in which, for all your love, you just can’t compare to the most beautiful girl in the world
wc: 13.5k (woah)
warnings: post maeve arc (so spoilers for 8×10 - 8×12), heavy angst, but so so much love and fluff before it! im picturing this taking place between s8 and s9 lol. also some of the bau aren’t like. super nice in this one soz :/
a/n: don’t stress abt the ending too much bc im already planning a part two (tbh a whole saga around these two icl). also yeah if u can’t tell, i don’t really like maeve im so sorry. i don’t think i do her any injustice here but this is like. me fixing stuff. sorta. kinda. not really. mostly just painfully. :,) also omg reblogs?! best part of my day fr
“Just as one day we will be separated by my death or yours. I know this must seem like a heaping up of obscurities to you. I can't say it in a more orderly and comprehensible way. I love you wildly, insanely, infinitely.” -Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago.
The living room is quiet.
Spencer’s apartment is always quiet, peaceful, warm. How could it not be, surrounded by books you’d never heard of, shelves that reach the ceiling and lined edge-to-edge with copies of novels that are older than you, in languages you can’t begin to comprehend?
The chess table is still set up, mid-game, from where Spencer had been teaching you how to play the other day. He’d gotten a call from his boss that he had to come in, and Spencer had stared at the board for no more than a moment before saying you could continue once he was back, then he pressed a kiss to the space between your eyebrows—your glabella, as he had once mentioned—before rushing out the door.
It still feels strange, being in his apartment without him here. But he had called you from the jet on his way back, and asked if you’d be home when he got back. He sounded so sleepy, so sweet, you couldn’t help the murmur of assent from spilling from your lips.
He’d only given you a key a week ago, and you were beyond shocked when he had pressed it into your hand, the metal digging into your palm. This, between you, was still so new, so young. But he’d assured you that he trusted you, that he always wanted you around, that you having a key to his home wasn’t a matter of if, only when, and he’d prefer not to waste unnecessary time.
It’s late when the door opens.
Spencer is quiet when he enters, expecting to see you either curled up on his couch or lying asleep in his bed, but instead, you’re standing at one of his bookshelves, your hand outstretched to reach at the higher shelves.
He’s a bit surprised. The top three shelves on that unit are all foreign novels, ones he’s collected from his youth. Latin, German, Russian, Korean, and even a couple of thick Spanish texts that he used mostly to continue learning the language.
You’re silent, not even turning your head to acknowledge his presence, and Spencer wonders if you’ve even heard the door at all.
“Angel?” he prompts, causing your head to whip to the left so quickly he’s momentarily concerned you’ve given yourself whiplash. You tear yourself away from the shelf immediately, like the surface itself has burned you, and Spencer pauses. “You okay? You didn’t even hear me come in.”
You just nod, jerkily, tucking your lower lip between your teeth. “I was just looking,” you tilt your head to the shelf and shrug, pulling the sleeves of your sweater over your hands and crossing your arms over your chest. “Sorry.”
Spencer shakes his head, hanging up his messenger bag and coat on the hook by the door. “You don’t need to apologize,” he says, coming closer to you. “Are you curious about them? You can borrow a few, if you want.” He sits on the couch carefully, like he knows there’s something you’re not saying.
You shake your head with a sigh, glancing back over at his stacks of novels. “That’s alright, Spence.” He pats the cushion next to him and you seat yourself slowly onto the cool leather, crossing your legs under yourself. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’d get it anyway.”
Spencer furrows his brows. “I’m sure you would, actually. There’s no reason why you couldn’t, unless it was a language you don’t understand. But even then,” he tilts his head, scooching ever so slightly closer to you. “I can still read them to you.”
You sigh softly. “I know, honey. You know I love it when you read to me,” the corner of your lips twitch up, and it makes a slow grin pull at Spencer’s cheeks. “How was the case, anyway?”
Spencer shrugs. “Fine, as usual. It doesn’t matter anymore, anyway.” He rests his arm over the back of the couch, a silent beckon for you to curl into him like usual. “I’m home now. With you,” he presses the softest of kisses to your hairline. “Are you tired?”
You shake your head, “Not really. I’m sure you are, though. Want me to start the kettle?” Spencer can’t help the nod—he is tired. Exhausted, even. You just smile at him before standing and padding to the kitchen and turning on the stove, setting the metal kettle on the burner.
He hears the cabinets open and the sound of ceramic being placed on granite. You’re quietly humming to yourself, and Spencer closes his eyes. It’s nice, so domestic in a way he hadn’t expected. You peek your head around the corner for a moment. “Lavender or peppermint?”
He smiles, all warm and soft. “Lavender, please.”
You nod once, your head hiding behind the wall again before you peek back out. “Maybe take a shower, honey. It’ll help you relax, y’know,” you grin, teasing at him. “The tea’ll be done when you are.”
Spencer’s eyes crinkle as he chuckles, watching you turn back to the kitchen. He stands with a sigh before heading into his bedroom to grab pyjamas and a towel, then into the bathroom where he leaves the door open, just a crack.
You take the kettle off the burner before it has a chance to whistle, not wanting to disturb this quiet, peaceful comfort that has settled into the cozy warmth of your boyfriend’s apartment. You make his tea exactly how he likes it; black, with no less than four sugars.
You hear the water from the shower shut off just as you’re bringing the mugs to the coffee table—on coasters, cute little pastel ceramic ones shaped like fruit slices. You’d bought them at a flea market downtown years ago, and when you saw that he didn’t have any, despite all the coffee and tea he drinks, you didn’t hesitate to bring them over.
They might look slightly out of place in this warm, cozy place, but, well… Maybe you have that in common.
The bedroom door creaks open before you have the chance to spiral too far. Spencer emerges in a loose-fitting MIT tee and sweatpants. He meanders slowly to the couch before flopping down and grabbing his mug—his usual one, with “think like a proton, they’re always positive!” faded on the side. It’s starting to chip, but he got it for free at a physics convention in Anaheim back when he attended Caltech, and it’s been a memento since.
He smiles as he picks it up off the bright coaster before looking at you. He nods towards the bookshelf you were staring at earlier. “Can you grab that red one for me, angel?” he gestures to a large leather-bound hardcover on the second shelf.
You nod and reach up to grab it. It’s heavier than you’d expected, but you take it to the couch before curling into Spencer’s side.
This has become routine every night you spend here. You make tea, and Spencer reads to you on the couch until you’re either both passed out or too tired to continue, before heading to bed.
You get comfortable, pulling your knees to your chest as he covers you both with the plush throw blanket he keeps on the back of the couch. Spencer clears his throat before starting to read, flipping to some random page in the middle of the book. You don’t question it, just close your eyes and rest your head on his chest.
His voice is low, quiet as he begins to read. You’ve already begun to drift off by the time you start to register the words he’s saying. They’re not from anything he’s ever read to you before.
“I felt a mortal pity for the boy I was, and still more pity for the girl you were. My whole being was astonished and asked: If it’s so painful to love and absorb electricity, how much more painful it is to be a woman, to be the electricity, to inspire love. ‘Here at last I’ve spoken it out. It could make you lose your mind. And the whole of me is in it.’”
You sit up, peering at the pages that Spencer’s eyes are trained on. You can’t hold back the way your breath catches.
“Spence, what is this?” Your brows furrow as you sit up fully, removing yourself from the warmth of his embrace. You wrap the throw blanket around your shoulders tightly.
He glances up from the book. “Doctor Zhivago,” he says simply, as if that explains everything. At your slightly raised brows, he continues. “It’s a Russian romantic novel by poet and composer Boris Pasternak. It was first published in 1957, and—”
“No, I mean, what is that?” You shake your head, pointing at the page.
Spencer’s brow furrows. “The language? This is Cyrillic. It’s the Russian alphabet, and—”
You cut him off again. “I know what Cyrillic is, Spencer.” You can’t hide the bite in your voice. “I meant, what- how- why are you reading it in Russian?”
He shrugs, closing the cover softly. “I have both the original Russian and the English translation, but I prefer this version. The translation makes it clunky, it doesn’t get the tone quite right.”
You just blink at him. “I didn’t know you spoke Russian,” you whisper, curling deeper into the blanket. You hate this, the feeling of inadequacy that comes so frequently from being with a man like Dr. Spencer Reid.
He sets the book down on the coffee table. “I don't, actually. I can read it, though.” He glances sidelong at you. “Is that… a bad thing?”
You shake your head, finally looking at him. “No, of course not, honey. I just,” you sigh. “I don’t know. I feel like I can’t keep up with you sometimes.”
All the time.
Spencer purses his lips. “Well, I don’t need you to. Frankly, I don’t really want you to.”
And that gives you pause. “Really?”
He nods, reaching for you, and you allow him to cradle you in his lap again. “Really. This might come as a bit of a surprise, angel,” he grins, “but I do like you.”
Your face goes warm. You press your cheek into his chest. “I know.” It’s quiet, a murmur, a whisper.
Spencer presses a feather-light kiss to your head. It’s late and quiet and calm, and you’re so warm, cuddled into him and under this plush blanket, that it takes no time at all until you’re fast asleep.
The sun wakes you before you’re quite ready, the bright rays shining on your face.
You’re still curled into Spencer’s chest, his legs stretched out along the length of the couch, whereas you know it’ll hurt to stand after having your knees tucked up all night. The blanket is still wrapped around you, the warmth more suffocating than comforting now, but the weight of his arm slung around your waist is a welcome one.
You peer your head up to look at him, to take him in, in this peaceful state of relaxation. You love this part, when you wake before him and he doesn’t turn his face away when you admire him.
His face is smushed into the throw pillow, his hair wild and messy, thrown every which way like a halo around his head. He’s snoring so softly you can barely hear it, but you do, because there’s nothing about this man you can’t notice.
You try to ignore the tug in your chest. It almost hurts. He looks so peaceful and happy and loved, so relaxed in this sleepy state of the early morning. You almost feel guilty for the thoughts that run wild in your head. How is this real? How is he real? How the hell do you fit into this world—his world—full of chess and tea and comfort and Russian poetry and genius minds?
But then he stirs, and his arm instinctively tightens its hold on your waist, his large hand splaying out over your back. He stretches slightly and, before he even opens his eyes, there’s a smile on his lips.
“Morning, angel.”
Your heart stutters wildly in your chest. You almost feel like bursting into tears right there, collapsing into his chest and letting him comfort you in that way you know he will. But you swallow it back. Just smile at the dopey look on his face, his eyes still shut.
You press the softest of kisses to his cheek, and maybe it’s your mind, but you swear he looks confused for a moment, his brows pulling together as he inhales, his nose at your neck.
It’s your mind. It has to be; your feelings of inadequacy are making you paranoid. “How’d you sleep, baby?” you murmur, your lips brushing his cheek before you pull away.
Then he opens his eyes, his honey-brown irises taking you in so sweetly, scanning over your face as a soft smile overtakes his lips. “Best sleep I’ve gotten in a long while,” he grins, pressing a peck at your lips. “Do you want any coffee?”
You nod, allowing him to crawl out from under you and stand from the couch. He pads into the kitchen, leaving you with your mugs from last night and the red leather hardcover of Doctor Zhivago. You soften immediately. Spencer was reading you poetry. He’d never done that before, read anything romantic. Usually, he read something you were at least familiar with, the classics, stuff you somewhat remember reading in high school. But this warms your heart so much you swear it’ll melt right there in your chest, drip down your ribs like sticky-sweet honey.
You stand, stretching out your legs, and pick up the mugs before bringing them to the kitchen. Spencer’s standing at the counter, his back to you, his hands bracing the edge of the counter. You set the mugs down in the sink and wrap your arms around his waist, resting your cheek on his back. “You okay, honey?”
Spencer nods, placing his hands over yours where they lay on his front. “I’m fine, angel. You can leave the mugs, I’ll wash them. Did you want to shower?”
You hum, pulling away from the hug but maintaining your hold on his hand. “Sure. Did you wanna join me?” you grin, “y’know, save water, and all that?”
Spencer’s neck flushes red, and he swallows harshly. “Not right now, sweetheart. But go ahead, take your time.” He gives your palm a squeeze when you pout. “Your coffee will be done by the time you’re back, and I don’t have to go in to work. Not unless I get a call.” He smiles when your face brightens. “So we’ll have the day, okay?”
You nod, a grin wide across your lips before you’re bouncing off to his bedroom. He hears the shower turn on a moment later, and he sighs heavily as he turns on the sink to wash the mugs.
Spencer can’t stop the quirk of his lips as he stares at your mug for a moment—a cute, bright pink one, tapered at the top like an upside-down strawberry. He takes extra care as he washes it, making sure to get soapy water around all of the molded leaves and seeds.
He exhales as he sets it aside. Runs a damp hand down his face. He needs to collect himself, but god, it’s so hard when he swears she’s hovering over his shoulder.
Spencer’s reading silently on the couch, sipping at the last bit of coffee in his mug. You’re on the other end, scrolling absently on your phone as you set your strawberry mug onto an orange slice coaster. You glance over at him, and you soften. “Spence?”
He hums, looking up at you. You’re lost looking into his eyes. He’s wearing glasses today, his thick browline ones that frame his face just right, and you wonder why he wears contacts so often. Why he doesn’t let himself look like this more frequently. He looks stunning in spectacles. “Angel?”
You blink at his prompting. “I was just wondering,” you shrug, glancing over your shoulder at the chess table behind you. “Did you want to continue?”
Spencer lets a smile slowly overtake his cheeks. He nods, setting down his mug onto a pink grapefruit slice coaster. “If you want, sure.” At your assent, he stands, holding out a hand.
Your cheeks flush with warmth as he helps you stand from the couch. You follow him to the table before seating yourself in the same seat as a week ago, staring at the pieces in concentration.
He smiles. “Do you remember where we left off? You nod, and he moves his rook up two places.
Your hand hovers over your knight, then your queen, almost shaking with uncertainty. Spencer watches you, his eyes soft but calculating, patiently waiting for your next move. You rest your fingers over a pawn and move it up one space with resignation.
“You know, angel,” Spencer says softly, all gentle comfort. “It’s not about making the perfect move. It’s about thinking a few steps ahead, but also,” he moves his rook up and takes the pawn you’d just moved, setting it to the side. “Trusting your instincts. You’ve got this,” he smiles so warmly at you, so reassuring. You still feel the slightest twinge of frustration and embarrassment.
Chess doesn’t come naturally to you, but you’re determined to figure it out. For him.
You bite your lip, glancing over the board. You’re sure his comment about trusting your instincts has something to do with the way you’d hesitated, but you’re still so confused about what to do. You glance up at Spencer again, his eyes fixed on the board, his hands gently tapping at the edge of the table.
“What should I do with my queen?” you ask, a little hesitant. “I feel like she’s… I don’t know. Not doing much.” God, how do you stop feeling so stupid about this?
Spencer just smiles, that warm, gentle expression that makes you feel like you’re the only one in the room. “That’s okay, sweetheart. Remember, your queen can move in any direction. Horizontal, vertical, or diagonal, but only as long as nothing is blocking her path. She’s powerful. You have to decide how to use her.”
You nod slowly, trying to picture it in your head. “So… I can go anywhere? Like, here?” you ask, pointing to a spot near his king.
“Exactly,” he says, his voice steady, his gaze never leaving the board. “But you’ll want to think about what happens after you move her. Like, does it leave you open to being attacked? Does it bring you closer to checkmate?”
You inhale shakily, trying to digest it all as you nod, but it’s a lot to process. You take a deep breath. You can do this. You look down at the board, then back at him, his gaze still so patient. “What if I mess up?” you ask softly, unable to hide the shyness in your voice, your tone full of the nervous doubt you try to push down.
Spencer chuckles gently. “You won’t mess up, angel. Even if you do, it’s just part of learning. I’m not going anywhere,” he smiles. “You’re doing great.”
His words warm you more than the mug of coffee you’d just finished, and you feel that familiar flutter in your chest. You allow yourself a small, shy grin before focusing on the board again. You move your queen exactly as he described, cautiously placing her diagonally across the board.
Spencer’s eyes light up a little, and his smile widens. “See? That’s the right move. You’re getting it. You’re really good at this,” and oh, how your chest positively aches at the pride in his expression.
Your heart skips a beat at his compliment, like it always does, and you let out a soft giggle. “I’m not that good, Spence,” you reply, trying to play it off.
He shakes his head, and you can see the admiration in his eyes. “You’re more natural at this than you think, trust me. Just keep practicing.” You sit back, watching him move a piece, and then he looks up at you, tilting his head. “It’s all about finding balance—taking risks, but also knowing when to protect what matters. Just like life.”
You blink at him, a little stunned by the way his words feel. Just like life? Maybe that’s what this whole chess thing is about—finding a way to balance your moves, even when things feel a little uncertain. Even when you’re just learning.
And then Spencer laughs softly, snapping you out of your thoughts. “You look so lost in thought, angel. Am I being too deep or introspective?” He gently pushes his glasses up his nose from where they’ve begun to slip down the slope of it.
You shake your head quickly, your heart racing as his eyes meet yours. “No, no! Not at all! I’m just thinking about how much you know.” You move your knight in an L-shape, like he taught you, and if the twinkle in his eye is any indication, you’ve made a good move. “Like, it’s crazy. You make it all sound so easy.”
Spencer just shrugs modestly, then picks up his rook and moves it up. “It’s just about seeing the whole board. Everyone has their own way of learning. Yours just happens to be different.” His eyes soften as he looks at you, and you feel your heart tug. “And I think that’s what makes you special.”
You bite down on your lip, trying to focus on the game again, but his words are ringing in your ears, making everything feel like it’s a little too perfect. The fact that he’s teaching you, patiently guiding you through something new, something you want to learn for him, feels so intimate.
You try to steady your breath as you make your next move, feeling your fingers brush against his as you capture his bishop. It’s a brief touch, but it makes your heart race. You chance a peek at him, and oh. His smile is so impossibly bright. You clear your throat and continue, tucking his bishop onto the table beside the board.
You’ve got this.
It's mid-afternoon when you pipe up again. “Y’know, the weather’s really nice today, Spence.”
He looks up from his book, honey-brown eyes tracing your nose from where you’re curled under his arm. “Yeah, I saw. It’s supposed to be pretty temperate until next week; then the rain is supposed to hit.” He lifts his arm from your shoulders and tenderly traces his knuckle down your jaw. “Did you want to go out?”
You shrug lamely, going shy and warm under his gentle gaze. “I don’t know, I guess, yeah. It’s really warm out.” Your eyes lock onto his. “I think we could go to the park or something?”
Spencer smiles, his hand gently gripping your chin as he presses a soft kiss to your lips. “That sounds great, sweetheart.” He stands, and pulls you up with him. He crouches to help you slip on your running shoes and ties the laces. You can’t tear your eyes from his lithe, slender fingers working the laces and, oh. Your heart beats wildly in your chest.
He stands and slings his messenger bag over his shoulder before grabbing his keys with one hand and yours with the other.
His fingers intertwine with yours, and you flush with warmth. He smiles at you as he leads you out of his apartment, locking the door with one hand before you head downstairs.
It’s warm and breezy, the air a perfect 75° outside, the wind just soft enough to sweep at your hair without messing it up. Spencer’s hand is still tangled with yours, and you can’t keep the smile off your face as he goes on some tangent about the differences between mallards and pintail ducks, because you’d just passed a pond and wondered why they looked so different.
You wish you were focusing, but god, you’re lost. So incredibly lost. Staring at his side profile, his brows raising and furrowing, his nose scrunching in that perfect way that makes you just want to bite it. He’s so animated, so enthusiastic about this, it’s a bit staggering.
You don't know when it happened, but now, looking up at him in this dreamy way, like he’s hardly real, like you’ve invented him to cover up the hurt from the meanness of those in your past, you’re sure of it.
You’re in love.
Somewhere between the way he reads to you and teaches you chess with all the patience in the world, between the way he remembers how you always take your coffee and kisses you first thing in the morning, between his warm linen sheets and the dusty scent of his books, you’ve fallen totally, completely in love.
And you don’t know why that invokes so much fear within you. Isn’t it a good thing, to fall in love with your boyfriend? To love him so wholly, so deeply, you aspire to learn the things he loves? To yearn for sameness, to relate to him, to keep up with his statistical rants about anything from the decline of leather-bound novels to the likelihood of walking past a serial killer without ever knowing it?
And then he looks down at you, notices the wistful, faraway look in your eyes as you just stare at him, and all he can do is laugh. He pulls you ever closer, pushes your hair back, and kisses your temple, and you positively melt. He’s so gentle with you, it almost hurts.
Then he’s tugging at your hand, and you look away from him for the first time since you arrived at the park. There’s a couple of tents set up along the path further ahead, and even though you groan through a laugh, Spencer looks so giddy, so excited, you can’t even think about ruining that. So you go along with him, his hand gently tugging at yours, before he stops at one tent towards the end.
Jewellry.
Spencer takes a while looking down at the display, before he picks up a simple gold necklace, a modest, tiny pink gemstone hanging off the chain. Spencer doesn’t hesitate before asking how much and pulling a twenty from his wallet.
You can’t tear your eyes from him. You feel like you haven’t so much as blinked in the last three minutes.
Spencer turns to you, the necklace hanging from his hand like it’s nothing more than a silly little trinket, and maybe it is. It’s probably some cheap, knockoff thing that’ll tarnish in a week, something that he paid far too much for, and you’re sure he knows that.
But he’s standing in front of you, holding it out with the sweetest, gentlest, most open expression you’ve ever seen on him.
And for that? The necklace might as well be twenty-four-carat gold and diamond-encrusted.
You blink at him, your brows furrowing upwards and eyes wide like a doe. “Do you want me to wear it?” you ask, sheepish and small and looking up at him like you’d give him the very earth itself if you could.
Spencer just smiles, all soft and warm and good. “I got it for you.” He shrugs, like this is nothing. Like it's casual and not like he’s holding your heart in his fist, like you trust him enough to not throttle it. “You can do whatever you want with it, angel.”
And, oh.
This is love. You’re certain of it. You’re so lost in the warmth of his eyes, the love pounding against your chest, that you don’t even notice the way he goes quiet, rigid, no longer looking at you, but through you. Like he heard something he wasn’t supposed to.
“Can you put it on me?”
Your soft voice breaks him from his trance, and immediately, the warmth returns to his gaze, his smile comes back so quickly it’s almost as if it never left. He nods, gently turning you around, and you pull your hair away from your neck.
Spencer is slow, reverent, as he drapes the chain around your neck. Careful as he clasps it. He even bends enough to press a soft, almost intangible kiss to your nape before stepping away.
And when you turn around, dropping your hair? Your palms go to his cheeks, clasping him like something precious between your hands, and you kiss him with all the love in the world.
All the love you’ve left unsaid.
You’re barely back inside his apartment when Spencer’s phone buzzes from its place in his bag.
You haven’t stopped toying with your necklace since he put it on you. The charm is almost glued to your fingers now; you’re unable to stop messing with it on your neck. It’s something so simple, but it feels like something more. Like something meaningful.
You’ve already seated yourself on his couch when he comes and plops beside you, a new, brighter grin on his face. “What was that, baby?” you ask softly, watching as he sets his phone face down on the coffee table.
“That was Garcia,” he smiles. “She invited us for drinks at Porter’s tonight.”
You blink. “She invited us, or she invited you?”
Spencer pauses, his hand momentarily ceasing its ministrations on your shoulder. “I mean, she invited me, and the team. But,” he sighs, turning to face you fully. “But, I think it would be nice. Introducing you to them.”
You inhale softly. “You sure? You don’t think it’s, like,” you glance down at your lap. “Too early?”
He shakes his head, his hand gently hooking under your chin to tilt your face up so he can look at you properly. “Angel, you already have a key to my place. I don’t think anything is ‘too early’ anymore.” His head tilts. “If you’re not ready to meet them, you know I wouldn’t force you to, right?” At your nod, he continues. “I would like for you to meet them. Really. They’re really important to me, and so are you. But if you don’t think you’re ready, or if you don’t want to, you don’t have to come. Or, I can stay home.”
Your eyes go wide, doelike and soft. Where on earth did this perfect man come from?
“Las Vegas,” he murmurs. You blink at him. He simply grins. “And I’m not perfect, sweetheart,” he turns bashful, his thumb gentle as it caresses your jaw.
“You’re so good,” you whisper, a whine in your voice. “Why- how are you so good?” You can’t help the tears that fill your waterline now, and Spencer immediately cradles you to his chest.
He shushes you softly. “I’m just normal, angel. I promise,” he chuckles. “I’m not doing anything that you don’t deserve.”
You sob impossibly harder.
“I would love to meet your friends, honey,” you pull away, your mascara smeared down your cheeks. Spencer’s hand comes up to cup your jaw, his thumb lightly brushing away the black smears from your skin like he’s doing something holy. Like he’s done it before, like he’d do it a thousand more times if you asked.
“You sure?” he whispers, careful, like if he speaks too loud this—you—might disappear. Like this is all some vivid dream he’s not quite convinced he deserves to wake up into.
You nod, just once. A little wobbly, but firm. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure, Spence.” Your fingers tug at the chain around your neck, the clasp digging gently into your skin. It stings, just a little. Just enough to feel real. To remind you, he gave it to you. Just today. That it means something. That Spencer is different.
“They’ll love you,” he smiles. He sounds so certain it almost breaks you in half. “I know they will.” You want to believe him. You want to let that live in your chest and take root. Because you’re not sure of much, really, but this? What you feel? It’s real. You know it’s real.
When he presses a kiss to your mascara-stained cheek, you close your eyes. Take it in. Take him in. He pulls away, looking at you warmly, openly, lovingly. “You can wear whatever you want. You don’t have to dress up,” he stands, his hand still warm where it’s clasped in yours. “We’re just going to a bar, and most of them are going straight from work.”
And maybe that’s exactly why you do want to dress up. You love Spencer. You want to make a good impression on his friends, his team, the people who keep him safe when he’s across the country chasing killers. Because you’re not just trying to impress them. You’re trying to seem enough.
In his bedroom, the light hangs low and golden and warm. Your dress hangs off your shoulders, and your hands tremble just slightly as you smooth it down again.
Spencer stands behind you, zipping you up with quiet hands and a look that could positively undo you. His touch settles at your hips, warm and grounding and real.
You study your reflection. “Is this okay, baby?” You catch his eyes in the mirror. Your voice is barely above a whisper, and you hate how small it sounds. How unsure. You can’t hide the way it trembles, the nerves that show through.
Spencer’s hands slide to your arms, trailing a path of fire before they cover your wrists, holding them steady. “Angel,” he whispers, turning you around gently. He looks at you like you’re an oasis in the middle of the driest of deserts. “You look beautiful.” He kisses you softly, tenderly. “I promise, they’re gonna love you. Please stop worrying.” His lips find that space between your eyebrows again, your glabella.
You know it means it. And that’s the worst part.
You’re still not used to someone holding you so closely, so gently, without an ounce of malice, of annoyance, of condescension.
You exhale shakily. You move your hands to the lapels of his blazer. Then to the knot of his tie. Then, finally resting them on his cheeks. Your eyes dart around his face, studying him like you haven’t already memorized the slope of his nose, the pink of his lips, the honey-brown warmth of his eyes.
Just in case. There’s a sinking in your gut you can’t explain. Let me remember you, it says, just in case.
“Thank you, honey.” You kiss him again, and when one of his hands finds the back of your head, you let him.
But then you sigh, pulling away. “If you ruin my hair, Dr. Reid, so help me,” you giggle, pressing a final kiss to his chin.
He chuckles softly. “I wouldn’t dream of it, sweetheart,” he grins before heading to the living room and pulling his messenger bag over his shoulder.
You grab your purse and glance one last time at your reflection. Not to fix anything, no. Just to see yourself. To pretend you might resemble someone worth loving in a room full of people who love him.
When you step into the living room, Spencer’s already waiting by the door, his hands wringing at the strap of his bag, his smile still impossibly wide.
He links your fingers with his again like it’s second nature. Like this is just what you do. Like you belong with him.
You pretend—for just a moment—that you do.
You know you’re nervous when you hardly remember the metro ride. Conversations blurred around you until they were nothing but mist in the background. Just the steady warmth of Spencer’s hand in yours, his thumb moving in slow, absent circles on your skin, like he was tracing something only he could see. You remember the vibration under your feet and the way he held you when you stumbled as the train stopped.
By the time you step off the train and into the buzz of the city night, the air is cool, crisp. There’s a dewy scent of rain on the horizon.
You don’t even remember the walk to the bar until Porter’s flashes in bright red neon.
Your pulse is back in your throat, and suddenly it all feels too fast. Too real.
The gentle tug on your hand has your head snapping to your left. Spencer’s brows are furrowed, his lips pressed together. “Just take a breath, angel.” His voice is soft, warm. His thumb runs tenderly across your hand again. “It’ll be fine. Like I said, they’ll love you. I promise,” and oh. Oh, he looks so earnest. So sure. You can’t help the nod, the shaky exhale, the way your shoulders straighten out.
You blink. Look over at him again, a small smile quirking at your painted lips. “Okay, baby. I’m ready.”
He grins like sunshine.
Porter’s is busy; not packed, but there are enough patrons to have the bartenders ignoring attempts at conversation.
Spencer grins widely as a group of six, all settled around a circular booth, waves him over. His hand stays locked with yours until you get closer—then, he places it on the small of your back.
Their smiles start to… well. They falter, a bit, when they notice it. His hand, warm and steady on your back. You expected to surprise them, sure, but… You figured that for FBI profilers, they’d be a little better at hiding their shock.
And that means they’re not hiding it. They’re not trying to. If you can see their confusion, their surprise, their—is it discomfort?—then it’s intentional.
And that’s what stings the most. That this sudden tension, the glances, the raised brows, all point to you not fitting in.
They’re not impressed.
Spencer hardly notices it, though. You think it must be because he’s been so excited, but… really, how doesn’t he notice it? It’s like all the oxygen in the room has been sucked out, leaving six pairs of eyes staring at you like you’re other, like you don’t belong.
The blonde with wide eyes smiles at you, but it’s the kind that feels practiced, calculating. You’ve seen it before, more times than you can even remember.
The man next to her—broad, confident, handsome—raises a brow, his glass of whiskey stopping by his lip. He tilts his head when his eyes lower, meeting Spencer’s hand on your back.
Then the third woman, dark hair, a sharp gaze, pursed lips. God, she looks like Spencer when he’s trying to solve a crossword. You hate it, being studied like a puzzle yet to be solved.
And then Spencer says their names, and suddenly, for a moment, it clicks. “This is JJ, Morgan, Blake, Hotch, Rossi, and Garica.” Names you’ve only ever heard in fond little stories, in memories over takeout containers and sleepy mornings in bed.
You take a breath, willing yourself to breathe again. Your eyes land steadily on Garcia—Penelope. She’s already standing to hug you, her arms outstretched and a grin on her face. Spencer had described her as glitter and joy personified, and you can’t disagree. You think you love her already. “Oh my god, you’re real!” you giggle, “I was so sure Spence made you up!”
Penelope laughs with you, her hug warm and inviting, and you can’t help melting into it. She smells nice; like coconut and vanilla and citrus. You squeeze her back before pulling away, and her eyes are crinkled behind her wide pink glasses. “Oh, honey, I’m so real! But who are you, gorgeous? The Good Doctor’s been hiding you away from us!”
You smile shyly up at Spencer, watching as his hand returns to your back. “Uh, guys,” he glances down at you, all softness, before looking back at them. “This is my girlfriend.”
He says your name with reverence, dripping in pure affection, and the mood shifts yet again. Even Garcia freezes from her place next to you.
You wave timidly at them. “Hi,” you smile. “Spencer’s told me loads about you guys. He really loves you all, I can tell.”
And… there’s silence. JJ, Morgan, and Blake blink in unison. Like they’re sizing you up. Surprised in the worst way.
Your fingers reach up to your necklace again, gently pulling at it, tucking the charm between your digits again and again. You smooth your dress, tug it down. Maybe it’s too short? You bite your lip, check your posture, standing up straight. You hold back a sigh. You want to be enough. For them. For him.
JJ smiles a little softer, now. Her eyes more forgiving, just a fraction. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she says. “What do you do?” she asks, scooching over on the bench. Spencer slides in first, then pats the space next to him. You squeeze onto the seat, and try to ignore the warm weight of his hand settling on your knee.
“I work in a flower shop,” you say softly. Blake’s eyes brighten a bit at that, and she unclasps her hands.
“You’re a florist?” she presses, taking a sip of her margarita.
You shrug. “I guess, that’s what my nametag says,” you laugh softly, folding your hands in your lap, fingers fidgeting beneath the table. “But I dunno if I’m like, a real florist. I just do the arrangements.”
Spencer squeezes your thigh gently. You do your best to ignore it.
Blake’s eyes dull again, just slightly. “So, how did you two meet?”
You feel underwater. Your hearing is muffled, you can barely hear the sweet story Spencer’s retelling, of when he walked into your flower shop and you giggled and handed him the store’s card with your number scribbled on the back.
You can’t tear your eyes away from the surface of the table. You try to control your breathing. Keep the tears at bay.
You’re being ridiculous. Absurd. Your insecurities are making you paranoid; you know it. This happens all the time.
But then Spencer’s lightly shaking your knee, his head tilted low enough to catch your gaze. His eyes are worried. You grin at him. “Sorry, what was that, honey?”
He furrows his brows. “I asked what you wanted to drink, angel.”
Your mouth opens, then closes again. “Um,” you bite your lip, looking around the table at everyone’s drinks. Your eyes land on Garcia’s. “Penelope?” you prompt, and her head snaps over to you.
“Yeah?” She looks happy, a little buzzed.
“What’re you drinking?” you ask, nodding at her glass.
She grins widely. “Oh, sweetness,” she stands, holding out a hand for you. “Only the most delicious frozen strawberry daiquiri you’ll ever have! Come on,” she wiggles her fingers at you. “I’m due for a refill anyway, let’s go!”
You blink at her before taking her hand; it’s soft, and she closes it around yours in a way that feels so warm, so comforting. You barely get off the bench before she’s practically dragging you towards the bar.
She orders two frozen strawberry daiquiris, giving the bartender a flirty wink and an “extra pink, thanks, babe!”, before turning to you. “Oh my god, I need to know,” she says, gripping your shoulders like a lifeline. “How long have you and Einstein been together?”
You blink. “Um,” you furrow your brows. “Like, two-ish months, I think?”
Her face blanches, and suddenly, everything feels too fast, too sudden, like it’s the wrong answer, even though it’s not. You swallow your paranoia. “Spencer could probably tell you, like, the actual day, if you ask him. He’s really good with that stuff,” you add on, your voice low, a shy, proud little smile curling at your lips. He really is good with that stuff. Remembering the important things. Even something as simple as your favourite takeout place or the way you take your tea.
She pouts at you, her eyes softening, like she’s trying to make sense of what she’s hearing. It’s almost like she’s worried for you, like she feels sorry for you, but you can’t quite figure out why. “Oh, honey,” she sighs, collecting you into a hug you’re too confused to return. “I’m so sorry.” Her arms are too tight, too warm around you. You just stand there, stiff and unsure why everything feels so off.
Your brows furrow. “What do you mean, sorry?” you frown, your stomach doing a nervous little flip. “Everything’s been great. Spencer’s, like, sunshine in human form,” you try to laugh, but it comes out quiet, timid.
She sighs heavily, like she’s carrying a too-heavy weight on her shoulders, and then looks at you like she’s afraid to ask. “But… you don’t think this is, like, really soon?” She furrows her brows softly. “He doesn’t think so?”
You shake your head, confusion knitting your brows. You pull away from her grasp gently, suddenly feeling exposed in a way you didn’t before. “Penelope, what do you mean? Why would it be too soon?” You cross your arms over your chest, vulnerability eating at you. “Like… like me meeting you guys? ‘Cause I was worried about that, ‘cause it felt like, really early. But Spence said it was okay, ‘cause… like, I already have a key to his place, and I’m there, like, all the time, so—”
Penelope’s gasp is so sharp, so dramatic, that she covers her mouth with both hands in complete shock. “Oh. My. God!” Her eyes are nearly as wide as the frames of her glasses. “No- You- What?! You have a key? To his apartment?”
You nod slowly, and for some reason, you can’t shake the feeling that you’re saying the wrong thing. “Yeah? He gave it to me, like, a week or so ago,” you add, hoping it doesn’t sound as bad as you’re starting to feel it is.
And Penelope? Oh. She shifts like ice in the Arctic. Cold and imposing. You don’t think she even catches it, but she’s looking at you like you’re the villain in a story you didn’t even know existed. “That’s… so soon, sweetness.” Her eyes soften only slightly, and there’s a sympathetic lilt to her voice that feels less inviting and more pitiful. “What about Maeve?”
And you pause. Blink at her a couple of times, unsure if you’re dreaming, the weight of her words pressing on your chest. She stares at you, awaiting an answer. One you don’t have. “I-” you hesitate, like the words are too heavy to lift from your throat. “Who’s Maeve?”
Penelope frowns, her nose going red as though she can’t bear to see you confused. “Oh, honey,” she sighs, pulling you into her arms again, like she’s trying to shield you from the pain of her words. “Maeve was,” she starts, then pauses. “I feel like Reid- Spencer, should be the one to tell you.” She shakes her head, her lips pressing into a thin line. She pulls away from the hug, her hands still lingering on your arms.
You keep a trembling hand on her wrist. “Clearly, he never told me anything. Who’s Maeve?” you ask again, the lump in your throat making it hard to speak. “Is he-... Is he seeing someone else?”
You don’t want to be the fool again. Not again, not with Spencer. You swore he was different.
Penelope shakes her head, her arms smoothing over your shoulders in a calming motion. It doesn’t work. “No, no. Not at all, honey,” she whispers softly. She’s so… soft with you now. Her hands caress your shoulders like a mother comforting a child, explaining something you can hardly understand. “Maeve was Spencer’s girlfriend. They dated for, like, almost a year,” Penelope adds quietly, like she’s treading carefully around a wound that’s still raw.
That gives you pause. A year? That’s… serious. You feel the weight of its importance, like you’re not measuring up somehow. But Spencer’s not required to tell you about all of his past relationships, right? You know you haven't told him about yours, either.
But then Penelope sighs. “She died four months ago.” And the world goes still. You freeze, like the air’s been sucked right oout of your lungs. “She was kidnapped by her stalker, and she got shot. Right,” she pauses, swallowing hard. Her voice cracks as she continues, like she’s holding back her own pain. “Right in front of Spencer.”
And it’s there. A slow death, you can feel it creeping up on you. Your heart starts to melt against your ribs like thick, sticky honey. It burns you from the inside out, like acid; hot and relentless. “So,” your voice trembles, barely above a whisper. “So… I’m what?” You look into Penelope’s eyes, searing desperately for something to hold on to, but all you see is a deep, profound sadness. “I’m, like, a rebound?”
You wait. Penelope is silent. Her lips part, like there’s something she wants to say, to comfort you, to tell you no, he really loves you, but… She doesn’t. And when you see the minuscule shake of her head, you break.
You shatter like glass, like crystal. Like you’re fragmented in tiny shards scattered across the sticky bar floor, and suddenly, Porter’s is too bright. Too loud. Too much.
The sob escapes you before you can stop it, crawling up your throat and across your tongue like bile. You cover your mouth with your hand, tears freely spilling down your cheeks relentlessly.
Penelope’s lip wobbles as she watches you push past her and run down the back hall, before hearing the slam of the ladies’ room door.
She stands there, still and frozen.
What did she just do…?
Her gaze slowly moves to the table. Nobody has turned around, nobody has noticed a thing. Spencer’s laughing at something JJ says, and the guilt gnaws at Penelope like a plague.
You stumble into the bathroom like a storm, leaning your back against the door like you can hardly hold yourself up on your own, your legs shaky and trembling like a fawn taking her first steps.
The bathroom lights are harsh, fluorescent, and unforgiving. You catch sight of yourself in the mirror and recoil like you’ve seen a ghost. Your mascara is smeared down your cheeks, bleeding down to your jaw, inked like grief itself has manifested onto your skin.
Your lipgloss is mostly gone—just a faint shimmer clinging to the dip of your cupid’s bow, like it’s trying to hold on for you.
You can’t help the way you begin to sway, dizzy as your knees nearly buckle in your heels. You grip the sink like it might hold you upright, like you’re not actively falling apart. But the second you meet your own eyes again, something inside you cracks.
You can’t look at yourself.
You can’t look at her—the girl stupid enough to think she was someone’s forever, not just a placeholder for a ghost.
You stumble into a stall and lock the door behind you, the click too loud in this stifling silence. You sit down hard on the toilet lid, burying your face in your hands as the sobs come back with a vengeance.
You feel like a fool. You’d really thought Spencer was different.
You wish he was here.
You wish he wasn’t.
Penelope shudders a breath, wobbling back to the table with two frozen strawberry daiquiris in hand. Her smile is long gone, her face pale and blotchy and tear-stained. Her eyes are red behind her glasses.
She sets the glasses down on the table like she doesn’t know what else to do with her hands.
JJ’s brows knit together. “Garcia?” She leans forward from her seat. “Are you okay?”
But Spencer’s looking over his shoulder, eyes darting around for you. He’s already standing when he notes your absence, like a string inside him has been pulled too tight, too restrictive, too wrong. “Garcia?” he asks, his voice shaky and low. “Where is she? What happened?”
Penelope’s lip wobbles. She wrings her fingers together, avoiding his eyes. “I didn’t mean to,” she whispers. “I swear, I didn’t mean to—I just, I thought she knew, I thought you told her, and I—Spencer, I’m so sorry—”
Spencer’s heart drops to his gut. His mouth goes dry. “Told her what?” Penelope doesn’t answer. He takes a step closer, his throat going tight, his voice sharper now. “Penelope, what did you say?”
Her silence says everything. Her guilt fills the blanks. She shakes her head weakly at him, her hands coming up, her mouth opening and closing like she doesn’t know what to say. She sniffles.
Spencer’s eyes go wide. “Penelope,” he breathes out, horrified. His irises dart around her face. “What did you say to her?”
Penelope’s mouth opens, closes, opens again. No words come out. Her face crumbles as she looks at the man in front of her. Her own words play back in her head, your reaction playing like a film sheet behind her eyes. She collapses next to Morgan on the bench, tucking herself into the booth. “Bathroom,” she mutters softly, like a confession. Like it hurts.
Her glasses come off in one swift, clumsy motion as she covers her face with both hands. She’s wiping her tears, covering her guilt, trying to hide from the shame of what she’s done.
Spencer’s gone before anyone can even fully comprehend what’s just happened.
He doesn’t walk, he runs, tearing through the bar like it’s life or death, like he might already be too late. His heart’s in his throat, hammering loud against his ribs, and he doesn’t care who sees, doesn’t care how crazy he must look.
He just needs to find you. Needs to explain, to defend, to apologize.
Maeve’s ghost hovers over his shoulder like a curse.
There’s an incessant banging at the door to the bathroom.
You think it must be him—who else would knock on the door to a public restroom?
You do all you can to ignore it; you cover your ears, tucking your face as far into your lap as you can. Try to block it out. Block him out.
But then the door opens, and frazzled footsteps rush into the bathroom until they stop in front of the locked door of your stall. You can see his brown oxfords standing in front of the door. “Angel,” he whispers, slightly out of breath. “Please open the door… please?”
You inhale shakily, holding your hands tighter over your ears. You don’t want to hear him, his excuses, his lies.
“Go away,” you murmur, tears coating your voice, your throat clenching tight. “I don’t want to see you.”
Spencer sighs, crouching in front of the door. “Sweetheart, let me in, please. I don’t know what Garcia told you,” he knows it’s a lie. “But you have to believe me. I want you. Only you. I swear it.”
You shake your head. “I don’t want to hear more lies, Spencer.” You swallow a sob. “I know about Maeve.”
Spencer’s heart stops in his chest. “It- It’s not what you think,” he tries, his voice thick with tears he feebly attempts to hold back. But then you sniffle harshly, from under the door he sees you stand, planting your heels on the tile. He stays crouching, swiping at his red-rimmed eyes.
You open the door just a crack, eyes catching sight of his lowered form. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Your voice is quiet, pained, tight. Spencer raises his head, meets your eyes. You look ruined. Makeup smeared, eyes red and puffy, lips bitten red and swollen.
He hates that he’s made you look like this. He hates that he still thinks you look gorgeous. Like a tragedy, beautiful and broken and raw.
“I,” he hesitates, eyes never leaving yours. He swallows. “I’m sorry,” he sighs simply.
Your face crumples again, and Spencer’s brows knit tight. His eyes stay locked on the way you tuck your lip between your teeth to hold in a sob, like he’s never seen anything more beautiful than the way you fall apart. “You should’ve told me,” you whimper, sniffling. “It’s not fair, Spence.”
He flinches at the crack in your voice. He bows his head. “I know,” he murmurs. “I know I should’ve, I’m so sorry, angel.” He can’t help the way he leans forward, just enough to rest his forehead against the softness of your tummy.
Your hand cards through his hair like you don’t hate him, like you never could, and it breaks you even more. This was a betrayal. You can’t forget that, even if the softness of his curls feels like home between your fingers. “Was I just a rebound for you?”
Your question is broken, tearful, and your chest stutters with a breath. Spencer’s head lifts slowly from your middle. He swallows. “No,” he breathes out, the word like acid on his tongue. His eyes are slow to meet your gaze. “No, angel. Never.”
Your eyes close, a shaky exhale exiting your nose as you purse your lips. “Then why didn’t you tell me?” You remove your hand from his hair, crossing your arms over your chest.
You’re closing off. Spencer stands from his crouch, his left knee clicking as it extends. He wrings his hands to prevent himself from reaching out for you. “I should’ve.”
You just shake your head, lifting your chin to eye him steadily. “I asked why, Spencer. Why didn’t you tell me about her if I wasn’t a rebound, a replacement?”
He swallows, his tongue darting out to wet his lower lip. “I don’t know. I think I was still…” he shrugs meekly. “Hurting, I guess.”
Your arms fall to your sides. “I could’ve helped you.”
Spencer lowers his head, shaking it roughly. “No, you couldn’t.” His eyes squeeze shut. He swears there’s a cold spot on the centre of his back, like someone’s staring into him, through him. He tries desperately to ignore her presence. “I never really dealt with it, I just wanted to move on. And,” he raises his head again, his eyes pained as he looks at you. “I did. I started to. With you.”
He reaches out his arm, his shaky hand settling softly on your elbow. You sigh, setting your gaze to the floor, but you don’t pull away from him. Spencer thinks it’s a small win. He tests the waters by taking a small step closer, invading your space, and his heart thrums in his chest when you let him.
You can’t hold it back. You want to hate him. You want to hurt him, like he’s hurt you. You thought you’d finally found it, your forever, the man who would treat you like you’re something worthy of love, of respect, of kindness. Who doesn’t criticize your curiosity, but who lets it thrive, who answers your questions softly, with reverence in his voice, with love in the way he holds you.
You thought he was different. You really did. But you think it’s fitting, really. To still love him, even now, even after he’s shattered your heart in your chest, even after he’s killed you from the inside out.
You collapse into his chest, and Spencer doesn’t hesitate before wrapping his arms around you, holding you tightly, like he’s holding your very form together. Like if he so much as loosens his grip, you’ll break apart into tiny pieces on this dirty bathroom floor.
His lips go to your hair, his hand cradling the back of your head. He can feel the way the sobs wrack through your body, the way they shake against him, your form trembling as you fist the fabric of his cardigan, needing something to keep you grounded in reality—to keep you out of your head.
“I thought you were different,” you sob, broken and pained and whimpering into his shoulder. Spencer freezes. “I thought you wouldn’t hurt me. Not like them, not like before.”
He opens his mouth, but he can’t find the words. How does he respond to that? To your wailing of grief, of betrayal? Of admitting you’d believed in magic just to find out it was all sleight of hand? How does he acknowledge being the source of your pain, of hurting you so wholly that your knees buckle under the weight of it?
He doesn’t know. So he just holds you impossibly tighter, rocking your trembling form in his arms as he tries to find some way to fix this mess he’s caused.
You’re silent for too long. No longer sobbing, just quiet sniffling as you bury your head in Spencer’s chest, no doubt staining his cardigan with your makeup. He doesn’t care.
You pull back slightly, hands still fisted in the fabric. “I want to go home.” Your voice is quiet, raspy, like your throat itself is protesting you talking to him.
Spencer nods, petting your hair down softly. “Okay,” he whispers back. His gaze catches yours before you lower your eyes to his chest again, your hand instinctively going to wipe at the smudge of mascara. Your brow furrows, and your eyes fill with tears again as your thumb rubs at the stain, just to smear it around. Spencer gently wraps his hand around your wrist, and your eyes snap up to meet his. “It’s okay,” he nods softly. “Please don’t worry about it, angel.”
You sniffle again before pulling away, wrapping your arms around yourself. “I want to go home, Spence,” you murmur again. He nods, holding a hand out for you.
You don't take it, don't even look at it, averting your gaze to the floor again.
Spencer sighs, blinking away tears before he’s opening the door to the bathroom, and following you out.
He doesn’t touch you, even though his hand is hovering over your back, your head down as you stand by the front door. Spencer swallows roughly, grabbing his bag off the bench of the booth, avoiding the eyes of his team, who watch him silently.
Hotch’s eyes stay steady on the black stain on the front of Spencer’s cardigan, Garcia’s still got her hands on her face, and JJ is looking at you; small and feeble and shy, and still shaking with tears as you wait for Spencer. He holds the door open for you, whispers something to you as you both exit, and JJ heaves a sigh, taking a gulp of her drink. She and Blake share a look.
The back of the cab is quiet. Uncomfortable, stifling, suffocating silence. You’re seated on opposite ends of the backseat, Spencer’s eyes on you, your gaze out the window.
When the driver pulls up to Spencer’s apartment block, your brows furrow, your eyes going to Spencer, who’s already climbing out the door and opening yours. “I said home, Spencer,” you frown, ignoring his hand. “I don’t want to be here. I want to go home.”
Spencer flinches. “Please, angel. Just for tonight? So we can talk?”
You heave a sigh, glaring at him as you slap away his hand, stepping out of the yellow car and walking past him and into the building.
Spencer exhales, his hands wringing tightly on the strap of his messenger bag before following you up the stairs. You’ve already unlocked the door with your key and slumped onto his couch, sniffling as you lean down to take off your heels.
He doesn’t bother removing his bag from his shoulder, just closes and locks the door before rounding the couch and sitting on the coffee table, gently taking your foot and tucking it into his lap. His fingers undo the strap around your ankle, his hands slow as they pull off the offending shoe. He does the same for the other foot, then stands, picking up your heels as he heads back to the entrance to place them down beside his beat-up old converse.
Spencer hangs up his messenger bag, toes off his oxfords, and looks over at you.
You’re curled up on the couch, tucked into the corner, arms around your knees. Your gaze is fixed on one of his bookshelves, brows furrowed, lips pressed tightly together. Like you’re trying to understand something, trying to solve a puzzle he can’t see.
Spencer slowly makes his way over, sits cautiously beside you, his eyes following yours to the shelf. He doesn’t know if the book you’re staring at is the one his eyes are drawn to immediately, but he tears his gaze away like it’s burned him.
The Narrative of John Smith sits like a ghost on his shelf, its very presence mocking what Spencer’s tried so hard to build with you.
“I don’t know how to get over this,” you mutter softly.
Spencer looks up at you to find your eyes already on him. You shake your head gently, like the small motion of it is just too much. “I don’t know how to move on, now.”
He swallows, tucking his feet up under his legs. “I know.” His hands wring in his lap. “I don’t either. I just know that I want you.”
You scoff, avert your eyes. “If you did, you would’ve told me about her. Now you’ve just made me feel like an idiot,” you sigh. “Again.”
His lips turn, the corners of his mouth pulled into a pout. “Again?”
You sniffle again, shrugging. “I told you. I thought you were different. I thought,” you sigh, raising your head to stare at the ceiling. “I don’t know.”
Spencer tilts his head. “You say that a lot,” he notes. “‘I don’t know’. Like you’re afraid to say what you’re thinking. Like you’re expecting to be wrong, or dismissed. Or left,” he catches your eyes when your head snaps back to his. “And I hate that. I hate that someone taught you to apologize for existing, for being curious, for not knowing. And I…” he sighs, blinking at you, his expression soft and gentle and guilt-ridden. “I hate that I did that, too. To you.”
You swallow a sob, your eyes going wide.
Spencer scooches a little bit closer to you, just enough that your knees knock against his. “I should’ve told you about…” He tries to say her name. His tongue freezes, paralyzed.
“About Maeve,” you whisper. Spencer tries to hide his flinch, like hearing you say her name is wrong. Like the mixing of these two aspects of his life shouldn’t be happening.
He nods jerkily. “About Maeve,” he tries to ignore the way his voice catches on the word. “I’m sorry that I didn’t.”
You nod, tucking your lip between your teeth. “I know you are,” you glance sidelong at him. “I know.”
“I’m not.” Your voice is shockingly steady as you say it. You shrug when he looks at you. “If she didn’t, I don’t know how long it would’ve been before you did. Honestly, Spencer,” you turn to face him. “Would you have ever even told me?”
He wants to nod, to tell you he would’ve, but he swears he can see her brown hair in the corner of the room, stalking, watching, waiting. His mouth opens, but no words come out.
You wait. And then sigh heavily. “You’re not okay,” you murmur. “I can’t help you, you were right.”
And then you stand from the couch, head into his bedroom, and close the door.
Spencer hears rummaging, the sound of his drawers being opened and closed, then his shower starts, and he buries his face in his hands. Rubs his palms aggressively over his cheeks, pushing his hair away from his forehead.
He stands, peeling the cardigan off. He holds it out, his eyes locked on the black stain that’s, ironically enough, just over his heart. He exhales softly before putting it into the dirty laundry hamper in his bedroom. The bathroom door is closed, the sound of the shower muffled behind it.
He sighs. Drags his feet into the kitchen to start the kettle. His hands move on autopilot: setting the kettle onto the stove, the soft clanging of your mug and his being pulled out of the cupboard, just like always. He freezes when his fingers close around the handle of your pink strawberry mug. It looks like something Garcia would’ve picked out. Too bright, too bubbly, too you. His heart skips a beat.
You were right. God, you were right. He wouldn’t have said anything; not now, maybe not ever. He would’ve stayed silent, keeping you blissfully unaware. You would’ve never found out about Maeve had Garcia not told you anything. The guilt eats at him, gnawing on his chest like a disease, spreading through his ribs like rot.
His hands tremble as he sets it down on the counter beside his. The ceramic clinks too loudly in the silence. He rocks his head back and forth, like he can shake the memories out.
When he opens his eyes, he swears she’s there. Just there, at the edge of his vision, he catches a glimpse of her sweater. He pours the water from the kettle into your mug. It’s all he can do to stop himself from shouting at a ghost.
She haunts these walls—ones she’s never once stepped into. It drives him mad.
Spencer’s sitting on the couch with his hands in his lap and his head bowed when you re-enter the room.
He looks up as the couch dips beneath your weight. You settle in the opposite corner, as far as you can be while still sharing the same space. Spencer clears his throat, rubs his palms nervously over the tops of his thighs. “I made you tea,” he whispers.
You blink. Your strawberry mug sits neatly on an orange slice coaster. He reaches for his, and you see the grapefruit one under it. Your throat goes tight again.
You don’t want to cry again. You refuse to.
You sigh. “I didn’t really want any tea.” Your lips press together as you curl further into your corner. “But thanks anyway.”
Spencer flinches. It’s barely noticeable, just a twitch. But of course you catch it. There’s nothing about this man you don’t notice.
Or so you thought.
Because now he’s staring at you.
Or, not quite; he’s staring through you.
You swallow hard. How many times has this happened before without you noticing? Without knowing he was haunted? Broken? Grieving someone you never knew existed. Mourning the woman you replaced.
You avert your gaze again. You can’t keep looking at your boyfriend while he stares through you, at the woman he lost. “Spencer,” you say, quiet yet sharp. It snaps him out of his trance.
His eyes dart to the side of your face. His brows pull together, unsure, almost pleading. He swallows roughly. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, setting his mug down. “You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to,” he chews on his lip, shrugging. “I just… I thought you might want it. Like…” he trails off.
You know what he was going to say, anyway. Like every other night. Like routine. But if he thinks you’re about to cuddle up to him while he reads to you, he’s sorely mistaken.
But then you look at him. Just once. And he looks so broken, you can’t bring yourself to say it.
So you stand, slowly, achingly, like just leaving him there is enough to hurt. “I’m tired,” you mutter softly. Spencer’s eyes track your movement. He untucks a leg, like he’s about to follow you like some lost, desperate puppy. You hold up a hand. “I’d like to be alone for a bit. You brought me here,” you can’t help the narrowing of your eyes. “The least you could do is let me have that.”
Spencer gulps, sinks back into the couch with a jerky nod. “Of course,” he whispers. He doesn’t look away, not even when his bedroom door clicks shut behind you.
He turns back around, squeezing his eyes shut. He scrubs at his cheeks, as if trying to wipe the grief and guilt from his skin itself.
There’s rustling behind the door. Spencer pictures you crawling into his bed. He wonders if you’re cuddling his pillow, like you always do when he leaves for work in the morning.
Then he figures you’ve probably thrown it off the bed. The thought tugs harshly at his chest.
He sighs, pulling the throw blanket off the back of the couch and wraps it around his shoulders. He sits in silence, his mind running too loud, too fast, for even him to keep up.
There’s a chill to his left. He doesn’t open his eyes. Doesn’t want to face the visible manifestation of his guilt, his grief.
Spencer doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there. The tea cools in both mugs; the steam rising and fading, like breathing out a ghost. His apartment is too quiet. Too silent to have you just in the next room. Too quiet for a mind like his. It feels wrong. Suffocating. Smothering. His lungs ache like he’s drowning in it.
It’s been hours. Two cups of lavender tea, three hours lost in casefiles and novels and poetry, and none of it has helped him sleep. It hurts even more when he realizes it’s because you’re not there beside him.
Spencer stands with a quiet groan, dragging himself to his bookshelf. He stares at it, needing something else. Anything to get him to sleep, anything to quiet his thoughts, even if just for a moment.
He doesn’t mean for his eyes to go to it. Doesn’t even realize his hand’s already reaching, already pulling it off the shelf. His mind doesn’t catch up to reality until Spencer’s already sitting on the couch with The Narrative of John Smith open on his lap. Maeve’s handwriting stares back at him from the first page.
“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone—we find it with another.”
The tears come before he even realizes he’s crying.
Spencer’s vision comes back slowly, like waking from a dream, walking out of a fog, seeing past the haze. He blinks, looking down at the book in his hands. He sets it down on the coffee table—careful, like it burns to so much as hold it.
He gulps. Two books sit side-by-side. Two mugs, four coasters.
He sighs, lying back on the couch. He listens, but the bedroom stays silent.
You wake early. So early that not even the sun is up, the birds aren’t even singing, and the stars are still twinkling in the darkness. You lie on your back, staring at the ceiling in silence. It’s so quiet here, the only sound is the crickets chirping softly outside the window.
You sit up, heaving your legs over the side of his bed with a heavy sigh. This room… you’ll miss it. It’s warm, comfortable. Smells like old books and clean linen and him.
Spencer.
Just the thought of him has you holding back tears again.
You shake your head, trying to push away your impending grief, and stand slowly. You open the drawer he’s dedicated to you, your hands trembling as you dress yourself. You avoid your reflection as you take the rest of your clothing out of the drawer and shove it into your bag. You grab your toothbrush and your makeup bag.
And you take one mismatched set of socks from his drawer.
You’re slow, quiet, as you creak open the bedroom door, your bag slung over your shoulder. You peek over to the couch. Spencer’s stretched out, long limbs draping over the armrest. His brow is pinched, mouth slightly agape, but he’s asleep.
You exhale a sigh of relief. Your eyes catch sight of the coasters—your coasters. Bright, vibrant, fruit slice circles of ceramic. They still look out of place. Still don’t belong here.
You can’t bring yourself to take them with you. They brighten up this warm, cozy space, this place that they just don’t fit in. You’ve related to them since you brought them over.
Oh well.
Spencer can decide what to do with them. You try to ignore the stinging in your chest when you imagine him throwing them out.
With a reluctant turn, you silently slip on your shoes, tug on your jacket, and sling your purse over your shoulder beside your bag.
You don’t leave a note. You wouldn’t know what to say.
You exhale as you crack the front door open quietly, allowing yourself just one last glance around the apartment.
You’ll miss it.
You close the door gently behind you, careful not to let it click. Your hands shake as you lock it, fingers trembling as you remove the key from your keyring. You slide it under the door. It catches on the floorboard for a second, then disappears into his apartment. Like it never belonged to you in the first place.
Your fingers go to the tiny pink gemstone on your neck. You tug at it gently. Rest your fingertips over the chain in something not unlike reverence, before lowering your hand.
You straighten your shoulders. You don’t look back.
Spencer wakes sluggishly. Like his body’s not quite his, his limbs tired and heavy. When he finally manages to sit up, he blinks the sleep out of his eyes. The door to his bedroom is open; he can see his bed made neatly. Too neatly.
He glances to the kitchen, expecting to see you standing at the counter, humming, pouring coffee into your favourite mug and smiling over at him, like you always do, every morning. But it’s empty.
Spencer’s brow furrows, knitting together tightly. He calls your name, soft, then louder. His voice shakes.
He rises slowly, like lost in a dream, his gaze drifting to the door.
Your shoes are gone, leaving his beat-up old converse and scuffed oxfords alone by the door. Your jacket’s not hung up beside his on the hooks. Your purse is missing from where you always hung it in front of his messenger bag.
Spencer rounds the couch, his hands trembling, panic rearing its ugly head, fear clawing at his chest. “Angel?” he tries again, his voice softer now. “Sweetheart, please… please answer me,” he whimpers, his throat going tight.
His gaze drifts down to the floor, like he’s hoping, just for a moment, that he’s wrong. That his peripheral was lying to him.
It shines, like some cruel joke, where it rests on the hardwood, the first rays of dawn catching it.
The spare key. The one he gave you. The one he thought meant home.
It gleams from the floor, tossed carelessly, just in front of the front door, like you’d locked it and slid it under the threshold when you’d left.
Left.
He doesn’t even know when you left. Doesn’t know if it was hours ago or mere minutes, but the air still feels thick with your absence.
Spencer stumbles, almost collapsing to the floor beside that key. The key to his home. To his heart. The key you’d left behind.
He staggers back to the couch, eyes hollow, locking onto the coffee table. Your coasters. And your mug. Just… sitting there.
You’d left them.
He swallows his sobs, choking on the grief that’s clawing its way up his throat. They look so bright. Too bright. Out of place here, in the dim silence of his apartment. You were, too. You brought a brightness to this warm, cozy place. One he didn’t know he needed until you’d taken it away. Like the sun setting, sinking slowly beneath the horizon, leaving nothing but a cold darkness in its wake. An emptiness he can’t escape.
Spencer reaches for the book left beside them. Flips it open to page 639 like muscle memory.
The Cyrillic stares back at him. He can hardly make it out through the tears clouding his vision. His voice cracks as he forces the quote out—the one he had meant to read to you just last night—his memory carrying him.
“I can't say it in a more orderly and comprehensible way. I love you wildly, insanely, infinitely.”
He breaks down into a lump of broken sobs on his couch, clutching the red leather-bound novel to his chest like it’s the only thing holding him together.
This is it. Doctor Zhivago, bright fruit slice coasters, and a strawberry mug. It’s all he has left of you, when he never thought he’d have to face the reality of life without you again.
Your absence chokes him like a vice.
The air turns frigid; Spencer feels like he’s wrapped in a sudden chill, like the warmth that was in his chest is being stolen from his soul itself.
He won’t open his eyes—refuses to. He won’t face this ghost that haunts him, keeps him broken, that pushed you away. He can’t look at her brown hair and warm sweater and blood on her cheek.
He just hugs the novel closer to his chest and mourns once more, wailing his grief into the air like pain personified is being ripped from his chest, leaving him hollow, empty, alone.
summary : when jason’s brothers start digging into the quiet, hidden love he kept before his death, they uncover far more than any of them expected. and once they know, jason can’t help but learn the truth too. now he has to face the reality that his death didn’t just take him from you, it took him from the daughter he never knew he had.
author’s note : i love this trope with jason sm and i see it quite often so i wanted to do my own take on it. i really got carried away writing this if you couldn’t tell. some more parts mayyy be in the works if you guys like it. i didn’t proofread sawry but i don’t have the time to reread 12k words over and over again unforch.
Jason Todd isn’t selfish.
At least, that’s what he tells himself as he looks down at the worn-out polaroid in his hand. Most people in his position, not that many die and come back from the dead, would’ve gone straight to the girl wrapped around Jason in the photo after returning to Gotham. But not him, not in a state as broken and hollow as he is now.
You’re probably better off, he thinks. Surely you’ve moved on, found bigger things in life to hold onto. You were only fifteen after all, though that factor hasn’t stopped Jason from thinking of you with a persistence that matches the beat of his heart. But that’s him, with all his scarring and quiet ache. Not you, sweet and steady you, who could calm even the fiercest storm.
But Jason is something worse than a storm now.
He tells himself that staying away is mercy. You don’t need to see what he’s become, what’s left of the boy who used to walk you home after school, his fingers brushing yours just to feel alive. You loved a boy who believed in second chances, in doing good. What stands in his place now doesn’t even believe in redemption, only in revenge that feels too much like breathing.
Sometimes he catches himself walking near your old neighborhood during patrol. The streets haven’t changed much. The same flickering lamppost on the corner. The same cracked pavement where you once tripped and he caught you, laughing. The memory hits too hard. He tells himself he’s just checking in, making sure you’re safe, but even he doesn’t believe that lie anymore.
He wonders if you still keep that soft, faraway look when you’re thinking. If you still write poems in the margins of notebooks or hum songs without realizing it. He tells himself that it doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. But there’s a part of him—quiet, stubborn, human—that still aches to know.
And when he dreams, it’s always the same. The sound of your laughter. The light in your eyes when you used to say his name. And then the silence that follows, the kind that only the dead can understand.
“What are you doing?”
Jason whips his head around at the voice, muscles tensing as if he’s been caught committing a crime. The polaroid in his hand glints faintly under the cave lights before he shoves it halfway into his pocket. Damian stands just behind him, arms folded, brow furrowed in that permanent mix of irritation and suspicion.
“Patrol starts in five,” Damian says after a pause, his tone sharp and precise. He sounds older than he looks, every word heavy with command.
“Yeah, sorry,” Jason mutters, his voice uncharacteristically soft. His usual edge is gone, replaced with something quieter, maybe nerves, maybe guilt. He doesn’t look at Damian, doesn’t offer his usual sarcasm or smirk.
Damian’s gaze drops toward his pocket, catching a glimpse of the corner of the photo. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” Jason says quickly. Too quickly. “Mind your own business, kid.”
He grabs his helmet and stalks toward his bike, the movement too sharp, too rehearsed. Before Damian can ask another question, the engine roars to life, echoing off the stone walls of the cave. By the time the sound fades, Jason is gone, leaving the air smelling faintly of exhaust and something unspoken.
Damian glances around the space where Jason had been standing. Something small rests on the edge of the workbench. The photo.
He hesitates only a moment before picking it up. It’s old, the corners creased and soft. A younger Jason, maybe fifteen, smiling wide beside a girl his age. She’s bright-eyed, laughing at something behind the camera. Damian studies the image longer than he means to, struck by how open Jason looks. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen that version of him.
Curiosity pulls him deeper into the cave. The computer hums to life under his fingertips, the screen filling with layers of search prompts. He uploads the image, isolates the girl’s face, and runs it through the facial recognition system.
The search takes a few minutes. While he waits, Damian leans back, studying the picture again. The girl’s smile is so real it almost feels like she’s still laughing somewhere, still out there.
A soft beep breaks his thoughts. Results populate across the screen. Name, address, employment. She stayed in Gotham. No criminal record, no aliases. A normal life, at least on paper.
He clicks through her files one by one, reading the small, ordinary details. Then something catches his eye; a hospital record dated five years ago. Childbirth. The listed father’s name is blank.
He narrows his eyes, pulling the full medical document. The patient’s age, location, the date of birth — all of it lines up. He cross-references it with his family’s old files, timelines, mission logs.
Jason Todd’s official death certificate: Eight months before the child was born.
For a long moment, Damian just stares at the screen. The cave hums around him, low and distant. He glances at the photo again, at Jason’s younger face, bright and alive, then back to the data in front of him.
He’s so focused he doesn’t hear footsteps until a voice breaks the silence. “Whatchu looking at?”
Tim stands behind him, hair messy, one hand still holding a mug of coffee. He blinks at the computer screens, at the old photo Damian hasn’t hidden, and frowns. “That’s Jason, right? He looks young. Who’s the girl?”
Damian doesn’t answer. Instead, he brings up another window, layering records, piecing together the information faster now that he knows what to look for. “She had a child,” he says eventually, his voice quieter than usual. “Five years old. Born eight months after Todd’s death.”
Tim steps closer, leaning in and setting the mug down beside the keyboard. “You think the kid’s his.”
“I don’t think,” Damian replies, scrolling through the files. “I know.”
Tim leans forward, scanning the data himself. Medical records, school enrollment, archived birth certificate. The child’s last name matches the mother’s, no mention of a father. He looks closer at the child’s listed name.
First name: Elizabeth
Middle name: Todd
“Holy shit,” Tim murmurs.
They work in silence after that, every keystroke measured, methodical. Tim tracks down old addresses and cross-references them with known Red Hood sightings over the past few years. Damian pulls up archived city cameras, comparing timestamps and locations.
Tim’s voice is quieter when he says, “He doesn’t know.”
“No,” Damian replies, his expression unreadable. “He doesn’t.”
The two of them exchange a glance — not the usual tension, but something heavier. For once, neither has a quip ready.
Tim finally breaks the silence. “We can’t just tell Bruce.”
“Of course not,” Damian says. “Not now at least.”
Tim nods, rubbing the back of his neck. “So what do we do?”
“We find proof,” Damian says. “Irrefutable. And then we tell him ourselves.”
Tim lets out a long breath but doesn’t argue. He sits beside Damian and opens another database, his fingers moving in rhythm with the younger boy’s.
The hours slip by. Medical records confirm it again and again. The timelines overlap too perfectly to be coincidence. Jason Todd died, and eight months later, a child with his eyes was born.
When they finally stop, the evidence glows across the monitors in quiet, damning light.
Tim leans back, staring at it all. “He’s going to break when he finds out.”
“Maybe,” Damian says, folding his arms. “But he deserves to know.”
The cave settles into silence again, the hum of the computers steady and constant. Outside, rain starts to fall against the surface world. Steady, cold, relentless.
And somewhere in that rain, Jason Todd rides through the city unaware that two of his brothers are sitting beneath it, staring at the truth that’s about to change everything.
“That tickles!”
Lizzie’s laughter rings through the bedroom, bright and unrestrained, as you try to run the brush through her damp curls. She wiggles away from your hand, kicking her legs under the blankets, water still clinging to her lashes. Her cheeks are flushed, eyes sparkling like the day hasn’t ended yet.
“Baby, you need to calm down,” you say through your own laugh, though your voice comes out more fond than stern. You press a kiss to her temple and set the brush down, fingers still smelling faintly of her shampoo.
“I can’t, Mama,” she giggles, hopping off the bed to follow you into the bathroom. “It’s too early.”
“It’s nine o’clock,” you remind her, tossing the brush back into the drawer.
“Too early,” she insists, peering up at you with the kind of stubborn confidence that makes her look so much like him it hurts. “Can I sleep with you tonight?”
You sigh, half-exasperated, half-defeated. She always asks, and you always say yes. Because she clings to you like you’re the last solid thing in the world, and truth be told, on nights like this, you need her warmth just as much as she needs yours.
“Yeah, baby,” you murmur softly. “Go hop in bed, I’ll be there in a second.”
Lizzie grins, triumphant, and darts back into your room. You linger a little longer, washing your hands, staring at the reflection in the mirror. Tired eyes, a few stray ink stains from work still on your fingers, and that same small, wistful smile that always comes during this time of night.
When you walk back into the room, Lizzie’s already tucked under the blankets, surrounded by a pile of stuffed animals. In her lap is a worn, familiar hardcover. Pride and Prejudice. She hugs it to her chest like a treasure.
“Again?” you tease gently, sitting down beside her.
Lizzie grins, curls bouncing. “Duh,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Start where we left last time.”
You smile, a quiet warmth settling in your chest. “Fair enough.”
You sit down beside her, smoothing a wrinkle from the blanket as she presses the book into your hands. The spine is cracked from years of use, the edges soft from being thumbed through so many times. You find the folded corner that marks your place and open to chapter thirty-four. You begin to read, voice soft and rhythmic, the words filling the room like a lullaby.
“When they were gone, Elizabeth, as if intending to exasperate herself as much as possible against Mr. Darcy, chose for her employment the examination of all the letters which Jane had written to her since her being in Kent.”
The words are familiar, not just to you but to her too. She mouths some of them under her breath, pretending to read along, her lashes already fluttering with the first signs of sleep.
You pause once to glance at her. She’s resting her head on your arm now, eyes heavy, one hand clutching the edge of your sleeve. You smile faintly and keep reading, slower now, letting the story unfurl.
By the time you reach the end of the chapter, her breathing has evened out completely. Her lips part slightly as she drifts off, the faintest trace of a smile still on her face.
You close the book gently, running your thumb over the worn cover before setting it aside on the nightstand. The room smells faintly of lavender shampoo and rain from the open window.
You turn off the light and lie beside her, feeling her small body instinctively curl closer. Her curls brush against your chin, and you rest your hand against her back, tracing slow circles until your own breathing matches hers…
“This feels like an invasion of privacy.”
“It is,” Damian replies flatly, not even looking at Tim as he adjusts his position on the narrow rooftop ledge. His voice carries the infuriating calm that makes Tim want to shove him off it.
Below them, through the cracked curtains, the apartment is bathed in warm lamplight. They’ve been there for almost an hour now, watching in guilty silence as you brush your daughter’s hair, read to her, and eventually turn off the light. The two boys look more like burglars than detectives. Hoods up, crouched near your window, trying not to make a sound.
Tim exhales quietly, rubbing at his temple. “You know we said we’d tell Jason the next morning after we found her, right? Not stake out her apartment like a pair of creeps.”
“You said that,” Damian corrects, eyes never leaving the window. “I said we should confirm what we saw.”
Tim rolls his eyes. “Oh right, confirm it by stalking a single mom and her kid. Real noble of you, Robin.”
“Tt. You wanted to see her too.”
Tim doesn’t bother denying it. His throat feels tight at the thought. “Yeah, maybe I did. Just… not like this.”
The room below has gone dark now, the only light coming from the faint glow of the city bleeding through the curtains. Damian shifts slightly, the leather of his boots scuffing against the concrete.
“So what do we do?” Tim asks quietly. “We can’t keep this from him forever.”
Before Damian can respond, a voice behind them says, “So which one of you is going to explain why we’re looking through this random window?”
Both of them freeze. Damian’s hand twitches toward his katana before he recognizes the voice.
Dick Grayson stands a few feet behind them, arms folded, expression unreadable in the low light. His mask catches the faint reflection from a nearby streetlight, and he looks equal parts exhausted and unimpressed.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tim mutters under his breath.
“We can explain,” Damian says immediately, straightening his posture like he’s standing at attention.
“You better explain,” Dick says, stepping closer to the ledge and glancing down at the apartment below. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like the two of you are about three minutes away from a restraining order.”
Tim sighs, dragging a hand down his face. “Okay, but— listen, we didn’t mean for it to go this far. We found something, and then it just… spiraled.”
“Spiraled into felony-level surveillance?” Dick raises a brow. “That’s not a great look, guys.”
“Todd has a child,” Damian blurts out before Tim can stop him.
The words hang there for a moment, heavy and disbelieving. Dick blinks once. “What?”
Tim exhales. “We found records… medical, school, the whole thing. We double-checked everything. The timelines line up. She was born eight months after he died.”
Dick looks from one brother to the other, his expression softening as the words sink in. “You’re sure?”
“Completely,” Tim says quietly. “We saw them. Her and her mom.”
“Her name is Elizabeth,” Damian adds, almost defensively. “She’s five. She likes books and skipped senior kindergarten.”
Dick runs a hand through his hair, letting out a long, low breath. “Jesus.” He leans forward slightly, peering through the window just enough to catch a glimpse of the dim room below, the faint outline of you curled beside a sleeping child.
“Does he know?” Dick asks after a moment.
Tim shakes his head. “Not yet. We wanted to be certain first.”
“And?”
“We are,” Tim says. “It’s her. It’s his.”
Dick stares down at the apartment for a long while, the faintest smile ghosting at the edge of his mouth before a look of worry takes over. “He’s going to lose it when he finds out,” he whispers.
“Yeah,” Tim agrees, his tone bittersweet. “But… maybe not in a bad way.”
The three of them stand there in silence for a moment, the sounds of Gotham humming low beneath them. Distant sirens, the rattle of the wind, the faint echo of the city carrying on.
Then Dick straightens, clapping a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “Come on,” he says. “We’ll tell him tomorrow. All of us.”
Damian nods, glancing one last time through the window before turning away. “He deserves to know.”
Tim lingers a moment longer, watching the faint glow behind the curtains, the shadow of the woman and child asleep inside. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “He does.”
And as they disappear into the night, the city stretches out below them — endless, sprawling, alive, unaware that one small apartment has already changed everything.
The morning light creeps in through the blinds like it’s testing Jason’s patience. He groans, rolling onto his back and staring at the cracked ceiling for a while before deciding to move. His alarm never went off. Or maybe he turned it off in his sleep again. Either way, the sound of Gotham outside feels a little too loud for the early hour.
He drags himself through the motions. Shower, toothbrush, dark jeans, worn jacket. The mirror fogs up while he runs a hand through his damp hair, the smell of cheap coffee grounds already drifting from the kitchen. Routine keeps him steady, the predictability of it.
He burns the toast. Again.
“Figures,” he mutters, scraping the black edges off with a knife that’s seen better days.
His phone buzzes. Roy’s name flashes on the screen. He ignores it. Then a message from Dick, something short like “You coming by the manor today?” followed by a smiley face emoji.
He frowns. Dick doesn’t usually text before noon.
Still, he goes. He tells himself it’s because Alfred probably made something worth the trip, not because part of him misses the noise of the manor.
The drive’s quiet. Gotham’s skies hang low and gray, the sort of morning that smells like rain but never delivers. The gates swing open automatically when he pulls up, and the manor looms above him, too big, too familiar.
Inside, it’s the same as ever. Spotless. Quiet except for the faint clink of dishes from the kitchen.
Tim’s in the dining room when he walks in, sitting with a newspaper that he’s definitely not reading. The paper’s upside down, for one.
“Morning,” Jason says.
Tim startles slightly, straightening the paper like that’ll hide it. “Hey,” he says, smiling too quickly.
Across from him, Damian’s hunched over a sketchbook, though his pencil hasn’t moved in the last two minutes. He doesn’t look up.
“You two look… normal,” Jason says, drawing the word out as he pours himself coffee.
“We are normal,” Tim says immediately.
Damian grunts. “Speak for yourself.”
Jason hums, leaning back against the counter. He takes a slow sip of his coffee, watching them like someone waiting for a punchline.
Something’s off.
Tim’s voice is too even. Damian’s too quiet. Neither of them will meet his eyes.
“Where’s Dick?” Jason asks after a beat.
“In the cave,” Tim says. “Busy.”
“Busy with what?”
“Things.”
“Ah,” Jason nods, smirking. “Things. Very specific.”
Tim clears his throat and looks back at the paper, pretending to read about stocks or politics or whatever the upside-down headline says. Damian shifts in his seat, his expression calm in that fake way he gets when he’s hiding something.
The silence stretches, heavy and strange.
Finally, Jason pushes off the counter and grabs a piece of toast from the plate on the table. “You two are terrible liars,” he says easily, half a grin tugging at his mouth. “Whatever you broke, it’s not my problem.”
Tim forces a laugh that sounds way too bright. “We didn’t break anything.”
Damian rolls his eyes. “Stop talking.”
“You stop talking.”
“No, you—”
“What did I say about bickering in the dining room?” Alfred’s voice cuts through the air as he steps in, carrying a tray of coffee refills.
They both shut up instantly.
Alfred sets the tray down, offering Jason a polite nod. “Good morning, Master Jason. Lovely to see you joining us.”
“Yeah, well,” Jason says, shrugging, “couldn’t pass up the chance to see Gotham’s most awkward breakfast club.”
Tim hides a nervous smile behind his mug. Damian pretends not to hear.
Alfred gives them all a look that could probably disarm a bomb, then turns to leave. “Eat while it’s still warm,” he says, and disappears down the hall.
Once he’s gone, the tension creeps back in.
Tim fidgets with the corner of the paper. Damian’s gaze flicks toward his brother, then away again. They’re both quiet — too quiet for them — and it’s starting to make Jason’s skin itch.
“Seriously,” he says finally, “what’s going on with you two?”
Tim’s head snaps up. “Nothing’s going on.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Really.”
“You’re acting weirder than usual, and that’s saying something.”
“We’re fine,” Damian insists, voice clipped.
“Sure you are,” Jason says, but his tone softens. He lets it go, mostly. There’s only so much weird he can handle before his second cup of coffee.
Still, as he sits down, he catches the brief look that passes between them — a flicker of something unspoken. Guilt, maybe. Or nerves.
Whatever it is, it’s about him. He can feel it.
And when Dick finally walks in a few minutes later, hair hanging to his forehead from the shower, smile too easy, both Tim and Damian straighten just a little too fast.
“Morning,” Dick says.
They echo the greeting in unison.
Jason squints at them over his mug. “What, you three rehearsing lines now?”
“Just being polite,” Dick says with that same practiced calm, but his eyes don’t quite meet Jason’s.
And that’s when it hits him. The subtle shift in their voices, the quiet glances, the way they move around him like something fragile’s about to crack.
Jason’s halfway through his second cup of coffee when Dick gives Tim a look across the table, all eyebrows and silent communication. Damian catches it too, and for once, doesn’t immediately roll his eyes. The three of them seem to share a collective breath, like they’ve silently agreed this is it.
“So, uh,” Tim starts, shifting in his seat. “There’s something we kind of need to tell you.”
Jason hums, not looking up from his plate. “If it’s about my stash in the garage, that’s not for you.”
“No, it’s not—” Tim pauses, realizing how that sounds. “Okay, it’s definitely not that.”
Dick leans forward slightly, resting his elbows on the table. “It’s… something important, Jay.”
There’s a tone in his voice that makes Jason finally glance up. The usual sarcasm drains a little, replaced by cautious curiosity. “Okay,” he says slowly. “Then what is it?”
Damian looks uncomfortable. That’s new. His posture’s too rigid, and he’s been staring at the same crumb on the table for the last minute like it might save him.
“It concerns your—” Damian begins.
But before he can finish, the sound of heavy footsteps fills the hallway.
Bruce walks in first, looking like he hasn’t slept in three days. Which, to be fair, he probably hasn’t. Duke trails behind him, scrolling through something on his phone, and Steph follows last, her hair pulled into a messy ponytail and her hoodie about three sizes too big.
“Morning, bitches,” Steph says brightly, grabbing a chair and spinning it around so she can straddle it backward. “Alfred said there’s bacon left. I call dibs.”
“Good morning,” Duke adds, smiling as he sits beside her. “You’re all up early.”
Bruce doesn’t say anything, just nods and heads straight for the coffee pot. The room fills with the quiet clink of the mug and the faint shuffle of movement.
Dick visibly deflates. Tim’s mouth opens, then closes again. Damian looks like someone just stole his sketchbook.
Bruce finally sits, stirring his coffee absently. “Alfred insisted.”
“Of course he did,” Tim mutters under his breath.
The conversation around the table drifts into something normal. Or at least as normal as it gets in the Wayne household. Steph teases Duke about his playlist, Damian complains about Cass stealing his training gear, Tim keeps fidgeting with his phone, and Dick… keeps looking at Jason like he’s trying to work up the nerve to say something again.
But there’s no way now. Not with Bruce here, not with half the family joking and passing plates around. The timing’s gone.
Jason doesn’t notice. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to. He’s too busy buttering toast, half-listening to the noise around him, pretending this feels like just another morning.
“So what was that thing you wanted to tell me?” he asks casually, looking up from his plate.
The table goes quiet for a second too long.
“Uh,” Dick says, clearing his throat. “It can wait.”
“Yeah,” Tim echoes, forcing a grin. “Nothing urgent.”
Damian’s jaw tightens. “For now.”
“For now?” Jason repeats, eyebrow raised.
Bruce looks up from his mug, gaze flicking between them. “Something you three need to share?”
“Nope,” Dick says a little too quickly. “Just… something minor.”
Bruce studies him for a beat longer, then goes back to his coffee.
Jason snorts, unconvinced but not pushing it. “You’re all getting weirder by the day.”
“Takes one to know one,” Steph mutters, earning a smirk from Duke.
Dick laughs, the sound too forced. He glances at Tim, who’s avoiding his eyes, and at Damian, who looks one deep breath away from snapping.
They’d planned to tell him. They’d agreed this was the morning.
But as Bruce starts discussing patrol rotations, and Steph reaches for more toast, and Jason leans back in his chair with that familiar half-smile — that same unguarded ease that makes him look younger, lighter — the words die in all their throats.
Not now. Not yet.
Because how do you tell someone their life changed five years ago without them ever knowing?
So they wait. For a quieter moment. For better timing. For courage.
The quieter moment never comes.
The manor settles into its usual hush after midnight. Lights dim, footsteps fading, the soft hum of the cave below like a heartbeat under the floorboards. Jason gets back from patrol long after the others, armor still dusted with grime and the faint sting of adrenaline wearing off in his veins.
He heads down to the Batcave out of habit more than need. Barbara’s offline, her chair empty and monitors dark. It’s quiet, which means he can use the Batcomputer without her watching over his shoulder or Bruce hovering with a lecture.
The glow of the screens paints him in blue light as he types in a name. A trafficker he’s been hunting through the Narrows, a lead that’s been eating at him all week.
Then something flickers.
A new file loads. It’s not what he was looking for. It’s a list, cross-referenced names, civilian records. His brows knit as he scrolls down, irritation quickly turning to confusion.
And then he sees it.
Your name.
He freezes. His fingers stop moving, breath catching in his throat.
He scrolls down again, slower this time. One name becomes two. The second is smaller, placed under yours, in the neat system font that suddenly feels cruel. A child. Five years old. Birthdate falling eight months after he died.
He stares at the screen, the cursor blinking like it’s mocking him. Each click opens another page, another piece of your life that he didn’t get to see. Schools, medical forms, birthdays, grocery receipts, even a video still from a city camera, your face turned toward the little girl with the same dark hair and green eyes that could only come from him.
The realization hits like a punch to the gut.
He can’t breathe.
For a second, all he can hear is the low hum of the cave and the echo of his own heartbeat. Nausea curls up from his stomach, tight and hot, but the sickness quickly burns into something else. Something sharper.
Anger.
It floods through him, quick and merciless.
His chair scrapes hard against the floor as he stands, every muscle locked tight. His fists shake. There’s too much heat in his chest, too much static in his head.
And then he hears it. Footsteps. The sound of the elevator doors sliding open.
Bruce.
He’s barely through the entrance before Jason’s on him.
“How fucking dare you?”
Bruce doesn’t even get a word out before Jason’s got him by the collar, slamming him against the concrete wall hard enough for the sound to echo through the cave.
“Jason,” Bruce grits out, his hands half-raised. “What—”
“Don’t you dare play dumb,” Jason snaps, voice low, shaking, almost vulnerable. “How long have you known? About her? About them?”
Bruce stares, eyes narrowing in genuine confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t lie to me!” Jason’s voice cracks, raw and furious. “You’ve been keeping tabs on them, haven’t you? All this time— my kid, my kid, and you never said a goddamn word!”
Bruce’s brow furrows, the confusion deepening. “Jason, I don’t—”
But Jason’s already pulling back like he might hit him, the fury boiling over. His knuckles are white, chest heaving, tears threatening to fall down his face. “You had no right,” he spits. “No fucking right—”
“What’s going on?”
The voice cuts through the noise.
They both turn.
Dick’s standing at the entrance to the cave, still in his suit, mask pushed back onto his curls. Tim and Damian are behind him, both looking something between exhausted and dreadful.
The air in the cave shifts instantly.
Bruce straightens, brushing off his collar, his jaw tight. “Your brother seems to think I’ve been keeping something from him.”
“Seems?” Jason laughs, sharp and humorless. “You’re damn right you have—”
But he pauses for a moment when he sees Tim’s face.
Guilt. Plain and visible, written all over him.
“Tim,” Jason says, voice dropping an octave. “You knew too.”
Tim hesitates, eyes darting to Dick, then to Damian, then back to Jason. “Jason, listen—”
“You knew.”
Damian steps forward before Tim can speak again. “He’s right,” he says bluntly. “We did.”
The words hang in the air like smoke.
Jason’s whole body stills. His grip loosens. “We?” he repeats.
“It wasn’t Bruce,” Dick says quietly. “It was us. We found something a few days ago. Records, photos. We wanted to tell you, but we needed to be sure.”
“Sure?” Jason’s voice shakes, half disbelief, half rage. “You thought you’d just play detective with my life until it was convenient?”
“We didn’t want to blindside you,” Tim says quickly. “We didn’t even know if—”
“If what?” Jason cuts in, stepping toward him now. “If she was mine? If it mattered?”
Damian folds his arms, meeting his brother’s fury with a steady, solemn expression. “It always mattered. We just wanted to confirm the truth before we handed you pain you weren’t ready for.”
“Don’t talk to me like you know what I’m ready for,” Jason snarls.
“We weren’t trying to hurt you,” Dick adds, voice low but firm. “We were trying to protect you.”
“Yeah?” Jason laughs bitterly. “You ever think maybe I didn’t need protection? Maybe I just needed someone to tell me the damn truth?”
Silence.
Bruce stands back, still tense, still confused, but quiet now. Letting the brothers hash it out.
“How long?” Jason finally asks, quieter now, but no less angry.
Tim swallows hard. “Almost a week.”
“And you watched me sit here,” Jason says slowly, like every word is costing him something, “not knowing that I had a daughter out there.”
Tim looks down. Damian stays still. Dick doesn’t speak.
For a moment, all that fills the cave is the distant hum of machinery, the faint clicking of cooling metal.
Then Jason laughs again. Hollow, tired, aching. “You’re all real pieces of work, you know that?”
He turns away before any of them can respond.
“Jason,” Dick calls softly, but he doesn’t stop.
He grabs his helmet from the workbench, the red light flickering to life as he slides it on. “Don’t follow me,” he says, voice muffled but firm. “Not tonight.”
And then he’s gone. The rumble of his boots fading into the sound of the elevator doors closing behind him.
The three brothers stand in the silence he leaves behind, the echo of his anger still heavy in the air.
Bruce looks at them finally, his expression unreadable. “What did you find?”
Tim hesitates, then quietly answers, “His family.”
Jason doesn’t go home that night.
He rides until the city bleeds into nothing, until Gotham’s skyline becomes a smudge of light and shadow in his mirrors. The wind bites at his face, sharp enough to sting but not sharp enough to quiet his thoughts. The hum of the engine under him feels like the only thing tethering him to the present. Every streetlight he passes flickers like it’s judging him, like the whole city knows what he found.
Eventually, the roads thin out, and he ends up at one of his safe houses. One of the older ones, one that nobody else remembers exists. The lock sticks; he kicks the door open and lets it slam behind him. The sound echoes in the empty space.
He drops his helmet on the table and stares at it. The silence that follows is too heavy.
He runs a hand through his hair, pacing. He doesn’t want to sit down because sitting feels too final, too much like giving in. But when he finally does, the couch creaks under his weight, and all the air leaves his lungs at once.
The file still burns in the back of his mind — your name, the child’s name, the dates that line up too perfectly to ignore. He can still see your face in the picture, smiling that small, distracted smile that used to drive him crazy when you were trying to look composed and couldn’t quite manage it. Beside you, a little girl with wild curls and bright eyes. His eyes.
He doesn’t need a test to tell him. He knows.
He thought he’d buried every version of himself that could still be surprised by pain, but apparently not. Because this isn’t the sharp kind. It’s the deep, sinking kind that makes it hard to breathe.
He presses his palms into his eyes, like maybe he can push the thoughts away if he presses hard enough.
You must’ve gone through hell.
Raising a kid alone at an age so young. Working. Surviving Gotham. Doing all of it while he was underground, rotting, clawing his way back to a life that kept moving without him. He tries to picture it, you holding a newborn, probably exhausted, probably crying, but still fighting. Because that’s who you were, who you are.
And where was he? In a coffin. In a pit. In the Red Hood’s armor, trying to pretend revenge could fill the hole in his heart.
You deserved better. Both of you did.
The anger he feels isn’t loud. It’s quiet, simmering, the kind that builds and builds until you forget where it started. He’s angry at himself, at the universe, at everyone who knew you back then and never told him. And beneath all of that, beneath the guilt and the fury, there’s something gentler, something terrifying.
He still loves you.
He realizes it like an old scar’s ache. Faint, but impossible to ignore. Maybe it never really went away.
He remembers the sound of your laugh, the way you’d quote books he never understood, how you’d press your hand against his chest when he got too wound up and just whisper, “Breathe.” He hadn’t thought about that in years.
And maybe what he feels now isn’t exactly love. Maybe it’s something tangled up with memory and regret. But it’s close enough to hurt like it.
Love doesn’t survive death. It shouldn’t. But maybe the part of him that came back from the grave brought it with him anyway.
When morning comes, he’s still on that couch. The city light spills pale through the cracked blinds, dust motes turning in the air like snow. He’s exhausted but wired, an exhaustion that sleep won’t fix.
He makes coffee — black, bitter, cheap — and stands by the window as he drinks it, staring at the streets below.
What’s she like? Does she smile like you? Does she talk too much, read too fast, ask too many questions? Does she have your patience or his temper?
He swallows hard.
Does she know him at all? Did you tell her stories about him, or did you let him become a ghost? A name you never say out loud?
The thought twists something in him, but he can’t blame you for it. Maybe you were protecting her. Maybe that’s what good mothers do.
He wants to see her. That’s the part that terrifies him most. Not the idea of finding you, but of seeing her and realizing what he missed. The birthdays, the first steps, the scraped knees, the school plays. Five years of moments that never had his shadow in them.
How do you make up for that?
He doesn’t know. He’s never been good at soft things, never been good at asking for forgiveness. He’s rough edges and broken timing. What could he even say to you? Sorry for dying? Sorry for coming back too late?
He laughs under his breath, but it sounds hollow.
The next few days pass in fragments. No sleep, no real meals, just coffee that goes cold before he finishes it and the constant lump in his throat. He doesn’t go back to the Manor. He can’t. The thought of facing them, of seeing pity in their eyes, makes his stomach twist even more.
He keeps his distance, but he can’t stay still. Jason’s always been a man who needs motion when his mind gets too loud. So he rides all through the night, through alleys and rooftops and streets that mesh together until he forgets where he’s going. When he finally stops, it’s outside a convenience store. He picks up a copy of the Gotham Gazette without even thinking about it.
He doesn’t expect to see your name there.
But it’s printed right under the title of a feature column, small and neat, the same way it was written in the school newspaper, though it feels a lot more serious now.
He stands on the curb, reading the first few lines, helmet under one arm. It’s about something mundane. A story on a community garden opening in West Gotham. But he can hear you in it. The way you write is the same as you used to talk: quiet, observant, warm. You always noticed small things other people didn’t.
He buys every paper he can find after that. Stacks of them end up on his kitchen counter, some old, some new. He spends hours going through the archives online too, scrolling through old columns, human-interest stories, interviews. The more he reads, the more he feels the years collapsing in on themselves.
You never left Gotham. You stayed right in the heart of it, writing about its people like you still believed there was good to find here. He doesn’t know if that makes him proud or furious.
He reads a short editorial you wrote two years ago for the Gotham University newsletter about motherhood, about how it changes the way a person measures time. Some days it feels like I’ve lived a lifetime in three years, you wrote, and some days it feels like I blinked and she grew up.
He rereads that one more times than he’ll admit.
It’s strange. He’s spent his whole life trying to understand people through what they do, through what they fight for. But with you, it’s in what you notice, what you choose to write down. There’s an intimacy in your words that feels like home, even after all this time.
And then there’s the part that hurts: he can see traces of her in your stories. Little mentions. Not by name, never in detail, but enough to tell him you’re proud. My daughter insists flowers grow better when you talk to them, one line reads. Another mentions a little girl who believes every cat in the city is secretly a vigilante.
He reads those lines until they blur.
Each time he closes the paper, he promises himself he’ll stop. But every morning, he finds himself looking again. He doesn’t even know what he’s looking for anymore. Maybe a sign, maybe an opening, maybe proof that it’s not too late.
The nights are worse. He finds himself standing on rooftops near your neighborhood without meaning to. He knows exactly where you live now. He didn’t want to know, but he couldn’t stop himself once he started digging.
He never gets closer than a block away. Just stands there, hands in his jacket pockets, watching the warm glow of your apartment light through distant windows. It’s pathetic, he thinks, but he can’t help it. There’s something grounding about knowing you’re still there, real and alive in a way he didn’t think he deserved to see again.
The more he learns, the heavier it gets. The anger, the guilt, the longing. It all churns together until he doesn’t know which is which. He wants to be angry at himself for not telling anyone about you back then. He wants to be angry at himself for dying, for making it impossible for you to tell him about her.
But mostly, he just feels tired.
Every night ends the same. Him on the couch, papers spread out, your words staring back at him. His fingers trace over your byline like it’s something fragile, something alive.
He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do next. Not that he needs to—Dick decides that for him.
The knock at his door starts early in the morning. He thinks at first it might be a neighbour or some delivery mix-up. It keeps going, steady and rhythmic, until a voice follows.
“I know you’re in there, little wing.”
He groans. He knows that voice. It’s warm but firm, laced with that eldest brother patience that makes him want to hit something.
“Not today,” he mutters to himself, sinking deeper into the couch.
The knocking gets louder.
“I’m serious, open the door or I’m climbing through the damn window,” Dick says.
That gets him up. He drags himself to the door and opens it halfway, squinting into the morning light. “You’re unbelievable,” he mutters.
Dick doesn’t wait for permission. He walks right in, taking in the apartment like someone stepping into a storm shelter after a hurricane. His eyes land on the papers scattered across the table, your name printed over and over.
“You’ve been busy,” Dick says, voice careful.
“Don’t start,” Jason replies, shutting the door behind him a little too hard.
Dick looks at the mess again. There’s no judgment in his face, only that infuriating mix of concern and sympathy. He’s holding back questions, Jason can tell.
“You’ve been off the radar,” Dick finally says. “Tim said you’ve been ignoring him. Damian too. Well, everyone really.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not really in the mood for family bonding.”
“You never are.”
Jason glares at him. “You here to lecture me or what?”
“I’m here because you’re hurting,” Dick says simply. “And because I know what it looks like when you try to pretend you’re not.”
Jason exhales through his nose and rubs the back of his neck. “You think you know everything, don’t you?”
“I know enough.” Dick steps closer to the table and picks up one of the Gazettes. He scans the byline and looks up at Jason, eyes softer now. “She’s good,” he says. “Really good.”
Jason looks away. “You shouldn’t know about that.”
“Tim told me,” Dick admits. “And Damian. Hell, if Damian thinks she’s good she must be phenomenal—anyway, they’re worried about you. I’m worried about you.”
Jason lets out a low laugh, sounding more tired than amused. “Great. Everyone’s worried. That’s new.”
Dick sets the paper down gently. “They only told me because they thought you might need someone to talk to. They didn’t mean to hurt you, Jason. They just didn’t want you to go through it alone.”
“Too late for that,” Jason mutters.
The silence after that feels thick enough to choke on.
“Yeah,” Jason finally says, voice low. “Before you start, I haven’t done anything. I’m not going to show up and ruin her life.”
“You don’t know that’s what would happen,” Dick retorts gently.
“Come on, Dick. Look at me. I’m not the guy she used to know. I’m not the guy she’d want around a kid. Especially not her kid.”
“You don’t get to decide that for her.”
Jason’s jaw tightens. “I think I do.”
“No, you don’t,” Dick says firmly. “You don’t get to erase yourself from her life forever just because it’s easier than facing what happened.”
“You think this is easy?” Jason snaps, voice rising. “You think it’s easy knowing she went through all that alone while I was—” He cuts himself off, swallowing hard. “While I was… gone.”
Dick doesn’t back down. “No, I don’t think it’s easy. But I think you owe it to both of them to try. To show up. Even if it’s messy. Even if it hurts.”
Jason turns away, gripping the back of a chair so hard his knuckles go white. “She’s better off without me. They both are.”
“You really believe that?”
He doesn’t answer.
Dick sighs and takes a step closer. “You can’t undo what happened. But you can decide what you do now. You’ve got a chance to make something right, Jay. Maybe not everything, but something.”
For a long moment, neither of them speaks. Everything feels too heavy.
Finally, Jason lets go of the chair and sinks down onto the couch. “I wouldn’t even know what to say,” he admits, voice quiet now. “Not like this kind of thing happens often.”
“You don’t have to have the perfect words,” Dick says. “Just be honest. Tell her the truth. Tell her you’re alive, for starters. Tell her you’re sorry.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It’s not,” Dick says, a small smile pulling at his mouth. “But it’s worth it.”
Jason looks down at the papers again. Your words, your thoughts, your life written in printer ink. The same voice he used to wake up to, now out there for the whole city to read.
He sighs, the sound rough in his throat. “You think she’d even listen to me?”
“I think she might,” Dick says. “And if she doesn’t, at least you’ll know you tried. At least you won’t have to keep wondering.”
Jason sits there for a while, staring at the stack of papers. His hand drifts to the top one, tracing over your byline with his thumb.
When he finally looks up, there’s something different in his expression. Not peace, exactly, but something close. Resolve.
“Fine,” he says. “I’ll talk to her.”
Dick smiles faintly, relief softening his shoulders. “Good. And hey, I can come with you if you want. Moral support.”
Jason shakes his head. “No. I’ve got to do this myself.”
“Then do it. Before you talk yourself out of it again.”
Dick claps a hand on his shoulder before leaving, the door clicking softly behind him.
For a long time after, Jason just sits there, staring at the papers spread across his table. Outside, morning is starting to break, pale light creeping through the blinds.
He breathes in slow and steady, like he used to before going into a fight. Maybe this will be one too—just a different kind.
He gathers the papers into a neat pile, grabs his jacket, and finally steps outside. The city feels heavy but alive, full of potential and second chances.
For the first time in years, Jason doesn’t turn away from it. He starts walking.
He doesn’t mean to end up there. He tells himself he’s just riding, clearing his head, burning through the nerves that have been eating him alive since Dick left his apartment this morning. But somehow, when he finally stops, he’s parked across the street from the Gotham Gazette.
He kills the engine and just sits there, staring at the glass doors. People move in and out, clutching papers and coffee, talking fast into their phones. He can see the reflection of his bike in the windows and feels absurdly out of place.
For ten minutes, he doesn’t move. His heart’s beating too hard, his palms slick against the leather of his gloves. He’s thought about this a hundred times—how it might go, what he’d say, how you’d react—but now that he’s here, the weight of it freezes him.
Does he just walk in and ask for you? What would he even say? Hey, remember me, the guy who died and came back wrong? Surprise, I know we have a kid.
He grimaces at the thought, jaw tight.
He’s still debating whether to leave when the doors open and you step outside.
You’re on your phone, scrolling, a half-empty cup of coffee in your other hand. The afternoon light hits you in a way that makes his breath catch. It’s you, but older. Softer somehow, but more mature. Your hair’s longer, your clothes are the same kind of whimsical they were when you were fifteen, but now work-worn. He shouldn’t notice this much, but he can’t help it.
It’s noon, he realizes. Lunch break. Fate’s cruel sense of timing hasn’t changed.
He takes a step forward before he can talk himself out of it.
You don’t look up right away. You’re smiling faintly at something on your screen, and for a split second, he gets to see what your life looks like when you’re unbothered, unguarded. And then your eyes lift, catching on the figure standing across the street.
You freeze.
The world goes silent for a beat. Your fingers slip slightly on your phone, your breath stalling. It’s like your brain tries to make sense of what you’re seeing, but it can’t. Because it can’t be him. It can’t.
He died.
And yet—
He looks older. Broader shoulders. A streak of white cutting through dark hair. But the eyes—God, those eyes—they’re the same. A little greener, but the same. The eyes that haunted too many dreams.
Your lips part, air hitching, but no sound comes out.
He swallows hard, his throat dry. “Hi,” he says softly, like the word might shatter if he says it too loud.
For a heartbeat, you just stare. Your mind’s racing, trying to catch up to what your eyes already know. And then the world tilts.
The sound leaves your throat in a strangled breath as everything inside you collapses under the weight of disbelief. The pavement blurs, your vision narrowing, heart hammering too fast.
You hear him say your name. Rough, desperate. But it’s already fading as your knees buckle.
He catches you before you hit the ground. His arms are around you in an instant, solid and familiar in a way that makes his chest ache.
“Hey, hey, I got you,” he mutters, voice shaking. People are starting to notice, heads turning, but he doesn’t care. He crouches low, one hand at the back of your head, the other gripping your shoulder gently.
Your phone lies forgotten on the sidewalk, screen somehow not shattered. He glances down at you, at the curve of your face, at the faint crease between your brows, and his heart breaks all over again.
You’re real. You’re here. And the sight of him made you fall apart.
He’s not sure if that’s better or worse than what he expected.
He exhales shakily, brushing a strand of hair from your face. “You’re okay,” he whispers, mostly to convince himself. “You’re okay, sweetheart.”
But his hands are trembling, and his pulse won’t slow down, because the truth is, he’s not sure if you’re okay. If he’s okay. Not anymore.
He crouches next to you on the sidewalk, the sound of Gotham around him muffled beneath the rush in his ears. His heart feels like it’s caught somewhere between disbelief and panic, watching you still and pale in his arms. People pass by, some slowing down to stare, others pretending not to notice, and Jason barely registers any of it. He is too focused on the rise and fall of your breathing, too terrified that you’ll stop.
He kneels there for what feels like hours—though it’s only a minute or two—his hand shaking slightly as he brushes the stray hairs away from your face. He says your name once, quiet and uncertain, and his stomach twists when you don’t respond right away.
Then you move. A soft sound leaves your throat, a small groan, and your eyes flutter open. You blink up at him, confusion clouding your eyes.
“Hey,” he murmurs, his voice softer than it’s been in years. “You’re okay. You fainted, but you’re alright.”
Your eyes focus slowly. The first thing you see is him, his face hovering above yours, older but familiar in a way that makes your breath catch. You blink again, unsure if your mind is playing a cruel trick on you.
“Jason?” Your voice comes out cracked.
He exhales, shoulders sagging with relief and guilt all at once. “Yeah,” he says, voice barely audible. “It’s me.”
You stare at him, too stunned to speak. Your body feels weak, your mind a blur of memories you thought you buried forever ago. When he helps you sit up, the world tilts for a second and he steadies you instinctively, his hand warm at your back.
The sound of a door opening behind you makes both of you turn. Your editor in chief rushes out of the Gotham Gazette building, his tie loose, his face pale.
“Jesus, we thought you hit your head,” he mutters with a Gotham accent almost as thick as Jason’s, crouching beside you. “You scared the hell out of us, kid.”
You try to sit straighter, embarrassed by the growing crowd. “I’m okay,” you say weakly, but the look he gives you says he doesn’t buy it.
He glances at Jason, taking in the leather jacket, the streak of white in his hair, the way his arm is still around you. “You her boyfriend?” he asks bluntly.
You shake your head before Jason can answer. “No. He’s—he’s an old friend.”
Your editor looks between the two of you, clearly skeptical but too concerned to press further. “Fine. Old friend, boyfriend, whatever. Take her home. She’s not coming back in today. And if I see her back here before tomorrow morning, I’m locking her out.”
You open your mouth to argue but he cuts you off with a hand. “Nope. Go. I’m not losing my best writer to stress or whatever the hell this is.”
He straightens up, mutters something about needing a drink, and disappears back into the building.
The street feels quieter after that. You and Jason stay where you are for a moment, neither of you knowing what to say. The weight of five years sits heavy between you.
You finally look at him again—really look. The streak of white in his hair, the faint scar above his eyebrow, the tiredness that does not belong to someone his age. His eyes, though—those are still the same.
“You’re alive,” you say softly, as if saying it too loudly might break the illusion.
He nods once, his throat tight. “Yeah. For a while now.”
You draw in a shaky breath and press your hand to your chest like you’re trying to slow your own heartbeat. “They buried you,” you whisper, the words trembling out of you. “I saw the reports, the funeral—”
“I know,” he says, cutting in quietly. “I can explain.”
You swallow hard, your vision blurring. “How?”
He hesitates. There are a thousand answers in his head and none of them sound right. “I’ll figure it out,” he finally says. “Just not here. Somewhere a little more… private.”
The air between you feels heavy again. Your lips part like you want to reply, but you can’t think of anything to say. You can feel your knees starting to shake again, exhaustion pulling you down.
“Come on,” he murmurs, standing and offering his hand. “Let’s get you home.”
You hesitate for only a moment before taking it. His grip is steady, warm, grounding in a way that makes something deep in your chest ache.
He walks you to your car in silence. Neither of you speak, afraid that the moment will shatter if you do.
As you reach the driver’s side door, you look back at him once more, still searching for the boy you used to know in the man standing before you.
“Follow me,” you say, your voice low but steady despite the tremor running through your hands.
Jason blinks, caught off guard. “What?”
You glance up at him, the city light flickering across your face, making your expression unreadable. “Follow me home,” you repeat. “I can’t just… go the rest of the day pretending this didn’t happen. I need to talk to you.”
He wants to argue. He wants to say it’s not a good idea, that too much has happened, that he doesn’t even know what to say once you’re alone. But the words won’t come. Instead, he just breathes out slowly and nods.
“Okay,” he says quietly. “We do need to talk, don’t we?”
You give a small, almost nervous smile before stepping back toward your car. “I’ll drive slow,” you say, your voice barely above a whisper.
“I’ll keep up,” he replies.
You nod once and slip into your car, shutting the door carefully as if any sudden movement might break the fragile calm between you. The engine hums to life, headlights cutting through the faint evening mist.
Jason watches for a second, grounding himself in the sight of you actually there, moving, breathing, real. Before he turns and walks toward where his bike is parked at the corner.
He pulls his helmet on, his fingers lingering against the edge of the visor as you pull out into traffic. The red glow of your taillights catches his attention immediately. He revs the engine and follows, keeping a careful distance.
The ride through Gotham is quiet in a strange, yet peaceful way. The streets are slick from a drizzle earlier, and the glow of the streetlights stretches long across the asphalt. He stays behind you, watching the rhythm of your turns, the familiar way you drive. He remembers teaching you once. Late nights, empty roads, the two of you laughing as you stalled the car for the fifth time.
He shakes the memory away, jaw tight. This isn’t the same. Too much time has passed, too much has changed.
You drive through the old neighborhoods near downtown, the kind with brick buildings and flickering street lamps. When you finally slow and turn into a narrow street, he recognizes it vaguely. One of those quiet, tucked-away areas far enough from the chaos of Gotham to almost feel safe.
You park in front of a three-story apartment building with ivy crawling up one side. Your car door opens, and you step out, glancing behind you as if to make sure he really followed.
He kills the engine, the sudden silence pressing in on both of you.
You look at him for a long moment, searching his face for something. Anger, regret, maybe the boy you once knew. Whatever you find there makes you sigh softly, tension easing just slightly from your shoulders.
“Come on,” you say, nodding toward the entrance. “We’ll talk inside.”
You look away first, unlocking the complex door with your card, pretending you don’t notice the way he stiffens slightly at the sound of it.
He follows you up the narrow stairs, the scent of rain and coffee lingering in the air. When you unlock your door, warmth spills out—not from the heat, but from the space itself. Your apartment feels alive, soft, and lived in, like the kind of place that hums quietly even when empty.
Sunlight filters through sheer curtains, painting the hardwood floor gold. Books are stacked in uneven piles, some open, some bookmarked with crayon drawings. A record plays faintly from a corner, a low, scratchy jazz tune that makes the air feel slower.
There are plants in chipped mugs on the windowsill, a blanket tossed carelessly over the couch, and a tiny pair of pink sneakers by the door beside your own shoes. A child’s watercolor painting hangs on the fridge—a house, two stick figures, a red heart above them.
The whole place smells faintly of books and vanilla and something sweeter underneath—something warm and unmistakably you.
And standing in the doorway, Jason realizes this is exactly what he used to imagine you’d build. A world full of colour, softness, and a life he somehow missed watching grow.
You leave the door open for him, walk in without looking back, and he steps in after you, closing the door behind him.
For a moment, neither of you say anything. You set your keys down on the counter, your hands shaking slightly, and he stands in the entrance, unsure if he should sit, move, speak.
Finally, you turn to him, your expression soft but exhausted. “Five years,” you say quietly. “Five years, Jason. And now you’re just here.”
He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
You let out a shaky laugh, running a hand through your hair. “I don’t even know what to ask first.”
“Start anywhere,” he says finally. “I’ll try to keep up.”
You nod slowly, moving to sit on the couch, your fingers brushing absently over the edge of a cushion as if grounding yourself. The words leave your mouth quietly, but with a steady sort of weight. “Then let’s start with how the hell you’re alive.”
He stays standing for a second, jaw tight, like he’s debating how to begin. Then, with a quiet sigh, he sits down across from you, elbows resting on his knees, eyes lowered to the floor. “It’s not a short story,” he mutters.
“I’ve got time,” you say softly.
So he tells you. Once he starts, it spills out in pieces, raw and uneven, like it’s still hard for him to believe it himself. He tells you about the Joker, about the crowbar, about the moments he remembers before everything went black. His voice goes quiet when he reaches the part about the pit—about the cold and the rage and the way it burned everything he used to be.
He doesn’t look at you as he talks about the Al Ghuls, or about clawing his way back to Gotham with too much anger and too little reason. His tone steadies when he mentions the Red Hood, the years of fighting, the half-rebuilt bridges with his family.
You listen silently, your hands clasped in your lap, every few seconds feeling the breath catch in your throat. The story sounds impossible, but the man sitting in front of you is very real, his voice rough and tired in the way only truth can sound.
He mentions how it was Damian who found your photo first, how Tim ran the records, how everything unraveled from there. The moment he says it, his eyes lift, hesitant, as if he’s not sure what comes next or how much he’s allowed to say.
The silence that follows stretches, heavy and trembling. You realize you’ve been holding your breath.
“You know about Lizzie,” you finally breathe out. It isn’t a question, not really.
He nods once, slow, eyes dark. He doesn’t trust himself to speak.
Your chest tightens, the weight of six years pressing down all at once. The sound of the record still hums faintly in the background, the low crackle filling the silence between you.
“She’s yours, you know,” you say after what feels like forever, the words coming out quiet but certain.
His head lifts at that, eyes meeting yours for the first time since he sat down. There’s something fragile in the look he gives you. A longing.
“You want to see her,” you say softly, and he almost looks ashamed.
“She thinks I’m dead.”
“So did I.”
His eyes flicker up at you again, and this time there’s something raw in them. A mix of guilt and ache and a tenderness he doesn’t know what to do with. You can tell he’s holding back, that he doesn’t want to push, doesn’t think he deserves to.
“I don’t even know where to start,” he admits, his voice small in a way that startles you. “I missed everything. Her first steps, her first words, birthdays, school, all of it. And it’s not like I can just walk in now and say hey, surprise, I’m your dad. That’s not fair to her.”
You nod slowly, fingers tracing the hem of your sleeve. “She’s curious,” you admit. “About him. About you. She asks sometimes, and I tell her the truth. That he was brave, and kind, and that he would have loved her more than anything.”
He exhales shakily, and for a moment you think he might break.
“I did,” he says, almost to himself. “I do.”
Your eyes soften, a small, sad smile tugging at your mouth. “She’d like you,” you murmur. “She has the biggest imagination I’ve ever heard of, and she’s a little too clever for her own good. She laughs like you used to.”
He looks up at you then, and something inside him shifts. A quiet realization that no amount of lost years could erase what he still feels—for you or for the child he’s never met.
You pause for a long moment, weighing something silently while Jason waits, tense and still. Then you stand. Your hands linger at your sides for a second like you are bracing yourself before you say, “Wait here a second.”
You disappear down the hallway. He hears the soft sounds of a closet door, something being shifted, then the quiet shuffle of you returning.
When you come back, your arms are full. A small stack of books, their covers worn, corners softened by years of being opened and reopened.
You sit beside him again, close but not touching.
“Baby books,” you say quietly. There is no embarrassment in it, only a kind of careful honesty. You set them on the coffee table and take the top one—a pale yellow notebook with a peeling label.
You open it. Inside, a sonogram picture is taped to the first page. The date is written in the corner in your messy fifteen-year-old handwriting.
“I started this the day I found out,” you say, thumb brushing the edge of the picture. “I was fifteen. It was May.” Your voice softens, barely more than breath. “You’d been gone for a month.”
Jason’s shoulders go rigid. He stares at the page like it might shatter if he blinks too hard.
“I didn’t believe it at first,” you admit. “I just thought everything in my life was spiraling because you were… because you were gone. I thought that was the reason I felt sick all the time. Why I couldn’t sleep. Why everything hurt.” You huff a faint, humorless laugh. “Took three tests before Mom found me crying in the bathroom.”
You turn the page. More sonograms. Notes scrawled in handwriting that’s both young and exhausted.
“I read Pride and Prejudice every night for weeks,” you continue, not looking up. “I guess I needed something that felt like you. I was debating between naming her Jane or Elizabeth, but I thought you’d want her to be named after someone a little more headstrong.”
You flip forward to a page that’s nearly torn from being handled so many times. A journal entry from January.
“The birth was… long,” you say, a soft laugh slipping out. “She didn’t want to come out. I was in labor for twenty-four hours. And when she finally did, she came out screaming.”
There’s a picture taped beside the entry. You in a hospital bed, eyes exhausted, hair a mess, cheeks blotchy from crying. Tiny Lizzie is tucked against your chest, her face scrunched and red. You were so young.
“I held her and I just… I felt a kind of love that I never really knew existed.”
You breathe out slowly, steadying yourself, then continue.
You flip to a page taped with your high school diploma. The ribbon from your graduation cap is taped beside it, along with a picture of you in your gown holding baby Lizzie. Jason looks confused, not saying anything but the furrow in his brow says enough.
“I graduated that June. Two years early.” Your voice softens as you touch the corner of the diploma. “I pushed through everything—doubled my classes, took summer classes, begged teachers to let me test out of anything I could. I didn’t want her growing up watching me struggle through school at the same time I was trying to be her mother.”
Jason sighs, guilt overtaking his features. “You shouldn’t have had to.”
“I know.” You reply simply, obviously not wanting to go into the unfairness of it all.
You thumb through the rest of the pages. Lizzie’s first smile. Her first laugh. Her first stubborn refusal to nap. Drawings she made when she was two—scribbles labeled in your handwriting.
You sit with him for hours, long enough for the soft afternoon light to fade into molten gold, then into the deeper blues of early evening. It happens slowly, quietly, like the world outside is holding its breath along with the two of you.
At some point, you call your mom, asking her to pick Lizzie up from school, that you would appreciate her keeping her for the night if she could. Jason sits perfectly still the whole time, pretending not to listen but visibly absorbing every syllable.
After that, you return to him—and to the little universe you two laid open between you.
You show him everything.
Every baby book, every messy page, every carefully taped sonogram and crinkled hospital bracelet. Every picture of Lizzie with her tiny fists curled, her squinty newborn glare, her first wobbly steps, her toothy grin at two years old. Every story you can remember spills out of you, things you have not said out loud in years, things that feel heavier now that someone else is holding the memory with you.
You talk about the nights she would only sleep if you laid her on your chest, and the mornings she woke up babbling nonsense at her stuffed animals. You talk about the first time she said mama. The first time she asked if she could wear your sweater because it smelled like you. The times she refused to nap unless you read to her.
Jason listens like he’s memorizing each missed second and tattooing it into his heart. There’s grief in his eyes, raw and quiet. But there’s also awe. And something like gratitude. And hope.
The light grows dimmer. You turn on a lamp, and the room becomes smaller, softer, wrapped in warm light.
When you close the last book, hours have passed. The quiet that follows is heavy but not suffocating. It feels like standing on the edge of something large and unfinished, something that could still become something good if you’re careful.
You fold your hands in your lap, gathering your breath.
“I’ll talk to her,” you say. Your voice is soft but sure. “About you. About meeting you. If she wants to. I’m sure she will, but I’m asking anyway. I didn’t really explain the whole… dead thing yet so that won’t be an issue, I guess.”
Jason’s breath shudders in his chest. His eyes drop, then rise again, bright with something fragile and breaking open.
“Thank you,” he says. The words shake. “I… thank you.”
You stand, because you need to move or you’ll fall apart with how he’s looking at you. He rises too, slower, like he’s afraid the moment will vanish if he shifts too fast.
For a moment you both just stand there, suspended in a silence that feels too full, too fragile. He looks like he is standing on the edge of something he never expected to face, and you feel like your heart is a trembling thing trying to leap out of your chest.
Then he takes one small step toward you. His hands lift just slightly, not quite touching you, not quite confident enough to ask. It is the most hesitant you have ever seen him.
You close the distance.
The moment your arms slide around him, something in him breaks—not a violent break, but a quiet, devastating one. He exhales sharply into your shoulder, a sound that is half relief and half grief, and his arms come around you in a slow, careful sweep, like he is gathering something he thought he lost forever.
He pulls you in close. Closer than you expect. His forehead drops to your temple, and his hands flatten between your shoulder blades, holding you like he is afraid you will disappear if he loosens his grip even slightly.
His breathing is uneven. Shaky. He tries to mask it, but you feel every tremor through the press of his chest.
You curl your fingers into the back of his jacket, anchoring yourself against him as if your own knees are beginning to give out. His heartbeat is a frantic, disbelieving rhythm against your cheek. It’s the most grounding thing you’ve felt in your life.
He smells like leather and rain and something faintly smoky. Familiar, but older. Heavier.
His cheek brushes the top of your head as he shifts, tightening the hug just a little more, like he’s memorizing the feel of you. Like he’s trying to apologize without speaking. Like he’s trying to say he missed you without saying the words out loud.
You don’t know how long you stay like that. Seconds, minutes, something in between. Enough for the world outside the apartment to fade. Enough for the ache in both your chests to settle into something warm and painful and necessary.
Finally, his voice slips out, quiet and raw.
“I didn’t think I’d ever get to do this again.”
You don’t reply with words, your arms just tighten around him.
When you pull back, his hands linger on your arms, grounding you both, before they fall away.
“I should go,” he murmurs, the words hurting to speak. “Give you time. Give her time.”
You nod, blinking through tears threatening to fall and the weight in your chest. “I’ll call you. After I talk to her. I promise.”
He swallows hard, nods once, and turns toward the door.
But at the last second he looks back, eyes sweeping over the warm light of your apartment, the books on the table, the remnants of a life he never knew he had helped create.
There’s pain in his expression. But there’s hope, too. Small, trembling, stubborn.
He leaves quietly, descending the stairs with a slow, heavy tread. You hear the front door open, then close.
And when the silence settles again, your apartment feels different. Like the air has shifted. Like the world has cracked open in a way that might finally let something good grow.
Thank you for the mini event!! Can I request a F1 Jason Todd x reader story?
Red Lights Pt.1
pairing *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ F1 driver!Jason Todd x fem!reader
disclaimer *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ angst. fluff. mild suggestive content. themes of mental health and depression. swearing. car accidents. injuries. mention of drug use. non-canon complacent. not proofread.
a/n *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ I can't believe i got this request. Just the other day I was like I wanna write an F1 driver au for a character. Anon are you spying on me? Should I be concerned? Nonetheless this made me so so happy. Comment, Like and Reblog (づ ᴗ _ᴗ)づ♡
Comment to be added to taglist
Part 2
Jason Peter Todd was a man who, at the peak of his career, could effortlessly be regarded as the very embodiment of Formula 1 excellence. He was everything a driver dreamed of becoming—wealthy, young, impossibly gifted, and the adopted heir of none other than Bruce Wayne, the legendary “Dark Knight” of motorsport himself. A five-time world champion, Bruce in his prime had been a force of nature, drawing comparisons to icons like Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost. And Jason? He was every bit his father's successor—perhaps even destined to surpass him.
Jason wasn't just successful; he was revolutionary. His meteoric rise shattered records with an almost casual ease. He wasn't just the youngest driver to ever compete in Formula 1—he was the youngest to win, and not just any race, but his very first. The accolades piled up faster than his rivals could keep track: most wins in a single season, most podium finishes, highest points tally ever recorded. The list seemed infinite, his potential boundless. The world adored him, idolizing him with near-religious fervor. Corporations fought tooth and nail for his endorsement, desperate to attach their brands to his golden image. Jason Todd—three-time world champion, impossibly handsome, and a marketing juggernaut—had single-handedly propelled Formula 1 into unprecedented popularity. Fans either wanted to stand beside him or become him.
There was no ceiling to what he could achieve. His future was a blinding horizon of endless possibility—until Bahrain.
The Sakhir Grand Prix unfolded under a scorching desert sun, the sky painted in hues of amber as dusk crept over the circuit. The air thrummed with the deafening roars of engines, the grandstands vibrating with the collective anticipation of thousands. The final laps loomed, tension thick enough to cut through. Jason Todd, the prodigy, the phenom, was locked in a relentless pursuit of history—his fourth Bahrain Grand Prix victory within grasp. His car screamed down the straights, tires dancing on the knife's edge of control. He was pushing beyond limits, chasing glory as always.
But as he himself had said once before “Speed is a relentless god. And sometimes, it demands sacrifice.”
Bahrain's Sakhir Circuit had always been a beast of a track—deceptive in its sweeping curves, punishing in its tire degradation, unforgiving to even the slightest misjudgment. Jason's tires were fading fast, the rubber screaming in protest with every high-speed corner. The team's warnings buzzed in his ear, urgent yet distant, drowned out by the adrenaline coursing through his veins. Roy Harper, his closest friend and fiercest rival, loomed in his mirrors, a mere eight-tenths of a second behind—close enough to strike if Jason so much as blinked.
The radio crackled again, the voice of his engineer strained with concern: “Jason, watch the rear left—it's going off!”
But Jason Todd had never been one to yield. Not to his rivals. Not to the limits of physics. And certainly not to caution. He was five laps away from etching his name deeper into the history books, from claiming yet another record that would silence even his harshest critics. The thrill of the chase, the roar of the crowd, the intoxicating rush of speed—it all blurred into a singular, all-consuming obsession. He knew his car better than anyone alive. He had pushed it beyond its limits before and walked away victorious. Why would this time be any different?
At 200 miles per hour, the world narrowed to a tunnel of asphalt and adrenaline. The next turn approached—a brutal, high-speed corner that demanded precision. He braked hard, but the rear tires, worn to the cords, betrayed him. The car shuddered, the tail snapping out in a violent fishtail. For a heartbeat, his reflexes prevailed—his hands a blur as he wrestled the steering wheel, correcting the slide with the instincts of a champion.
And then—catastrophe.
A deafening bang ripped through the air as his left rear tire failed explosively. The car lurched sideways, spearing toward the barriers at a near-perpendicular angle. The carbon-fiber monocoque—a marvel of engineering designed to withstand brutal impacts—shattered like glass upon collision. The force of the crash sent debris flying in a lethal storm of shrapnel, scattering across the track in a grotesque spectacle. The wreckage rebounded violently, spinning back onto the racing line—just as Roy Harper's car, helpless to avoid the chaos, hurtled into the carnage.
A second impact. A sickening crunch of metal and carbon fiber.
Roy had no time to react. No time to swerve. His front wing speared through the mangled remains of Jason's cockpit like a blade. The halo device—the very piece of safety equipment designed to protect drivers from such horrors—held firm, but the sheer force of the collision tore the survival cell apart, leaving nothing but devastation in its wake.
“Jason? Jason, can you hear me?”
The voice of Dick Grayson—Jason's brother, his race engineer and his unwavering support—crackled over the radio, raw with desperation. A silence followed, thick and suffocating, broken only by the distant wail of sirens.
And then, as if the universe itself sought to twist the knife deeper, fuel from Roy's ruptured tank spilled onto the scorched asphalt. A single spark—a fleeting, inevitable spark—ignited the fumes.
The world erupted in flames.
Marshals in fireproof suits charged forward, their extinguishers spraying thick plumes of retardant, but the devastation was absolute. The grandstands fell eerily silent, thousands of spectators frozen in horror. Mechanics, engineers, and rival team members stood motionless, hands clasped in prayer or pressed over mouths in disbelief. Roy Harper, miraculously conscious but dazed, was dragged from his ruined car with relative ease—his injuries severe but survivable.
But Jason Todd?
The reigning world champion was still trapped inside the inferno.
The fireproof material of his race suit glowed beneath the flames, his silhouette barely visible through the thick, black smoke. Over the team radio, Dick Grayson's voice cracked with increasing desperation, begging for any sign of life. “Jason, talk to me. Please, just say something—anything!” Only static answered.
The medical car arrived within seconds, but the violence of the crash had left almost no room for hope. The extraction was a nightmare—jaws of life prying apart twisted metal, paramedics shouting over the roar of the flames. When they finally pulled him free, his body was limp, his helmet scorched, his suit seared in places. The world blurred into chaos after that—screaming sirens, frantic radio calls, the paddock holding its breath.
Then, whispers spread through the garage like wildfire.
The hospital's initial prognosis was grim: incompatible with life. The injuries were catastrophic—internal bleeding, multiple fractures, third-degree burns covering nearly 40% of his body. At one point, his heart stopped entirely, flatlining for over a minute as Bruce Wayne, the legendary Dark Knight of motorsport, stood helpless outside the ICU, restraining a sobbing Dick Grayson from pounding on the glass in sheer despair.
Time of death: 20:45 hours.
The words hung in the air like a death knell.
But then—
A single, weak beep.
The head surgeon blinked, certain he had imagined it. Then another. And another. Jason's heart, stubborn as the man himself, refused to surrender. The news rocketed through the paddock, a shockwave of disbelief and cautious relief: Jason Peter Todd was alive. Barely. Clinging to life by the thinnest of threads, but alive.
What followed was a waking nightmare.
Roy Harper, consumed by guilt, retired from Formula 1 immediately, unable to bear the weight of what had happened. Months later, he was found half-dead in a hotel room, an empty bottle of pills beside him—another casualty of that cursed day. The FIA scrambled to implement new safety regulations, mandating stronger cockpit protections and stricter tire wear monitoring. The team, once dominant, floundered without their star driver.
And Jason?
He slept.
For six agonizing months, he remained in a coma, his body healing at a glacial pace. When he finally woke, the details were kept fiercely private—no press releases, no interviews, just a single, guarded statement confirming his consciousness. But those who saw him in those early days knew: the Jason Todd who emerged from the darkness was not the same man who had entered it.
The fire had taken more than just flesh.
It had taken a legend.
“I want to race.”
The words hit Bruce Wayne like a physical blow.
For a man who had stood unshaken in the face of countless crises—both as a five-time world champion and as the iron-willed owner of Wayne Racing—the sheer weight of that simple declaration brought the world to a staggering halt. His son's voice was barely more than a whisper, raw and fractured, yet burning with a desperation that cut deeper than any scream could have.
It had been two months since Jason Todd had woken from the abyss of his coma. Two months of slow, agonizing progress—of bandages being peeled away, of casts removed, of wounds grudgingly closing. The hospital had kept the worst of the scarring hidden beneath layers of sterile gauze, not just for medical reasons, but out of fear for his fragile psyche. The first days after his awakening had been a storm of rage and denial—violent outbursts that left nurses scrambling for sedatives, his own body betraying him as orderlies pinned him down to keep him from tearing at IV lines and heart monitor leads.
The crash had taken more than flesh and bone. The doctors had warned Bruce in hushed tones: PTSD. Depression. Nightmares that never end. Jason's body, though stable, was a battleground. His mind? A warzone.
“I understand, Jay, but—”
“No, you don't!” Jason's voice shattered like glass against steel. “You don't get it! These four walls, these fucking machines and tubes—they're driving me insane. I don't belong here!”
And he was right.
Jason Todd had never been meant for cages. He was wildfire in human form—meant to blaze across the rain-slicked straights of Interlagos, to carve through the golden-hour shadows of COTA's esses, to exist where the air smelled of scorched rubber and high-octane fuel, not antiseptic and despair. The hospital was a prison, and every second spent trapped inside it was another piece of him dying.
Bruce exhaled slowly, his gaze fixed on the floor rather than meeting his son's fever-bright eyes. “Jason,” he said, forcing calm into his voice, “you need to heal.”
Jason's hands clenched into fists, the heart rate monitor spiking beside him. “I have healed enough!”
The words weren't just defiance—they were a plea, a demand, a last stand. Because Jason Todd had spent his entire life pushing past limits, and this? This was no different.
Except it was.
And the crushing weight of that truth hung between them, suffocating and unspoken. Bruce, the man who had faced down the most ruthless competitors on the track, who had rebuilt entire teams from ashes, found himself paralyzed by the one battle he couldn't strategize his way out of. How do you make a force of nature understand it's been fractured?
Bruce didn't—couldn't—answer. The silence that followed was deafening, thick with everything left unsaid. The heart monitor's steady beep mocked them, a cruel reminder of time moving forward even when Jason's world had screeched to a halt.
Then, like a blade slicing through the tension, Jason spoke again, his voice stripped of its earlier fire, replaced by something colder. “Who did the seat go to?”
It was a logical question. The season hadn't ended with his crash. The circus marched on, the cars kept racing, and the world didn't stop turning just because Jason Todd had been ripped out of his cockpit.
“Tim got the seat.”
Tim Drake. The reigning F2 champion. Bruce's godson. The kid with a mind sharper than a scalpel and reflexes that bordered on preternatural. After his parents' tragic death, Bruce had taken him in, just as he had with Jason. And Jason knew—hated that he knew—Tim was good. Scary good. But potential didn't change the brutal arithmetic of Formula 1: seats were finite. Tim's promotion meant Jason's throne had been filled before he'd even left the ICU.
Before the crash, Jason's teammate had been Cassandra Cain. A prodigy in her own right, the only woman on the grid outside of Themyscira Formula One team—Diana Prince's all-female team, founded to shatter the sport's glass ceiling. Cass had been more than a teammate; she'd become family. Diana herself had tried to poach her, offering a coveted seat in her revolutionary outfit. But Cass had chosen Wayne Racing, loyalty outweighing opportunity. And Jason would sooner set himself on fire again than take her place.
“He's half-baked at best,” Jason spat, the words dripping with acid. His fingers dug into the sheets, knuckles whitening with the force of his grip. “I saw him at testing. He can't do shit.”
Tim Drake was brilliant. A prodigy by any measure, but raw talent wasn't enough in Formula 1 and brilliance didn't erase inexperience. Not when you were thrust into the spotlight mid-season, expected to fill the void left by a living legend. Not when every lap, every turn, every mistake was measured against the ghost of Jason Todd—the youngest champion, the record-breaker, the firebrand who had redefined what it meant to be fearless behind the wheel.
Tim wasn't just racing against the competition. He was racing against a memory. And right now, memory was winning.
Bruce exhaled, slow and measured. “But that doesn't change the fact that you're not ready yet.”
Jason's jaw clenched. “The season's coming to an end. I have plenty of time to train and get back in the game by the time next season rolls around.”
“Jason, but—”
“YOU DON'T GET TO TAKE THIS AWAY FROM ME!”
The roar tore through the room, raw and unfiltered. In a flash of movement, Jason's hand shot out, snatching the call remote from the side of his bed. Before Bruce could react, it was hurled through the air with enough force to shatter the fragile illusion of control Jason had been clinging to.
Bruce sidestepped on instinct, the remote clattering against the wall behind him. But when his gaze snapped back to his son—really looked at him for the first time since entering the room—something in him faltered.
A flinch.
Subtle, involuntary, but there.
Jason saw it. Saw the way Bruce's eyes flickered, the way his breath hitched for the barest fraction of a second. Saw the look in his father's gaze—not just concern, not just frustration, but something far worse.
Revulsion.
Or at least, that's what it felt like.
The realization hit Jason like a lightning. His chest tightened, the anger draining out of him as quickly as it had surged, leaving behind something hollow and brittle.
Bruce Wayne—the man who had faced down the most dangerous corners in the world without blinking, who had stared death in the eye more times than he could count—flinched at the sight of his own son.
And in that moment, Jason understood.
This wasn't just about whether he was ready to race again.
This was about whether he'd ever be seen the same way again.
“Boy Wonder No More?”“Crash Down Bahrain Lane: What It Means for the Champion Team”“Robin Fails to Fly”
The headlines screamed at him from every newsstand, every digital feed, every godforsaken screen in the hospital waiting room. Bold, black letters against stark white backgrounds, each one a dagger twisting deeper into the wound. And beneath them—always beneath them—the same grotesque images: his car wrapped around the barriers, the inferno licking at the sky, the thick plume of smoke staining the Bahraini horizon like an omen.
They had reduced his entire legacy to a single, catastrophic moment.
Three-time world champion. Youngest race winner in history. The driver who had redefined dominance. None of it mattered now. The trophies gathering dust in Wayne Manor's halls, the records that still bore his name, the races where he'd crossed the line with his fist raised in triumph—all of it was trumped by one mistake. One lapse in judgment. One turn taken a fraction too late.
Jason Todd: No longer the Boy Wonder.
Now, forevermore, The One Who Died.
The irony wasn't lost on him. He had died—if only for a minute. Flatlined on the table, his heart stubbornly restarting as if to spite the universe itself. But the world didn't care about comebacks. It cared about spectacle. And what was more spectacular than the fall of a golden child?
He was Lucifer, wasn't he? God's most favored son, the brightest of angels, cast down from heaven for the sin of pride. Wings broken, flames licking at his heels as he plummeted into the abyss. Maybe it had always been inevitable. Maybe this was his divine punishment—for daring to believe he was untouchable, for thinking the throne was his by right.
Fall from grace.
Fall from his throne.
Fall from his rightful spot.
So he trained.
Day and night, through the pain that lanced up his spine with every movement, through the phantom screams of tires that echoed in his dreams. He pushed his body to the brink, then past it, his muscles screaming in protest as he forced them to remember what they'd once been capable of. The rage inside him was a living thing, coiled tight around his ribs, whispering in his ear: Prove them wrong. Make them regret it.
There were days when the fury was all-consuming, a black tide that drowned out reason. Days when he'd catch his reflection—the scars, the hollows under his eyes, the gauntness of a face that had once been called ridiculously pretty—and something inside him would snap. Mirrors shattered under his fists. Posters torn from walls, trophies hurled across rooms, their polished surfaces dented against the hardwood. The boy who had been worshiped now couldn't stand the sight of himself.
Bruce tried. He really did. He threw money at the media, buying silence where he could, burying stories of Jason's outbursts beneath layers of PR spin and legal threats. Staff members who looked at Jason with pity in their eyes found themselves abruptly unemployed. But none of it changed the truth: Bruce Wayne, for all his resources, all his power, didn't know how to fix this.
How do you mend a shattered reputation?
How do you rebuild a ghost?
The world had already written Jason Todd's epitaph.
Now he had to claw his way out of the grave.
The new season began with a quiet humiliation—Tim Drake, the temporary heir to Jason's throne, was demoted back to F2 with barely a whisper of protest. If anything, the young driver seemed relieved to return to the junior category, away from the suffocating expectations of filling Jason Todd's fireproof shoes.
Jason reclaimed his seat, but not his crown.
The first race back was... acceptable. Mediocre by his old standards, but passable for a man who'd crawled back from death's doorstep. The commentators tiptoed around his performance—“He's shaking off rust,” they said. “The speed will come,” they assured. But Jason heard the unspoken truth beneath their carefully chosen words: the fire that had once made him untouchable had dimmed to embers.
Heavens know how he tried. But no amount of willpower could stop his breath from shortening at corners that reminded him of that turn in Bahrain. No mental gymnastics could prevent his palms from sweating through his gloves when the pack bunched too close. The doctors had a name for it: PTSD-induced panic attacks. Jason had another word for it: weakness.
And weakness had no place in Formula 1.
Race after race, he watched helplessly as rivals streamed past—drivers he'd once dominated now leaving him in their wake. The unthinkable happened in Jeddah: Jason Todd, the boy wonder who'd podiumed here in his rookie year, finished outside the points for the first time since his debut.
The garage wrapped him in cotton-wool encouragement. “You'll get there, J.” “Just need more seat time.” Each well-meaning word landed like a scalpel, peeling back layers of pride to reveal the rot beneath—their pity, their disappointment, their fading belief in the myth of Jason Todd.
He wanted to scream. To tear the fucking garage apart. To make them all see—really see—what this was doing to him. But he stayed silent, letting their hollow encouragement wash over him like acid rain.
The truth was simple: Jason Todd wasn't back.
He was just... there. Haunting his own career.
And the worst part? He wasn't sure which was more unbearable—the idea that this might be permanent, or the terrifying possibility that the old Jason, the real Jason, had died in that Bahrain crash after all.
Jason leaned heavily against the balcony railing, a cigarette dangling carelessly between his fingers. Below him, the team party roared on—champagne corks popping, laughter ringing through the Wayne Racing hospitality suite. Cass had podiumed at their home race in Gotham, keeping the team's legacy alive where he had failed. He was proud of her. She'd earned this. But pride couldn't fill the hollow space in his chest where ambition used to live.
The nicotine burned his lungs in a way that felt almost comforting. The old Jason—the real Jason—had treated his body like a temple. No alcohol, no junk food, certainly no cigarettes. Every calorie counted, every heartbeat optimized for performance. But that man had died in Bahrain. This new version of him? This one didn't give a damn.
He exhaled slowly, watching the smoke curl into the Gotham night. It was funny, in a twisted way. Every drag brought him back to that moment—the acrid smell of burning carbon fiber, the taste of gasoline and fear. In a world where nothing felt familiar anymore, only the memory of his destruction remained vivid.
“I thought F1 drivers weren't allowed to smoke.”
The voice startled him. He turned to see a young woman swaying slightly, her cocktail sloshing precariously in her hand. She couldn't have been more than mid to early twenties, her designer dress wrinkled from dancing, her makeup smudged at the edges. Some sponsor's daughter, probably. Or a journalist's plus-one.
“You shouldn't be here,” Jason said flatly. “The bar's over there.” He gestured vaguely toward the party without looking at her.
“Smoking is bad for you,” she persisted, ignoring his dismissal. “You're the best of the best. You're supposed to—”
“I'm roadkill, sweetheart.” The words came out harsher than he intended, edged with something bitter. “All charred meat and bones. Ain't nothing special anymore.” He waved the cigarette absently, sending a lazy spiral of smoke her way. “They don't get rid of me ‘cause I've got too much on them to lose.”
For a second, she just blinked at him. Then, with a suddenness that almost made him laugh, she snatched the cigarette from his fingers and flicked it over the railing.
“Hey—!”
“You listen up,” she slurred, jabbing a finger at his chest. “You are Jason fucking Todd. You are literally the coolest.” Her words were drunken, but her conviction was startling. She said it like it was scripture. Like she truly believed it from the bottom of her heart.
“That was before the—”
“NO!”
Her voice cut through the night, sharp and unyielding, all traces of drunken slurring stripped away by sheer frustration. She stepped closer, invading his space, her finger jabbing into his chest with enough force to make him stagger back half a step. The scent of vodka and citrus clung to her breath, but her gaze was startlingly clear—burning with an intensity that pinned him in place.
“Don't you dare give me that.”
Her words struck like a hammer to glass.
“You're still him. It doesn't matter how deep you bury yourself in hate and self-pity, you're still the Jason I know.” Her voice cracked, raw with something that sounded too much like betrayal. “And honestly? You're the best out there is— snap the fuck out of it. And also don’t you dare talk smack about my idol. Because I will fight you for it.”
Normally, Jason would’ve had security drag her away by now. Normally, he wouldn’t tolerate some drunk stranger laying into him like this. But there was nothing normal about tonight.
Because she wasn’t tiptoeing around him. Wasn’t feeding him hollow platitudes or empty encouragement. She was the first person in months who looked at him and didn’t see a cautionary tale—just a man too stubborn to climb out of the hole he dug himself.
And damn if that didn’t terrify him.
Her hands flew to his shoulders, shaking him with a desperation that bordered on violence. “Why do you do this to yourself?” Her voice broke, and suddenly, the anger bled into something else entirely. Tears spilled over, streaking her mascara in inky rivers down her cheeks. The dam broke—great, heaving sobs wracked her frame, her words dissolving into incoherent hiccups.
Jason stood frozen, arms stiff at his sides, utterly unprepared for the emotional hurricane in front of him. He glanced toward the party, grateful the crowd was still oblivious, but the reprieve was short-lived.
Footsteps pounded against the terrace tiles.
Danny, one of his oldest friends, a race mechanic who’d known him since their karting days—burst onto the balcony, breathless and wide-eyed.
The woman whirled, launching herself at Danny with a wail. “Dan-Dan, he—” She jabbed a finger wildly at Jason, her words devolving into unintelligible sniffles.
Danny caught her, steadying her swaying frame. “He what?”
“He’s being mean.”
Jason’s hands flew up in surrender. “I didn’t do anything to her!”
Danny’s gaze flicked between them, bewildered. “To whom?”
“To himself!” she wailed, fresh tears erupting. “Tell him to stop!”
Realization dawned on Danny’s face, followed swiftly by mortification. He squeezed his eyes shut, exhaling through his nose like a man praying for patience.
“Toddster, I am so sorry for her behavior,” he muttered, already maneuvering her toward the door. “Please forgive her.”
Jason barely had time to process before Danny hauled her away, her protests fading into the din of the party.
The balcony was silent again.
Jason stared at the empty space where they’d stood.
What the hell just happened?
The next race weekend arrived with an unexpected turn—Jason clawed his way past the midfield, securing a respectable finish that, while nowhere near his former glory, at least silenced the whispers of his inevitable decline. The garage hummed with cautious optimism, the tension easing just enough for Dick to crack a joke, for the engineers to clap him on the back without that lingering hesitation. It was progress.
But Jason's mind wasn't on the race.
It was on her.
That drunken, furious woman who'd screamed at him like he was worth the effort. Her words had burrowed under his skin, festering like a splinter he couldn't dig out. “You're still the Jason I know.” The worst part? She'd said it like she meant it. Like she'd seen him—really seen him—through the wreckage of Bahrain and still believed in whatever of himself remained.
He'd resigned himself to never seeing her again.
Until the broadcast screens flashed her face.
There she was—no smudged mascara, no vodka-induced haze—standing trackside with a microphone in hand, interviewing the podium finishers with effortless charm. The realization hit him like a missed gear shift: she wasn't just some random party crasher. She was one of the presenters. And now that he really looked, he did recognize her. Not just from the balcony, but from the periphery of his world for months. Lingering near Danny in the garage, passing through the paddock with a press badge. He'd been too consumed by his own spiral to notice.
His curiosity flared.
He watched her wrap up the interview, then slip toward the back of the garage—a restricted area for presenters. Equipment rooms weren't on the media tour. Even if she was connected to Danny, she had no business there.
For the sake of the company, Jason told himself, and followed.
The equipment room was dim, cluttered with spare parts and toolkits. She was already inside, rummaging through a duffel bag that looked suspiciously personal.
“Looking for something, miss?”
She whirled, clutching the bag to her chest like a shield. “I-I wasn't snooping, I swear! I just came to get my bag—”
“Yes, of course,” Jason said, leaning against the doorframe with a smirk. “And about that night on the terrace...”
Her face drained of color, lips parting slightly as if she couldn't quite believe what she was hearing. “I'm so sorry, really,” she stammered, her fingers tightening around the strap of her bag. “I understand if you want to press charges, but just know I—”
“Actually,” Jason interrupted, his voice softer than she'd ever heard it, “I wanted to thank you.”
She blinked. Once. Twice. “What.”
It wasn't a question—it was pure, unfiltered disbelief, the kind that left her rooted to the spot, staring at him like he'd just spoken in tongues.
Jason exhaled, rubbing the back of his neck in a rare show of vulnerability. The movement was almost self-conscious, as if he wasn't entirely sure how to navigate this moment either. “You were right,” he admitted, the words rough but sincere. “About... all of it.”
His gaze lifted to hers, bracing for the pity he'd grown so accustomed to seeing in people's eyes. But it wasn't there. Instead, he found something far more disarming—wary confusion, yes, but beneath it, a flicker of something that might've been hope. Or maybe just surprise that he hadn't thrown her out of the garage yet.
Silence stretched between them, thick and charged.
Then, as if her brain had finally caught up with the absurdity of the situation, she blurted: “So... you're not gonna press charges? Or slap me with a lawsuit that would probably cost more than everything I own and land me in jail?” The words tumbled out in a rush, her hands gesturing wildly. “Because, honestly, I've been mentally preparing for that exact scenario for the past week, and—”
Jason laughed.
Not the hollow, humorless sound he'd been making for the past year, but a real, genuine laugh—the kind that caught even him off guard. It rumbled deep in his chest, startlingly warm in the dim light of the equipment room.
“Not today, sweetheart,” he said, shaking his head. Then, with a smirk that was equal parts challenge and invitation: “But if you're feeling that guilty, you could make it up to me by keeping me company over dinner.”
The woman looked like she was about to faint.
Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “You—what?”
Jason arched a brow. “You heard me.”
“You're asking me to dinner?”
“Unless you'd prefer the lawsuit?”
She stared at him, torn between disbelief and the dawning realization that he was, in fact, serious. And then—slowly, hesitantly—the corners of her lips curled upward. “You're insane.”
Jason grinned. “Yeah. Thought you knew that already. So what's the verdict?”
She exhaled, shaking her head as if she couldn't believe her own answer. “...Fine. Better than a ruined career I suppose.”
“That's the spirit,” Jason said, pushing off the doorframe. “Now, you gonna tell me your name, or am I just supposed to keep calling you ‘the drunk girl who yelled at me’ in my head?”
“Oh my god,” She groaned, covering her face with her hands.
The moment Jason’s manager contacted her after their encounter in the equipment room, reality hit like a sudden downpour at a race—unexpected and impossible to ignore. A sleek car would arrive at her doorstep at 7 PM sharp, the message stated, its tone leaving no room for negotiation.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, caught between exhilaration and sheer terror.
What if this was all an elaborate trap?
The thought circled her mind like a vulture. Maybe Jason Todd had taken offense to her drunken tirade, and this dinner was simply a prelude to legal annihilation—a chance to personally serve her with a lawsuit that would bankrupt her and tarnish her fledgling career before it even took off. The possibilities were endless, and none of them comforting.
But beneath the anxiety, a traitorous spark of anticipation flickered.
Because it was Jason Todd.
Three-time world champion. The man whose posters had adorned her walls as a teenager. The driver whose career she’d followed with near-religious devotion long before she ever stepped foot in the paddock as a presenter. And now? Now she was supposed to sit across from him at a dinner table without combusting from sheer nerves.
Outfit crisis imminent.
As a presenter, her wardrobe was extensive—filled with sleek blazers, tailored dresses, and enough heels to make a fashion blogger weep. But suddenly, nothing felt sufficient. Too formal? Too casual? Too try-hard? She stood frozen in front of her closet, hands buried in her hair, as the existential dread mounted.
“Steph. Help.”
The phone call to Stephanie Brown—her closest friend and a rising star in the motorsports styling world—was nothing short of a distress signal.
“I have a very, very, very important dinner today, and I have nothing to wear. What do I do? Should I just die? God, I can’t do this. I—”
“Woah, woah, easy, girl,” Steph interrupted, her voice a calming anchor amidst the storm. “I caught ‘dinner,’ ‘important,’ and ‘nothing to wear’—that correct?” A muffled sound followed, then Steph’s sharp, “Tim, stop that—”
“Uh-huh,” she confirmed, nodding vigorously out of habit despite Steph’s inability to see her. “Also, tell Tim congratulations for his podium. I was going to catch up with you guys, but you’d already flown out.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Steph sighed. “Tim just couldn’t wait to get some ‘me time’ at home.” The unspoken eye roll was almost audible.
“That’s okay. It’s understandable.”
“See? Y/N gets it!” Tim’s voice chirped in the background, smug.
“Shut up, Timothy,” Steph snapped. “Ain’t nobody asked yo ass.” What followed was a familiar symphony of bickering— a dynamic so ingrained it nearly made her smile despite her panic.
“Steph! Dinner!” she interjected before the couple could fully derail.
“Oh, right.” Steph’s tone shifted back to business. “Let’s see—is this like a professional ‘don’t fuck with me’ dinner? Or a ‘I lowkey wanna bang you’ dinner? Or a ‘this could’ve been an email’ dinner?”
The blunt categorization forced a laugh out of her, but the truth was far more complicated. “It’s a ‘please don’t kill me and my career’ dinner,” she confessed, voice small.
A beat of silence. Then—
“Y/N,” Steph said slowly, “What did you do?”
“Fucked up big time.” The admission came out in a rush, followed by Tim’s audible “Ooh,” in the background.
“Shut up, Tim!” Both girls barked in unison, effectively silencing the young driver.
Steph’s sigh was long-suffering. “Alright. First, breathe. Second, we’re fixing this. But you owe me the full story later.”
Y/N had stood in the presence of racing legends before - interviewed world champions with champagne still dripping from their hair, exchanged banter with team principals who controlled billion-dollar empires, even moderated press conferences where the tension between rival drivers could have powered the entire paddock. Yet none of those experiences could compare to the visceral, gut-churning nerves currently twisting her stomach into knots as the luxury car glided toward the restaurant.
It was ironic really. She'd interacted with Jason Todd quite a few times in professional settings - the obligatory media day interviews, the post-race scrums where she'd lobbed softball questions about tire strategy and a couple more here and there. Those encounters should have made this easier. Familiarity should have bred comfort.
But this wasn't a media event with carefully scripted questions and PR handlers monitoring every word. This was dinner. Intimate. Unfiltered. Just two people and whatever uncomfortable truths might surface between the appetizer and dessert.
Before that disastrous night on the terrace, she would have sold her soul for this opportunity - a private audience with the man whose racing prowess had inspired her career path. Now? Now she fantasized about the floor opening up beneath her. The cruel twist of fate wasn't just that Jason Todd finally knew she existed - it was that he knew her as the drunken harpy who'd screamed at him like some deranged fangirl.
Her fingers plucked nervously at the burgundy tulle of her dress, the delicate fabric whispering with every fidget. Stephanie had insisted this was the perfect choice - “It says ‘I’m too sexy to kill, so please don't ruin my career’,” she'd declared while wrestling Y/N into the designer garment through the phone. The color was no accident either: Jason's signature shade, the one that adorned his helmet and racing suit. A subtle homage or a desperate plea for mercy? She wasn't sure anymore.
The car slowed as they approached their destination - one of those impossibly exclusive restaurants where the maître d' could spot an impostor from fifty paces. The kind of establishment where reservations required connections more than money, though God knew there'd be plenty of both behind these doors. Y/N had walked past places like this her whole life, never imagining she'd actually enter one - certainly not under these circumstances.
Through the tinted windows, the restaurant's facade glowed like some temple of the elite, its polished brass and artfully distressed oak radiating quiet money and old-world power. The sort of place where Bruce Wayne might hold court in a private dining room while discussing billion-dollar deals between courses.
Her throat went dry. Against the combined might of Wayne Enterprises and Jason Todd's racing fortune, she was utterly insignificant. A single ill-advised outburst could vaporize not just her career, but Danny's position at the team too. The weight of that realization settled over her like a lead apron as the car door opened, releasing her into the lion's den.
The maître d' didn't even check the reservation list. One glance at her and he was nodding deferentially. “Mr. Todd's guest. Right this way.”
Her heels clicked against the marble floor like a countdown to judgment. Somewhere in this temple of haute cuisine, Jason Todd waited and Y/N wasn't sure whether to beg for forgiveness or prepare for war. The ambient chatter of the elite patrons seemed to fade into a distant hum as her eyes scanned the dimly lit dining room, searching for the one face that had haunted her thoughts since that disastrous balcony confrontation.
And then she saw him.
Jason Todd sat bathed in the warm glow of an artfully placed spotlight, looking every bit the racing royalty he was. The crisp lines of his tailored shirt—a deep burgundy that matched her dress with embarrassing precision—stretched across his broad shoulders, the top button undone just enough to reveal the faintest glimpse of the scars that marred his collarbone and running up his neck. His dark hair was slightly tousled, as if he'd run his fingers through it one too many times in frustration and the ghost of a smirk played at the corner of his lips as he watched her approach.
“Wasn't aware there was a dress code,” he remarked dryly, his voice laced with amusement as his gaze flickered pointedly between her dress and his own shirt.
Y/N felt the heat rise to her cheeks, turning her face the same shade as the offending fabric. Goddammit, Stephanie.
“It's a coincidence,” she muttered, sliding into the plush chair opposite him with all the grace of a startled deer. Her eyes darted anywhere but at him—studying the intricate pattern of the tablecloth, the way the candlelight reflected off the polished silverware, the distant exit sign she was sorely tempted to bolt toward.
Jason chuckled lowly, the sound sending an unwelcome shiver down her spine. “I know I ain’t much to look at, but you don’t need to make it so obvious,” he teased, accepting the leather-bound menu from the waiter with a nod of thanks.
Her head snapped up at that, indignation momentarily overriding her embarrassment. “What? No! You're gorgeous—”
The words tumbled out unchecked, her filter obliterated by sheer panic.
Jason froze, the menu hovering mid-air as his eyebrows shot up in surprise. A slow, dangerously smug grin spread across his face. “I see,” he drawled, the teasing lilt in his voice making her want to vault over the table and strangle him—or maybe herself.
Mortified, Y/N yanked the menu up like a shield, pressing the cool leather against her burning face. You're so done, Y/N, her inner voice screamed at her, equal parts horrified and exasperated.
From behind her makeshift barricade, she heard Jason let out a huff that oddly sounded like a laugh—the kind that vibrated through his chest and made her traitorous stomach flip. “You planning to order from behind there or should I just guess what you want?”
She groaned, the sound muffled by the menu. It trembled slightly in Y/N's grip as she fought to regain control of her traitorous tongue. The embossed letters blurred before her eyes— foie gras, truffle-infused something, caviar that probably cost more than her monthly rent. None of it registered.
The candle between them cast flickering shadows across the sharp planes of his face, highlighting the faint scar that bisected his left eyebrow— a souvenir from his early racing days that no media outlet had ever gotten the full story on.
“It's a bold strategy,” Jason mused, leaning back in his chair with the effortless grace of someone completely at home in this world of white tablecloths and thousand-dollar bottles of wine. “First you scream at me drunk, now you're trying to suffocate yourself with the menu. I'm starting to think you've got a death wish, doll.”
Y/N finally dropped the menu with a defeated thud. “I was hoping for spontaneous combustion actually,” she admitted, reaching for her water glass with only the slightest tremor in her fingers. “Seems more dignified than whatever this is.”
Jason's laughter rang out, unfiltered and unguarded. It transformed his face completely - the harsh lines of trauma and exhaustion momentarily smoothed away, revealing the more of the boyish charmer who'd taken the racing world by storm years ago, almost making Y/N's heart stagger.
“But you know,” He said swirling the liquid in his glass with deliberate nonchalance, “most people who think I'm going to ruin their careers don't compliment me quite so... enthusiastically.”
The ice cubes clinked mockingly as he took a sip.
“I was being polite,” Y/N lied through clenched teeth, surrendering her menu shield to the hovering waiter.
“Polite would've been ‘you clean up nice.’ But ‘Gorgeous’?” He leaned forward slightly, the candlelight catching the gold flecks in his otherwise stormy eyes. “That's the kind of word that makes a man think dangerous thoughts.”
The waiter chose that moment to reappear with their first course - some delicate arrangement of edible flowers and microgreens that looked more like a museum installation than food. Y/N seized the distraction like a lifeline, stabbing at her plate with slightly more force than necessary.
“Careful,” Jason murmured, watching her assault on the defenseless appetizer. “That fork's not one of my sponsors.” Y/N shrugged and muttered something unintelligble before continuning with the same.
“Christ, you’re something else,” he said, shaking his head as he signaled the sommelier. When he turned back, his expression had shifted into something more contemplative. “Look, let's get one thing straight - you're not here because I'm planning to sue you into oblivion.”
The waiter arrived with the wine list before she could respond. Jason barely glanced at it. “The '89 Margaux,” he said automatically, then paused. “Unless you'd prefer something else?”
Y/N blinked. That particular Bordeaux cost more than what she made in a month. “The... the Margaux is perfect,” she managed, watching as Jason nodded dismissal to the waiter.
When they were alone again, he leaned forward, elbows resting on the table. The movement caused his shirt to pull tight across his shoulders, and Y/N suddenly found the stem of her water glass fascinating.
“I asked you here,” Jason continued, voice dropping into a more serious register, “because you were the first person in a year who didn't treat me like either a ticking time bomb or a broken trophy.” His fingers traced the rim of his glass absentmindedly.
The raw honesty in his words stole Y/N's breath. This wasn't the carefully curated media persona or the angry driver she'd confronted on the balcony. This was Jason Todd stripped bare— vulnerable in a way she'd never imagined seeing.
Her professional instincts warred with something far more personal. “I saw someone who needed to get his head out of his ass,” she said before she could stop herself, then immediately winced. “Sorry, that was-”
“No,” Jason interrupted, that ghost of a smile returning. “That's exactly it. It was... refreshing. Let's just say it helped me think differently.” His fingers tapped a restless rhythm against the tablecloth. “And I'd like to thank you for that.”
Y/N nodded slowly, taking a deliberate sip of her wine to buy time. The rich, oaky flavor bloomed across her tongue. “You're welcome, I suppose,” she murmured, the rim of the glass muffling her words slightly.
An awkward silence settled between them, punctuated only by the distant clink of silverware and the muted conversations of other diners. Jason's gaze drifted to the window where Gotham's skyline glittered against the night sky, his expression unreadable.
“You know,” he said suddenly, turning back to her with renewed focus, “you're free to make conversation with me. It's more entertaining than most people I talk to.”
The challenge in his tone sparked something in Y/N. She tilted her head, considering him for a long moment before asking, “So what do you do when you're not racing?”
It was a genuine question - one she'd always wondered about. In every interview she'd ever watched or conducted with Jason Todd, the conversation inevitably circled back to racing strategies, training regimens, or future competitions. His social media showed nothing but carefully curated content - podium finishes, sponsor events, the occasional vacation photo that still somehow related to racing. There was never any glimpse of who Jason Todd might be when he stepped away from the track.
Jason opened his mouth automatically. “Um, I usually train or go over my past races, analyze data, study tracks—”
“No,” Y/N interrupted gently but firmly. “I mean outside of racing. You've pretty much dedicated all of you to racing, but who is Jason Todd outside of that?”
The question seemed to catch him off guard. His fingers stilled against the tablecloth, and for the first time that evening, the ever-present confidence in his posture faltered slightly. The silence stretched between them, growing heavier with each passing second.
Jason's brow furrowed as he stared into his wine glass, as if the answer might be hidden in its depths. When he finally looked up, there was something unsettlingly vulnerable in his expression.
He paused, then continued with a soft huff of self-deprecating laughter, “I mean I used to read.” The admission came slowly, dragged up from some long-buried place in his memory. “Before races. History, mostly.” A faint, nostalgic smile touched his lips. “There was... there was something about empires rising and falling that put the whole 'will I qualify P1 or P2' thing in perspective.”
Y/N found herself leaning forward without realizing it. This was new territory - an actual glimpse behind the carefully constructed media persona. The Jason Todd of press conferences and interviews was all sharp edges and racing statistics, a human embodiment of competitive drive. This Jason? This one had layers.
“And now?” she asked softly, her voice barely above a whisper, afraid to break the fragile moment.
Jason's thumb traced slow circles around the base of his glass, his gaze distant. “Now I...” The sentence trailed off into silence, his brow furrowing deeper. When he spoke again, his voice had taken on a rougher edge, the words tinged with something like self-reproach. “Christ, you're right. There isn't a Jason Todd outside of racing. Hasn't been for a long time.”
Y/N could see the moment of realization hitting him, could practically see the wheels turning in his head as he confronted this truth about himself. The way his jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, the slight narrowing of his eyes - she recognized the signs of someone spiraling inward with uncomfortable self-examination.
Seeking to lighten the mood before it turned too heavy, she quipped, “For someone who just admitted he has no life outside racing, you're doing a terrible job of convincing me to take this dinner seriously as a networking opportunity.”
The tension shattered as Jason barked out a surprised laugh that made the waiters look curiously. “Fuck you,” he shot back, but there was no real venom in it - just a warmth that softened the edges of his usual sharp demeanor. He speared a bite of his appetizer with more force than necessary, the action betraying his lingering discomfort with the direction of their conversation. “Fine. Next time I'll lie. Tell you I breed rare orchids or some shit.”
“Next time?” Y/N raised an eyebrow, her own fork hovering mid-air as she caught the implication.
Jason froze for a fraction of a second, then recovered with a shrug that was far too studied to be casual. “Figure of speech.” But the way his eyes darted briefly away, the slight tightening at the corners of his mouth, told a different story entirely.
Y/N deadpanned, “You just admitted your entire identity is wrapped up in going fast in circles. That means we've got our work cut out for us.”
“'We'?” Jason latched onto the word with surprising quickness, his tone dripping with exaggerated sarcasm though something in his eyes betrayed genuine curiosity. “As in you want to accompany me in this grand journey of self-discovery?” The question was framed as rhetorical, but there was an undercurrent of something more - a quiet hope that surprised even him.
Y/N smiled at his characteristic sarcastic flair, recognizing the defense mechanism for what it was. “That depends on you, Mr. Todd,” she replied, matching his tone but letting her amusement show through.
Jason regarded her for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “I suppose it does,” he finally conceded, the words neither a confirmation nor denial, but something intriguingly in between.
The sleek black town car had glided through the city's rain-slicked streets in near silence, the hum of the engine the only sound as Jason’s chauffeur navigated the late-night traffic. Y/N had sat stiffly in the plush leather seat, fingers twisting in her lap, replaying every moment of the evening in her head. Jason had been... different than she expected. Not the brooding, closed-off champion the media painted him as, but someone sharper, wittier—someone who had actually laughed at her jokes.
When the car finally pulled up to her apartment building, she had thanked the driver with a polite smile, maintaining her composure right up until the moment her front door clicked shut behind her.
Then her knees gave out.
She slid down the length of the door until she hit the floor, back pressed against the wood, heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her throat. A giddy, disbelieving laugh bubbled up, followed immediately by a wave of sheer panic.
She needed to talk to someone. Now.
Stephanie picked up the video call on the second ring, her face already alight with curiosity. “Okay, so how did it go?”
Y/N opened her mouth—and promptly burst into tears. Stephanie’s eyes widened as Y/N devolved into a babbling, incoherent mess, words tumbling out between hiccuping sobs.
“I can’t understand shit,” Stephanie said, leaning closer to the screen. “Are these happy tears or sad?”
“Seems happy to me,” Tim chimed in from somewhere off-camera. “Happy?” Stephanie repeated, narrowing her eyes. “What the hell happened? You’re acting like Jason Todd took you on a date or something.”
Y/N froze.
Then, slowly, she looked up at Stephanie through her lashes, her lips quirking into a sheepish smile. “I mean—” A giggle escaped, high-pitched and entirely involuntary.
Stephanie’s expression morphed into pure shock. “Hol’up, bitch. What do you mean by ‘I mean’? Whatchu teehee’ing for?” she shrieked, loud enough that Y/N had to pull the phone away from her ear.
“Y/N went on a date with who now?” Tim’s voice floated into frame as he leaned over Stephanie’s shoulder, eyebrows raised.
“That’s why I just asked her, dipshit,” Stephanie snapped, shoving him away.
“It wasn’t a date,” Y/N insisted, though the way she twirled a strand of hair around her finger betrayed her. “I mean, it was one in my head, but that doesn’t matter.”
Stephanie’s jaw dropped. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”
Y/N snapped out of her daze, straightening up as the full weight of the evening came crashing back. Words poured out of her in a frantic, breathless rush—Jason’s unexpected dinner invitation, the way he’d actually listened to her, the way his smirk had softened into something dangerously close to genuine amusement.
Stephanie’s reaction was instantaneous. “Jason FUCKING Todd? As in three-time world champion Jason Todd? The guy who hasn’t been seen in public outside of races for like a year? The same Jason Todd whose poster you had above your bed and wrote like a thousand fanfictions about in high school and college? The one who’s—”
“Steph! That was years ago!” Y/N’s face burned so hot she was surprised her phone didn’t melt.
From the background, Tim’s voice piped up again, smug. “Wait, Y/N had a crush on Ja—”
“TIMOTHY DRAKE, IF YOU DON’T SHUT YOUR MOUTH RIGHT NOW I SWEAR TO GOD—”
A scuffle ensued, followed by a yelp and the sound of something—or someone—being forcibly silenced.
Y/N buried her face in her hands, groaning.
Then her phone chimed.
A text.
From an unknown number.
Her stomach dropped. With trembling fingers, she opened the message.
Unknown:
So when do we start?
Y/N let out a strangled scream and threw her phone across the room like it had burned her.
“Y/N? HELLO? WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?” Stephanie’s voice screeched from the discarded device. Y/N scrambled to retrieve it, her voice pitching into hysterics. “H-he just texted me. What do I do? What do I DO?”
She collapsed back onto the floor, biting her fist to muffle another scream.
Y/N's phone continued to blare Stephanie's increasingly frantic voice from where it had landed face-up on the rug. She stared at it like it might explode, her entire body frozen in panic.
Jason Todd had her number.
Jason Todd had texted her.
Jason Todd was somehow already ruining her ability to function like a normal human being.
Stephanie's pixelated face twisted in exasperation on the screen. “Y/N, I swear to god if you don't pick up this phone right now—”
With trembling fingers, Y/N grabbed the device, her wide-eyed reflection staring back at her in the front camera. “Steph,” she whispered hoarsely. “What do I say?”
Stephanie opened her mouth—probably to deliver one of her famously unhinged pep talks—when Tim suddenly shouldered his way back into frame, his grin downright diabolical.
“Say yes, obviously.”
“TIM—”
“No, listen,” he barreled on, ignoring Stephanie's death grip on his arm. “Jason doesn't text people. Like, ever. Dick had to bribe him just to answer group chats. If he's reaching out first? That's basically a declaration of—”
Stephanie clamped a hand over his mouth. “What my handsome yet unburdened by intelligence boyfriend is trying to say is,” she said through gritted teeth, “that you should reply before you psych yourself out of it. Also, tim don't spout bull, she's plenty delulu as it is.”
Y/N's thumb hovered over the screen. The cursor blinked mockingly in the text box.
Unknown:
So when do we start?
She swallowed hard.
This was Jason Todd. The same Jason Todd who had once flipped off an entire grandstand after a controversial penalty. The same Jason Todd whose post-race interviews were legendary for their sarcasm and barely-contained rage. The same Jason Todd who had just admitted he had no identity outside of racing—and was now asking her to help him find one.
Her fingers moved before she could overthink it.
Y/N:
Depends. Are we starting with book recommendations or full-blown personality reconstruction with something more hands-on?
The reply came almost instantly.
Jason:
Never been the one to back out from a challenge.
So what's it gonna be doll?
Y/N's breath hitched. She could practically hear his voice in her head, that low, teasing drawl that had made her stomach flip more than once during dinner.
“Steph,” she blurted out, turning back to her still-active video call where Stephanie and Tim were watching this unfold with rapt attention. “Suggestions. Fast. Something I can take Jason to.”
Stephanie's grin was instantaneous. “Oh, I know you're not about to drag Jason Todd into one of your hyperfixation hobbies.”
“Good idea and that I absolutely will.”
Stephanie snorted. “Well, you could take him to that artisan ceramics workshop with the old Italian nonnas you're obsessed with. Or that dance class you signed up for in Barcelona last year.”
One thing about Y/N: she happened to be on the ADHD spectrum and every Grand Prix weekend in a new country had become an opportunity to dive headfirst into a new hobby. From pottery in Italy to flamenco dancing in Spain, her restless mind latching onto anything that could provide that sweet, sweet dopamine hit. It made her the perfect person to help Jason Todd find something—anything—that wasn't racing. Collecting herself, Y/N typed back with renewed determination:
Y/N:
Give me a country, and I'll tell you what we're doing.
Jason:
Race in Imola in two days.
Y/N:
So Italy it is.
Excitement buzzed under Y/N's skin. Imola. The Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. And now, the backdrop for whatever this was becoming.
Across the world, in a private jet en route to Italy, Jason found himself staring at his phone with an unfamiliar feeling in his chest. For the first time in years, he was looking forward to something that wasn't a race.
Their messages continued late into the night—Y/N enthusiastically listing every obscure Italian hobby she'd tried, Jason responding with dry humor that slowly melted into genuine interest. He didn't even realize when the tension in his shoulders began to ease, when the ever-present anger that had fueled him since his return started to fade, replaced by something lighter. Something like anticipation.
In just a span of two days, his phone was filled with ridiculous stickers, mostly consisting of a concerning number of cat memes and a plan for their first “non-racing activity.” His phone buzzed again—another meme from Y/N, this time a photoshopped image of Bruce Wayne with cat ears next to an actual grumpy Persian. Jason snorted, thumb hovering over the keyboard to reply, when a quiet voice interrupted.
“Jason, can we talk?”
Cass's voice cut through the controlled chaos of the garage, where mechanics buzzed around the car like worker bees. Jason slipped his phone into his pocket, though not before Cass caught a glimpse of his screen— the ridiculous meme Y/N had sent him.
“Sure, Cass. What's up?” he said, turning to face her.
Cass studied him for a long moment, her dark eyes perceptive as ever. “You've been... different.”
Jason stiffened. Different. Did that mean distracted? Unfocused? Cass was one of the few people who had never treated him like glass after the accident, never looked at him with pity. If she said he'd changed—
But then Cass's lips quirked. “You smile more.”
Jason blinked.
“And you keep checking your phone,” she added, nodding to his pocket, where another notification had just buzzed. “Whoever they are... I like them.”
Jason opened his mouth—to protest, to deflect—but found he didn't want to. Instead, a slow, unguarded smile spread across his face.
“Yeah,”
he admitted, pulling out his phone to see Y/N's latest message.
Y/N:
Pack something you don't mind getting messy. We're starting with ceramics tomorrow.
“Me too.”
Jason stood frozen outside the unassuming ceramics studio, his boots scuffing against the worn cobblestones as he double-checked the address. The building looked like something out of a postcard—sun-bleached terracotta walls draped in lush ivy, the faint scent of lemon trees mingling with the earthy aroma of clay from the open windows. A hand-painted wooden sign swung gently in the breeze, its blue door chipped with age.
He glanced at his watch—10:02 AM. He was late.
Not that it mattered, he told himself. This wasn’t a race briefing or a sponsor meeting. Just... an odd detour into unfamiliar territory.
The street was blessedly empty, tucked away in the city’s historic district where tourists rarely wandered. Jason exhaled slowly, rolling his shoulders to ease the tension coiled there. These days, being recognized outside the paddock meant one of two things—either starstruck fans shoving phones in his face, or pitying glances from those who remembered the crash. He hated both reactions equally.
His outfit felt foreign against his skin—a lightweight linen shirt layered over his usual thin turtleneck, loose trousers instead of fireproof racing gear, boots that had never touched a garage floor. The fabric moved differently, unrestrictive in ways his racing suits never were.
Jason raised his fist and knocked twice on the weathered blue door.
The door flew open before his knuckles could make contact a third time.
“Ah! Finalmente!”
A tiny, silver-haired woman—Nonna Gianna, he presumed—grabbed his wrist with surprising strength and yanked him inside before he could protest. The studio was cooler than the sunlit street, the air thick with the mineral scent of wet clay and something herbal—maybe thyme or rosemary from the small kitchen in the back.
“You are il ragazzo who knows nothing, sì?” Gianna declared, her dark eyes scanning him with the same intensity engineers used when inspecting a damaged chassis.
Jason opened his mouth to argue—he’d mastered the most complex racing circuits in the world, surely he could handle some clay—but she was already dragging him past shelves of glazed pottery, their surfaces catching the morning light filtering through the windows.
The back room was bathed in golden sunlight from the open roof and thin shades, the hum of a spinning pottery wheel filling the air. And there—
Y/N sat at the wheel, her hands buried in a mound of wet clay that spun hypnotically under her fingers. She’d traded her usual paddock attire for a linen shirt that matched his own—though hers was already streaked with earthy smudges—her hair tied back with a vibrant scarf. And a smudge of clay decorated her cheek.
“Wasn’t aware there was a dress code,” she quipped without looking up, her voice laced with amusement.
Jason blinked, momentarily thrown by the quip and the sight of her—so at ease here, so different from the polished presenter or the drunk socialite he saw earlier. But before he could respond, Gianna shoved him toward the empty wheel beside Y/N’s.
“Bello ma stupido,” the old woman muttered, patting his bicep approvingly before grabbing his hands to inspect them. “Strong hands,” she announced, turning them palm-up like a fortune teller. “Good for clay.” Her smile was slightly unnerving—the kind usually reserved for fresh meat in a lion’s den.
Jason, who had faced down the most intimidating team principals and aggressive reporters without flinching, felt an odd prickle of nerves under her scrutiny. “I’ll... try my best?”
Gianna snorted and slapped a wet lump of clay onto his wheel with a decisive thwap. “Non provare. Do it.”
For the next two hours, Jason Todd—three-time world champion, master of precision—was thoroughly humbled by a lump of wet earth.
His first attempt collapsed inward like a deflating balloon. His second wobbled violently before spiraling off-center. His third attempt earned him a sharp rap on the knuckles with Gianna’s wooden spoon when he gripped the clay too tightly.
“Troppa forza!” she scolded. “Clay is not enemy! You fight it, it fights back.”
Y/N muffled a laugh into her shoulder, her own wheel producing something suspiciously vase-shaped. “She’s right, you know,” she said, pushing back a stray strand from her forehead with her wrist. “It’s about listening, not controlling.”
Jason glared at his latest failed attempt, the clay stubbornly refusing to obey him the way his car always did. “I’m used to things responding immediately when I tell them what to do.”
Y/N’s grin was downright wicked. “Welcome to the real world, hotshot.”
He flicked a bit of clay at her. She gasped in mock outrage and retaliated by smearing a streak across his cheek, her fingers lingering just a second too long. Gianna threw her hands up and muttered something in rapid Italian before stomping off.
By the session’s end, his shirt was thoroughly ruined, patience exhausted and—against all odds—he’d somehow produced something vaguely cup-shaped.
“Non male,” Gianna conceded, examining his lopsided creation with a critical eye. “For first try.” She turned to Y/N and said something that made the younger woman nearly drop her perfectly formed vase.
Jason wiped his clay-caked hands on a towel. “What’d she say?”
Y/N refused to meet his eyes. “Nothing important.”
The warm afternoon sunlight streamed through the studio’s windows as Gianna’s cackling faded into the distance, leaving Jason and Y/N alone at their worktable. Jason found his gaze tracing the details of Y/N’s profile—the way her nose scrunched in concentration when examining their pottery, the smudge of clay drying along her collarbone that she’d missed when cleaning up. He noticed how her shoulders curved slightly forward when focused, the golden chain around her neck catching the light with each movement. A glimpse of ink at the base of her neck peeked through her hair—some tattoo he couldn’t quite make out, its meaning hidden just like so much about her still remained unknown to him.
It struck him then how rarely he noticed these small things about people. In the paddock, he saw drivers as competitors, engineers as problem-solvers, journalists as obstacles to navigate. But Y/N—he was seeing her in fragments, piece by unexpected piece, and each discovery left him strangely curious for more.
As Y/N carefully carried their creations to the kiln, Jason wiped his clay-streaked hands on a towel. The studio’s elderly owner reappeared at his side, moving with surprising stealth for someone who’d just been cackling moments before.
“Tu e Y/N,” Gianna began, her dark eyes twinkling with mischief. “Da quanto tempo vi frequentate?”
Jason blinked. “Pardon? Uh, signora um... non parlo italiano.”
Gianna’s wrinkled face scrunched in concentration as she searched for the right English words, then gave up with an exasperated wave of her hands. Instead, she brought her pinched fingers together in the universal sign for kissing.
Jason’s eyes widened comically. “No, no, me and Y/N—not like that,” he protested, waving his hands in denial.
“Non?” Gianna looked genuinely surprised. “Ma l’ultima volta che l’ho vista eri nello sfondo del suo telefono.”
Jason stared blankly, the rapid Italian washing over him without comprehension. Before he could respond, Y/N returned, immediately picking up on the tension.
“Hey, you okay?” she asked, tilting her head at Jason’s bewildered expression.
“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about it,” Jason muttered, suddenly finding the clay remnants on the table fascinating.
Gianna said something rapid-fire to Y/N, who laughed and shook her head before turning back to Jason. “She said we can fix ourselves a meal in her kitchen if we want while the pots bake. What do you say?”
Jason automatically shook his head. “Thanks for the offer, but I have to strictly watch what I eat.”
Y/N groaned dramatically, throwing her head back. “Jay, look. It’s two weeks before the next race. One sandwich won’t destroy you.” She clasped her hands together in mock pleading. “And Gianna makes her own cheese! With goat milk from her nephew’s farm. Pretty please?”
The way she said it—the exaggerated pout, the way her eyes sparkled with challenge, the way she said his name—stirred something in Jason. He’d spent years following nutrition plans to the gram, never deviating, never indulging. But standing there, with clay under his nails and Y/N looking at him like that, the strict rules he’d lived by suddenly felt less important.
“Fine,” he conceded, holding up a warning finger. “One sandwich.”
Y/N’s triumphant grin was worth whatever lecture his nutritionist would give him later. As Gianna led them toward the small kitchen in the back, chattering away in Italian, Jason realized with startling clarity that for the first time in years, he wasn’t thinking about macros or race weight.
He was simply... enjoying himself.
The small kitchen was warm and fragrant, filled with the earthy scent of baking bread and the sharp tang of fresh herbs. Sunlight streamed through the lace curtains, casting delicate patterns across the worn wooden counter where Y/N stood, her hands deftly slicing into a crusty loaf of sourdough. The rhythmic sound of the knife against the cutting board filled the comfortable silence between them.
Jason leaned against the counter nearby, watching as she worked. There was something mesmerizing about the way she moved—practical yet graceful, her fingers sure and steady as she portioned the bread. The quiet domesticity of the moment felt foreign to him, like stepping into a scene from a life he’d never allowed himself to imagine.
Then Y/N glanced up, her eyes flickering briefly to the high collar of his turtleneck before meeting his gaze.
“I respect people’s fashion choices and all,” she began, her tone light but curious, “but if you don’t mind me asking... why the turtleneck?”
The question shouldn’t have caught him off guard. He’d been asked it before—by reporters, by fans, even by well-meaning acquaintances who didn’t know how to tiptoe around the subject of his scars. But coming from Y/N, it felt different. There was no pity in her voice, no morbid fascination. Just simple, straightforward curiosity.
Jason hesitated, his fingers absently tracing the edge of his sleeve. He could deflect, could make a joke and steer the conversation elsewhere. But something about the quiet intimacy of the kitchen, the way Y/N waited without pressing, made the truth feel less like a burden and more like just another part of himself.
“After the crash,” he started, his voice quieter than he intended, “people tend to... stare.” He shrugged, as if that explained it all. And in a way, it did. The scars were a map of his worst moment, etched permanently into his skin. A reminder he carried everywhere, whether he wanted to or not.
He realized how somber his words sounded and quickly tried to lighten the mood. “And even then, I wouldn’t wanna scare you with ‘em. It’s ugly stuff.”
Y/N didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she turned back to the bread, her knife moving steadily. But just as Jason thought she’d let the subject drop, she murmured, so softly he almost missed it:
“Not to me, it’s not.”
The words hung in the air between them, delicate as the dust motes floating in the sunlight. Jason wasn’t sure if he’d heard her correctly—if he’d imagined the quiet sincerity in her voice. But before he could question it, Y/N looked up again, her expression shifting seamlessly back to casual ease.
“Hey, can you wash the cherry tomatoes, please?”
Jason nodded, pushing away from the counter to comply. As he turned on the faucet and let the cool water run over the vibrant red tomatoes, he became acutely aware of the quiet sounds filling the kitchen—the splash of water, the rustle of Y/N gathering herbs, and beneath it all, the soft, absentminded hum escaping her lips.
The melody was unfamiliar, but the way she let it drift in and out of her thoughts, barely aware she was doing it, struck something deep in his chest. It reminded him of his mother—how she would hum old lullabies while cooking, the sound wrapping around him like a comfort as he sat on the countertop, swinging his legs and waiting for dinner. It reminded him, too, of Alfred—the Wayne family’s butler—patiently teaching him how to prep vegetables, his dry wit hiding a warmth Jason had taken for granted in his youth.
He hadn’t thought about those moments in years. Hadn’t let himself.
The water ran over his fingers, the tomatoes glistening like little gems in his palms. For the first time in longer than he could remember, the simmering anger that had fueled him since the crash—the bitterness, the relentless drive to prove he was still the same, still unbeatable—felt distant. Fading, like an old wound finally beginning to heal.
And standing there, in a kitchen with the scent of fresh bread in the air and Y/N’s quiet humming weaving through the space between them, Jason realized something with startling clarity:
He was happy.
Not the fleeting rush of a podium finish, not the hollow satisfaction of proving his critics wrong. Just... happy.
Y/N perched on the edge of the worn wooden counter, her legs swinging idly as she took another enthusiastic bite of her sandwich. Crumbs tumbled onto the plate below, but she paid them no mind, too absorbed in savoring the flavors—the rich creaminess of Gianna’s homemade goat cheese, the sweetness of sun-ripened tomatoes, the crunch of freshly baked sourdough.
Across from her, Jason sat frozen, his own sandwich hovering halfway to his lips. His expression was distant, conflicted, as if caught in some internal debate. The voices of his past—his coaches, his nutritionists, even his own relentless drive—whispered warnings in his mind. This isn’t part of the plan. This isn’t what champions do.
Across from her, Jason sat frozen, his own sandwich hovering inches from his mouth. His fingers gripped the bread just a fraction too tightly, his knuckles pale with tension. The voices in his head were louder than the cheerful clatter of the kitchen—his old trainer’s stern warnings about maintaining race weight, the nutritionist’s rigid meal plans, the unspoken expectations of a champion who couldn’t afford to slip, not even for a moment.
Was this weakness? The thought slithered through his mind. Was he throwing away years of discipline, all the sacrifices he’d made—the early mornings, the grueling workouts, the endless self-denial—for something as trivial as a sandwich?
“Is there something wrong?”
Y/N’s voice cut through his spiral, her brow furrowing as she studied him. The concern in her eyes was genuine, untainted by the judgment he’d come to expect from the racing world.
Jason shook his head, more to clear his thoughts than to answer her. Then, before he could overthink it further, he took a bite.
The flavors exploded across his tongue—sharp, tangy cheese mellowed by the sweetness of sun-ripened tomatoes, all anchored by the nutty depth of freshly baked bread. It was simple. It was perfect. And for the first time in years, Jason actually tasted his food.
His so-called “cheat meals” had always been at Michelin-starred restaurants—obligatory team dinners or sponsor events where the food was secondary to the politics. He’d long since trained himself to ignore the delicate dishes placed before him. The flavors had become irrelevant, just another sacrifice in the pursuit of perfection.
But here, in this tiny kitchen with its chipped tiles and sun-faded curtains, with Y/N swinging her feet like a child and Gianna humming off-key in the corner, the weight of expectation lifted. For the first time in longer than he could remember, Jason was present—truly present—in a moment that had nothing to do with racing.
“Want one more?” Y/N asked, already reaching for the bread.
Jason didn’t hesitate. “Actually, yes I do.”
The words felt like a revelation.
Between races, in stolen days across different time zones, he found himself dragged into what Y/N affectionately called their “hobby hunts”— whirlwind excursions into the mundane wonders of each Grand Prix host country. In Italy, he’d learned the meditative art of pasta-making from a Nonna who smacked him whenever he kneaded the dough too aggressively. He’d reluctantly tried watercolor painting, only to discover an unexpected satisfaction in the way colors bled across the paper.
And now, in Venice after the triple header, Y/N was determined to subject him to what he firmly believed was the most ridiculous “hobby” yet.
“Mask-making is not a real hobby,” Jason declared, arms crossed as they stood outside a tiny workshop in Dorsoduro, its windows filled with elaborate papier-mâché creations. Y/N’s expression shifted instantly—her usual playful smirk dissolving into something far more serious. When she spoke, her voice carried a weight that gave Jason pause.
“Tell that to Guillermo,” she said quietly, “who spent thirty years perfecting this ‘hobby’ of his. After he lost his job and his son stopped speaking to him, it was the masks that kept a roof over his and his wife’s heads.”
The raw sincerity in her words hit Jason like a missed braking point. He stiffened, suddenly aware of the careless privilege in his dismissal.
“I—” He swallowed, uncharacteristically lost for words. “That was insensitive of me. I’m sorry.”
Y/N studied him for a long moment before her face lit up with sudden mischief. “So that means you’ll give it a go?” The whiplash-inducing shift in tone left Jason blinking. “...What?”
“You promised,” she singsonged, bouncing on her heels with renewed energy. Realization dawned slowly, then all at once. Jason’s jaw dropped. “You made that up?”
“Every word,” Y/N confirmed cheerfully. “And no takesies-backsies. You already agreed.”
Jason groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “You’re an evil little thing, you know that?”
“But you love it,” she teased, already pushing open the workshop door.
The protest died on Jason’s lips. Because as much as he hated to admit it, she wasn’t wrong.
The crisp Canadian air carried a bite that was absent in the Mediterranean warmth they’d left behind. The empty rink stretched before them, its surface gleaming under the soft glow of evening lights, freshly smoothed by the zamboni. Jason exhaled, watching his breath curl into the cold air as he stepped onto the ice, the blades of his skates cutting effortlessly into the pristine surface.
He hadn’t expected this. When Y/N had mentioned renting out an entire rink as a thank-you for flying her to Montreal in his private jet, he’d assumed she was joking. But here they were, the only two people in the arena, the silence broken only by the distant hum of refrigeration systems and the occasional scrape of steel against ice.
It was… thoughtful. Unnervingly so. Y/N had a way of anticipating what he wanted before he even voiced it—like she understood that, despite his love for the roars of the grandstands on track, he craved these quiet moments away from prying eyes and cameras.
As a high-performance athlete, Jason found his balance almost immediately. The muscle memory from years of rigorous training translated seamlessly to the ice, and within minutes, he was gliding across the rink with the same natural ease he carried on the racetrack.
Y/N, however, was another story entirely.
She clung to the boards like her life depended on it, her usual confidence replaced by wide-eyed terror as her skates betrayed her at every turn. Jason watched, amused, as she attempted to push off—only to immediately pitch forward with a yelp, arms flailing wildly before she somehow managed to right herself.
“Show-off,” she muttered under her breath, glaring at him as he executed a lazy backward crossover right in front of her.
Jason smirked. “You’re the one who picked this hobby, sweetheart.”
“I didn’t realize you’d turn out to be some figure-skating prodigy,” she shot back in an attempt to gain back some of her dignity, gingerly releasing the railing—and immediately regretting it as her feet slid out from under her.
Jason darted forward, catching her by the waist before she could faceplant onto the ice. “You’re hopeless, I swear,” he laughed, steadying her as she wobbled like a newborn fawn.
Y/N’s cheeks flushed, though whether from embarrassment or the cold, he couldn’t tell. “I’m great at plenty of other things!” she grumbled, attempting to shake him off.
“Oh, I believe you,” Jason said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “But skating isn’t one of them.”
As she wobbled dangerously again, his arm shot out to steady her. “Careful, doll. Can’t have you messing up that pretty face.”
She muttered something decidedly unflattering under her breath, but the effect was ruined by the way her lips twitched, fighting a smile.
Jason held out his hand. “Alright, baby steps. Take my hand.”
Y/N hesitated, staring at his outstretched palm like it was a trap. On one side: this was Jason Todd, the man whose posters had adorned her teenage walls, whose career she’d followed with near-religious devotion— offering to teach her something for once. It should’ve been a dream come true. But letting him witness her utter lack of coordination was humiliating enough and accepting his help felt like surrendering the little dignity she had left. Especially considering how insufferably smug he looked seeing her struggle.
For a brief, stubborn moment, she considered refusing. But the ice was unforgiving, her pride bruised but definitely not worth a broken tailbone and his hand looked awfully steady. With a sigh, she placed her hand in his. Perhaps this was karma from the pottery class.
“Don’t you dare let go,” she warned.
Jason’s grin was all teeth. “Wouldn’t dream of it doll.”
The scrape of blades against ice filled the quiet rink as Jason guided Y/N in slow, careful circles. Her fingers trembled slightly in his grip - whether from the cold or the unfamiliar intimacy, he couldn’t tell.
“Stop looking at your feet,” Jason chided gently. “Look at me instead. It helps with balance.”
Y/N’s eyes flicked up, meeting his with a mixture of irritation and reluctant trust. The moment their gazes locked, her posture straightened almost imperceptibly.
“See? You’re getting it,” he murmured, unable to resist a small, genuine smile.
“I’m literally just standing here while you do all the work,” Y/N grumbled.
Jason chuckled, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze before slowly releasing it. “Alright, try on your own. Just remember - knees bent, weight forward.”
For a glorious three seconds, Y/N glided unaided, her face lighting up with triumph. Then physics intervened. Her arms became frantic windmills, her balance abandoning her in an instant. Jason saw the exact moment panic flooded her wide eyes—the dilation of pupils, the part of lips ready to yelp—before his body moved on instinct honed from years of split-second reactions.
One strong arm banded around her waist, hauling her flush against his chest with enough force to knock the breath from them both. His other hand slapped against the boards to arrest their momentum, the impact vibrating up his arm. But all Jason registered was the feel of Y/N pressed along his entire side—the warmth of her even through layers of clothing, the way her racing heartbeat thudded against his ribs in perfect sync with his own runaway pulse.
Jason had always known Y/N was attractive. Objectively. The way one might note a well-composed photograph or an elegant car design. As a presenter, she fit the expected mold of paddock beauty—polished, camera-ready, the kind of woman sponsors loved to position near their drivers for photo ops.
But this... this was different.
In his years as a champion, Jason had been paraded before countless models and starlets, had endured awkward PR “dates” arranged by the team, had smiled for cameras with women whose names he barely remembered. None of them had ever made him notice how the arena lights caught gold flecks in their eyes. None had hands that fit so perfectly in his, as if engineered by some higher power just for this moment. No one’s cheeks had ever flushed such an enticing pink from cold and exertion, nor had their lips—currently parted in surprise and glistening with whatever gloss she’d applied that morning—ever seemed so impossibly, distractingly soft.
And the scent of her—citrus and something sweet beneath the cold air—wrapped around him more completely than any embrace.
“Maybe... maybe we should call it a night,” Y/N whispered, her breath puffing warm against his neck.
The words were a surrender, but her body told a different story—the way she hadn’t pulled away, how her fingers had fisted in the front of his jacket as if to anchor herself.
Jason blinked, suddenly aware he’d been cataloging her features with an intensity that bordered on obsession. He cleared his throat, carefully putting space between them while keeping a steadying hand at her elbow. The air from the refridgeration systems rushed in to fill the void she left, chilling him instantly.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed, voice rougher than intended. He busied himself with adjusting his gloves, avoiding her gaze. “We can, uh... try again another time.”
The words tasted like a lie. Because what Jason really wanted was to pull her close again, to see if her hair really was as soft as it looked, to discover if her lips tasted as sweet as that damned gloss promised. But that way lay madness—or at the very least, a complication neither of them needed.
In the weeks that followed, something undeniable shifted in Jason Todd’s racing—a transformation that didn’t go unnoticed by the sharp analysts and devoted fans who tracked his every lap. The reckless, almost desperate aggression that had once defined his driving—the “madman” style commentators loved to dramatize—had mellowed into something far more dangerous.
His moves were calculated now, his overtakes executed with surgical patience rather than brute force. Where he once would have forced a risky gap, he now waited, biding his time until the perfect moment presented itself. The result? A steady climb up the championship order that left his rivals scrambling to adjust their strategies.
“What the hell’s gotten into Todd?” became the paddock’s favorite question.
Only Jason knew the answer.
In the quiet hours between races, when the roar of engines faded to memory and the paddock emptied of its usual chaos, Jason found himself reaching for the books Y/N had slipped into his life like secret treasures. Each volume carried her fingerprints—literally, in the smudges on the pages where she’d gripped them too tightly during thrilling passages, and metaphorically, in the notes she’d scribbled in the margins with her characteristic wit and insight.
“While finding new hobbies, it’s important not to lose the old ones,” she’d told him with that knowing smile of hers, pressing another book into his hands after their delightful attempt at Venetian mask-making.
He’d taken her words to heart in a way that surprised even himself. The books became his companions on long flights between races, their pages a refuge when the weight of expectation grew too heavy. He raced through them not just for the stories they held, but for the promise of her next recommendation—the quiet thrill of her commentary when he texted her his thoughts at 2 AM after finishing one.
What he didn’t tell her—what he couldn’t bring himself to admit—was that he’d commissioned a custom sandalwood bookshelf for his bedroom, its rich grain polished to a warm glow. It stood as a shrine to something that was uniquely theirs’s: the slightly lopsided cup that he made at Nonna Gianna’s, a beer mug from their trappist brewing adventure in Belgium, the framed photo of them covered in cheese curds in Austria, the pressed wildflowers from their trek across the Scottish highlands after his P1 finish in Silverstone. The one that brought him back in contention for the World Championship. It felt like he was building something more than just a collection.
It felt like proof.
Proof that there was a Jason Todd beyond the racetrack. Proof that he could be more than the sum of his scars and his victories.
And it was all because of her.
His phone was a dangerous thing these days.
The gallery, once filled with nothing but race data and engineering schematics, now held a growing album of stolen moments—candid shots of Y/N laughing at a joke he hadn’t meant to be funny, her nose scrunched in that way he’d come to adore. Screenshots of her social media posts and presenter segments saved before he could talk himself out of it.
It was pathetic, really.
World champion. Three-time title holder. And yet here he was, lurking on her Instagram like some lovestruck fan, his stomach twisting every time she posted something new.
Most of her older posts were about him—race photos, blurry grandstand shots, captions filled with exclamation points and heart emojis. The realization should have been flattering. Instead, it left him unsettled.
Did she still see him that way? As some untouchable idol, a fantasy to be admired from afar?
Or could she want the man behind the helmet—the one who woke up sweating from nightmares, who still caught himself holding his breath when tire smoke curled too thick on race day?
Then there was Danny.
A single photo, buried deep in her feed like a landmine. Y/N pressing a kiss to some grinning bastard’s cheek, her caption cheerful and simple: Happy birthday, loser.
Jason knew Danny. Knew him in the way you only know someone who’s shared both your childhood dreams and their dissolution. They’d started karting together, two scrappy kids with more talent than sense, pushing each other until their tires wore bald and their wrists ached from steering. Danny had been one of the few who could match him turn for turn, whose laughter rang just as loud when they tumbled into the grass after some reckless, glorious overtake.
Jason had assumed they’d climb the ranks together, side by side. But life had other plans—Danny’s family couldn’t sustain the financial hemorrhage of competitive karting and pragmatism won out over passion. While Jason raced forward, Danny stepped back, trading the driver’s seat for textbooks, determined to stay close to the sport in whatever way he could. He still remembered the hollow look in his friend’s eyes the day he packed up his helmet— “Engineering school,” he’d muttered, “like the old man wants.” Jason had fought to keep him close, badgering Bruce until Wayne Racing took Danny on as a junior mechanic. They weren’t the brothers-in-arms they’d once been, but the bond remained, worn comfortable with time.
But his closeness to Y/N bothered him. Jason stared until the pixels blurred. He could ask her. Three words —“Who is Danny?” —and he’d have his answer. Who was he to her? A friend? An ex? Worse—a current?
But the thought of hearing the answer—of watching her face shift in that way when someone mentions a name that matters—left him cold.
Better not to know. Better to—
His phone buzzed, Y/N’s name flashing across the screen like she’d somehow sensed his spiral.
Y/N:
It’s a shame the race in Zandvoort is so late. You should see the tulips they have in April.
Jason exhaled, the tension in his shoulders easing as he typed back without thinking.
Jason:
Yeah well. Next year I’ll take you.
The reply came instantly.
Y/N:
Bet. Though the beach there is pretty cool too. The water’s cold this time of year but still warmer than your ice tubs :P
And then there are the museums too—a history buff like you would appreciate them.
Jason smiled despite himself, imagining her rolling her eyes as she typed.
Jason:
I’ll go wherever the lady takes me.
The words hung in the air between them, heavier than he’d intended. For a long moment, the typing bubbles appeared and disappeared, until finally—
Y/N:
Careful, Todd. That almost sounded like a promise.
“Jason, what do you think?” Bruce’s voice cut through the low murmur of conversation in the boardroom. He was seated at the far end of the long, polished table, flanked by executives in tailored suits and their managers poised with styluses over tablets.
Jason blinked, startled. His head snapped up from the phone in his lap, only to find nearly a dozen eyes trained on him. He straightened in his seat, his screen going dark as he shoved the device into his blazer pocket. Of course, he had zoned out—texting during a sponsor meeting was probably frowned upon, but truthfully, Jason didn’t give a damn.
The Wayne Formula One team hardly needed financial backing. Bruce’s wealth alone could fund a fleet of cars and pit crews for the next decade. But apparently, having glossy logos of luxury brands and legacy sponsors plastered across the chassis was “strategic”—whatever that meant. Optics over necessity. It was all part of the game.
“Uh, yeah. It’s… cool, I guess,” Jason mumbled, shrugging one shoulder with disinterest.
Bruce closed his eyes for a moment and pinched the bridge of his nose in silent frustration. But without missing a beat, he turned back to the others and carried on with the presentation.
As the meeting ended and people began shuffling out with polite handshakes and promises to circle back via email, Dick approached him with a concerned look, pulling him gently aside into a quieter corner of the lounge just outside the boardroom.
A/n: Ughhhhhh this is what I get for trying to cram what should be a multi-chapter fic into a single one-shot. Tumblr said "bitch i think the fuck not" and slapped a only-1000-blocks-allowed-per-post on my dreams 😭😭😭Anon I'm so sorry it took me so long😔😔 (Tumblr, I beg you—just let me post my novel-length emotional support in peace.) Feel free to send more requests for the event.
Summary: You're a princess who's visiting Gotham City. You weren't loving it to begin with—then you of course had to get kidnapped. Needless to say, your expectations of the night are in hell. You're hoping, at least, that you'll be rescued by the famous Batman. Instead, it's the infamous Red Hood that finds you.
Pairing: Jason Todd x princess!fem!reader
Word count: 6.6k
Warnings/tags: kidnapping, rescue, reader and jason don't get along at first, violence, drugging, meet-ugly, 7-eleven food as a courting strategy, kissing, softie jason (he always makes an appearance somehow!), strangers to...not-so-strangers.
the divider
You suppose that, for a princess, you ought to have expected a kidnapping to pan out at least once in your life.
You just didn't think it would happen tonight. In Gotham City. A place you weren't loving to begin with.
“Unhand me!” you scream as soon as your taker's filthy, sweaty hand leaves your face. “You'll be executed for this!”
You're not actually sure of Gotham's death penalty policy, but you feel like it's something you should throw in. In any case, the three men who've dragged you away, tied you up, and bruised you in the process, should be a little more afraid of getting caught.
“Batman will find you,” you add. “He'll save me.” You've heard great tales of Gotham's hero. If anyone can help you, it's him.
That makes one of them pause. But the ringleader sneers at you. “If he finds us. He's got a lot on his plate every night, ya Majesty.”
“I am a priority guest in this city, of course he would—”
“Shut her up,” the leader snaps, and suddenly, you're being gagged. Disgusting. Completely unsanitary. You don’t want to imagine if the gag has ever been washed.
You keep screaming and fighting through the gag until a needle pricks your neck. Your terror spikes as you realize there's suddenly an ultimatum to the fear: either Batman finds you in time, or he doesn't.
That's your last thought as the drug renders you unconscious.
When you awaken, it's still nighttime. Nearly pitch black, except for a dim lightbulb in the center of the room. It looks like you're in some kind of warehouse. You can't see much of anything and it makes you claustrophobic. Your head aches and your vision is blurry, and your cheek is pressed against a grimy floor. You just want to go home.
You try to sit up first, but that nearly makes you throw up, and you do not want to throw up through this ratty gag. So you swallow the feeling and close your eyes, waiting until the nausea passes. You open your eyes and they begin to adjust to the darkness. You’re alone, which confuses you.
Then you spot the explosives hooked up at the bottom of your dress.
The good news is that your kidnappers aren’t here. The bad news is that the reason they aren’t here is because they can remotely explode this place and you inside of it. If they don’t get the ransom they’re no doubt demanding, tonight will be your first and last night in Gotham.
Another thought chills you to your bone: what if the explosives are set to go off whether they get the ransom or not?
You squeeze your eyes shut as the tears come. You’re going to die.
But wait. Maybe not. Surely, Batman is looking for you. And his young, brightly-colored companion. You never understood that color palette choice.
They’ll save you. Your father has no doubt alerted authorities. You’re the most important person in the city tonight! Of course people are looking for you.
Yes, you’ll be saved, the criminals will be punished to the highest extent of the law, and you’ll be escorted back to your hotel where you can take a long, luxurious bath. That’ll be very nice.
You’ll also never visit Gotham again, that is for sure.
The door to the warehouse rolls open with a boom. You flinch and squint, trying to make out the figure. If it’s your kidnapper, you want to act like you’re still asleep. You think you saw that trick in a film at the cinema you snuck out to watch when you were young. You didn’t catch the whole film, though—you were found out by your guards before you could. Maybe you wouldn’t be in this situation if you’d watched the whole film!
As the figure gets closer, you realize firstly that he’s a lot bigger than your kidnappers. You sigh in relief. Batman.
“‘Lo?” asks a gruff voice. “Anybody here?”
You shout through your gag. You can’t make out a face, but it’s alright. Relief floods you. You’re saved.
Your savior jogs to you. You tilt your head as you make out a… red helmet? With glowing eyes?
Wait a minute.
“Holy shit,” Not-Batman says. He pulls out your gag first. “Y’okay?”
Realization strikes you; you recall a story one of the party guests shared earlier in the night about a crime lord and his terror on Gotham.
"You're that terrible gangster that left a duffle bag of heads!" you blurt.
"In the flesh," he says, tapping the barrel of his gun to his helmet in a salute. Red Hood. “You don’t look very happy to see me, all things considered.”
“I don’t want your help!” you say, wriggling away from him. “I’m in an alliance with The Batman!”
He tilts his head. “‘S that so? What alliance would that be? Beauty Pageant Runaways For Bats?”
“I am not a beauty pageant contestant,” you say hotly. “I am a princess, and I have a small militia looking for me.”
He kneels in front of you, holstering his gun. His one of many, many guns. Your skin itches with sweat and adrenaline as he approaches. Those glowing eyes in his helmet flip your stomach. This is all wrong. You're supposed to be saved by a hero, not an outlaw. A criminal.
“Princess, huh?” Hood nods. “Ah, yeah. I heard somethin’ about that. They took you from the Plaza. Just my luck that I’d run into ya.”
“You mean, you weren’t actively looking for me?” you ask in a small voice.
“Nope. You’ve got every vigilante and cop in the city looking for you, Your Highness. I came in here ‘cause I smelled motor oil.”
Now that he’s found you, what does he plan to do?
“Are… are you going to release me?” you ask.
“Depends. Is this place rigged to blow?”
“My dress,” you say, unsure whether you should let him know about the explosives. A man who leaves severed heads in a duffel bag doesn’t seem wrapped up too tightly.
“Hm?” Hood lifts your skirt slightly. He whistles. “Damn. This is some excellent work. Whoever did this is a pro demolitions expert.”
His praise doesn’t comfort you, oddly enough.
“Is it live?” you ask.
“Doesn’t look like it. And I’ve got a lot of experience with explosives. Just stay still for now.”
Hood squats and pulls out a knife. You shift. He's bigger than you even like this, crouched at your level. His shoulders nearly block your entire view.
“Who were they?” he asks.
“Who was who?”
“The people that took you.”
“I don't know. They were wearing masks. Three men,” you say, frozen as he takes the knife to your feet.
“Mm.”
Hood begins to cut the ropes around your ankles. You delicately point your feet, unsure if he'll slip and get you.
Your lip curls. "Where's Batman? Or that boy who works with him? Aren't they in charge of this city? I want to speak to one of them."
“I don’t work for the Bats,” he says, an edge to his words.
“Well, I don’t feel comfortable with you rescuing me,” you say. “You’re a criminal.”
Hood stops cutting and looks at you. "Y'want Batman? Fine. I don't mind letting you wait around for the Bat.”
He pockets the knife and rises, walking out of the warehouse and disappearing. Just like that. Your heart jumps.
"Wait!" you shout, squirming in your binds. "Wait, come back!"
But it's silent. Panic digs its claws into your chest.
"Red Hood! Red Hood, come back! Please!"
You begin to cry out of desperation, tears dripping onto your already soiled dress. You try to pull your feet apart, but the rope isn't cut enough and all you do is worsen the burns around your ankles.
You bow your head and cry onto the floor. You just want to go home. You want your goose feather pillows and Egyptian cotton ten-thousand thread count sheets. More than that, you never want to return to this stupid city.
"Are you cryin'?"
Your head shoots up. Hood stands over you, arms folded.
"You-you came back," you say, voice wobbly.
He shrugs. "I had an inkling that you had a change of heart, princess.”
You look away. "You left me.”
"I did,” he says. “But as much as you might deserve abandonment, I'm duty-bound to rescue everyone. No matter how obnoxious of a Batman fan they are."
"I'm not a fan. I just didn't want the morally corrupt, violent drug runner to save me."
He leans down and snaps away the ropes from your ankles—a feat of strength that doesn't go unnoticed. Then he saws the ones around your wrists. "Yeah, well, I don't do that anymore, and for such a pretty face, you suck at sweet talking."
He tosses the rope aside and pockets the knife. You rub your wrists and attempt to sit up. This time, you don’t want to throw up. Success!
“Anything hurt?” he asks.
“My legs,” you say miserably.
“Okay, let me rephrase: anything that'll make you bleed out in the next ten seconds?”
“Um… no.”
“Fantastic. I can probably getcha back to your hotel in an hour.”
You hold out your arms expectantly. He tuts.
“I don’t give hugs until the third kidnapping. Fourth one is free.”
You huff. “You expect me to walk like this? They took my shoes! Gotham is so uncouth.”
“And what am I s’posed to do about that?” Hood asks. “I look like a Payless to you?”
“I don’t know what that is,” you say. “Don’t you vigilantes have a protocol to follow? I cannot possibly walk through this filthy warehouse on my bare feet. I’ll catch a virus! You’ll have to carry me.”
Hood lets out a full-bellied laugh. It’s somewhat eerie through his modulator. You lift your chin, maintaining your composure.
“Oh my God! Highness, you’re a diamond-encrusted piece of work. I don’t carry anybody unless they’re unconscious and I like ‘em a lot. It’s a short list.”
Your brows furrow. “I’m a guest in your city, and I’ve been kidnapped! The least you can do—”
“The least I can do is leave you to rot here,” Hood says, tone cutting. “Or let your kidnappers come back and finish the job. You aren’t in whatever palace they carted you out of; you’re in fuckin’ Gotham, and if y’want my help, you’re gonna suck it up and walk.”
You look away, tears brimming once more. You sniffle.
“You don't have to be so mean,” you say, voice watery. “I’ve had a difficult night.”
It's quiet for a few moments. You've never cried as much as you have tonight, especially not in front of a stranger. A dangerous stranger.
“...Look, I think I got some spare boots,” Hood finally says. “Stay here.”
“Where would I go?” you mumble. Whether he hears you or not, he doesn’t reply, stalking out of the warehouse. He returns thirty seconds later with a pair of ugly, black, man boots.
“Used?!” you ask, voice high.
“Lightly, Your Majesty. They’re my spares. Here.”
Hood tosses the boots at you. You stare at them like he’s flung a pair of rats at you. He taps his wrist.
“Time’s a-ticking, princess. I’m on a schedule. I can always let you wait for Batman. He’ll find ya. Eventually.”
So you put on the boots.
You attempt to stand next, but the drugs and binds have made your limbs weak. You try and fail to get up twice before Hood hooks his arms under yours and hauls you up without a sweat. You squeal, fingers digging into his brown leather jacket.
He towers over you, doubly intimidating now that you're standing.
“Got it?” he asks, arms slipping away.
You definitely don’t have it, and you wobble backward. Hood grabs you again, hand on your back.
“Whoa. Easy.” Hood cups your face, a little rough. You squirm, mind flooded with all the germs that are probably on his gloves. “Look a'me. Look—stop fighting, Jesus Christ.”
“This is no way to treat a princess!”
“Yeah, I missed that day of training,” he says dryly. “Stay still, I'm tryna see if your pupils are dilated.”
“Your grip hurts!”
Hood loosens his grip and manages to keep you still long enough to examine your eyes. He hums and lets go.
“Seems like you’re still feeling the effects. Should wear off soon. Now…”
Hood steps back, but not so far that you can’t grab onto him should you fall again. He gives your dress a onceover.
“So that’s not gonna work.” He takes out his knife again. Your eyes widen.
“What on earth are you doing with that?” you ask, taking a small step backwards.
“Cutting your dress,” he says, like it’s a perfectly normal thing to do.
You gasp, backing away. “No you will not!”
“Princess—”
“This dress is one-of-a-kind, handmade for tonight’s gala. You’re not going near it! It cost seventeen thousand euros!”
“Is it worth more than your life?” Hood snaps. “I don’t have any spare clothes and I’m not dragging a ballgown with three pounds of C-4 attached to it around. You have to be able to move and you have to get on my bike. Now quit whining.”
You sulk as he cuts and tears the bottom layer of your gown. He isn’t as savage about it as you expect: the cut is neat and could even be salvaged in the hands of a good seamstress. The night air makes your legs prickle with goosebumps. Then his words register.
“Bike?” you ask as Hood sets your dress remains aside. You’ll grieve for your dress privately.
“Mmhm.”
“I thought you had a Batmobile.”
“That’s Batman’s car. Hence the name. I have a bike ‘cause I’m a morally corrupt, violent, drug runner.”
Your nose wrinkles. “Can’t we take a taxi? Or call a car service?”
Hood snorts. “No one’s driving to this part of Gotham at this hour. It’s my bike or nothing. Or, of course, you can wait for Batsy.”
He starts walking and you hurry to follow. Hood’s strides are long and you’re unsteady in his too-big boots.
“Can you please slow down? These boots are enormous!”
He doesn’t say anything, but he does slow down, waiting until you catch up before leading you to his bike. It’s a nice motorcycle, you suppose, if you were into that thing. You’ve always thought motorcycles were a stupid risk to take. Being on the road is dangerous enough—why remove the comfort and protection of a car?
Hood’s bike is shiny and cherry red, just like his helmet. He produces a proper motorcycle helmet from nowhere and hands it to you.
“Are you sure this is safe?” you ask, inspecting the helmet. It looks fairly clean and unused.
“Hasn’t killed me yet, and I’ve been dead once.”
Is that his idea of a joke?
“You’ll be fine,” Hood says at your silence. “I’ll go slow.”
“Alright,” you say, putting on the helmet. It smells oddly pleasant, like spicy cologne. “Very slow.”
“Yeah, yeah, very slow. C’mon.”
Hood kicks a leg over the bike and straddles it, all muscle memory. His muscles flex as he bends his legs. He pats the space behind him.
Cautiously, you attempt to do the same, but you soon realize that doing that exact move in a dress is probably not the smartest. You hold onto the seat with both hands instead and clumsily try to fold a leg over. It doesn’t work.
“Yo, Bambi. This century would be good.”
“I’ve never ridden on a motorcycle!” you say, glaring at the back of his helmet. “You could help me.”
“For fuck's—”
Hood turns around, grabs the back of your calf, and pulls. Your legs part and you shriek, certain you’re about to flash him. He holds your waist as you flail so that you don’t bang into him as you sit.
“What is wrong with you?” you hiss, smoothing down your dress.
“Re-lax, I didn’t see anything.”
“This is highly undignified—”
“Yeah, we don't really do dignified in Gotham, princess. Comfy?”
“No.”
“Mm. Hold my waist.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Beg all ya want.” Hood takes your arms and wraps them tightly around his waist. He’s warm and, oddly enough, soft despite his bulk. “You’re drugged and unsteady. If y’don’t hold on, you’re gonna fly off. Press up against me and hold tight.”
“Go slow,” you say again, obediently holding his waist.
“Yeah, I’ll go slow,” he says.
“Do you promise?”
“Promise.”
Hood turns the ignition. The bike roars to life, louder than you expected. You suck in a breath as he revs the engine and starts off.
True to his word (and what a flimsy word it is), Hood goes slow. He takes gentle, easy turns and breaks at all the stop signs, even though this part of the city is essentially abandoned at this hour. You’re able to study the streets, twinkling streetlights a little too bright to your recovering eyes. But you look anyway, shocked at the dilapidated buildings and uneven pavement. You’re definitely not in the Gotham you were earlier tonight. It hardly looks like the same city.
You turn your attention to your savior. It feels like an odd word to use for the Red Hood, whom you’ve heard enough about tonight. Your father had warned you excessively about what a dangerous area this was, and who exactly made it so dangerous.
But a savior is exactly what Hood has been to you. You decide that, despite his roughness, he still deserves a good reward. Perhaps a Hoodmobile. Or new boots.
Your rescue is going smoothly until you cross the bridge. That’s when another biker turns onto the road behind you.
“Shit,” Hood says, and you’re startled that you can hear him so clearly despite the noise. It’s like he’s in your head. “We’re being tailed.”
Well, that’s not good. You turn around briefly but you can’t make out your follower; you’re too scared to move on the bike.
But then you hear the bike behind you speed up.
“Motherfucker,” Hood says, and speeds up. Your arms tighten into a death grip.
“Hold on,” he says, like you'd do anything otherwise.
Hood speeds up and takes a sharp left turn. You tense and yelp, squeezing your eyes shut. He takes several winding turns and you keep your eyes shut through all of them. The nausea has returned and you’d prefer not to ruin the inside of his helmet with your stomach contents.
“We lose him?” he asks when the road levels off and it doesn’t feel so much like you’re on a rollercoaster.
“Um…” you begin, and chance turning around.
It’s clear for a few seconds until…
Well, to echo Hood’s sentiment: motherfucker.
“He’s there!” you yell, and Hood growls.
“The helmets are mic’d, you don’t have to shout,” he says, leaning into a left turn.
“I see him!” you say, and grab one of Hood’s holstered guns. He scrambles to grab it but misses, surprise slowing him down.
“What the fuck are you doin’?!”
You ignore him and take off the safety. Moving your free arm up to Hood’s neck, you fire. He curses up a storm, throwing in a few words you’ve never even heard.
The shots go wide; one dents a parked car, and one hits a stop sign.
“You’re fuckin’ nuts!” Hood yells and snatches the gun out of your hand.
But your tail falls back, evidently spooked enough by you and your poor aim. He turns on a side street and disappears.
“He’s gone! We’ve lost him!” you say happily.
“Are you insane?”
You wince at his volume. “The helmets are mic’d, you know.”
“You’re so—”
Hood cuts himself off and pulls sharply onto the sidewalk. He dismounts and pushes the kickstand down hard. Then he turns to you, chest heaving.
“Don’t ever fucking do that again. Are you crazy? You could’ve gotten us killed!”
“It worked, didn’t it?” you ask, putting out your arms. “We lost him!”
“No, we didn’t. All we did was throw him off our trail a little. We gotta walk the rest of the way now because he probably fell back to get more guys to follow us. But that’s not the point: what you did was insanely risky and stupid. You don’t know how to use a gun and you could’ve hurt yourself.”
You stay silent, chewing on his words. Hood isn’t wrong, he’s just… loud about it.
“Do you understand me?” he snaps.
You don't reply.
“I need a yes.”
“...I wanted to help.”
Hood sighs. “Yeah, well… just don’t. I’m good at what I do and I’ll get you back in one piece. But you gotta trust me.”
“Okay,” you say quietly. You feel small, but you don't want to cry in front of him again and confirm that you really are just a spoiled, whiny princess. “I'm sorry, Red Hood.”
You sit down on the curb, feeling exhausted. Tonight is awful.
It's quiet for a long moment. Then Hood says, “Don't cry.”
Your jaw works as you swallow hard. “I'm not.” You turn your head so he won't see.
“Christ on toast,” he mumbles above you. “This is exactly why I don't do rescue missions—”
You sniffle. “I'm not crying.”
“—’Cause I'm the world's biggest asshole,” he finishes, voice miles softer.
Hood sinks onto the curb next to you. He scoots in just enough so that your shoulders brush against each other.
“Look, ‘m a jerk. The Bats are better at handling civilians and being nice. You got the potty mouth with a bad attitude.”
You rub your eyes. “I don't like yelling.”
“Yeah,” Hood says quietly. “Okay. I'll try not to yell unless you're in immediate danger. But you can’t pull stunts like that. Deal?”
You nod. “I won't fire any more of your guns.”
He snorts. “Yeah, no kidding. Where’d you learn how to shoot, anyway? I mean, y’didn’t do it well, but you did it. Not half-bad for your first time in Gotham.”
“My father wanted me to learn gun sports,” you say. “I learned how to take the safety off and point and shoot, but I refused to do any more lessons after my instructor shot a duck for target practice. I think guns are uncivilized and destructive, and I don’t condone killing animals for sport.”
“Uncivilized unless you're getting tailed by kidnappers?” You think you detect a smile in his question.
“Everything has its exceptions,” you say primly.
“Ain't that the truth. C'mon, we should get moving. We're, ‘scuse the saying, sitting ducks out here.”
Hood stands first and offers you a hand. You take it, letting him pull you up. He does that so easily. It makes your spine tingle.
“How far are we from my hotel?” you ask.
“‘Bout two miles. If I had my gear I'd call for an assist,” he says apologetically. “Wasn’t planning to save lost princesses tonight.”
“I don't suppose there's any chance that you'll carry me, is there?”
“Pretty and funny,” Hood says. “You're the whole package, beauty queen.”
Your snarky reply is cut off by your stomach growling. Your eyes widen.
“Pardon me,” you say, mortified.
“What, ‘cause you're hungry?” Hood asks. “‘S a normal human condition.”
“You don't know anything about royal manners,” you say, but you're relieved. Your father would give you a tight, deadly look if you were hungry in public.
“No, I really don't. Born and bred Gotham, baby.”
“Showing any signs of hunger or thirst around company is highly undignified,” you say.
“Being a princess sounds exhausting.”
No arguments there.
Hood starts walking. You scramble to follow, and he seems to remember your shorter stride and slows down.
“There's a pretty decent 7-Eleven nearby,” he says. “I'd take ya to my favorite diner, but we're on a tight schedule. Those guys won’t be far behind.”
“A seven and eleven? Oh, I've heard of those!” you say.
“I’m… glad you're so excited about convenience stores?”
“I saw it in a film once. My father didn’t catch me watching this one. It looked so rugged, eating in a convenience store and fighting crime afterward. I've never been to one.”
“I know I shouldn't be surprised considering how much your dress cost but it does kinda blow my mind that you've never tasted anything but the finest cuisine,” Hood says. “Wait, did you say your dad didn’t catch you?”
You hum. “He doesn’t like me watching films that aren’t pre-approved.”
“Wow. Y’know, I could pirate you some movies if y’want. I know a great website for it.”
You laugh. “That’s alright. I manage to sneak out to the cinema more than I used to, now that he’s older.”
“Pretty sneaky, beauty queen.” He sounds impressed.
You shrug, trying to hide your pride. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”
You turn on the corner and he leads you through a residential area. A few people outside of their apartments stare at you, but when they see Hood, they relax.
“Red!” a little boy shouts from a fire escape. He waves excitedly. Hood waves back.
“Hope you’re listening to your ma,” Hood calls to him, mock-stern. To anyone else—to you—it would be unnerving.
But the boy grins. “I am!”
“Then why aren't ya in bed, huh?”
The boy shrugs. “Not tired. Who's the lady?”
“The lady is a princess, so be nice,” Hood says.
“Whoa!” The boy gapes at you. You wave at him and he jumps up from the window.
“Mom!” he yells. “Red Hood found a princess!”
You giggle as Hood leads you away.
He shakes his head. “Kids.” He sounds terribly fond.
You stare at his back for a moment.
“They like you,” you say. “You keep them safe. But you're also a friend.”
“Helps to earn their trust,” he says gruffly.
You walk a little more in silence.
“I was wrong about you, Hood,” you say. He doesn't look at you.
“Lotta people are. Nothin’ new.”
No, it probably isn't.
“‘Kay, here we are. C’mon. We gotta be fast, alright?”
“Alright,” you say, following him into the 7-Eleven.
“Hey, Benny,” Hood says to the tired cashier behind the counter.
Benny nods. “Long night?”
“You got no idea.” He gestures to you. “She’s a princess.”
“Sweet,” Benny says. “What’s up?”
“How do you do?” you say politely.
Hood leads you to the rolling hot dogs and other cylindrical foods under the heat lamps. You frown.
“I have had a hot dog before,” you say. “I’m not that sheltered.”
“Yeah, but have ya had a buffalo ranch roller? My brother and I used to get these after patrol. That with a blue raspberry slushie? Heavenly after getting thrown into a dumpster.”
“Well, you’ve gotten me this far, so I suppose I’ll trust you,” you say.
“I’m flattered. Benny, my usual.”
Benny gives a thumbs-up and puts the ‘roller’ in a paper bag. Meanwhile, Hood takes you to the back where the slushie machine is. You watch as he fills a plastic cup with electric blue sludge. Your brows raise.
“Why is it that color?” you ask.
“Tasty chemicals,” Hood says cheerily. “It won’t kill ya, I promise.”
“That would be counterintuitive at this point,” you say.
“I appreciate your faith in me, princess.”
You return to Benny, who rings up the food. “Five twenty-seven.”
Hood looks at you expectantly. You look at him.
“What?” you ask.
“This is the part where you pay,” he says.
“A princess never carries money on her person,” you say, like it’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard.
“You–” Hood looks at Benny and sighs. “Why am I not surprised?”
He pays and you take your treats, trotting out the door.
“Thank you, kind sir!” you say as Hood waves.
“See ya, Ben.”
You hold out your slushie for Hood to take while you work on your fried goodie.
“I’m not a cupholder,” he says, but he takes the cup anyway.
“It’s warm!” you say, delighted. “Let me take a bite.”
Hood patiently waits as you bite and chew. You hum.
“Good?” he asks.
“I like it,” you say. “It’s unusual. Is this chicken?”
“So they say,” Hood says. “Try the slushie.”
You take the cup and first take a small sip. It’s cold and sweet and slightly sour and probably full of enough sugar to rot your teeth out of your head. You love it.
“This is wonderful,” you say.
He laughs. “Yup. Told ya, nothin’ like this combo. It’s a classic. C’mon, let’s get moving.”
You walk and eat, and it definitely improves your night, having something in your belly.
“This is just like Roman Holiday,” you say.
Hood snorts. “I don’t think we watched the same movie.”
“It has a likeness. You’re Gregory Peck.”
“Yeah, sure. If Gregory Peck was a street fighter, then yeah. I’m Greg fuckin’ Peck.”
“No, you’re right. You’re much younger than he was in that movie. How old are you?” you ask.
“Twenty-four.”
“Really? Why are you doing this?”
“Took a career test.”
You bump his shoulder. “Seriously, Hood. You’re young. You’ve so much potential. I can tell that you’re smart.”
“Hence why I do this,” he says.
You tut, shaking your head. “That’s ridiculous. You could do more. Be more.”
“You’re just fulla charm, aren’t ya?” Hood says.
Your next step is hesitant. Hood keeps walking.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way,” you say. “I guess I assumed…”
“Yeah, I know. You assume a lot, princess. And you’re wrong.”
“You made assumptions about me! You thought that I was stupid and naive and I’m not.”
Hood stops, turns. “Maybe I like doing what I do, huh? Ever think of that? I meant it when I said I’m not a criminal anymore. I help people.”
“I know that,” you say quietly. “I see how the citizens treat you. They like you. You care for them greatly. I just… I just meant that you could try new things too. If you wanted to.”
He’s quiet for a bit. You keep walking.
“I didn’t think you were stupid,” he eventually says.
You scoff. “Yes, you did.”
“No, I didn’t. Yeah, I thought you were a little… sheltered. But you’re smart. You’re certainly tougher than your dad gives you credit for.”
You roll your eyes. “He still thinks I’m six years old. It takes me getting kidnapped to see a city.”
“Pretty shitty tour.”
You smile behind his back. “Oh, I don’t know. The tour guide is alright.”
Hood stops. When he doesn’t speak, you approach.
“Hood?”
He suddenly puts a hand over your mouth and drags you backwards into an alleyway. Your yelp is muffled. Hood puts a finger to where his mouth would be under his helmet.
That’s when you hear voices.
“—single fuckin’ clue. She could be in the fuckin’ Atlantic by now. Halfway to China!”
“China’s on the other side, dumbass.”
You look up at Hood, eyes wide.
Those are your kidnappers' voices.
He seems to understand and nods. He squeezes your arm and removes his hand from your mouth. He points to himself and points outside, then points to you and points down.
You assume that means stay put and don’t try to shoot anyone with his gun. You can take a hint.
Hood slinks out of the alley. You peek your head out to look, curiosity overtaking fear. Besides, you trust Hood. You figure with a reputation like his, he can more than handle his own.
“Nice night, ain’t it?” he says.
The two men turn, looking close to pissing themselves. Good.
“Hood, we weren’t doing nothin’!” one says.
“Yeah, Ricky and I are clean!”
“Oh, really? So you had nothing to do with the kidnapping of a certain visiting princess.”
“We was nowhere near the Plaza!” Ricky cries.
The other elbows his friend. Before you can blink, Hood has them both down on the ground, pistols pointed at their necks.
“You were gonna hurt her,” Hood says, and now there’s no trace of humor in his voice. “That poor, sweet princess. Strapping C-4 to her like a fuckin’ bank vault. Drugging her, tying her up. You fuckin’ animals.”
“It wasn’t our idea, it was Bobby’s!” Ricky cries.
“Shut up, Ricky!”
A shot rings out and you flinch. Ricky starts sobbing. Red seeps from his leg.
“The only reason I’m not killing you two right now is because I want a word with your boss. But make no mistake.” Hood leans in. “You’ll pay for hurting the princess. I’ll make sure of it.”
With two final hits, Hood knocks them out cold. The sudden silence is loud.
He looks at you then, those eerie eyes glowing. He beckons you out. You go.
You look down at the unconscious bodies. “You don’t have to kill them.”
“What?”
“I mean, I’d rather you didn’t. You shouldn’t have that on your conscience.”
“They kidnapped you. They would’ve hurt you had their boss ordered it.”
You squeeze your eyes shut. “I don’t want you to bear that burden, Hood.”
“‘S not a burden,” he says, gently taking your wrist. Your eyes fly open. “If it’ll make you feel better, safer, anything. It’s no burden.”
“Okay,” you say quietly, frightened at how pleased a part of you is at his words.
“I’ll tie ‘em up and send for ‘em when we get back. One second.”
You watch as Hood drags their bodies into the alley like they’re sacks of feathers. He handcuffs them to a drainpipe and ties their feet and gags them.
“So they can see what it feels like,” Hood says, dusting his hands. You can’t help your small smile.
“Ready?” he asks.
You look up at the starless sky, suddenly exhausted. Your limbs feel like lead. “I guess so.”
Hood looks into the distance, then back at you. He sighs.
“Climb on my back.”
You blink. “Pardon me?”
“You’re pardoned.” Hood shrugs. “I can tell you’re tired. We don’t have far to go.”
“Won’t I be too heavy?” you ask. “All that way…”
“Princess, I’m honestly offended. I once carried Batman and my brother to Bludhaven. I’m more than capable.”
“But what about your rule?” you ask. “About carrying people.”
“Turns out you’re not so bad,” he says. “Get on ‘fore I change my mind.”
So you climb onto Hood’s back. He secures you easily, and you wrap your arms around his neck.
“Don’t choke me out,” he says. “Otherwise we’re both goin’ down.”
You smile and relax on his back. “Thank you.”
“Mm.”
At first, it feels like an eternity, waiting for the familiar Plaza sign. You can’t complain, though: Hood is warm and being carried by him is even better than riding on his bike.
You blink, startled at the thought. What are you even talking about? This is the Red Hood. You were terrified of him a few hours ago.
And yet, the rhythmic bumping and Hood’s solid figure lulls you to sleep. You don’t even realize until you’re being nudged and a voice pulls you back to consciousness.
“Hey.”
You’re gently jostled awake. You blink blearily, yawning into Hood’s shoulder.
Oh. Right. You’re on his back.
“Hm?”
“Ride ends here,” he says. “We’re at the Plaza.”
“Oh.” Sleepily, you try to climb off. Hood sets you on your feet. Embarrassment fills you as you become more awake.
“I’m so sorry,” you say. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you. You could’ve woken me! I—”
Hood holds up a hand. “Hey, chill out. ‘S fine. You had a long night, I get it.”
“Right. I, um…” You look up at the hotel. The top floor windows disappear in the layer of fog that’s settled over the city. You wonder what Hood’s windows look like.
“I’m gonna track down your main kidnapper and make sure they don’t hurt anyone else. I’ll kick his ass, at the very least.”
You look at Hood, blinking. “Oh. That’s very nice of you, thank you.”
He shrugs. “‘S my job.”
You nod clumsily. “Right, of course. I could give you something in return, though. Money or, um, firearms. A car, perhaps?”
He snorts. You smile shyly.
“Cute,” he says, but he’s not being mean. “No, that’s okay. I’m pretty set, actually. Doing what I do is surprisingly lucrative.”
“Surely there’s something—”
“Seriously, princess, no charge.”
You bite your lip. Is this too bold? Yes, definitely.
“What about a kiss?”
At first, you think Hood hasn’t heard you. Then he turns to face you in a way that tells you no, he definitely heard you.
“Ex-cuse me?”
“Um.” You scratch your neck. “Well, princesses kiss their knights goodbye, don’t they?” you ask, but it’s weak. It’s stupid. You’re so young.
You think he’s going to just walk away. That would be the kindest thing to do in response to your blunder.
“I’m sorry, forgive me. That was a terrible joke,” you blurt.
“No, it wasn’t.”
He steps forward, close enough to kiss you if he didn’t have the helmet. You look up at him, heart pounding.
“Wasn’t terrible or wasn’t a joke?” you ask, blood roaring in your ears.
Hood’s quiet.
“Haven’t done much kissing, to be honest with ya,” he finally says, not answering your question.
You shake your head. “Nor I.”
“Mm. And y’wanna kiss me? Don’t offer ‘cause you think you owe me.”
“I want to kiss you, Hood.”
He tilts his head. “Y’wouldn’t be kissing a knight. More like kissing a toad.”
You frown. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, I’m no Greg Peck. And I’m no hero either.”
“Do you give this speech to everyone who wants to kiss you?”
“You’re the first one who’s wanted to,” he says.
You inhale sharply. “Oh.”
“Uh-huh.”
You wait. He waits. You both wait for the other to back out. You don’t. Neither does he.
“Can’t believe a princess wants to kiss me,” he mumbles.
And then he covers your eyes with his hand.
You blink, lashes sweeping over his glove. You hear a click, then a hiss of air. His helmet hits the ground with a dull thud.
Hood gingerly holds your chin with his free hand. You keep your eyes closed even though he’s covering them, out of respect.
His mouth is warm and so, so gentle. You barely feel his lips at first, so you press a little harder. Hood doesn’t know what to do with his mouth, resting it on yours, so you take the lead, following what you’ve seen others do and what you’ve watched on television.
You reach up and hold his face. He makes a soft noise in the back of his throat. You stroke his stubbled jaw, feel strong cheekbones and the ends of curls above his ears.
“Your Highness? Your Highness!”
The hand leaves your face so quickly, your eyes stay closed for a second longer, slow to react. Then you open your eyes and see the empty street.
Your lips tingle with heat. It’s all noise around you, policemen and your guards flitting around you, asking questions, alarmed by your torn dress.
You exhale, disappointment overtaking you.
Your father is in front of you, taking your wrists. “Can you hear me? Doctor, I need a—”
“I’m fine,” you say, finally meeting his eyes. “I’m alright, Father.”
He exhales and pulls you into a hug. It startles you. He pulls away before you can hug him back.
“I am so glad you’re alright,” he says. “The police say they saw a figure with you. Who was that? Was he your kidnapper?”
“No, not at all,” you say, staring out into the street beyond. Your lips are buzzing. “He was my hero.”
luke castellan x fem!dionysus!reader [the trouble!verse]
MAIN SERIES MASTERPOST
summary: few things are certain in this life as a demigod, but one thing is for sure— you can’t fight fate when it pulls you and luke castellan together, over and over again. two young people who hate the gods are more like them than they think, for better or worse. annoyances to best friends to lovers
things to know: dionysus!reader's nickname is trouble & most of these can be read as standalones!
here's a playlist (spotify & apple music links now available!)
child of dionysus headcanons!
trouble!verse moodboard 1 & moodboard 2 & college!trouble by the lovely @24kmar
deleted scenes from a different universe (AUs)
play the extended cuts (blurbs from in-between)
character study: luke castellan & trouble
any works, updates, thoughts, musings, etc about this series will be tagged under #trouble!verse !
trouble always finds me (trouble!reader origin story) 1.7k ☼
The one where he could tell you were trouble from the day he met you. (You're an annoyance, but not an enemy)
entropy 3.6k☼
The one where you both blur the lines between annoyance and admiration. (the promise of becoming partners in crime)
buddy system 4.2k ☼
The one where he comes with you to rescue your younger twin brothers, Pollux & Castor. (this is as close to a real quest that Mr. D will give you--might as well take someone you trust!)
somebody's angel 4.4k ☽
The one where you convince him he’s pretty, even with a scar. (songfic - Die Alone - Finneas)
feed the fire 1.2k ☼
The one where his focus is not on spilled food, but on you. (Luke realizes this is more than playful banter)
bedtime stories 2.4k ☼
The one where night shift with him runs late, but you don’t mind at all. (the both of you have feelings you want to admit, but duty calls!)
crazy little thing 3.4k ☼
The one where he uses all his drachmas to make you smile on Valentine's Day. (the Apollo kids are better matchmakers than Aphrodite, sometimes)
anything you want 1.6k ☼
The one where you and him have your first kiss. (You've always loved teaching the story of Orpheus and Eurydice; except when your Orpheus runs away from you)
said he likes crazy 2.1k ☼ ☽
The one where only he can help you with a bad day, even if he's avoided you since your first kiss. (For being a son of Hermes, he has a way of calming your nerves)
[pause and remember us like this] established relationship
play pretend 5.1k ☼
The one where Mr. D catches you two in the act, but you and him aren’t exactly together yet. (Drunk words are sober thoughts. Your dad just wishes Luke told you instead of him)
a wish your heart makes 1.4k ☼ ☽
The one where you share dreams, burn cookies, and it still reminds him of home. (The dryads will probably ban you from the kitchen after this)
star crossing 4k (NEWEST ADD) ☼
The one where both your dreams come to life for a night (Crossing the stars for love is easier said than done)
to see the chaos through ☽
The one where he remembers he was never a good guy, just yours. (Luke makes the ultimate deal with the devil in order to save you)
not your goddess ☽
The one where you both know the best of days eventually have to come to an end. (songfic - Goddess - Laufey)
don't blame the kids ☼
The one where you both chaperone a trip to Mount Olympus. (the Olympians are bigger gossips than you thought they'd be)
trouble's coming for you 3.7k ☼
The one where Percy meets his two favorite counselors at Camp Half-Blood. (three times Percy is oblivious (and in the way) and the time he realizes you and Luke are in love)
now that we're older 3.5k ☼
The one where he asks if you can stay the night even if all of cabin 11 makes fun of him. (Luke is tired of the routine. He just needs his girl)
if you need to be mean (be mean to me) 1.5k☽
The one where he leaves before you wake up. (songfic - I Don't Smoke - Mitski )
[fast forward until we meet again] post-tlt
lovers, or partners in crime 2.1k ☽
The one where Annabeth and Percy think you’re guilty too. (the last day leading up to Luke's betrayal)
love like a blister: the five stages of loving losing luke 4.7k ☽
The one where you learn to mourn someone even if they’re still alive. (the five stages of grief after facing a loss)
to catch a thief 3.7k ☼ ☽
The one where duty calls at Camp Half-Blood. Again. (Your reunion with Luke isn't quite what you expected.)
solipsism 5.3k ☽
The one where you finally pray to Hestia to keep your home safe, even if he's also trying to destroy it. (the four times Luke uses Backbiter to visit you during college ft. the first time you trust a god to help you)
forever falling: luke castellan & his four great loves 4.3k ☼ ☽
The one where he falls from grace and still thinks of you. (the four great loves of Luke Castellan’s life and how it will end up killing him)
love me dry 4.5k ☼ ☽
The one where he meets you at his mother's house, though both of you didn't expect the other to be there. (a glimpse into May Castellan's idea of a perfect day)
when the curtains close 5.3k☽
The one where you lose two people in the Labyrinth that day. All strings are cut. (Annabeth and Pollux find out the biggest difference between you and Luke.)
asking for trouble ☽
The one where Luke's final wish is to see you. (He's himself again, and all he wants is to find out if the trouble was worth it all)
as above, so below ☽ ☼
The one where you plead your case with the gods of Olympus. (The one thing the fates didn't expect was how much you'd both be like your fathers; in a way, you and Luke didn't see it coming either)
pairings: luke castellan x daughterofposeidon!reader, percy jackson x sister!reader
summary: the three instances where percy almost found out about you and luke, and the one where he did.
warnings: secret relationship, make outs, arguments, creepy boys, protective luke, protective percy, suggestive photos, violence, smut (last chapter only), bickering luke n y/n, sibling water kids to the max
a/n: my baby, i love this idea ngl!! comment below to be added to the taglist. this master list will be updated regularly.
confessions under the stars lead to wandering hands and marked up bodies, your brother percy has a very sharp eye and a penchant for never letting up.
ii. solidify
yourself and luke are navigating your new relationship. with the two of you being popular amongst the camp, eyes were on you always. some tended to wander to places reserved for the other.
iii. honeymoon bliss
your relationship with luke was pure joy, but it seems your happiness and love leads to the two of you slipping up.
iv. uncharted waters (out now!!)
four months of keeping percy in the dark were over, you could only hope he’d understand your reasoning for keeping him there.
or
the one where percy finds a polaroid of luke and a girl eerily similar to his sister, donning not a lot of clothing.
status: in progress, sporadic updates; requests open for concepts and spitballing but no actual fic requests!
pairing: luke castellan x daughter of poseidon!reader
summary: the life (and death) of luke castellan's first love.
warning(s): reader dies. that is her ultimate fate there’s no way of getting around it lmao. angst, fluff if you ignore said fate, more specific warnings on each chapter, but basically nonstop emotional damage
series tag | spotify playlist
geyser
↳ 6.5k words; the original fic | percy learns about the first girl luke castellan ever loved.
northern attitude
↳ 4.6k words | you and luke meet for the first time.
weight of the world
↳ 5.6k words | percy returns to camp after a successful quest. luke battles his guilt.
price of dreaming
↳ 4.1k words | luke's spiral and the part you play in it.
hurricane comes back au (this is not canon just a fun little thing to explore!)
time's blur
↳ 3.3k words | somehow, someway, you come back.
pairing: luke castellan x soulmate!daughter of aphrodite reader
a universe where soulmates are interlinked by shared pain (senses) and emotions, luke castellan refuses to have anything to do with his soulmate because of what it did to his mother, but he can't ignore fate.
—or: luke castellan and the soulmate he never wanted.
content: pre-tlt. super angst (with a happy ending coming soon). slow updates (sorry gang i have school).
author’s note: this layout is inspired by @too-deviant !!
back to navigation. luke castellan masterlist.
part i: he led me to you
luke just got back from a shitty quest, and now he has to meet his soulmate too? worst. day. ever. 4k+
part ii: how many tons of love inside?
luke castellan is being haunted by kronos and… well, you. 6.4k
part iii: built a bridge to your heart
you and luke are off on your quest you're totally not having second thoughts about choosing him, he's your soulmate after all... right?
part iv: the whole world could feel my heartbeat (in the works)
your quest has gone wrong, cupid's arrows are sharper than you thought, and quick! you have to blend in with the crowd so the monsters don't find you!!
part v: [typing…]
you’re hiding something about your quest, eros really doesn’t like being hunted, and now luke can’t sit still when you try to clean his wounds.
pixelskylines
ellievsbear
tangentwithtanner
2087
blakekathryn
