Pairing: Yandere!Dick Grayson x Reader (+Batfam) [DC].
Word Count: 3.8k.
TW: Non/Con, Fem!Reader, Omegaverse, Alpha!Dick, Beta!Reader, Kidnapping, Forced Mating, Knotting, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Ideation, Forced Proximity, Fingering, Group Sex, and Nonconsensual Touching. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.
Every morning, you woke up underneath Dick Grayson.
That was to be expected from an alpha, or so you’d been told. They tended to be clingy, physical, never satisfied unless their mate was within their sight or, better yet, in their arms. It was perfectly natural, but knowing that did little to alleviate the hot, damp weight of him on your back, didn’t make the smell of sweat and bodies that dragged you from your sleep any less smothering. His arm was a steel bar across your waist, his legs a pair of writhing snakes that tangled around and immobilized yours. Regardless of how much distance you put between yourself and him in the night, his face always seemed to find the crook of your neck, his mouth never more than an inch or so from your mating mark.
The mating mark you, biologically, weren’t supposed to have. But you guessed what was ‘natural’ mattered more for him than it did for you.
Worst of all, he always woke up after you. It was a shared symptom of his late-night patrols and the domestic, homebound instinct most alphas felt to make their den and maintain it. You were left to lie awake for the better part of an hour, swallowing back the feeling that you ought to find a way to crawl out of your own skin, before he began to stir – groaning as he groggily lifted his head. He squeezed your body against his once before rolling over to drag a hand over his face, wiping away lingering exhaustion. You savored the distance the same way an alcoholic savored fine wine: already desperate for another glass.
You made a valiant effort to get away, shuffling towards the edge of the mattress as you muttered some excuse about showering or brushing your teeth. Of course, Dick was quick to stop you and of course, his chosen method of persuasion was touch-based. He sat up, resting his back against the headboard. An arm lashed out, curling around your midriff and dragging you into his lap. Your knees landed on either side of his waist, your ass slotted against his crotch. You could feel his cock pressing into you, stiff and leaking. Your revulsion must’ve shown on your expression, because Dick laughed and rolled his hips against you.
“Can’t help it,” he muttered, voice still thick with sleep. “You just smell so good in the morning. Guess you wouldn’t know that, though.”
Right. Obviously. Because, of the two singular drawbacks to being a beta, there was only one Dick would ever dare to mention out loud. He loved holding your weak sense of smell over your head, reminding you that there was a whole, invisible world defined by scents and pheromones that was entirely inaccessible to you. It’d never been an issue before you met him. From what you’d heard, pheromones were just another way to tell how a person felt, easily replaced by a keen eye for micro-expressions or a careful ear for tones, and you didn’t find being able to tell the exact notes of a person’s unique musk all that appealing.
Then again, if you did have a better nose, you might’ve been able to tell Dick (or, rather, Nightwing, at the time) was going into a rut the night you met, the night he saved you from an armed robber and so heroically offered to walk you home. You might’ve been more aware of the pheromones you were radiating – scared, helpless, in need of protection – and what they would do to alpha at his most eager to lay claim. You might’ve been able to get away from him before he pinned you down on the floor of your living room, dug his teeth into your throat, and bound you to him permanently. His family had told you, afterward, that splitting up a bonded pair was dangerous. Separation from his mate could make Dick irritable, obsessive, hyper-violent. No part of you liked being stuck with him, but the Waynes had promised that you would like version of him that distance bred less. Moving in with his pack, playing mate – that was the safer option. The more humane option.
It also conveniently ignored the second drawback to being a beta: your unwavering preference for your own company. You weren’t supposed to have a mate. You weren’t supposed to join a pack. That was for alphas and omegas with their primal, hormone-driven brains; the ones too busy sucking and fucking to notice people like you quietly keeping society on-track in the background. You’d been made for long periods of isolation, peaceful nights in empty beds, the muted tranquility of mental silence. Crowds made you anxious. Too many voices in one room left you on the verge of hyperventilating. The thought of gushy, romantic sex (the type with lots of skin-to-skin contact and so, so many fluids) made you want to throw up. These were undebatable facts of your existence and traits which Dick trampled over daily with no small amount of zeal.
He grinned, easy and loose, as he slipped a hand into your panties. Two fingers found your slit, tracing over it as the heel of his palm ground into your clit. Sex, real sex, was thankfully off-limits. His dick (or, more accurately, the knot at its base) would kill you. Literally. His constant, pleading pawing wasn’t much more bearable, though.
“It’s stronger in the morning.” Right. Back to your scent. His fingers slipped inside of you, pushing in to the knuckle. “I mean, I can always pick it up, but right now, I don’t even have to try. ‘s like I’m drowning in it.”
You swallowed back a whimper, forcing your tongue to work the way you needed it to. “That sounds terrible.”
“It’s perfect.” He curled his fingers, interrupting his otherwise lazy pumping, then ground into your clit with that much more force. “You’d drown in me if you had the chance to, right?”
You could hear your own slick noises echoing off the walls of his bedroom. “I’d rather just drown you.”
He laughed, bowing his head and pressing an open-mouthed kiss into your collarbone. “I wouldn’t mind.”
Irritation sparked, hot and fierce. Your hands shot for his neck, but Dick’s grin only widened. Without pulling out of you, he rolled over – throwing you down to the mattress and landing on your back. His arm was trapped underneath you, but he didn’t seem to care, didn’t let it slow down the harsh way he flicked his wrist or the invasive curling of his digits inside of you. You thrashed, then when that failed, clawed at the sheets, as if tearing through silk and cotton would do anything to get him off of you. Not that your resistance lasted long enough to matter. It only took short, pitiful seconds for him to make you cum – dragging a miserable whine out alongside your climax. Immediately, you went limp underneath him, and Dick kissed the nape of your neck, humming as he pulled away. Over your shoulder, you could hear an awful, wet sound, like a tongue running through fingers. You did what you could not to put an image to the noise.
When he was done, Dick rested a hand on your back, rubbing circles in your shoulder blade. “Sorry, baby,” And then, stifling another laugh, “You’re just so cute when you’re all—”
His touch drifted south, skirting over the length of your spin. You shrieked into the mattress, arching your back on reflex. Trying to get away from him. Dick sighed.
“Can’t run from me forever.” As if to prove his point, he gathered you up in his arms, pushing himself to his feet and starting in the direction of the en-suite. “One day, I’m gonna have to make you see that.”
You could only groan in response.
~
Breakfasts at Wayne Manor were always difficult to get through.
Late in the morning, after the brunt of the pack had a chance to sleep off the worst of last night’s patrol, every available member of the family gathered around a single, narrow table to clack utensils against porcelain and scrape chairs across the floor and speak to each other as loudly as they possibly could. The others were allowed to choose seats at random, but somehow, you always seemed to end up near the head of the table, stuck between Dick and the Pack Alpha, Bruce.
You hated it. You hated the proximity, too many bodies crammed into too small of a space. You hated the paranoia, never able to eat in comfort knowing another hungry mouth could steal the food off your plate at any time. Most of all, you hated the volume. So many voices layered on top of one another, you couldn’t be bothered to differentiate between Stephanie’s laugh and Cassandra’s quiet hum, Jason’s sardonic drawl and Tim’s mechanical droning. After a while, it was all just noise.
You felt a headache coming on. This was to be expected at this point in the day and thus, warranted no reaction more apparent than a half-hearted scowl and a pair of eyes narrowed toward your plate.
As always, you ate too quickly and were forced to stay too long. When you tried to get up from your seat, Dick’s hand found its way to your thigh, gently urging you back down. He was smiling, again – the golden boy grin, all clear blue eyes behind dark, disorderly hair. You hated that smile more than you hated every other part of Dick combined. Without it, you never would’ve trusted him. You never would’ve let him into your home. You never would’ve found yourself trapped in his.
You never would’ve let him touch you.
You started to turn to him, to make it clear that you were finished and you needed to leave, but someone cleared their throat to your right. Of course.
How could you have forgotten about Bruce.
You braced yourself before turning to him. Dick squeezed your thigh by way of reassurance. It didn’t help.
Bruce Wayne was the Pack Alpha of secondary sex bio-essentialists’ collective wet-dream. Well over six feet tall with the build to match, he towered over the rest of his family with an air of calm, analytic judgement. Even his gaze felt too heavy, as if a weighted pole had been dropped onto your shoulders whenever he deemed you worthy of a stray glance in your direction. Your loathing for him was no less intense than the loathing you held for Dick, but the tone of it was different. You hated Dick because of what he’d done to you, what he continued to do to you. You hated Bruce because of how easily he could fix it and how consistently he decided not to.
“Don’t forget your medication,” he started, slowly, drawing out each word as he gestured to the small collection of multi-colored pills on the edge of your plate. Supplements, you’d been told, to make up for the general lack of activity in your current life. You tried not to take them when you could get away with it, if only because it was one of your precious few ways to maintain your independence. “You won’t like that happens if you miss a dose.”
An order, albeit not a cruel one. He was talking to you like one of his children. Like a member of his pack.
Your head pounded.
“I—” You paused, swallowing. The juxtaposition was dizzying. He was an older man and you were in his home. You wanted to do what he said and be done with it. He was an alpha and you were nothing. You wanted to do anything but listen to him then run as far as you possibly could. “I don’t want to.”
His cold gaze flickered from you to the rest of his table. In turn, the others went quiet, their attention naturally gravitating to Bruce, who then directed it to you. The noise had been unbearable, but the silence was worse. Six pairs of eyes, all focused unblinkingly on you. You would’ve sat through a thousand family meals if it meant they would all stop looking at you like that.
With shaking hands, you snatched up the pills and choked them down dry. Bruce nodded. Dick beamed.
You wanted a long second for their attention to disperse, then another. It never did. Your vision blurred around the edges as you scrambled out of your seat, muttering excuses. This time, no one stopped you.
You wanted your bedroom – safe and dark and isolated – but the kitchen was closer. Your temples throbbed. Your heart threatened to beat out of your chest. So busy trying to steady your own frantic breathing, you didn’t notice the footsteps until you were leaning over a counter, eyes clenched shut and hands flat against the cool marble. You thought it might be Dick, at first, come to check on his upset mate. You should’ve known he wouldn’t be so attentive, that the world wouldn’t be so kind.
A lean arm wrapped around your midriff, its owner’s chest soon pressed against your back. You saw a flash of gold in your peripheral, felt soft lips on the shell of your ear.
Stephanie. Another alpha. Perfect.
She was surprisingly quiet. There was a slight hum, a breath of a laugh, but nothing else as she nuzzled into your shoulder. Rather than an act of mercy, her silence came off as a show of further sadism. It meant you had to be the catalyst for your own misery.
“What are you doing?”
“Comforting you.” A purr started up deep in her throat. You felt the reverberations against your skin. “You should see the pheromones you’re releasing, right now. I’ve rescued hostages giving off weaker distress signals.”
Another set of footsteps, another body placing itself too close. You glanced to your left and found Tim pulling himself onto the counter, his dark eyes wide. He was an omega, but that did little to endear him to you. Alphas tended to be more aggressive, but there was something about the cloying, saccharine way omegas held themselves that made you uneasy. They went through life expecting to be loved. Your lack of affection was regarded less as an inability and more as stubbornness. Something meant to be resented or, better yet, overcome.
“It really is strong,” he mumbled, edging that much closer to you. “Not that I’m complaining. It’s nice. Calming.”
Stephanie snickered. “Don’t listen to him. He says you smell like the ocean.”
Your nose wrinkled. Every soul born and raised in Gotham knew the coastline’s dead-fish, rotting-trash stench by heart. Tim scowled.
“I did not. It’s more like—” He cut himself off, pausing to think. When he went on, his voice was more distant, as if drawing from a well-loved memory. “Bruce took me to Italy for a case, once. The air was so—so fresh. There was salt, and sunlight, and something sweet, like—”
“Caramel,” Stephanie finished. Her purring was getting louder. Her hands began to wander, slipping under your shirt and pressing flat against your stomach. She was unbearably warm, and you could feel her palms sliding up, up, her breath against your throat as she sought out your—
“Please,” You were so quiet, you could hardly hear yourself above the static in your ears. “Stop.”
Her grin pressed into the curve of your neck. “Why would I do that, sweetheart?”
“I don’t like being touched. It’s not—” Your body was too hot. You were burning alive. “It’s not right.”
She laughed – loud and bold and searing. “Of course it is, honey. This,” She dragged her blunt nails over your chest for emphasis. “is how we show we care. Don’t you want us to care about you?”
No. You didn’t. You wanted something, anything else. You opened your mouth to say as much, to scream, but Tim was fast.
“Let her go, Steph.” Sweet, soft, nearly pleading. Obediently, Stephanie pulled away, and you sucked in a deep breath. Those piercing, beady little eyes of his never fell away from you. It seemed to turn the air hostile, filling your lungs with acid in the place of relief. “She’ll come around, soon.” And then, quietly, almost to himself, “She’ll have to.”
His words rang in your ears for seconds. She’ll have to.
Meaning, they’d make you.
All the warmth left your body at once. It was strangely calming – the rush of cold; the way your heart beat so fast, it might as well have not been beating at all. Without a word, you slipped out from underneath Stephanie, and she let you. Tim whispered something and Stephanie laughed, but the details were lost in translation. It didn’t really matter. They’d said what they needed to.
You couldn’t get to the roof, so you settled for Bruce’s office. It was on the uppermost floor, with a balcony that looked out over the manor’s gardens. His door was unlocked, so you let yourself in. Bruce was at his desk. You passed by him without acknowledgement.
He only got to his feet as you stepped outside. The guardrail was tall enough to press into your stomach as you peered over it. Fifty feet to the ground, more or less. You’d been hoping for more, but it would do the trick.
You leaned forward, bowing your head low and using your arms to better ease your body over the side. Eventually, your center of gravity tipped, your feet kicking off the ground as you teetered on the railing and started to—
A fist curled around the collar of your shirt, jerking you back and throwing you to the ground. You blinked, and then, Bruce was kneeling above you, his hand around your neck and his gaze steely. Your skin crawled underneath his palm.
“I had higher hopes for you,” he muttered. His free hand slipped into his coat pocket, drawing out a thin black box. “We thought you were coming along.”
You hesitated to respond, but there was only one thing you were ever going to say. That you could say, anymore. “Please don’t touch me.”
He scoffed, the noise dry and humorless. The box was placed next to your head, the lid carefully removed. You saw the flash of something long and silver in your peripheral, felt a pinch at the base of your neck. Heat flooded into your veins, thick and primal. You caught the distant scent of something sweet, and then, you were gone.
~
The room stank of sweat, salt, and sugar.
You came into consciousness slowly, only able to take in one foggy detail at a time. You were in an unfamiliar bed, too large to be your own. Dick was above you, kneeling in between your legs, his face flush and his hands planted on either side of your head. In the corner of your eye, you could see Tim and Stephanie on the other side of the too-big mattress – Tim on his back and Stephanie moving above him, bouncing on something you couldn’t see. Behind them, of course, was Bruce. He leaned back in his armchair, expression bored but cold eyes watchful. The Pack Alpha, residing over the rituals of lesser creatures.
Dick’s breath hitched and you realized, rather belatedly, that he was inside of you. Really, actually inside of you. Deep, deep inside of you.
Oh no.
Your hands shot to his shoulders, nails burrowing into muscle. “Dick, Dick, you have to—”
He hushed you, falling that much lower. His lips found the curve of your neck, ghosting over a patch of scarred skin. Your mating mark. “’s alright, baby. You’re so—” He moaned, rolling his hips against yours. “So tight.”
“You need to pull out.” You could feel it – beating against your entrance, a swollen mass at the base of your cunt. It was too thick, too hard, too big. He was going to split you open. He was going to fucking kill you. “I’m not supposed to—”
“But you are, baby. You are.” He pulled away, his pace falling into something blissfully lethargic. A hand slipped between your body and his, two fingers finding your clit. Dread and pleasure pulsed through you in tandem. You didn’t want this. You couldn’t. It wasn’t in your nature. And yet, your hips bucked against him and your cunt ached. Your mind was suddenly in the backseat, watching in horror as your body begged to be taken care of.
“Tried to let the pills do their work, take things slow, but B decided it was time to go all the way.” He grinned, kissing your forehead. You could smell something on him, underneath the sweat and closeness. Sharp mint and chalk in sunlight. Then, below that, something else. A steady, indescribable reek that seemed to whisper ‘love me, love me, love me’ into the back of your skull. Your pussy clenched that much tighter around his cock. “Tim even offered to help. Having another omega’s pheromones to copy should make the first time a little easier.”
Another omega? He made it sound like Tim wasn’t the only—
Understanding dawned on you, cruel and terrible. Of course. The pills. The shot. The pack’s insistence that, one way or another, you’d come around. It was all you could do to blink up at Dick. Your voice was weak, when you finally found it. Cloying and submissive. “I’m a beta.”
“You used to be,” he sighed, the contentment in his voice only rivaled by his sheer, unrelenting joy. One of his hands fell to your hip, steadying you. “I couldn’t stand to watch you suffer like that. Not when we could make it so much easier.”
You opened your mouth to protest, but all that came out was a long, desperate whine. You’d never felt so empty, so cold, so in need of something hot and warm and filling. Dick seemed to sense the change. He groaned as he thrust into you, forcing your cunt to take him to the hilt, then deeper still – bullying his knot into your unwilling body. You stretched to accommodate him. It was painless.
It was natural.
You felt him pulse against the walls of your cunt, locking your bodies together. Something hot and thick flooded into you, filling you up in a way you’d never thought to conceive of. Above you, Dick panted, his hair hanging over his face and his eyes half-lidded. His smile was pulled wide enough to strain.
You took a deep breath and regretted it immediately. It hung thick in the air, inescapable despite your best attempts to block it out.
Sea salt and caramel – so strong and so defined, you could only wonder how you’d never noticed it before.
request reader who acts as a healer for the team, and their ability on paper [and seemingly in practice] is just that they can heal anybody, no matter the damage or cause, except their power actually works by stealing the wound and inflicting it upon themselves. they can take any pain, mental, chronic, sometimes even emotional depending on circumstances and the degree of it. no one knows until they take on something far too bad: losing a limb, breaking their spine, guts spilling out, etc.
content gn! reader x damian wayne, healer! reader, reader gets hurt, aged-up adult damian wayne, severe injury, traumatic limb injury/near-amputation, blood, pain transfer, self-sacrificial healing, medical trauma, guilt, panic, league of assassins trauma references, emotional distress, anger after consent violation, angst with hurt/comfort
masterlist | word count 8.4k
Damian Wayne had been taught that a body was a weapon before he had ever been allowed to think of it as his own.
Hands were for blades. Feet were for balance. Bones were structure. Blood was consequence. Pain was instruction. A body was sharpened, trained, corrected, punished, and improved. A body was not precious. A body was not sacred. A body was not something one wept over unless its failure cost the mission.
Then he came to Gotham.
Gotham taught him many things. It taught him that rain could feel like grief made weather. It taught him that family was a battlefield where no one drew a blade and everyone still left wounded. It taught him that his father could love him deeply and still fail to say it in any language Damian understood. It taught him that Grayson’s hugs were inescapable, Todd’s anger was often fear wearing steel-toed boots, Drake’s silence was rarely empty, and Pennyworth could end a war with one raised eyebrow.
It taught him that bodies could be held. Bandaged. Fed. Carried to bed when sleep finally won.
It taught him that pain was not always a lesson. Sometimes it was only pain.
Then there was you.
You were not Gotham’s lesson. You were its contradiction.
You walked into the lives of heroes with no cape, no crest, no ancestral oath or alien sun burning beneath your skin. You arrived with steady hands, tired eyes, and a reputation that made even gods go quiet.
You could heal anything. That was what everyone said.
The Justice League said it with reverence. The Titans said it with relief. The Outlaws said it with reckless gratitude. Young Justice said it like they had discovered a cheat code and decided not to read the terms of service.
Jon said you were “basically a miracle.”
Damian said miracles were unreliable.
You had smiled at him when he said it. Amused.
“Good thing I’m not a miracle, then,” you had replied.
He had disliked you immediately.
Not because you were wrong.
Because he wanted you to be.
The first time Damian let you heal him, he was twenty-one and old enough to know better.
It was not a serious injury. That was what he told himself. A fractured wrist after a fight with a metahuman trafficking cell near the docks. He had taken the hit redirecting a collapsing beam away from a child. The child survived. His wrist did not.
A favourable exchange.
You found him on a rooftop afterwards, attempting to secure a splint one-handed with the grim concentration of a man personally offended by gauze. You stood in front of him for five seconds before saying, “That wrap is a hate crime.”
Damian did not look up. “It is functional.”
“It is shaped like unresolved childhood trauma.”
His eyes lifted. You smiled mildly.
He stared. “You are bold for someone within throwing distance.”
“You’re injured.”
“You believe that protects you?”
“No. I believe your wrist is broken and your left-handed aim with medical tape is probably worse than you think.”
Damian’s jaw tightened. The worst part was that you were correct.
You stepped closer but did not reach for him.
That was unusual. Most people reached. Medics, especially. Even kind ones often forgot that kindness could still become an invasion if delivered without permission.
You held your hands at your sides.
“I can heal it,” you said.
“No.”
“Okay.”
He paused.
You did not argue. No persuasive speech. No moral lecture. No “you don’t have to be tough with me,” which was a phrase Damian loathed almost as much as “calm down.”
You simply accepted his answer and leaned against the roof access door.
Damian narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting.”
“For what?”
“To make sure you don’t pass out from pain while continuing your one-man war against compression bandages.”
“I will not pass out.”
“Great. Then this will be boring.”
The silence that followed should have annoyed him.
It did. But not only.
You watched the skyline instead of watching him. You gave him privacy without leaving him alone. It was a surprisingly difficult balance, and Damian hated that you managed it.
Eventually, his splint slipped. You did not comment.
His wrist throbbed hard enough that his vision flashed white at the edges. You still did not comment.
He exhaled sharply through his nose.
“Fine,” he said. You looked over. “I will permit your assistance.”
“Assistance with the splint or healing?”
He paused. You waited.
Damian looked at your hands. They were steady. Scarred in small places, though no injuries lingered long on you. He knew that much. Everyone knew that. You healed quickly. You healed others faster.
A miracle, Jon had called you. A risk, Damian thought.
“To heal,” he said finally.
You stepped toward him. Slowly. “May I touch your wrist?”
“Yes.”
Your fingers settled around the fracture. Warmth bloomed beneath your palm.
Damian prepared for pain. There was none.
The ache vanished. The bone slid back into place with a painless shift that should have been impossible. Swelling disappeared. Torn tissue knitted itself whole. His fingers, stiff seconds before, flexed freely.
He stared at his hand. There should have been consequences. There were always consequences.
You released him and took half a step back. Your own fingers curled briefly against your palm.
A twitch. Almost nothing.
Damian saw it. “What was that?”
You blinked. “What was what?”
“Your hand.”
“My hand exists. Very observant.”
He frowned.
You smiled. It was a practised smile.
He would understand that later.
At the time, he only knew that he disliked it.
Trust came slowly.
Damian preferred it that way. Trust that arrived too quickly was either foolishness or manipulation. Real trust was built like a fortress: stone by stone, inspected from every angle, reinforced after every storm.
You never rushed him. That was the first stone.
You respected every no. That was the second.
You remembered details he did not expect anyone to notice: that he preferred tea without sugar, that he hated being touched from behind, that Titus became restless during thunderstorms, that Damian’s right shoulder tightened before he admitted exhaustion.
You learned the names of his animals before you learned the gossip about his family. That was several stones at once.
“You brought treats,” Damian said the first time you visited the Manor, and Titus abandoned dignity to shove his massive head into your hands.
“For Titus.”
“I can see that.”
“You sound offended.”
“You have bribed my dog.”
“I have respected his interests.”
Titus wagged his tail with shameless enthusiasm.
Damian crossed his arms. “He has betrayed me.”
“You love him anyway.”
“Unfortunately.”
You smiled down at Titus. “Good boy.”
Damian watched the way your hands scratched behind the dog’s ears. Gentle, sure, absent of fear. Titus leaned against you like a creature who knew exactly where kindness lived.
Damian did not realise he was staring until you glanced up.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Your smile became suspicious. “Was that almost fondness?”
“No.”
“It looked like almost fondness.”
“You are mistaken.”
“I’m choosing to believe otherwise.”
“Your delusions are your own burden.”
You laughed. Damian looked away too late.
After that, you became a regular presence.
Not constant. Damian would not have tolerated constant.
Familiar.
You appeared in the Cave after League missions, carrying medical supplies and the quiet authority of someone who had seen heroes at their worst and remained unimpressed by theatrics. You patched Grayson while he told a story with too many hand gestures and not enough respect for his own cracked ribs. You argued with Todd about antibiotics until he took them out of spite. You confiscated Drake’s coffee once and survived.
Damian had been impressed. Not that he said so.
Jon noticed, because Jon noticed everything Damian wished he would not.
“You like them,” Jon said one evening on a rooftop patrol.
Damian did not stumble. Barely.
“I tolerate them.”
Jon floated beside him, cape moving in the wind. “You gave them one of your sketches.”
“It was a medical diagram.”
“It was a drawing of their hands.”
“Hands are medically relevant.”
“You wrote ‘rest’ under it.”
“They do not rest.”
Jon’s grin widened. “You are so down bad.” Damian turned slowly. Jon backed up in the air. “I say that with love.”
“I will remove you from the sky.”
“You can’t fly.”
“I will improvise.”
Jon laughed.
Damian resumed walking. His ears were warm.
Jon landed beside him, quieter now. “They look at you differently, too.”
Damian’s step faltered. “They do not.”
“They do.”
“Kryptonian hearing does not make you an expert on human emotion.”
“No, but hearing their heartbeat change when you walk in is pretty compelling evidence.” Damian stopped. Jon also stopped, expression immediately apologetic. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You listen to their heart?”
“Not intentionally! It’s just loud when they see you.”
Damian’s own heart became deeply undisciplined.
Jon smiled softly. “You should tell them.”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Damian glanced at him, suspicious. “You concede too easily.”
“No, I just know you’ll do it eventually and pretend it was your idea.”
Damian glared. Jon grinned.
Two nights later, you found another drawing tucked into your medical bag. This one was of Titus asleep with his head on your knee. Beneath it, in Damian’s precise handwriting, was one sentence: He trusts you. This reflects well on your character.
You found Damian in the garden.
It was raining, because Gotham apparently believed subtlety was for lesser cities. He stood beneath a stone archway, pretending not to wait.
You approached with the sketch held carefully against your chest.
“This is beautiful,” you said.
“It is accurate.”
“It’s kind.”
“That is debatable.”
“No.” You smiled. “It isn’t.”
Damian looked away.
You stepped under the arch beside him. Rain whispered over ivy. The Manor glowed behind you both, all old stone and golden windows.
“Thank you,” you said.
He nodded stiffly.
There was a silence.
Not uncomfortable. That had become dangerous.
You looked at him, and Damian could feel the moment opening like a door.
“You’re allowed to want things,” you said quietly.
His jaw tightened. It was not fair, how gently you said it. As if the words were not a blade sliding between armour plates. “I am aware.”
“You know it intellectually.”
He looked at you sharply. Your smile was sad.
“What do you want, Damian?”
Many answers came to him.
Peace. Purpose. His father’s approval, though he had outgrown needing it and somehow not outgrown wanting it. A world where children were not trained into weapons. A self that did not sometimes still hear his grandfather’s voice and mistake it for his own.
But those truths were too large for the rain. So he chose the smaller one. The braver one.
“You,” he said.
Your breath caught.
Damian did not look away. Your face changed in a way he did not have language for. Softened, yes, but not with pity. With wonder. With wanting so open, it made his chest hurt.
“You have me,” you whispered.
He should have asked if you were certain. He should have warned you that he did not love gently by instinct, that his devotion had teeth, that he was still learning how to hold without gripping too tightly.
Instead, he leaned in.
You met him halfway.
The first kiss was rain-cold and mouth-warm, hesitant for only the first breath. Then your hand rose to his cheek, and Damian let himself lean into it.
Let himself want. Let himself be wanted.
Later, Jon would claim he heard Damian’s heartbeat “attempt to achieve escape velocity.”
Damian would threaten him. Several times.
But in the rain, beneath ivy, you kissed him like there was nothing in him that needed to be earned back from violence.
And Damian, foolishly perhaps, believed you.
He should have known the past would come for him with a blade.
The League of Assassins rarely wasted poetry.
When the case began, it looked like a string of metahuman disappearances. Three teenagers taken from Metropolis. Two from Gotham. One from Blüdhaven. All newly powered. All young enough to be frightened by what their bodies had become and old enough for someone cruel to turn that fear into compliance.
Oracle connected the disappearances to an abandoned hospital outside Gotham registered under six false companies, two shell organisations, and one name Damian had not heard spoken aloud in years.
A minor League sect. Old blood. New methods.
His father stood at the Cave computer, grim and silent. Grayson’s usual warmth had sharpened into focus. Drake’s fingers flew across keys. Todd checked and rechecked his weapons with quiet, murderous care. Jon stood beside Damian, tension radiating off him like sunlight behind storm clouds.
You stood near the medbay entrance. Damian saw you before anyone spoke.
“No,” he said.
Your eyes moved to him. “Excuse me?”
“You are not coming.”
Todd muttered, “Smooth, brat.”
Damian ignored him.
You stepped closer. “They’ll have injured kids inside.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t want a healer there?”
“I do not want you there.”
The room went still.
Your face did not change, but Damian saw the hurt land. He regretted the phrasing instantly.
Not the meaning. The wound.
You folded your arms. “Because it’s dangerous?”
“Because it is League.”
Your expression softened, which was worse than anger. “Dami.”
“No.”
“You can’t keep me away from every shadow in your past.”
“I can keep you away from this one.”
“That isn’t your choice.”
“It is if I refuse to allow you through the Zeta-tube.”
Drake winced.
Grayson said, “Dami.”
You stared at him.
For a moment, he thought you would argue. Part of him wanted you to. Part of him wanted you angry enough that the fear in his chest had somewhere to go.
Instead, you nodded once. “Fine.”
Damian hated the word.
You looked at Bruce. “I’ll coordinate med support from here.”
Bruce’s gaze shifted between you and Damian.
Then he nodded. “Accepted.”
You did not look at Damian again.
Good, he told himself. He had protected you.
It felt like losing.
The facility beneath the hospital was exactly what Damian expected. That made it worse.
Stone corridors beneath sterile tile. Modern restraints bolted into old walls. Hidden sigils carved under steel plates. The League had always understood the value of layering cruelty beneath cleanliness.
The team split. Batman and Nightwing cleared the upper labs. Red Hood secured the escape route with a level of aggression that suggested several assassins would later require reconstructive dentistry. Red Robin disabled surveillance from the Cave with you beside him on medical coordination. Damian and Jon moved through the lower chambers.
They found the first two teenagers in a containment room.
Bruised. Dehydrated. Alive. One had burns from power-dampening cuffs. The other had a dislocated shoulder and a split lip. Damian’s jaw tightened as Jon broke the cuffs with careful rage.
You wanted to be there. You wanted to put your hands over the burns and make them vanish.
Instead, you gave orders.
He was proud. He was afraid. Both feelings sat together in him like badly behaved animals.
They moved deeper.
The final chamber was beneath the old surgical wing. It had once been an operating theatre. The League had turned it into something worse. Six teenagers were strapped to tilted metal tables arranged in a circle around a machine pulsing with stolen metahuman energy. Their powers fed into the device through cables bright with unstable light.
In the centre stood a man in black armour with a white sash marked in old League script.
Damian knew the title.
Not the man. That hardly mattered. The League was full of replaceable monsters wearing inherited arrogance.
“Blood heir,” the man said.
Jon’s eyes burned red. “I hate when they call you that.”
“As do I,” Damian said.
Then the fight began. Assassins dropped from the rafters. Red solar emitters ignited in the walls, flooding the room in pulses designed to weaken Jon without fully stripping him. Power-dampening fields snapped on around the captives. Blades flashed.
Damian moved.
He had been raised in rooms like this. He knew their rhythm. Strike before the second attacker lands. Never follow the obvious opening. The left wall hides a second blade. The floor sigil is not decorative. The man with the shorter sword is the true threat.
He fought like memory given teeth. Jon fought beside him, weakened but furious, each hit controlled enough to avoid collapsing the chamber on the children.
“Red Robin,” Damian snapped over comms. “Disable the solar emitters.”
“Working,” Tim replied. “They’re layered into the medical grid.”
Todd’s voice cut in, breathless and violent. “I can blow the grid.”
“Do not blow the grid,” Tim and Bruce said at once.
Todd scoffed. “No one appreciates vision.”
Your voice came through, tight. “Damian, behind you.”
He turned before the blade reached his spine.
An assassin fell.
Damian’s pulse sharpened. You were watching through hacked security feeds.
Good. Bad. You were seeing too much.
The lead assassin smiled.
“Still guided by softer hands,” he said.
Damian lunged.
Mistake.
Not fatal. Almost.
The floor beneath him flared with old script. Chains of black light erupted around his right arm and shoulder, locking him mid-strike. Jon shouted and tried to reach him, but two assassins drove him back beneath red solar pulses.
Damian twisted. The chains tightened.
The lead assassin drew a curved blade.
Not toward Damian’s heart. Toward his arm.
Damian understood at once. Maiming, not killing. A message. A punishment. A ritual humiliation. The blood heir made less whole.
He fought the chains with everything he had.
Not enough.
The blade came down. Pain went white.
For one suspended heartbeat, there was nothing.
Then sound returned.
Jon screaming his name. The teenagers crying out. The wet sound of blood hitting tile.
Damian looked down. His right arm was nearly severed below the elbow. Attached by ruined flesh, fractured bone, and a stubbornness his body had apparently inherited from him.
The sight was clinical in its horror.
He knew what losing the arm would mean.
Not death. Worse, in some ways.
Relearning everything. Sword forms. Drawing. Writing. Touch. Balance. The language of his body rewritten by another person’s blade.
Pain struck next, vast and blinding.
Damian dropped to his knees. His left hand clamped above the wound. Blood surged between his fingers.
“Robin!” Bruce’s voice cracked over comms.
That, more than the injury, frightened him. His father sounded afraid.
Jon hit the lead assassin so hard that the man flew into the far wall.
The solar emitters died.
Tim’s voice, “Grid down.”
Todd, “I still think explosions would’ve been faster.”
Your voice came next. Not steady. Not anymore.
“Damian?”
He clenched his teeth. Could not answer.
Jon dropped beside him, face white. He pressed both hands over Damian’s arm, trying to stem the bleeding without making it worse.
“Oh God,” Jon breathed. “Dami, stay with me.”
“I am… here,” Damian forced out.
“You’re losing too much blood.”
“I noticed.”
“Stop being sarcastic while actively bleeding out!”
Your voice came again. “Jon. Status.”
Jon looked at the comm on Damian’s collar, horrified.
“It’s his arm,” Jon said. “It’s—it’s almost gone.”
Silence. The kind that took all air with it.
Then the sound Damian dreaded most. The Zeta-tube activating in the chamber beyond.
“No,” Damian rasped.
Jon looked at him. “Damian—”
“No.”
He tried to push himself upright. Failed.
The chamber doors opened. Batman entered first, cape like a storm, medkit in hand.
You came behind him.
Your eyes found Damian. Everything in your face stopped.
No. That was his first thought.
Not relief. Not love.
No.
Because he knew you. He knew what you were seeing. Not only the blood. Not only the limb hanging by torn flesh. Not only the future unravelling in one brutal line.
You were seeing something you could fix.
“Do not,” he said.
Your face crumpled. You crossed the room anyway.
Bruce knelt at Damian’s other side, taking over pressure from Jon with controlled, terrible efficiency.
“Tourniquet,” Bruce said.
Jon was already moving.
You knelt in front of Damian.
“Hi,” you whispered.
Absurd. He loved you so fiercely in that moment that it frightened him more than the blood loss.
“No,” he said again.
Your hands hovered over his arm. Shaking now. The tremor was visible. He hated that.
“I can save it,” you said.
His vision blurred. “No.”
“You could lose your hand.”
“I know.”
“Your arm.”
“I know.”
“Damian.”
He looked at you. Your eyes were full of tears, but beneath the fear was something harder.
Resolve. The same resolve he had seen in you a hundred times when someone was hurt. When pain became a problem and your body became the answer.
“No,” he whispered.
You touched his face with one blood-slick hand.
He should have turned away. He did not.
“I’m sorry,” you said.
His heart stopped. “No.”
“I can’t let them take this from you.”
“No.”
“You draw with this hand.” His throat closed. “You hold your sword with it,” you continued, voice breaking. “You hold Titus. You hold me.”
“Beloved—”
“I can help.”
“You will take the wound.”
“Not all of it.”
“You do not know that.”
“I know my body.” A desperate, broken smile flickered across your mouth. “It changes things. It softens the transfer sometimes. I probably won’t get it as bad.”
“Probably,” Damian spat.
You flinched. Good.
No. Not good. Nothing was good.
Bruce’s gaze snapped to you. “What does that mean?”
No one answered him. The entire chamber seemed to narrow around you and Damian.
Your hand was still on his face. His blood streaked your fingers.
“I can’t watch you lose part of yourself,” you whispered.
Rage and terror rose together in Damian’s chest. “You think my hand is myself?”
“No,” you said immediately. “No. That’s not what I mean.”
“That is what you said.”
“I mean they took enough from you. The League took enough. Your childhood, your choices, your body, your pain, your name before you even knew what names meant.” Your voice cracked. “I cannot sit here with the power to stop them from taking one more thing and choose not to.”
His breath hitched.
There it was. The blade under the kindness.
Not pity. Fury. You were angry for him. You were choosing him. You were choosing him over yourself.
He wanted to weep. He wanted to shout. He wanted to beg.
“Ask me,” he said.
Your face broke. “Damian—”
“Ask me.”
The words cost him more than blood.
You stared at him. “I can’t.”
Pain lanced through him.
Not from the arm. From you.
“You can,” he said. “You must.”
“If I ask, you’ll say no.”
“Yes.”
“And then I’ll have to let it happen.”
“You will have to honour my choice.”
Your tears spilled over. “I’m not strong enough for that.”
Damian’s heart shattered.
Bruce went very still beside him. Jon made a small, broken sound.
You leaned closer.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered again.
And then your hands closed around Damian’s ruined arm.
The transfer hit like lightning.
Damian screamed. So did you. For one second, pain filled everything. Not leaving him gently, not fading like mercy. It ripped out of him, dragging fire and nerve and blood with it.
Then his arm healed. Bone snapped into alignment. Flesh knitted. Tendons reconnected. Skin sealed beneath your palms. Feeling surged down to his fingertips in a brutal rush.
His hand flexed. Whole. His.
Then you collapsed.
Your right arm buckled beneath you.
Not severed. Not as bad. You had been right. Somehow, impossibly, terribly right.
But the damage still tore through you. A jagged wound split from your forearm toward your wrist, deep enough to expose blood and white flashes of bone beneath muscle. Your fingers curled uselessly. Blood poured down your hand, splattering onto the tile. Your shoulder hit the floor, and your breath broke on a sound Damian would hear forever.
For half a second, he stared at his healed hand. Then at yours.
No.
No.
No.
He lunged toward you. His body, newly healed but blood-weakened, nearly failed him. Jon caught his shoulder. Damian shoved him away and dragged himself to you with both hands, both whole hands, which made it worse.
“Beloved,” he choked.
You were curled around your injured arm, face white with agony.
Bruce moved quickly, already applying pressure to your wound. You cried out. Damian flinched as if the sound had opened him.
“Do not touch them,” he snapped at Bruce.
Bruce’s eyes flashed. “They’re bleeding.”
Damian knew he was being irrational. He did not care.
“Damian,” you gasped.
His attention snapped to you.
You were looking at him. Not your arm.
Him.
Relief trembled through your expression.
Relief.
Because his arm was whole. Because you had succeeded.
Damian felt something inside him go cold and wild.
“How dare you,” he whispered.
Your eyes filled. “I’m sorry.”
“How dare you.”
“I couldn’t—”
“You could,” he said, voice shaking. “You chose not to.”
Your face crumpled.
He wanted to take the words back. He wanted to sharpen them. He wanted to kiss you until your pain disappeared. He wanted your blood off the floor. He wanted his wound back.
“You chose me,” he said.
Your lips trembled. “Yes.”
“Over yourself.”
“Yes.”
The honesty was a killing blow.
Damian’s breath left him.
Bruce tightened the pressure bandage around your arm. You whimpered, trying to stay still. Jon knelt nearby, crying openly now. Damian barely saw him.
“You were right,” you whispered. His heart stopped. “It’s not as bad.”
Damian stared at you.
Then laughed once. A terrible sound.
“You think that matters?” Your eyes searched his, confused through pain and shock. “You think because the wound is smaller, the violation is smaller?”
You flinched.
Bruce’s expression tightened.
Jon whispered, “Dami…”
“No,” Damian snapped. “Do not.”
Your breathing hitched.
Damian’s hands shook. His right hand, whole and healed, shook.
That made him angrier. That made him love you more. That made him hate everything.
“You did not save my arm,” he said, voice breaking. “You made it yours.”
Your face went slack.
There. Good.
No. Not good.
Truth. Necessary and brutal.
You looked at your wounded arm as if seeing it for the first time. Blood soaked the bandage beneath Bruce’s hands.
Your mouth opened. No sound came out.
Then the pain took you. Your eyes rolled back.
Damian caught you before your head hit the floor. “Beloved?”
No response.
“Beloved.”
Bruce pressed two fingers to your throat. “Pulse is weak. We need extraction now.”
Damian held you against him, his healed hand cradling your head.
His arm worked perfectly. He had never hated his own body more.
The Watchtower medbay smelled like antiseptic and fear. Damian sat outside the surgical suite with blood on his clothes.
Yours. His. Both.
He had refused to change.
Todd had said nothing, which was how Damian knew the situation had reached an unnatural level of horror. Jon sat on the floor across from him, knees drawn up, cape wrapped around his shoulders. He had cried himself quiet twenty minutes earlier. Bruce stood near the observation window like a statue carved by grief. Grayson paced. Drake typed furiously on one tablet, then another, then stopped as if realising no amount of data would make time move faster.
Todd leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, helmet off, face pale and furious.
“This is bullshit,” Jason said finally. No one answered. “This whole damn thing is bullshit.”
“Jason,” Dick said softly.
“No. They should’ve told us.”
Damian’s eyes lifted.
Todd looked at him.
Not accusing. Not pitying.
Understanding.
It was unbearable.
“They should’ve told us what healing cost,” Jason said. “Before any of us let them touch us.”
Damian looked down at his right hand.
He flexed his fingers. Whole. Obedient. Yours now, some treacherous part of him thought.
No.
No.
He dug his nails into his palm. Pain answered.
His pain. At least that remained.
“They knew I would refuse,” Damian said.
His voice was calm. Too calm.
Everyone looked at him.
“They knew,” he repeated. “So they did not ask.”
Jon’s face crumpled again.
Bruce said, quietly, “They thought they were saving you.”
Damian’s gaze snapped to his father. “They were.”
Silence.
Damian stood. His body swayed.
Jon scrambled up, but Damian lifted a hand. Jon stopped.
Damian looked at Bruce. “That is the problem.”
Bruce’s face tightened.
“I know,” he said.
Of course he did. Bruce Wayne understood being saved against his will. Understood surviving at a cost someone else paid. Understood the rage that followed gratitude so closely they became nearly impossible to separate.
Damian hated that he understood.
The surgical doors opened. Dr Mid-Nite emerged, expression grave but not hopeless. Damian was in front of him immediately.
“They’re alive,” the doctor said.
Damian nearly collapsed.
He did not. But Jon did, a little, against the wall.
“The transferred injury was severe,” Dr Mid-Nite continued. “Less catastrophic than yours would have been, but still serious. The arm is salvageable. There’s nerve trauma, tendon damage, blood loss. Their accelerated healing is responding, but slowly.”
“Will they regain function?” Damian asked.
“Likely, with treatment and time.”
Likely. Damian hated likely. Likely was probably wearing a white coat.
He wanted certainty. He got none.
“Can I see them?”
The doctor hesitated. Damian’s eyes narrowed.
Bruce stepped closer. “He won’t interfere.”
Dr Mid-Nite looked at Damian. Damian lifted his chin.
“I will not interfere,” he said.
He did not know if it was true. But he meant to make it so.
The doctor nodded.
You looked too small in the bed. Damian hated that thought. You were not small. You were not fragile. You were not a wounded bird cupped in his hands.
You were the person who had looked at the League’s attempt to maim him and said, No more. You were the person who had made yourself the answer.
You were terrible. You were brave. You were unconscious beneath white sheets, right arm wrapped from shoulder to wrist and elevated in a brace.
Damian approached slowly. Machines hummed. Your face was pale with pain even in sleep.
He stopped beside the bed. For a long time, he did nothing.
Then he reached out with his right hand. The healed one.
His fingers hovered over your bandaged arm.
He did not touch. He could not.
It felt obscene.
“Why?” he whispered.
You did not answer. The monitors did.
Steady beep. Alive.
Damian sat. He folded his hands in his lap. His right hand looked unchanged. Same calluses. Same scars. Same fine ink stain near his thumb from sketching two days earlier. Same knuckles bruised from training. Same fingers that had held yours in the garden.
It should have been a relief.
It was. That was the cruelty.
He was relieved.
He loved his hand. He loved what it allowed him to do. Draw. Fight. touch. Feed Titus scraps when Alfred was not looking. Hold his sword. Hold you.
He had not wanted to lose it. He had been prepared to.
You had seen the part of him that feared the loss, the part he would have hidden beneath pride, and you had chosen that frightened part over your own safety.
Damian hated you for it. Damian loved you for it. Both truths wrapped around his throat until breathing became difficult.
“You should have asked,” he said. His voice shook. “You should have asked me and allowed me to refuse. You should have trusted me to survive less than wholeness.” His eyes burned. “You should not have loved me like the League.”
The words entered the room and stayed. He regretted them immediately.
No. He did not.
Yes. Both. Always both with you now.
You stirred. Damian sat forward sharply. Your eyelids fluttered.
“Beloved?”
Your eyes opened slowly. Unfocused.
Then they found him.
Relief. Again.
Damian closed his eyes. When he opened them, you were trying to smile.
“Arm?” you rasped.
His jaw tightened. “Yours or mine?”
Your smile vanished.
Good. No. He was tired of good. Tired of bad. Tired of feeling everything.
“Damian,” you whispered.
He took the cup from beside the bed and held the straw to your lips. His right hand did not tremble this time.
You drank. Only a little. He set the cup down.
“My arm is whole,” he said.
Your eyes closed. “Good.”
The word struck him like a slap. He stood so quickly the chair scraped back.
Your eyes opened, startled.
“No,” he said.
Your face twisted with pain and confusion. “No?”
“No. You do not get to say good.”
Your throat bobbed. “I saved it.”
“You took it.”
“I saved it.”
“At the cost of your own.”
“It isn’t as bad.”
He stared at you. You seemed to hear yourself then. Your face faltered.
“It isn’t,” you said, quieter. “I knew it wouldn’t be as bad.”
“You did not know.”
“I was pretty sure.”
“Pretty sure,” he repeated.
Your eyes filled.
His hands curled into fists. Both hands. “You gambled with your body.”
“I gambled to keep yours.”
“I did not ask you to.”
“I know.”
“You did not let me refuse.”
“I know.”
“You did not trust me.”
That hurt you. Your mouth trembled. “I did trust you.”
“No.” Damian shook his head once. “You trusted that I would survive. You did not trust that I had the right to choose what survival looked like.”
Tears slipped down your temples.
“I couldn’t bear it,” you whispered.
“What?”
“The thought of you losing it.” Your gaze flicked to his right hand. “Your hand. Your arm. Your art. Your sword. The way you touch everything like you’re still learning you’re allowed to be gentle.”
Damian went still.
Your voice broke. “I couldn’t bear knowing I could help and choosing not to. I couldn’t bear seeing another piece of you taken by them.”
He looked away. The room blurred.
Damn you. Damn you for knowing that. Damn you for seeing the child beneath the blade, the boy raised by people who called ownership love, the man still trying to make his body his own. Damn you for choosing him. Damn you for being right that part of him was glad.
“I would have learned,” he said. You sobbed once. “I would have adapted.”
“I know.”
“I am more than my sword hand.”
“I know,” you said, crying harder now. “I know, Damian. I swear I know. I didn’t do it because I thought you’d be less. I did it because I love all of you, and I couldn’t watch you be forced to lose something when I had a chance to stop it.”
His anger fractured. Love rushed in through the crack.
Unwelcome. Unstoppable.
He sat down again, slower this time. “You chose me over yourself.”
Your eyes held his. “Yes.”
The honesty hurt worse than any lie could have.
Damian lowered his head. For a moment, he was back in the chamber. Your hand on his face. Your eyes full of tears. Your voice saying sorry because you already knew you were about to betray him for love.
He hated that he understood. He hated that if it had been you on the floor with your arm nearly severed, he did not know if he would have done better.
That thought humbled him. Humiliation would have been easier. This was grief.
“I love you,” he said.
Your breath caught. He looked at you.
“I love you for choosing me,” he continued, voice rough. “For looking at the worst thing the League tried to make me and refusing to let them take more. I love you for your fury. For your tenderness. For wanting me whole even when I was prepared not to be.”
Your face crumpled.
“And I hate you for choosing me over yourself.”
You closed your eyes. “I know.”
“No,” he said. “Listen.”
Your eyes opened again.
“I hate that you decided my wholeness was worth your damage. I hate that I am relieved. I hate that part of me wants to thank you while another part wants to never let you touch me again.”
A tear slid down your cheek. Damian reached for it.
Stopped.
“May I?” he asked.
Your face broke all over again. “Yes.”
He wiped the tear away with his right thumb. His healed thumb.
You leaned into the touch. He nearly broke.
“I am angry,” he whispered.
“I know.”
“I will be angry for some time.”
“I know.”
“I may not forgive you quickly.”
Your lips trembled. “Okay.”
“But I am staying.”
A sob caught in your throat. Damian leaned closer.
“I am staying,” he repeated. “Because love is not leaving when one has been wounded. Even by the beloved.”
You cried then.
Not quietly. Not beautifully. You cried like something in you had finally stopped bracing for abandonment.
Damian rested his forehead against yours, careful of the tubes, the bandages, the injured arm held between you like a third presence.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“I know.”
“I love you.”
His eyes closed. “I know.”
A faint, watery laugh escaped you. “Arrogant.”
“Yes.”
“Say it back anyway?”
His mouth softened. “I love you.”
Your breath shuddered.
“I love you,” he said again, because the words seemed to hurt you in a healing way, and Damian was beginning to understand that not all pain was harm. “I love you, and you were wrong.”
You laughed and sobbed at the same time. “That is very you.”
“I am consistent.”
“You are.”
His hand remained on your face. Your uninjured hand lifted slowly and covered his.
For a moment, neither of you spoke. The monitor kept counting proof of your survival. Damian listened like it was scripture.
Recovery was not gentle. Yours rarely was.
The wound had not taken your arm, but it had changed it. Nerves misfired beneath the skin. Your fingers trembled. Grip strength came and went like a moody ghost. Some days, your hand curled stiffly and refused to open without coaxing. Some nights, the pain climbed from wrist to shoulder and left you pale, sweating, biting back sounds Damian wished he could tear from the world.
He did not offer to have you heal yourself. He had learned enough by then. You could accelerate your recovery only in fragments, carefully, at the cost of exhaustion that frightened everyone.
So you healed slowly. Humanly.
Damian stayed. Angrily. Devotedly.
He brought tea and corrected your posture with surgical precision. He read aloud when the pain made focusing difficult. He chose poetry at first because he thought it might soothe you. Then he chose murder mysteries because you criticised everyone’s investigative technique so fiercely that even Drake listened from the doorway with reluctant approval.
He brushed your hair when your arm hurt too much.
The first time, you cried. He pretended not to notice until you said, “You can notice.”
So he did.
“You are crying,” Damian said.
You laughed wetly. “Thanks.”
“I am uncertain what response is appropriate.”
“Just keep going.”
He did. His fingers moved through your hair with grave concentration.
Todd walked in, saw the scene, and immediately walked back out muttering, “Nope, too intimate, I’m emotionally allergic.”
You laughed so hard that Damian threatened him through the door.
Some days, Damian’s anger sharpened unexpectedly.
A dropped cup. Your wince while trying to flex your fingers. The sight of you struggling to button a shirt. Each small reminder of what you had taken from him and made yours.
One afternoon, you caught him staring at your hand as you failed to hold a pen.
“Say it,” you said.
Damian looked up. “What?”
“Whatever you’re thinking.”
“I am thinking many things.”
“The angry one.”
His jaw tightened.
You waited. Always waiting, even now.
He exhaled. “I am thinking that I should be the one unable to hold a pen.”
Your face softened with pain.
“I am thinking that you stole a consequence from me.”
“Yes.”
“I am thinking that I am grateful.”
Your eyes filled.
His voice hardened. “And that gratitude disgusts me.”
You set the pen down. “Damian.”
“No. You asked.”
“I did.”
He stood, restless, anger moving through him like a blade seeking a target. “I look at my hand and I am relieved. I draw and I am relieved. I hold my sword and I am relieved. I touch you and I am relieved.”
Your mouth trembled.
He looked at you, furious and wrecked. “Then I look at your hand.”
You said nothing.
“I do not know where to put the relief,” he confessed.
Your expression crumpled.
Oh. There it was. The truth under the anger.
He did not know how to be grateful for something that had hurt you. He did not know how to love the saved part of himself without feeling like he was betraying the wounded part of you.
You rose carefully from the chair. He stiffened. You came close but did not touch.
“I don’t need you to be only grateful,” you said softly. His throat tightened. “I don’t even need you to be grateful at all.”
“I am.”
“I know.”
“I despise it.”
“I know.”
Your injured hand hung between you, bandaged, trembling slightly.
Damian looked at it. Then, slowly, he held out his right hand. His healed hand.
You stared.
“May I?” he asked.
Your eyes filled. “Yes.”
He took your injured hand with unbearable care. The bandages were soft beneath his fingers.
Your hand trembled in his. He lifted it and pressed his mouth to your knuckles. You inhaled sharply.
“I am angry,” he said against your skin. “I am grateful.”
“I know.”
“I love you.”
Your eyes closed. “I know,” you whispered.
He looked up.
“And I hate,” he said, voice rough, “that those truths do not cancel each other out.”
You opened your eyes. “They don’t have to.”
“No.” He held your hand between both of his. “No,” he repeated. “They do not.”
It was not forgiveness. Not yet.
But it was contact. It was honest. It was enough for that moment.
Jon came often. He was terrible at pretending he was not checking on both of you. He brought snacks, flowers, terrible jokes, and one stuffed cow wearing a tiny Robin cape.
Damian stared at it. You stared at it.
Jon held it out with both hands. “For emotional support.”
Damian said, “Leave.”
You laughed immediately.
Jon brightened. “See? It helped.”
“It offended me.”
“That’s your love language.”
“I will make you eat the cow.”
“It has a name.”
“No.”
“Moo-bin.”
Damian closed his eyes. You laughed so hard you had to clutch your injured arm, which made Damian glare at Jon with genuine threat.
Jon winced. “Sorry. Sorry. Medium laughter only.”
You wheezed, “Moo-bin.”
Damian looked at you.
Betrayal. Absolute betrayal.
Jon smiled, then sobered. “Can I talk to Damian for a sec?”
You looked between them.
Damian stiffened. “If this is another emotional intervention—”
“It is.”
“No.”
“Dami.”
You touched Damian’s wrist gently. “Go,” you said.
He frowned. “I’m fine.”
“That word is banned.”
“I am stable, medicated, and entertained by Moo-bin.”
Jon looked delighted. Damian looked betrayed again. Still, he followed Jon into the hallway.
For several seconds, Jon said nothing.
Damian crossed his arms. “Speak.”
Jon looked toward the medbay door. Then back at Damian. “You’re allowed to be glad.”
Damian went still.
Jon’s face was open and earnest and far too difficult to dismiss.
“That your arm is okay,” Jon said. “You’re allowed to be glad.”
Damian looked away.
“They would want you to be.”
“That is part of the problem.”
“I know.”
“You do not.”
Jon’s jaw tightened.
“I watched them do it,” he said.
Damian looked back.
Jon’s eyes shone. “I watched you say no. I watched them do it anyway. I watched you heal and them drop. I’m angry too.”
Damian’s throat closed.
Jon stepped closer. “But I also heard your heartbeat when you saw your hand move again.”
Damian flinched.
“Sorry,” Jon said quickly. “I know. Accidental perceiving. Bad habit.”
Damian did not respond.
Jon continued anyway. “It sounded like hope.”
The words struck too deep. Damian turned away.
Jon’s voice softened. “I don’t think that makes you bad.”
Damian’s jaw clenched.
“The League made you think every gift is a debt,” Jon said. “But this isn’t that.”
“It feels like that.”
“I know.”
“They paid in blood.”
“Yeah.”
“For me.”
“Yes.”
“How is that not debt?”
Jon was quiet. Then he said, “Because they’re not asking you to repay it.” Damian shut his eyes. “They’re asking you to stay.”
Damian hated how simple Jon made things. How gentle. How impossible to refute.
“I do not know if staying is enough,” Damian said.
Jon stepped beside him. “Maybe not every day. But it’s a start.”
The hallway remained silent.
Then Damian said, “Moo-bin is a terrible name.”
Jon laughed, startled. “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
“You keeping him?”
Damian looked toward the medbay door.
Through the small window, he could see you holding the cow in your lap, smiling faintly at its ridiculous cape.
“Yes,” Damian said.
Jon wisely did not comment.
The first time you returned to the garden, your hand was still bandaged. The rain had stopped earlier, leaving the paths dark and shining beneath the evening lights. Titus wandered ahead, sniffing at wet leaves. The Manor windows glowed gold behind you.
Damian walked beside you. Close enough that your sleeves brushed.
You stopped beneath the same ivy arch where he had first told you he wanted you. The memory sat between you.
Soft. Cruel. Yours.
You looked at him. “I’m scared you’ll never look at me the same.”
Damian’s chest tightened.
He considered lying.
No. No more soft lies.
“I do not look at you the same.”
Your face fell.
He turned toward you fully. “I know more now.”
You swallowed. “That sounds ominous.”
“It is honest.”
Your mouth trembled.
He reached for your injured hand. Paused. You nodded.
He took it carefully. “I know you are capable of betraying my choice to preserve my body.”
You closed your eyes.
“I know you are reckless when afraid.”
A tear slipped down your cheek.
“I know you love me with a ferocity that does not always ask permission.”
“I’m sorry,” you whispered.
“I know.”
“I’ll keep saying it.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know how to make it right.”
Damian looked down at your joined hands.
His whole one. Your wounded one.
“There is no undoing it.”
Your breath caught.
He looked back at you.
“There is only what comes next.”
You opened your eyes. “What comes next?”
He brushed his thumb lightly over the edge of your bandage. “You tell me when you are in pain.” You nodded. “You do not minimise it because it is less than what I would have suffered.” Another tear fell. “You let me be angry without deciding I no longer love you.” Your face crumpled. “And I,” he continued, voice roughening, “will learn to feel relief without turning it into shame.”
You stared at him.
The rain began again, soft at first. Gotham had timing. Terrible, dramatic timing.
You laughed through tears.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re negotiating emotional terms in the rain.”
“It is a serious matter.”
“It’s very romantic.”
“It is practical.”
“It can be both.”
He considered this. Then nodded once. “Fine.”
Your smile was small. “Fine?”
“It can be both.”
You stepped closer. “Can I kiss you?”
Damian’s heart moved painfully.
Even after everything. Especially after everything. You asked.
“Yes,” he said.
You kissed him gently. Too gently. As if afraid he would break beneath the weight of what you had done.
Damian’s left hand rose to your face. His right rested against your waist, whole and steady and unbearable.
He deepened the kiss. You made a soft sound against his mouth. He held you there beneath the ivy while rain gathered in your hair.
When he pulled back, your eyes were closed.
“You are not forgiven yet,” he whispered.
Your eyes opened. “I know.”
“But you are loved.”
Your face broke open with relief so bright it nearly hurt to see.
He continued before the words could fail him. “You are loved while I am angry. You are loved while I am grateful. You are loved while I do not understand how to carry either.”
Your injured hand rose slowly and touched his chest. Over his heart.
“I can live with that,” you whispered.
“You must.”
A faint smile. “Bossy.”
“Yes.”
“I love you.”
His throat tightened. “I know.”
You gave him a look.
He let the smallest smile touch his mouth. “I love you too.”
Titus barked from somewhere near the fountain, apparently offended that no one was paying attention to him.
You laughed.
Damian’s right hand flexed at your waist. He felt the motion. Felt every tendon obey. Felt relief. Felt guilt. Felt your warmth beneath his palm.
This time, he did not push any of it away. He held it. All of it. The anger. The gratitude. The love. The wound. The choice stolen and the life preserved. The hand he kept and the hand you injured to keep it for him.
Pain had gone somewhere. So had love.
Not cleanly. Not without consequence. But here, in the rain, with your hand over his heart and his over your bandages, Damian understood something he had never been taught in the League.
A gift paid in blood could still be wrong. A wrong thing could still come from love. Love could wound and remain love. And healing, real healing, was not the absence of scars. It was the choice to stay and learn the shape of them.
Damian pressed his forehead to yours.
“I will draw again,” he said quietly. Your breath caught. “And when I do, you will sit for me.”
You smiled through fresh tears. “What will you draw?”
He looked at your face. Your wet hair. Your tired eyes. Your stubborn, devastating tenderness. Then your bandaged hand. Then his own.
“Hands,” he said.
You laughed softly. “Again?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Damian lifted your injured hand and kissed the bandages. “Because they tell the truth.”
You looked at him like he had given you something fragile.
Maybe he had. Maybe he was learning. Maybe both of you were.
The rain fell harder, silvering the garden.
Inside the Manor, his family waited with tea, lectures, jokes, and the unbearable relief of people who had almost lost too much and were now determined to hover about it.
Out here, there was only you. Only him. Only the wound between you, no longer hidden.
Damian held your hand. You held his. Neither of you were whole in the way you had been before.
Thinking about calling Damian the nicknames he'd given to you.
Damian had been at it for hours—not that it was abnormal for him to train for so long, but, you missed your boyfriend. You’d tried all your usual tactics: calling his name, lingering in the doorway, even offering him water. Every time, the response was the same clipped, focused:
“Just five more minutes, beloved.”
That was thirty minutes ago, and to say you were getting a little impatient would be an understatement.
“Damian.”
“Just a little–”
“Dami.”
“I’m almost–”
Alright, enough was enough.
You pushed off the doorway, arms crossed, and let your voice slip into something airy, casual, and soft.
“Habibi.”
The sound of wood striking the mat cut short. His staff faltered mid-swing, balance wavering for a fraction of a second before he steadied himself. Not fast enough to hide the way his head jerked toward you, eyes wide, pupils dilated slightly.
“…What did you just say?”
You tilted your head, feigning innocence. “What? Did I say it wrong?”
He lowered the staff slowly, brows drawn together, ears betraying him as they pinked. His lips parted slightly, as if he had words ready but couldn’t decide which to use—or whether to say any at all. Finally, he cleared his throat, exhaling sharply, attempting control.
“You shouldn’t—” He paused, gaze darting away, then back, restless. “…You shouldn’t say things like that so casually.”
“Casually?” you echoed, stepping lightly onto the mat. “You say them all the time, hayati.”
He stiffened, then visibly relaxed by a hair’s breadth, shoulders dropping, but his jaw clenched. His green eyes flicked to yours, sharp and searching, as though he were measuring the danger in your smile.
You let the silence stretch, then spoke deliberately, soft and steady: “Beloved.”
The staff slipped from his fingers and hit the mat with a muted thud.
“Beloved,” he repeated, voice low, almost reflexive, as if trying to remind himself that he wasn’t imagining it. His lips twitched, caught between incredulity and restraint.
You smiled and took another step closer. “What?”
His jaw tightened, and his cheeks were faintly flushed. He looked like he wanted to argue, but couldn’t find the words, couldn’t muster the strength to fight it.
You reached out, fingertips brushing his hair. He didn’t pull away—just swallowed hard, pulse quickening under your touch.
“…Say it again,” he murmured, barely above a whisper, eyes downcast, lashes brushing his cheek.
You leaned in, voice soft, lips near his ear: “Hayati.”
His reaction was subtle, but it struck you more powerfully for it. A sharp breath, caught halfway between a laugh and a sigh, escaped him. His forehead brushed against yours briefly, a tiny, almost involuntary gesture of surrender. He didn’t pull back, but you could feel the tension leaving him in micro-movements—an exhale here, a slight loosening of his shoulders there.
He stayed like that for a long moment, forehead resting lightly against yours, chest rising and falling unevenly. You felt him tremble just slightly under your touch, enough to make your chest tighten.
Finally, he peeked up at you from beneath his lashes, green eyes wide, but wary. “I—” His voice caught. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
You smiled softly, brushing your thumb over his cheek. “Shouldn’t have done what, Damian?”
He swallowed, gaze darting to your lips. “…You’re evil,” he muttered, faintly, his own lips twitching.
You stepped closer. “Do you want me to stop?”
His laugh was low, shaky, restrained—but not unkind. “Do you think I’d ever want you to stop?” He let his hands rest on your waist, gripping just enough to anchor himself, not in surrender so much as in habit, a quiet acknowledgment of trust.
“Good,” you whispered, voice dropping slightly. “Because I’m not even close to done yet.”
You let another nickname fall, measured and soft: “Qalbi.”
His chest stiffened, lips parting faintly. A faint, sharp intake of breath, and then he pressed just a little closer, forehead nudging yours once more, eyes closing for a brief moment. “Stop,” he murmured, voice low, caught between plea and protest. “I can’t—”
“You can’t what?” you teased gently, smiling.
He groaned softly, face buried near your shoulder, to hide his embarrassment, succumbing to the effect you had on him. “You,” he huffs in frustration, gripping you tighter, voice muffled, “are lethal.”
You laughed softly, hand running down his back. “Maybe,” you murmured, brushing a kiss along his temple, “come to bed now, habibi.”
He hesitated—just a moment—before giving a faint, reluctant sigh and letting you guide him. Later, when the two of you were laying together, his arms wrapped around your waist and face buried in your hair, he mumbled, “Say it again?” in the softest, sweetest voice, and who were you to deny him?
a/n: its my first time writing for DC and I only got into it fairly recently, so if he seems OOC I apologize :\ honestly this is the most nervous i've ever been to post something
If you have any recs/things I have to read to get a better grasp on any of the characters, feel free to tell me!!
All characters I write for are aged up if they are minors in canon
Sorry to disturb the regularly scheduled iceflame/icespring/general akotsk programming, but your recent Jason headcanons (immaculate btw top tier Jason characterization!!) made me wonder 👀 ik you said Jason is your boy but would you happen to also have any thoughts on Dick (Grayson)?? 👀👀👀
Bc I’d LOVE to hear them!! (dc was my first fandom and continues to have me on a leash)
STILL DON'T GO HERE, BUT PEOPLE SEEM TO REALLY ENJOY MY JASON HDCS, AND I ALWAYS MAKE TIME FOR MY ICEFLAME PRESIDENT.
18+ for nsfw (got wayyy too carried away 🚬). mdni.
✶ JASON'S VER.
DICK GRAYSON AS YOUR BOYFRIEND HDCS—
Loving Dick Grayson is, on the surface, the easiest thing in the world. And that's the first lie you have to learn to see through.
Because Dick is spectacularly good at making things look easy, and the things that look easiest with him are usually the things that are most likely to break your heart in slow motion if you don't pay attention.
He's the one who seems open and seems warm and seems like he's giving you everything, and the trick of him (the actual heart of him) is learning to tell the difference between what he gives easily and what he gives only when something has been earned.
The first thing you'll notice about Dick is that he's charming, and you should understand this is not an accident or a personality quirk, it's a trained skill.
Dick Grayson learned to read a room before he could read a book, he was raised in a circus that depended on charisma the way a body depends on oxygen, he learned at his father's knee how to walk into a tent and have eight hundred strangers fall in love with him in under thirty seconds, and then he was raised by Bruce Wayne, who taught him an entirely different kind of social engineering.
The result is a man who can, without effort, make you feel like the most important person in any room, and the terrifying thing is that in the moment, he means it, every time.
The way he meets you is going to feel like a movie scene. Dick has a talent for the meet-cute, he's the kind of man who notices you across a crowded bar and crosses the room and introduces himself with a grin that suggests he's been thinking about this for hours.
Within ten minutes you'll be laughing, and within twenty you'll be telling him things you don't normally tell strangers, and within an hour you'll be wondering if you've ever actually been seen before you met him. Because that's the gift he has, the genuine one, not a manipulation but a capacity: he can give you his whole attention, all of it, the lights-on undivided real thing, and the world will narrow to the size of your face.
But here's where it gets complicated: he's doing this honestly, he's not performing, not running some play on you. He genuinely is that interested, genuinely does find you fascinating, but he's also like this with the bartender, and the woman who sells flowers outside the subway, and the teenager working the front desk at the gym, and his cousin's best friend at the wedding three states away.
You will not understand for a while that what feels singular and miraculous is actually his baseline mode of being a person, and the question of whether what's between you is special is going to require a different metric than how brightly he shines when he looks at you, because he shines that brightly at everyone.
The early dating is euphoric. Dick is, hands down, the most fun first three months of your life.
He plans things, real things, not generic dinner-and-a-movie things, but things: a midnight breakfast at a diner he loves in Blüdhaven, a borrowed canoe at four a.m. so you can watch the sun come up on a reservoir, a rooftop he knows about with a view of the river, the back room of a salsa club where he knows the owner and has known the owner since he was fifteen, a bookstore that's open late where he buys you a book he thinks you'll love and inscribes it with something funny and slightly breathtaking.
He texts back immediately, he calls when he says he'll call, he remembers every offhand thing you mention, he shows up on time, he opens doors, he has manners in a way that's real and was beaten into him by both his parents and Alfred and his own native warmth, and the manners are not a performance.
He is, also, physical in a way that disarms you immediately.
Dick was raised by acrobats and lives in a body that doesn't have the boundary between platonic and not-platonic that most people's bodies have; his hand will be on your lower back when he's guiding you through a crowd, his arm will be slung around your shoulders when you're walking down the street, he'll pull you into his lap on the couch with the easy thoughtlessness of a man who's been physically affectionate with everyone he loves since he was a child, and within the first two weeks you'll already feel like you've been touching him for years.
The flirting is playful. Dick teases the way he was taught to tease, lightly, never punching down, with a grin that lets you know he's having a wonderful time.
He calls you gorgeous and beautiful and uses your name like a song, he winks at you across rooms with the kind of dial-up wink most men cannot pull off to save their lives but which on Dick reads as charming because his face was made for it, he flirts like flirting is a love language he speaks fluently in three dialects and is willing to teach you any of them.
And then (and this is the first crack) you'll notice, somewhere around week six, week eight, that you don't actually know him. Not yet. You know an enormous amount about him: the surface biography (orphaned, raised by Bruce, was Robin, became Nightwing, lives in Blüdhaven, used to date Barbara, used to date Kori, used to date a half-dozen women whose names you've heard in passing and who he speaks of with affection that's also slightly unnerving because who manages to break up with that many women and still be friends with all of them—the answer is Dick).
You know his routines, and you know his favourite restaurants, and you know which of his brothers he can tolerate this week. You know that his back hurts when it rains, and you know how he takes his coffee. But you don't know what scares him, or what he thinks about when he can't sleep, and you don't know what he has not told you, because Dick is a master of giving you so much that you don't notice what's being withheld.
This is the central paradox of dating Dick Grayson, and you have to understand it early or you'll spend years confused: he's not lying, he's not hiding from you in any way he could be called out for, he's not a secretive man. He is, in fact, by Bat-family standards, a radically open one, a person who hugs his friends and tears up at movies and tells you he loves you without flinching.
But he has a way of being present with you that doesn't require him to be known, and it can take you a year to even register that you've been giving him your whole inner life and getting back something that feels like the same coin but is actually a different currency altogether.
The flaws (because yeah, golden boy has those) are real and they're specific, and the first one is that he's conflict-avoidant in a way that can drive you genuinely insane.
Dick was raised by Bruce, and Bruce communicates by glaring through plate glass for forty years, and Dick reacted to that by becoming the opposite on the surface (affable, talkative, easy) but underneath he's still a Bat, which means when something is actually wrong, when something is sitting between you that needs to be dealt with, he'll smile, deflect, and he'll change the subject.
He'll give you a hug and a forehead kiss and a we're fine, baby, we're great, and the issue will not get addressed, and three weeks later it will resurface in some roundabout way and you'll realise he's been carrying it around the entire time and just not telling you, because telling you would have been a fight, and Dick Grayson has spent his whole life trying to be the person who never has to fight with the people he loves.
The second flaw is over-extension. Dick says yes to everything, Dick is in a dozen people's emergency contacts, Dick is the one his brothers call at 2 a.m., Dick is the one Babs calls when she needs help, Dick is the one Bruce calls when something has gone wrong with the family in a way Bruce can't fix on his own.
Dick is the police officer (or the consultant, depending on which era we're talking) who can't say no to overtime, Dick is on the Titans roster, Dick is in the JLA rotation, Dick is mentoring three teenagers and checking in on six others, and you'll find, in the second or third month of dating him, that he's exhausted in a way he will not admit to.
The exhaustion has consequences for you. He'll fall asleep mid-sentence on your couch, cancel plans last-minute with apologies that sound rehearsed because he gives them too often. He'll be physically present with you and mentally three calls behind on his to-do list, and when you try to talk to him about it he will look at you with those big blue eyes and tell you he's fine, baby, I promise, I just need a few hours, and you'll have to learn that a few hours in Dick's vocabulary means I'm not going to address this, please stop asking.
The third flaw (and this one's the worst) is what Babs once called, in a fight that he absolutely did not handle gracefully, his martyr complex.
Dick has internalised the idea that he's responsible for the wellbeing of the people he loves, that their pain is his to absorb, that if anything goes wrong it's on him to fix it.
The way this shows up in a relationship is that he'll not let you take care of him, not in any way he could not have explained as just being thoughtful, not in any way you can call out without sounding ridiculous. But the asymmetry is real.
He'll hold you when you cry, but won't cry in front of you; he'll ask you about your day with focused interest, then deflect when you ask about his; he'll let you in to the version of him that needs to be the strong one, and he'll pretend the version of him that needs anything else doesn't exist. And if you're not paying attention you'll fall in love with the strong version and never notice that the other one is starving.
Then there's the family. Dick's family is, depending on the day, either a delight or a structural threat to your relationship. Dick is the eldest son, the golden boy, the one who absorbs all of the Bat-family chaos and metabolises it into functional family dynamics, and being his partner means inheriting an entire tribe of complicated, traumatized, dangerous men (and women), some of whom will adore you and some of whom will decide instantly that you're not good enough for him.
Damian will be politely contemptuous of you for at least a year before grudgingly admitting that you have your uses; Jason will needle you and Dick equally and call you sister-in-law in that lazy drawl before you've even talked about marriage just to watch Dick choke on his beer; Tim will run a background check on you because he runs background checks on everyone Dick dates and is genuinely apologetic about it (maybe); Cass will simply look at you for a long quiet moment and then either nod or not nod, and there's no court of appeal for what Cass decides; Babs will be polite to your face and reserve judgment, and you'll understand within ten minutes of meeting her that she and Dick share a history that is cellular in a way that nothing can quite touch, and you'll have to make peace with this or you'll lose your mind.
Bruce will be Bruce about it, which means he will not openly disapprove and he will not openly approve, he'll simply observe, and you'll leave every dinner at the manor unsure whether you passed or failed. Alfred (bless Alfred) will be the one who actually tells you the truth, in tiny offhand asides delivered while he refills your tea, things like, "Master Dick has not slept well this week, Miss, I trust you will encourage him to take a proper rest", and you'll understand that Alfred is the only person in this entire family who's going to tell you what's actually going on, and you'll love Alfred for the rest of your life (don't we all?).
Now, the Barbara thing. Because we have to address it.
Babs is one of Dick's people in a way that you, no matter how much he loves you, can't fully displace at the level of history, and you have to decide early whether you can live with that or whether it's going to corrode you from the inside.
They've known each other since they were teenagers, they've loved each other in every possible way (romantically, platonically, professionally, with grief, with rage, with the kind of forgiveness that only comes from people who've survived each other), and there's a frequency on which they communicate that no one else can pick up (half-sentences finished by the other one, references to events that don't have names, the particular way she says Grayson that sounds like a whole conversation) and the texture of their friendship is going to take some getting used to, because they are close, they'll always be close, and that's information you have to absorb without resentment.
But (and this is very important) Dick knows what it looks like from the outside, Dick has been in this exact situation with previous partners. Dick has watched relationships die on the Babs hill before, and he's not going to let that happen with you, and the way he'll not let it happen is by being crystalline about where you stand.
The first time the topic comes up (and it'll come up, you'll say something offhand, or he'll catch a flicker on your face when she calls, or someone at a Bat-family thing will make a comment that lands wrong) he will stop, turn to you, take your hands or your face, and he'll say it: "hey. hey, look at me. she's my friend. she's my best friend. she's not—she's not what you are. you are what you are. you. okay?" and the use of the word you twice, the you-are-what-you-are, is going to land in your sternum like a bell, because Dick chooses words for a living and he's chosen these ones on purpose. What he's telling you is not don't worry about her but understand who you are to me, specifically, and let that be enough.
He'll do it more than once, because he understands it has to be reiterated. Because he understands that with him in particular the past is populated, and reassurance with Dick is not a one-time conversation it's a practice.
He'll bring it up unprompted sometimes, when he's noticed something you didn't say, "hey, by the way, you know that thing earlier? Barbara and I are gonna be like that forever, that's not changing, but you also know there's no version of my life where I'm not coming home to you, right? you know that?", and the willingness to say it without being asked is the thing that, over months, defuses it.
He'll not perform a separation from her that isn't real, but he'll absolutely perform, in the most direct and least ambiguous terms possible, his choice of you, and you'll learn, slowly, to trust that the choice is renewed every day on purpose.
And the small things matter: he keeps a photo of you on his nightstand, where her photo used to live (he'll mention this exactly once, casually, watching for your reaction, "used to be a different picture there, now it's you, just so you know," and it'll take you the rest of the night to recover).
He introduces you, every time, by your full name followed by my girl; he holds your hand at family dinners (the small everyday hand-holding, not performance) even when she's at the table.
He asks your opinion on cases when both of you are present, because he wants you to know that you're not in the second tier, that the room you occupy in his life is the room with the lights on; and the cumulative weight of all of these small choices, made consistently over years, is what makes the difference between a partner who eats herself alive over Babs and one who learns, eventually, that being his now is not a lesser thing than being someone's was, and may in fact be the bigger thing.
The Kori thing is different and easier, because Kori lives in a different gravity than the rest of you do, and her relationship with Dick is something he carries with him like an ache rather than a pull. It's the past, it really is, but the past did something to him that you'll feel sometimes. The way he gets quiet when stars come up in conversation, the way he doesn't talk about the time after the Titans first broke up. You don't push it, the same way you don't push the rest of it, because Dick is not a man who responds well to being excavated.
Now, the intimacy. This is where everything that's been laid out so far really matters, because Dick in a relationship looks one way and Dick in bed looks another, and the difference is illuminating about who he actually is.
You'd think (based on the charm, the easy physicality, the way he flirts, the half-dozen famous exes) that Dick would be a suave lover, a smooth one, the kind of man who orchestrates a seduction the way a conductor runs a symphony, and the truth is more interesting than that and a little bit funnier:
Dick is technically extraordinary (this is a man who has the body control of an Olympic gymnast, the cardio of a working acrobat, and the kind of physical literacy that means he can find any nerve cluster in your body within four minutes of meeting it), and yes, he absolutely could run the symphony version, and sometimes does, but his actual default mode in bed is delighted, almost playful, with a generosity that borders on excessive.
Because Dick was raised in a culture where giving someone pleasure is a form of love, and he has internalised this so thoroughly that he genuinely doesn't understand selfish lovers, finds them confusing, considers them a category mistake.
The first time is not fast. Dick is not a man in a hurry, he's waited his whole life to find out what you like and he's not going to rush.
The experience of being undressed by Dick Grayson the first time is a thing that will spoil you for other people, because he treats it like an event. He kisses you like he has all the time in the world (and he does, and he's going to use all of it), and when his hands first move under your shirt the touch is so unhurried and so deliberate that you'll, briefly, forget how to breathe.
He undresses you slowly, watching your face, narrating with his hands rather than his mouth. The first thing you'll notice is that he's quiet in bed at first, not silent but attentive, listening to you, watching, learning, and the second thing you'll notice is that he smiles against your skin, often, like he's having a wonderful time, like there's nowhere else he'd rather be.
The smiling against your skin is going to undo you, because nobody has ever made you feel that welcome in your own body before.
He has specific physical tells in bed that are just him, and you'll come to recognise them like signatures:
He hums. A low, almost-not-audible hum against your skin when he's particularly enjoying something, a sound that's not a moan and not really a growl but something closer to a contented animal noise, and the first time you feel it vibrate against your collarbone you'll understand why his exes never quite got over him;
He has a habit of pausing mid-thrust to grin at you, just stop and grin, like he can't quite believe his luck, and the grin will be at close range and unguarded and if you weren't already in love with him it would do the job;
He taps his fingers. When his hand is resting on your hip or your thigh, his fingertips will tap absently, an irregular little rhythm, the same way they tap on a coffee cup when he's thinking, and you'll realise he doesn't even know he does it;
He has a ticklish spot just below his ribs on the left side that he does not announce and will absolutely deny if asked, but if your mouth happens to land there during the slow exploration phase he will jolt and laugh, surprised out of his cool, and the laugh (that real laugh, the one his handsome face was made for) will derail the next ten minutes;
He kisses foreheads, constantly, mid-fuck, between thrusts, after climax, your forehead, your temple, the crown of your head, like a punctuation mark, and you'll learn that the forehead-kiss is his most reflexive expression of affection and it shows up in bed as often as it shows up anywhere else.
He's a worshipful lover in a way that can take you a few times to get used to.
Dick goes down like it's a hobby, he goes down like he's competing with himself for Olympic gold. He goes down for long stretches and shows no signs of getting bored. The eye contact is intense in a way that will short-circuit you the first time, because he wants to watch your face fall apart, he wants the information, and the entire time his hands will be doing other things, attentive things, his fingers laced with yours or holding your thigh pinned open or pressed flat against your stomach so he can feel you breathe.
Afterwards he will rest his cheek against your hip for a moment with this expression of quiet satisfaction that will make you want to weep, because he's pleased with himself, in the best way, like he just executed a perfect double-twist and stuck the landing without a single wobble.
He's vocal in a particular register. Dick praises, constantly, and the first time you notice the pattern it's a little dizzying because you have not, until this point in your life, been told you are gorgeous, perfect, fucking incredible, baby look at you, that's it, just like that, fuck you feel so good, you have no idea what you do to me by a man who clearly means every single word.
The praise is not generic, it's specific. He tells you about the noise you just made, tells you about the way your back arched just now, he tells you about how you taste, tells you about something you did three minutes ago that he can't stop thinking about. And the cumulative effect is that being in bed with Dick is like being told an extremely flattering story about yourself in real time and discovering, against your will, that you might actually believe it.
He calls you baby (that's the dominant one, the one he uses the most) and beautiful and sweetheart and honey and your name, often, comfortably. The use of your name is not a wall to be brought down because the wall isn't there; the first time he says I love you in bed it will be relatively early (months early) because Dick says it easily, he says it freely, and he means it every time.
You'll have to decide whether the easiness of it is a comfort or a complication, because the words come faster from him than they did from anyone else you've loved and that doesn't necessarily mean less, but it does mean different.
He's ridiculously attentive. He reads you in real time and adjusts, he learns your body in two or three sessions in a way that some people don't manage in years. He remembers what worked, he tries new things and watches your face for your reactions, he asks (verbally! with words! like a regular person!) what you want, and the asking is hot rather than awkward because Dick is genuinely curious, he wants to know, the wanting to know is part of the wanting you.
The cumulative effect of all of this, over months, is that the sex with Dick becomes some of the most pleasurable sex you've ever had in your life, and that fact, in itself, is going to start to bother you in a specific way that takes you a while to identify.
Because here's the thing nobody tells you about being a generous lover's partner: you start to notice, somewhere in month three or four, that the dynamic is asymmetric.
Dick is very, very invested in your pleasure, he derives a great deal of satisfaction from giving it to you, but the bulk of every encounter is structured around making you fall apart, and you'll start to wonder, gently at first, what he actually likes. What he actually wants. What would happen if you took the wheel for an evening and made the night about him, and you will discover, over time, that this is genuinely difficult for him.
Dick has trouble receiving. This is the bedroom version of the wider pattern (the over-extension, the conflict avoidance, the martyr-complex thing) and it shows up in bed as a deflection, a graceful one, almost imperceptible.
You start working your way down his body and he'll roll the two of you so suddenly you're underneath him again and he's grinning at you like yeah, no, my turn; you'll try to slow him down and he'll redirect with a kiss and his hand between your legs; you'll say it, eventually, Dick, hey, let me, and he'll laugh (that easy charming laugh, the deflective one) and say baby, I'm having fun, I'm great, c'mere, and the conversation will end and you'll be on your back again and you will, an hour later, lying next to him while he's drifting off, realise that he's done it again.
The first time you sit with this, properly (the first time you understand what's happening) you'll feel a little sick, because you'll realise that the generosity you'd been mistaking for sexual confidence is partly a deflection, a way of making the encounter about you so it doesn't have to be about him. A way of staying in the role of the giver because the role of the receiver is one he was not, somewhere along the way, taught how to occupy without flinching.
The way you have to crack it is the same way you have to crack every other layer of him, which is patiently, over time, with a kind of attention that mirrors back the attention he's been giving you.
What you do, slowly, is insist, gently, repeatedly, without making it a confrontation: you take his hand and put it on the headboard above his head and you say stay there, you laugh when you say it, you keep it light, but you mean it, and he'll laugh and try to move and you'll say no, stay, and he'll go very still and look at you with something new in his face (a flicker of genuine surprise, almost a kind of unease) and what yo're doing in this moment is showing him that the room is going to hold him whether he's in motion or not.
The first time he actually lets you do what you want with him, the first time he just lies there and lets you take him apart, slowly, with no escape route, you'll see his composure crack in real time and it'll be one of the most extraordinary things you've ever witnessed, because Dick Grayson unguarded is a rare phenomenon and you're getting it because you earned it.
And what you'll discover, when he finally lets himself receive, is that he is extremely responsive. Vocally, physically, emotionally. That the surface charm has been masking a deep, almost unbearable sensitivity, that he gets loud when he's being properly attended to, that he has shake in him when someone is patient with him.
He will say things (broken, half-finished things, baby, please, oh god, fuck, don't stop, please) that you have never heard from him in any other context, because Dick when he's being taken care of is a different person than Dick when he's taking care of you.
The moment you get access to that other Dick is the moment the relationship begins to deepen into something the surface version could never have built on its own.
The other thing about Dick in bed (and this is important) is that he's strong, in a way that doesn't always register because his charm makes him read as soft. The way this surfaces in bed is genuinely startling the first time you encounter it.
Dick can pick you up, easily, without much effort, and rearrange the geography of the bed with the kind of casual physicality that comes from a man who routinely flips off rooftops, and the first time he does it (the first time he just lifts you, hands under your thighs, and walks you to a different position with no apparent strain) you'll have a small private revelation about what the rest of his life is like, and the thing he holds back.
The strength he's being careful with around you, is going to become a quiet erotic undercurrent for the entire relationship.
And then there's the flexibility, which you can't talk about Dick in bed without addressing.
The man can do things with his body that other people genuinely cannot, and it's not a party trick, it's just physical fact. He can hold positions other men would tap out of within minutes, his hips have a kind of fluency that's difficult to describe and impossible to forget.
He can fold you up into shapes you didn't know your body would do and hold you there long enough for the position to stop being an act and start being a place you live, and he's not show-offy about this, he doesn't lead with it, he just uses it, casually, the way other men use their hands.
The first time it really registers what you're working with you'll laugh, mid-act, an involuntary disbelieving laugh, and he'll stop and grin at you and ask what, and you'll say nothing, nothing, keep going, and he'll know exactly what, and his ego will preen for a week about it.
He can kneel between your thighs with his back arched and his hands braced wide on the headboard for as long as he wants to; no shake, no shift, no sign of strain, just steady working focus. He can fold himself almost in half over you while still keeping perfect rhythm, his forehead against yours, his elbows planted on either side of your head, his hips doing something that should not be physically possible from that angle but apparently is when it's him.
He can sit back on his heels with you in his lap and stay there for hours, his hands on your hips guiding you, his thighs not trembling once, his breathing barely changed, and the patient quality of that stillness (the way he can just hold and let you move on him at your pace) is one of the most erotic things you've ever encountered, because he's not enduring it, he's enjoying it, you can see it on his face.
His hips are their own subject, and you'll think about them in spare moments for the rest of your life.
There's a fluency to the way he moves that other people simply don't have, an unbroken liquid quality, the same physical literacy that makes him a working acrobat showing up here as the ability to change rhythms mid-stroke without losing the through-line, to slow down without losing the angle, to grind in a slow circle that finds something specific inside you and stays there until you're making sounds you don't recognise, and the worst part is that he knows.
He has the information, he's clocked the angle that makes your breath catch and he can return to it with surgical precision whenever he wants to, and he does, often, with a small private smile against your shoulder.
He has a habit to pick you up mid-fuck and walking you somewhere else without losing rhythm. This is a real thing he does and the first time he does it you will go slightly insane, because you'd been on the bed and you'd thought you were going to finish on the bed, and instead he's reached under your thighs, lifted you cleanly into his lap with his hands cupping you, stood up, walked you to the wall, and pressed your back against it without ever pulling out.
The casualness of the whole manoeuvre (the way it's genuinely no effort for him) is going to recalibrate your understanding of what sex can be; he does the same thing with the bed-to-counter relocation, with the bed-to-shower transition, with picking you up off the couch when neither of you is going to make it to the bedroom in time, and every single time he does it he treats it as completely unremarkable, which is somehow worse than if he were trying to impress you with it.
The positions he prefers shift over time, too.
His early-relationship favourites are these: he loves having you on top of him with his hands on your hips, because he likes watching you, he likes the angle, he likes being able to reach every part of you at once (your hips, your stomach, up to your breasts, your throat if you tip your head back), and he likes the freedom it gives his mouth. He can sit up and meet you, pull you down against him, kiss you while you move, or lean back and just watch, eyes dark, jaw slack, with the kind of frank wonder that's going to feel like being looked at by a man who has never seen another woman in his life.
He loves having you face-down with his weight on your back, one of his hands flat against the mattress next to your head and the other gathered in your hair, his mouth at your ear narrating playful filth, because the angle is good and the intimacy of his mouth that close to your ear is a thing he's very aware of.
He loves having you on your side with him behind you, slow and deep and unhurried, his arm under your head and his other hand splayed across your stomach holding you against him, because this position is the one where he can stay closest to you for the longest, and Dick prioritises closeness above almost everything else.
He loves (and this is one of his giveaway favourites) having you sit in his lap, facing him, both of you upright, your legs around his waist, your foreheads together, his hands on your back holding you against him.
This is the position he reaches for on slow nights, the one he gets you into when he wants the whole encounter to be one long unbroken kiss, and the slowness of it (the way it forces you to breathe in time with him, the way his eyes are right there, two inches from yours, the way every shift is felt across your whole pressed-together body) is the position where he's most undone, where the surface charm comes off completely and you get the real him.
There's also the mid-sex things he does that will become the texture of the relationship.
He hooks one of your legs over his shoulder and turns his head to kiss the inside of your knee, never breaking rhythm, and the casual grace of the gesture (the fluency of it, the way it costs him nothing) will undo you the first dozen times he does it;
He catches your hand when you reach for him and laces your fingers and pins it to the mattress next to your head and holds it there, palm-to-palm, his thumb stroking the inside of your wrist, an entire conversation happening in two square inches of contact; he stops, sometimes, mid-thrust, and just looks at you, his rhythm gone still, his eyes traveling your face like he's trying to commit something to memory, and when you ask what he just shakes his head and smiles and kisses you and starts moving again, and you'll never get the answer to what, but you'll learn that this is one of his most reflexive expressions of love.
He talks against your skin (not on it, into it) his mouth pressed to your throat, your shoulder, the soft place under your ear, and the praise comes out muffled and warm and slightly slurred. Like he can't quite focus enough to enunciate, and there's something about the vibration of his voice directly against your pulse that hits a frequency words alone can't reach.
He murmurs into the join of your neck and shoulder, a small steady stream (baby, fuck, you feel—fuck—)and the sentences don't always finish, and the not-finishing is the proof that he means them.
He has a habit of brushing your hair back from your face mid-sex. Your hair will fall across your forehead, or into your eyes, or stick to your temple, and his hand will come up automatically and touch it, gentle, almost absent, like he can't bear to have anything between him and your face.
The gesture is so reflexive he doesn't even know he does it; he does the same thing with hair stuck to your temple from sweat (smooths it back with his thumb, presses a kiss to where it was, keeps moving) and the overall effect of being touched this attentively, this casually, while he's taking you apart between your thighs, is going to ruin you for partners who treat sex as a contained event with discrete inputs, because Dick treats it as a continuous field of attention, and once you've experienced that you can't go back.
He sucks on his fingers. Sometimes after he's had them inside you, holding eye contact, deliberate, with a small smile that's the smuggest expression on his entire face, and you'll hate him for the smugness and you'll love him for it. And you will, eventually, give up on which one wins; he does it casually, like it's the most natural follow-through in the world, and the unbothered quality of the move is what makes it work, because if it were performed it would be obnoxious and instead it just reads as a man who's genuinely enjoying himself.
He kisses down your body in a continuous unbroken line. Dick doesn't skip, Dick doesn't jump-cut. He gets from your mouth to where he's going by traveling, lips against your jaw, your throat, your collarbone, your sternum, the soft place between your ribs, your stomach, your hip.
The journey takes as long as it takes, he's in no hurry, and he stops at points along the way to settle in for a minute, sucking a mark into the place where your shoulder meets your neck, scraping his teeth lightly across your hipbone and watching you twitch, and the deliberateness of the trip is more arousing than the destination.
Dick has a thing he does where he'll be inside you, going slow, and he'll stop moving entirely. Just stop, just stay there, deep, holding still, and lean down and kiss you, hungry and unhurried, for a full minute, two minutes, however long, while the rest of him is just present inside you, not moving, not building, just there.
The held stillness combined with the kissing is going to do something to your nervous system that nothing else has ever done, and he knows, and he does it on purpose, and he watches your face afterward with this small satisfied expression that says yeah, that one's mine, I did that.
He gets a flush (high on his cheekbones, down his throat, across his chest) when he's getting close, and the flush is one of the few things about his body he can't control. The first time you notice it (you'd been watching his face) you'll feel the small private thrill of having identified one of his tells, and after that you'll watch for it deliberately, and he won't know you're watching for it, but when it appears you'll know before he does, which is a strange small power that becomes one of your favourite things about him.
He stretches afterwards, in bed, with the unselfconscious physical grace of a cat. Arms over his head, back arched off the mattress, a long luxurious extension of every muscle group, and the first time you watch him do it you'll understand viscerally what kind of body you've gotten access to, and you'll think about the stretch in inappropriate moments for years; sometimes he'll do it half-on top of you, his weight pleasantly pinning you to the mattress while he stretches his arms above his head, and the unconscious comfort of the gesture (the way he'll just use your body as a place to land) is one of the most affectionate things he does.
He puts his ear to your chest, sometimes, after you're both finished. Head tucked under your chin, ear flat against your sternum, and listens to your heartbeat, and he does this often enough that you'll realise it's very much deliberate. He's checking, that something in him is soothed by the sound of your heartbeat; he won't explain why, and you won't ask, but you'll find yourself, on the nights he does it, automatically running your fingers through his hair, holding him there, letting him stay as long as he wants. Because you understand on some pre-verbal level that this is one of the ways he loves you.
He likes (and this is something you'll have to learn over time, because he doesn't volunteer it, it has to be asked for) being underneath you. Not just casually. But in a true sense. With you setting the pace.
He likes pinning your hands above your head and watching you try to move under him; he likes (and this is the one that surprises you both) being held afterwards in a particular way, your arms around his ribs, your face against the back of his neck, your whole body tucked against his, and the first time you do it without thinking.
The first time you fold yourself around him and just stay, he goes still in the way that means I didn't know I needed this and now I will not be able to live without it, and he won't say anything, but in the morning he'll be a little softer with you than usual, a little more clingy, and that'll be his way of telling you.
He also has, and this takes you longer to notice, a thing about hair (yours specifically, but his too) he likes you running your hands through his hair (and his hair is thick and a little wild and slightly too long and he uses some kind of product that smells like cedar, and you will find yourself reaching for it constantly), and he likes pulling yours, gently, at the right moment, with the kind of precision that suggests he has done his homework on what you can take.
He likes when you scrape your nails along his scalp, soft slow drags from temple to nape, and the first time you do it absent-mindedly while watching a movie he goes liquid on the couch beneath you and you'll think you've broken him, and then you'll do it again, on purpose, in bed, and he'll make a noise you've never heard him make before.
He's a kisser in a way that some men are not. Some men kiss as a transition, a means to an end, a thing you do on the way to other things. Dick kisses as a destination, kissing is part of the event, and he'll kiss you for absurd lengths of time without escalating, just kissing, slow deep unhurried kissing, his hand at your jaw, his thumb stroking your cheekbone.
There are nights when the whole evening is essentially just that, hours of just kissing on the couch like teenagers, and you'll realise at some point that he's doing this on purpose, that he's savouring, that he genuinely loves the act of kissing you and considers it not foreplay but its own complete category of intimacy.
The slow nights with Dick are soft in a way that's almost embarrassing. He's not afraid of softness, he leans into it, he enjoys it. He kisses you for forty minutes before anything else happens because he genuinely loves kissing you, he wraps his whole body around yours and moves slowly enough that you can feel every shift. He keeps his eyes on yours, he talks, but quieter than usual, the praise reduced to its essentials, baby, baby, you're so perfect, I love you, fuck I love you, and the I-love-yous on these nights are easier than they have any right to be, because Dick really does love easily, that part isn't a lie, the difficulty is what's underneath the loving, but the loving itself is real.
Dick is a man who feels things deeply and was trained from childhood to perform composure, and there are nights (usually after he's let you take him apart, usually after a stretch where work has been hard and he's been carrying too much) where he'll hide his face in your neck afterwards and you'll feel his breath catch, and you'll feel something wet against your skin.
He will not acknowledge it, and the way to handle it is to do nothing (don't comment, don't question, don't make it a thing) just hold him, run your hand up and down his back, and let him do it, because what is happening is that he's letting himself feel the day, and the only place he's allowed to do that is here, with you, and if you make a fuss about it he won't be able to do it again without feeling like a burden.
Aftercare with Dick is seamless. He's good at it the way he's good at everything socially calibrated, but the early version of his aftercare has a quality of checking that you've to learn to read past (are you good? you good, baby? you need water? you need anything?) and this is partly genuine concern and partly anxiety, partly his own need to confirm that he did the encounter right.
The loving thing to do, eventually, is to take his face in your hands and kiss him gently and say yes, I'm good, I'm great, come here, and pull him down and hold him, and let his version of aftercare give way to your version, and the long quiet hours of just lying tangled up in him, his head on your chest, his hand in yours, are the hours when he is most himself, when the performance is fully off, when he's just a man in a bed with someone who loves him.
He's deeply affectionate post-sex in a way that will spoil you.
Dick doesn't roll over and just fall asleep. No. Dick wants to talk, Dick wants to cuddle (he uses this word, unironically, he's not embarrassed by the word cuddle, he's comfortable with all of his feelings in a way that took him years of work to get to).
Dick will trace shapes on your back for an hour, he'll kiss the top of your head every few minutes like he's checking in. Dick will tell you stories from his childhood at 2 a.m. with your head on his chest and his hand in your hair, and these are the hours when he gives you the real him, the one that exists underneath the glossy charm, and you'll learn that the way to access this Dick is to be still with him. To not rush it, not ask him questions that put him on the spot. To just be a warm body next to his and let him talk, and over months, over years, the stories will accumulate, and you'll know him in a way that few people have ever truly known him, and that knowing will be the thing that makes the relationship real.
His general affection, outside of bed, has its own grammar that you'll learn to read as well.
He's a toucher, constantly, never aggressively, just always. His hand on your knee at dinner, his fingers tangled in yours under the table at family events, his arm around your shoulders on the couch, his hand at the small of your back when he's standing behind you in any line for any reason.
He's a forehead-kisser, as established, and the forehead kiss is his most freely given affection. Dispensed dozens of times a day, when you walk past him in the kitchen, when you hand him coffee, when he leaves for patrol, when he comes back.
He' a nape-of-the-neck-toucher, his palm warm and broad against the back of your neck when he's leaning in to say something close, and there's a soft, possessive quality to the touch that he himself doesn't quite recognise, the kind of soft mine that doesn't need to be said out loud.
He likes holding your hand, full hand, fingers laced, in public, walking down the street, at parties, at dinners, like he wants people to see, and the wanting-people-to-see is its own kind of declaration.
He cooks for you. Badly. But with great enthusiasm, and he'll get better over the years because Dick gets better at everything he applies himself to.
He learns your favourites and makes them on bad days, he leaves you notes on the kitchen counter with hearts on them like he's twelve years old, he sends you texts in the middle of the day that are just thinking about you, beautiful, hope your day's going okay, and the weight of all of these gestures is what builds the relationship into something solid.
Dick understands (in a way many people don't) that love is not a feeling you have once and refer to forever, it's a practice, it's the daily choice, and he's good at the daily choice, which is one of the most quietly extraordinary things about him.
He dances with you in your kitchen. Actually dances. Not the joke kind, real dancing, he was raised by acrobats and learned to dance before he could read.
He can lead, and he'll teach you, and the first time he pulls you up off the couch to dance to something that came on while he was making dinner you will feel like you have walked into a different kind of life
He sings, badly, in the shower, loud, unselfconscious, and the badness of his singing is one of the only things he is genuinely unselfconscious about, the only place where the surface composure cracks without him noticing.
He laughs at your jokes. Not in some polite way, in a full way, head thrown back, with his whole body, and the laugh is so generous it will make you try harder to be funny, just to hear it again, and you'll become, over the course of dating him, slightly funnier than you were before, because he's been treating your humour like a thing worth investing in. And he'll become happier, because you're one of the few who can bring simple, uncomplicated happiness into his life with a few sentences.
He remembers everything. The names of your friends from college, the specific wine you liked at that one restaurant two years ago, the way you take your eggs, the title of the book you'd mentioned wanting to read. And the effect of being remembered like this, of being attended to at this granularity, is destabilising in a way that takes you months to recover from. Because most people in the world are not paying attention at this level, and discovering that one of them is paying it to you will change your understanding of what attention can be.
Now, fights with Dick are their own thing because they're terrible in a specific way. Dick doesn't yell, he doesn't storm out. Dick instead does the worst possible thing, which is get quiet, get gentle, smile at you with sad eyes and say you might be right, baby, let's just—let's just take a beat, okay? and then leave the apartment for three hours and come back composed and ready to not talk about it.
The first time he does this you're going to be furious in a way you don't quite have language for, because he didn't fight back, he didn't engage, he just side-stepped and you're now standing in your living room with all of the original anger and nowhere to put it.
You will learn, over time, that the way to fight with Dick is to refuse the side-step: you have to make him stay in the room, you have to ask him direct questions and not let him deflect with charm.
You have to be willing to call him on the we're fine, baby when you're not, in fact, fine, and you have to do this without yelling, because yelling triggers his shutdown, the version of him that learned at age fourteen that the way to survive Bruce Wayne in a bad mood was to be agreeable and inscrutable.
You have to be steady, and you have to be patient, and let him know that the conversation is going to happen, today, and that you're not going to be charmed out of it.
When he realises you've figured out the trick of him will be a moment of genuine pain on his face. Not anger, not annoyance, grief, almost, because something he's used to manage relationships his whole life has just stopped working, and he's now going to have to actually be in the room with you, and he is, on some level, terrified, and that fear is a thing you have to handle gently, because what is being asked of him is enormous, and what he's going to discover, on the other side of it, is that he can survive being known.
Over time, the relationship with Dick stabilises into something that's both easier and harder than the early days suggested it would be.
Easier because he's genuinely a wonderful person to be around, because he makes you laugh, because he's reliable in the ways that matter. Because he loves you with a steady warmth that doesn't ever waver. The sex remains, against all odds, better than it was at the start.
But harder because the work of dragging him out of his own self-effacement, the work of insisting that he be a whole person with you and not just the version that takes care of you, the work of sitting in conflict with him until the conflict is actually resolved... that work is constant. IT doesn't get easier, you don't fix it once and have it stay fixed. You have to do it every six months, every year, every time something gets stressful and he reverts to his old habits, and you have to decide if you have the energy for that work, because you'll need it for the rest of your life with him.
The big picture, the actual truth of dating Dick Grayson is this: he's the easiest man in the world to fall in love with, but one of the more difficult ones to actually know. The gap between those two facts is the entire territory of the relationship.
Butt if you're willing to do the work, if you're willing to refuse his deflections without breaking him, and you're willing to be the person who insists on his full self instead of accepting the gracious half he hands you, what you get on the other side is a man who is radiantly good.
Who loves you with everything he has, who is kind in a way the world doesn't produce many of anymore, who will show up for you for the rest of his life, who will hold your hand in the hospital and your face when you cry and say your name like a prayer when he comes.
Who, when he finally lets you all the way in, will look at you with the kind of relief that suggests he's been waiting his whole life for someone to refuse to let him hide, and you will understand, then, what the charm was for: it was simply the door. It was never the room.
He's the easiest man you'll ever love and the hardest one to actually reach, but the reaching is the whole point.
Sometimes it felt like Gotham was just a soap opera.
At least, that's how Dick felt the second his boots hit the rooftop overseeing the majority of the city.
It was strange to be back on the job. As a vigilante Blüdhaven let you breathe at least a little. Gotham watched you, judged you, and remembered literally everything.
He hasn't seen you yet, which is a bit upsetting. You were always his third favourite alien (Kori first, obviously. And Clark second. No one will ever replace the fan boy obsession he has with Clark).
But the fact you weren't here had him frowning. Your punctuality wasn't the most pristine—you were constantly late to galas, early to disasters, but always on time to people.
Especially when it comes to your new boy toy Red Hood, you'd been orbiting him so consistently lately that whenever he saw you Dick had started a running tally of how many times he could tease you about it before you snapped and finally launched him into orbit.
At least Kori would be his knight in shining armor when you did. Oh how glorious that would be.
He rolled his shoulders, gaze sweeping the streets below. Why is it so quiet? He needs some action so that he can pack up whatever gang Bruce wants him chasing and get home to Kori. She even said she had a surprise–
He almost fell to his knees at the crack of gunfire cutting the thought clean in half. Hell, fucking, yeah.
Dick's head snapped toward the sound, instincts flaring as he zeroed in on a narrow alley a few blocks away. He was already moving before his brain fully caught up, allowing muscle memory to do what it always did.
He landed just in time to see Red Hood drive a knee into a guy's sternum and slam him into brick hard enough to leave a crater. He was efficient, controlled, violent in a way that was almost familiar.
"Wow," Dick muttered as he dropped in, taking out a gunman with a kick.
Red Hood whipped around, guns snapping up before pausing as his eyes clocked the black and blue suit.
"What the hell are you doing here?" He growled.
"Helping your ass," Dick cheered, cracking an escrima stick across someone's wrist, "You're welcome."
"I have it handled."
Dick ducked a wild swing from someone attempting an ambush behind him and elbowed the guy in the jaw, "You have most of it handled. I'm like the little parrot spewing words of praise on your shoulder."
Red Hood groaned, shooting one more man in the leg before all of them were finally riddled injured on the floor, either passed out or on the very verge. Silence rushed in to fill the alley, thick and echoing.
Dick straightened, hands resting on his hips, "See? Team effort goes a looongg way."
Red Hood turned slowly, angled just enough that Dick could just about feel the glare looming behind it, "Uh-huh."
Dick grinned, "So you're more of a loner. Got it."
Up close the resemblance was uncanny. The stance, they way he held himself, the way Red Hood winced a little when he rolled his shoulder—the exact shoulder Dick remembered stitching up for his little brother.
Jason.
No. Red Hood. Jason is dead, long gone.
"So," Dick said, leaning against the wall like they weren't standing in the middle of a crime scene, "Superstar ditch you tonight or am I about to be a third wheel?"
Red Hood stiffened. Barely, but Dick still saw it.
"She's busy," The masked man replied flatly.
"Uh-huh," Dick hummed, "Are you lying? You keep looking up at the sky like you're searching for her."
"I am not."
"You are," He grinned brightly.
Red Hood scoffed, "You don't know anything about me."
Dick tilted his head, studying him with an infuriating calmness, "You sound like my brother when you say that."
The air shifted and Red Hood's hands curled at his sides, "Isn't that fun."
"Sure is," Dick said gently, "I'm sure you'd get along if he was still with us."
The jacket squeaked a little as the (literal) red-head shifted uncomfortably, fingers idly playing with the zipper, "Shame."
"You're so brooding," He giggled to himself.
"Then go."
Dick exhaled, gaze flickering briefly skyward, "Nah. Starshines my friend I wanna see what the hype around you is all about."
Red Hood hesitated, "And your opinion is...?"
"You seem good enough. I would have preferred someone else but you're close enough."
Red Hood's patience didn't snap all at once. It never did. His patience was something that fizzled all throughout the day, depleting depending on his surroundings (mainly when he was around you). And this right now was not good for his blood levels.
"Stop staring," He told the man.
Dick blinked like he'd just been caught zoning out in class, "Am I?"
"Yeah. Like you're tryna x-ray through the helmet."
"Maybe if you stopped being so defensive I wouldn't have to," He grinned.
Red Hood let out a sharp, humourless laugh, the sound echoing far too loud in the alley, "Defensive? You drop into my fight, won't leave, and fucking psychoanalyse me like some fuckass therapist."
Dick grinned wider, "Make sure to leave a good review. I have a card somewhere..." He muttered as he patted down his suit.
"Jesus Christ–" Red Hood ran a hand down the front of the helmet, frustration oozing from his voice, "Just lay off it, Dick."
Okay. Right. That could have just been an insult. Surely he's just calling him a Dick.
But the way he said it—it was almost soft despite his anger. And seemingly like everything this man did, he had done it just like Jason.
Dick's grin froze mid-expression, almost as though someone had hit pause on him. The city noise—sirens, distant traffic, Gotham's ever-present hum—seemed to fade into the background, muffled and unreal.
"What," Dick whispered in disbelief.
Oh. Oh shit. Jason hadn't even realised he said that. It's not like it's inconspicuous that Gotham and Blüdhaven's favourite boy is Richard John Grayson—anyone who knew him would know. Hell, anyone with a brain would know all the hero's identities in a heartbeat. Although it seems majority of the world seemingly has no brain.
And of course, Jason does know. Because one—he spent five of his most important years with this man, he could spot him from a mile away. Two—he's seen photos of Nightwing and Starfire kissing, and no way in hell would Dick let that happen without a public, dramatic eulogy about his failed relationship with his so-called one true love. And three—he's not dumb.
But oh fuck is he beginning to debate that third point.
He turned his head just enough to look away, "I was insulting you, don't act weird–"
Dick straightened immediately. The easy looseness of his typical persona leaking into something sharp. His escrima sticks slid back into their holsters
"No you weren't," He said, voice low and steady in a way that made the man opposite him shiver, "Insults are all bark and bite. That was neither."
Red Hood's shoulders squared defensively in response, not necessarily appreciative of being on the receiving end of Nightwing's anger for the first time, "Drop it. You're reading into shit that isn't there."
"No I'm not," Dick snapped, taking a step forward, making sure to keep note of the way Red Hood didn't retreat.
Dick reached up and peeled his own mask off in one smooth motion, letting it hang loosely from his hand as he stares at the unresponsive man currently avoiding his gaze.
Was this stupid? A little. Actually, a lot. Because if his gut feeling is wrong then he's just gonna have to give this guy so much brain damage he totally forgets about this whole interaction. And that wouldn't make you very happy.
"Look at me."
And yet Red Hood continued to stare holes into the ground, fists clenched tight.
Somehow, that annoyed Dick enough to shove him. Not viciously or cruelly, but just enough to get his point across.
Red Hood stumbled back a step, boots scraping against gravel as his back hit the brick wall behind him with a dull thud. His instincts flared hot and fast, hands shooting up to grab his aggresor's wrists, preventing him from any more shoves.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" He snarled.
Dick leaned in, forearm braced across Red Hood's chest, eyes burning, "Take it off."
"Fuck no," He laughed.
"You know my name," Dick snarled, "You fight like him. You brood like him. You have the same shitty posture."
Red Hood scoffed, breath coming fast, "Projection much."
"Jason stop hiding," He begged, throat tightening as he arm tightens against the man's neck.
Silence stretched between them, heavy and suffocating. That was before Red Hood laughed. Far too loud, and far too brittle. Like glass snapping under pressure.
"You've lost it," He cackled, "Great detective work, Nightwing. See a guy with a singular resemblance to your dead brother–"
Dick's knuckles cracked against the red plating with a brutal clang that echoed through the alley, the sound sharp enough to make even himself flinch with how much accidental force he put into it. Red Hood's head snapped sideways, the force rattling through the helmet as his boots skidded on damp concrete. He barely even had time to recover before Dick grabbed a fistful of his jacket and drove him back into the wall, spine hitting hard brick.
"Shut up," Dick snarled, forearm slamming across Jason's chest to pin him there again. His heart was hammering so hard it felt like it might tear its way out of his ribs, "Don't speak about him like that."
The man in front of him sucked in a sharp breath through clenched teeth, the air still knocked out of him despite the recovery time.
"You are losing it," He bit out between breaths, "Back up–"
Dick leaned in instead, forehead almost knocking against the red helmet, voice dropping into something low and jagged, "I watched my brother grow an identity outside of being just some poor kid. And I also buried him. Stood at his grave. Wondered what I did so wrong that he felt he couldn't even ask me for help for something so important to him."
Jason froze, the words landing somewhere deep and totally knocking the fight out of him.
"And now you're in front of me with his voice, his temper, and his shitty deflection tactics knowing my name and expect me to– what? Just walk away?"
Dick could feel as he took a sharp inhale against his arm, "So take it off," He begged, "Or I swear to God, I'll bash your head into the wall so many times you won't even have a helmet by the end of it."
Jason's hands curled at his side, shaking with the intensity, "Are you sure you want that?" He murmured. Gone was the snark, gone was the bite. All that was left was vulnerability.
Dick swallowed, "Yes."
They stared at one another, the space between them tight. Dick can really feel it now—the familiarity that he had been trying to decipher whether it was reality or his own projection.
Red Hood let out a long and shaky exhale, "Fuck," He muttered, tipping his head back against the brick wall, "Fuck– you were always like this. Could never let shit go."
Slowly, reluctantly, each clip of the clasps at the base of the helmet sounded impossibly loud in Dick's ears, like a countdown to a challenge he was regretting agreeing to.
Once the helmet lifted, Dick forgot how to breathe. He was so...different.
There was now a white streak in his hair, stark and unrecognisable.
A new scar formed at the corner of his mouth, as well as a few faded ones he had never helped Alfred clean before.
And his eyes. They faded into something that seemed more green than blue, as if the pigmentation was battling for exposure.
"Stop staring," Jason muttered bashfully.
Dick totally ignored that request, unblinking as if worried that if he did, Jason would dissappear again.
His chest felt tight, lungs refusing to work properly as his breaths came in short, uneven pulls like they forgot how to work. One hand lifted without permission, fingers hovering near Jason's face, stopping just short of touching skin.
"You're–" Dick let out a laugh that broke halfway, "You're alive. You're actually–"
Jason shifted on his feet, shoulders hunching as Dick still refused to look away, "Yup."
Dick laughed again, wet and hysterical, a sound torn straight from his chest. He shoved Jason's shoulder, soft and fond, nothing like the hit from earlier, "You're so annoying! I had to stand there and watch them lower you into the ground just for you to come back?!"
He surged forward before Jason could even prepare himself, fists grabbing the front of his jacket and yanking him into a hug that was grounding and desperate all at once. Dick's shoulders shook as he laughed and cried into Jason's collarbone, "Do you have any idea how long I've wanted to beat you up for dying?"
Jason huffed a weak laugh, arms coming up to wrap around him just as tightly, "Pretty sure you already fulfilled that."
"Don't get comfortable," Dick sniffed, "I've got seven years left of grieving to beat you with."
"Great, I'll make reservations," He deadpanned.
"Oh my God."
Jason stiffened immediately, looking around them, "What?"
Dick's eyes went wide, joy detonating across his face like he'd just solved the question if the universe, "Oh my God."
"What?!" He was panicking now.
"You got her!" Dick cheered, awe-struck and delighted all at once, "God, you used to be so obsessed with her."
"I was not–"
"Oh don't lie to me," Dick cut in immediately, grinning like a menace, "You had photos of her all over your room."
"I did not–"
"Half of them didn't even have you in! They were just random newspaper clippings."
Jason groaned, dragging a hand down his face, "I was, like, fourteen."
"Oh em gee, I remember that one time you has to skip patrol because the idea of her fighting a giant alien with Superman in Metropolis worried you so much you got sick–"
"Wouldn't you get worried over Kori?!"
"Oh," Dick paused, thinking for a moment, "Yeah but I'm married to her. What's your excuse?"
"Whatever. Semantics."
Dick was still smiling when it hit him.
"Jay..." He began, "You know I gotta tell Bruce. At least be with me when I do."
The words landed without any dramatics on Dick's end—just fact. And it annoyed Jason how true it was.
"I know," He sighs.
"At least you'll get to meet the new ones. Did you know B had an actual son he didn't yank from an orphanage?" Dick grinned.
"Seriously?"
"Mhm, and there's Steph and Cass—though Cassandra is the only one Bruce adopted. And then there's Duke. Man, gotta love Duke. And then Tim–" Dick listed.
"Okay, I get it. Jeez. Save some surprises," Jason huffed.
"Him and Sel–"
"I said save some surprises!"
you
jason i'm so sorry !! i'm on the way i swear
jon was trying to join me and kon-el on this mission and got upset and i had to comfort him and hes really whiney i swear i didnt forget !
jaybird ♡
dont worry about it
dick kinda found out and is taking me to talk to bruce so you can just go back home
you
richard found out ?? are you okay with that ??
jaybird ♡
i think so ??
it feels better than i thought it would for him to find out
i missed him a lot sadly
you
awh good luck jaybird !! i love you <3
jaybird ♡
love you too <3 sleep well i probably wont be able to say goodnight while you're awake
a/n : this is so long and so bad i am NOT built for long things but i couldn't stop writing i had to stop myself at the end. like always just ask to be tagged (also make sure to comment on the most recent fic bc otherwise i will forget to add you i fear) also if i haven't added you and you have asked please ask again i love tagging people !!
A/N: Next Part. Damian stitches up a wounded Constantine. They're like 18-19, Fem reader, Alfred's alive wdym haha? w.c: 1.1k
Damian's eyes are open before the second rap on the doors to his balcony.
The katana he keeps under his bed is in his hand by the third. He stalks closer on quiet feet like the assassin he's trained to be.
Who could've possibly evaded the manor's security systems, scaled the wall to his bedroom, and all without alerting any of the vigilantes living inside?
No matter. He's Damian Wayne, he can handle anything this world can throw at him. His hand stalls on the balcony's door handle before violently throwing it open...
And there you are, slumped on the stone railing, covered in blood, clutching your torso where the white dress shirt is dripping red.
You give him a tired grin, shooting a finger gun at him with the hand not clutching your bloody wound.
“What's cooking, good looking?”
Damian lowers his katana and clicks his tongue,
“Constantine.”
His eyes never leave your wound, assessing just how bad the damage is. He can smell the iron from where he stands. Of course the first time you visit him in months would be when you look half way through death's door.
“Are we just gonna stare longingly at each other or are you gonna let me in, Love?”
His only reply is a "tt", before he steps aside so you can gracefully stumble into his room.
“I will get Pennyworth, he-”
You swiftly interrupt him, falling onto his bed with a wince,
“What, you can't do it yourself? I heard you wanted to be a doctor or something?”
He skips asking how exactly you knew that, neither of you really make an effort to catch up.
“That doesn't mean I'll just- ”
You interrupt him again, waving your hand dismissively while rubbing your tired eyes,
“I can't heal it myself right now, Damian, I spent all my energy just getting here so you could heal it. Letting a patient bleed out isn't a very good way to start your whole doctor thing.”
Damian walks off to his bathroom, muttering curses in a language you understand better than he knows.
─⋅⋆⁺.
The wound looks much worse in the harsh light of the desk lamp Damian’s forcing you to hold up. You lie at the foot of his bed, brown coat discarded, buttons of your dress shirt unbuttoned up your torso, just enough for him to do his work.
He kneels at the end of the bed, emergency Med Kit next to him. He's still grumbling as he preps the needle while you help sanitize the bloody area.
“So the doctor thing... it's true then? I thought you liked being Robin.”
Your voice is soft, almost unsure, neither of you acknowledge it. You shiver when he smears cold topical anaesthetic around the wound.
“I need to know who I am when I'm not trying to be him…or trying to be less like her.”
You both let that sit heavy in the air. Direct and blunt, as he always is.
He glares at your wound while piercing the needle in and out of numb flesh. You stare distractedly at the expensive looking ceiling.
“You could try it too... I know you feel the same way about him.”
His words startle you out of your trance. You look down at him with furrowed brows, his green eyes never stray from his work. You scoff,
“Oh yeah? And do what? Be a circus magician like Zatanna? Not all of us were getting medical degrees by the age of 10, Wayne.”
Did you admire Zatanna’s talents? Of course, but you're no show-woman. You're a demonologist, an exorcist, an occult specialist. Someone who does the dirty work that no one else can or wants to do. It's unforgiving and often feels futile, but someone has to do it.
Damian gently tugs the last of the thread coming out of your flesh before cutting it.
“Zatanna does plenty good, and we both know you could do any number of things with your life that isn't this."
He gestures to your freshly stitched waist.
"You don't have to do this just because it's what you've always done, or because it's expected. You can do whatever want.”
He doesn't say this in an encouraging, inspiring way. He says it like it's obvious, like he's frustrated that you haven't figured this out yet or maybe that it took him so long to figure out himself.
The air feels thick, Damian is used to the smell of blood, but the sight and feel of yours on his fingertips isn’t a feeling he'd like to get used to.
“…You just wanna see me in fishnets.”
Damian's head shoots up from where he was applying the gauze over your stitches. He scoffs scornfully when he sees your satisfied grin and presses harder than necessary on the gauze which he immediately regrets when you groan a bit too loudly.
A single solitary moment later you hear three polite knocks on Damian's ridiculously big bedroom door.
“Master Damian, are you alright?”
Alfred. How did neither of you hear him walking up to the door? Both you and Damian stare at each other, completely lost for what to do. Though he's trained for countless situations, you doubt he's ever thought of what to do if he got caught with a girl in his room, on his bed, with her shirt halfway up her torso.
“I'm fine, Alfred.”
You pause a little at him calling Alfred by his first name, but he just stares at the door like he can will the man away with his mind. You try to lift yourself up, so you can maybe hide in the closet or something but Damian pushes you down gently by your shoulders, giving you a stern look. Right, he's not about to let all his stitch work get undone.
“Lovely, and is Miss Constantine alright?”
You both freeze. Damian's hands still on your shoulders, you look at each other with shock, fear, embarrassment and a shared understanding that you didn't hear him walk up to the door because the old butler had been there the whole time.
The minute-long silence is broken when you burst out laughing, before clutching your wound and groaning. Damian watches you with a scowl on his face, which is tinted a deep reddish colour, like he'd been trying to hold his breath too long.
“I'll be fine, Alfred. Thanks for asking.”
Damian clicks his tongue once more as he packs up his Med Kit.
“Oh good, I will set up another chair for you at breakfast, Miss Constantine. It's been awhile since you've visited the manor, much has changed since your last visit.”
You raise an eyebrow at Damian, grin apparent, to which he rolls his eyes, packing away his supplies to avoid your gaze.
synopsis :: no one could have guessed you would become Jason Todd’s partner but more importantly you couldn’t have put money down on becoming his own personal arm rest
warnings :: none! fluff
word count :: 941
pairing :: Jason Todd x reader
dc masterlist
The cool evening air of Gotham usually felt heavy and damp, but from the back of Jason’s custom Ducati, it felt like pure electricity.
You had spent weeks eyeing the bike in the garage, alternating between admiration for the sleek machinery and a healthy dose of intimidation. Jason, ever the observant partner, had finally caught you staring long enough to toss a spare leather jacket your way.
"Stop looking at it like it’s a museum piece," he’d grumbled, though the smirk playing on his lips betrayed his delight. "Put the gear on. It’s time you learned why I don't take the car."
The first five minutes were a blur of adrenaline. As Jason kicked the kickstand up and the engine roared to life, the vibration traveled through the seat and straight into your bones. It was loud, primal, and a little terrifying.
"Arms around my waist," Jason’s voice crackled through the comms system in your helmet. "Tight. Don't lean away from me when we turn; lean with me. If I go left, you go left. Got it?"
You nodded, your gloved hands locking together over his stomach. He felt like a brick wall—solid and steady. With a click of the gear shifter, you were off.
As you transitioned from the narrow alleys of the Bowery to the open expanse of the bridge, the world changed. The wind whipped past your visor, a constant rushing sound that drowned out the rest of Gotham’s chaos. You found yourself pressing your chest against his back, tucked into his slipstream.
Jason was a masterful rider. He didn't just drive; he navigated the traffic like it was a choreographed dance. Every time he leaned into a curve, you felt that momentary stomach-drop of gravity shifting, followed by the exhilarating rush of the bike straightening out. Through the comms, you could hear him humming a low, distorted tune, completely at ease.
After nearly an hour of weaving through the outskirts of the city, the fuel light on the dash began to flicker. Jason pulled into a brightly lit, nearly deserted gas station on the edge of the Diamond District.
The silence that followed when he killed the engine was deafening. You climbed off, your legs feeling a bit like jelly, and began to undo the strap of your helmet—only to realize your fingers were still buzzing from the vibration of the bike.
Jason didn't take his helmet off. He hopped off the bike with that effortless grace he possessed, clicked the pump into the tank, and stood there watching the digits climb. You were busy trying to smooth out your jacket when you felt a sudden, heavy weight press down on the very top of your head.
You looked up—or tried to. Jason had walked over and casually rested his armored elbow right on top of your helmet, using you as a literal armrest.
"Comfortable?" you muffled through the face shield.
"Perfect height," Jason’s voice came through the external speakers of his helmet, sounding smug and metallic. "I’ve been looking for a place to park my arm. Didn't realize I was carrying a portable shelf this whole time."
"I am not a shelf, Todd," you grumbled, though you were smiling behind the plastic.
"You're the right height for it. It’s basic physics."
Without warning, you reached up and delivered a firm clink with your palm against the side of his Red Hood helmet. It didn't hurt him, of course, but the sound echoed loudly inside his gear.
Jason’s head snapped back in surprise. "Oh, it’s like that?"
"Move the elbow," you challenged, giving him a playful shove to the shoulder.
He didn't move. In fact, he leaned more of his weight onto you, forcing you to brace your knees. "Make me, Shortstack."
The "fight" escalated quickly. You tried to duck out from under him, but he anticipated the move, stepping with you and keeping his arm firmly planted. You began a series of rapid-fire, light slaps against his reinforced chest plate and shoulders, which sounded like a drum circle gone wrong.
Jason started laughing—a deep, booming sound that rumbled through his chest. He began to playfully shove back, using his superior reach to keep you at arm's length while you swung wildly at his biceps. You managed to hook a foot behind his boot, trying to trip him, but he just pivoted, caught you by the waist, and swung you around in a half-circle until you were breathless from giggling.
"Surrender?" he asked, his hands now resting on your shoulders.
"Never," you gasped.
Jason went quiet for a second. His hands shifted from your shoulders to the base of your helmet. His gloved thumbs hooked under the edge of the jawline, tilting your head up so you were looking directly into the white, expressive lenses of his mask.
Slowly, deliberately, he leaned down. He didn't take the helmet off. Instead, he brought the forehead of his red cowl flush against yours.
Clink.
The sound was soft this time. He held it there, the two hard surfaces pressed together in a mechanical embrace. It was a "helmet kiss"—a gesture born of the life he led, where gear and armor were second skins.
"You did good today," he whispered, his voice dropping to that soft, gravelly tone he saved only for you. "For a first-timer."
He bumped his forehead against yours one more time before letting go and turning back to the gas pump.
"Get back on the bike," he said, his tone returning to its usual bravado. "We’re taking the scenic route home.”
