SPACE
simon riley x dove shifter!reader
tags: fluff
part of: a soft place to land
You know Simon Riley isn’t a demonstrative man.
It complicates things a bit when your relationship is new and fragile. You’re touchy, physical in a way that Simon simply isn’t. You’re prone to plopping yourself down in his lap when he’s alone in his office, or pecking him on the cheek whenever you can steal a moment of his time. He never complains, but his face is always left perfectly blank.
In those days, you think he almost prefers you as an animal rather than a person.
As a dove, when you perch on his shoulder to beak at his hair, Simon laughs. He runs a finger over the feathers of your back while he works on his reporting. If you nestle into his inbox tray, he’ll talk to you about anything—his day, his men, something funny Johnny told him.
Things get a little better the first time you walk into his office and don’t immediately sit on his knee.
Simon gives you a look when you lean against his desk instead.
“What’re you doin’, dovey?”
You shrug. “Just thought I’d give you some space.”
He huffs, one gloved hand flashing out to hook into your belt loop. You’re dragged into his lap with a yelp, and Simon goes back to his paperwork like nothing has changed. His arm stays around your waist, hand sneaking up your shirt to splay over your bare stomach.
Carefully, not wanting to upset this new balance, you wrap your arm around his neck and rest your head on his shoulder.
Still stoic as ever, Simon talks. His deep voice rumbles through his chest and straight into your side, and you have to suppress a shiver at the feeling.
“‘M no’ the touchiest boyfriend, I know. But even I wouldn’ say no to this.”
Jason can handle being watched. What he can’t handle is the thought of someone turning his love for you into a weapon. But when distance starts to hurt more than it protects, you offer him a different countermove: choose closeness anyway.
A/N: Hi hello, I am alive 😅 I know it has been about five months since I updated this story, and I’m so sorry for disappearing on you all. Life got wildly out of hand for a while, but I finally found my way back to Jason, Reader, and this little Gotham family. Thank you so much to everyone who has stuck around and waited patiently — it genuinely means the world to me. 🖤 Now let’s get back into the danger, yearning, and Jason Todd emotional repression, shall we? 🦇
🥀 a safe place to land master list 🌹
Jason comes home before dawn.
Quietly.
Not because he needs to be — the apartment has learned him by now. The floorboard near the hall groans if he steps too far left. The old lock clicks twice before it settles. Sophia’s door doesn’t squeak anymore because he fixed it, and that small fact hits him harder than it should when he passes it in the dark.
He stops outside your room.
Just for a second.
The city is still clinging to him. Cold air in his jacket. Damp on his boots. The stale metallic taste of rooftops and old blood, even though none of it is his tonight.
Not really.
He lifts a hand toward the doorframe.
Then lets it fall.
It’s stupid. He knows it’s stupid.
You’re asleep. No one is watching through the walls. No one is counting how long he stands here, how often he comes back, whether he goes soft when he thinks no one can see.
Still.
Moretti isn’t stupid.
That’s the part Jason can’t shake.
The man isn’t lunging at the obvious target. He isn’t throwing threats into the dark or kicking down doors. He’s watching for motion. Reactions. Pressure points.
Who moves when your name comes up.
Who tightens the perimeter.
Who cares enough to make mistakes.
Jason has made a career out of being the mistake other people don’t survive.
He cannot make you one.
So he steps back from the doorway and goes to the couch instead.
He sits in the dark until the window begins to pale at the edges.
⸻
You find him there before the sun fully comes up.
Of course you do.
You’re wearing one of his shirts, hair loose around your face, bare feet silent against the floor. You pause at the end of the hall, eyes adjusting to the dim room.
For a second, neither of you speaks.
Then you say, softly, “You came home.”
Jason looks up. “Yeah.”
It’s the wrong answer.
Not because it’s untrue.
Because it’s too small.
Normally, he would reach for you. A hand at your hip. Fingers brushing your wrist. Something unconscious and territorial in the gentlest possible way, like he’s still surprised you let him have places to land.
This morning, he doesn’t.
He watches you notice.
That hurts more than the bruises.
You cross the room anyway and sit beside him, not touching. Just close enough that he can feel the warmth of you at his side.
“You okay?” you ask.
“Yeah.”
Another too-small answer.
Your mouth tightens, but you don’t push. Not yet.
That almost makes it worse.
⸻
The morning moves around the distance like water around a stone.
Jason makes coffee.
You make toast.
Neither of you says anything that matters.
He keeps his body angled away from the window without making it obvious. He doesn’t kiss you by the sink. He doesn’t touch your lower back when he passes behind you. He doesn’t lean into the quiet like he normally would.
He does all the right domestic things.
Rinses his mug. Checks the messages from Barbara. Puts the butter back where it belongs. Picks a stray thread off the sleeve of your shirt and realizes halfway through the movement that touching your clothes is still touching your life, so he stops.
Your eyes flick down.
You saw that too.
Damn it.
Jason turns away before you can say his name.
His comm buzzes on the counter.
Barbara.
He answers because avoiding one problem by stepping into another is practically a family tradition.
“What?” he says.
“Good morning to you too,” Barbara replies.
You lean against the counter, arms folded, listening.
Jason doesn’t put it on speaker.
You raise an eyebrow.
He does.
Barbara pauses. “Am I interrupting something emotionally avoidant?”
“No.”
“Yes,” you say at the same time.
Jason shuts his eyes.
Barbara sighs. “Fantastic. My favorite operating environment.”
“What do you have?” Jason asks.
Her tone shifts, clean and precise. “Moretti’s people are testing correlation. Not access. Not location. Pattern.”
Jason’s jaw locks.
You go still beside him.
Barbara continues. “Red Hood movement. Response timing. Geographic clustering after certain names hit certain channels. He’s not looking for her directly.”
“He’s looking for why I care,” Jason says.
“Yes.”
You absorb that without flinching.
Jason hates that you have had to learn how not to flinch.
Barbara’s voice softens by the smallest degree. “Important note: disappearing completely is also correlation.”
Jason looks up.
“What?” he says.
“If you suddenly stop moving near her, stop responding near her, stop showing up in any predictable overlap, that’s also data.” A pause. “Absence is a pattern too.”
The kitchen goes quiet.
Jason feels your eyes on him.
Barbara, because she is merciless and correct, adds, “So whatever you’re doing right now that feels noble and self-sacrificing? Rethink it.”
You press your lips together.
Jason points at you. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was not.”
Barbara says, “She was.”
Jason exhales through his nose. “You done?”
“For now,” Barbara says. “Don’t get loud. Don’t get obvious. And don’t confuse distance with safety.”
The line clicks dead.
Jason sets the phone down.
Slowly.
You wait exactly three seconds.
Then: “You’re acting like proximity is dangerous.”
There it is.
No anger. No accusation.
Just the blade placed cleanly on the table.
Jason looks at the counter. “It is.”
Your face changes, but only a little. A small tightening around the eyes. A controlled inhale.
“That’s what you think?” you ask.
“That’s what I know.”
You nod once, like you’re deciding not to argue with the fear itself. “Okay.”
That throws him more than a fight would have.
“Okay?” he repeats.
“Yes. Proximity can be dangerous.” You step closer, careful and steady. “So can distance. So can silence. So can changing so much he can see the shape of what scared us.”
Jason doesn’t answer.
Because you’re right.
Because Barbara was right.
Because he hates that the two of you are right in the same direction.
You fold your arms tighter, not defensive. Holding yourself together.
“I’m not asking you to be careless,” you say. “I’m asking you not to let him decide what closeness is allowed to look like.”
Jason’s throat works.
“He’s counting,” he says finally.
“I know.”
“Every time I come here. Every time Hood moves in your orbit. Every time I answer too fast or show up too close or—” He cuts himself off, jaw hard. “I don’t know how to touch you without thinking about who might use it.”
There.
He said it.
Not all of it.
Enough.
Your expression softens, but you don’t reach for him yet.
That is worse.
That is better.
“I hate that,” you say quietly.
Jason huffs a humorless laugh. “Yeah. Makes two of us.”
“No.” You shake your head. “I hate that someone made you feel like the answer is to take yourself away.”
The room goes still.
Jason looks at you then.
Really looks.
You don’t step into him. Don’t force his hand. Don’t make closeness into a test he can fail.
Instead, you sit at the small kitchen table and lay your hand open on the surface between you.
Palm up.
An invitation.
Not a demand.
“Then choose it on purpose,” you say.
Jason stares at your hand.
He has taken worse risks.
He has stepped into gunfire with less hesitation.
But this feels sharper somehow. More exposed. A decision made in daylight instead of darkness.
If he takes your hand, it means he is admitting there are things Moretti can see and still not own.
It means refusing to amputate tenderness just because someone might map the wound.
It means trusting that protection doesn’t have to look like absence.
Jason crosses the room.
Slowly.
He sits across from you, jaw tight, eyes lowered.
Then he takes your hand.
Your fingers close around his immediately.
Warm.
Steady.
Real.
Jason exhales, and something in him gives—not breaks. Gives.
“I hate that you’re right,” he mutters.
Your thumb brushes over his knuckles. “I know.”
He looks at your joined hands, then at you.
“I’m still changing the pattern.”
“I know.”
“Routes. Timing. Hood sightings nowhere near here. Maybe Dick runs a few false overlaps. Tim can make the data messy.”
“Good.”
His eyes narrow. “You already thought of that?”
“I spent three days at a beach house with the world’s weirdest crime family,” you say dryly. “Some of it rubbed off.”
Despite himself, Jason laughs.
Not loud.
Enough.
Your smile is small, tired, victorious in a way that makes his chest ache.
“So we make a plan,” you say.
“Yeah,” he answers. “We make a plan.”
But he doesn’t let go of your hand.
Not while he calls Barbara back. Not while she answers with, “That was fast,” like she absolutely knows what just happened. Not while they sketch out the shape of it in clipped, efficient language.
Decoy movement.
False Hood sightings.
Nightwing making noise two districts over.
Tim muddying timestamps.
Barbara smoothing the digital edges.
Your routines staying human. Unremarkable. Yours.
No one says the word bait.
No one needs to.
This isn’t that.
This is camouflage.
This is choosing which parts of love belong to the world and which parts stay behind closed doors.
When the call ends, Jason is still holding your hand.
His thumb has started moving without permission, slow against your skin.
You notice.
You don’t mention it.
Mercy, he thinks.
Or maybe strategy.
Maybe, with you, they are starting to become the same thing.
⸻
Evening comes softer than it should.
The apartment is lit low, curtains drawn not because of fear, but because privacy is allowed to be practical. You make dinner together without ceremony. Jason burns the edge of the garlic bread and looks personally offended by it. You scrape the blackened part into the trash while he insists it was “char.”
“It was ash,” you say.
“It was character.”
“It was evidence.”
That gets you the smallest smile.
The kind he doesn’t mean to give away.
Later, you check your phone and find a message from Alfred.
Miss Sophia has informed Master Damian that Ace requires a bedtime story. Negotiations are ongoing.
You laugh so softly it almost isn’t sound.
Jason glances over. “What?”
You show him.
His face shifts before he can stop it. Soft. Painfully fond.
“She okay?” he asks.
“She’s okay.”
He nods.
That ache moves through both of you, quiet and shared. Missing her is not panic. Missing her is proof.
The night keeps going.
No alarms.
No sudden calls.
No one at the door.
Just the kind of quiet that makes decisions feel louder.
When Jason stands to leave, the old instinct flickers across his face.
Distance.
Calculation.
The urge to make the goodbye clean and untouchable.
You see it.
He sees you see it.
For a second, the board waits.
Then Jason steps toward you instead of away.
Not by the window.
Not in the open frame of the room.
In the hallway, where the light is warm and low and private.
He cups your cheek with one hand.
“On purpose,” he murmurs.
Your breath catches.
Then you nod. “On purpose.”
He kisses you.
Not desperately. Not like goodbye.
Like proof that a thing can be protected without being hidden from the people who matter.
His mouth is warm and careful, his thumb brushing once beneath your cheekbone. You lean into him, fingers curling in the front of his jacket, holding him there for one more second that belongs to neither Moretti nor Gotham nor the cold arithmetic of men who think affection is only useful once it can be counted.
When he pulls back, he rests his forehead against yours.
series summary: When Y/N Y/L/N is discovered by Bucky Barnes in a local Los Angeles diner, her wildest dreams finally become a reality. The fame, fortune, and glory is right at her fingertips. But her acting skills alone are just not enough to get her on the A-list of actors in Hollywood. Romantic affairs and scandalous outings give Y/N the push she needs to make her a star. However, the closer she gets to stardom, the further away it brings her from the ones that matter to her most and the one person who truly loves her.
warnings: 18+, mature themes (mentions of alcohol, sex, drugs, and addiction), sexism, depression, and some violence
A collection of doodles (done by me) for mine and @crisp-breeze ‘s spn AU (a soft place to land)!!!! It is very good and Shelly is an AMAZING writer, please check it out! It’s our baby ❤️
PERCH
simon riley x dove shifter!reader
tags: fluff, non-graphic injury, military conflict
part of: a soft place to land
The flight home is crowded, to say the least.
They’d picked up the Americans and some of the SASR along the way, and now there are too many soldiers and not enough seats for them all. It’d been trouble enough convincing the pilot to take off—after hemming and hawing about the weight, he’d finally agreed.
Logistics are still being argued when Ghost hears your voice rise above the din. “I don’t need a place to sit,” you announce, squeezing between the bodies. “Got my place right here.”
You shift mid-step, and a plump gray dove flutters down to Ghost’s knee. Pecking the back of his hand, you look up at him with pleading dark eyes. He obliges, flipping his hand over so it’s facing up, and you settle smugly in the cradle of his gloved palm.
Even as the plane takes off and the landing gear retracts with a grinding thud, you rest in Ghost’s hand, undisturbed. The lieutenant sits stock-still through the rest of the flight.
With so many bodies crammed inside, the soldiers start to get hot, stripping outer layers and wiping sweat from their faces. Ghost alone is unmoving. Sweat rolls from his hair into his collar, and the balaclava is suffocating, but he doesn’t make any effort to take it off.
The men on either side of him lean away almost instinctively, careful not to bump or jostle him. Through the leather of the glove, he feels your rapid heartbeat, the subtle rise and fall of your chest, and has to resist the urge to squeeze you tight.
Gradually, everyone settles. The heat combines with exhaustion to make eyelids grow heavy.
When he’s certain that everyone is asleep, Ghost dares to run one finger—agonizingly gentle—down the soft feathers of your back.
If you make a sound, it’s lost in the roar of the engines. You open one eye and twist your head to look up at him, then tuck it back down on your breast, asleep again as quickly as you’d been awoken.
THIEF
simon riley x dove shifter!reader
tags: fluff, non-graphic injury, military conflict
part of: a soft place to land
One of Simon’s masks goes missing.
The mask itself isn’t the concern—he’s got about a dozen extra. The real question is this:
Who’s brave enough to steal from him?
Simon shakes down Johnny and Kyle, but doesn’t get any answers. Price is out of the country playing nice with Laswell and the Americans, so he’s out. He pays off three new recruits to sniff out any culprits among the rank and file, but even they come back empty-handed.
“You’ll keep an eye out?” He asks you after three days, curious enough to take advantage of your literal bird’s eye view.
You don’t bat an eye. “Of course, sir.”
After a week of no news, it's Kyle who comes to him, smiling a little half-smile.
“Think I found your thief.”
Simon follows the sergeant up to the roof of all places, and Kyle leads him to a hidden little nook stuffed with twigs. And something else; his mask, woven among the branches and half-hanging out one side.
You’re tucked in the center of the nest, sleeping with your head buried under one soft gray wing.
“Well, well,” Simon coos, jostling the nest with his finger. You wake with an indignant squawk. “Kept an eye out, did we?”
You look as sheepish as a bird can, fluttering up to his shoulder to preen his hair in apology. Simon reaches up to stroke your breast feathers with the back of his hand.
