading nook, and lit a cigarette.
The city was still alight with activity. Sirens blared in the distance, muted and blinking pinpricks of light that buzzed towards and away from the hospital centers like swarms of bees. Helicopters whirled and lamps flickered. Cars revved their engines and apartment windows shone with candy-colored lights, hazy and soft.
She held her smoldering cigarette in between two fingers, coughing lightly as she texted Jason.
I’m home safe.
He answered immediately.
I love you. I’ll see you in the morning.
The Red Hood turned off his phone, rolled his shoulders and turned back to the mobster currently tied down to a chair in an abandoned parking garage.
Thomas Moretti’s head lolled around on his shoulders, mouth swollen and dribbling blood all over his expensive satin suit. He pulled weakly at his bonds, feet scratching to get purchase on the cement floor. His nails were short and bloody, scratched down to the quick from hours of clawing at the arms of the metal chair.
Red Hood stretched his head to the side, looking at the thick line of scar tissue on his neck.
“I remember you,” Red Hood said mildly. The modulator deepened his voice until it sounded as rough and coarse as sandpaper.
“Yeah, I remember you too, motherfucker.” Tommy spat out blood, but it landed short of Red Hood, falling unbecomingly on his stomach. Tommy stiffened, legs kicking furiously as Red Hood drew close, pale white eyes staring lifelessly into his soul. “Fucking hell.”
“I know there are more names.”
“I gave you all the names.”
Tommy doubled over in pain, wheezing as Red Hood pulled back and punched him in the stomach two more times. Something in him shattered and he felt its sharp ends stretch, then puncture organs deep in his body. Suddenly the very act of breathing burned him from the inside out.
“If you,” he coughed wetly, “If you kill me. They’ll know she’s important to you. Your doll.”
Red Hood didn’t blink. Couldn’t blink. Not with his signature helmet sitting rigidly over his head. He only tilted his head to the side, then yanked up Tommy’s dress shirt, analyzing the bruises blooming on his torso with a clinical detachment, like he could see the blood pooling in cavities it didn’t belong to.
“You’re bleeding internally. Shouldn’t take more than an hour before you’re beyond saving.” Red Hood pressed his fingers deep into Tommy’s side. Screams bounced off the walls before eventually being swallowed up by the evening air. “Probably less.”
Tommy started to shake, tears flooding his glossy, marble-like eyes. “P-P-Paulie-Paul Blanchard, Etienne K-Katsaros, the girls from the Midnight Club—”
The women had already been paid handsomely for their silence, but they’d turned over Tommy, Paul, and Etienne for free.
The last name made Jason’s blood boil, then turn ice cold.
“Os-Oswald Cobblepot. I-I-I don’t know who he told, but I-I-I swear that’s it.”
Red Hood nodded and Tommy had only a moment of relief before he was staring down the face of a barrel. The gunshot rang out and his neck snapped back before he slumped in his seat. The coin-sized hole left in his forehead oozed red down to his chin before dripping onto his lap.
Jason clenched his teeth so tightly he thought they’d break, hands shaking as he holstered his gun, then started packing up the tools he’d laid out on the floor.
Thomas Moretti’s pocket started to buzz in time to the dripping of blood on the floor. Jason didn’t pick up at first, but when the buzzing didn’t stop, he finally dug around in Tommy’s pocket, wading past fistfulls of crumpled cash sticky with body glitter and booze. Jason held Tommy’s head upright by a clump of hair until the phone unlocked.
There was a new text message from an unsaved number. No name. No photo. Only a penguin emoji and a handful of pictures sent fifteen minutes ago.
Jason didn’t need to look long to recognize the windowsill, or the rusty fire escape, or the figure perched by the open window, nail polish flashing around a lit cigarette. Y/n was wearing his old band t-shirt and a pair of second-hand gym shorts blissfully unaware of the sniper trained on her head.
He dropped the phone, bolting out of the garage and leaping onto his motorbike. It roared to life, nearly drowning out the sound of him barking orders to his siblings over the comms as he sped towards the city.
Summary: Jason never imagined falling in love, so when he fell, he fell hard. He couldn't deny her anything, not even the leather jacket he'd tried burying in the back of his closet along with the rest of his secrets. But he'll soon realize the crucial mistake he made when he lets the love of his life walk out with Red Hood's signature leather jacket.
Warnings: fluff, violence, sleazy men
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Two years. They’d been together for two years.
Every argument, every moment of hesitation from Y/n had made Jason wonder, Is this it? Is this the final slip up? The last mistake I make before she goes out that door and never comes back?
And every time, the answer had been a resounding no. Once Y/n had chosen him, she’d chosen him, and after some time, Jason had finally accepted that there would be no last argument, no last mistake. No final straw.
“I’m going to tell her, Dick.”
His brother had smirked over the phone. “There’s a lot of yapping going on, but not to your girl.”
“I mean it.”
“I know! I know! All I’m saying is, you’re moving in with your girl before telling her about the vigilante stuff. Don’t you think you should be talking to her like… now?”
Jason hated talking to Dick sometimes. Not only was he the pompous, perfect golden boy in the family, he was — on occasion — right.
It was annoying as fuck.
Jason hung up the phone with a scowl, spitting over the guardrail of the fire escape onto the sidewalk below like he was shooing away an omen. He rolled the stale gum around in his mouth, nicotine long gone, and watched the mailman try to squeeze his truck down and around the slim bend in their street. Jason smirked as the truck took off the side view mirror of a double-parked car — sleek black paint now sliced through with orange and white. A string of profanities billowed out the open truck window like smoke, spilling into air already heavy with siren calls, car alarms, and the beeping of horns.
Just because this was a safer part of town didn’t mean people were any nicer. It was still stripped down. The right level of grime filling in the cracks in the sidewalk and clinging to the foundations of buildings to let you know it was lived-in. Just how Jason liked it.
He folded up his gum in a tissue and expertly threw it into one of the trash cans on the side of the street before squatting down and folding himself through the window back into Y/n’s apartment.
Y/n clicked her tongue against her teeth, shaking her head as she swung her switchblade open and sliced through the taped up cardboard. Black marker screamed “JACKETS” on the side of the box.
“I don’t know why you insist on taking calls out there.” The fire escape was rickety as hell and covered in so much paint it peeled. Y/n liked to smoke or drink her coffee there in the morning in her fold-up chair, but she wasn’t built like a mountain. Jason was large enough that she could imagine the whole fire escape crumbling like tin foil.
Jason readjusted the sleeves of his shirt, folding them back carefully to expose his forearms just the way she liked. She smirked at him as he wrapped his arms around her, playfully biting her neck and squeezing her sides. His distraction worked and the phone call was forgotten about.
She dug around the box, pulling out pair after pair of leather jackets crinkled and soft from use. “Did you buy the whole fucking cow, baby?” She asked, snapping out his clothes with a flourish.
“Shut up.” He kissed her cheek before stealing the pile from her, bumping his head against hers as he went.
Flat, empty cardboard boxes littered the floor in Y/n’s room marked CLOTHES, BATHROOM, and BOOKS. The KITCHEN box had already been organized and put away last week and the corner of his mouth ticked up at the thought of his mugs mingled in with Y/n’s, his mismatched utensils finding a home in her drawers.
Their drawers. He corrected himself. It was their kitchen now. Their room. Their apartment.
His new home.
“Hey baby!” Y/n called out from the living room. “Can I keep this?!”
Y/n was already pulling on the leather jacket when he exited the bedroom. Browned, bleached, and weathered from countless motorcycle rides and hours in the sun, it kept the shape of Jason’s body even as she adjusted the sleeves and lapels. She smoothed her hands down the front of the jacket, tracing the tiny stitches where Jason had patched up bullet holes and knife wounds with curiosity before deciding to ignore them.
She tugged the jacket up to her face, breathing in the scent of wind, smoke, and Jason’s cologne with a sigh.
Oh yeah. She was totally keeping this.
Jason chuckled, already knowing that her mind was made up. She spun around, snatching up Jason’s sunglasses from the kitchen countertop before striking a pose. She leaned against the kitchen island, shooting Jason a dark glare from beneath his shades as she spoke in a rough, gravelly voice.
“I’m Jason Todd. I smoke cigarettes and coffee for breakfast. But only black — like my soul. I can’t sleep longer than three hours at a time. The nightmares… they’re too dark for a pure soul like you.”
Jason blushed thinking back to some of the notably cringy things he’d said to her back when they’d started dating. “You finished there, baby?” His eyes glittered with amusement.
“Never.” She puffed up her chest, swaggering around the kitchen and living room, blue knee-high socks padding across hardwood. “I’m Jason Todd. I’m filled with so much teenage angst. I like to wear smudged eyeliner after 6pm and—”
“Hey!” He snatched her in his arms as she passed, sending her into fits of laughter as he tickled her sides. “You said you liked when I wore eyeliner.” She shrieked as he attacked her neck, blowing against the sensitive skin just above her jugular. He sent them both sprawling over the living room couch, rattling the coffee table and sending a few carelessly stacked books tumbling onto the rug.
“Mercy! Mercy!” Y/n giggled, gasping for breath as Jason finally let her go. He lay on top of her, pressing against her front until she could feel every hard, rigid line of his body. They sank into the couch cushions, trapping her in a position that had her eyes falling shut and her legs drifting up and around Jason’s hips as he kissed her breathlessly. Liquid heat pooled between them and she began to wonder if this would be the moment Jason took things further than they’d ever gone before.
He pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger before widening his grip to brush against her jaw. “You drive me crazy, you know that?”
“But you love it.”
Jason smiled, all pearly teeth and stretched lips. The scars he had at the corner of his mouth and the center of his brow stretched, crows feet crinkling like paper at his temples.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah, I really do love you.”
Y/n blushed. Hard. “Does this mean I get to keep the jacket?”
Jason snorted. “Yeah you can keep the jacket.”
But that was a mistake.
He should never have let her leave the house with his old Red Hood jacket. It was innocuous enough. No more or less different than the harsh attire Gothamites preferred. And it had been the first he’d ever worn out on the job. It was ridiculous to think that anyone would see that jacket and tie it back to Red Hood.
But someone did…
Y/n popped the collar of her coat, warm leather trapping the heat of her body as she stumbled out of the hospital at midnight. She cradled a to go cup with shitty coffee and too much cream in her hands, steam rising into the night sky like breath.
“Hey Y/n!” A mousy haired nurse sporting bright yellow crocs and cat-eyed spectacles caught her at the employee entrance. Janice looked Y/n up and down, smelling the disinfectant that clung to her cracked, dry skin, then scrunched her nose. “Rough night?”
Y/n sighed, rubbing at her temples. “I was supposed to be off at six and they scheduled me for another twelve to twelve shift tomorrow.”
“Today, you mean?” Janice pulled out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from her pocket, handing it over to Y/n.
Y/n rolled her eyes, lighting the cigarette and breathing in deeply. Orange light flickered in her eyes like a candle, smoke billowing out from between her teeth as she muttered, “Fuck, you’re right.”
Janice knocked her shoulder into Y/n’s. “Go home and get some sleep, girl.”
“When’s your shift ending?”
“6pm, so I’ll catch you when you get back. I just wanted a smoke break.”
“Lucky us.”
“Fucking tell me about it.”
They both snorted before drifting off into the night air with goodbyes and good lucks trailing behind them along with cigarette smoke.
Y/n waited at the shuttle stop one block from Gotham General. Light flickered in and out from the lamppost above her, the pool of yellow at her feet sputtering with an asthmatic wheeze of electricity. The shuttle was five minutes away when a trio of greasy men in black suits trickled in from around the block. They were shadows swaying drunkenly in the darkness. Lanky blondes wearing tiny, shimmering dresses hung at their arms, flashing necklaces and earrings worth thousands like peacock feathers. Y/n bristled as they approached smelling like cheap booze and nightclub sweat. She dipped her hand into her jacket pocket, fingers closing around the switchblade Jason had gifted her last Christmas. She had less to fear being this close to the hospital, but that didn’t mean she would be caught off guard.
“Hey!” One of the men hollered, tripping into her circle of light. The woman at his side frowned at Y/n, pulling the man as close as she could. For a split moment his suit jacket parted enough to see the gun strapped to his hip and Y/n felt her stomach sour. “Can I bum a smoke?”
Y/n didn’t say anything, didn’t flinch as the man lost his patience and reached out. He stole the cigarette from between her lips and breathed in deep, the end of the cigarette flaring to life like a drop of orange sun.
He tried fitting it back between her teeth, blowing smoke into her face as he did so.
She stepped out of reach. “Keep it.”
He eyed her up and down, gaze snagging on the name tag hanging from her scrubs.
Y/n L/n
APRN, ENP
Gotham General Emergency Department
She closed her jacket.
He tilted his head to the side. “Nice jacket. Where’d you get it?”
“Tommy, what the fuck’s the holdup?” His friend shouted at him from halfway down the block. His tie was undone and hanging around his neck. The red-sequined woman at his side twirled the narrow end around her fingers.
“I’m just asking the doll a question!”
“Well be a gentleman about it and hurry the fuck up! I’m trying to get laid tonight! WHOO!”
Tommy snickered, shaking his head. “The guy’s telling me to be a gentleman and those are his manners? Right?” He spat the cigarette bud on the ground, stamping it out beneath patent-leather shoes. When he turned his neck he showed off the scar just beneath his jaw, pale and pink. Any further down and it would have sliced through his jugular.
Y/n fingered the trigger of her switchblade.
“Anyway, back to the jacket. Where’d you get it? It’s a fine piece.” He looked up, oily black eyes blown wide. “Boyfriend maybe?”
“Thrift store,” Y/n answered as calmly as she could. She could hear the wheels of the shuttle as it hit the pothole on the corner. “39th and Weston.”
Tommy sucked on his teeth and spit on the ground once more. “Thanks, doll. Was a pleasure to meet you. A real pleasure.”
She side-stepped him and jumped onto the shuttle, the doors opening before the bus had fully wheeled to a stop. They closed just as quickly, slamming shut on the oily trio before speeding away.
Y/n let out a shaky breath, grasping for the bars before sinking into the lumpy seat at the front of the shuttle. There were only two other people — the driver, Leonor, and a custodian whose name she couldn’t place.
“You alright there?” Leonor asked, Gotham accent laid on thick.
“Yeah… yeah,” Y/n whispered, earning a backwards glance from the concerned driver.
“Do you need me to drop you off somewhere else tonight? Closer to home?”
Y/n swallowed thickly and nodded, letting out a meek, “Thank you.”
He watched the shuttle hug the corner and disappear from sight.
“Tommy, what the fuck?!”
“Shut it, Paul!” He swore under his breath, untangling a phone from his pockets and shrugging off the girl he’d picked up at the club. “Just give me a fucking minute would you? Heyyyy boss.”
From the other side of the phone came the distinct wet sound of fists meeting bloody flesh. A low groan echoed, fritzing over the poor connection as the Penguin finally asked him what was sooo important that he’d interrupt a man as busy as himself.
Tommy smirked, scratching at the scar beneath his jawline and shivering. “Remember that fucker who tried to slit my throat?”
“Are you… are you trying to insinuate I don’t know who the fucking Red Hood is? Are you a fucking moron?! YOU GODDAMN SON OF A B—” Tommy held the phone a careful distance away from his ear, waiting for the expletives to trickle off.
“I think I just found his girl.”
There was a pause on the line. The beatings stopped. “You better have a name.”
Summary: Jason never imagined falling in love, so when he fell, he fell hard. He couldn't deny her anything, not even the leather jacket he'd tried burying in the back of his closet along with the rest of his secrets. But he'll soon realize the crucial mistake he made when he lets the love of his life walk out with Red Hood's signature leather jacket.
My darling, I just wanted you to know that 'The Graveyard shift' has been one of the most beautiful stories I've ever read in my life (including non-fanfics). The way you write is like a soft poetry, and the way you described Simon is so perfect, relatable. Stoic, closed and strong, but with a golden heart, gentle and soft on the inside, a true gentleman that can break bones and burn the whole world down just to protect the ones he love.
Thank you sweetie, your story had brought me comfort and now it's part of my safe place.
Hope to read more stories from you, I'll be there to give them all my love!
🤍
Thank you for such kind words, and thank you for reading! As someone who loves writing, especially about characters that I know people already love and enjoy, it means the world to me that I can bring people comfort and write stories that people come back to.
For everyone who feels grateful to fanfic writers, know that we are grateful for readers too! You give our work new life and meaning
