★ = Multi-chapter fic
✿ = Drabble or Short fic
！= Angst
♡ = Fluff
✦ = xReader
Drabble, Short Fic, and One-shot requests: OPEN
Fanfic Recommendations - Masterlist
Writing:
The Star that Wouldn't Die ★♡✦！
Jason Todd forgot a lot of things after the Lazarus pit's putrid green waters helped restore him back to life. He wished that Dick hadn't said that name, your name. Reigniting feelings and memories.
As memories he thought were long lost start to return, can he continue to be in your life without dragging you down with him? Can he be in your life without you knowing who he is? He doesn't know, but he wants to try.
Thanksgiving Surprise ✿♡✦
Jason Todd and Smoking ✿！
Books and Bleeding Ink✿♡✦
Art:
Hyperfixation Starts
A Gift of Chocolate - "Devoted Little Thing" fanart
Killshot
Writing:
Guess Whose Wearing My Scar✿♡✦
Wedding Crashers(Oneshot)♡✦！
What starts with wedding crashing, fake names, and pretend stories, unfolds into something far more real, and impossible to ignore.
Art:
Sketch Page
Writing:
Sweet Tea and Soulmarks★♡✦！
Damian wasn't looking for his soulmate. The marks had always been there, but they'd never told him where to go or who to look for. He had more important things to focus on. Still, when he starts running into the same woman over and over again it's hard to ignore. She's sharp-eyed, southern, kind but cautious. Damian told himself it was just coincidence.
You didn't come to Gotham looking for love, especially not the soulmate kind. After everything that happened back home, you're done trusting people who claim to understand the strange marks on your body. But when you keep running into the same man, quiet, unreadable, and always watching, you can't shake the feeling that somethings circling too close.
BatBoys Dating Sim - Fic Idea I will never write
BatBoys Soulmate Thoughts✿♡✦！
You come back to town, Damian finishes a painting, Red Hood gets pointed in the right direction.
Word Count: 4,449
Taking care of Ophelia for you had been refreshing, honestly Jason felt somewhat spoiled. If the weekend did nothing else, it really highlighted just how poorly he'd been treating himself since coming back as Red Hood.
In your shower there were whole three separate bottles of body wash, each scented differently, and each blatantly got varying levels of usage. And after a quick text you told him where the extra Loofah's were so that he could use one. Spare loofahs that there were at least ten of. It almost felt a little something like when he was a child at Wayne Manor being handed fancy bathing supplies for the first time in his life. The biggest difference was that then, for a long time, he'd felt bad about using them. Especially back then he felt as if he didn't deserve them.
That part hadn't followed him here. At least not as extremely as it had stuck to him back then.
Since becoming Red Hood he'd fallen back into habits he had as a child. He fell back into using just a bar of soap and some shampoo, it was functional, nothing more. But one use of your conditioner and he remembered why he had liked having it.
Then there was your kitchen, which looked like you'd completely restocked it before leaving. There were snack foods, oven pizzas, and stuff to cook with. Somehow, making his own food and eating it was better than the endless trips to fast food restaurants to grab a bite. Although he did feel a little guilty for just how much of it he had eaten while you were gone. With Damian's help, of course.
Strangely, one of the largest bonuses pet sitting for you came with was access to your PC. It was a custom build, probably courtesy of Sammy if he had to take a guess. Considering the speaker system in the room was also there because of Sammy, this was likely his work too. And he got to spend a good bit of time playing various video games he'd never gotten around to buying but you happened to own. And one morning, after a long patrol, he accidentally got some work done.
Reddit wasn't a site that he opened often, many of the scum of the earth gathered there. He'd intended to sleep, but it was evading him for the night. He hadn't started on reddit, but eventually the youtube recommendations were Reddit stories and that just began a spiral. Somehow, one that ended up with him finding r/gloryholegotham.
At first glance it seemed like it was every other clubs typical subreddit. Outfit posts, videos of people dancing, and certainly not moderated by the actual club itself. However interestingly, he did find a peculiar tag. The Princess.
There was no official explanation, no pinned posts that made it make sense. Just….stories. Hundreds of them, and most of them contradicticted by the other half. The closest thing to structure on the topic was a megathread someone had complied and kept updating weekly. "Princess Lore Compilation" None of it had any proof, but certainly something within the stories were true, so he'd started scrolling.
The list of alleged incidents was concerning, to say the least. "Made Black Mask's men back down, Jokers people avoid her, She has dirt on the entire city, She once stabbed a man with a stiletto, has paid for random peoples rehab, slapped a cop, maybe killed someone(?), banned from a casino in bludhaven" The list went on, but the rest of the "lore" wasn't nearly as interesting. Still, none of it helped with any of the contradictions around the princess, so he went to the comments.
The comments were even worse, because nobody could agree on her. Monster, Princess, Victim, Rich Girl, Crime Heir, Party Slut, Saint. All of it contradicted itself, like the internet couldn't decide which version of her it wanted to believe.
None of this was usable, probably. But maybe it could help fill in some details about her. Even if Rafael had been repeatedly trying to warn him off of her. There were loads of people saying a friend of a friend got their rehab covered by her, which he wasn't sure how that fit into the profile he was building of her. And judging by how small the subreddit was in spite of the nearly thousand replies arguing back and forth, he wasn't the only one bothered by the uncertainty.
Even so, Damian, had a fantastic time in your apartment. There was a half done painting sitting in your spare room that Damian had made Jason promise to bring him back to that he was able to finish it. And he was pretty sure one of your books was missing. He was pretty sure you wouldn't mind.
Slipping the key back over the top of the doorframe a couple hours before you were supposed to be back and heading back to his own apartment felt unreasonably depressing. Something in him resisting the idea of leaving without being told to. Enough that he'd actually gone out and bought new body wash and a bottle of conditioner, as if that fixed anything.
Tracking Slickbane remained much the same while you were gone. Gloryhole hadn't changed, and even though Tim had found two more shipments that Red Hood had managed to take out, neither was interesting or helpful. Just more crates of vape cartridges. A handful of weapons in each shipment, but not enough to feel like he was getting anything substantial. Once again, he felt like he was chasing ghosts. And maybe he was, but he doubted that and operation as large as slickbanes was seriously just batches of vapes.
Which made Monday night at Gloryhole feel like a pressure point. Rafael had been MIA over the weekend, which wasn't unusual in itself. He came and went in a pattern that he hadn't yet figured out. He'd made an attempt at mapping it, and come up empty handed. Which meant that Monday was a gamble.
Rafael might be there, or he might not.
Rafael was not there.
Rafael was not there Tuesday or Wednesday even. However, he did take Damian to your apartment to finish the painting that he had started. Somehow, Dick agreed to help cover for them, and hadn't even asked to get to meet you in exchange. Truly, a small miracle.
It also gave Damian a chance to return the book, something that he wasn't sure if you'd noticed or not. He hadn't texted you about it.
The visit was different than the ones he was used to. It started off strange even, instead of you opening the door, Sammy did. Wearing a pair of ratty pajamas, hair sticking up in every which way, and visibly already irritated. Behind him, a dark haired girl sitting on the couch and holding Ophelia visible in the background.
Sammy squinted at him, and then Robin, but ultimately sighed and made his way back to the couch. "Fine, whatever. I guess. She's not home, but I figure she'll be back soon."
Bethany grumbled from the couch, "She did say to let them in if they came around while she was gone."
Sammy stuck his tounge out at Bethany, "Yeah I know. That's why I did." He pointed toward Red Hood, "That doesn't mean that I'm happy about any of this situation. The only reason either of us are letting you in is because she explicitly told us to, and said you were friends and therfor allowed in the apartment."
Red Hood laughed a little, underneath the helmet, shutting the apartment door behind him with his boot so Bethany could let go of Ophelia and let her run into his legs.
Damian, on the other hand, glanced at her and then dissapeared down the hallway long enough to go drag the painting he was working on and the supplies needed into the living room.
When you were home, he'd fallen into a routine. He knew how to interact with you, but he really wasn't sure about Bethany and Sammy. They were foreign, like trying a new food for the first time. Socalization was never his strongest skill, and this felt akin to a test that he hadn't studied for.
At least until Bethany put her head back on the couch to look at him.
"She's bringing home food, by the way. If you want anything just text her. What the hell is she even doing Sammy?"
"She's finishing up at a commission at the studio."
"Ah."
He didn't know that you had a studio. He knew that on top of your animating job you did some freelance and gallery work, hell he'd given you ample reference for those pieces. All of which were no longer in the apartment, and for your financial sake he hoped they sold for a good price. He couldn't see you affording an apartment this nice without all the side work that you did. Gotham rent might be cheap, but it wasn't that cheap. And you had to be doing alright considering you never seemed stressed out about money.
Still, it made him ask quieter, "She has her own studio?"
Sammy hummed, "Sort of. It's nothing official, she just ran out of space for all the bullshit she works on so she rented an empty room to fill with her shit. It's not far, and if it makes you feel any better she doesn't walk places at night. Just takes her car."
That, did help a lot, actually. Jason hadn't realized that was party of why thats why the comment had put him on edge, but he really didn't like the idea of you walking around Gotham alone.
Bethany kicked her leg up onto the couch, and Ophealia followed to hop up onto it and curl into the hole where her legs were. It was helpful, as Jason, to have Ophelia be so friendly. But he would prefer if she had some sort of formal training to protect you, especially since while pet sitting sometimes she made him take her on a walk at night. Clambered up onto the bed and pawed at him until he got up and took her on a walk, even if he had just taken her out a couple hours ago.
"It's super cool actually. I work at the same animation company as her, and I swear to god she's a genius with art." Damian finally came out with the painting supplies, but Bethany continued on anyways. "I'm pretty sure that's part of why she's so strange. Like, for example, running around on Gotham rooftops because she just has to get a photo of red hoods boots for a gallery painting. Something about being genius and being weird, I think. The two have to go hand and hand."
Robin muttered something at that. But he chose to ignore it, and seemingly, so did Bethany.
He hadn't thought about that in a while actually. The way that he'd found himself stumbling back into her orbit and the strange timing of it all. First the photos from Dick, and then the photo flash on the rooftop. Bethany yelling at you as she drug you down a fire escape, and your little wave to him. You grew up in crime alley, and clearly didn't mind him. But hell if it wasn't a strange situation. One that he still felt bad about. Walking in and out of your apartment, through the front door.
Bruce would've called it a security risk, gotten on his ass about it. Damian had done so, breifly. But his visitation with you seemed to have calmed Damians feeling around that a bit, probably since he was stuck doing the same thing. He was a headstrong kid, but you were a headstrong adult and would probably throw pillows or receipts at him if Robin tried to enter the house any other way. And Jason himself was sort of scared that if he did you'd throw him out of your life.
It tied a knot in his stomach actually, being thrown out of your life like that.
"Is she still doing that?"
Bethany shrugged, "Probably not. Figure she'll just ask you to get photos now. Normally she'll ask me to go with her. Bethany, come be my voice of reason please."
Sammy smacked bethanys arm, "She's never once said that."
Bethany laughed, shoving Sammy back, "She may as well. I've heard enough stories about what you two were like in highschool and the summer before she got the animation job that I know neither of you are solid voices of reason."
"And you are?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"Okay then. Ask him your question so we can settle our bet."
Jason immediately didn't like where this was going, and unfortunately it meant that Damian seemed highly interested. Bethany was looking at Sammy scandalized, "I can't ask that in front of Robin. He's just a kid."
"I am sitting right here," Damian said flatly.
"Exactly! That's the point. Not all conversations are appropriate for conversation and this one isn't-" the door to the apartment opened then, and you stepped in with paint stained clothes and two takeout bags in hand, "And look at that i'm saved by the bell!"
Sammy scrambled to grab Ophelia before she could launch herself off the couch and toward the front door, while you scrambled to get inside and close it. Both tasks went surprisingly well, despite the keyring with a little Robin figure on it getting caught in the door. "Was everyone playing nice Hood? We've had at least four conversations over it and they're still apprehensive about you being allowed in the apartment."
Bethany shot her hand up while you set the bags down and bent down to pet Ophelia. "Robin helps. He's at least objectively good."
Jason tried to ignore the way that stung and looked toward you, "Everyones been playing nice."
You clapped your hands together, "Good! If you or Robin are hungry you're more than welcome to pick through leftovers or eat my fries, but you didn't exactly text to say you'd be over so I didn't get anything for you guys specifically." You pulled out your phone and took a few steps toward your room, "I'm gonna change clothes and then I'll be back."
You dissapeared down the hallway before either he or Damian could answer, leaving him with the group yet again. Even though it had been stated that you'd had several conversations with them, it didn't make how chill they were being any less weird. Most likely they weren't chill and were just pretending to be. Damian focusing on his painting didn't serve much of an emotional buffer, not that he was the best at that anyways.
Sammy moved to grab the takeout bags, digging through them and figuring out whose food was whose and setting them on it's respective places on the coffee table. His own on the right, Bethanys on the left, and yours in the middle.
Bethany stole some of your fries while you were gone, and by the time everything was setup to eat, Sammy with the TV remote in his hands and scrolling through Netflix trying to pick something to put on, your bedroom door opened again.
You wandered back down the hallway in oversized sleep shorts and Gotham Academy hoodie that was both simultaneously in good condition, awful condition, and too small and too big. If he didn't recognize a small rip by the collar of it, he probably would have had some questions. You never went to Gotham Academy, didn't have the financial situation to get into a high school like that. No, it was one of his old hoodies. Which rose the question of how exactly you got your hands on it, but he did his best to ignore that question.
You'd gotten almost all the paint off your face, and threw your phone at Sammy before stepping up next to Robin. "The painting looks really good so far." It looked like a painting of the massive dinosaur statue in the cave, probably something Damian would give to Bruce or Dick when he finished it. But as far as he knew, Damian was just excited to finally have access to the right shade of green for the piece.
Damian made a low sound in response, but that seemed to be enough for you since you wandered over to the coffee table, and took a fry out of the container that had your food in it. "You can sit down by the way, Hood. Rather than just standing there awkwardly."
He glanced behind him, at the stools by the kitchen counter, and hesitantly, he finally did sit down. Being in your space alone was one thing, while you were home was another, when you had friends over was an entierly different thing. Then again, you'd called these two family, and had invited him into the space. He just wasn't used to it.
And maybe he should invite you into his space. Not that he could take you to one of his safe houses, but maybe he could bring Dick over. Stephanie had found her way in on her own, Damian had been over. Really all that was left was Dick and Tim. Maybe, eventually, Bruce.
It wasn't long until the show for the night had been chosen, and Damian started stealing some of the food from your plate. It wasn't exactly surprising when the show had to be paused every five minutes for some sort of debate that sparked from the episodes, and those spiraled so long that it took an obscene amount of time to get through even just one episode. It was a nice night, and an easy prelude to what he had to deal with the next day.
A week of showing up to Gloryhole and it wasn't until Thursday when Rafael was lingering around the club. He was sitting at a booth with one of the two women he had previously marked as potential people to be the Princess. Specifically, the Blonde woman who had seemed not quite happy when the red head had tried to garner all of Rafael's attention. Despite that, it didn't take long until Rafael had spotted him and was moving toward the doorway leading into the back, stopping at the threshold and waiting for him to approach.
The hallway was glaringly empty, completely undecorated like the main area of the building. Brick walls that looked nice and thematic in the main area suddenly appeared dour, the lighting was functional, but nothing to write home about. And the room that Rafael took him into was much the same. Plain, was the best way to word it. Sure, there was a desk and a chair. However unlike the main room it lacked any personal flair. Didn't even have the expected bookshelf that most people kept to try and make one of these rooms appear slightly less depressing.
It was almost more depression than one of his safe-houses.
Places that were lived in gathered things, dust, clutter. It was always something. Even in his childhood apartment, there had been a group of gathered objects. This room had nothing. A space not designed to be used often, perhaps only when necessary. Maybe just when a conversation needed to be had, but they didn't want to let anyone in too close.
Or maybe this was Rafael's personal office and the man truly was an enigma.
"Jesus," he muttered, "You interrogate people in here or is this just your idea of interior design?" It really was ironic that Jason of all people was poking fun at the design here. His own apartment wasn't that much better.
There was only one exit to the room, and it was the one he had his back to. No windows, no good places to hide any hidden compartments like he would have expected. At most there was one or two within the desk, but with the way the building was built the chances of there being one in one of the walls was slim.
"Are you here to talk about the interior design, or do you want to discuss what we're here for? Information for the deed."
Jason should've expected something like this from Rafael; it didn't make it any less irritating. Still, he pulled the folded up deed out of his pocket of his spare leather jacket and dropped it on the table. Tapped it once on the edge, keeping his eyes on Rafael. "Point me somewhere useful, and you get the deed."
The mans lips quirked up slightly again. "And you're just going to trust what I have to tell you?"
Jason glanced once at the seat on the opposite side of the table. Funny that there was only one seat, and Rafael had taken it. "Trust?" He laughed a little, "No. I'm betting that you aren't stupid enough to like to me about something I can quickly confirm." And betting that Rafael didn't actually care if Slickbane got taken down, that and a new theory he'd been developing lately.
He'd been told that The Princess didn't "do logistics" but that had come from a bartender, and all that meant was that she didn't do any at Gloryhole. That didn't mean she didn't pull any strings. Especially when one of the warnings Rafael had given was directly from the Princess. Especially with the various rumors he'd found floating around on reddit.
"Good. I'd be more concerned if you did trust me." He leaned back in the chair, looking upward for a moment like he was considering how much to tell him. Finally, after several moments. "You ever notice what people don't question?"
He didn't reply immediately, trying to mull the words over in his head. What exactly they meant. There were a lot of things people didn't notice, especially in Gotham.
Rafael continued on, "Guns, big shipments, those get attention. They're a good method to throw someone off the track. If they happen to get through, great. If not, whatever." He paused for a moment, "But pills? Easy to move in small packaging and not get caught. Easy enough to avoid gaining attention.
"Anti-anxiety, sleeping aids. The sort of thing people take every day and don't think twice about. Because if a doctor will prescribe it, surly it's not that dangerous."
"Pushing counterfeit benzos?"
Rafael shrugged, "Not exactly. If you're thinking Slickbane is pushing laced drugs, you're wrong. There's more profit in selling something reliable to the needy, without discretion. Of course, none of his people sell them directly, at most they move them."
Jason mulled over the information in his head. Staring at Rafael a moment longer than he intended to. No one under Slickbanes employment were selling the pills directly. Which meant that they were being given to a third party, here in Gotham. Thinking about it, Benzos were the perfect opportunity. Build a reputation for being reliable, and sell it to those who didn't have adequate medical access. Eventually, without regulation from a doctor the likelihood of becoming addicted was high, which guaranteed repeat buyers who weren't likely to rat anyone out.
Something people wouldn't notice.
Someone who sold things worse, so something this small would fly under the radar.
"Penguin?"
Rafael didn't say he was right, but he also didn't say he was wrong. Which was all the confirmation that Jason needed. Rafael had always said something when he was poking in the wrong direction, had specifically warned him off getting involved in any of this.
Neither of them said anything for a long moment.
Rafael waved at the direction of the door, "Well get to hunting."
Jason didn't move yet, debating for a moment. He'd touched a nerve the last time he brought up the Princess, but maybe Rafael would confirm his theory. "One last thing. One of the bartenders mentioned that The Princess isn't involved in logistics, but she sent you to give me a friendly warning. How much is she involved?"
Rafael stiffened, almost imperceptibly. "Why?"
"If I'm right, your goal is protecting her. Not sure why, but that's what it seems like. If I knew how much she's actually involved, maybe when everything comes to a head I can prevent some of the fallout." If she was an innocent bystander, or actively working against Slickbane from her position.
Rafael's jaw tightened a little bit more. "My goal," he said carefully, "is making sure you don't dig yourself into a hole you can't climb out of."
"Not what I asked."
He was met with silence again. Maddening silence. By now, with almost any other case he'd have a pretty decent guess at Rafael's intentions, he'd certainly interacted with him enough. But trying to figure out what was going on with Rafael was like trying to see the road on a foggy night. Sometimes he got glimpses, but never a full picture.
"Look, I don't actually care about your boss. But if there's someone in the middle of this whose either not supposed to be collateral, or actively trying to keep things contained? I'd like to know before I start kicking doors in."
Rafael exhaled slowly, debating for a moment. "She's not a person you should care about. And that's all the information that you'll get from me."
Once again, perhaps stupidly, Jason sighed. Decided to leave it alone, and turned to walk away.
Rafael stayed still until the sound of the door clicking shut had passed. Only then did he relax but it wasn't relief. His shoulders dropped a fraction and he ran his hands down the sides of his face. He probably should have walked him out.
Should've made sure that he didn't take a wrong turn, didn't open the wrong door. The studio wasn't far, it was close enough that it was easy to stumble into if you got curious enough.
Jason Todd struck him as the type to get curious.
Rafael glanced toward the wall like he could see through it. Clean, bright, as controlled as one of your workspaces could be. Nothing like the rest of the building. Canvases stacked carefully, lighting against your personal tastes for the sake of making sure the pieces could hold up under museum scrutiny. Paintings moved in an out of that room at a speed that even he head a hard time keeping up with.
What a mess.
Such a mess he wasn't sure how you'd react if you knew the truth of it. It would come out eventually, it always did. He just wondered how bad the fallout afterward would be.
Some secrets were a heavy burden, some secrets were as light as a feather. One heavy secret was just as bad as a thousand small secrets.
Rafael knew a lot of secrets, yet had very few himself. He knew that Slickbane kept three separate passports for himself and his daughter in three separate safes, in three separate houses, in three separate states. Not a single one of them used their real names. The exact brand of bourbon Cyrus drank when doing business. Which bartender at the club was secretly stealing from the register to funnel money into his sisters college fund.
He knew where the ledgers were kept and exactly how much damage they could do. And conversely he knew that the numbers didn’t exactly add up just because the accountant skimmed just enough off the top to fund whatever personal vices they had.
They used to feel excruciatingly oppressive. Knowing that a tiny slip of the tongue would lead to his disappearance. But with a simple act of rebellion from a girl protesting her father, he was free of that.
The sleeve tattoo still marked him as property to a certain crime family, if anyone knew what to look for. An old and ugly tradition. It had been late at night when the idea was thrown out there. Three too many drinks and you’d said the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard.
“Just let me design it instead.”
He’d stared at you for a long moment.
“The tattoo, I mean. Technically, I’m a Crowe too. Same bloodline, different boss. Easy.”
Easy.
As if Cyrus Crowe was the sort of man people reassigned loyalty away from.
But you were his daughter, estranged for many years perhaps. And initially only paid for out of guilt, or whatever it was that he had felt toward you. At least until the man had realized that a person like you could be useful to the family business.
He initially shot the idea down.
And yet, somehow, a few weeks later, Rafael had been sitting in a tattoo chair while the artist quietly followed the design you’d created. It hadn’t been a quiet change, instead of a crow as the primary motif, he’d been given a wolf. The style was the same, everything else was in line with the typical tattoo given to people like Rafael.
Anyone who knew the Crowes would recognize the bones of the design immediately. The same heavy blackwork, the same placement of symbols, the same implication of ownership.
Slickbane had been more than pissed, yet by some miracle given by god none of that wrath had been directed at Rafael. Had it been, it would have been a lot messier. Instead you had taken the lecture, the yelling, the long cold reminder that traditions like that existed for a reason.
And you hadn’t apologized, not even once. At one point you’d even rolled your eyes at him. You even threw the ire right back at him. “I thought he was your gift to me, to do as I wished with, Dad”
But ultimately, the crow was gone.
And the wolf did not belong to Cyrus Crowe.
Technically, the wolf may have belonged to the Princess, but you’d never actually treated him as such. You had handed him his freedom on a golden platter, treated him as a friend instead of an employee.
He probably could have walked away, you would have been alright with that. His phone would still get a ridiculous amount of messages from you, but you would have let him without repercussions.
No threats. No reminders about loyalty. Just texts about whatever random thing you were thinking about in that particular moment.
You come back to town, Damian finishes a painting, Red Hood gets pointed in the right direction.
Word Count: 4,449
Taking care of Ophelia for you had been refreshing, honestly Jason felt somewhat spoiled. If the weekend did nothing else, it really highlighted just how poorly he'd been treating himself since coming back as Red Hood.
In your shower there were whole three separate bottles of body wash, each scented differently, and each blatantly got varying levels of usage. And after a quick text you told him where the extra Loofah's were so that he could use one. Spare loofahs that there were at least ten of. It almost felt a little something like when he was a child at Wayne Manor being handed fancy bathing supplies for the first time in his life. The biggest difference was that then, for a long time, he'd felt bad about using them. Especially back then he felt as if he didn't deserve them.
That part hadn't followed him here. At least not as extremely as it had stuck to him back then.
Since becoming Red Hood he'd fallen back into habits he had as a child. He fell back into using just a bar of soap and some shampoo, it was functional, nothing more. But one use of your conditioner and he remembered why he had liked having it.
Then there was your kitchen, which looked like you'd completely restocked it before leaving. There were snack foods, oven pizzas, and stuff to cook with. Somehow, making his own food and eating it was better than the endless trips to fast food restaurants to grab a bite. Although he did feel a little guilty for just how much of it he had eaten while you were gone. With Damian's help, of course.
Strangely, one of the largest bonuses pet sitting for you came with was access to your PC. It was a custom build, probably courtesy of Sammy if he had to take a guess. Considering the speaker system in the room was also there because of Sammy, this was likely his work too. And he got to spend a good bit of time playing various video games he'd never gotten around to buying but you happened to own. And one morning, after a long patrol, he accidentally got some work done.
Reddit wasn't a site that he opened often, many of the scum of the earth gathered there. He'd intended to sleep, but it was evading him for the night. He hadn't started on reddit, but eventually the youtube recommendations were Reddit stories and that just began a spiral. Somehow, one that ended up with him finding r/gloryholegotham.
At first glance it seemed like it was every other clubs typical subreddit. Outfit posts, videos of people dancing, and certainly not moderated by the actual club itself. However interestingly, he did find a peculiar tag. The Princess.
There was no official explanation, no pinned posts that made it make sense. Just….stories. Hundreds of them, and most of them contradicticted by the other half. The closest thing to structure on the topic was a megathread someone had complied and kept updating weekly. "Princess Lore Compilation" None of it had any proof, but certainly something within the stories were true, so he'd started scrolling.
The list of alleged incidents was concerning, to say the least. "Made Black Mask's men back down, Jokers people avoid her, She has dirt on the entire city, She once stabbed a man with a stiletto, has paid for random peoples rehab, slapped a cop, maybe killed someone(?), banned from a casino in bludhaven" The list went on, but the rest of the "lore" wasn't nearly as interesting. Still, none of it helped with any of the contradictions around the princess, so he went to the comments.
The comments were even worse, because nobody could agree on her. Monster, Princess, Victim, Rich Girl, Crime Heir, Party Slut, Saint. All of it contradicted itself, like the internet couldn't decide which version of her it wanted to believe.
None of this was usable, probably. But maybe it could help fill in some details about her. Even if Rafael had been repeatedly trying to warn him off of her. There were loads of people saying a friend of a friend got their rehab covered by her, which he wasn't sure how that fit into the profile he was building of her. And judging by how small the subreddit was in spite of the nearly thousand replies arguing back and forth, he wasn't the only one bothered by the uncertainty.
Even so, Damian, had a fantastic time in your apartment. There was a half done painting sitting in your spare room that Damian had made Jason promise to bring him back to that he was able to finish it. And he was pretty sure one of your books was missing. He was pretty sure you wouldn't mind.
Slipping the key back over the top of the doorframe a couple hours before you were supposed to be back and heading back to his own apartment felt unreasonably depressing. Something in him resisting the idea of leaving without being told to. Enough that he'd actually gone out and bought new body wash and a bottle of conditioner, as if that fixed anything.
Tracking Slickbane remained much the same while you were gone. Gloryhole hadn't changed, and even though Tim had found two more shipments that Red Hood had managed to take out, neither was interesting or helpful. Just more crates of vape cartridges. A handful of weapons in each shipment, but not enough to feel like he was getting anything substantial. Once again, he felt like he was chasing ghosts. And maybe he was, but he doubted that and operation as large as slickbanes was seriously just batches of vapes.
Which made Monday night at Gloryhole feel like a pressure point. Rafael had been MIA over the weekend, which wasn't unusual in itself. He came and went in a pattern that he hadn't yet figured out. He'd made an attempt at mapping it, and come up empty handed. Which meant that Monday was a gamble.
Rafael might be there, or he might not.
Rafael was not there.
Rafael was not there Tuesday or Wednesday even. However, he did take Damian to your apartment to finish the painting that he had started. Somehow, Dick agreed to help cover for them, and hadn't even asked to get to meet you in exchange. Truly, a small miracle.
It also gave Damian a chance to return the book, something that he wasn't sure if you'd noticed or not. He hadn't texted you about it.
The visit was different than the ones he was used to. It started off strange even, instead of you opening the door, Sammy did. Wearing a pair of ratty pajamas, hair sticking up in every which way, and visibly already irritated. Behind him, a dark haired girl sitting on the couch and holding Ophelia visible in the background.
Sammy squinted at him, and then Robin, but ultimately sighed and made his way back to the couch. "Fine, whatever. I guess. She's not home, but I figure she'll be back soon."
Bethany grumbled from the couch, "She did say to let them in if they came around while she was gone."
Sammy stuck his tounge out at Bethany, "Yeah I know. That's why I did." He pointed toward Red Hood, "That doesn't mean that I'm happy about any of this situation. The only reason either of us are letting you in is because she explicitly told us to, and said you were friends and therfor allowed in the apartment."
Red Hood laughed a little, underneath the helmet, shutting the apartment door behind him with his boot so Bethany could let go of Ophelia and let her run into his legs.
Damian, on the other hand, glanced at her and then dissapeared down the hallway long enough to go drag the painting he was working on and the supplies needed into the living room.
When you were home, he'd fallen into a routine. He knew how to interact with you, but he really wasn't sure about Bethany and Sammy. They were foreign, like trying a new food for the first time. Socalization was never his strongest skill, and this felt akin to a test that he hadn't studied for.
At least until Bethany put her head back on the couch to look at him.
"She's bringing home food, by the way. If you want anything just text her. What the hell is she even doing Sammy?"
"She's finishing up at a commission at the studio."
"Ah."
He didn't know that you had a studio. He knew that on top of your animating job you did some freelance and gallery work, hell he'd given you ample reference for those pieces. All of which were no longer in the apartment, and for your financial sake he hoped they sold for a good price. He couldn't see you affording an apartment this nice without all the side work that you did. Gotham rent might be cheap, but it wasn't that cheap. And you had to be doing alright considering you never seemed stressed out about money.
Still, it made him ask quieter, "She has her own studio?"
Sammy hummed, "Sort of. It's nothing official, she just ran out of space for all the bullshit she works on so she rented an empty room to fill with her shit. It's not far, and if it makes you feel any better she doesn't walk places at night. Just takes her car."
That, did help a lot, actually. Jason hadn't realized that was party of why thats why the comment had put him on edge, but he really didn't like the idea of you walking around Gotham alone.
Bethany kicked her leg up onto the couch, and Ophealia followed to hop up onto it and curl into the hole where her legs were. It was helpful, as Jason, to have Ophelia be so friendly. But he would prefer if she had some sort of formal training to protect you, especially since while pet sitting sometimes she made him take her on a walk at night. Clambered up onto the bed and pawed at him until he got up and took her on a walk, even if he had just taken her out a couple hours ago.
"It's super cool actually. I work at the same animation company as her, and I swear to god she's a genius with art." Damian finally came out with the painting supplies, but Bethany continued on anyways. "I'm pretty sure that's part of why she's so strange. Like, for example, running around on Gotham rooftops because she just has to get a photo of red hoods boots for a gallery painting. Something about being genius and being weird, I think. The two have to go hand and hand."
Robin muttered something at that. But he chose to ignore it, and seemingly, so did Bethany.
He hadn't thought about that in a while actually. The way that he'd found himself stumbling back into her orbit and the strange timing of it all. First the photos from Dick, and then the photo flash on the rooftop. Bethany yelling at you as she drug you down a fire escape, and your little wave to him. You grew up in crime alley, and clearly didn't mind him. But hell if it wasn't a strange situation. One that he still felt bad about. Walking in and out of your apartment, through the front door.
Bruce would've called it a security risk, gotten on his ass about it. Damian had done so, breifly. But his visitation with you seemed to have calmed Damians feeling around that a bit, probably since he was stuck doing the same thing. He was a headstrong kid, but you were a headstrong adult and would probably throw pillows or receipts at him if Robin tried to enter the house any other way. And Jason himself was sort of scared that if he did you'd throw him out of your life.
It tied a knot in his stomach actually, being thrown out of your life like that.
"Is she still doing that?"
Bethany shrugged, "Probably not. Figure she'll just ask you to get photos now. Normally she'll ask me to go with her. Bethany, come be my voice of reason please."
Sammy smacked bethanys arm, "She's never once said that."
Bethany laughed, shoving Sammy back, "She may as well. I've heard enough stories about what you two were like in highschool and the summer before she got the animation job that I know neither of you are solid voices of reason."
"And you are?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"Okay then. Ask him your question so we can settle our bet."
Jason immediately didn't like where this was going, and unfortunately it meant that Damian seemed highly interested. Bethany was looking at Sammy scandalized, "I can't ask that in front of Robin. He's just a kid."
"I am sitting right here," Damian said flatly.
"Exactly! That's the point. Not all conversations are appropriate for conversation and this one isn't-" the door to the apartment opened then, and you stepped in with paint stained clothes and two takeout bags in hand, "And look at that i'm saved by the bell!"
Sammy scrambled to grab Ophelia before she could launch herself off the couch and toward the front door, while you scrambled to get inside and close it. Both tasks went surprisingly well, despite the keyring with a little Robin figure on it getting caught in the door. "Was everyone playing nice Hood? We've had at least four conversations over it and they're still apprehensive about you being allowed in the apartment."
Bethany shot her hand up while you set the bags down and bent down to pet Ophelia. "Robin helps. He's at least objectively good."
Jason tried to ignore the way that stung and looked toward you, "Everyones been playing nice."
You clapped your hands together, "Good! If you or Robin are hungry you're more than welcome to pick through leftovers or eat my fries, but you didn't exactly text to say you'd be over so I didn't get anything for you guys specifically." You pulled out your phone and took a few steps toward your room, "I'm gonna change clothes and then I'll be back."
You dissapeared down the hallway before either he or Damian could answer, leaving him with the group yet again. Even though it had been stated that you'd had several conversations with them, it didn't make how chill they were being any less weird. Most likely they weren't chill and were just pretending to be. Damian focusing on his painting didn't serve much of an emotional buffer, not that he was the best at that anyways.
Sammy moved to grab the takeout bags, digging through them and figuring out whose food was whose and setting them on it's respective places on the coffee table. His own on the right, Bethanys on the left, and yours in the middle.
Bethany stole some of your fries while you were gone, and by the time everything was setup to eat, Sammy with the TV remote in his hands and scrolling through Netflix trying to pick something to put on, your bedroom door opened again.
You wandered back down the hallway in oversized sleep shorts and Gotham Academy hoodie that was both simultaneously in good condition, awful condition, and too small and too big. If he didn't recognize a small rip by the collar of it, he probably would have had some questions. You never went to Gotham Academy, didn't have the financial situation to get into a high school like that. No, it was one of his old hoodies. Which rose the question of how exactly you got your hands on it, but he did his best to ignore that question.
You'd gotten almost all the paint off your face, and threw your phone at Sammy before stepping up next to Robin. "The painting looks really good so far." It looked like a painting of the massive dinosaur statue in the cave, probably something Damian would give to Bruce or Dick when he finished it. But as far as he knew, Damian was just excited to finally have access to the right shade of green for the piece.
Damian made a low sound in response, but that seemed to be enough for you since you wandered over to the coffee table, and took a fry out of the container that had your food in it. "You can sit down by the way, Hood. Rather than just standing there awkwardly."
He glanced behind him, at the stools by the kitchen counter, and hesitantly, he finally did sit down. Being in your space alone was one thing, while you were home was another, when you had friends over was an entierly different thing. Then again, you'd called these two family, and had invited him into the space. He just wasn't used to it.
And maybe he should invite you into his space. Not that he could take you to one of his safe houses, but maybe he could bring Dick over. Stephanie had found her way in on her own, Damian had been over. Really all that was left was Dick and Tim. Maybe, eventually, Bruce.
It wasn't long until the show for the night had been chosen, and Damian started stealing some of the food from your plate. It wasn't exactly surprising when the show had to be paused every five minutes for some sort of debate that sparked from the episodes, and those spiraled so long that it took an obscene amount of time to get through even just one episode. It was a nice night, and an easy prelude to what he had to deal with the next day.
A week of showing up to Gloryhole and it wasn't until Thursday when Rafael was lingering around the club. He was sitting at a booth with one of the two women he had previously marked as potential people to be the Princess. Specifically, the Blonde woman who had seemed not quite happy when the red head had tried to garner all of Rafael's attention. Despite that, it didn't take long until Rafael had spotted him and was moving toward the doorway leading into the back, stopping at the threshold and waiting for him to approach.
The hallway was glaringly empty, completely undecorated like the main area of the building. Brick walls that looked nice and thematic in the main area suddenly appeared dour, the lighting was functional, but nothing to write home about. And the room that Rafael took him into was much the same. Plain, was the best way to word it. Sure, there was a desk and a chair. However unlike the main room it lacked any personal flair. Didn't even have the expected bookshelf that most people kept to try and make one of these rooms appear slightly less depressing.
It was almost more depression than one of his safe-houses.
Places that were lived in gathered things, dust, clutter. It was always something. Even in his childhood apartment, there had been a group of gathered objects. This room had nothing. A space not designed to be used often, perhaps only when necessary. Maybe just when a conversation needed to be had, but they didn't want to let anyone in too close.
Or maybe this was Rafael's personal office and the man truly was an enigma.
"Jesus," he muttered, "You interrogate people in here or is this just your idea of interior design?" It really was ironic that Jason of all people was poking fun at the design here. His own apartment wasn't that much better.
There was only one exit to the room, and it was the one he had his back to. No windows, no good places to hide any hidden compartments like he would have expected. At most there was one or two within the desk, but with the way the building was built the chances of there being one in one of the walls was slim.
"Are you here to talk about the interior design, or do you want to discuss what we're here for? Information for the deed."
Jason should've expected something like this from Rafael; it didn't make it any less irritating. Still, he pulled the folded up deed out of his pocket of his spare leather jacket and dropped it on the table. Tapped it once on the edge, keeping his eyes on Rafael. "Point me somewhere useful, and you get the deed."
The mans lips quirked up slightly again. "And you're just going to trust what I have to tell you?"
Jason glanced once at the seat on the opposite side of the table. Funny that there was only one seat, and Rafael had taken it. "Trust?" He laughed a little, "No. I'm betting that you aren't stupid enough to like to me about something I can quickly confirm." And betting that Rafael didn't actually care if Slickbane got taken down, that and a new theory he'd been developing lately.
He'd been told that The Princess didn't "do logistics" but that had come from a bartender, and all that meant was that she didn't do any at Gloryhole. That didn't mean she didn't pull any strings. Especially when one of the warnings Rafael had given was directly from the Princess. Especially with the various rumors he'd found floating around on reddit.
"Good. I'd be more concerned if you did trust me." He leaned back in the chair, looking upward for a moment like he was considering how much to tell him. Finally, after several moments. "You ever notice what people don't question?"
He didn't reply immediately, trying to mull the words over in his head. What exactly they meant. There were a lot of things people didn't notice, especially in Gotham.
Rafael continued on, "Guns, big shipments, those get attention. They're a good method to throw someone off the track. If they happen to get through, great. If not, whatever." He paused for a moment, "But pills? Easy to move in small packaging and not get caught. Easy enough to avoid gaining attention.
"Anti-anxiety, sleeping aids. The sort of thing people take every day and don't think twice about. Because if a doctor will prescribe it, surly it's not that dangerous."
"Pushing counterfeit benzos?"
Rafael shrugged, "Not exactly. If you're thinking Slickbane is pushing laced drugs, you're wrong. There's more profit in selling something reliable to the needy, without discretion. Of course, none of his people sell them directly, at most they move them."
Jason mulled over the information in his head. Staring at Rafael a moment longer than he intended to. No one under Slickbanes employment were selling the pills directly. Which meant that they were being given to a third party, here in Gotham. Thinking about it, Benzos were the perfect opportunity. Build a reputation for being reliable, and sell it to those who didn't have adequate medical access. Eventually, without regulation from a doctor the likelihood of becoming addicted was high, which guaranteed repeat buyers who weren't likely to rat anyone out.
Something people wouldn't notice.
Someone who sold things worse, so something this small would fly under the radar.
"Penguin?"
Rafael didn't say he was right, but he also didn't say he was wrong. Which was all the confirmation that Jason needed. Rafael had always said something when he was poking in the wrong direction, had specifically warned him off getting involved in any of this.
Neither of them said anything for a long moment.
Rafael waved at the direction of the door, "Well get to hunting."
Jason didn't move yet, debating for a moment. He'd touched a nerve the last time he brought up the Princess, but maybe Rafael would confirm his theory. "One last thing. One of the bartenders mentioned that The Princess isn't involved in logistics, but she sent you to give me a friendly warning. How much is she involved?"
Rafael stiffened, almost imperceptibly. "Why?"
"If I'm right, your goal is protecting her. Not sure why, but that's what it seems like. If I knew how much she's actually involved, maybe when everything comes to a head I can prevent some of the fallout." If she was an innocent bystander, or actively working against Slickbane from her position.
Rafael's jaw tightened a little bit more. "My goal," he said carefully, "is making sure you don't dig yourself into a hole you can't climb out of."
"Not what I asked."
He was met with silence again. Maddening silence. By now, with almost any other case he'd have a pretty decent guess at Rafael's intentions, he'd certainly interacted with him enough. But trying to figure out what was going on with Rafael was like trying to see the road on a foggy night. Sometimes he got glimpses, but never a full picture.
"Look, I don't actually care about your boss. But if there's someone in the middle of this whose either not supposed to be collateral, or actively trying to keep things contained? I'd like to know before I start kicking doors in."
Rafael exhaled slowly, debating for a moment. "She's not a person you should care about. And that's all the information that you'll get from me."
Once again, perhaps stupidly, Jason sighed. Decided to leave it alone, and turned to walk away.
Rafael stayed still until the sound of the door clicking shut had passed. Only then did he relax but it wasn't relief. His shoulders dropped a fraction and he ran his hands down the sides of his face. He probably should have walked him out.
Should've made sure that he didn't take a wrong turn, didn't open the wrong door. The studio wasn't far, it was close enough that it was easy to stumble into if you got curious enough.
Jason Todd struck him as the type to get curious.
Rafael glanced toward the wall like he could see through it. Clean, bright, as controlled as one of your workspaces could be. Nothing like the rest of the building. Canvases stacked carefully, lighting against your personal tastes for the sake of making sure the pieces could hold up under museum scrutiny. Paintings moved in an out of that room at a speed that even he head a hard time keeping up with.
What a mess.
Such a mess he wasn't sure how you'd react if you knew the truth of it. It would come out eventually, it always did. He just wondered how bad the fallout afterward would be.
Hello all! And specifically those who are reading The Star that Wouldn’t Die and Sweet Tea and Soulmarks! I’m here with an update for their updates and posts!!
I do ask for some patience, and warn this will get a little personal without getting too deep into the nitty gritty of everything. TSTWD and STAS are very special to me. I know TSTWD has gotten updated more than STAS, and in large part it’s because STAS has more delicate plot details going into it than TSTWD.
Often times I use my writing as an escape, and I’m so so glad you all have been enjoying them and following along with those stories. I have been going through some life stuff throughout both of their writing. It would seem as if all of it is coming to a head now.
I am getting a divorce, and will be moving out of our house on this Saturday. Which means I need to pack everything I own, all my animals and their stuff, and deal with everything surrounding transferring schools so that I can complete my undergraduate degrees (yes!! Degrees! I’m a psychology and criminology double major! A specific interest of mine is the psychology behind crime and the situations that lead to a lot of crime, which I believe shows itself in what I write even without getting into the details of it). So the next week will be HECTIC for me to say the least.
I do want to say not to worry about me! I am not in danger, nor have I ever been in any of my living situations. And as a treat for everyone once I move and have my stuff unpacked I’ll post photos of all the figures and DC related merch I have collected. Know that there are two more coming as well!
Updates on my fics will be coming, because I will always be writing. I just ask for a little more patience on waiting for updates and wanted to make sure yall knew they are still coming. I am not abandoning these fics, I will finish them.
I adore you all, and I fully encourage in the meantime to look at my fanfic master list post and give some of your love and support to those authors. Thank you all for your understanding.
Pieces start clicking together, your bedroom is explored, and you have a lovely vacation in California.
Word Count: 4,620
It had been a busy three weeks. Due to other issues in his territory popping up - mostly Blackmask - he’d had to put the case around Gloryhole on a pause. He had, however, gotten results on what exactly was in those cartridges he’d found at the warehouse. Much to his shock, they had been normal vape cartridges. Some were marijuana based, others nicotine based. Chemically, they were much the same to the standard that could be found within a legal shop. However, upon further inspection they had been processed differently.
He wasn’t sure exactly how they were processed differently, that was difficult to tell. But it only left him more questions. He’d overheard girls talking about some mystery drug, was this it? Did the difference in processing make a few idiots describe it like it was some crazy euphoric experience? Why the hell was Slickbane selling something this unremarkable? It could have easily been sold legally, but they weren’t. Gloryhole had a liquor license, but not the proper licensing to sell nicotine and marijuana.
Unless there was another establishment he was unaware of. That was always a possibility. Either way, things just weren’t adding up.
And after stomping down yet another nuisance created by Blackmask, Red Hood spotted a familiar dark haired man with a sleeve tattoo leaning up against the alley wall just outside of the reach of a half broken streetlamp.
How exactly Rafael knew that Red Hood would be in this part of town at night was exactly a surprise. It wasn’t terribly difficult to figure out that this was his territory, and he was present in it. But the words out of his mouth, like every conversation with the man previously, were a surprise.
The alley wasn’t quiet. Nowhere in the Bowery truly was ever quiet. There was always something audible, someone laughing, arguments, a car horn going off. But the alley was private, enough for this sort of conversation with little risk of being overheard. Strategic placement on Rafael’s end.
“You have something that doesn’t belong to you.”
Rafael didn’t shift when he spoke. Didn’t push off the wall to step forward, Didn’t do anything to guarantee that he’d be paid attention to. He remained where he was, hand holding the cigarette by his mouth, the other tucked into an almost comically comfortable looking jacket. It certainly didn’t do anything to add intimidation, but Rafael didn’t seem like the sort of person who would need that. He seemed like if he wanted to be intimidating, he could quite easily.
Red Hood didn’t stop walking.
He kept moving down the narrow alley, boots echoing against the damp concrete until the streetlight caught the red helmet properly. Rafael remained where he was, leaning against the brick wall, a cigarette between his lips like this was a daily occurrence for him. It was almost reminiscent of how this had all started.
A tattooed man waiting outside in an alley to warn a stranger because “the princess” had decided that he looked like he was bracing for a fist to be thrown his way. Somehow he doubted this would be their last interaction, even if it did feel awfully like a full-circle moment.
“You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“Air Rights.”
It wasn’t a surprise, this had been what he was hoping for, actually. He couldn’t imagine that Slickbane would be happy with his daughter's birthday present going missing, and it was only logical to assume that Rafael would get sent out after it.
The deed was a bargaining chip. A good one.
Still…three weeks.
Once again, that didn’t sit right with him. It was too long. Long enough for the Princess’s birthday to come and go. Why wait until now to play this card?
Red Hood hummed for a moment, the sound distorting awfully though the voice modulator. Rafael didn’t so much as twitch. Surprising, considering even if he had figured out his identity - and shockingly kept his secret - they had never met like this. Never when the mask was on. “Maybe I have it. Maybe I don’t. If I do, what makes you think that i’d just give it up, because you asked nicely?”
Rafael shrugged, taking a long drag of his cigarette before dropping it to the ground and stomping it out with his boot. It wasn’t even halfway burnt through. “I’m not particularly in the mood for fighting. So I’ll offer information in trade. You’ve been warned to stop digging around in places you don’t understand, and you keep doing it. This could make your life a lot easier.”
Red hood paused. He didn’t even have the deed with him. And there was no way in hell he was revealing the location of the safehouse it was in to Rafael. The man was strange enough with just the fact he came up clean on paper and was involved in something like this. The insistence that he didn’t work for Slickbane while being tangled up in his business, while taking care of his daughter. “I want Slickbanes name.”
“You know I can’t give that to you. You almost got it recently though, didn’t you? Shame, what happened to the man.”
The words landed heavier than they should have.
Red Hood hadn’t even considered him. Not once.
He should have clocked him as a possibility. From the first time he spotted Rafael he’d thought the man was a predator. The way he moved through Gloryhole, how he’d conveniently be in just the right place at the right time. It didn’t matter if a background check came up clean on him.
Why hadn’t he?
Had it been the way Rafael gave information away so easily? His insistence that he didn’t work for Slickbane? The fact that as far as he could tell, Rafael hadn’t told anyone who he was? That didn’t matter anymore.
The shot had already been lined up, and if he worked for Slickbane it made perfect sense. Silence the informant, protect the boss. That was clean.
I don’t work for Slickbane. I work for her. That should have raised more flags. Instead he had…what? Taken it at face value? No. It wasn’t that. It was the way he had said it. There hadn’t been hesitation in the words, no microexpressions or tells that he was lying, not even a defensive edge. It was the same reaction that he himself had when someone suggested that he was tied to Batman more than he actually was. It had been a correction.
A startling familiar one. The reaction of a man who had made a change, who resented the idea of being tied to someone but wasn’t angry about it anymore. An ex-robin forever tied to the bat. A drug addict who had gotten clean and still faced vitriol for a disease. Rafael was a man who had at one point worked for Slickbane, and gotten out by using the princess somehow.
He ran through it again, trying to find a different angle, one that made sense from the information he knew.
Confirming Slickbanes identity meant that inevitably, he’d be taken down. Which meant his entire operation crumbled. That had always been the goal. It would open a power vacuum, one that presumably the princess would fill. Except she wasn’t interested, in any other situation he would assume that was a lie. And his thoughts stalled on it for a moment, but he pushed forward anyway.
Revealing Slickbanes identity meant dragging hers into the light too. She wasn’t adjacent to the operation, wasn’t a small cog that didn’t matter. She was inherently tied to it. Her finances, properties, and club. Every gift Slickbane had given her would look less than legal, regardless of whether it was or not. Those ties were too strong. It didn’t matter how clean she herself was, the deed, her presumable lifestyle.
Red Hood was starting to think that perhaps she was clean. Just born into an unfortunate situation and taking advantage of that without getting involved. But it wouldn’t read that way. It would never read that way.
Which meant she’d be buried in the fallout. It would have been better for her if she were interested in taking up the position. She could rebuild it and maintain her lifestyle. But if she truly wasn’t interested in that, it just meant her entire life crumbled. At best, she would be put into a bad financial spot. At worst, she’d be questioned, investigated. Her life would be torn apart piece by piece until something stuck. It didn’t matter if it was real or not. Keeping Slickbane hidden protected her. The name wasn’t the issue, the chain reaction was.
His brows furrowed beneath this helmet.
But if Rafael truly was just using the princess to get out from underneath Slickbanes thumb it didn’t make sense. Men like him didn’t make decisions like this for someone else. Not without something in it for them.
There had to be another angle. Leverage? Blackmail? Debt? Something had to make this make sense. He had half of this puzzle now, but he was still grasping at straws on the second half.
Unless…”Are you her boyfriend or something?”
Rafael didn’t answer immediately. Most men would have laughed it off, deflected. Made a comment, or something. But Rafael just looked at him, thinking. That, more than anything, set him on edge.
“No.” A long moment passed between the two, just staring at one another. “No, but you’re closer than you were.”
Again, the teasing of information. The subtle guidance. So if they weren’t together, then what was it? If she wasn’t involved, none of the usual motives applied, it had to be something personal. And “closer”, like he wasn’t entirely incorrect. But the answer wasn’t as simple as that either.
Nothing else fit, so blind loyalty was the only thing that made sense. But blind loyalty was what got someone killed, discarded the moment they weren’t useful. He knew that better than most people. He’d lived that life, bled for it, died for it.
“Why the loyalty then?”
Rafael didn’t answer right away. But it felt different this time, less like he was watching a man shuffle chess pieces, and more like it was a line. A line that Rafael didn’t seem to like being crossed. One that he wasn’t going to get an answer for, not now, and possibly not ever.
So he shifted back toward something concrete. Something he could actually get an answer for.
The shot had already been lined up, there was no way he didn’t hear the conversation.
“How long have you been watching me?”
Rafael took a moment to answer.
“Long enough.”
“That’s not a timeframe.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
He huffed quietly through the modulator.
“Let me guess. You’ve been keeping an eye on me because I’m getting close to something that might hurt your princess.”
One side of Rafaels mouth tipped up into a smirk. Something about this was amusing to him, which made Red Hood's stomach curl. “Something like that.”
If Rafael had been watching him long enough to set up that sniper shot, then this wasn’t a one-off encounter. He’d been being followed. While Red Hood ran his own investigation, Rafael had been running his own.
Tracking him.
Which meant that the man likely knew every step he’d taken over the past few weeks. Likely already knew what safe the deed was stashed in. And yet, he hadn’t just gone to get it. He’d gone out of his way to offer information.
He didn’t like that thought.
It meant there were motives surrounding what was going on that he wasn’t aware of. Motives that he had little to no way of grasping at. But it also meant that Rafael knew things Jason didn’t.
Strangely enough it also meant that if he did know where the safehouse was, where the deed was. Rafael was going out of his way to help him. The Princess being “a fan” couldn’t have been the reason for this. That didn’t make full sense. But this wasn’t an opportunity that he was going to throw away. The man had his own agenda, that was obvious. But he was still all but blatantly offering to steer him in the right direction.
If the end of the road was blocked, the next best move was to go around it.
“Since you won’t give me Slickbane, if you want the deed so bad, give me something else,” Red Hood stepped forward, “ You’re so concerned about me digging where I shouldn’t, so tell me where the hell I should be digging.”
The smirk widened, then spread into something that almost resembled a grin. As if this had been his goal all along, and maybe it had been. “Bring it to Glory next week and I’ll give you what you need.”
Jason had been expecting to pick up a key from you in person. But apparently you were having a sleepover with Bethany, Sammy, and Stephanie the night before you left town. The two of you decided that it was smarter to just leave the key on top of the door frame for him to grab, rather than inviting him over and the certain chaos that would cause within the apartment. Even if everyone was aware of his presence in your life - not that you knew that Stephanie knew - it helped avoid some of the mess of the situation. He couldn’t imagine that all your friends were totally cool with the fact you were having Red Hood of all people pet sitting.
So, instead, early in the morning before when you said you usually fed Ophelia, he found that standing outside your door without his mask or armor on felt strange. He’d thought that going to your place as Red Hood was starting to feel normal, a kind of clandestine routine; this felt downright domestic. Like you knew who he was. Like you were happily inviting your best friend to come pet sit for you while you were out of town for a weekend.
The key was exactly where you said that it would be. Your apartment was quiet. Predictably, all the lights were off until he flicked one on. And that's what it took for Ophelia to come trotting out of your bedroom - whose door was open - tail high and ears perked. He was sort of surprised she didn’t come running the second that she heard the front door creek open. “Morning Ophelia.” She happily jumped at his leg until he picked her up. She was fully grown now, had been for a while. But she still had all the energy of a young puppy, and he was sure that Damian would complain about how you didn’t discipline her into not jumping at people like an overexcited puppy.
It was a strange thing, being in your apartment without you here. But everything was the same, aside from a handwritten list on the countertop with specific instructions for Ophelia in case he forgot, and your bedroom door being open. The wall of storyboarding was still there, the bookshelves were. Blankets still strewn across the back of the couch. There was still evidence of Sammy having been crashing with you before the vacation, a couple stray men's jackets, one of his textbooks on the coffee table.
Your bedroom was the only place that he hadn’t actually been in. But you’d invited him to come pet sit and had left the door open, so this didn’t count as snooping around, right? Snooping around was something that someone did when they weren’t invited. Having a quick look around when pet sitting was expected. And you had said he could stay here, which he had been planning on doing. It would give Ophelia more “people time”. It wasn’t like he was going to go around opening every drawer you had and trying to find all the little things you owned.
Convincing himself that this truly wasn't snooping as he had been invited, Jason put Ophelia down and wandered toward your bedroom. If it was possible, it was even more eclectic than the rest of your apartment. Just, a different sort of eclectic.
Of course, there were still paintings on the walls, hung carefully. Some of them recognizably yours, some looked like they’d been bought or were prints from different artists. Most of them related to some sort of fandom you were in. He wondered who your favorite artists were now. Still photos on the shelves, mostly of you and your friends. But where he’d expected figurines of characters you liked, or an overabundance of blankets and pillows; a closet stuffed so densely it had clothing spilling out of it, five different tiara’s all lined up on a shelf mounted into the wall very carefully, a separate shelf with a vinyl holder and a record player. And, what was probably his personal favorite, the overabundance of sticky notes on the wall. Most of them were little doodles, affirmations, while others were threats to whoever else she allowed in here. “If you smoke in the house again I’ll do worse than just confiscate them”, “force sammy to listen to EPIC”, “”If you read this, you have five minutes to send this to ten different people or- “it ran out of room there. Some of them were absurdly tiny, miniature post-its with reminders written on them, to lock the front door or be sure to pick up your socks from the other rooms in the house once a week.
He laughed quietly at them.
There was also an impressively large selection of candles on the dresser. Varying in size, different brands obviously bought at different places. Some were brand new, others barely had any wax left inside them. Next to a candle warmer, instead of a lighter.
The bathroom was no less overwhelming. There were even more sticky notes on the mirror, even a couple expo marker writings on it, a cologne called “Blade Dusk”, about five other perfumes with equally ridiculous names, a half empty jewelry box he assumed you looted before your vacation, panda bear face masks, anything and everything he could have expected to find. Except for one glaring omission that he had been planning to steal back: his goddamn leather jacket. You’d probably taken it with you, determined to not let him have it back. Later, that suspicion would be confirmed by a photo of you curled up on a couch with the jacket thrown over your shoulders like a blanket.
Little Thief.
As he made his way back out of the bathroom, intended to go to the kitchen and grab Ophelia’s harness and take her for a morning walk before feeding her breakfast, his eyes caught on one last time. A framed photo on the bedside table. Small, easy to miss but unmistakable once noticed. It was eerily similar to a photo he’d seen before. You had a blue sticker on your cheek, but instead of it being just you and Jason in front of a painting of Robin that had won you the school’s contest, it was a group photo. A big group, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, your mother, Sammy and his parents, you, and himself. The only person who was there who wasn’t in the photo was Alfred. The only way that he could think that you got it was that Alfred had sent it to your mother shortly after it was taken. Nobody in his family was still connected with you. He didn’t know if any of them ever tried to reach out to you after his death. Probably not, considering how Dick had brought you up all those months ago.
He picked it up, looking it over, turning it in his hands. God, every day you woke up and looked at this. You’d always been a light, a star. And even after his death, you’d refused to extinguish yourself. But you also refused to forget him. Purposefully kept reminders of him in your life. Purposefully dedicated a comic book to him. Purposefully made sure he was in your computer's background. Even if he had disappeared from every photo in your life at a certain point, you still made sure he had a place within your home.
You didn’t even know that Red Hood was Jason Todd. And you’d still given him a place within your home.
The weight of that realization hit him differently this time. It was sharper, stinging his eyes and blurring his vision. He had to tell you, but not now. Not before this case was done. To reveal himself, only to vanish or die would be too cruel. Could you even survive losing the same person twice? Could he? Especially if you felt the way he did, even after finding out who he was.
He wouldn’t bring it up until after that had happened. It wouldn’t be fair to you. It made sense to keep who he was secret if it had been flipped. If you hadn’t known him before, if he was hiding the fact that he was the Red Hood, instead of hiding the fact he was Jason Todd. But that wasn’t what was happening.
He only set the photo down when Ophelia nudged his leg. “Yeah, yeah. I get it.” She needed to go outside, then get her food. Just because he was once again rediscovering something he already knew didn’t mean he could skip out on taking care of her like he’d promised. This, at least, he could do for you.
Out of all the places you’d had the pleasure of visiting, California might be one of your favorites. You’d never move from Gotham, something about its uniquely gloomy skies and interesting cast of characters always called to you. But going to other countries, states, it was always a pleasure. California was bright, sunny, the sky was clear in a way that Gothams never was. During the day the sun painted the sky in hues that could only be found here. At night, the stars were so visible, compared to Gotham. There were other places, of course, where they were more visible due to a lack of light pollution. It had added bonuses too outside of that.
Sammy and Bethany loved it too. They loved anywhere with a beach where they could play an extremely heated game of volleyball on the beach while you painted, read, sketched. Sammy, forever dramatically diving for the ball, landing in the sand with a theatrical groan every time he missed it. Really, he was terrible at volleyball. There only was ever one sport he’d been good at, and that was chasing you through the Gotham streets as a teenager. More often than not, both half-drunk. Funny, how he became more athletically inclined the more drinks he’d had. And yet, he always insisted on playing against Beth, who had been on her high school's volleyball team.
You’d positioned yourself nearby in the sand, underneath a sort of ridiculous umbrella and a flimsy towel as protection from the sand. It wasn’t working all that well, it was still getting all over you and your sketchbook. But that wasn’t all that much of an issue. You were more than happy to enjoy the view.
There was a sandcastle to your left, Sammy and Bethany had insisted that the group make one. It had been an undertaking, for sure. Bethany and you determined to make it artistic, hell there was even a sketch of the design in your sketchbook now. Sammy had just wanted to make one for fun, but it was hard to ask two professional animators to not plan it out.
Certainly, it would not be the last sandcastle built on this trip. After all, every beach the three of you went to there had to be a contest to see who could build the best one. Somewhere along the way they’d all stopped being castles in the sand and become anything you could think of and wanted to. Maybe for shits and giggles you’d make one of Red Hood this time. Although that would be excruciatingly difficult to do.
You’d picked out the Air BnB carefully this time, after last time was such a disaster that the group of you hadn’t even stayed in it. The group of you had gotten there, opened the door and discovered that there were five massive rats who had taken up residence in it. That was all that you had needed to see before declaring that you would not be staying that, and promptly putting in for a refund on the space.
This one was much better. High ceilings, light streaming through enormous windows, and a balcony that overlooked the beach. Not too far from a good smattering of shops and restaurants, but tucked away enough that you could have some semblance of privacy. The living room was fantastic, and as much as you loved your couch you were considering swapping it out for something with a more interesting design like the one here. Shame, that it wasn’t quite as comfortable.
You set your sketchbook down on a little folding table near the umbrella, shading your eyes as you watched Sammy fling himself sideways and fail to hit the ball, again. Bethany was laughing, nearly doubling over from the fit.
You couldn’t help but smile at the scene, glancing over once at the man laying in the sand next to you.
“Seriously, I think I pulled something,” Sammy groaned, rolling over and brushing sand from his hair.
“You’re fine, just afraid to face defeat by my hands!”
You leaned back for a moment, watching the two argue before pulling out your phone and texting Hood. Hows pet sitting going?
The reply was almost instant. Good. Robin is having a great time trying to get Ophelia to stop jumping.
You laughed. Robin was cute, a bit of a spitfire. But you thought he was a good kid. Though you weren’t sure if meeting him made you more or less put off by the idea of child vigilantes. The ethics of that whole conversation. It had been nice, as a kid. You’d loved and looked up to Robin, but as you aged you started to seriously question if they were really necessary. If putting a kid through that was okay.
You put the thought aside for the moment, texting back I wish him luck. Did you decide to stay at the apartment or come and go?
Staying
You smiled at that. With the way he spoke, you wondered if he had a comfortable place to stay. Did he have an apartment that he’d gotten all comfy and cozy? Or was it all depressing safehouses with little to no decorations? Sometimes you wondered if you should extend an invitation to come over and use the apartment whenever he wanted. But there were several issues with that. Like the fact he didn’t feel comfortable showing his face and doing that meant that eventually, you’d see it. Unless he never took it off and did live in it.
Finding everything okay?
You watched the ball sail past Sammy again, he was in the sand again, whining dramatically about her having figured out some way to cheat at the game.
Yeah, but I have questions about some of these perfume names that I’ll have to ask about when you get back.
Don’t want to bother your vacation too much.
For someone who had killed people, with such a horrible reputation, he was awfully considerate. Sometimes, you wished that he’d take his mask off. Not even so you could see his face. You didn’t need to see someone to do what you wanted to do.
Tim finds a lead for Jason. You fall asleep on the couch.
Word Count: 5,780
Roy’s visit had been short-lived. Two days exactly. And then he was gone again, swallowed into the orbit that he called home. Still, it had been good to see him. Even if it meant enduring lunch with Dick and explaining the one part of his life he was most hesitant to share. Dick hadn’t ratted him out to Bruce yet, and even though he’d promised to stay out of it, he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t talk to you if he accidentally ran into you.
And, of course, before leaving, Roy had made Jason promise to update him on the “girl situation”. Roy had said it like it was a crush, but it wasn’t that, not really. You were an ex-best friend, not an ex-lover. Not more than that. Definitely not. In childhood, it had been nothing more, and his visits to you were still firmly in the territory of being best friends.
His phone buzzed against the edge of the dresser, sharp and insistent. Perfect timing. Anything to pull him out of his thoughts. He was halfway dressed for yet another night at Gloryhole, a night that promised all the excitement of watching paint dry while following leads that never amounted to anything. Another night of trying to avoid Rafael Velasco's gaze.
“Tim.”
“Jason.” There was something in Tim’s voice that immediately pulled Jason out of his thoughts. Instantaneous, despite normally needing half a conversation to successfully do so. Some days, the thoughts gnawed so hard at him that even half a conversation wasn’t enough to do it. “You’re not gonna believe this.”
Jason froze mid-motion, letting go of his shirt despite the fact it was only half on. “Try me.”
“There's a shipment manifest. I managed to link it to Gloryhole, but just barely. Shell company in, hold your breath, California. Normally, that’s sloppy enough I could pull a name from it, but I can’t find anything. Whoever did this, they erased the trail.”
Jason ran a hand through his hair, more dead ends then. However, it was interesting information. California, of all places. “Did you find anything I can follow? Or is it all just dead ends and information I can do anything with yet?”
A sharp exhale came through the line. “Yeah. Yeah, actually. There’s a secondary drop. Tonight. Not Gloryhole itself. A warehouse, two blocks off the Narrows. Listed as temporary holding.”
Jason felt his heartbeat pick up. He’d been preparing for another night of sitting and people watching. But this was tangible. This, had people he could shoot involved. And god was he not doing enough shooting at people with his attention focused on Gloryhole. “And you didn’t lead with this because?”
“Because it wasn’t supposed to exist.” Tim’s words were deliberate, cautious. “It only shows up if you cross-reference the manifest with customs inspections that never happened. A shipment from a different country, to Gotham, to gloryhole, and then out to a non-existent company in California. Someone scrubbed it manually. Sloppy in a way that says rushed, not stupid.”
Jason felt his mouth curve against his own will. That kind of sloppiness? That kind of rush? That was exactly the opportunity that he needed for this case. “That’s my favorite kind.” He finished tugging the shirt down, but he was already grabbing for his suit. Tonight called for an entirely different sort of outfit.
Tonight was not a Gloryhole night. Tonight, he might actually get something done. Something he could touch, track, and maybe, just maybe, break. Rafael most certainly wouldn’t be there. He was willing to bet money he was busy babysitting whoever the Princess was at Gloryhole. Every interaction that he had with him, the more infuriating he found him.
“Send me the address.”
Putting his armor on was somewhat of a ritual. Every single piece had a weight, a purpose. The padding hugged his skin, and while some part of him was always conflicted on how much bulkier it made him look, but the layers upon layers were life protecting. Reinforced fabric, hardened plated, protection against people like him who didn’t hesitate to shoot. It was enough armoring that he’d survived every fight that he’d come against so far.
The boots went on second to last. Much like the armor, he was conflicted on those. Bulky, another couple inches of height. They were practical, kept his actual feet off the ground, and ensured that no matter what he stepped on, the soles of his feet weren’t going to be sliced open. But once they were on, it was just one more step away from the person he remembered, from the person he no longer saw in the mirror when he looked.
The helmet was always the final nail in the coffin. The weight of it had softened, something about the way that you’d brazenly pressed your face against it. The way that you’d never shown even an ounce of fear for it, despite its design being made specifically to illicit fear. It worked well enough that he’d had to take it off to get children to trust him enough to let him take them to safety. It made him seem just that last step non-human, and it used to be a heavy weight.
It didn’t take long to reach the warehouse. Tim had sent the address just like he’d said he would, and with boots flying across rooftops, it was only a matter of minutes till he was staring at the warehouse in the narrows. It wasn’t a large warehouse, small, maybe two floors at max, tucked between two taller abandoned buildings. It was just the kind of place you walked past a hundred times and never noticed because you were too busy trying to haul ass out of the sketchy part of town. Unless, of course, you were here for a purpose.
From where he was, he could see the entire perimeter: one open loading dock, a side alley that could serve as an escape route, and a chain-link fence at the far end that had certainly seen better days. Significantly better days. It was in such a state of disrepair that he was pretty sure if he put his full weight onto the fence, then it would just come completely undone.
He dropped down from his vantage point without ceremony, landing against the side of the building opposite the warehouse. The alley swallowed him whole, shadow folding over him until he was nearly fully obscured. Someone looking for him would have a hell of a time trying to spot him. He could already smell it: oil, dust, old metal. Something chemical that most certainly did not belong in a place like this.
The loading dock was the obvious entrance. Which meant that it wasn’t his. Not tonight at least. This wasn’t recon exactly, but he didn’t have enough intel to know exactly what he was working with. What they were shipping. Sure, Tim had sent over a list of what was officially listed as being inside the building. But that was almost always a lie. A cover-up for something bigger. Anything Slickbane was associated with had to be a cover-up for something. Gloryhole wasn’t just a club; Rafael had all but confirmed that. The same thing applied here.
Jason moved toward the fence instead. Up close, it was even worse than he had initially thought. The links were rusted, french posts loose. He hooked two fingers into the chain and gave it a careful tug. The fencing gave way almost immediately. That tracked. Shitty part of Gotham, shitty warehouse, shitty fence. And just like a lot of other shitty parts of Gotham, there was no alarm, no shouting. Either the people in charge of watching this shipment were careless, or they didn’t think anyone would be stupid enough to come poking around tonight. Probably a mix of both. Either way, he liked that. That was helpful for him.
The side door was warped at the bottom, as if someone had sat there and kicked it for longer than even a metal door could withstand. That, or someone extremely large had kicked it with their full force. Or a super. A super could easily do something like this even by accident.
The lock clicked open easily. Lock picking wasn’t a difficult skill to pick up; at least Jason had never had an issue learning it as a kid. Breaking into any shop that had books or comics to try and collect as many as he could before he’d gotten caught stealing tires off the Batmobile. It was an easier skill than learning how to shoot someone without killing or maiming them too badly.
Carefully pushing the door open, he listened. Voices, at least three of them. Still slightly muffled and distant. He couldn’t see them, not yet. But even if he only counted three voices, he sincerely doubted that it was going to be just three people watching whatever the hell this shipment was.
Slipping inside and pulling the door too carefully so that it didn’t shut fully, and most importantly didnt make any noise. He crouched automatically, boots quiet against the concrete even if they weren’t made for stealth.
Three voices had been the minimum, but now that he was inside, it was clearer. Two people clustered somewhere to his left, talking casually, unprofessional. The third was higher up, pacing. Footsteps hitting metal and echoing faintly. A catwalk then, or maybe an office bolted onto the second floor after the fact.
All of those were good signs. It meant this was likely to go easily. Perhaps the trade off for Slickbanes movements being so difficult to track. Or, maybe Lady Luck had simply decided to smile down upon him tonight. Either way, he wasn’t going to complain.
The lights inside were shitty. Not broken, intentionally dim. Long stretches of shadow broken up by hanging fluorescents that flickered just enough to mess with a lesser man's depth perception. He could work with this, even if he was likely to have a headache by the end of this ordeal. The crates were stacked in uneven towers, giving him plenty of places to slip into, plenty to hide until he was ready to deal with those inside the building.
He moved along the wall, shoulder brushing corrugated metal, every step placed with care. A flick of his hand, and his HUD was lighting up heat signatures, just long enough to confirm. There were more bodies than he expected. Six in total. One near the loading dock. Two were closer to the center of the warehouse, leaning against a pallet like they owned the place. And the already established ones to his left, and one on the second floor.
None of them were watching the fence, that was mistake number one. Their spacing was terrible, that was mistake number two. It was like they were trying to make this an easy job for him. If his initial suspicion that it was only three people in the building had been correct, that would be suspicious. Only three people, and this would have most likely been bait. Six, and this truly was just a last-minute shipment.
The two in the center were talking quietly enough that he hadn’t heard it before he was closer, but he certainly could now. “Somehow I’m not surprised. This was supposed to be held off until next week, but no. The Princess,” the words were dripping with disdain, “Just had to throw a bitch fit until the shipment moved up. Wanted her present on time for her fucking birthday. It doesn’t matter bitch, you aren’t that important.”
Red Hood froze for just a second. The Princess. For a girl supposedly “not involved” in logistics, she certainly seemed to be pulling more strings than she should be able to. But a birthday present. Maybe, she didn’t know it was in the shipment, and was just truly a spoiled brat who threw a tantrum that convinced her father to change an entire shipment schedule. Enough to give him an opening. Was it truly a happy accident, or did she have more influence than the workers at Gloryhole knew?
He should take out those two last and see what information he could get out of them. If they wanted to talk shit, they could talk shit about it to him. Which made this easy. He got closer to the two toward the left side, and the two were still talking loudly. And waited, waited for a lull in their conversation.
Once it came, Red Hood moved.
He closed the distance in a heartbeat, one hand cupping one of the men's heads, and then grabbing the other. Slamming them together and then easing them down the floor once they were unconscious.
Two down, two to go.
Red Hood paused, listening. The two in the center were still talking, but for now, he ignored their words. He shifted his attention toward the loading dock. That guard was alone, and the two in the middle weren’t facing him. He had a rifle resting against a crate instead of in his hands. Mistake number three. Jason circled wide, using the boxes and shadows for cover.
Red Hood took him down with speed instead of finesse. A hand sending him stumbling forward, a hand over his mouth, a hit to the head. And then he was down. Red Hood dragged him to the pile with the other two.
Three.
The catwalk was last. Red Hood tilted his head, eyes tracking the heat signature above him. The guard up there was more alert than the rest. Still pacing, probably the closest thing this operation had to a supervisor. Which meant that he was also the most likely to notice that something was wrong. He palmed a small grappling hook and fired it upward, holding on to the bottom of the metal grating until that guard was above him.
He took his opening, pulling himself up the side of the railing and wrapping an arm around his neck while the other hand covered his mouth. He struggled, tried to throw his head back against Red Hood, and hit the armor plating on his chest. Idiot knocked himself out cause he hit it so hard. Hard enough that he actually felt the recoil of his skull off his chest.
Only the two in the center remained. And they were still talking.
Red Hood dropped down from the railing, still quiet, at least enough that they didn’t notice the sound of feet landing over their own conversation.
“...bitch better watch her step.”
“Hey, man, chill out with that. If Rafael shows up and hears you calling her that, you’re not going to be waking up again.”
“I don’t give a fuck, man. She’s obnoxious. Struts around like she owns the fucking place. She doesn’t even get her hands dirty. Just points, pouts, and shit happens.”
The other guard snorted. “Yeah, well. That’s kind of how power works. You don’t gotta bleed for it if you’re born into it.”
So then, mouthy was who he should keep conscious. Take out the one worried about Rafael, interrogate the one who clearly wanted to chat.
Red Hood didn’t even bother to come out of the shadows. Just unsheathed his gun and shot. The second man went down, the first started to panic, looking around for a weapon, any weapon, and failed to find one before Red Hood was moving out from the shadows and yanking him forward by the front of his jacket. “So what’s this supposed birthday present?”
The guard stammered, eyes darting to the unconscious bodies - and the one writing on the floor and crying - panic starting to bloom in his facial expression. Perfect. People who talk like this always reveal too much when they think they’re clever. “I…I don’t- I don’t know.”
Red Hood pressed his gun to the man's temple. He wasn’t going to shoot it. Probably. But the weight was usually enough to get him whatever information he wanted. “Try again.”
“Okay- okay. Fuck.” The man sucked in a sharp breath, panic finally overriding whatever loyalty he’d had ten seconds ago. “It’s not like the rest of it. That’s what you wanna hear, right? It’s not drugs. Not guns. Not chemicals. It’s just-” He laughed a little, “It’s just a piece of paper.”
Red Hood stilled.
“A what?”
The words were rushing out of the man's mouth, like he couldn’t get them out fast enough. “One box. Single crate. Smaller than the rest. Triple sealed, logged separately. It’s supposed to be boring. That’s the point. Clean. Legal. You could’ve shipped it through normal channels, and nobody would’ve given a shit. But no. It got lumped in with the rest of this crap because C- SLickbane was already moving product and didn’t want eyes on it.”
Oh? Was someone stupid enough to let a name slip? He wouldn’t have pressed it if the slip hadn’t been so fucking obvious. A letter wasn’t nearly enough to work off of. But if he could get the whole name, then that was something. Either way, he was coming out of the night happy with the amount of information he’d gotten, even if it ultimately just raised more questions. “Because who?”
The guard's eyes widened more than they already were. It was truly adorable how wide a person's eyes could get when they were terrified. “Nobody. I meant Slickbane. I said Slickbane.”
“You started to say something else. It’s funny, real names usually come out by accident. And I need real names.”
The silence stretched long enough that he was starting to think he’d have to ask again to get his answer. But before he got the chance, a shot rang out. A single shot, from in front of Red Hood. For half a second, he thought it had missed. But then he looked down.
The bullet had torn straight through the upper thigh, exactly where the leg met the hip. The femoral artery. Anyone with even a basic understanding of anatomy would. It wasn’t a warning shot. It wasn’t meant to interrogate. It was execution with a timer.
Blood was pouring out of it, quickly. Red Hood released him and looked up, slowly. The shot had been particular. Through the head would have been easier. Through the head, and it would have hit him. So whoever it was didn’t want him dead, but they also didn’t want that name getting out. Or it was a warning, a warning to stop poking into things. A warning that Red Hood would not heed.
Nobody was standing there. The loading dock was open, but that wasn’t new. It had been open. A fucking sniper. A good one.
Every instinct was roaring to get low, hide. Stay alive. But they hadn’t shot at him. Whoever had made this shot, if they wanted him dead, he would already be dead. So against every single instinct roaring in his veins, he stepped outside and looked around. There was a remnant heat signature on the roof opposite the one he’d been using as a vantage point earlier. But whoever the sniper was, they were gone. And there was nothing he could do about it. Other than start ripping open crates to figure out what the fuck was inside of them. And maybe, just maybe, see if he could find the princess's birthday present.
He worked fast.
The guard was already dead; there was no fixing a hit like that without instantaneous medical intervention, and whoever had taken the shot had known it. The others were still unconscious. He did his best not to dwell on it for the moment.
But it told him one thing: Slickbane's real name was explosive. He was going to have to fight, and fight hard, to get it. But maybe, just maybe, there was a way to weasel the information out of Rafael. If he could find and take the gift before dealing with the rest of the crates.
Crates came apart under brute force and impatience. He tore nails free, ripped lids off, and packing foam ripped out and discarded. Most of it was - sort of - exactly what he expected. Weapons, ammunition. And drugs. But not the drugs he expected. Nothing blatantly so problematic that it sent chills running through him. There were no needles, no tightly packed bricks of cocaine.
If he had to guess, it was little more than designer weed and vape cartridges. The sort of thing he could see the blonde woman from the bar smoking. But he’d have to take a few and have them tested to see if they were laced with anything, or even to figure out exactly what they were.
And then there was the small one. Barely waist-high. Unassuming. Triple sealed. He was careful to pry it open this time. And inside was a fireproof document case. Just like the idiot had said, just a fucking piece of paper.
He flipped it open, expecting some sort of corporate nonsense. Maybe something that had her name on it. Some sort of clue or hint. But he didn’t even get so much as that. A fucking air right deed. Bearer level, whoever held the piece of paper, legally, owned the air.
He frowned beneath the helmet.
Malibu.
He read it again, slower this time. Coordinates. Altitude ranges. Bearer-level ownership of exclusive airspace rights above a stretch of coastline so valuable that he recognized the name. So valuable that it made Gotham real estate look like more of a joke than it was. Not a house. Not land. Not even a building. The fucking sky. She was being handed the goddamn sky for her birthday.
The right to build upward, to block views, to restrict flight paths. It sounded stupid to those uninformed, because other than it being silly, what would owning the sky really do? A lot. And it was absurdly expensive to acquire. And entirely legal, aside from being thrown into a shipment full of drugs.
He closed the case and stood.
Air rights in Malibu. A princess who supposedly didn’t get her hands dirty. A bodyguard who claimed loyalty to her, not her father. A sniper good enough to kill without being seen and disciplined enough not to take the second shot. And a singular letter, C. This case truly was going to drive him fucking insane.
He tucked the document case under his arm. “Happy fucking birthday, princess.”
Before going to your place, Jason tucked the case in one of his safehouses and cleaned himself up. He didn’t want to drag someones blood to your apartment. It was early in the morning, so ridiculously early that he was normally heading back to his own place after spending some time with you. You were probably still awake though. He’d taken care of the shipment as best he could, put a kink into Slickbane's plans, and definitely got himself noticed.
So he was careful, more than usual, when getting to your apartment and knocking on the door. Paranoid even. The case was already complicated enough, and he didn’t need or want to drag you into it. But he wanted nothing more than to crash on your couch and watch whatever show you were in the mood for this morning.
He hesitated outside your door longer than usual before knocking. And it took a few seconds, long enough that he almost turned away, assuming that you’d fallen asleep for the night already, before the lock clicked, and the door swung open.
You were very obviously not asleep.
He was used to sweatpants, pajamas, and hair pulled away from your face. That was not what he got this morning. You had a dress on - a dress he was already avoiding looking at - glitter clinging to your collarbones and arms. Full face of makeup, smudged makeup that was worn down in a way that gave away the fact that you’d been drinking and laughing all night long.
Your eyes took a second to focus, and then they lit up.
“Well,” you said, voice warm, words slurring, “You’re late.”
Jason's brain shorted out for half a beat. Since when had you been into partying and clubbing? Sure, you’d probably love the vibe of Gloryhole, with its early 2000’s music. But he couldn’t seriously picture you there, dancing on a table, and drinking. No, you struck him as more of the type of person who turned on a trash rom-com and then cracked open a bottle of your favored alcohol and got trashed on the couch with a friend or two. Or get a Bluetooth speaker and blast that while drinking, in the privacy of your own home. What club had you even gone to?
“You okay?”
You grinned at him, stumbling away from the door and onto the arm of the couch, grabbing Ophealia as you went and nearly tumbling to the floor when you did. “Fan-fucking-tastic! Sammy’s in town for the school break, so he, Bethany, and I went out. He crashed like, five minutes ago.”
And yet he didn’t see Sammy anywhere in the apartment, which meant he was probably in your bed. In the one room, he had yet to be invited into. He didn’t even have a chance to talk before more words were tumbling out of your mouth. His eyes caught on the smeared lipstick, was it just from drinking, or had you been kissing someone? “Sit sit. It’s weird with you just standing there all moody and broody. Besiiides, I need to get your number. I’m going on vacation in a few weeks when Sammy finishes his semester, and I need someone to pet sit Ophelia here. If you’d be willing?”
He hesitated for a moment, using moving to the couch as an excuse to not respond. Watching Ophealia was easy; that was something he could do. The most he’d need is a piece of paper with feeding instructions and the like written on it. But why weren’t you asking Stephanie since she wasn’t included in the short list of people who were going on the vacation with you? And just like before, right as he was about to respond, you started talking again. Releasing Ophelia and slipping onto the couch with all the grace of a drunk baby gazelle.
“You can stay here if you want. My bed is super super comfy. And if you need company, Robin could come over. He can use all my paints and canvases. I just restocked, I’ve got way more than I need. I would say he could use my drawing tablet, but my computer has some uber embarrassing drawings on it that nobody needs to see. Like, the type of shit you draw when you’re eighteen, drunk, and horny. Really, I should delete them- I really shouldn’t have said that aloud even. Pretend like I didn’t say anything. I’m still drunk, and I just say shit when I drink. Sociable, I think. But anyway, yeah. To celebrate another completed semester, I’m taking Sammy on vacation, and Bethany is tagging along. And I need someone to watch Ophelia. SO are you in?”
He exhaled slowly, looking around the apartment. Nothing was different, really, aside from a bag that was almost exploding at the seams, and one more cup than usual on the coffee table. Both likely directly related to Sammy being here. Anything, really, to try not to acknowledge the outfit that you had on. “I’ll…pet sit. You just have to tell me the dates.”
You grinned, flopping forward on the couch so you were lying on your stomach, face right by his leg. “Good! Perfect. Now gimme your phone so I can give you my number before I forget.”
He froze for a second. Of all the things you could have asked him for, that was the one thing he absolutely did not have on him. Or, at least. Not his personal phone. And he didn’t want your number in his work phone, just in case someone who wasn’t supposed to have it got hold of it. And, naturally, at his hesitation, you started pouting. “You don’t wanna have my number? I think I’m super fun to be phone buddies with. I send like the best memes. And sometimes movie reviews.”
“No thats not it. It’s just my work phone I have on me.”
“And?”
“And it’s the one that’s most likely to get taken.”
“Oh booooo. Fine, hang on,” And you were moving, stumbling way through the apartment and into your bedroom, door starting to swing shut behind you, before you reemerged with your phone in your hands, and then tossed it at him, and missed. It landed at his feet instead. He picked it up for you. “The password is the same as my computer.”
He tried not to think about the fact that you trusted him with the password to both your phone and computer, and whatever else you used that same string of numbers for.
He unlocked it and found it left on your camera roll. A photo taken in the back of a car, an uber presumably. Face pressed against Sammy, both grinning, clearly taken tonight. He stared at it for a second while you got yourself situated back on the couch, then navigated to the contacts and put his private number in, and sent himself a text with your name before handing it back. “There. You have my number now.”
You grinned at him, “Perfect! If you ever get a drunk call from me, honestly, just ignore it. It’s sort of my thing. If I’m still drunk and by myself, I just start calling people and will talk for houuursss. It’s honestly a great time for me.” You started fiddling with the TV remote, “What are you in the mood for i’m thinking…OH! What about she’s the man? It’s so good. If you’ve never seen it, it’s honestly a sin.”
The name sounded familiar, familiar enough that it was bothering him. Until he remembered sitting in Sammy's mother's house with a DVD rental in hand and a box of pizza. Watching it at your insistence, and complaining that it was too girly, before finally admitting he enjoyed it when the three of you finished the movie. “Yeah. I’ve seen it.”
“Perfect! Then you love it! If nothing else, it’ll be nostalgic. Popcorn?”
He tapped the helmet once. “Can’t.”
You nodded, thoughtfully, like this was a major revelation and not an issue that the two of you had run into before. Several times, actually. Enough that he’d at times debated taking the helmet off and risking it just to eat whatever snack you had in the house. But he never had too worried about you recognizing him. “That’s fine, no worries, no worries. It’s totally cool.”
The TV flickered to life, and within minutes, you had the movie pulled up and playing. For the first twenty minutes of the movie, you were quoting it, clearly you’d seen it frequently. More than enough to have it memorized. But within forty minutes, you’d fallen asleep, somehow, using his lap as a pillow. He wasn’t entirely sure when you’d moved close enough to him that he became a pillow, and he really should’ve moved you. But instead, some traitorous part of his mind and himself, finally let his gaze wander downward slowly. This was wrong, so, so wrong. But he was finally allowing himself to take in the dress. The way it clung to your body, glitter on your shoulders, twinkling from the lights on the TV. You’d been out like this, in Gotham. And somehow you’d managed to make it through the night and then home unscathed, unaware. Completely yourself.
The neckline dipped just low enough to reveal below your collarbones, fabric tugged slightly by the way you were curled against him. Oh.
Oh.
As if this night hadn’t been complicated enough, he was being struck with a realization that felt like a truck had just hit him square in the chest. He was attracted to you.
And not in some vague, abstract way, he’d tell Cass or Stephanie that the dress looked good on them when prompted, or that their hair looked fine. Not in a safe, distanced way. The kind of attraction that made his gut curl when he thought about you kissing someone else while out having a good time. Even if you were painfully single. And this was fucking terrifying.
Because this wasn’t a memory. This wasn’t the echo of a teenage crush that he didn’t remember or nostalgia warped by grief. This was now, this was adult, this was real. You, in a dress that hugged you in all the right ways, drunk and warm and sleeping in his lap like you trusted him completely. Because, as far as he knew, you did trust him completely. You’d let him into your home, asked him to watch your dog while you were going to be gone on vacation. Offered to let him trapse in and out of your home without needing permission, without worrying about him digging through your private belongings.
He swallowed hard.
He was scrambling for logic, but there wasn’t any. There wasn’t anything to put any distance between you and him. He couldn’t just disappear, well, he could, but he could only imagine the backlash that would cause for you. He’d already done it once, and he wasn’t going to do it again. Especially not to you. It had to have crept up on him sometime between movie night and couch crashes, and the way you smiled at him like he was safe.
He stayed very still, staring at the wall instead of you.
This was dangerous. He’d tumbled right over that invisible line without intending to, without realizing that he was doing it. He should’ve stopped when he realized that you trusted him. At least, this version of him with the rough edges sanded down as much as he could. Just enough to be safe. There wasn’t going back now, and most certainly, he couldn’t just leave now. The last thing that he wanted was to cause you any more pain than his death already had.
And so, carefully, he shifted just enough to grab the throw blanket on the back of the couch, draping it over your shoulders and tilting his head back against the pillow. Unwilling to risk waking you up. And despite falling asleep on the couch at some point, after some random show had started auto-playing, he managed to slip out of your apartment before you were awake. And as far as he could tell, before Sammy had woken up either.
You officially visit Jasons grave, for the first time
Word Count: 1,683
It was August sixteenth, the wind was cold, and you were doing your best to stay tucked inside the jacket that fit you properly now. Once it was too big, it looked ridiculous on you with how nice it was compared to the rest of your ratty clothing. It didn’t look so comical anymore. None of the clothing that Jason left in your bedroom did anymore.
The bouquet of flowers that you’d bought at too high a price for the horrible quality of them felt like barely dried acrylic in your hands. Tacky, and not wanting to leave your hand even if you had bought them and brought them here for this specific purpose.
You hadn’t even known what sort of flowers to get. They hadn’t been bought from a florist who could have given guidance on the supposed meanings of flowers, the sort of thing that Jason would have loved. The exact sort of thing he would have pointed out in an annotation scrawled on the side of a page. It was just a bouquet of white and red flowers you didn’t know the names of, already half wilted stems starting to break off already.
All you had to do was leave the flowers at his grave, maybe apologize for taking two whole years, two whole birthdays, to come visit him. You supposed there was what Sammy had started referring to as the “grave incident” but you didn’t remember that, so it didn’t count. He had died two years ago, and you hadn’t visited him. Alfred had given you an invite to a funeral, you didn’t show. So now, you were stuck visiting a grave that he wasn’t even in. He was buried on a private lot somewhere, and this was just a headstone placed for the public.
God, if he knew that it had taken you this lon to visit you he would’ve thrown a sock at you. It wasn’t even difficult to imagine the exaggerated, wounded betrayal he would have looked at you with. “Two whole birthdays? I see how it is.”
You used that. Used his imagined disappointment in you to step forward and set the bouquet down. Looking at it next to the gravestone, you felt suddenly inadequate. He at least would have stolen you a nicer bouquet of flowers. The same way he’d stolen comic books for you, even if you didn’t know they were stolen at the time.
“Happy birthday Jay. I miss you.”
The words hung there.
You’d been expecting a small part of you, that part that expected him to show back up to shrivel and die. It didn’t, for it had died before even visiting his grave. It had been prom that had done it, and the glorious disaster of events afterward. Realizing just how much of life he was going to miss. You’d known, had thought about it a lot. But something about experiencing that moment, experiencing something that he never would, and never did get the chance to fully killed it.
Jason Todd was dead. And he wasn’t going to come clambering back up your fireescape again. There would never again be a rhythmic knock at your door, or a tap at your window in the middle of the night.
Never again would he show up to your door with Alfred and an outfit picked out for you so you could feel nice while you went to go see some movie.
Never again would you pretend to believe that the bruises and marks on him were just from falling down stairs. He wasn’t ever that clumsy, and he was always insistent that Bruce and Alfred were nice to him. So you really didn’t know what they were from. Probably something stupid, like getting cans thrown at him after getting caught stealing something.
Still, the silence felt oppressive. The rest of the cemetery was empty, save for the rows and rows of headstones. How many were people that someone failed to save, how many were unavoidable tragic accidents, and how many had been blessed enough to simply grow old and die in their sleep? How many had their friends and family taken away from them prematurely? How many of them had nobody?
“Mom thinks I’m with Sammy. Which technically, I was earlier. I don’t know why I didn’t tell her I was coming to see you. I guess maybe it’s because if I did then she’d worry; think I’m not…okay. But it’s normal to visit, isn’t it? I’d be pissed as hell if you never came to visit me.
“This is what people do, right? Visit, bring flowers, talk. They don’t wait two years to do it, but you and I both know I'm not…people. At least not Gotham people. Something was always different. A little kid comforting another kid because he was bothering her by crying in the middle of the night.”
You were quiet for a moment. Trying to ignore your stinging eyes. But there was a reason why you hadn’t put on any makeup today.
“You know for a while I thought that you’d come back. That you hadn’t actually died, but were kidnapped by aliens or joined a gang or something equally as ridiculous and equally as likely to happen to you. It’s Gotham, weird shit happens. We have an evil clown who runs around and thinks tormenting people is hilarious, a lady who is very passionate about plants. Hell, we even have a guy whose whole thing is riddles and puzzles.”
Gotham didn’t have anything to do with it. You could’ve lived in the most peaceful city on earth, where nothing weird happened, and you still wouldn’t have believed it. Blaming it on the city was an excuse, but the grave didn’t lie. It just sat there, like a normal rock would have.
“I hate that I’m getting older and you’re not. Fifteen forever, and I’m being questioned about my plans for the future. What a sham.” You moved, this was certainly bad cemetery etiquette, but you didn’t care. So you laid down on top of the earth before the headstone, leaning up against it. Jason wouldn’t have minded. And he’s the only person whose opinion should have any weight here.
“You missed prom. I even got a date. But it went so terribly that he’s been acting like we don’t know each other. Which, we don’t. And I suppose if I fucked someone in the bathroom and then they ditched me immediately I’d probably never speak to them again. It’s not like it hurts, I don’t actually care that he’s ignoring me. It’s not like I’ve tried to talk to him either. But you would’ve laughed at the story. From start to end, asking random people to go to prom with me until someone said yes, looking for some dress last minute, getting horribly drunk and hungover. You’d love it. And in a different universe, none of it happened. Because in a different universe you’d still be here with me, and there would be some different entirely unrelated story to tell about junior prom.”
You sighed, glancing at your backpack discarded by the walkway between the rows of graves.
The stone at your back remained cool.
“I think….you’d be happy though. That even after you were gone Sammy became my person. We have this whole plan you know? He goes off to college to get his fancy degree, medicine or something else helpful. Something productive, that makes money, and that he likes. And I, will get mine in character design or animation or something that I have no hope of making money with. We’ll get an apartment, and I’ll try not to make a total mess of wherever my art supplies are, try to get a job. And he’ll take care of the brunt of the bills. Who knows if it’ll actually work out that way.
“If he gets a serious boyfriend, the kind that turns into a fiance and then a husband, then what? He deserves it, but it sort of leaves me with only a few options. Gotham’s cheap, I’m sure I could make ends-meet. Become the manager of some comic store, try not to get robbed. Unless maybe it’s little street kids who just want a good comic to read. That’s okay, I think. Or try to work something out with them where they get to borrow two or three comics at a time, and if they bring them back they can have more. That’s probably smarter.”
You sighed, “Anyway, that’s the plan. Sammy becomes successful and stable. I become creatively unstable but charming. We survive. And if that falls apart, I pivot.”
Without thinking, you moved forward, reached for your bag and pulled out your sketchbook, and began drawing. Not Jason's headstone, but the surroundings. If you were being pretentious you could call it a life study. But this wasn’t pretentious. This was just existence.
You fell into a rhythm, you always did when drawing. Pencil scratching softly against the paper, line by line an image starting to form. A blank page slowly becoming a black and white personal homage to this very cemetery. Pulled you into it enough that the rest of the world faded away, and it was just you, drawing the cemetery that your best friend was buried in.
Occasionally you still spoke to him, little anecdotes, how much you hated your math teacher. The fries you’d stolen off someones tray during lunch while they were looking and how triumphant that moment felt. How annoying dealing with acne was. There were also things you wondered if he knew. Was he aware that Sam had a crush on him?
The page filled eventually, and the sun started dipping lower and lower in the sky. You should get home. Maybe one day you’d actually draw his headstone. But it didn’t feel right to do that today. Too morose.
Before leaving you moved the flowers in front of the headstone, ripped the drawing out of your sketchbook and set it underneath the flowers.
I’m getting smth secondhand and very fragile this morning to add to my collection and if it breaks I’m gonna be SO upset. When it’s all set up and everything I’ll post a photo of it.
I’m getting smth secondhand and very fragile this morning to add to my collection and if it breaks I’m gonna be SO upset. When it’s all set up and everything I’ll post a photo of it.
I’m getting smth secondhand and very fragile this morning to add to my collection and if it breaks I’m gonna be SO upset. When it’s all set up and everything I’ll post a photo of it.
You win an art contest, get your first phone, and someone knocks at your door
Word Count: 5,186 words
You wanted it to be all official and shit. So, naturally, instead of just having your mother send a text to Jason's phone, you made an invitation for him. Not a half-assed note, a nice, real invitation. You were determined to make it look fancy too.
The best you could get your hands on was a piece of construction paper from an old at supply bin, since actual cardstock was way out of budget. You spent an entire week drafting it with Sammy sitting cross-legged beside you. His penmanship was leagues better than yours (he claimed it was from years of his mother forcing him to write thank-you notes for every single present he’d ever received) so the plan was: you’d handle the design, and he’d do the actual writing.
It was only one little invitation, but you poured hours into it like it was a magnum opus. You painstakingly painted frilly gold edges onto the paper with cheap acrylics until your hands were cramped and your bed was covered in golden flecks from places where it flaked. Then you begged your mother to trim the paper down to the neat size of a real invitation, because scissors were not your strong suit. When the paint had finally dried, you handed the paper to Sammy like you were passing him a sacred relic.
“You better not fuck this up.”
“I’m not going to! I’ve been practicing like you said to. I’ve got this.”
He leaned over the kitchen table, tongue between his teeth in concentration, and carefully wrote in loopy cursive that put anything you could’ve done to shame.
“An evening of art and excellence.
Jason Peter Todd, Big A, Bruce Wayne, and Dick Grayson
Are cordially invited to attend the East end High annual student art showcase,
Featuring the work of Gotham’s best artist.”
Of course, you added in a second scrap of paper that clarified that you were, in fact, Gotham’s best artist. No confusion allowed. The details followed on the invitation, date, time, location, and a dress code. (you insisted on calling it semi-formal even though you knew they would have a different meaning of that word than everyone else in attendance)
When it was finished, you slipped it into the nicest envelope you could find - which wasn’t saying much, since it was reused from your mom’s old Christmas card stash. Still, you thought it looked important. Like something a rich person might actually RSVP to.
The delivery was the best part. You convinced your mom to drive you all the way to Wayne Manor just so you could sneak up to the giant iron mailbox and deposit your masterpiece like some secret agent. The second it was in, you bolted back to the car, laughing like you’d just pulled off the world's greatest heist.
The stealth mission was a success. Well, almost. Alfred had caught sight of you through one of the tall windows and waved as if you hadn’t been trying to be sneaky at all. Okay, so, maybe stealth wasn’t your thing. But then again, Gotham's best artist didn’t need to be stealthy.
The piece that you were showing at the event you’d slaved away at for days. Your art teacher, kindly enough, had let you use class time to work on it, while the rest of the kids did whatever half-hearted project was assigned. Every morning, you covered the canvas with your bedsheet and then drug it to and from your moms car. Sammy helped once it was at the school, but other than that you were on your own.
And then when you got home, you kept working on it until your eyes blurred into the late hours of the night.
And somehow, you’d managed to hide it from everyone. Not Sammy, not even your mother, had so much as seen a glimpse of the finished thing. Only your art teacher, and the handful of kids unlucky enough to share the classroom with you, knew what you were making.
And that was exactly how you wanted it. When you unveiled your masterpiece, it needed to be a moment. It couldn’t just be out and about for everyone to see.
You truly thought that it was your best work to date.
By the time the day of the art competition rolled around, your nerves were shot. You lugged the piece into the gym like it was a holy relic, still hidden underneath your now paint stained bedsheet. Sammy and your art teacher helped you shuffle it into place on a rickety easel in the gymnasium. It was already crowded with other students doing the same thing.
You didn’t know if Jason had gotten the invitation. You hadn’t seen him since before you slipped it into the Wayne mailbox like a thief in the night, and your mom hadn’t said anything about a text from him either. But Alfred had seen you drop it into the box, so surely?
It wasn’t unusual not hearing from him, but still, it sat heavy in your stomach. Until you saw them.
Four men in suits far too nice to belong in your school’s drafty gymnasium. Bruce Wayne, larger than life - and larger in real life. Alfred Pennyworth - or Big A, dignified as always. Dick Grayson. And Jason - your Jason - already breaking into a smile the second he spotted you barreling across the floor.
You didn’t even think about it. You’d just ran, throwing yourself at Jason and hoping that he’d catch you. He did, looping his arms around you like this was normal.
“You came!”
“Of course I did!” His voice cracked, but despite that he spun you in a circle once, just enough for your feet to leave the ground. He was taller than you now, enough that you had to tip your chin to see him. “You think I’d miss this?”
When he set you down, you immediately grabbed his hand, “Come on! I haven’t pulled the sheet off yet, you wanna do it?”
From somewhere behind you, you vaguely heard Alfred's voice. “The young miss is very excitable.”
For half a moment you faltered, you probably should have greeted them. And you’d never even met Bruce in person, but whatever. The damage was already done. Then again, you had thrown paint at Dick the first time you’d met him, so maybe this was on par for you.
Jason let himself be dragged, laughing, “uh, yeah, duh!” He barely had time to react when you stopped short, stumbling forward as you tried to stop. He caught your arm and hauled you back onto your feet easily.
He was grinning.
Maybe you shouldn’t mention that. That his grin had been part of the inspiration for the piece. Bright, stubborn, impossible not to look at. The other part had been Robin, leaping across Gotham's rooftops like the darkness of the night didn’t even matter. Bright and beautiful, always.
Huh. You probably shouldn’t word it like that either or someone was going to assume you had a crush on Robin. You just saw the world differently, that was all.
Jason put his hand on the edge of the sheet, bowing low like a magician about to reveal his most dangerous trick. “Realy?”
“Ready,”
With a flourish, he yanked the sheet away.
And then his grin faltered.
Your stomach dropped. He looked like someone had just punched the air out of him. Jaw slack, eyes wide, eyebrows drawing together. Panic prickled at the edges of your mind. Did he had it? Did it look wrong? Too bright? Not bright enough?
But while Jason was still staring at the piece, Dick came up behind you and let out a low sharp whistle. “Damn,” he said, tilting his head as he studied the canvas. “That’s awfully impressive. Which Robin is it - the first or the second?”
You blinked at him, caught off guard. You hadn’t actually thought about that. SUre, the piece had been inspired by a mix of the current Robin’s acrobatings and Jason's grin, but you hadn’t painted it with the intention of pinning it down to one specific boy behind the mask. It was more about the idea, the symbol.
When Jason had gone missing for those months, Sammy had given you a batman figurine to protect you, to give you hope. But in Gotham, Robin was the one who really instilled hope.
“Technically, neither. I guess it’s more..Robin the mantle than any specific Robin. But the suit’s more inspired by the current one. The boyshorts were stupid looking.”
Jason laughed at that, a smug grin plastered back on his face but not quite right. “Yeah. The boyshorts were stupid looking.”
Dick looked briefly offended, but your attention was back on Jason now. Elbowing him slightly, “What do you think?”
It took him a beat too long to answer.
“I think you’re going to win the competition.” His voice was steady, but his hands told a different story. Fists curled so tight his knuckles were white. Was he hiding something from you?
No. That wasn’t how the two of you worked. Jason knew everything about you. He knew about your first period, the awkward trip to buy your first bra, your first real crush. And you knew everything about him. His pretentious taste in books, the first girl at school who’d made him blush, even the bruises he’d shown up with from “surfing” down the manor’s staircase railings or trying to pull off some other reckless stunt. Secrets weren’t your thing.
You smacked his arm lightly, trying to cut through the tension and whatever was causing it, “Don’t jinx me! Mira’s piece is really good too.” You nodded toward the far corner, where your mom was chatting with Mira and Sammy’s parents. Mira’s painting was good, technically strong, bold, it played with shadows really well. Everything an art teacher would love. You were sort of jealous of her, in a different way though.
She had both her parents there. You didn’t. Not that you hadn’t asked, you had. And each time you got the same answer, “Don’t worry about it sweetheart.”
You glanced at your mom’s smile and reminded yourself, you didn’t need a dad. You already had more than enough.
Before Jason could get another word out, a deep voice cut cleanly through the air behind him. “He’s right.”
You ruined, heart skipping when Bruce Wayne himself stepped closer. You hadn’t expected that he would come. You hadn’t expected that Dick would come. You’d just invited them to be nice. Jason was the one you really cared about, and if Jason was coming, so was Alfred.
He was looking over your canvas with surprising intensity, “That’s professional work. In fact,” his eyes flickered to yours, steady and unreadable, “if you would be interested, I’d be keen to take the piece off your hands. Just name your price. If you’re willing to part with it, that is.”
You stared up at him. Bruce Wayne - the Bruce Wayne - wanted to buy your artwork?
Sure, he was Jason’s adoptive father, but people like him didn’t just buy some kids' paintings for some reason. Not unless it was pity, and from the way he was looking at the canvas…no, it didn’t feel like pity. This was an opportunity. One that kids at your school whispered about. How sometimes, if the right person noticed your work, it could change things. And what were you going to do with the painting anyway? Let it collect dust in your tiny apartment? At least in the manor, someone would actually look at it. Appreciate it.
It felt like you’d swallowed a bucket of acrylic paint. Your throat was thick and heavy, your stomach threatening to roll. He didn’t look like he was joking, he didn’t even seem like the type of person who did joke.
Before you could find the words, Jason's hand closed around your wrist, “Think about it first,” he said it quickly, “Don’t sell it ‘cause he asked. It’s your painting.”
You glanced between Bruce, the Canvas and Jason. Thinking about it for a second before curling your fingers around Jasons and giving a small squeeze. You were glad he was here.
“Could I..think about it? Just until the judgings over?”
Bruce inclined his head, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, “Of course. Opportunities should never be rushed.”
Alfred stepped forward then, smooth as ever, as though he’d been waiting to diffuse any tension that might appear. “Might I guest miss, that you enjoy the evening before considering the matter? We’ll have a word with your mother, if you don’t mind, while you go and have fun.”
Dick gave you a quick wink, like he could tell you were about to combust from nerves. Or he was trying to insinuate something else with how you were clutching on Jason's hand. But it wasn’t like that, even if Jason had threaded his fingers back through yours. When had his hands gotten so calloused anyways?
“Alright,” you said, tugging Jason gently, “Let's go find Sammy. Pretty sure he went to the bathroom.” You hesitated, just briefly, before pulling Jason away and weaving through the word until you reached the hallway. The closer you got, the more you settled down.
You weren’t shy, never had been. Out of your small circle of close friends, you are always the loudest, the one mostly likely to drag everyone around with you. The “if your friends jumped off a cliff?” metaphor? Yeah. You were the first one jumping off that cliff. Still, Jason looked mildly horrified when you stopped dead at the threshold of the boys bathroom and yelled inside.
“SAMUEL THOMAS RIVERA, IF YOU DON’T GET YOUR BUTT OUT HERE IN THE NEXT TEN SECONDS, I’M COMING IN!”
“Don’t you dare use my middle name in public!” Sammy's voice echoed off the cracked tiled walls as he rounded the corner, glaring at you. He wasn’t nearly as loud as you, though, and the effect was ruined when he stopped short. His eyes landed on where your fingers were still locked with Jasons.
“You two start dating or something?”
Jason froze like someone had just punched him in the face. And maybe Sammy had, at least emotionally.
But you knew where the question was coming from. Sammy hadn’t told Jason, and you didn’t think he ever would. But one night, he confided in you that he had a crush on Jason. Then again, after that he was more chatty about his crushes, and every moderately cute guy in school had been ranked, swooned over, or at least briefly considered. But Jason? That crush had been the loudest, the longest.
You, on the other hand, weren’t interested in any of them. Sure, some of the guys at school were kinda cute, but they all fell flat when compared to the people you read about in books. They felt bigger than life, impossibly charming or devastatingly complicated. Real boys never measured up.
You’d drawn more embarrassing fanart of your favorite characters than you wanted to admit. Nobody had ever seen them. Well, that wasn’t true. You’d shown Sammy, and sometimes when a piece turned out good you’d show Jason.
Rolling your eyes, you broke the tension before Jason could combust, “Oh, come on.” You reached out and grabbed Sammy’s hand with your free one, tugging both boys into motion. “Lets go look at the other entries.”
Sammy sighed dramatically, but didn’t resist, falling into step on your other side. Jason stayed quiet, you could still feel the stiffness in his hand like he was still recovering from Sammy’s question.
All the other pieces were set up now, the gym turned into a maze of easels, pedestals, and folding tables. Paper-mache models, abstract splashes of neon paint, graphite portraits with smudged edges, oil landscapes, clay still-lives, photo collages. The works.
You’d complained about it when you found out all the rules about entering. It wasn’t fair to lump them all together when it was obvious different mediums should’ve had different categories. How could a watercolor compete against a sculpture? But you didn’t make the rules, and your complaint about it to your art teacher had gone ignored.
The three of you made your own game out of browsing through the other entries. Jason cracked jokes under his breath, pointing out a paper-mache bust that looked suspiciously like it had been through a car accident. You commented on the techniques, how someone layered color pencils to mimic paint strokes, or how another had managed to capture light with graphite. Sammy ranked them out loud, assigning each piece a “favorite so far” or “no chance,” adjusting his order constantly.
Every so often, you tried to chat with the artists themselves, asking about their inspiration, or their process. Sometimes you even got a few sentences in before Sammy or Jason tugged you away toward the next display.
There were more entries than you expected, and that made your stomach knot slightly. Easily two dozen at least, even if half of them were clearly done just for fun. You barely made it through all of them before the overhead speakers crackled, static buzzing through the gym for just a moment before a voice came through.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention please. We’ll be beginning the judging shortly! Students, please remain near your work, and everyone else feel free to take a seat.”
Sammy and Jason nudged you in unison, whisper-yelling at you to go. Once you were by your painting and they’d found a seat in the stands, they were easy to spot in the crowd. Sammy's mother and father, your mother, Jason, Sammy, Alfred, Bruce, and Dick were all sitting together. It didn’t look like something out of a photo, with four of them in nice suits and the other four in whatever jeans and shirts they had that didn’t have holes in them.
Your stomach churned. You felt like you’d swallowed a mouthful of acrylic paint again, watching as the judges got up from their seats, metal of the chairs scraping against the cheap linoleum.
They started making their way through the gym, walking through the aisles and looking at students' pieces, whispering to one another with slow deliberation. The judges weren’t anything crazy. The school principal, art teacher, and one of the other teachers who had an interest in art. You only really knew the art teacher.
They lingered at Mira’s piece, and it really was impressive. If she was a little nicer then you could’ve been friends with her, but she’d always been competitive to an unhealthy amount. So you sort of avoided her.
And then they reached your canvas.
They circled your canvas, looking over it and whispering to each other as you tried not to hurl onto your shoes. You thought for a moment your knees might give out.
It didn’t really matter though. Winning wasn’t important, it wasn’t like the world depended on it. You kept telling yourself that. But god you wanted that stupid bright blue sticker. It wasn’t even a good prize. You were sure other schools would have gotten a trophy for the winner. It wasn’t like only first place got a sticker either.
It felt like forever, but the judges did return to their seats, talking between themselves quietly. The microphone was still on, but they were leaning back and whispering to one another. Again, it felt like the seconds were ticking by in slow motion. When the principal finally leaned forward and cleared his throat things changed. No longer moving in slow motion, but instead at 2x speed.
“Thank you all for your patience. It’s been a difficult decision, as the talent shown tonight is extraordinary. However, the judges have reached a verdict. The winner of this year's East End High Student Art Showcase is.”
You didn’t even hear your name.
Actually you were pretty sure that you blacked out for a second there. The thing that made you realize it had been your name that was said? The group in the bleachers, standing up, clapping, whooping. Jason and Sammy jumping up and down like crazy people. Your mother looked like she was about to cry, and even Bruce Wayne himself was standing and clapping politely.
You’d won.
The thought hit like a freight train. You called yourself Gotham's Best Artist on the invitation as a joke. Something that Sammy had said, and you’d thought it was funny enough to include on the invitation. You didn’t actually think it was true. You wanted to win, but didn’t think you would. Yet you had.
Holy. Shit.
And the judges weren’t coming to you. They were still seated, so you had to go up and get the sticker yourself.
Which meant walking past Mira - and her very obvious scowl - to do it. It would be fine. You had to force your legs to move but that wasn’t an issue. You liked attention, thrived on it even. So why was this different? Maybe the amount of attention? Everyone was looking at you. You should’ve been thrilled, and yet, your legs felt like jello.
Maybe it was the amount of attention. You’d never had this many eyes on you before, especially not for such a prolonged time. God, it must be terrifying to be Robin. Past all the fighting and the danger, knowing the whole city was watching every move that you made? Judging you?
Still, if he could do that, then you could do this. This wasn’t nearly as bad as what he dealt with.
Mira’s glare burned between your shoulder blades as you passed. She’d gotten second place. Objectively speaking, second place was good, hell you would’ve been thrilled if you’d gotten second place. Mira was good, if she got first place then she would’ve deserved it. You tried to give her a smile in passing, but she didn’t even pretend to smile back.
One of the judges handed you the sticker, bright blue and rimmed with gold. You took several steps to the side, so the others could go get their stickers. And just stared down at the sticker in your hand for a moment. You’d really done it. You’d won.
You must’ve lost track of time, because the next thing you knew the sticker was gone. Someone had ripped it out of your hand and then smacked it onto your cheek. Sammy. Nose nearly pressed to yours and grinning as he finished smoothing the sticker down on your cheek.
“See? I told you! All that stressing was for nothing. I didn’t even have to see the painting to know it was going to win.” he wrapped his arms around your shoulders, squeezing once, quickly, before legging go and then grabbing your arm. “Come on! Let's go get some photos with it!”
Sammy never drug you anywhere. That was your job. With Jason, it went both ways. Yet for the first time, Sammy was the one dragging you through the room. The first, yes, but certainly not the last.
Everyone was waiting by the painting. Jason, your mother, Sammy’s parents, Dick, Alfred, Bruce even. And everything after that passed in a blur. Your mothers arms around you, Alfred taking her phone to get a big group shot, your mom taking turns snapping photos of you, Sammy, and Jason together. Then just you and Sammy. Then just you. Then Dick was shoving Jason forward, holding his own phone up. “Say cheese!”
A sea of classmates, teachers, acquaintances, parents, anyone who was there and saw it fit to come by and congratulate you passed in a blur too. It didn’t feel real still, and more than anything else, you were thinking.
What were you going to do with the painting, realistically? Let it collect dust? Stick it in a corner? Put it on your wall where one day there would inevitably be a water leak that would ruin it? No. It deserved a better life than that. For sure. In the manor, it might actually be seen.
“Mr.Wayne, are you still willing to buy the painting?”
Bruce studied you for a moment, then inclined his head so that he wasn’t towering over you quite so much. “Then the only question left is, how much would you like for it?”
You froze.
That…you hadn’t considered. But you did have something in mind. So you glanced at your mother and stood on your tip toes to whisper into her ear. You didn’t want Bruce to hear your question, that felt…mortifying. “How much would a phone cost? And…um…the bill for a year and a half? Until I can get a job and pay for it.”
It had always been your plan. When you and Sammy turned sixteen, you’d go and get a parttime job somewhere, and use the money you got so that you could both get your own phones. It had been something that you’d been discussing since you both really realized that Jason had his own phone.
Your mothers laugh was quiet, fond, and she whispered back. “About two thousand.”
You turned back toward Bruce. Two thousand felt huge. That was the kind of number you’d only hear on TV. A number your painting couldn’t possibly be worth. But…he had the money, right? If you were going to ask anyone for that much cash it might as well be him.
“Two thousand?” The number sounded wrong coming out of your mouth. It was absurd. A fifteen year old from crime alley selling her art for that much? That was unheard of.
But Bruce didn’t even blink. He simply nodded, reached into his jacket, and pulled out his wallet. A few quick flips through the bills, and then without hesitation, he was holding out a small, neatly stacked bundle of cash for you.
You took it slowly, your paint stained fingers brushing over the crisp paper. THe weight of it was unreal. It didn’t actually weight that much, physically. But you’d never seen this much cash in one place, let alone had it pressed into your palm. You got excited when you found a five dollar bill on the ground, two thousand felt entirely different.
“Two thousand.” Bruce confirmed, his tone steady. “Fair trade for work of that caliber.” It sounded like flattery, it probably was flattery. Just an adult being kind to a poor kid. But you didn’t care. You’d get your own phone soon and could text Jason now.
“Thank you, Mr.Wayne.”
Jason gave a low whistle beside you, “Guess I know who's paying for pizza next time.”
Alfred's look and reprimand was immediate. “Master Jason, I would suggest retaining from harassing an artist on the day of their first great success.”
First.
Like he knew that there were going to be more in your future.
Your mom slid an arm around you shoulders, pulling you close with a squeeze that was equal parts pride and comfort. “You earned it sweetpea. Every bit of it, all on your own. We’ll go get you that phone tomorrow. Promise.”
The first thing you did after getting your phone, once it was turned on and working, was text Jason. He’d scrawled his number on a scrap piece of paper for you before leaving the art show. You’d tucked it into a sketchbook so that you wouldn’t lose it.
Hey. It’s me.
You didn’t even think about it. And it was seconds later when a response buzzed through.
Who? Sorry I’m real popular with the ladies and give my phone number out all the time.
You snorted, leaning back against your pillows as your thumbs flew across the screen. You took longer to type than him, not yet used to texting yet. Hell, he was probably used to all sorts of technology that you’d never gotten to use before.
Wow. Didn’t realize I was talking to Gotham’s Most Eligible Bachelor.
Gotham's Most Eligible Pizza Eater, actually. Speaking of. Still waiting on that promised slice.
Promised? I said nothing about promising.
Within days, the phone had become somewhat of an addiction. It wasn’t even just access to the internet. No. It was texting. It started with just little check-ins with Jason once or twice a day. He’d even sent you a photo of your painting in Bruce’s study. It looked good, it looked like it had a home.
Within weeks you were texting him things that you hadn’t even thought about ever telling anyone. How the lunch lady had spinach between her teeth, how you’d accidentally knocked over a whole tray of art supplies in class, anything and everything. Books were a frequent topic of conversation, like always. Sharing favorite passages, debating characters, but you’d both agreed that the annotating and trading of books should be a tradition that should be kept. It felt real, tangible in a way that texts weren’t.
Then you started texting about TV shows. It started with Jason asking if you’d seen Supernatural because one of the characters was named Sam. He had more access to TV than you did, but that was okay. You talked about what you could.
The phone had been nothing but an improvement in your life. That was for sure.
Several months with the phone and you got to see Jason consistently, you’d been texting so much about anything and nothing that you’d even started saying goodnight to each other. Each night ending with a Talk to you tomorrow, Jay.
Then one day while you were painting in the living room a soft but deliberate knock came at the door. Your mother answered it, and Alfred was standing just past the threshold.
Alfred never showed up alone. Never showed up alone when you didn’t have a phone, and certainly didn’t show up alone now that you didn’t see him as much anymore. Between video calls and significantly better organized hang outs with Jason, the days of unexpected chauffeur rides and spontaneous drop-offs were a thing of the past. Now it was small waves and curt nods.
“Young Miss, may I have a moment of your time?”
“Yeah.” You set your paintbrush down. “What's up Big A?”
He hesitated, glancing at your mother briefly, before looking back at you. This was strange. It had started strange, but it was just getting stranger and stranger by the minute.
“I’m afraid I have news about Jason that I thought would be best delivered in person.”
He hadn’t even told you what the news was, and the room was already starting to tilt. This wasn’t necessarily bad though. It could be some sort of surprise that Jason was planning or- you didn’t know actually. “What kind of news?”
“Jason is no longer with us.”
The words hung in the air, thick and suffocating. “Did he run away?”
“No miss. He was involved in an incident. He’s no longer with any of us.”
You’d just texted him last night. Talk to you tomorrow, Jay. And somehow between that text, and now, something had happened to Jason, and he had died.
Talk to you tomorrow, Jay. And his tomorrow never came.
dcu masterlist | main masterlist | song-inspired fics
fem!reader x jason todd
summary: in which loser!jason gets a chance to see his favorite popstar on stage—you.
warnings: slightly suggestive, jason being downright pathetic for his celeb crush (aka youuu), jason is a little obsessive (but who wouldn't want a jacked, polite, and HANDSOME loser obsessing over them?), a bit of a parasocial relationship, he's a bit ooc but whatever
step inside my mind, you can see the shrine, got you on my walls, believe it
a/n: was gonna write this one for tim but the world needs a few more loser!jason fics out there. also lol this is inspired from the time i went to a madison beer concert with my sister and i asked, "why are there so many dudes here?" to which she replied, "dude, it's madison beer."
UNEDITED!
when he first saw the billboard, jason thought he was going to lose his mind. you were coming to gotham city of all places? to tour? here? you?
he didn't tell anyone he bought tickets. won't tell his brothers or his friends, because they'd make so much fun of him. because only girls buy your tickets, and if not girls, then some chronically online loser who's watched all your performances and has all your albums downloaded on his phone, remixes included.
and jason, unfortunately, knows very well that he falls into the latter category. or would if anyone found out about his massive—borderline parasocial—crush on you.
when he bought the tickets, he didn't even consider the price. he never spends money! not unless it's a necessity, right? why not treat himself to a front row seat? doesn't matter how much it costs.
he books the night off months in advance and ensures nobody is trying to make plans with him. not that anybody really is. and not that he's bothered by that.
gosh, he's just so damn excited. he listened to your entire discography all over again. relieved it. because you're an experience.
he feels like a fangirl shoving his big brother out so he doesn't see all his posters of you.
"what'chya hidin' in there, jay-bird?" dick would call from the other side of the room. "got something on your computer you don't want me to see?" he'd chuckle and walk off, thinking jason was just a pervert.
worse, jason isn't a fangirl. he's a fanboy. some loser locked away in ihs room, cherishing the vinyls he has of your latest album.
he's frugal with his money. but whenever you drop merch, whenever you drop a new album, he's all over it. then his brothers wonder what he does with his money.
"dude, you literally don't spend it on anything," tim would say. "then you drain an entire paycheck in one week. what the hell are you spending it on?" tim doesn't expect an answer. he knows jason is a little secretive.
truthfully, the moment you release an album, he's all over the pre-orders. limited edition vinyls and album covers, posters, cds. he even once bought a vhs tape just to tell people online that he has it. anonymously, of course.
so, in short—jason is ecstatic the night of the concert. he feels like he's been waiting forever. his legs are jittery as his classes wrap up for the day. dick keeps askin him what's wrong, and damian is giving him a bitter, judgemental side-eye.
nine p.m rolls around, and jason snatches his coat from the closet. "i'm going out."
the entire living room is stunned. jason, going out? jason, touching grass? jason, maybe meeting up with somebody?
dick doesn't know what to say. "uh, sure. see you...tonight."
jason slams the door behind him. he's lucky he came early, because the line is already trickling out the door. doesn't matter either way—he bought a front-row seat.
by the time he's checked in, jason couldn't care less how out-of-place he looks. there's a few other young men here. relatively his age, just as jittery. they give him tight smiles or pretend to ignore what they're here for. you.
the opener gets him warmed up. an artist he's not familiar with, but watches gleefully nonetheless.
then the white lights fade, pink ones replacing them. a hue of love and mystery fall over the arena and the crowd erupts with eager cheers. jason's heart is pounding. he's getting a little light-headed. a little giddy, like a child.
the backup dancers spin onto the stage, flexible legs darting upwards, then down.
your silhouette appears behind the curtain. more cheers. he's silent the entire time. the entire world fades away. it's like a dream come true watching you emerge from backstage.
you break out into your first song. you sound just as good live—no, better. way better. the rawness of your vocals. the way his ears ring from the bass.
he knows every lyric, every song, even the quiet harmonies layered over each vocal.
he loves you.
jason swears he loves you.
he's absolutely mesmerized. hypnotized. you keep him in a trance. he's overwhelmed by the pinky tones of the stage. the golden lights. your shimmering bodysuit.
he feels like he's glowing alongside you.
and then you bend down—at the knee, so polite and pretty—and end a song. more cheering from the crowd, and then your eyes catch on his. now, he's obsessed with you, but not quiet delusional. not yet, at least.
he knows your eyes have lingered on a million different people. you're touring the whole damn world, after all.
but your eyes linger a bit too long, and he feels his cheeks heat.
his heart is just about to tear out of his chest when you lean down and say into your sparkly microphone, "what's your name, handsome?"
jason swallows as you angle the microphone to him. "i...uh. jay. i mean—jason."
"jay??" the crowd whoops and hollers at your flirtatious smile. "are you alone tonight, jay?"
he shudders at the nickname. a good, thrilling shudder. your gaze alone matches the stare of a thousand people. he feels like an ant.
no. he feels human, because you look like a goddess. he's small underneath your gaze. entirely helpless as his eyes worship you from head to toe.
"no," he says into the mic. "i'm...i'm not seeing anybody."
you cackle that boisterous laugh he's seen recorded so many times. he realizes suddenly that you asked if he was alone, not if he was seeing anyone. heat flushes his face red.
you take note of his embarrassment and pout. "jay, don't worry. i was hoping you weren't seeing anybody."
it's just a game! that's what he tries to remind himself of. that you're simply playing with him. it's your act, your image. still, he can't help but blush.
"jay," you ask, panting slightly. "will you request a song for me to sing?"
he lights up. you've already sung half the songs he wanted you to! then again, he wants you to sing all your songs.
so jason pipes up and politely asks you to sing one from an older album of yours—your debut, in fact. the first song he ever heard from you that sent him spiraling into obsession. a slow, romantic beat. sensual and just so lovely.
you sing it so much stronger than you do on your album. given, your voice has developed since your debut. he's noticed. of course he has.
as much as jason tries to convince himself you're playing with him, he can't help but notice your eyes flitting to his every few seconds. even after you've sung his requested song, you keep glancing over.
but jason doesn't want to hope.
no, he'd never.
but when the end of the show rolls around, when confetti blasts through the arena and everyone's voice is blown, you kneel down and give him a guitar pick.
not the one you were using to play. this one came from a hidden pocket in your bodysuit.
he flips it between his hands, hiding it in his palm until he's out of the arena.
he goes home with a big, fat, stupid smile on his face. he's thumbing your guitar pick in his pocket and ignores his brothers as he walks upstairs.
still, jason cannot stop listening to your music.
the experience becomes a memory, and eventually the excitement melts away. he cherishes the guitar pick and still watches all your performances.
but things are back to normal. and soon you vanish from the world's touring eye and take a couple months off.
he's not expecting new music from you anytime soon—nobody is.
but three months after your tour wraps up, you release a new song and the title has him starstruck.
it's titled jay.
and while he expects to hear the usual upbeat tempo of your songs, this one carries the same tone as the song he requested. low, husky alto range. fluttery notes in your falsetto.
though you never sing the name "jay" once in the song, the lyrics strike him as a little...odd.
you sing things like, "find you" and "miss you," and during the bridge, you sing, "it was a three-minute connection, and i loved every moment."
he thinks it's a coincidence. a stupid fantasy he's reading into.
until the end of the song comes and cheers fade into the audio. your voice, amplified by a microphone in an echoing stadium screams:
"goodnight, gotham city! i love you, and i'll be back!"
do people love loser jason as much as i do or am i constantly in a state of tweakery
