Grace @mage062002 - Tumblr Blog

Still Holds

Pairing: Jason Todd/F!Reader

Word Count: 11.8k

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: explicit sexual content, canon-typical violence, guns, blood and injury, references to Jason’s death and resurrection trauma, mutual pining, oral sex, vaginal sex

Summary: Jason Todd only visits the archive when he needs something translated, restored, or buried.

When a stolen manuscript puts its conservator in danger, protecting her should be another job he can finish and walk away from. The problem is that she keeps giving him reasons to return.

Author’s Note: written for this anonymous ask

this fic is a spiritual successor to Signal Bleed, one of my Roy Harper x reader fics. Relay is the reader character from that fic :)

The man Relay had warned you about arrived at your archive eleven minutes before closing with blood on his collar and a book wrapped in a stolen tablecloth. The embroidered crest belonged to the Gotham Museum of Antiquities, which had reported a break-in less than three hours earlier. The blood was probably not his; it had dried in a thin spray rather than soaked through the fabric, though the dark jacket made certainty difficult. Relay’s message had arrived ten minutes earlier: A large, unhappy man is coming to see you. Please resist the urge to antagonize him until he has put down the historical object.

You looked from your phone to the man standing beyond the glass partition of the conservation room. Large was accurate. Unhappy seemed insufficient. He wore civilian clothes in the technical sense, if one considered a black leather jacket, heavy boots, and a holster visible beneath his shirt an attempt at blending in. A white streak cut through the dark hair above his forehead, and his expression had the patient severity of someone accustomed to being obeyed by armed people and increasingly offended by the absence of immediate cooperation.

He lifted the wrapped book. “You the conservator?”

You remained seated at the worktable. “You the large, unhappy man?”

His mouth flattened as Relay sent another message: He has the emotional range of a locked door, but he usually uses the handle. You turned your phone face down. “I’m closed.”

“I was told you’d help.”

“You were told I could help. Those are different statements.”

His eyes narrowed, though something shifted behind the irritation—not amusement exactly, but a reluctant adjustment of his initial assessment. He glanced at the clock. “You close in eleven minutes.”

“You have blood on a museum tablecloth.”

“It was available.”

“That is not generally considered a defense.”

“Are you going to look at the book?”

You considered telling him to leave. The reinforced glass and security system meant you were not frightened of him, only curious, which was arguably worse. “Put it on the examination table. Do not unwrap it.”

He entered when you released the lock, bringing cold evening air and the faint smell of smoke with him. The bundle looked small in his hands, and he set it down more gently than you expected. When you pulled on nitrile gloves, his gaze dropped to your hands.

He watched without interfering as you unfolded the cloth. Beneath it lay a leather-bound manuscript roughly the size of your hand, swollen from moisture and blackened along one edge. The binding had partially separated from the text block, several raised bands had split across the spine, and the brass clasp hung from one rivet. A dark stain spread through the lower corner of the cover.

The book was old—older than the tablecloth and the museum whose property had been used to conceal it—and you forgot the man for several seconds. The leather bore no title, but concentric circles intersected by lines that appeared decorative until you noticed the spacing between them. The pattern was not ornament but a cipher, or perhaps a map. The remaining clasp carried an altered symbol you recognized from medieval Levantine trade records.

You leaned closer without touching it. “Where did you get this?”

“You don’t need to know that either.”

You looked up. “Then take it somewhere else.”

He stared at you while you explained that the manuscript had structural damage, possible water exposure, biological contamination, fire damage, and a binding that might have been intentionally altered. Without provenance, you could neither treat it safely nor determine whether opening it would destroy whatever evidence he expected to find.

His jaw flexed, but he eventually answered. “Private collection in Bristol. The owner bought it through an intermediary six years ago. The collection changed hands last month after an estate sale, but this book wasn’t listed in the inventory.”

“Because it was stolen?”

“Because the owner collected things that couldn’t be listed.”

“Antiquities?”

“Among other things.”

That explained the museum break-in imperfectly. You examined the charred edge. “And tonight?”

“The new owner moved it through Gotham. Someone else intercepted the shipment. We intercepted them.”

We. Relay worked with the Outlaws, though she rejected any suggestion that she belonged to the team. She spoke of Red Hood with the fond irritation usually reserved for a useful malfunction.

“Do you know what language it contains?” you asked.

“Several. Arabic. Greek. Latin. Maybe something older beneath it.”

“A palimpsest?”

“We think so.”

You studied the warped pages visible through the damaged fore-edge. Someone had written across prepared parchment, scraped away the original text, and reused it. That was not uncommon, but faint lines had begun emerging beneath the later ink where heat and moisture disturbed the surface. The fire might have damaged the manuscript, but it might also have revealed what someone had tried to erase.

“How quickly do you need it?”

“Tonight.”

You laughed, and Red Hood looked offended by the concept. “You brought me a manuscript that may be eight hundred years old, subjected it to water, heat, blood, and gunfire, and want it restored tonight.”

“I need to know what’s inside.”

“That is not the same as restoration.”

“How long to make it readable?”

“Weeks.”

“No.”

You rested both hands on the edge of the examination table. “That was not an opening offer.”

“We don’t have weeks.”

“The manuscript does.”

“People might not.”

The words ended the argument more effectively than his size or weapons could have. He had not raised his voice or attempted to intimidate you, but the tension in his body sharpened until he resembled a held blade.

“I can stabilize the exterior damage tonight,” you said. “After that, I can begin imaging the exposed pages. Heat may have brought some of the erased writing forward, but I need multispectral equipment to separate the layers properly.”

“Can you identify anything before then?”

“Possibly.”

“How long?”

“Several hours.”

“I’ll stay.”

You blinked. “That wasn’t an invitation.”

“You said several hours.”

“And you interpreted that as permission to occupy my workplace?”

“I’m staying until you’re finished.”

“You could take the manuscript and return tomorrow.”

“No.”

“Because you don’t trust me with it?”

“Because people were shooting at each other over that book three hours ago, and now it’s sitting in your archive.”

That was considerably more reasonable than you wanted it to be. “I have security.”

His attention moved toward the glass partition and the camera mounted in the corner. “Your eastern sensor is misaligned. It leaves a blind strip beside the loading entrance. The staff-door lock is commercial grade, and the glass is reinforced, but the frame isn’t.”

“You have been here for less than ten minutes.”

“Long enough.”

“I dislike you.”

“That’s fine.”

“You say that as though it happens frequently.”

“It does.”

You believed him.

You carried the manuscript into the humidity chamber while Jason—because Relay eventually sent his name after deciding you had earned it—stood with his back against the wall and watched the archive empty around you. He did not speak unless you asked a question, touch anything, or complain when you explained that the leather needed to acclimate before you could separate the cover from the text block. The silence he produced afterward still contained a detailed opinion on the passage of time.

You worked past midnight. The blood belonged to Felix Ward, an antiquities broker who had been shot during the transfer. Jason said Ward was alive, which was the only reason you continued asking questions. Ward maintained accounts for a network trafficking stolen objects, weapons, and occasionally people, and the manuscript had passed through that network for decades.

Jason believed it contained records.

“Financial?” you asked.

“Locations. Names.”

“You said the visible text is religious.”

“It is. Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

He stood opposite you with his arms crossed, having removed the leather jacket after you noticed a tear near his shoulder. The black shirt beneath it did little to make him less imposing.

“There are references to resurrection,” he said.

The word entered the room differently from the others. His expression closed when you looked at him.

“Metaphorical resurrection?” you asked carefully.

“No.”

You could have pushed, but the controlled emptiness in his face warned you away more effectively than anger would have. Whatever the manuscript contained, the subject was not academic to him.

You returned to the warped binding. “Hand me the small spatula. The one with the ivory handle.”

He selected it and offered it across the table.

“Not by the tip.”

He adjusted his grip.

“Thank you,” you said, taking the spatula.

His fingers released it before yours could touch. The movement was so slight you might have missed it if you had not spent years studying fragile surfaces for signs of tension. Jason did not like accidental contact, and you filed the observation away without examining why it interested you.

At two in the morning, you found writing hidden inside the binding. Moisture had loosened the rear pastedown enough to reveal a narrow sheet folded between the leather and the board, much newer than the manuscript and covered in compact handwriting and rows of numbers.

Jason moved to your side before you spoke. “Can you read it?”

“Some.”

The writing was Arabic, though several entries shifted into an unfamiliar shorthand. Dates ran down the left margin beside coordinates, initials, and symbols matching those tooled into the cover. You photographed the sheet before unfolding it fully.

Jason leaned over the table, close enough for his presence to change the air beside your shoulder but careful not to touch you. “That one,” he said, pointing. “Al-Kharrat.”

“A place?”

“A family name. Maybe a title.”

His Arabic carried the easy familiarity of someone who had used it in situations where people expected an immediate answer, rather than having learned it through carefully paced lessons. You turned your head and found him closer than you had realized.

Jason stepped back first. “What?”

“I was wondering where you learned Arabic.”

“Places.”

“That is barely a noun, let alone an answer.”

“It’s what you’re getting.”

You looked back at the sheet. “You are very committed to being difficult.”

“I’m not difficult. I’m private.”

“There is a difference?”

“Yes.”

“Explain it.”

“No.”

You smiled despite yourself. Jason noticed, and his expression suggested he did not approve of being entertaining.

The manuscript remained with you for twenty-six days. Jason came back for twenty-three of them.

During the first week, he always had a reason: new intelligence from Ward’s accounts, a translation of one of the symbols, or a list of names that might match the initials hidden inside the binding. He arrived after closing and stayed until you stopped working, usually positioned near the door with a book he did not read or a tablet displaying files he checked too often.

Jason did not fidget. Restlessness made him still, watchful of reflections and footsteps beyond the glass until his attention began including you as thoroughly as the doors.

On the fourth night, he placed a paper bag beside your elbow.

“What’s this?”

“Food. You haven’t eaten.”

“You’ve been here for forty minutes.”

“You threw away your lunch when I came in.”

You had not noticed him watching. The bag held two sandwiches.

“You bought enough for both of us.”

“I was hungry.”

The answer came too quickly. You handed him one, and he accepted it without argument. The next night, he brought food again.

By the second week, his excuses had become thinner. He needed to confirm dates already listed in the shared case file or inspect images he could access remotely. On other nights, he claimed to have been nearby despite arriving from the opposite direction of his usual territory. You did not point any of that out. Instead, you began leaving the chair across from your worktable clear.

Jason did not sit in it during the first ten days.

On the eleventh, he arrived with a paperback tucked inside his jacket. The cover showed a dark-haired woman standing before a ruined manor beneath a dramatic sky.

The bookstore receipt remained between the first two pages. You picked up the book. “You bought me a gothic romance novel.”

“You mentioned it.”

“Thank you,” you said.

“Don’t.”

“For the book?”

“For whatever you’re about to make it mean.”

“I was going to make it mean that you listened to something I said.”

“That’s not unusual.”

“For you?”

“For me.”

The words were blunt enough to stop you. Jason met your eyes without humor, stating it as fact rather than as flirtation. He listened. He remembered. The world might not associate those qualities with him because most people were too distracted by the helmet and guns, but he seemed faintly offended that you might not have noticed.

You ran your thumb across the edge of the paperback. “I’ll read it.”

Jason looked toward the chair.

Then he sat down.

The manuscript revealed itself reluctantly. Multispectral imaging separated the visible religious text from the erased material beneath it, revealing a medical treatise whose anatomy deviated from anything human and marginal notes added across centuries. The newest entries recorded locations, shipments, and subjects, the last word appearing repeatedly beside numbers and abbreviated outcomes.

Jason grew quieter as you translated. The records described attempts to replicate the effects of chemical pools beneath sites controlled by an unnamed organization, their language shifting over time from reverence to experimentation: restoration, renewal, reanimation. You did not ask whether the organization was the League of Assassins. Jason did not offer the name, and you did not need him to.

The subjects were identified only by age, physical condition, and blood type, followed by results: failure, deterioration, aggression, memory loss. Successful revival appeared twice. Both entries had been crossed out.

Jason stood beside the imaging monitor with his shoulders rigid.

“They were experimenting on people,” you said.

“Yeah.”

“Trying to reproduce whatever the pools do.”

“Yeah.”

“Did the owners of the manuscript conduct the experiments?”

“Some of them.”

“And the current network?”

“Selling access. Samples. Information.”

You swiped to another image. “There are recent coordinates. The final entry is six months old.”

“I saw it.”

His voice had sharpened. When you turned from the monitor, his face had emptied in the same way it had on the first night, but you recognized more now: anger in the set of his jaw, fear tightening the skin around his eyes, and something deeper that he seemed to be containing with every muscle in his body.

“You knew this was about Lazarus Pits,” you said.

His gaze snapped to yours. The name had appeared in one of the translated notes, and your research afterward had uncovered little beyond myths and unreliable references.

“You should stop researching beyond the manuscript,” he said.

“That is not a reasonable instruction.”

“It is if the information can get you killed.”

“The manuscript has already placed me in danger.”

“That doesn’t mean you should keep digging.”

“You brought it here.”

“I needed a conservator.”

“You needed someone competent enough to uncover the text but incurious enough not to understand it?”

“I needed you to do the job.”

“I am doing it.”

“Then do the pages and leave the rest to us.”

You stared at him. The severity that had once been almost entertaining had become cold and authoritative, designed to end the conversation.

It did not.

“Get out,” you said.

Jason went still.

“You don’t get to bring this into my workplace, sit across from me for three weeks, and then speak to me as though I am a tool you rented.”

“That’s not what I—”

“Get out.”

His mouth closed. For a moment, you thought he might refuse, not because he wanted to intimidate you but because he could not bear to leave the manuscript and its danger behind. Then he collected his jacket.

“I’ll have someone else come.”

“I don’t need a guard.”

“That’s not your decision.”

“It is my archive.”

“It’s your life.”

“Yes,” you said. “Which is why it remains my decision.”

The anger in his face lost its edge as recognition interrupted it. Jason knew what it was to have control taken from him, and he hated realizing that he had tried to take yours.

“I’ll be outside,” he said.

“I told you to leave.”

“You told me to get out.”

You glanced toward the windows, feeling the dry correction waiting between you. “You are infuriating.”

“I’ve heard.”

He left the conservation room, and the glass door closed behind him.

The sidewalk remained empty, which irritated you more than his refusal to leave should have. An hour later, you shut down the imaging station and discovered that the archive felt larger without him in it.

When you stepped outside, the eastern security sensor had been realigned, and the staff door had a new lock. Jason sat across the street on his motorcycle, helmet resting on the fuel tank as he watched the building. You folded your arms. Jason looked tired beneath the streetlights; the anger from earlier burned away, leaving something rougher behind.

“I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that,” he said.

The apology came without qualification or excuse, unsettling you more than an argument would have.

“No,” you said. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I’m not good at this part.”

“What part?”

His eyes moved toward the archive windows. “People. Civilians.”

“That is a category, not an answer.”

“It’s the answer I have.”

You waited.

Jason dragged a hand over the back of his neck, the first nervous gesture you had seen from him. “When I know where the danger is, I can deal with it. When it spreads to someone who didn’t sign up for it, I start making decisions.”

“For them.”

“Yeah.”

“That isn’t protection.”

“I know.”

The admission was quiet. Remaining still seemed to require more effort from him than leaving.

“You could have told me why the subject mattered,” you said.

“No.”

The answer was immediate, but not angry.

You almost laughed. “That was a very short attempt at emotional growth.”

“I said I knew I was wrong. I didn’t say I was ready to tell you everything.”

“Fair. You are allowed to have boundaries. You are not allowed to use them as weapons against everyone standing nearby.”

Jason looked down at his gloves. “Relay says things like that,” he muttered.

“She is very intelligent.”

“She’s a menace.”

“Those qualities overlap.”

He glanced at you again. The corner of his mouth moved. “Need a ride?” he asked.

Jason put on his helmet and held out a spare without comment.

Your apartment was twenty minutes away. The ride took thirty-five minutes because he chose wider streets and avoided every pothole he could. By the time you realized what he was doing, your arms were already settled comfortably around his waist.

The first intruder entered the archive through the staff door at 1:17 in the morning, three hours after you had left. The alarm woke you, and the security feed showed a masked man moving through the corridor outside the conservation room with the replacement lock hanging broken from the frame. You sat upright and called Jason. He answered before the first ring finished.

“What?”

“Someone’s in the archive.”

Fabric shifted sharply on his end of the line. “Are you there?”

“No. I’m home.”

“Stay there. Lock everything.”

“The manuscript—”

“Stay home.”

The call ended. You were still staring at the screen when a second figure entered the camera frame. Then the conservation room feed died.

You locked the bedroom window, checked the front door, and retrieved the pepper spray beside your bed. It felt painfully inadequate. Your phone rang again.

“Jason called,” Relay said without greeting. “He asked me to monitor your building.”

“You sound delighted.”

“He didn’t phrase it as a request, which is how I know he is panicking.”

“I’m fine.”

“I know. I’m still sending Kori.”

“That seems excessive.”

A soft thump came from the living room, stopping your breath.

Relay’s voice changed immediately. “What was that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bedroom door?”

“Closed.”

“Locked?”

You looked at the small privacy latch. “Technically.”

“Move something in front of it.”

You slid out of bed with the phone pressed to your ear and pushed the dresser in front of the bedroom door. Another sound came from the living room—glass being carefully moved rather than broken.

“They’re inside,” you whispered.

“I see one heat signature near the fire escape. Kori is thirty seconds out.”

The bedroom doorknob turned. The latch held through two tests before the wood around it splintered, and the door struck the dresser hard enough to shift it. A gloved arm reached through the gap. You sprayed until the man swore and recoiled, then swung the bedside lamp into his wrist. His gun fell inside the room, and you kicked it beneath your bed.

The man threw his weight against the door again. Relay was speaking rapidly, but the blood rushing in your ears swallowed the words as you braced both hands against the dresser. Then the window behind you exploded inward.

Koriand’r floated through the shattered frame with green energy burning around her hands, beautiful, furious, and deeply reassuring. “Please move away from the door,” she said.

You obeyed. Her next strike sent the man and the dresser into the hallway, and she crossed the room before he could stand. Green light flashed, something heavy struck the floor, and silence followed.

You remained beside the bed with the empty pepper spray canister clutched in your hand.

Kori looked toward the broken window. “Red Hood will be upset.”

“About the assassin?”

“The window.”

“He can join the queue.”

Her smile softened. “Are you injured?”

“I don’t think so.”

The apartment door burst open before she could respond. Red Hood entered with a gun in each hand, his helmet turning from the broken window to the unconscious man in the hallway and finally to you.

“What happened?” His voice had gone low and flat, every word scraped clean of emotion because whatever lay beneath it was too violent to show safely.

“He came through the front,” Kori said. “Another remained outside. I stopped him before entering.”

He crossed the room and stopped directly in front of you, rain darkening the shoulders of his jacket as his gaze moved across your face, throat, arms, and bare legs.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Did he touch you?”

“No.”

“Did he—”

“I’m all right.”

His shoulders tightened. You reached for his wrist before remembering his aversion to unexpected contact, but your fingers had already closed around the edge of his glove.

He froze.

“I’m all right,” you repeated.

The helmet dipped toward your hand. You began to release him, but Jason turned his wrist and caught your fingers. The contact lasted only a moment, firm pressure around your hand that might have been grounding or confirmation. Perhaps both.

Then he let go. “We’re leaving.”

“Where?”

“Safehouse.”

“My apartment—”

“Compromised.”

“The archive?”

“Roy’s handling it.”

“The manuscript?”

“Secure.”

You glanced at the unconscious man. “Who are they?”

“People who knew Ward talked.”

“Hood.”

“Later.”

“You do not get to turn me into luggage because you’re frightened.”

His posture sharpened while Kori looked politely out the ruined window.

“I’m not frightened,” Jason said.

“You have two guns in your hands and are staring at an unconscious man as though death is an administrative decision.”

“He broke into your home.”

“I noticed.”

“You’re coming with us.”

“That is not the same as giving me a choice.”

He fell silent. Rain tapped against the glass remaining in the window frame, and somewhere in the hallway, a neighbor opened a door before immediately closing it again.

Jason holstered one gun. “The people behind the manuscript know who you are. They know where you live and work. We caught the two here, but there may be more, and I can’t secure this building before they try again.”

His tone remained hard, but the words had changed from command to information.

“I have a safehouse outside the city,” he continued. “We’ll take you there while we identify everyone involved. If you don’t want to stay at one of mine, Relay can arrange something else. You can choose, but you can’t stay here tonight.”

It was not a perfect choice. The danger had already narrowed your options, but the effort still mattered.

“I need clothes,” you said.

Jason exhaled, and the sound might have been relief. “Five minutes.”

“You are not timing me.”

“Ten.”

“Get out of my bedroom.”

He looked at the broken door. “Door’s gone.”

“Jason.”

He turned and walked into the living room. Kori remained beside you.

“He is trying,” she said.

“I know.”

“He was moving very quickly.”

“I know.”

“He may have frightened several drivers.”

“Kori.”

“I will help you pack.”

Jason’s safehouse had the warmth of an abandoned police station: concrete walls, battered furniture, locked weapons cabinets, and a kitchen with one chair at a table built for four. The only signs of personality were books stacked across mismatched shelves, several old enough to interest you professionally. Jason removed his helmet and set it on the scarred coffee table before placing your bag beside the couch, while Roy carried the manuscript into the kitchen.

“You live here?”

“Sometimes.”

“He means whenever he wants to feel imprisoned by his own decorating choices,” Roy said.

“You can leave.”

Relay entered behind him, recognizable from encrypted video calls, and immediately pulled up the footage of Jason’s replacement lock failing. “Hinge-side bypass. It delayed them for twelve seconds.”

“It was available.”

“That is what he said about the tablecloth,” you said.

Relay looked delighted. “I knew I liked you.”

Kori arrived with food while Roy complained about being assigned to check the archive and your apartment.

“You’re going because I don’t trust you alone with the motorcycle,” Relay said.

“One motorcycle caught fire.”

“After you improved it.”

Their argument continued toward the door. Kori paused beside you. “Call if he becomes emotionally unreasonable.”

“Kori.”

“I believe that differs from his usual behavior.”

Then the others were gone, leaving the safehouse abruptly silent. Jason stood near the kitchen table with the manuscript case in one hand, seeming larger without the others filling the room, his presence touching every exit.

He set the case down. “There are two bedrooms. Take the one at the end of the hall. Bathroom’s across from it. Towels are clean.”

“Where are you sleeping?”

“Couch.”

“That couch appears to have survived an explosion.”

“It’s fine.”

“Your standards for furniture concern me.”

“Add it to the list.”

You looked around the room. “How long am I staying?”

“Until I find March.”

“Who is March?”

Jason’s mouth tightened before he answered. “Gideon March. He brokered the sale, inherited Ward’s client list, and started moving material from old League sites.”

“Is he responsible for the experiments?”

“No. He sells what’s left of them.”

“Samples?”

“Records. Chemicals. People who survived.”

Your stomach turned. “The recent coordinates in the manuscript belong to him.”

“We think so.”

“And you intend to find him tonight.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Jason looked at you.

“You are bleeding.”

He glanced down as though the dark stain beneath his shirt had only just become relevant. “Not badly.”

“You were shot?”

“Grazed.”

“Sit down.”

“I have to go.”

“Then you can leave after I determine whether you are going to bleed through your clothes and collapse dramatically in an alley.”

“I don’t collapse dramatically.”

“You arrived at my workplace covered in blood and carrying a medieval manuscript in a tablecloth.”

“Wasn’t my blood.”

“This is.”

He looked toward the door, and you stepped between him and it.

Jason stared down at you. “Move.”

“No.”

“This isn’t a negotiation.”

“Correct. Sit down.”

His expression darkened, but you held his gaze. Something strange passed between you, a contest that was not entirely about authority. Jason could have moved you easily. He could have stepped around you, lifted you aside, or simply left through another exit. He did none of those things.

“Five minutes,” he said.

“You are very fond of invented deadlines.”

“Ten.”

“Sit.”

He sat at the kitchen table.

The medical kit beneath the sink was organized with the rigid precision of frequent use. Jason reached for the hem of his shirt, but you stopped him before he could lift it.

“Wait.”

He did.

Treating the wound required access. That did not explain your sudden awareness of the body beneath the bloodied fabric.

“You can take it off.”

The corner of his mouth moved. “Thanks.”

“Do not sound so amused.”

He pulled the shirt over his head. Scars crossed his chest and abdomen, including a pale Y-shaped line that disappeared beneath his waistband. You forced your attention to the graze along his ribs.

“You should still have this checked.”

“I just did.”

“I’m not a doctor.”

“You sound disappointed.”

You pressed antiseptic to the wound. Jason did not flinch, though the muscles beneath your hand tightened.

“You can react.”

“Moving makes your job harder.”

The answer was so entirely him that you paused before continuing. “Why didn’t you tell me March knew my address?”

“We confirmed it two minutes before you called.”

That explained why Jason had already been six blocks away, checking your building because the archive had been watched for three days.

“So you followed me.”

“I made sure nobody else did.”

You taped gauze over the wound with more pressure than necessary. His hand closed around your wrist, startling both of you, then released it immediately.

“Sorry.”

“You dislike being surprised that way.”

His gaze shifted to yours. “Sometimes.”

You nodded and closed the kit without asking him to explain.

“You should sleep,” he said.

“You should not go after March alone.”

“I won’t be alone.”

“Roy?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Kori?”

“Yeah.”

“Relay?”

“Remote.”

“And you’re leaving me here.”

“The safehouse is secure.”

“Your archive lock was secure.”

“That was one lock.”

“Comforting.”

Jason stood and pulled a clean shirt from a cabinet near the refrigerator, wincing slightly as he put it on. “I’ll be back before morning.”

“You cannot promise that.”

“No.”

The honesty settled heavily between you.

You looked toward the manuscript case. “I’ll keep working.”

“No.”

“I brought my imaging drive.”

“You need sleep.”

“So do you.”

“I’m not the one who got attacked in her bedroom.”

“That does not make you indestructible.”

Jason’s face closed again, but not before you saw the confusion beneath it, as though concern directed toward him was a language he understood only when spoken about someone else.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

Then he left.

You did not sleep. Instead, you worked at the kitchen table until the safehouse windows began to pale, processing the final multispectral files copied from the archive while the manuscript remained closed in its case. As the layers separated across the screen, the hidden text became coherent enough to reveal that March’s network was moving three survivors from a facility outside Thessaloniki. Their ship was scheduled to leave just after midnight local time. There was still time to intercept it, but not much.

The safehouse door opened at 5:42. Jason entered first with blood on one sleeve, split knuckles, and a bruise darkening his jaw. Roy followed with soot in his hair, while Kori appeared unharmed.

Jason saw the translated entries on your screen. “What did I say?”

“Good morning.”

“I told you not to work.”

“You were not here to supervise me.”

His reprimand disappeared as he read over your shoulder, his chest brushing your back before he stepped away. “Thessaloniki.”

“Three survivors are being moved through a port facility. The remaining numbers identify the ship.”

Relay entered with coffee and opened her laptop. “I can search the registry.”

“We leave in twenty,” Jason said.

“You leave after someone cleans your hand.”

Roy made a sympathetic sound. “You walked into that one.”

Jason glared at him and sat while Kori placed breakfast on the table. “We should eat first.”

“We don’t have time.”

“You have twenty minutes,” you reminded him.

Relay found the ship while you cleaned Jason’s knuckles. When he objected that the survivors had not technically been missed, you met his gaze.

“You would have missed them if I had followed instructions.”

“You also would have slept.”

“I can sleep when people are not being sold.”

Jason stopped arguing.

The Thessaloniki operation lasted eleven hours. You remained at the safehouse with Relay, listening through encrypted comms as the Outlaws stopped the ship before it left port. The three survivors were alive. March escaped.

Jason returned to Gotham two days later and began keeping his distance. He still came back after midnight to check the locks, change clothes, and sleep in fragments on the couch, but he no longer sat across from you while you worked. The manuscript was nearly stable, though returning to the archive remained unsafe, and from Jason’s kitchen table you watched his domestic habits contradict the bleak room around him. He cooked with quiet competence, removed the ingredient you left uneaten, repaired the bedroom lamp, replaced the thin blanket, and found a cushion for your chair without mentioning any of it. Jason performed care as though it had to remain anonymous to count.

On the fifth night after Thessaloniki, you woke to the sound of breaking glass. Jason stood in the kitchen with one hand gripping the counter, dressed only in sweatpants, sweat darkening his hair at the temples. A shattered tumbler lay near his bare feet, but he looked at you without recognition, every scar pulled tight over rigid muscle.

“Jason.”

His hand moved toward the knife block.

You stopped several feet away. “It’s me.”

His eyes focused slowly, and the hand lowered. “What are you doing up?”

“You broke a glass.”

He looked down and noticed the blood welling beneath his foot. “Shit.”

“Sit.”

“I can clean it.”

“I know.”

He remained standing until you asked, “Nightmare?”

His face closed. “Forget it.”

“You almost reached for a knife.”

“I knew where I was.”

“Not immediately.”

“I said forget it.”

The words struck hard enough to end the conversation, but when you folded your arms, Jason looked away first.

“You don’t have to tell me what you dreamed,” you said. “You also don’t get to pretend it didn’t happen while standing in broken glass.”

He exhaled through his nose and sat.

You swept the glass aside before kneeling in front of him with the medical kit. The cut was small, and you cleaned it in silence beneath the weight of his gaze.

“This is backward,” he said.

“What is?”

“You keep patching me up.”

“You keep bleeding near my workspaces.”

“That sounds like blame.”

“It is.”

You bandaged his foot and sat back on your heels. Fading bruises from Thessaloniki marked one hand, while a fresh cut crossed the opposite palm.

“You went out again tonight,” you said.

“Yeah.”

“Looking for March.”

“Yeah.”

“Alone.”

He did not answer.

You closed the kit. “You’re preparing to leave.”

His gaze sharpened. “What?”

“The safehouse. The archive. Me.”

“That’s not—”

“You found the survivors. The manuscript is nearly finished, and March is the only remaining problem. You’ve decided that once he is gone, there will be no reason to come back.”

Jason went completely still, confirming that you had guessed correctly. The knowledge hurt more than it should have.

“You’ll be safe,” he said.

“That was not what I asked.”

“You didn’t ask anything.”

“Fine. Are you planning to disappear?”

His jaw flexed.

“I was never supposed to become part of your life,” you continued. “I was someone Relay recommended for a job.”

“You are part of the job.”

“That is a cruel thing to say.”

His expression changed immediately. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant. You’re trying to reduce this to something you understand.”

Jason stood, and you rose with him.

“This isn’t a conversation we’re having at four in the morning,” he said.

“Because you’re tired or because I noticed?”

“Because you’re reading into things.”

“You bought me a book because I paused in front of it. You learned what I eat, replaced my bedroom blanket, and drove thirty-five minutes to avoid potholes on a twenty-minute route.”

His eyes widened slightly. “You noticed that?”

“Of course I noticed.”

“Then you should’ve noticed I do things for people.”

“You do. You protect Roy. You listen to Relay even when you argue. You look at Kori as though the sun decided to become your friend and you still cannot understand why.”

Jason looked faintly appalled. “Do not say that to her.”

“I’m not discussing them. I’m discussing you.”

“There’s nothing to discuss.”

“You only know how to stay when you can make yourself useful.”

The words landed. Jason’s face emptied, but this time you saw the wound beneath it. You should have stopped, but you did not.

“You repair locks, cook dinner, stand between people and bullets, and make yourself necessary before anyone can decide whether they simply want you there.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think I do.”

“You know me from a month in an archive.”

“I know you came back twenty-three nights out of twenty-six.”

“For the manuscript.”

“You had digital copies.”

“They weren’t enough.”

“For what?”

His mouth closed. The safehouse suddenly felt too small as you stood close enough to see his pulse beating at the base of his throat. Jason’s gaze moved across your face, frustrated and searching, as though the right answer existed somewhere he could reach without exposing anything vital.

“You should go back to bed,” he said.

You laughed once, without humor. “There it is.”

“What?”

“The locked door.”

“Don’t.”

“You want me to stop noticing because you don’t know what happens after.”

“I said don’t.”

His voice dropped, but you stepped closer. Jason did not retreat.

“What happens when no one needs saving?” you asked. “What happens when the manuscript is finished and March is gone?”

His face was inches from yours now. “I leave.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s when people realize.”

“Realize what?”

His eyes burned beneath the dim kitchen light. “That they liked the part where I was useful more than they like me.”

The honesty hollowed the room around you. Jason regretted it almost immediately, his shoulders tightening as every defense returned at once.

You touched the scar near his jaw slowly enough to let him turn away. He froze but remained beneath your hand.

“I liked you when you sat in my archive insulting the furniture.”

“I didn’t insult it.”

“You stared judgmentally at the chairs.”

“They were bad chairs.”

“I liked you when you brought me food and pretended it was accidental. I liked you when you were difficult, when you apologized, and when you sat outside after I told you to leave because you could not make yourself go home.”

His breathing had changed.

“You don’t know all of it,” he said.

“No.”

“You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“No.”

“You should.”

“Eventually.”

The promise contained in the word struck him differently. Jason’s gaze dropped to your mouth, and for one suspended second, you thought he would kiss you. He wanted to; you saw it in the tension of his body and the slight angle of his head toward your touch.

Then his comm unit chirped from the table.

Jason stepped away, and the loss of his warmth felt immediate. He picked up the device.

Relay’s voice came through. “I found March.”

Every softness in him vanished. “Where?”

“Private auction tomorrow night. Old courthouse near the river. He’s selling an original Lazarus sample and the remaining records.”

Jason looked at you.

The locked door had returned, but this time you understood what waited behind it.

March held the auction in an abandoned courthouse, routing buyers through underground service tunnels and confiscating electronics at the entrance. His records required the manuscript’s authentication key, making you the only person who could verify them.

Jason hated the plan. He expressed this by saying very little as he checked your protective vest for the third time.

“It still fits,” you said.

“The side strap is loose.”

“You adjusted it five minutes ago.”

“It moved.”

“You’re pulling it.”

Jason released the strap.

You stood in a small equipment room beneath the courthouse, dressed as a private archivist employed by one of the prospective buyers. Relay had built the credentials. Roy waited in the service corridor wearing a suit and an expression of delighted criminal respectability. Kori would enter from the roof once the auction began.

Jason wore black tactical clothing stripped of anything that would identify him as Red Hood, with a fitted black mask that concealed his hair, leaving only his eyes visible. It was enough to hide the man beneath it from the buyers, even if nothing could make him look like an ordinary hired security guard.

“I stay beside you,” he said.

“You are supposed to be Mr. Halden’s security.”

“I am security.”

“Halden does not exist.”

“The other buyers do not know that.”

“They won’t be watching me.”

Roy leaned through the doorway. “They will absolutely be watching him. He looks like he wants to kill the concept of commerce.”

Jason ignored him.

Relay’s voice sounded through the concealed earpiece beneath your hair. “March’s guards are cycling positions. You have twelve minutes before the eastern entrance is clear.”

Jason checked the weapon at his side. You touched his forearm, and his attention shifted immediately.

“We are finishing this,” you said.

“You’re identifying the ledger. Then Roy gets you out.”

“That’s the plan.”

“If anything changes—”

“I leave.”

“If you see March—”

“I do not approach him.”

“If the room locks down—”

“Jason.”

He stopped.

“I know the plan.”

His eyes searched your face. The conversation in the kitchen remained unresolved between you, and Jason had spent every hour since Relay’s call preparing with brutal efficiency, as though careful planning could erase the moment his mouth had almost touched yours.

“You are allowed to want to keep me safe,” you said quietly. “You are not allowed to make fear the only thing we discuss.”

“This isn’t the time.”

“I know.”

You released his arm. “After.”

Jason held your gaze for a long moment.

“After,” he agreed.

The auction began at midnight. You entered the courtroom beside Roy, who had transformed himself into the careless heir to a shipping fortune through a tailored suit, several borrowed rings, and a change in posture. He kept one hand at your back while loudly complaining about the lack of heat. Jason followed three steps behind, looking nothing like hired security and very much like the reason hired security existed.

March stood near the judge’s bench speaking with a woman in silver. He was younger than you expected, perhaps forty, dressed in a dark suit without a tie and carrying the polished neutrality of someone who had built a career from making atrocities sound like transactions. His attention found you within seconds, and his slight, knowing smile told you when he recognized your face. Jason saw it too; every muscle in his body shifted.

Roy leaned closer to you. “Please remind our friend that public murder complicates auctions.”

“Easy.”

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You are staring at March’s throat.”

“Occupational habit.”

“Find another occupation.”

March approached.

“Mr. Halden,” he said to Roy. “I had not expected you personally.”

Roy smiled with expensive boredom. “I enjoy seeing where my money goes.”

March’s gaze moved to you. “And your companion?”

“My conservator.”

“An unusual precaution.”

“I’ve been disappointed before.”

“You won’t be tonight.”

March looked at Jason last, his attention lingering as recognition gradually sharpened. The disguise concealed Jason Todd, but March had spent too long tracking Red Hood not to recognize the particular stillness of a man accustomed to violence. “Your guard may wait outside during authentication.”

“No,” Roy replied.

“The materials are delicate.”

“So is my disposition.”

March smiled without warmth. “Those are the rules.”

Jason stepped forward, but you placed one hand lightly against his chest and stopped him. The contact could have appeared practical to anyone watching, a reminder from an employer’s archivist to remain calm. Beneath your palm, his heart beat hard and steady.

“I will be fine,” you said.

His gaze remained on March. “Three minutes,” he said.

March’s eyebrows rose.

“To authenticate the records,” you clarified. “After that, my employer leaves.”

“Efficient.”

“I value my time.”

March gestured toward a door behind the judge’s bench. You removed your hand from Jason, and his eyes met yours.

After.

You followed March into the adjoining chamber. The room had once belonged to the judge, with dark wooden shelves covering the walls and a leather-topped desk beneath boarded windows. A metal case waited on top of it. March closed the door behind you, and the lock engaged.

“The famous conservator,” he said.

“I doubt that.”

“You have caused considerable inconvenience.”

“You sent armed men into my apartment.”

“They were instructed to retrieve the manuscript.”

“One came through my bedroom door.”

“Employees often exceed their authority when frightened.”

“You should hire better people.”

March laughed softly. “I see why Hood likes you.”

Your pulse jumped, but you kept the reaction from your face. “You know who he is.”

“I know what he is.”

March opened the case. Inside lay three sheets of parchment, a glass vial filled with green liquid, and a stack of modern records bound with black cord. The parchment matched the manuscript in its ruling pattern, discoloration, and ink composition.

“Authentication?” March asked.

“I need light.”

He switched on the desk lamp. You examined the first sheet and found fresh ink obscuring sections of the earliest known site. March had not merely preserved the records. He had rewritten them.

“These are incomplete,” you said.

“They are what remains.”

“They have been edited.”

“History is always edited.”

“Usually by people less obvious about it.”

His smile faded. You turned the page and found faint marks beneath the visible text, continuing the erased layer from the original manuscript. The symbols corresponded to the map tooled into its cover.

The final location was not Thessaloniki. It was Gotham.

March watched your face. “You found it.”

“The original site beneath the city,” he continued when you looked up. “The League abandoned it decades ago. The sample is weak, but enough remains to interest buyers.”

“You have been taking people there.”

“Testing compatibility.”

Your stomach turned. “How many?”

“Enough to understand the limitations.”

The earpiece remained silent; the room’s shielding had blocked Relay’s signal. Three minutes had already passed when March reached inside his jacket and removed a small pistol fitted with a suppressor.

“Hood will come through that door soon,” he said. “I need him angry enough to stop being cautious.”

“You think threatening me makes him careless.”

“I watched him at the archive. At your apartment. Men like him are predictable when they find something they believe belongs to them.”

“I do not belong to him.”

“No,” March agreed. “That is what makes it interesting.”

The first impact struck the locked door, and March smiled. The second cracked the frame. You grabbed the desk lamp and swung it into his gun hand, sending the shot into the shelves. March struck you across the face, and you fell against the desk as the vial rolled toward the edge. Then the door exploded inward.

Jason came through the splintered wood and shot March through the shoulder before he could aim. The pistol hit the floor. Jason crossed the room with terrifying speed, seized March by the shirt, and drove him into the wall hard enough to shake the shelves and send books falling around them.

March laughed through the pain. “Ask her what she found.”

Jason hit him, spraying blood across the wood.

“Hood.”

He hit March again, snapping his head sideways.

“Hood!”

This time, Jason heard you. His fist remained drawn back while March sagged in his grip, conscious only through spite. Then Jason looked at you and saw the red mark spreading across your cheek. Something in his eyes broke loose.

March smiled. “I was right. Predictable.”

Jason turned back, but you caught his arm. He could have pulled free easily. He did not.

“Do not give him this,” you said.

“He touched you.”

“And I am standing here.”

“He sent men into your home.”

“I know.”

“He used people as test subjects.”

“I know.”

Jason’s entire body shook with restrained violence. Roy appeared in the ruined doorway with his bow drawn.

“Hood.”

March laughed again. Jason released him, and March dropped to the floor. Roy crossed the room and secured his hands.

“Look at that,” Roy said. “Growth.”

“Shut up.”

Kori entered behind him, green light illuminating the wrecked office. “The buyers are contained.”

Jason turned toward you. His hands rose to your face but stopped just short of contact, so you closed the distance yourself and rested your palms against his wrists. He touched you then, carefully examining the mark on your cheek, the cut near your mouth, and the place your shoulder had struck the desk.

“Anything broken?”

“No.”

“Dizzy?”

“No.”

“He hit you.”

“I noticed.”

Jason’s gaze hardened, but you looked toward the case. “The original site is beneath Gotham.”

“We heard the last part through the door,” Roy said.

“March rewrote the records to hide it. He has been taking people there.”

Kori’s expression hardened as Roy hauled March upright. “We’ll get the location.”

“No need.” You pointed to the parchment. “It is mapped there.”

Jason followed your gesture. There were victims to find, buyers to identify, and a Lazarus site beneath the city that needed to be sealed or destroyed, but his attention returned to you anyway.

“Roy will take you to the safehouse.”

You almost argued, then saw the strain in his eyes. “Come back.”

Jason went still. The request was more intimate than be careful. It assumed there would be somewhere—and someone—for him to return to.

His gaze held yours. “I will.”

This time, he did not pretend it was a certainty. It was a choice.

The Gotham site contained fourteen people, all alive. March’s records led the Outlaws to two additional facilities and enough evidence to dismantle most of the trafficking network. Kori secured the Lazarus sample somewhere beyond human greed, while March survived his wounds and entered federal custody under a name intended to keep his associates from finding him before he testified.

The archive reopened six weeks later with a replaced staff door and a security system designed by Relay. Roy attempted to contribute an automated defense mechanism but was banned from the installation after his prototype launched a rubber projectile through a light fixture. Jason repaired the frame around the eastern window himself, though he did not come inside.

You saw him twice during the first week after reopening: once across the street near his motorcycle and once reflected in the glass of the neighboring building. Both times, he disappeared before you reached the door. The manuscript had been transferred to a secure collection, its records preserved in encrypted copies, and your involvement was officially over. Jason had no reason to return, and you hated that he had been right about that part.

On the ninth evening, you finished closing the archive and found a first edition of the gothic novel on the reception desk. This cover used a painting from the correct century. A note tucked inside read: Better?

You carried the book outside and found Jason beneath the eastern light with his hands in his jacket pockets, looking as though he had been considering leaving.

“You broke into my archive to deliver a book,” you said.

“Relay gave me the new code.”

“She absolutely did not.”

“She might’ve left it somewhere visible.”

“On an encrypted server?”

“Very visible.”

You approached him. The bruise along his jaw had faded, and the narrow cut above one eyebrow had nearly healed.

“You’ve been outside twice.”

“Checking the new system.”

“Relay can check it remotely.”

“I don’t trust Relay’s systems.”

“She built most of yours.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

He had no answer.

You held up the book. “This is an expensive edition.”

“Found it.”

“At a rare-book dealer.”

“Still found it.”

“You bought it.”

“Allegedly.”

“Why?”

His gaze moved toward the archive windows. Traffic passed at the end of the street, and the evening air carried rain that had not yet begun to fall.

“I don’t know how to come back without an excuse,” he said, the words quiet enough that the city nearly swallowed them.

You stepped closer. “You could knock.”

“I’ve had bad experiences with doors.”

“That is not funny.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be.”

“You could call.”

“I don’t like phones.”

“You call Relay.”

“Work.”

“You call Roy.”

“He calls me.”

“Kori?”

“She shows up.”

“You could bring food.”

His mouth moved slightly. “That’s an excuse.”

“You are allowed to have one.”

His expression tightened.

“What if I don’t want you here for the book?” you asked.

Jason looked at you as though the question frightened him more than March’s gun. “What do you want?”

“You.”

He stopped breathing.

The answer had been waiting for weeks, perhaps since the first night he stayed in the archive rather than leave you alone with a damaged manuscript.

“You do not have to repair anything,” you said. “You do not need to protect the building or translate a page or stand outside all night. I want you to come inside because I like you there.”

His gaze dropped to the book in your hands. “You don’t know everything.”

“We discussed this.”

“Not enough.”

“Then tell me when you can.”

“What if it changes things?”

“It will.”

His eyes lifted.

“Knowing someone changes things,” you continued. “That is not the same as ruining them.”

“You make that sound easy.”

“It’s not easy.”

“Then why are you standing here?”

“Because you came back.”

Something in his face gave way. Jason raised one hand and touched your face, his fingers rough and warm, the contact careful without being uncertain.

“You sure?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He kissed you.

Jason kissed like someone opening a locked room after years of keeping the key hidden, deliberate at first and then suddenly hungry when he realized you intended to stay. His hand moved from your cheek to the back of your neck, and the book pressed between you until you shifted it aside and gripped his jacket instead.

The restraint you had watched him carry for weeks became heat without becoming careless. Every movement remained controlled, but the control had changed from distance into intention. When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours.

“You’re at work.”

“The archive is closed.”

“There are cameras.”

“Relay designed the system.”

“That makes it worse.”

You smiled against his mouth. “Come inside.”

Jason looked through the glass doors. “For the book?”

“For me.”

He followed you in.

Jason began returning without excuses badly. The first time, he arrived with dinner and claimed the restaurant had doubled his order by mistake, despite the containers holding two entirely different meals. The second time, he said he was checking the window repair even though he had checked it three days earlier.

“Could’ve shifted,” he said.

“The building has not moved.”

“Gotham.”

“That is not an explanation.”

“It usually is.”

By the fourth visit, he stopped pretending. He sat across from your worktable with a novel while you repaired a nineteenth-century atlas, sometimes speaking but more often sharing a silence filled by turning pages and the soft sounds of your tools. Comfortable silence came slowly to Jason, and you watched him learn that nothing was required of him inside it.

He still mapped the exits and sat where he could see the door. Sudden sounds tightened his shoulders, and some nights exhaustion darkened his face enough that you knew sleep had become dangerous again. You did not demand explanations, but Jason began offering pieces anyway: a sentence about training abroad, a name he did not elaborate upon, the admission that the Lazarus Pit had not brought him back whole, and later the quieter confession that he no longer knew whether he had been whole before it. He told you about dying in fragments, and you listened without turning his pain into a test he had to pass.

In return, you let him see the less flattering pieces of your own life. Your impatience. Your tendency to work until your hands cramped. The collection of failed repair attempts you kept in a drawer because destroying something accidentally did not mean it had never deserved care.

Jason found the drawer on his seventh visit and examined a torn page you had badly mended during your first year of training. “You kept this?”

“It reminds me that expertise is mostly surviving your earlier decisions.”

He looked at the uneven repair. “Looks solid.”

“That does not make it good.”

“Didn’t say good.” His thumb traced the edge of the mended paper without touching it. “Said it’s fine.”

You kissed him beside the open drawer.

After that, kissing Jason became part of the archive’s unofficial closing procedure. Sometimes it remained brief, a touch of his mouth before patrol. Other nights, he backed you carefully against the conservation-room door, one hand at your waist and the other braced beside your head while he kissed you until your knees felt unreliable.

He rarely spoke during those moments, making every sound more intimate: the rough breath against your throat, your name spoken low when your fingers entered his hair, and the quiet curse when you kissed beneath his jaw and felt his control slip. He always stopped before you moved beyond what the archive could reasonably contain, and you began to suspect the restraint was deliberate self-punishment.

Two months after the auction, Jason arrived at your apartment carrying takeout, a toolbox, and a duffel bag.

You opened the door. “Which is the excuse?”

“Your window sticks.”

“You have never opened my bedroom window.”

He stared at you while you smiled, then looked down the hallway as though checking for witnesses before stepping inside.

The apartment had been repaired after the attack, though one crack remained near the bedroom doorframe. Jason noticed it every time he visited. He placed the food and toolbox on the kitchen counter, the duffel still hanging from one shoulder.

“You brought clothes.”

“Patrol later.”

“You usually start patrol from your own apartment.”

“Could leave.”

“You could.”

Jason watched you as you closed the door.

“Or you could stay.”

His expression changed slowly. Dinner remained on the counter for twenty minutes.

Jason kissed you against your front door, his hands framing your waist as though he had imagined the position too many times to waste it now. Your fingers caught in his jacket, and he shrugged it off without breaking the kiss, letting it fall beside the toolbox. He tasted faintly of coffee and mint. When you slid your hands beneath his shirt, his breath caught and the muscles beneath your palms tightened around the scars along his back. He had allowed you to touch them gradually over the past weeks, sometimes going still beneath your hand. Tonight, he leaned into it.

You drew the shirt up, and Jason pulled back far enough to remove it. He stood before you without armor or fabric obscuring the scars across his body, watching your face as you traced the pale line along the center of his chest, the one he had explained three nights earlier in incomplete but sufficient detail. You pressed your mouth to it. His hand came to the back of your head on an unsteady breath. You kissed the scar again and moved lower, lips crossing the hard line of his stomach as his fingers tightened gently in your hair.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I know.”

When you looked up, desire had darkened his face, tangled with the old disbelief that remained whenever you chose him without asking for anything in return. You unfastened his belt, but his hand caught yours.

“Bedroom.”

It was not a question.

You led him there, and the repaired door closed behind you.

Jason remained near the foot of the bed while you removed your shirt, his attention following every inch of exposed skin with a seriousness that gathered heat beneath it.

“You can touch me,” you said.

“I know.”

He crossed the space between you. His hands settled on your waist before moving upward, palms following the shape of your ribs. He kissed you while unfastening your bra, the clasp giving way beneath fingers more accustomed to weapons and motorcycle engines. The fabric fell.

Jason looked at you. You had seen desire in his face before. This was different. Unshielded. Almost angry in its intensity, though none of that anger was directed toward you.

“You’re staring,” you murmured.

“Yeah.”

His bluntness made you laugh softly. Jason’s mouth curved, then lowered to your throat. He kissed along your collarbone, one hand spreading across your back while the other cupped your breast. His thumb moved over your nipple, and when your breath caught, his eyes lifted to watch the reaction. Then his mouth replaced his hand.

You caught his hair as his tongue moved over you, his other hand learning what changed your breathing. Jason listened with his entire body. When you pulled him closer, he followed. When your thighs pressed together, his hand slipped between them, and when you opened beneath his touch, he accepted the invitation.

Your remaining clothes disappeared in stages. Jason knelt to pull your underwear down your legs, broad shoulders and scarred chest framed between your knees.

He kissed the inside of one thigh, then higher.

“Jason.”

His eyes lifted. You opened your legs, and his hands settled firmly against your thighs before he pressed one kiss directly over your clit.

Your breath broke.

His mouth returned with purpose. He did not tease or retreat whenever pleasure began to build. He found what made your hips lift and stayed there, tongue moving with steady pressure while his fingers held you open.

You gripped his hair. He groaned against you, the vibration sharpening the pleasure as two fingers circled your entrance and pressed inside.

Your head fell back.

Jason watched you from between your legs as his fingers curled and his tongue returned to your clit. The combined rhythm narrowed the room to his mouth, his hand, and the rough sound of your name when your body tightened around him.

You came hard enough to pull his hair. He continued until your thighs trembled against his shoulders and you pushed weakly at his head, finally drawing back to press a kiss against your inner thigh.

His mouth glistened. The uncertainty had vanished from his face, leaving only satisfaction.

You reached for him, and Jason stood to kiss you, letting you taste yourself on his tongue. You pulled him between your knees and reached for his pants.

His forehead rested briefly against yours. “Condoms?”

“Nightstand.”

He glanced toward the drawer. “You got some?”

“I am capable of planning.”

“Didn’t say you weren’t.”

“You sounded surprised.”

“I’m impressed.”

You pushed his pants and underwear down. Jason’s eyes closed when your hand wrapped around him, his breath leaving sharply as you stroked upward.

You kissed his stomach, feeling the muscles flex beneath your mouth, then lowered yourself from the mattress. His hand slid into your hair as you took him between your lips.

Jason swore softly.

You worked him deeper, circling what you could not take with one hand. His control remained until your tongue moved beneath the head and you looked up at him.

His hips shifted before he immediately forced himself still. You tightened your hand around his thigh, encouraging him, and the next movement was shallow and careful. He watched your face, restraint held taut through every muscle as you took more of him.

Your name left his mouth, spoken like it mattered.

Jason pulled you away before he came, breathing hard.

“You keep doing that.”

“What?”

“Stopping.”

His thumb moved across your lower lip. “Want to be inside you.”

The directness sent fresh heat through your body.

You stood and kissed him. Jason guided you onto the bed and retrieved a condom from the nightstand, rolling it on with hands that remained steady despite the tension throughout the rest of him.

He settled over you, his weight supported carefully on his forearms as his body fit between your thighs. For a moment, neither of you moved.

“You still with me?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.”

You wrapped your legs around his hips, and Jason entered you slowly. The stretch caught your breath, his forehead dropping to your shoulder as a low groan left him. When he was fully inside, his body trembled once.

“Jason.”

He lifted his head.

You touched his face. “Move.”

His first thrust was controlled, nearly cautious. The second went deeper. By the third, he had found the angle that made pleasure spark low in your stomach, and he noticed the change in your breathing immediately.

His pace built. The bed shifted beneath you as one hand slid beneath your knee and lifted your leg higher. He watched your face with the same concentration he brought to everything, though desire had stripped the severity into something rawer.

“You feel—” His voice broke off when you tightened around him.

Jason swore and buried his face against your throat.

His rhythm changed, harder now without becoming careless. His hips drove into yours with enough force to push you higher against the sheets, one hand gripping your thigh while the other remained planted beside your head.

You dragged your nails down his back.

He groaned into your skin. “That. Again.”

You did, and his control slipped further.

The sound of his body meeting yours filled the room, pleasure gathering with every thrust and the sight of Jason surrendering the distance he guarded so fiercely everywhere else. He kissed you hard, and when you caught his lower lip between your teeth, his hips stuttered.

“Careful,” he murmured.

“You don’t want careful.”

His eyes darkened. “No.”

Jason shifted, one hand sliding between your bodies. His fingers found your clit, moving in firm circles that matched the pace of his hips.

Pleasure tightened rapidly. You clung to his shoulders.

“Jason.”

“I know.” His voice had gone low and rough.

He watched you come apart beneath him. Your orgasm struck hard, your body tightening around his cock as his fingers continued moving. His expression broke, mouth opening on a sound he failed to contain as he thrust twice more and came.

Jason remained above you afterward, breathing heavily. You stroked a hand through his hair until he lowered himself carefully, resting against you without crushing you, his face settling into the curve of your neck.

For several minutes, neither of you spoke.

Eventually, he shifted to deal with the condom. When he returned, he lay on his side facing you rather than retreating to the edge of the bed.

You traced the scar near his shoulder. Jason caught your hand and kissed your palm, the unexpected tenderness tightening something in your chest.

“You all right?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, but the old worry remained around the edges of his expression, as though he expected regret to appear by morning.

You moved closer and rested your head against his chest. Jason’s arm came around your waist.

“You can stay.”

His hand tightened slightly against your back. “Tonight?”

“Tomorrow too. And the night after that, although you may eventually need additional clothes.”

“I brought a bag.”

“I noticed.”

“Could’ve been for patrol.”

“It contained sweatpants.”

“Tactical sweatpants.”

You laughed into his chest, and his arm tightened around you. You listened to his heartbeat beneath your ear, slow and steady now.

“I meant what I said,” you murmured.

“Which part?”

“You don’t need an excuse.”

His fingers moved along your spine. “I might still bring one.”

“That’s allowed.”

“Food?”

“Acceptable.”

“Books?”

“Encouraged.”

“Security assessments?”

“Limited to one per week.”

“That’s irresponsible.”

“You may negotiate for two.”

“Three.”

“You are taking advantage of my weakened state.”

“You seem fine.”

“You were very thorough.”

Jason went quiet.

You lifted your head and found a faint flush across his cheeks.

“Are you embarrassed?”

“No.”

“You are.”

“I’m reconsidering staying.”

“You brought tactical sweatpants.”

His hand moved down and squeezed your hip.

You smiled. “I want you to stay.”

The humor faded from Jason’s face, leaving something quieter behind. He looked at you for a long moment before kissing your forehead.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m here.”

Three months later, Jason entered the archive through the front door carrying dinner, a damaged eighteenth-century atlas, and absolutely no blood.

You looked up from the conservation table. “What happened to breaking in?”

“Door was open.”

“The public entrance is generally designed that way.”

He placed the atlas beside your tools. Its binding had separated completely, several pages were singed, and a bullet had passed through the lower corner.

“Jason.”

“Found it.”

“Where?”

“Warehouse.”

“Why was it in a warehouse?”

“Crime.”

“That is not provenance.”

“It’s all I have.”

While you examined the pages, Jason set the dinner bag beside your elbow.

“You haven’t eaten.”

“I had lunch.”

“At eleven.”

“You were not here at eleven.”

“Relay.”

“Traitor.”

“She says you get mean when you skip meals.”

“Relay does not understand professional focus.”

“She understands mean.”

You looked at him. Jason stood across the table with his jacket unzipped and the white streak falling over his forehead. He had begun leaving pieces of himself in your apartment—a toothbrush, two shirts, three novels, and a gun locked beneath the bed after an argument that ended with another reinforced lock and an agreement to store the ammunition elsewhere.

He still kept his safehouses and disappeared on nights when Gotham demanded pieces of him daylight could not hold, but he came back. Sometimes injured, sometimes angry, and sometimes quiet enough that all he could offer was his weight beside you on the bed.

He came back anyway.

You touched the hole through the atlas. “This will take weeks.”

“No.”

You looked up. Jason’s face remained completely serious.

“You have learned nothing,” you said.

“I learned you like difficult projects.”

“The atlas is the project?”

His gaze held yours. “Mostly.”

You smiled.

Jason walked around the table and bent to kiss you, one hand settling at the back of your neck. The kiss was brief, warm, and familiar enough to make something in your chest ache pleasantly.

When he straightened, you caught the front of his jacket. “You can stay.”

“Was planning to.”

“No excuse?”

He glanced toward the damaged atlas. “Brought one anyway.”

You looked at the scorched leather, the bullet hole, and the pages waiting to be restored. Then you looked at Jason.

“That is a terrible excuse.”

His mouth curved. “Worked anyway.”

credit to @uzmacchiato for the cherry divider and @toxisyddy for the Red Hood divider ❤️💛