Hii I am absolutely in love with the way you write mark Grayson and was hoping you could write something kinda sorta like a fwb or blurred lines friendship with mark 👀
why yes ur actually super in luck bc the upcoming mark grayson fic listed on my anniversary event is, in fact, another fwb fic LOL 🥳🥳🥳
pairing. clark kent x fem spidergirl reader
in sum. you stop producing webs and to your chagrin, superman has the tech to help you. you’re desperate enough to ask, and like all things, your mission goes a little (very) awry.
word count. 8.3k
tags/content. 18+ mdni, humping & rough fingering, the suits STAY ON, pheromones and hormones, Weird metahuman anatomy, sex in a clinical (fortress?) setting, unclarified rut dynamics, clark whimpers agenda, identity porn and silliness
— my singular contribution to kinktober is the vague idea of metahumans having weird sensitivities and okay maybe clark licks ur web shooter don't ask....
METROPOLIS — Industry magnate Lex Luthor announced Friday trials for what biomedical professionals are calling a new frontier in disease treatment. According to a follow-up press release by spokesperson Talia Head, the effort—a window into the wider, secretive “Project Cadmus”—involved the creation of a new transgenic and radiation-treated species equipped with deadly venom that, in the correct amounts, could prove to be groundbreaking.
—
THE DAWN OF DOOMSDAY DOESN’T START with a galactic conqueror or an asteroid. It doesn't even start with Lex Luthor.
It starts with Superman—dimpled, cheery, annoyingly kind Superman.
And of all travesties, it also starts with the sore spinneret that’s been bothering you for weeks.
Which is to say, when you’re swinging above the sidewalk of East Siegel Boulevard with the afternoon wind screaming into your ears, you probably shouldn’t ignore the pain in your wrist and aim at the next scaffold because you’ll probably eat shit on the pavement for the third time this month.
So here you are: frustrated, face itching from your healing factor, wrists sore with the ailment that’s befallen you. You’re tucked into a serene alcove of brick-walled apartments and bodegas, licking your wounded pride with a hot dog in hand—because Queensland Park hot dogs make everything better.
Oh, and there’s this group of guys across the street who won’t stop dogging on you for your series of accidents, which unfortunately always goes viral within the first thirty minutes of it happening.
They’re a picture-perfect fraternity. Fighting the November wind in Met U hoodies and selvedge denim, gathered around the hot dog stand on the cracked pavement of the curb. Your mask pushed up to your nose, feet dangling off a billboard plastered with Zatanna Zatara’s drop-dead gorgeous face and a bunny popping out of her top hat.
You swear that she winks at you sometimes.
“You’re that Spider-girl on Youtube, right?” shouts one of the guys. He’s got a smear of mustard on the corner of his mouth. Talks like he’s from Bakerline, which is a long way from Queensland, but the hot dogs are objectively better here, so. “Do the splat!”
“No!” Your flustered shout is pitched in mortification. Blood rushes to your cheeks, embarrassment nestling behind your ribs. You’re about ready to rip out your hair inch by painstaking square inch. “Come on, man, I’m trying to take a lunch break here.”
“What the hell’s even up with you, bro?” another one of them asks.
You work your jaw, temples tight. “It was an accident. God, am I not allowed to make mistakes when I’m stressed out?”
Which. Yeah, stressed out is the understatement of the fucking millennium.
Working at a daily paper does that to people. Turnarounds so tight you can hardly breathe before you’re meeting fresh dead ends in sources and opening a new document for an article that’ll only last a day in print. News cycles are fleeting, but the pressure isn’t.
“Man, if I were you, I’d get laid. That shit solves everything.”
Raucous laughs; the frat guy who said it gets a handful of slaps on the back. You shove the rest of your hot dog into your mouth—salt and sweet bread bursts on your tongue—and crumple the paper tray in your lycra-gloved hand.
Today’s wind is good for a day of swinging. It’s unfortunate that your earlier incident has made you wary of shooting webs anytime soon.
It smells like salt and—weirdly—Brylcreem when you come to your feet. The skyline stretches for what seems like miles, stalagmites of Art Deco and Mid-Century modernist buildings cut-and-pasted together.
Sun’s resting in the sky at one o’clock. It’s about time you head back to work and deal with the rash of red-penned edits on your article, but...
You’re a little hesitant to leave now.
Maybe it’s the way the city looks back at you, tall windows winking with sunlight and pigeons cooing from under the eaves. Maybe you want to stay on your little perch for a while, let your heart swell with how much you love the mundanity of home in Queensland with all her bumper-to-bumper streets and quintessential sunniness.
Or it could be the group of frat guys who’ve elected to stop ribbing you and enjoy their hot dogs. If I were you, I’d get laid and the whole works. They’re kind of right; between cramped articles, malfunctioning drip machines, and patrol, you haven’t found a way to make time for a little action that isn’t web-slinging some mugger to the wall.
Or…the skyline. Clear and true blue and dotted with clouds you’d only see in an edited sitcom. Cut out by buildings that spell out hope in your heart, the earnest promise of truth, justice, and a better tomorrow.
Truth, justice, and a better tomorrow.
The idea crests out of the fatigued and stressed waters of your mind, leaps to your mouth before you’re able to stop it.
“Superman.”
It’s quiet. Not in a whispering way. Not even in a way that suggests a secret.
Just—there. Slightly defeated by the nag of something building up in you, the itch of needing to do something but being powerless to act on it.
You say it like the solution has fallen into your lap by pure coincidence. Like you should trace your lip with trembling hands after speaking his name.
The air stills in a slightly odd way, making the hairs on the back of your neck prickle to attention. A shadow falls over you, blotting out the afternoon sun, and the sound of a cape snapping softly in the breeze prompts you to turn around, meeting the eyes of—
“Holy shit, it’s Superman!”
The frat guys start scrambling to cross the street, dripping mustard and ketchup onto the pavement, hollering about dude, you’re so fucking cool, can I get an autograph?
You try your best to frown at Superman, but the glare of the sun peeking out from behind the crown of his slicked-back head makes it hard. You’re pretty sure you just look like you’re squinting to save your life.
He just grins back at you, puppyish with that signature loose curl falling over his forehead. Stands cardboard-stiff on the billboard’s rusted grate, as if he’s got livewire twined around his bones.
As if he isn’t actively encroaching on your patrol territory. As if he’s Queensland’s friendly neighborhood hero, which is your title.
The thing about this is: Superman might have won the hearts of the rest of Metropolis and the world, but this little borough, this little slice of 75-cent hot dogs and bodegas with cloudy windows is yours.
He thinks it’s his too. Flies over you sometimes, red boots scuffed at the toes, cape rippling in the breeze, smelling slightly like ash and Brylcreem.
You yank the bottom half of your mask back over your mouth. "Superman.”
This one is steadier. Colder, like you’ve finally remembered to tighten up and keep your reputation consistent.
He pinkens a little. Just a faint blush blooming from cheek to cheek, stretching across the bridge of his nose. Darts his eyes down to his feet, then back up to meet yours.
“You...” Superman makes a face, brow wrinkled and glittering blue eyes squeezing shut as he chooses his next words very, very carefully. More likely than not, he probably remembers the time you shot a web onto his mouth for saying something that was meant to dig under your skin, no matter if he really meant it.
He decides, while still finding great interest in a painted section of Zatanna’s glossy billboard hair as he mumbles, “You called for me.”
A heat burns under your mask, smolders in your ribcage. You’re blunt, but it’s a lot better than being sharp enough to prick, “Can we go somewhere more private?”
You fix him with the best stony look you can muster with dinner-plate lenses. Superman is just watching you with slightly furrowed eyebrows and a tilted head, like he isn’t sure but still half expecting you to say sike or jump at him.
“Oh,” he says. One short syllable straining under a metric ton of confusion, because you’ve never called for him before and hell, you’ve never been this nice either. “Like, I’ll meet you on the roof of…the Daily Planet, or something?”
Bad idea. You’d probably keep him waiting for hours while you sort out the trains to keep your glitching spinnerets closed, and you can’t afford to wait that long.
“No.” You shift on your feet, lycra flexing around your ankles. “Where’s your fortress?”
“Why do you ask?”
Frustration bubbles in the hollow of your throat. Hisses beneath your sternum, corroding your chest. “Just—god, I need your tech, okay?”
The admission swings in the air for longer than you’d like.
He’s stunned, for one. Eyebrows lifting and mouth corners wilting, blinking a few times to make sure that you’re stone-cold serious.
Kneads his next words very carefully in the pocket of his dimpled cheek before deciding on, “Is this about your accident?”
You can’t tell if the flare in your stomach is because you’re miffed or mortified. Superman isn’t supposed to do social media, unless he’s going on the Daily Planet’s account to debunk something with a selfie of himself as proof of identity.
But he does. And he’s seen you in your most embarrassing, dream-about-shitting-your-pants-at-school, viral moment of stretching out your arm to shoot another web and breaking your nose on the curb.
Oh god.
“Well—maybe. Maybe not,” you stammer to the same rhythm of your leaping pulse.
Superman breaks into a blinding, thousand-watt smile. Shines like you should squint or just stop looking entirely for the fear of being bestowed with something so purely good.
“I can’t believe it, Spider-girl is asking me for help,” he says, dimples winking at you chumpishly. Does this thing with his hands, shrugging a little before letting them flop back to his sides, like someone’s cracked a joke so unbelievable that he has to react to it physically.
You make a note to maybe—alright, definitely—be a little less curt with him.
“Sure,” you mutter, turning to the billboard and slapping your palm onto the glossy surface. It sticks, to your (mild) surprise. Who knows, anything could be happening with your powers. “If you want it that way.”
“Of course.” He says it with unbridled excitement. It’s definitely cliché, but he’s reminiscent of a kid set loose in a candy store.
But that’s Superman, isn’t he? The all-American son who comes out every year to root for the Meteors and gets spotted by meta-battle chasers eating a fucking hamburger on the corner of Shuster and Reeve.
(It’s kind of endearing now that you consider it. Maybe he isn’t so different from you—after all, you sneak out of work to grab hot dogs from Mr. Kreuk’s stand every Monday.)
“Then I’ll see you in…” you let the wheels in your head grind the math for you, sticking a foot onto the billboard now “…four hours.”
His face falls as you start scaling the glossy surface. “We aren’t going now?”
You grunt as you hoist yourself higher, palms and soles peeling and resticking onto the vinyl print of Zatanna’s perfectly poreless face. The breeze whistles softly in your ears, the sound of gulls from the bay singing along with the ever present backdrop of traffic noise.
“Unlike you, I’ve got a nine-to-five instead of a secret fortress. Rent’s not cheap in Queens.”
“Ha,” he laughs, though it sounds like he’s just suppressed a snort. “Yeah, I get it.”
“Do you now?”
You drag yourself upright, precarious on the beams behind the display. Looking down, you find that he’s still watching you from the grate, cape swaying gently in the wind with the barest impression of his dimple reminding you that he finds all this amusing.
“Yeah,” Superman stammers. Smiles, a little stilted, like he’s not quite sure of what to do with himself now that you’re leaving. “Midtown.”
You think it’s a hallucination at first. Maybe it’s a side effect of your broken spinneret. Maybe it’s just the weather, or a bug flying past your ear, or even someone else saying it.
You’re harsher than you intend to be. “What?”
“I said Midtown.” He shrugs like he isn’t taking it too personally because he never does, looking almost like some sheepish bastard when he repeats himself. “I live in Midtown. Rent’s a lot more reasonable, but I’d like to live here someday. Just…the atmosphere and general opposition to gentrification, I guess.”
Your breath stills, if only for a moment. It’s stupid, really.
How that presses at something in your chest you didn’t expect to be exposed. How that just makes Sense—yes, with a capital ‘S’—and fits right into the neat puzzle of Superman.
You’re the one who feels like you don’t know what to do with yourself now.
“Cool,” is what you manage after a stagnant moment, embarrassment’s shadow painting your neck. You jab your thumb over your shoulder in the general direction of the bridge to New Troy. “I gotta—”
“—oh, yeah, of course—”
“—get back to work, you know—”
“I know,” he laughs, hanging his head to hide whatever stupid grin he’s wearing on his face now. “I have a job too, so—”
You hold your palm out to stop him. “Okay, a little too much information. Don’t go spoiling the movie just yet.”
“Right.” Superman flashes that oddly charming, upside-down grin, dark hair shining under the afternoon sun and broad palm pressed to his nape. “You know how to call for me in four hours.”
“Yeah.”
“In a while, crocodile.”
And like that, the billboard rattles with the force of his takeoff, wind billowing over you like a wave on the days the shoreline gets crowded. His red cape arcs over the blocks, cheers rising as he zooms across the borough and towards New Troy.
You let out a slow stream of air and ignore the ache rolling through your chest.
He’s such a cornball.
—
“So, Miss Genius,” Cat picks through her words as you plop into a chair and roll toward her without a hitch, “I have huge gossiiiii—oh my god, did the office casual police jump you when you took lunch?”
You make a pathetic little squeak, tilting your cracked phone screen into the light and catching a glimpse of yourself.
“Girl, you look like you needed a matcha latte yesterday,” she adds.
You know you’re feeling a little frazzled, nerves bitten through by your encounter with the weirdly endearing Superman who lives in Midtown and quips cliché phrases.
But you look the part too: the collar of your sweater bunched up, cuffs folded at odd angles, mascara smudged. It’s a miracle that Cat—sharp eye extraordinaire—didn’t catch on to the glaring edge of your costume’s lycra sleeve peeking out.
You tug yourself into shape as she waves it off and dives into her next spiel.
“—and like, they’re so different but I’m kind of starting to see the vision.”
You clear your throat a little, just to make sure you don’t slip up and say something stupid like ‘I think Superman might really like Spider-girl’ or whatever is on your mind.
Cat’s got this story on some popstar and her new man. Says it’s groundbreaking because Little Miss Singer has been keeping it secret for months, but she’s got an exclusive interview with said couple, and she’s going to break a love story so sweet and sexy and whatever that the Planet’s entertainment column will go down in history, right next to GQ and People.
“Right,” you say, tilting your chin up to offset the mild discomfort now settling below your throat.
It’s not every day you rush back to work with only your wall-climbing powers and shove your clothes back on without changing out of your costume first. You really need to find the time to tailor the lycra again.
“Oh, hun, are you alright?” Cat’s neatly shaped brows furrow and she smooths her cool fingers over your shoulder. “You look a little ill. Is it stress? I think it’s stress—the news’s been heavy lately, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah, lots of stuff going on this week,” you eke out. A tingling sensation needles at the apex of your wrists—spinnerets again.
You massage them over the soft cuff of your sweater. “Think I might be getting some carpal tunnel, too. All these edits.”
“Oh…” She leans a little closer, whisper conspiratorial, “Is it Clark again?”
Oh indeed.
Sweet, helpful, hapless Clark Kent. Who arrives late to work with the same Jitters cup in hand and never fails to smile despite having the misfortune of always catching the train that’s going to be delayed by an hour.
Smells like newsprint and ink toner and something country-like when he leans in close to point out problems in your proof prints. Writes his edits in the margins of your proofs in blue pen that smudges onto your thumb sometimes.
“No,” you keep it hushed, pushing down the image of your colleague’s tragically dorky grin, “it’s just stress, like you said.”
Cat’s look is pointed. “Really.”
You itch under her gaze, an exasperated frown pulling at your mouth. She always knows. “Alright, it’s Clark again.”
“Oh, hun…”
“He just—god, he’s so” —you groan— “ridiculous. He just can’t accept that Spider-girl sucks, so he’s taking it out on me because I’m the only one brave enough to say it.”
Which, of course, is probably the best cover you have ever thought of. No one would expect some lowly reporter to be Queensland Park’s honorary granddaughter, much less one that campaigns against Spider-girl as much as Lex Luthor does against Superman.
And alright, being the number one fan of every superhero, Clark Kent is probably less than pleased to have heard your opinions. For god’s sake, his hero tier list has everyone sharing the number one spot—excluding Booster Gold.
Last week, he said that he was ‘working on that.’
So. You’re about ninety-percent sure that he doesn’t like you. As in, vaguely displeased—not hate, because he just isn’t that type of man—with your guts.
He isn’t necessarily rude. But he does regard you with an air of faint I-don't-wanna-be-here, steels his eyes onto your forehead when he speaks to you and wipes the forever lingering smile off his face.
Cat’s jaw falls ajar, eyes zoning out to glance at something behind you.
You force a strained exhale through your nose, the inside of your cheek raw from how hard you’re restraining the urge to gnaw on it. Wheeling around in your chair, you meet the wide, curious eyes of Clark Kent.
“Hi, Clark.”
He flashes a sardonic type of smile, all bite and no bark. The kind that means to leave an annoying little papercut on your fingertips. The kind that makes something in your chest squeeze tight, like you’ve unwittingly become a stress ball.
“Hi.”
Doesn’t even say your name. Barely stands to make eye contact with you, opting to take the easy path and distract himself with Cat, asking about photo-ops and quotes and pretending you don’t exist.
So, yeah. You’re definitely sore, and beyond embarrassed at the fact that you are, considering you indirectly brought this upon yourself.
“Sorry, hun, you were saying?” Cat asks once Clark has cleared his too-large body from her desk, leaving only the faintest whiff of his cologne lingering.
Smells handsome, and that’s the only word you can muster to describe it. Makes you tilt your head slightly for more until you realize just how strange that is.
You’ve never chased a scent before. Hell, you make a habit of shutting them out, letting your sight and spider-sense to help you navigate during your vigilante hours.
But this is different. Addictive different. Dangerous different. Sets slow, dancing bells off in your head, a reckoning. Like you’re bating your breath and waiting for something to come to fruition.
“It’s nothing,” you tell Cat. She just gives you a polite, HR sort of tight smile.
When you settle back into your own chair and turn away from the slouched form of Clark’s back, you realize some familiarity to his cologne.
Brylcreem.
And when he says goodbye to Jimmy, and Lois, and even Steve, you work the inside of your cheek and stop holding your breath when he passes you without a word.
For the first time in your life, you’re going to be overjoyed to see Superman.
—
An arduous piggyback ride and several skin scrapes later, you’re shivering on the examination table, hard and painfully cold under your ass.
“It’s fucking freezing,” you chatter, lips now beyond chapped in the five minutes since you pushed up the bottom half of your mask to your nose. Lycra is far from an insulating material.
The Fortress of Solitude is a huge chunk of crystal stretching toward the clear sky like a stalagmite, every shard refracting with the light of the unforgiving Arctic sun.
It’s blue in here, the shade that reminds you of good days in Metropolis. When the clouds are sparse and everyone rushes to the verdant parks in droves, a sea of heads trying to find space on the grassy lawns. Or when you step out of the Planet with a freshly published article, which means you have approximately five hours to enjoy your freedom before you start another story.
A pale blue kind of feeling. Mellow. Peaceful.
The Superman Robots, as he so endearingly named them, are flitting around you while he fiddles with the workstation’s strange buttons and toggles.
Superman flicks a switch and a light buzzes on above you, warming the tender skin of your inner wrist.
Ouch—it’s pretty inflamed by the looks of it. Puffy, so much that you can hardly see the small slit where your web-silk is supposed to eject from.
A robot prods at it and you hiss.
“Sorry,” you hear Superman mutter from the console. He twists his mouth, brows furrowed in confusion. “No, that’s not right.”
Fingers fiddle around the knobs and switches. The pink tip of his tongue peeks out from the seam of his mouth as he dials one last control, and something comes buzzing to life.
“Oh, that’s it,” he breathes, a relieved smile rising to his face.
“What’s what?”
“I synthesized it,” Superman says. “The spider that bit you.”
You frown, panic skipping behind your ribs. Carefully, like you’re some wounded animal and not a metahuman vigilante, “How’d you know about that?”
He just tilts his head owlishly, says, “Well, it’s in your genome. Says here that your DNA was introduced to radiation via bite two years ago.”
“That’s a fucking secret, Superman,” you bristle, sliding your palm over your exposed wrist.
“It’s really not.” He frowns down at the displays lighting up the console, casually scanning the lines of alien language that leave your truth naked to him. “And you can call me Kal-El. Kal, for short.”
Is he fucking serious?
He blinks at you, twice. No change in expression.
He’s being fucking serious, you realize. And that sinks something heavy in you, the knowing and the guilt.
That you aren’t a born metahuman. That you, of all people and chances, were accidentally bitten by the radioactive spider that was supposed to save the world. The same spider that contracted some previous pathogen from your blood it hadn’t been exposed to in a sterile lab and according to insider reports, wiped out the entire test-tube-grown population.
You’re harboring the secret to superhealing that could cure cancer while Luthorcorp sweeps up the last of their failed experiment. And Superman knows and somehow, he can remake the spider.
You take a steadying breath, arms crossing. It’s a sign of nervousness, but people do it for a reason, and you really need that security when it feels like he can see right through your skin and bone, like he can see the unnatural spider venom fused with your platelets.
“Aren’t you scared that I’ll find you out with a name like that?” you ask, tone level. Another robot wraps a benign hand around yours, peels it back to expose your spinnerets to the air again.
You shiver at the cold pressing into the inflamed swells.
He hums. “It’s my Kryptonian name. Like you said, I’m not spoiling the movie yet.”
Kal—your brain stutters at the thought of calling him that—turns to face you fully, cape sweeping around his ankles in some way that mesmerizes you. Smiles, soft. Leans back against the console like this is just another Tuesday.
“Great,” you mumble, knowing he can hear it. “Now I have to come up with a fake fake name.”
An amused scoff leaves him. “Kryptonian,” he corrects.
“Right.”
Neither of you say anything for a while. Just let the silence breathe a little steadier than it’s been for years. Let the console trill between beats, something strange happening in a weird prism attached to the metal as Kal synthesizes the spider.
You remember it. A web-funnel, mutated. Thin legs that hardly grazed your skin before it sank its fangs into the back of your neck.
You still have the scar, raised and thick, a reminder of the great responsibility that comes with your power.
Kal forces an exhale through his nose. Tightens his fists and presses them against the metal.
“That’s weird,” he says, voice rumbling with frustration like a storm on the horizon. Clicks his tongue, dimples flashing as he bites the inside of his cheek. “I can’t print it.”
Your thoughts screech to a halt. “Print? As in, printing an organism from, what—a scab?”
“Well—it’s not really a carbon copy.” He tucks his chin in, almost bashful. “Krypton had rules against that kind of stuff. It’s more bits and pieces than a sentient body.”
“Still,” you say, sitting up straighter, “that’s sick.”
His eyebrow twitches. Mutters, “Why, thank you,” in a way that’s so stunningly earnest that it makes your chest kick.
You don’t know why the question comes to mind. You don’t even know why you decide to act on your curiosity.
“So, do you have any weird alien stuff going on with your body? Other than the flying, obviously.”
Kal pauses. The loose curl lazing on his forehead sways slightly.
Quiet, with his eyes fixed on his bright boots, “I…have glands. That secrete…”
He winces like it’s something to be afraid of. “Pheromones.”
Your face falls flat.
“Dude, humans have those too.”
“I know,” he says, quickly. A little too quickly. Pushes off the console to pad over, hands clutched behind his cape in a sheepish manner. Bastard. “It’s different, though. They’re sensitive to touch and swell up every few months, like yours.”
Juts his chin out briefly, signaling the undersides of your swollen wrists still turned up to the bleak ceiling. You suddenly feel too exposed, and not exposed enough.
Kal continues, thumbing the underside of his jaw, where the hinge meets the soft lobe of his ear. “It’s around here.”
“So,” your start trails off for a moment. “How’d you fix it?”
You don’t expect him to tell you. You surely didn’t think he would blush scarlet. Almost scandalized, as if you were spreading hearsay on the streets of Gotham, that damn cesspool of rumors.
And it’s strange, how that sight of his ears and whole face blooming with a pretty color throws your stomach for a loop.
It’s now that a Superman Robot decides to butt into a conversation it was supposed to be a background in: “Why, it’s relieved due to his cycle.”
“Five,” he warns, low.
You swear Five shrugs in exasperation, like a teenager sick of their mom nagging them to clean their room.
“Cycle?” Your face morphs into one of curious surprise. How interesting, that metahumans have such strange anatomy. “Do tell. Do Kryptonians menstruate?”
Five creaks. “No, they—”
“I don’t,” Kal butts in, blush darkening. He averts his eyes, avoidance heavy in his already broad frame. “It’s...” Flicks his eyes to the ceiling like he’s waiting for an asteroid to strike him down. “...sort of like a rut.”
You blink once.
Twice.
“Okay.” You don’t miss the way your own voice squeaks. Like you’re trying to keep it cool. Like you aren’t actively shooting down any thoughts about what Superman in rut looks like. “So, do you secrete fluids or anything?”
He groans, burying his face into his palms. Almost whines when he laments, “Jesus, no, but I don’t ask if you shoot web fluid from anywhere else, do I?”
You burn bright. Eyebrows shooting up to a high angle. Yank your hands out of the light and fist them in your lap. “Well, it’s not like I’ve tried.”
He considers you for a moment. Works the inside of his cheek. Steals a look at the console, which blinks in error-code red.
Kal sighs, motioning for you to scoot your legs over. You comply, and he perches on the edge of the table, broad hand held out like a white flag.
“Gimme your hand.” It’s accompanied by the slightest wiggle of his fingers. “Superman Robots, you’re dismissed.”
You frown, but you’re already reaching for him. Tentatively, of course. You still need to retain some semblance of nonchalance. “Why?”
His skin is warm. Comforting in a way you didn’t expect it to be. He smooths his thumbs over the delicate skin of your wrist, careful to not press too hard.
You shiver nonetheless.
“The synthesizer doesn’t print radioactive material,” Kal explains, under-breath. Just on this side of loud enough for only the both of you as the robots march away. “But if I know one thing about swollen glands, it’s that they’re in need of release.”
A thrill of frisson races down your spine when he gently, ever-so-slightly brushes over your spinneret. There’s a difference to being touched by another, you learn, instead of yourself or a robot.
Feels like connection. Like your nerves want to shoot themselves out of the tiny little organs in your wrist and wrap around Kal’s careful fingers.
“See, when mine get inflamed, I soften the outer edges and progress inwards,” he continues, voice a lull in this too-bright, too-clean room. “That way, everything has somewhere to go.”
You hum, eyelids fluttering at the sight of his thick fingers soothing small circles on your skin. “You never told me whatever else happens during a Kryptonian rut.”
He pauses for a split second. Sits a little stiff, but keeps going even though his flush is returning. “I…can take care of myself, Spider-girl. There’s no need to wonder.”
The double entrende is so obvious that you fear Lex Luthor would outright call him dumb and not some pretentious, poetic word that would otherwise further emphasize naivete.
A soft laugh escapes you, bitten off at the end because he’s rolling over the tiny opening of your spinneret and god, stars burst in your head. Heat flickers in your cheeks, an unexpected wash of breathlessness sparking against your diaphragm.
“Funny,” you strain, trying to ignore the slow creep of something now curling in your belly. It’s quiet, and Kal tilts his body toward you just so to hear. And since when did Brylcreem and whole-milk smell like needing to shift your hips?
You mean for it to be a joke. Just something that had floated to the surface at the last second, and already, it was too late to stop yourself:
“Y’know, those fanboys were all about getting laid to destress.”
Kal pauses in his kneading of your wrist. The swelling has decreased, but your skin is still hot—less from the inflammation though, and more from the neck prickling, stomach somersaulting, would-Kal-be-good-at-kissing wrecking havoc on your body.
He studies you with a look that is just this side of hesitant. Parts his mouth a few times, not sure of what to say.
It’s now, with a maybe hanging in his shoulders, this slow breath he takes as he weighs his options, that you remember something Jimmy had shown you last week.
It was Kal, slamming into a metahuman at full-throttle. Jimmy quipped something about taking a punch and Superman unbarring the holds. Despite the gross underestimate you’re mentally trying to calculate, you think you could take it. You could keep up, if he’d let you.
He might be thinking the same, because he shifts his hold on you and guides your limp, unexpecting hand toward the underside of his jaw. Your fingertips brush against the soft, warm spot he showed you earlier, and he shivers.
It isn’t one that comes from the cold—it rips down his whole body in such a visceral way that you can’t help but hold your breath. It comes out in a shaky exhale and fluttering eyelids. The gland pulses under your touch, and you can feel how his blood is rushing faster beneath the skin, how the air ripens with a sweet, slightly earthy scent.
Like cinnamon in oatmeal on a chilly morning. Like an old, threadbare shirt that’s just small enough to be criminal, freshly dragged out of the dryer and warm on your skin. He smells unbelievably good, in a way that sets off a bloom of warmth over the knob of your neck, just beneath your bite scar.
Hypothesis: you think his pheromones are inadvertently doing something weird to your hormones.
What’s worse, you think that the seat of your panties might officially be damp.
“I read,” he starts quietly, voice laced with a rasp. You feel high-octane, an anticipating thrill running circles behind your ribs. “That spider mating season is happening right now.”
“Oh, yeah?” It comes out shakier than you want it to be. Your foundation’s crumbling, embarrassingly fast. “So you think my problem’s gotta do with not being horny enough?”
“Maybe,” he rumbles, voice almost a groan. “God, I might have that problem too.”
Your stomach coils tight, the end of your rope fraying and sparking with electricity. You want to drown in his heavy, homely scent forever. Kal presses down on your spinneret to remind you to respond, and all you can manage is a restrained, “Gonna do something about that, Kal-El?”
It’s less a snap under tension than a thunderclap of desperation. Kal is bearing down on you in seconds, forcing your back to press into the exam table’s hard surface, and his nose is buried so brutally against the crook of your neck that you’re sure something might bruise.
You gasp, heart thundering in anticipation. He’s heavy on you, two hundred something of superpowered muscle and sinew. And that wave of pheromones crests over your head, crashes down like vengeance.
“You smell so good,” he rasps. That sets you off, and you start to shift your hips up slightly, just enough to brush against the quickly growing tent in his trunks. To believe they were silly—now all you want is to peel them off with your teeth.
He glances up at you, and his eyes are blown so fucking wide that your heartbeat ratchets up at the sight. Barely a touch and you’re both already wrecked, and you’re reaching up to knot your hand in the short strands of soft hair at the back of his head. Kal makes a weak little sound.
“Sorry,” you mumble, pulling him closer to trace the top of your nose over the swollen gland just under the love of his ear. It’s like something’s taken hold of your body and helping your hormones stage a mutiny. Satiation coils low in your belly, and an uncontrollably coy smile rises to your mouth. “Can’t help myself.”
Bottom lip tempting, eyes glimmering with alien stars, he asks with a plea woven into his voice, “Can I kiss you?”
It’s strange.
One moment you’re half-ready to use your adhesion abilities to make him stick as closely as possible to your body, and the next, you’re being splashed with the reminder that he’s only ever seen your mouth and he’s asking for that.
Which is arguably the most intimate thing two people could do. The thing meant for people in love. You don’t love Superman. Hell, before today you hardly tolerated him—but that was before you found out he lives like you, and he’s secretly softer than you ever imagined, and he trusts more than he should.
And the request lances through the tenderest part of your chest. He’s asking. Not demanding. Not just crashing his lips over yours like the movies, where the dramatic irony is present that these two people really want each other and don’t need words.
Kal is…hesitant. Gentleness chemically bonded to the calcium in his bones. Consideration glueing together every thought that crosses his mind.
You hum, the thought of him treating you like a lover settling next to the desire piling in your stomach with uncharacteristic quietness.
“Wouldn’t that be improper?” you deflect. You betray yourself, though, sneaking a glance at his parted, pinkened mouth.
He cranes his neck to find a sweet spot you didn’t know you had—just beneath the swell of your throat—and you suppress the choked sound begging to escape from you.
“Is it?”
Wry, “You tell me. Kissing on the mouth is meant to be somewhat affectionate. Elicits chemical response, nerve endings, blah-blah-blah, et. al.”
He smothers an amused huff into your skin, broad, warm hands kneading slow circles over your hips. Smiles against the slope of your neck. Breathes deep, voice hoarse, “‘S there something wrong with that?”
“You hardly know me.”
“I know.” Kal pauses to crack a smile. It’s real. Genuine. Makes your heart leap to heights it hasn’t before. “But I admire you. I want to know you.”
And fuck, if that doesn’t land. He wants to know you. For the first time, the suggestion doesn’t sound half bad.
Still, you decide to blame it on pheromonal-slash-hormonal mutiny when you tug him closer by the curls to kiss him.
Kal’s sigh is full-bodied. Tension evaporates from his bones. The sound he makes is less a moan than quiet acceptance of pleasure.
Sparks fly in your brain, ricochet down to your core. Feeling his plush lips sliding over yours in such a cradling, gentle way does something to you. Placates the storm boiling in your lungs, calms the thundering of your heart.
Feels almost right, in a way.
You let your instincts take over. Let one of your hands trail down to find his, guide it to wiggle between the waist seam of your costume. Need pulls at you, sharp and incessant.
The soft, whispery sounds leaving his mouth between increasingly hungry kisses are getting a little louder, a little more desperate. Wanton. Needy.
They finally reach a peak when he dips his hand beneath your waistband, nudges aside the thin panties you wear under the lycra. When his fingertips prod at the wet spot in the gusset. When you feel something go pop, or release, or just float away from your skin, and suddenly you can smell something sweeter and familiar mingling with Kal’s scent, and he just grinds his hardness into your thigh without warning or shame.
“You have glands?” he manages, dipping down to lap at your exposed neck. You shiver when he moves to another spot, his spit drying to the frigid air of the fortress. “No wonder you smelled like heaven.”
You’re just this side of lucid, but you can tell it won’t be long before you’re lost to delirium. Already your head is cottony, hardly tethered to gravity.
Another experimental grind into your thigh sends you into near frenzy, nerves going haywire as Kal breathes sweet nothings in your ear, broad fingertips slowly stroking over your cotton-covered cunt.
Waiting. Biding his time with pupils dilated so wide that they make you feel small. Frisson shoots up your spine when he presses a little hard, toeing the boundary.
Then it happens. It shouldn’t have been so significant, but here he is, responding to your half-cracked moan with one of his own, punctuated by a rock of his clothed cock.
You burn. But the desperation is getting to you. Like spinning-vision, chest-kicked-in desperation. The kind that makes you abandon all sense and plead, softly, “Please?”
Kal hiccups into your shoulder, hips rutting faster onto your thigh as he scoops your panties to the side. He blazes his fingertips through the wetness gathered at your seam—you shiver. Works his index finger in with hardly restrained enthusiasm, and you tighten your legs at the raw stretch.
He falls into line fairly quickly. Puts his superhuman adaptability to the test, taking only a few rocks and a crook of his finger to find a spot that makes you keen into his soft curls. Fireworks whistle in your core, and you’re helpless to the grind that takes over and makes you jerk your hips to meet the moment he sinks another into your cunt, down to the hilt.
You feel like a fucking teenager with him at your neck and you buried in his hair. Him throwing his weight behind the dry, wanting thrusts he’s pushing against you and you squirming as he finger-fucks you like a means to an end.
He rolls his thumb over your clit.
To clarify: he rolls his thumb over your clit. Fuck.
Kal responds to your gasp with a whimper of his own, breaths coming short and fast. Teases you again—and then another again, and over and over until the soft sounds leaving your mouth are the only thing you can hear over his low moans—the rough pad of his fingerprint catching on your nerves like a spark lit too bright, burning up too fast.
You’re at the edge of your wits.
Then he does the unthinkable. Well, as unthinkable as having his fingers in you, which was unthinkable an hour ago.
But this is somehow worse, and simultaneously the best thing that’s ever happened to you.
Kal takes your wrist. It’s terribly unfair, the way his hands are so skillful, gently smoothing his thumb over your still-swollen spinneret while the other does the same to your equally sensitive clit.
And he brings it to his mouth, scrapes his tongue hot over the tiny slit in your skin. You think you feel a vibration of something—a choked-out moan. Maybe your name, whined quiet like a question.
You can’t tell. You’re already cresting, mumbles pitched into his sweet-smelling skin, “Kal, Kal—fuck, that’s—”
He fucks you through your orgasm, even when you’re letting out an embarrassed whine at how the euphoria takes you, how control slips from your grasp for just a second. How he moans loud and searing into the skin of your wrist as a little spurt of web fluid escapes your spinneret.
And he fucking swallows it. This goddamn freak.
Your breaths shiver as you float down from your high. Between this moment and the next, Kal has stopped rutting your thigh, and a tacky heat blooms just above your skin.
Did he...?
“Shucks,” he gasps, unlatching his mouth from your skin. The sight of your spinneret, clear of any inflammation, greets you like a guilty accomplice. A spidery string of web fluid trails from the corner of his mouth. Repeats himself, a little clearer, “Aw, shucks.”
“What?” you croak, blinking a few times to readjust your vision. The pale ceiling swims above you.
“Nothing,” he stammers, shifting his hips guiltily. Slowly works his fingers out of you, coated to the knuckle with your arousal. You long for the ache, even after the sharp pull in your gut has subsided.
“Come in your trunks like a virgin?”
“Spider-girl!” He rushes to sit up, facing himself away with his ears tinged in a mortified scarlet. “That’s improper.”
Hypocrite.
You wiggle the waist of your costume back over your hips and prop yourself up on your elbows. “So, putting your fingers in your mouth isn’t?”
Kal freezes, caught. Angles his head slightly to glance at you from his peripheral, and there those skillful digits are, resting on the plush of his slick bottom lip. And if that doesn’t send a sharp sting of need through your chest, you’d be a traitor to human nature.
“You win,” he mutters, eyes flicking up in a manner so petulant you’re almost endeared by it. “You do taste good. I should collect a sample next time.”
You’ve half the urge to preen at that. Or smile. Or duck your head down and let the flush come to your cheeks, because Superman is pretty sweet for a guy who doesn’t know how to mind his own fucking business and leave you alone in Queensland Park.
“Next week, then?” you ask, pulling down your mask. Just to tease. Prod. See if he blushes on command.
He leaps into some semblance of properness, spine straining like he’s been drawn, quartered, and trying to keep himself together. His blush is blotchy, sitting somewhere between souring from panic and unfurled flustering.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he stammers. Some shy bastard he is. Real slick.
You’re wry when you counter with, “Well, I did. Your glands are still swollen.”
Kal considers you for a moment. Really looks at you, like he’s trying to figure out your inner workings. “So you’re suggesting we continue collaborating to offset our unfortunate biological responses.”
Well, said like that, you’ll admit that you would be floundering for your words too.
A sudden flare of meekness smokes between your lungs. “Sure.”
He tucks his tongue into his cheek, a secretive grin blooming at the corners of his mouth. That shouldn’t make something uncurl in your chest. Shouldn’t make your stomach leap like it does.
“Then next week, Spider-girl.”
—
You’re still thinking about Superman when you clock into work the day after.
How he smiled like you were the only person in the world. How he clutched you so gently when he flew you back to that billboard in Queensland, did a flip in the air when you asked.
Or how he stopped halfway into the trick, hovering upside-down in the air, cape fluttering right-side-up in the rippling wind. Grinned at you all coyly. Kissed the junction of your neck, right over the same spot he had moaned into an hour earlier.
Said goodnight, Spidey with a silly little wave and dimples winking at you, as if he was oblivious to the heat starting to simmer in your core again. Maybe he was. You like to think that he wasn’t.
“Woah,” Cat says, the click of her Louboutins grinding to a full halt. The ice in her matcha latte—oat milk, jasmine syrup, 60% sweetness, and it's already beading with condensation—shifts by a hair before falling still. “Well, Miss Genius, I’d say you have a glow about you.”
You flash a nervous grin, trying not to reveal too much. God knows how bad the gossip bug infects Cat Grant when she notices someone is just a sliver off from yesterday. “Is that so?”
“Yes,” she ponders. Nods slowly, hair bobbing along with her. Purses her lips in that hint-hint, nudge-nudge way she does, trying to be inconspicuous about her interrogating. “Did you and Clark manage to sort things out somehow?”
A flash of cold sears down your spine. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, hun, he’s positively bioluminescent.” Cat tilts her head like a—well, a cat, as she is so aptly named. You’ve half the mind to quip something about curiosity killing, but you follow the angle of her head and oh.
Clark is positively bioluminescent. As in, the sun is filtering in from one of the high windows, and he’s bobbing his head to a song only he knows like a metronome, and are his feet fucking swinging under the desk?
What the fuck’s got him so cheery?
“So how was it?”
Cat’s wearing her Cheshire grin like a vintage fur coat found in new condition, eyes wide and imploring behind her huge glasses. You stuff down the panic gripping your heart and turn back to your article, fraught with annotations from the layout editor—because of course your shit doesn’t fit in the page without needing to fuck with the VA.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you breathe, propping your elbow against your desk so you can tuck your mouth behind your hand. “I’m a little too busy to be sorting anything out, especially with Clark Kent.”
“I’m talking about sex. And I’m gonna find out who the hell it was that’s got you badly hiding a lovesick grin—yes, I can see it—behind your hand.”
“Jesus, Cat, can’t I come to work with a little pep in my step?”
“No, you can’t.” She throws her head back with a mini cackle, heels resuming their usual chic click against the bullpen floors as she struts back to her desk. “I’m onto you, genius!”
“Good to know!” you call after her, heart still racing. Fucking hell.
Someone lets out a soft snort from across the room. You zoom in with your hearing, the hairs at the back of your neck prickling—it's Clark. A barebones grin rests on his lips as he shakes his head in slight amusement.
Whatever. It’s not your business, especially with a guy who seems to dislike you so much for a simple opinion.
It doesn’t matter that Cat thinks he’s wearing the same post-sex glow you’re wearing. Really. It doesn’t.
And it doesn’t matter that you can smell the faintest thread of Brylcreem either. Or that his hair is strangely familiar now that you’ve seen Kal’s curls in wrecked disarray. Or that the bow of his lip weirdly, uncannily known to you.
You grumble and wretch your screen to obscure your view of him.
Right. You have work to do, articles to finish, layout editors to argue with. And you have another date with Superman in one week.
So whatever Clark is up doesn’t matter.
Seriously.
note: hiii just a disclaimer that i do not have a part 2 in the books.... "but june what if u do have a part 2 eventually!!" i mean this as kindly as possible but eventually = an eternity, so please do not ask me about any continuations because you will Know if i am writing a continuation :))
hii i just wanted to ask how should i get more into the dc fandom (specifically like the robins and batfam) 😭😭 idk what media to consume or how what to watch
comics comics and btas!! dc infinite also has "get to know" collections for most of the main batfam members (sans duke, but i rec batman&signal and we are robin). tbh i tend to stay away from wayne family adventures as a fic writer, it's fluffy but not well characterized. sadly i'm currently more of a superman/zatanna reader so reddit would be a better rec source esp if u want to get niche and underrated!!
hi junie! i was wondering how long it usually takes you to finish a fic, it feels like you pump them out so fast lol! love your writing x
there's so many factors for me so this is going to be an under the cut response
sooo when i get an idea, i outline it asap in notes/word/tumblr drafts and write the exposition + tidbits of important dialogue i want. from there, i twiddle my thumbs and watch a show instead LMAO but in all seriousness, many of my fics i've conceived a long time ago, i just hop around and write them gradually depending on how excited i feel about the idea. if i had a brand new idea today, it would be Months before i truly finish as i have other fics i want to write more
for example: i wrote 'night's so blue' and 'unfold your love' at the same time over 3 wks because i was on break and geared up for clark kent summer. my doc for 'soft and only you' was created in august, and the process was fun so i wrapped up 18k in a month. for my bruce fic, i came up with it last year and left ~2k in the dust until i felt bad for leaving him in purgatory 😭😭😭 However, i've also been actively writing part 5 to 'kansas anymore' since january, and i've had 2 jason todd wips from last july, but i just take longer on them because i tend to redo scenes if they don't hit the way i thought they would 💔
if it's a burning horny ficlet idea, yeah i can manage 1k in a day...? But if nothing's urgent i lowkey wave my hands like mr. peabody and pick a lucky wip to look at with fresh eyes and try my best to finish and perfect it in a few weeks. 🥳🥳
horndog boyfriends jason todd && ck-prime (18+) ₊˚⊹
"guys, you will not believe what happened today—" clark stumbles as he rushes to toe his shoes off, probably eager to rant about the idiots he had to talk to at the comic store.
the couch's squeak gets cut off as jason freezes behind you. his cock manages a single, pathetic throb in your cunt before he grumbles, "can it wait until—i don't know—we're done here?"
you can practically see the way his face pinches, even though he's buried your face halfway into the cushions. clark's mouth opens, then closes, and opens again.
"uh...you're telling me to wait, but you started without me?" he asks, offense clear in his tone.
you flick your eyes up, gaze meeting your boyfriend's sharp, tensed jaw. yeah, you think to yourself, he was definitely about to come.
"well, get over here, genius," you say to your other boyfriend, pushing yourself up onto your forearms. jason takes it a step further and pulls you against his flushed, firm chest, effortlessly taking you with him as he sits up.
"don't waste your time," he teases, hooking your pliant legs over his knees and spreading you for your third to see how deep you're taking him.
you hold your arms out to him while shifting to chide, "don't provoke him, jay."
he presses soft lips to your shoulder, so unlike the way he'd been fucking you before the welcome interruption. "sorry."
clark steps closer, pulling off his shirt in one smooth motion. jason throbs in your pussy again at the shield burned into clark's chest, at the taunting grin on his face. "yeah, jay, stop being an instigator."
you give him an exasperated look and readjust yourself the best you can with seven inches in your pussy. with a grunt, jason's hand flashes out and drags clark to kneel at eyelevel with your joined sexes. your thighs are trembling when he settles between them without a complaint, like second nature.
"oh," clark swallows unsteadily, crystal-blue eyes transfixed on your pussy, "i guess i can pipe down for a little."
the stretch in your legs and the pleasure simmering under your skin makes your head hazy, and clark nudging his nose against your clit feels like an afterthought.
“so pretty like this.” his words are warm on your inner thigh, smarting along your tendons. jason hisses when you flutter around him, tipping his hips up in return. your sigh trembles at the nudge of his cockhead against that spot that makes your vision go blurry.
the calluses on jason's fingers trail up beneath your soft camisole, catch on your nipple, the pert bud hitching between his thumb and forefinger. your thighs twitch again, and clark settles his warm, warm hands on your skin. the heat stays even after he moves on.
“can you touch yourself for me, baby?” when clark says it, he laps at the ring of arousal pooling at jason's base, dripping down his balls. the man behind you mutters a quiet fuck into your neck, gripping your waist for dear life.
you’re still so sensitive when you press your fingers to your clit and trace small, jerky circles over it. clark watches you and jason squirm, drinking in every flex in jason’s fingers and every attempt to close your thighs.
you whine, breathy and low, and he must be having enough of it because he dips forward and laps at your fingers as they slide between your labia. you make another pitched noise, gasping in tandem with jason.
jason lets one of his hands inch down, down, down until his fingers twist in clark's curls, until he’s pulling the black haired man closer into where the two of you are joined, until—
“fuck—clark, y’re filthy,” he groans. jason doesn’t wait for his boyfriend to respond, nipping at the tender area under your ear that makes you jerk your fingers just a little faster and moan just a little louder.
clark matches your pace, tongue cleaning the slick off your skin, mouth suckling at your clit when you pull into the apex of the tight circles you’ve been drawing. jason's right; it is fucking filthy.
he can’t stop rutting his hips up into your cunt, chasing the flat of clark's tongue as he swipes it across your fingers again. you shudder when jason moans, and clark just goes straight back to mouthing all over your clit and the hilt of jason's cock.
your stomach is starting to knot up again, neck tightening, shoulder blade drawing together. jason's as wound-up as you are, too caught in the web of your fingers and clark's tongue and the way you’re clamping just right around his cockhead.
your free hand joins jason's in the nest of black curls making a home between both of your thighs; you tug, just a bit, at the base near clark's scalp.
the man makes a low, stomach-deep sound that comes out rumbling around your stretched-out slit. jason's strained fuck goes ricocheting between your ribs, pinging right into your heat.
you coil clark's hair around and pull again; he makes the same choked noise, burying himself deeper into you and jason. you aren’t even sure if he can breathe there or if the cream that’s leaking out of your cunt is all he needs to fucking sustain himself.
clark pulls back and lets his eyes hunt the movement of your fingers slipping in your own wetness and his saliva. jason reels him back in by the back of his neck, muttering dirty nothings into your ear.
and then you swear you see stars, because clark is pressing his touch to your clit too, grazing his teeth over both of your fingers. jason grinds up for the nth time, twitching in in the way he always does when his balls are touched into that spongy spot that has you whining: please, jay, clark, right there, don’t stop—
he cleans yours and jason’s mess; the gothamite’s hips thrust mindlessly when he cums, heat spilling from your spasming cunt as your digits freeze up. clark's fingers don’t, and he keeps tracing shapes that aren’t even circles anymore all over your twitching clit.
you moan, low and spent and fuck, you can’t help but try to slam your legs close again. “cee, s’too much, please, i can’t.”
he just tilts his head to the side, shallowly digging his teeth into the plush of your thigh. clark taps at the junction of jason’s softening cock and balls—he shudders against your back, whimpering.
the freckles on clark’s forehead follow the movement of his brows when they tilt up and his breath goes beady in the humidity at the peak of your sex when he begs:
“can i please, please talk about that dumb fuck at the store while you both suck it?”
i just wanted to ask if u have any tips on how to characterize superboy prime properly ?? because seeing ur fanfics, u portray him so well !!! 😭😭 sighhh why am i struggling :/ !!!??
why yes!! i'm assuming u mean how he's characterized for DC All In, because Whew sbp used to be a menace. i think the most recent issue of superman is the truest to his post-death metal character, he's very silly and meta and passionate about media + wants people to see that he's genuinely changed since the crisis events.
prime for sure has the weirdest vocab, like "babe i need to tell you something but please don't wayne me" PAUSE BRO 😭😭😭 he's that one meme where the girl grabs her bf's lips. D1 ragebaiter, iirc he's canonically a troll. as a bf, he'd be the teasing but sweet type, a la caleb xia and invincible variant. prizes communication (and praise) a lot. also presents powerpoints on why lobdell and king deserve jail (he's right). big fan of messy sex and eating, a bigger fan of aftercare and pillow talk is mostly him yapping about losers who think they're batman HAHA
some canon resources u could reference are the current supes issue, death metal, and just the main infinite earths/infinite crisis storylines (the tie-ins are a pain to read & kinda optional anyway) 💗💗
hallo faye could i drop dead for "let's meet at our spot" with jason todd,, also hugeeee congrats on 6k!! we don't interact much but ur sooo unbelievably talented && i always love ur gorg themes 🥳💗💗
hiii june!! ur actually the cutest and sweetest ever!! i love ur blog sm. believe me when i say i’m always lurking like a secret admirer 🤭 also i loveee this req!!
join the celly!
ex!jason todd x reader, kinda angst but mostly fluff and awkwardness, kinda ooc!jason (?), ‘skinny dipping’ by sabrina carpenter references, (2.5k+ words)
Jason might be in over his head.
He kept picking at the loose thread on the sleeve of his shirt until it’s now torn, and the stitching has lost its hold. It’ll unravel by the end of the day. It’s peak summer anyway; why’s he wearing long sleeves?
He should’ve worn the first shirt he picked out. But you’ve seen him wear that plain black shirt a million times.
Were these long sleeves too much, though?
Jason glanced down at his shirt. It was nice. A nice shirt. Well, it was nice before he started picking at the stitching.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. It was you.
Be there in 10!
You were supposed to meet at 1:30. He checked the time and saw it was only 1:12. He’d been standing there for about fifteen minutes now. Jason realized there had been no reason for him to be there so early. Why the fuck did he get there so early?
Nineteen hours, thirty-eight minutes and forty-two seconds. That’s how long it’s been since he first texted you, breaking a long drought of silence that grew between you for the last two months, two weeks, four days and a couple of hours.
Not that he’d been keeping count or anything.
ˆBut if he was (keeping count), it was exactly at 3:17 pm yesterday that you replied to his very sudden, very desperate “let’s meet at our spot” message with a very witty, very snarky, “welcome back from the dead, jason todd (again).” message.
Yeah, he deserved that one. And the many more you’d likely throw his way today.
God, it was hot out. He was sweating. Was he sweating through his shirt? If he’d worn the black shirt, it’d be harder to tell than with red. Fuck, should’ve just worn the stupid black shirt.
The soft dingle of a bell distracted him, following a wave of laughter as a group of teenage girls stepped out of the coffee shop he was standing in front of. Jason watched as they walked in front of him, each of them with different coloured iced drinks, green, pink, brown—even blue?—before they walked into the small bookstore next door.
Jason noticed there was a display of war novels in the window. It made him frown. You’re going to hate seeing that. You always hated military fiction. You always called it military propaganda, even if it wasn’t glorifying warfare.
Maybe he should get you a drink. He still remembered your order; you’d get the same thing every time. Maybe that barista still worked there; maybe they still remembered both yours and Jason’s usual.
But he hasn’t been here in a while. What if the barista quit?
What if you didn’t like that drink anymore?
But it was hot, and you’d probably appreciate it. He could imagine you grinning sweetly when you saw him holding your favourite drink.
Should he have gotten you flowers?
Footsteps slowed somewhere behind him. Jason turned before he could stop himself.
It was you.
For one impossible second, everything else seemed to dissolve. The chatter spilling out from the patio of the coffee shop faded into a distant hum, traffic blurred into meaningless noise, and even the suffocating summer heat loosened its grip around him. There was only the stretch of sidewalk between the two of you.
His hand lifted in an awkward wave before he could think better of it. Immediately, he regretted it. Should he have walked over instead? Met you halfway? Stayed where he was?
His feet had apparently made the decision for him.
They weren’t moving.
But you spotted him almost instantly.
The smile that spread across your face was sweet, the sort of smile that happened before you even realized you were smiling.
You waved back, and you picked up your pace.
As you got closer, Jason found himself noticing everything at once: the breeze catching the ends of your hair, sunlight slipping through the leaves overhead, scattering shifting patches of light across your shoulders as you walked beneath them. The familiar bounce in your step. The way your gaze kept darting back to him every few seconds, as though you wanted to make sure he hadn’t disappeared while you weren’t looking.
His eyes couldn’t seem to settle on just one thing.
You’d cut your hair. Not by much, but enough that it framed your face differently than he remembered.
Your skin had caught the summer sun, warmer now than the last time he’d seen you—when it was still cold and gloomy. The earrings were familiar, but the purse slung over your shoulder instead of the old backpack you’d carried everywhere was new.
You stopped just in front of him, close enough now that he could make out the little flecks of colour in your eyes that he’d forgotten existed.
You stopped in front of him.
“Hi,” you said kindly.
Jason hadn’t realized he’d started smiling until it hurt.
“Hey.”
Neither of you moved.
And then a couple of seconds passed.
You shifted your weight, smiling in that uncertain way people did when they didn’t know what to do.
You took another step forward.
Jason’s body reacted before his brain could, and he took half a step back.
“…Oh.” You froze.
Heat crawled at his neck. Nice going. Thirty seconds and he’s already made this weird.
“Sorry—” he blurted.
“No, I—”
“—I didn’t mean—”
You laughed, the sound escaping more out of embarrassment than anything else. “That was weird—I don’t know what I was doing."
“I just— Sorry. I don’t know what happened. I panicked.”
You raised your brows, amused. “You panicked?”
“...Yeah, a bit.”
That earned him a real laugh.
“Oh,” you teased, “do you think I was going in for a hug?”
Jason grinned, “You totally were.”
“Yeah, maybe,” you shrugged, no shame in your voice.
“I just wasn't sure if...” Jason glanced down at the pavement before looking back at you. “...if that’s still something we do.”
Something softened in your face. “Yeah, me neither.”
Jason watched as the strap of your bag slipped down your shoulder, and without thinking, your fingers reached up to hook it back into place. A second later, they drifted lower, absentmindedly finding the rings you always wore.
Jason nodded, unsure what to say next. Nonsensical chatter had never been his strongest suit.
He watched you fix the strap of your purse as it slipped from your shoulder, and he took this as a chance to look at you again. Your earrings were familiar, and you had colourful nail polish on. Were those new shoes? He’d never seen them before.
“Uh, you look grea—”
“Did you—?”
“Oh.”
“Sorry.” You said this time.
“No, it’s my bad.” he shook his head. “You go.”
“No, you go.”
“It wasn’t anything important, seriously.”
You paused, looking up at him. “…this is weird. Do you feel weird?”
Jason let out a breath. “I thought it was just me.”
“No, I feel it.” You said and started to twist the rings on your fingers. That made Jason’s shoulders relax; it was familiar—he’d seen you do that millions of times before when you were nervous.
Wait. Were you nervous? Right now? With him? Did he still make you nervous?
“Did you want to grab a drink?” you asked, nodding to the cafe. “It’s hot, and the AC would be nice.”
Jason glanced over his shoulder.
The little bell above the door jingled every few seconds as people came and went, letting bursts of cool air spill onto the sidewalk. He hadn’t realized just how miserable the heat had become until the thought of stepping inside sounded like a lifesaver.
“...Yeah. That’d be great.”
The blast of air conditioning hit them the moment the door swung shut behind them.
Jason let out a quiet breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
The café looked almost exactly the same.
The scratched hardwood floors. The mismatched tables squeezed beside the front windows. Someone had added a shelf of secondhand books along the back wall since he’d last been there, but everything else was stubbornly familiar. Even the old playlist still floated lazily through the speakers overhead.
“I haven’t been here in a while,” you said, following Jason to the back of the small line. “Oh, no. Jamie’s not here.”
Jason turned to you, “Huh?”
“The barista,” you frowned, “I liked them. They made the coolest art on the lattes.” Then you beamed, turning to him fully, “Oh my god, Jason, do you remember that one time when they made a bird on your cappochinto?”
The line shuffled forward as he nodded. Your eyes were as wide as the day Jamie handed the mug to Jason. He could still remember the gasp you made, instantly pulling your phone out to take a million pictures of his drink and gushing to Jamie about it. “Yeah, that was cool.”
Jason glanced at the menu up on the wall.
“You getting your usual?”
You tilted your head at the sign, lips pursed in exaggerated concentration. Jason noticed you were wearing a new perfume now. It was nice.
“Actually,” You looked up with a smile. “I think I wanna try something new.”
“Oh?”
“I’ll get what you’re having.”
That made Jason do a double take. “…You sure?”
“Yeah.” You nodded, “I mean, you’re not planning on getting a hot drink, right?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Then, yeah, I’ll get what you get.”
He looked at you for another second before shaking his head.
“You won’t like it.”
“How would you know?”
“Because you always like your coffee ridiculously sweet.”
You sputtered in disbelief, “What? No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.” Jason couldn’t stop the grin spreading across his face even if he tried.
“I don’t—”
“You always get iced vanilla lattes.”
“That’s—”
“With like three pumps of caramel.”
“—ridicoulous. I’ve never—”
“Sometimes you don’t even get coffee—those, uh, colourful drinks.”
“Refreshers? That’s like rare.”
“You got them like every Saturday.”
You stared at him, mouth open in a wide smile. “You remember that?”
Jason shrugged one shoulder, suddenly very interested in the pastry display beside the register. “Yeah—I mean, yeah. I remember.”
The line moved again, carrying the two of you to the front.
“What can I get started for you two?” the barista asked with an easy smile.
Jason stepped forward.
“I’ll get an iced flat white.”
Before the barista could type it in, your voice came from beside him.
“Make that two, please.”
“You’re serious?”
You looked entirely too pleased with yourself.
“Just let me have this.”
The barista smiled to herself as she finished punching the order into the register. “Two iced flat whites.”
It was strange. Sitting by the same window you usually did, but not at your same old table. The old one had been tucked farther into the corner. From there, you could see the entire street outside—the bookstore, the crooked streetlamp, the restaurant across the street with the patio where people always fought over the last empty table whenever the weather got nice like today. This one only gave him half of it.
Something about looking out a familiar window from the wrong seat made the whole afternoon feel slightly off-centre.
Like trying to remember a dream and realizing one detail was wrong enough to make the whole thing foreign.
Jason wrapped a hand around his cup, letting the cold seep into his palm.
Across from him, you finally took your first sip.
“How is it?”
You paused before swallowing, “…good.”
Jason raised an eyebrow. “Good?”
“Yeah,” you nodded a little too soon, “It’s.. It’s delicious.”
He looked at you for a long minute. “Why’re you making that face?”
“What face?”
“That face you’re making—”
“I’m not making a face—”
“You are. Your mouth’s all twisted—”
“There’s no face. It’s good. It’s a good latte.”
“It’s a flat white.” Jason corrected you, taking a long sip for himself, making an unnecessarily exaggerated show of enjoying it.
You watched him with narrowed eyes before looking back down at your own drink, turning the cup slowly between your hands.
Your thumb traced absent circles through the condensation gathering on the plastic. “…Since when do you drink these?”
He looked up. “What’d you mean?”
“I thought you always drank your coffee black. Apart from cappuccinos, of course. But you only ordered those because you liked the art, and the lattes had too much milk.”
Jason blinked. Of all the things you'd remembered... That’s one of them?
He looked down into his cup.
“..Guess I’m trying something new.”
The answer came out before he’d really thought about it. He wasn’t even sure if it was true.
You hummed softly.
Then, with considerably less confidence than before, took another sip.
Your face scrunched almost immediately.
“...It’s bitter,” you finally admit.
“I knew it.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Jason smiled. He watched you fight back a grin, hiding it as you turned your head to look out the window.
Then, without a word, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a sugar packet. And then a couple more. He had grabbed a handful before you sat down. Jason put them on the table and slid them over to you until the paper nudged your finger.
Your eyes widened when you noticed, and you didn’t fight your smile this time as you tore open the packets. “Thanks,” you said, and poured all of them into your cup.
“Better?” he asked when you mixed your drink and tried it again.
You nodded, a little sheepishly, “A bit.”
“I can get you another drink if you want.”
“No. It’s fine.” You looked down into the cup again before smiling to yourself. “I’ll finish this one.”
Bonus:
When you stepped back outside, the afternoon didn't feel nearly as unforgiving.
The sun was still bright, still hanging lazily above Gotham's skyline, but the worst of the heat had settled into something gentler. A warm breeze drifted between the buildings, carrying the smell of coffee beans and old paper from somewhere nearby.
Your conversations came easier now. Neither of you had brought up the past, worldlessly deciding to keep it bureaucratic. You didn’t harp on old arguments or on why things hadn’t worked out the first time. It was all water under the bridge anyway; you’re both different than how you were months ago.
But it was still nice to have that small sense of familiarity. of walking side by side without thinking too hard on it. Close enough that shoulders brush and touch every few steps.
You slowed your steps as you neared the entrance of the bookstore next door and stopped when you reached the front window.
Jason took another couple of steps before realizing you weren’t beside him anymore.
You were standing in front of the display, arms folded tightly across your chest, staring through the glass with the kind of offended curve of your lip.
Jason doubled back until he was standing beside you again.
“So…” he said carefully. “What is it?”
You gestured lamely to the window, at the sign proudly declaring a new fictional war novel series in bold red lettering.
oh wow..... i had to get up and walk a lap they're the cutest 😭😭
Jason glanced down at his shirt. It was nice. A nice shirt. Well, it was nice before he started picking at the stitching.
awkward jason right off the bat like what happened to hi hello how are you,, he's so perfect and sweet in ur style i love him dearly
And the two month radio silence ohhhh reunion angst is so back 🤧
Jason noticed there was a display of war novels in the window. It made him frown. You’re going to hate seeing that. You always hated military fiction. You always called it military propaganda, even if it wasn’t glorifying warfare.
read this and started olivia wilde nodding for The Art of Noticing right right... and the hatred of the military #REALLL
For one impossible second, everything else seemed to dissolve. The chatter spilling out from the patio of the coffee shop faded into a distant hum, traffic blurred into meaningless noise, and even the suffocating summer heat loosened its grip around him. There was only the stretch of sidewalk between the two of you.
that one gif of penelope featherington writing like she's running out of time Whew what a paragraph Whew these yearners
Your skin had caught the summer sun, warmer now than the last time he’d seen you—when it was still cold and gloomy.
ok i have to highlight this one like "caught the summer sun" is INSANE someone please get me a cigarette so i can read like a true scholar 🚬🚬
“Actually,” You looked up with a smile. “I think I wanna try something new.” / “Oh?” / “I’ll get what you’re having.” / That made Jason do a double take. “…You sure?”
It was strange. Sitting by the same window you usually did, but not at your same old table. The old one had been tucked farther into the corner. From there, you could see the entire street outside—the bookstore, the crooked streetlamp, the restaurant across the street with the patio where people always fought over the last empty table whenever the weather got nice like today. This one only gave him half of it.
Something about looking out a familiar window from the wrong seat made the whole afternoon feel slightly off-centre.
the symbolism in this.... woah the sad ross gif is necessary
Then, without a word, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a sugar packet. And then a couple more. He had grabbed a handful before you sat down. Jason put them on the table and slid them over to you until the paper nudged your finger.
this is when i got up and walked around the room... he's literally the sweetest ever i'm weak 🤧🤧💗
all 2.5k words are sososo scrumptious and the bonus OMG 💔💔💔 don't even play i would adopt them.
faye believe me when i say this is soooo reminiscent of 'before sunrise' (my letterboxd top 4), like their conversations just flow so well and reveal a lot about their relationship if that makes sense. i'm being redundant but u are SOOO talented and ur style is so real and sweet!!
happy 6k to the moot whose blog i also lurk on like a secret admirer 🥳💗💗
it's perfectly fine to blow some steam with the so-called 'detective' you hate. it's also perfectly fine to turn around and talk shit about him to your best friend.
— wc 4.3k, suggestive content, menaces/bffs to luvs, making out, identity silliness, 2-timing but also not really, banter, fluff and cuteness
— title from bad habit by steve lacy, im crazy for the jimenez/rpat bat but u can imagine him as any version tbh!!
BATMAN WOULD BE YOUR FAVORITE CRIME, apart from the fact that you, in no way, are a criminal.
Every day before you slip that Gazette badge into your pocket, you tell yourself that he's just a guy in a suit. A six-two, totally ripped, and infuriatingly genius guy who has a penchant for out-scooping you.
Mysterious sounds in the sewers? The Bat's already got that solved, and spoiler alert—it's Killer Croc, again.
Local gang war? Oh, don't worry about it. There won't be much reporting needed, because the leaders have been strung up above Main Street with Bat-rope.
Journalists always have some paranoid, skeptical chip in their shoulders. You're worried that this could be some sort of telepathic link or something. Why else would Batman be haunting your headlines like he does every pitch-black alleyway in this damned city?
So, naturally, you find ways to take out your frustration.
"God, how many compartments do you need?" you grit, fingers scrabbling for the right seam in his suit. You aren't a stranger to wrestling his cowl off, but it's hard in complete darkness, and you've almost cut yourself on a hidden blade more than once.
But that's how it always is with Batman. Darkness, danger, a knife's edge between will he, won't he. Schrodinger's Bat, if you will.
The alley you're crammed in isn't really one. It's a side-street, tucked between a condo and a rowhouse. Clean and quiet, in a way that would be surprising if you weren't in the nicer part of the city that lines the financial district.
You suppose the night is why he even lets you touch him at all. The myth turned man, right at your fingertips. He sows a line of kisses from the right corner of your mouth to your ear, squirming out of your grip on purpose because last time, he admitted to finding you cute when you were frustrated.
You had half the mind to gag, and the other half you buried deep into the meat of your brain, where it will rot and follow you forever. The thought comes back now, that maybe he's not that bad of a bad guy.
(It’s not like you hate him. It’s just…you wish he’d leave some of the fun for you—after all, there’s nothing exhilarating in simple reporting. You want excitement, the thrill of the chase.)
At least he knows how to push your buttons.
"Not that hard," he mumbles, lips mouthing at the space behind your earlobe. He's somewhere between chapped and baby-soft, like he sometimes peels the skin off his mouth with his teeth as a nervous habit.
"It is," you respond, swallowing a sound when he bites. Just lightly, not hard enough to bloom, but enough to remind you.
It's this cat-and-mouse game you play. The PD gets the whole story before the press can jump because of Batman. Therefore, you're justified in your duty as a journalist—a pillar of democracy—to try unmasking him, no?
The mission may have run awry, but you're here, and you're close.
Finally, you find the small flap where his mask detaches from his cape. He helps you with it, considerate for once, fingers joining yours in sliding under the cowl and wrestling it off.
You still can't see him, but you can feel him. The day-old stubble clinging to his jaw. How his nose has that slightly crooked angle, one you couldn't feel if he had his mask on. The way his jaw works, the way his hair is shorter at the nape and soft at the crown.
You wonder what color his eyes are, if they sparkle in the light.
He's never taken his suit all the way off with you. How many scars does he have? Does the suit bulk him up? Is he really that tall without boots?
And then, quieter in your head...does he have cold feet? You know someone who does, and he always presses them to your warmer thighs.
You grimace. It's one thing to have a covert, inappropriate relationship with the most wanted man in Gotham, but it's another thing entirely to think about your best friend while participating in said relationship.
"What are you doing." Not a question, but not a demand either. His voice echoes in the narrow side-street.
"Feeling your face?"
"That defeats the purpose of being a mystery," he says, low. Then you hear the rasp of his glove sliding off, and the palm of his hand meets your hip, burning as he nudges the hem of your cardigan.
(You're again reminded of him. Probably dead in that stupidly large bed in his mansion, snuggling silk sheets and the whole works, completely unaware of what you're doing. He'd chastise you if he found out.)
Humming, your fingers tangle in his hair. "I have a mystery for you: where's Karate Kid?"
"Taking a break."
"Can you respond in more than ten words?"
"Depends on if we're off the record."
You hate him. Still, you don't stop him from kissing you again, eyelashes fluttering on the apple of your cheek as he moves back down to your jaw.
A soft sigh burns through you when Batman's bare fingers find the sliver of skin beneath the hem of your rucked-up shirt, then dip into your waistband—myth and man, all at once.
Face numb with heat, you just hope no one can hear the night’s silence shattering with your quiet whine of want.
—
"Thanks, Alfred."
You know the tight grin you flash looks more like a grimace, but you have to make do with your thighs that scream with every sore step.
“He’ll be in his room,” Alfred says, and every muscle in his face stays perfectly still as he folds your jacket over his forearm, giving no indication that he’s picked up on your stiffness.
But knowing the butler, he probably has—he just doesn’t feel the need to comment.
The halls, however grand and spacious as they are, have never made you feel small. Though your steps echo as you drag yourself up the darkly lacquered stairs, and the grim paintings on the walls regard you with intimidating glares, the Wayne residence has always felt like a second home.
It’s awfully drafty, though. You know Bruce runs hot (save for his freakishly frigid feet), but the breeze drifting along the ornate walls is making concern for that poor kid itch at your nape.
You turn right, go straight until the floorboards make a particularly loud creak, then take a left. It’s a path you could follow by feeling alone, by counting the precise seconds until you can see your best friend again.
You knock on the bedroom door with firm knuckles and resolve.
“What.” The word comes out as a low, gravelly rasp, devoid of inflection.
You scoff, wry. “Did Alfred not bring you coffee?”
The latch twists with a snick, and the heavy, darkly lacquered door parts from the frame to reveal a scruffy jaw and broad ink-strokes of messy hair falling over an angled brow.
Bruce glares at you, but there’s no trace of annoyance in those clear blue eyes. Only tiredness; slight relief softens the heavy bags beneath his enviously thick bottom lashes.
“Woah,” you blurt, instinctively taking a step toward him. “Sheepless night?”
He just makes this…little rough, careless sound in the back of his throat, letting you in as he sneaks one hand beneath his black silk shirt to scratch his stomach. “Not punny.”
Ignoring the insult, you pad into his room. It hasn’t changed since the last time you’ve been here—which was last week, as always.
His absurdly massive bed sits in the middle, more rumpled than usual. It’s a shame that he rarely sleeps here anymore, and you almost feel bad that he prefers to spend his nights in his office (or wherever he wants you to believe).
Like second nature, you choose the silky cushions of the chaise lounge beside the bed to unceremoniously stretch out across. You won’t disturb that sacred mattress with your outside clothes.
The curtains are drawn tight, forming a thick armor of velvet over the windows, but Gotham’s pale sunlight still wriggles into the room from above the curtain bar.
The thousand-threaded sheets seem to shimmer in the dim light, rippling as Bruce collapses onto the bed with a sleepy groan.
“I take it we’re having brunch at home then,” you say, arranging your limbs so that you’re starfished on the lounge. “Shame…Dick seemed like he was looking forward to soufflé pancakes.”
“Mhm,” he rumbles, dragging a pillow into his chest. Nuzzles into it, and something in your chest loosens like the first bloom of spring.
Lately, you've noticed that his typically rigid composure has been loosening. Though the ghosts of his parents' deaths still hang over his exhausted head, he's warmed up in small increments—like now, choosing to lean into his sleepiness rather than pushing past the need to maintain his image.
But perhaps that's because you've known him for too long. You can see through most of his farces, especially the one he insists on displaying to the wider public.
You almost scoff to yourself. Playboy billionaire. Who's going to tell the paparazzi that he broke into a cold sweat when you joked about setting him up on a blind date?
He sighs, all rough edges, tinged with the sweet relief of abandoning pretense. “You can blame Dick for keeping me up last night.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that to him.”
Gazing at you with sleep-softened eyes, Bruce says with a tinge of earnest affection, "I was helping Alfred tend to him. Wouldn't have happened if he dressed warmer like I told him to.”
“What should we do instead?” you muse, absently running your fingers over the smooth, nearly invisible stitches in the chaise’s upholstery. You’ve probably worn a path along the seam with that habit.
“Tell me about your week,” Bruce murmurs, voice dipping into gravel. His languid words pour over you, soothing. “Any scoops? See the Batman again?”
At the reminder, irritation and something akin to embarrassment (though you won’t assign an official name to it) flares in your stomach. The ache in your thighs and a few tender points along your collarbone decide to flare up, which only serves to fuel your annoyance.
You exhale hard—not so much a scoff than a careless grunt—and choke back the burning urge to roll your eyes. “Alright, that's just provoking, Bruce.”
A lazy, almost blasé, hum is your answer. “I thought you liked complaining about him. Beating the dead horse much?”
"Oh, that horse is rotting," you grit, sitting up so quickly that your vision spins with the elaborate detailing on his dark ceiling. Now that it's come to your attention, you're slowly noticing how the Gothic-reminiscent ornamentation resembles the skeletal wings of a bat, stretching above you in desperate flight. Huh.
"Do tell."
You cross your arms and glare at him, but he just lets an amused smirk play at the corner of his chapped lips (though still partially concealed by his stupidly fluffy pillow, which you are suddenly thankful for, as you'd probably just suffocate him remorselessly if you'd been exposed to the full power of his smugness).
"Remember the gang war lead?"
"Tied above Main Street with Bat-rope," is the confirmation, followed by a couple of nods that are too solemn to not be teasing.
"And the whole Joker thing—which, by the way, I think he should investigate why the clown keeps escaping—"
"—it's ninety percent Arkham Asylum's fault—"
"—plus when I was actively investigating the Riddler's latest puzzle, but he must've stolen my notes because I swear I was this," you pinch your index and thumb together, muscles tensed for emphasis, "this close to solving it."
To your ire, Bruce chuckles wryly, and if you didn't know better, you'd say he's dangerously toeing the line of self-satisfied. But that would be crazy...unless...
No, that's just crazy.
Right?
"Well, Batman is the world's greatest detective," he says, following the statement with a smooth card of fingers through his inky mess of hair.
The motion shifts the collar of his expensive pajamas, making the silk dip to reveal a small circular bruise on his collarbone. It's still reddish and stark against his pale skin, so it must be fresh. Weirdly, you distinctly remember the hard press of the Batman's clavicle against your teeth last night.
Your own bites pulse faintly again beneath your clothing.
"There's a reason why Commissioner Gordon—"
"Is that a hickey?" you interject, your pointer finger flicking out to zero onto it. You scoot to the edge of the chaise, frowning; secretly, you're elated at the chance to pivot away from the subject of Batman.
Your voice takes a teasing tone as you chuckle. "C'mon, you didn't have to lie about Dick's antics keeping you up. Bruce Thomas Wayne, are you finally becoming the playboy they say you are?"
You bite back the bitter tang of regret the moment those words escape your mouth. Your best friend can have anyone he wants—he's rich, handsome, generous, caring, and despite what the tabloids spew about him, all of Gotham knows that his intellect is damn near genius.
And yet the discovery stings. Deep down, you chide yourself for being a hypocrite, for feeling the slight betrayal that Bruce had someone in his bed while you were fucking Gotham's protector (you'll use the word loosely) practically every week.
But still. Maybe he isn't loosening up. Maybe he's still the same guarded boy he's been for over two decades.
He huffs softly, the white of his canines flashing at you for a moment. "It's nothing."
"Nothing," you repeat, incredulous. "You don't think—maybe—that this is a significant milestone?"
"Pssh, you're acting like I'm some fair maiden."
Doubling down, you slide off the chaise and kneel by his bedside, folding your arms along the edge of the mattress with a pleading look in your eyes and a sharp grin on your face. "Come on, I'm just curious. I tell you everything, down to my leads and sources."
Eyeing you from behind the soft armor of his pillow, he responds, "Alright. Why were you limping?"
Shit. The gleeful journalist in you drops dead on the floor, replaced by the anxious secret-bearer, whose knees are knocking together like the erratic tick of your heart.
"Almost everything," you correct, grin beginning to wilt into a grimace.
Bruce just regards you with a stare that is almost cold while exasperation weighs heavily on the thick lines of his angular eyebrows. That damn disapproval lances straight through your heart. Jaw tight, you concede and rest your cheek against your arm, frowning slightly.
"Fine. Sorry. I shouldn't push," you say with a softer voice. "I'm limping because I hooked up with a guy."
He...doesn't seem fazed, which throws you off. You've always known him to be protective, even possessive at times; even before his parents were murdered, he kept watchful tabs on his belongings, and he'd know if you shifted one of his toys by an inch.
Naturally, you'd expect him to show some sliver of alarm between his brows—because if you were limping after sex, that would imply that your partner may have been rough enough to affect your gait—but those faint 11 lines haven't budged.
In fact, he almost looks smug. Or maybe he’s just gotten better at caring more than he lets on.
"Your turn," you mumble as an afterthought, cheeks burning hot. If this room were colder, you'd be radiating white coils of steam.
"I also…was intimate. With a girl," he admits, though he works through his choice of words with a faint wrinkle by the corner of his mouth, like they taste bitter. "She’s nosy for a living."
Sounds like someone you know very well.
“You could’ve just told the truth,” you mumble, feeling redundant in your disappointment.
Flashes of your clandestine meetups with Gotham’s favorite vigilante unwittingly resurface, from the softness of his maybe-black hair to the way you’d know the elegant structure of his cheekbones by touch alone.
You’ve always wondered what he looked like, yes, but you suppose that imagining it with all the parts you have already memorized is different. But if you could hold up a man to the myth…
…you might raise Bruce.
Which is—fucking insane! It’s crazy, and stupid, and a terrible thing for him to do.
Yet.
Yet the small, needling voice of journalism rises from the dead. Whispers echo in the caverns of your chest: just follow the hunch, wouldn’t it explain a lot?
A beat of silence follows as Bruce determines his next words.
“I didn’t want you to see me differently,” he says, low and earnest. “I thought I had a good thing going. For the first time, I don’t want things to change.”
Somehow, you get the feeling that he isn’t just talking about his hookup.
“Plus,” he tacks on, like some afterthought he finds vaguely humorous, “you get all flustered when you need the truth. It’s cute.”
He admits that in the same tone the Bat admitted it, kissing the side of your neck.
The world shifts just a few degrees. Like the Earth has been spinning on its axis a little wrong, and you sitting up has made the planet right again.
It fits so fucking neatly that it’s infuriating. The intricate gadgets. The sleek car, with all its sharp edges and plush Italian leather cushions. The way he always seems to be two steps ahead of you.
They’re both six-two, ridiculously smart, and muscular. You know Bruce had trained in martial arts overseas; you’re realizing with horror that Dick is about the same age as Robin, and the cold would explain the sidekick's absence last night.
You deal in facts. In hard, concrete truths and testimonies sworn against perjury. Yet, if you wanted to stick with only the cold facts, you would’ve become a lawyer.
And there’s the subject of his hickey. The thought of it being you twists something around your ribs, ugly and vindictive and satisfied all at once.
You should be pissed—no, you should be furious.
Bruce lied, hid, copied off half of your investigations like a bad high school cheater, and fucked you so good that you’d forget about it.
Yet the truth just settles deep inside the pit of your stomach, like you’ve known all along but never wanted to believe it.
Because maybe you’re just as possessive. Maybe you do feel ugly and messy and proud that you’re the one that keeps him coming back.
“Yeah,” you say after a swallow, gluing your gaze onto him to gauge any reaction. “My guy’s pretty nosy too. A lot more annoying than your girl, probably. Tends to hide important information.”
“It seems like they’ve got their bad habits in common,” Bruce responds. To any other person, he’d seem unfazed, but you know.
You know that slight downward twitch of his sharp eyebrows. You know the understated purse of his lips by touch in the dark and visual study in the light. He doesn't quite blink, but his long, dark eyelashes flutter like he's making a conscious effort to keep his mask up.
“That changes a lot, doesn’t it?” It leaves your mouth less like a question and more like a statement. “Does she mean anything?”
You lean closer to him, eyes flicking all over the planes of his face until he twitches, one hand curling gingerly around your nape, as if deciding between holding fast or not at all.
“Everything.” He lets it tumble out, just like that, lets the weighty admission bounce off the mattress like a hand grenade. Too easy, too loaded. “She means everything. I think you know that too.”
The last syllables are breathed softly against your lips, and his lashes tremble as he searches your gaze with a deceptive calm brewing in his glassy eyes. Like the stillness before a storm, except there's a sort of acceptance thrown haphazardly into the blue swirling around his pupils.
Understanding.
“I can forgive the lying,” you murmur, tilting your head just so, nose brushing against his. “And the hiding. But out-scooping me? That’s fucked up.”
“You’re not even mentioning last night, and all the other ones?” A faint laugh colors the question, blooming in the infinitesimal space between your lips.
It’s then that you realize you can never be mad at him for too long. He’ll just pull some puppy-eyed shit like this, irresistible charm woven into his forever lingering smirk, and you’ll turn the world just because he’d do the same.
“Those have been forgiven for a long time.”
Bantering like this, impossibly close yet too far, comes as second nature. You fall into place like the pieces of his two identities, all neat and simple.
“Can I make it up to you?”
You flick your eyes to his Gothic ceiling, where the spiny wings of the bats seem to flutter in excitement. “Since you asked so nicely…”
Bruce presses his gentle, apologetic lips to the corner of your mouth, then traces your bottom lip with a callused thumb. “Can I kiss you here?”
“Will that stop making you ask questions like a journalist?”
A soft puff of air leaves him, half incredulous and all endeared. The thought of that being so enamoring, so magnetic flashes through your mind before he softly places his lips over yours—slightly chapped, warm, and completely familiar.
You've figured the Batman out and solved the mystery of the century. The victory doesn't taste as sweet as Bruce Wayne.
Without breaking, he draws you up to him as he shifts onto his back, a rough yet cautious hand on your waist guiding you to shuffle across the mattress on your knees and sit over his hips.
Your head spins, eyes refusing to open out of fear that this is a dream. You feel the gradual slide of his tongue in your mouth, so unlike the feverish way he kisses you in alleyways.
A quiet moan of satisfaction rumbles in his throat, and it strikes you in the chest, how he seems to be just the same, yet so different. Or maybe it's because he knows this is tentative, precarious, that it's not as certain as you and his alter-ego.
You shiver—pliant and wanting in a way you didn't expect from yourself—when he diverts his attention, kissing reverently across your cheek, then expertly down your neck.
Palms and fingers on your waist, surer this time and dragging your weight against...is he serious?
You sigh against his hair, putting a little firmness behind the occasional rock of your hips against the growing heat tenting his pajama pants. "Really?"
He groans at the stimulation, cheeks flushing as he ducks his head down.
"Ignore it. Just want to stay like this," he mumbles, voice rough.
You slide a hand into his hair, which is prickly at the nape and soft at the crown (yes, yes, yes), and run the other down from the scruff still clinging on his jaw, to his softly heaving chest, to the hem of his shirt.
You sneak your touch beneath the warm silk, splaying your hand over the burning skin above his hip. This feels like a blessing, to feel the subtle ripple of muscle instead of a toolbelt and a suit.
Bruce’s sharp canines nip at your fresh hickeys from last night, to which you wince at the twinge of tenderness and slip your fingers higher to fit into the dips between his ribs—he's a little ticklish there, though you know he lies badly about it.
Paying you back in double, his hands travel beneath the hem of your own shirt, rucking the fabric up to expose your spine to his exploring touch. Another soft sigh burns through you, though the latter half is swallowed by his lips, all lazy and savoring.
And this might be better than what you've been doing. There's no more dancing, no more cat-and-mouse.
There's just you and him, sharing breaths in a sliver of air you're hesitant to widen, learning to orbit each other again with the weight of Batman altering your gravities.
He rolls both of you onto your sides, wasting little time tangling your legs. He traces shapes into your back, weaving around your spine.
The world smudges around you. Time swims by languidly as he just…caresses your skin, humming against your lips, bent on appreciation rather than stress relief.
You’ve never wanted something to stretch on forever so badly.
Unfortunately, impermanence calls when Alfred—and you know it’s him before he speaks—primly raps his knuckles three times against the door. “Master Dick is stirring. His temperature has dropped.”
“Finally,” Bruce grumbles. He attempts to pull away but can’t resist another two (or five) quick pecks. “Breakfast for lunch?”
You smooth your fingers over his head, pressing down the strands that stick out at odd angles from your grip. “Weird, but okay.”
He calls out, “Alfred, order from that French toast place Dick likes.”
“Will do, sir.”
You can practically see the way the butler bows slightly and marches down the hall. Never change, Alfred.
Bruce glances back at you with glimmering eyes, and his faint smile is too tender to be anything but hopeful, "Stay for dinner, too?"
You twist your lips, faking pensiveness. “Only if you promise to leave something for me to write about.”
Wrinkling his nose, he scoffs but makes a point of avoiding your gaze. “When have I ever done that…”
“Don’t even start.”
“I'm not,” he chuckles against your lips. It’s signed and sealed with a sweet, chaste kiss.
Oh, your heart sighs in wistful recognition. It’s always been him.
— soft tease bruce my shayla.... part of the much ado about luv event <33
