Red Hood x gothic!reader || Masterlist || Request! Dividers by: @enchanthings
The apartment smelled like old books, melted black wax, and the faint iron tang of blood.
Again.
You didn’t even look up from the taxidermy crow wing you were carefully pinning open on your work table when the window slid up with that particular scraping whine only Jason ever made. Heavy boots hit the floorboards. A low, pained grunt followed.
“Before you start,” his modulated voice rasped through the helmet, “I’m fine.”
“You always say that right before I have to cut your favorite jacket off you.” You finally glanced over. The Red Hood was swaying slightly in your living room like a listing ship, one gloved hand pressed to his side. Fresh blood had already soaked through the reinforced weave between two plates.
He tilted his helmet. “It’s not that bad.”
You set the steel dissection pins down with deliberate calm. “Take it off. All of it. Or I start reciting Victorian mourning etiquette at you until you pass out from boredom.”
A beat of silence. Then the mechanical hiss of seals releasing. The helmet came off first—dark hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, a fresh split above his left eyebrow, the beginnings of a truly spectacular bruise blooming along his jaw.
He looked tired. Not just physically.
You didn’t comment on it. You never did unless he brought it up first.
Instead you pointed to the stool you kept specifically for these midnight surgeries. “Sit.”
Jason peeled the jacket away with a wince, then the armored undershirt. The gash along his ribs was ugly—jagged, deep enough that you could see the pale edge of fat before red swallowed everything again—but it wasn’t arterial. Small mercy.
He watched you the whole time you worked: iodine, saline, the curved needle you kept sterilized in a coffin-shaped case, black surgical thread. Your hands were steady. They always were when it was him.
“You don’t have to do this,” he muttered after the third stitch.
“I know.”
“Then why—”
“Because if I don’t, you’ll bleed on my rug again, and the last time that happened the stain looked like a very judgmental nun. I’m trying to avoid thematic sequels.”
A short, rough laugh escaped him despite the pain. “You’re so fucking weird.”
“Says the man who brought me a jar of what I’m pretty sure are human finger bones last month.”
“They were suspected human,” he corrected, almost prim. “And the guy I took them off definitely wasn’t using them anymore.”
You tied off the last stitch, pressed fresh gauze down, and began wrapping. “You act like that makes it romantic.”
“Thought you liked morbid courtship rituals.”
“I like taxonomy and preservation technique and knowing exactly what kind of death I’m looking at.” You smoothed medical tape with more care than necessary. “Not just ‘here’s some war trophy, babe’.”
Jason’s mouth curved—small, crooked, real. “Noted.”
You stepped back, surveyed your work, then reached over to the cluttered shelf behind you. Among the glass domes of preserved moths, the row of antique mourning jewelry, the vial of what might or might not be river water from the Thames circa 1889, sat the newest addition: a small, stoppered bottle containing something dark and faintly luminous.
He’d brought it three nights ago without explanation. Just set it on your kitchen counter at 4:17 a.m., kissed your temple through the helmet, and left again.
You picked it up now and turned it slowly in the lamplight. “I still don’t know what this is.”
“Glowing algae from that Lazarus-adjacent pit in Bosnia,” he said casually. Like people just stumbled across bioluminescent resurrection pools on vacation. “Thought the color might match that weird lamp you keep in the bathroom.”
You stared at him.
He shrugged, suddenly looking almost shy beneath the blood and bruising. “You said you liked things that shouldn’t be able to glow after they’re dead.”
God damn it.
You set the bottle down very carefully, stepped between his knees, and cupped the uninjured side of his face. Your black-lacquered nails looked almost blue against his skin.
“You’re still doing that thing,” you said quietly.
“What thing?”
“Acting like you’re allowed to be the untouchable rich boy who buys people’s affection with trophies and then leaves before anyone can ask for more.”
His eyes flickered—something raw and young flashing through the green.
“I’m not—”
“You are.” Your thumb brushed the edge of the bruise. “You drop dead things on my table like offerings and then disappear for four days so I can’t ask why your hands were shaking when you gave me the last one.”
Jason swallowed. Didn’t deny it.
You leaned in until your forehead rested against his.
“I already know who you are, Jason,” you whispered. “I knew before the first time you bled on my floor. So stop trying to pay me off with weird little corpses and start letting me keep you alive instead.”
For once he didn’t deflect.
He just closed his eyes and let his forehead rest heavier against yours, breathing like it hurt more than the stitches.
After a long minute he murmured, “Next time I’ll bring you something alive.”
You huffed a tiny laugh against his mouth. “Don’t you dare. I’m not running a pet cemetery.”
“Too late,” he said, and you felt the shape of his smirk. “Already got one very alive disaster who keeps coming back here to bleed.”
You kissed him then—careful of the split lip, careful of the fresh gauze, not careful at all with the way your fingers curled into his hair and held on like you were daring him to leave again.
He didn’t.
Not that night.
Later, when the bleeding had stopped and the painkillers had started working, he sprawled across your velvet couch (black, of course) and watched you return to the crow wing with a kind of quiet fascination he rarely let show.
You felt his gaze like touch.
Eventually he spoke, voice low and rough from exhaustion.
“Found something else today.”
You didn’t look up. “Mhm?”
“Old silver locket. 1870s. Still has hair inside. Looks like it was cut after death.”
Your hands paused.
He continued, softer. “Figured you could… I dunno. Put it under glass. Or wear it. Or tell me why the hell people used to keep dead people’s hair like love letters.”
You finally turned.
Jason was watching you with that unguarded look he only wore when he thought you weren’t paying attention—like you were the strangest, most precious thing he’d ever pulled out of the dark.
You crossed the room, climbed onto the couch, straddled his thighs without putting weight on the stitches.
He let you.
You leaned down until your lips brushed the shell of his ear.
“Bring it tomorrow,” you whispered. “And stay long enough to watch me open it.”
His arms came around you—careful, warm, alive.
“Deal.”
And for once, when morning came, the window stayed closed.
