you are literally soooo good at writing angst!! can you do something with adrian where the team doesn’t know about the reader and adrian’s relationship but the reader gets injured and adrian freaks out so now everyone knows?
in this world full of people
pairing: adrian chase x reader (gn pronouns)
rating: m+
word count: 2,054
combined with the anonymous request in my inbox: "Hi!! This is my first request ever, but my vigilante hyper fixation is going strong 😭 I’m a sucker for any hurt/comfort especially rescue fics! But really any will do, sorry for the lack of creativity lol"
one-sentence synposis: the 11th street kids rescue you after you've been kidnapped and tortured by a cult— but the way adrian reacts in particular tells them exactly what the dynamic between the two of you has become.
read now on ao3!!
You’re getting kind of sick of cults.
It seems like every other case you’re all assigned to lately is some cult. A bunch of evil humans, a bunch of interdimensional aliens, a bunch of sadistic monsters— just endless groups that think they’re better than everyone else, suck up everything into it, and become hivemind monstrosities that can only end up imploding.
This case has been no different: a cult of superhumans living in the woods, which wouldn’t normally be an issue if they left other people alone. But these types love to involve others, and they’ve moved on from harassing locals as a recruitment tactic to creating superpowered weapons to threaten the locals into joining up and serving them.
From there, you were all able to determine, their plan is to move onto everyone in the state, then the country, then the world— as it so often goes with these things for you. Everything is taking over the world. Why isn’t anyone ever content with just hanging out?
That’s what you would be doing now, if you could. But, being the most recent addition to the team— and thus the least recognizable— you were selected to infiltrate the cult so you and the rest of the Kids could start taking it down before it becomes a tornado-of-supervillains situation.
You’d lasted two days before one of the new superhumans joining the team arrived and showcased their lie detector abilities.
And you’d been caught.
That was a week ago.
It’s been a long week since then.
It turns out that the superhumans value life enough to let you hang onto yours, but not so much that they’re not willing to play with it as a form of punishment for you. They have a variety of weapons— and a variety of powers— and you get to witness so many of them in action, in ways you wish you never had, in ways you wish you could forget, in ways that will scar you for the rest of your life— which might not be that long, depending.
You endure sonic shrieks that make your ears ring and your head throb and your nose bleed. You’re tied to a chair, and have been this entire time, unable to move; your body aches horribly, and you wonder if you’ll ever be able to get out of this position. You know both kneecaps are broken; one swing from a superhuman with super-strength had shattered them both. Even if you could break the silver, impenetrable ropes keeping you bound to the uncomfortable wooden chair, you wouldn’t be able to walk anywhere. You probably wouldn’t even be able to crawl by this point.
Burns from a super with pyrokinesis; lightning-bolt marks electrocuted through you by a super with electrokinesis; constantly soaked-through and shivering in this tiny shed they keep you in, because a weather-manipulating super has it storming constantly in here, no reprieve from the cold rain that pelts you at all times.
Occasionally, you manage to slip into sleep and get a break from it all— but it always comes roaring back when they wake you up again. They seem to enjoy having someone to test their superpowered weapons on; you don’t know how many knife blades they’ve brought to you by this point, testing on every inch of available skin. There’s a bullet festering in your shoulder made of alien material; that’s all you’d been able to find out before they’d experimented with it by firing it on you. You’d barely been able to feel the ball-ended whips they’d tested on you afterwards, you’d been so focused on not throwing up and passing out.
Now, after a week of this, you’d love nothing more than to just pass out and stay that way. You’re exhausted, you’re in so much pain you feel like you’ve moved onto another level of existence just to handle it, and you’re starting to wonder if the team’s coming for you— if they even can.
You feel a sense of panic at the thought of them being captured, too— of John, and Leota, and Emilia, and Chris, and— and Adrian—
You especially can’t think of Adrian in another tiny shed like this, being subjected to the same treatment you’ve been subjected to for the last seven days. At least, you think it’s been seven days; it’s getting harder and harder to keep track, and you think you’re losing time.
Blinking, you know you’ve just lost it again. It’s the strange feeling of slipping sideways, and you just know you’re coming in and out.
You just wish you could feel any relief in the moments you’re out. You barely remember them or notice them anymore.
In the distance— you don’t know when, or where, or why, but you feel a rumble.
Your brain foggily tries to tell you that this is something different, but your body is reacting instinctively. Every time there’s been a noise in the last week, the door has opened into your shed, and you’ve been hurt. Your body is still trying to protect itself, even after everything, and you cry out at the pain that jolts through you as a result.
Outside there’s the sound of gunfire, then shouting.
And you think you recognize a couple of the voices.
Not as belonging to people here, but as belonging to your people. You think you can hear the Kids— Emilia shouting instructions, Chris calling back to her— it’s them—
But—
This could be another trap. Another method of torture. You’d been wondering when they’d move on from physical torment to mental; it was only a matter of time before some superhuman with illusion magic, or manipulation abilities, or— or any number of horrors you could easily come up with, after the week you’ve had— before they decided to break your brain as well as your body.
Despite this fear, your heart still lurches into your throat when you hear Adrian in a shout of, “Not here!”
If he isn’t real, you’ve got nothing to lose. You’ll be hurt anyways; you’ll probably die here.
If he is real—
“Here,” you whisper, licking at your dry lips, cracked beneath your tongue. You can’t manage to get your voice very loud at first, your throat aching as you try again, “Here, I’m— I’m here—” You cough, then shout, crackling but louder, “I’m here!”
There’s more gunfire outside, then Leota shouting, “I hear something!”
Your eyes fill up with tears. You don’t stop, making yourself keep shouting, “Here, I’m here, please, I’m right here, please, I’m here,” on an endless, begging loop, louder and more frantic with each pass, until the door is crashing in. You flinch; every time that door has banged in, it’s been followed by pain.
This time, though, Leota and Chris are rushing through the doorway into the rain, and you sob with relief. In better circumstances, you might be embarrassed, but you have been hurt and drained and broken; you can’t hold back your relief at seeing them, hallucinations or not.
“You guys came,” you gasp out.
“Of course we did,” Leota says, coming to crouch beside you. She can’t stop looking you over with this horrified expression on her face; she looks back at Chris, asks, “What do we do?”
“Well, we can’t just— pick up the whole chair, we have to get (Y/N) out of it first,” Chris points out.
“But—” Leota starts, then stops. You can hear the unspoken words; you look like you’re about to fall apart, a beaten, wet mess held up by the ties keeping you attached to the chair.
Together, with knives Leota pulls from her belt, they work at sawing through the ropes binding you. You let your head drop; relief is flooding your system as you start to believe they’re real, their touch on you actually having weight and feeling, and exhaustion is seizing you.
“Hey, stay up,” Chris warns you. Into his communicator, he tells the rest of the time, “We’ve got (Y/N). Location is—”
“I’m on my way,” Adrian’s voice crackles through.
Your chest tightens hearing him. You’ve missed him so much; thoughts of him were one of the only things that got you through this. You’ve only officially been together exclusively for a couple of months, and you’ve still been keeping it a secret from the rest of the team.
You wonder how Adrian has been handling your absence. If the roles were reversed, you’re sure you’d be a wreck, determined to get him back, wouldn’t rest until you had.
When Adrian spills through the doorway, you know he’s felt the exact same as you would have.
Even with his entire body covered— face included, the prescription Vigilante visor shining red and getting speckled with rainwater— you can tell how destroyed he is about this from the tense lines of his body, the way he freezes when he first comes in, and then—
And then, him sprinting to you, sliding to his knees in front of you, grasping your face between his gloved hands. You flinch at the pain, and his hands leave; you beg him, “No, come back,” and he’s cradling you again, shifting upwards as the ropes are finally cut and you can sag into him.
“I’m so sorry,” Adrian babbles in your ear, desperate, words rushing together. He rips his helmet off in an uncharacteristic move, but it’s exactly what you need: to see his face, to meet his eyes, to see his red-flushed skin and his terror and him, to know he’s real. “Baby, I’m so sorry, I should’ve gotten here sooner, oh— Oh, shit, you look so bad, I’m so sorry, I’m— I’m gonna fix it, okay?”
You nod blearily against his shoulder. He lifts you up again, nudging you back so he can evaluate your face between his cupped hands again. The gloves are rough on your bruised skin, but you’re so happy he’s here, you just smile dazedly up at him.
“Thank you for coming,” you mumble upwards. “Love you.”
“I told myself I’d say it if I saw you again,” you tell him. Your blinks are getting longer, slower; you wish you weren’t in this rain anymore. “So, I am. I love you.”
It only takes a second for this to process through Adrian before he’s grinning. It’s a strange expression on his face, the simultaneous horror and elation, but you can see both there in spades.
“I love you, too,” he replies in a rush. “I love you so much, I’ve loved you since I met you, it’s been torture not telling you— Oh, shit, I shouldn’t be saying that, that’s insensitive as fuck—”
You huff a laugh that has him stopping, looking down to your mouth then back up to your eyes before he ducks in, pressing a gentle kiss there, careful with you.
It’s real. He’s real. This is real.
“What the fuck?” Chris demands from beside them.
“Is this really happening?” Leota asks. “Should I be stopping him? Is he taking advantage of—”
“I kinda think they’re into it,” Chris comments.
Your kiss breaks, and you loll against Adrian again, barely able to keep yourself upright. Everything is pain; you look up to Adrian, tell him, “Sorry.”
“Sorry?” he demands. “What sorry? What the fuck could you possibly be sorry for?”
“The secret,” you remind him. “Now they’ll know.”
His face is flushing from pink right into red when he tells you, “I want them to know. Just— Not the bad guys.”
You smile, letting your head fall against his shoulder. “Love you.”
He kisses the top of your head, then moves to scoop you up. You hiss at the pain in your knees, your ribs, your head, your everything, and he kisses your cheek again, telling you, “I got you. I know it hurts, we’re gonna fix it all up, don’t you worry.”
“We are talking about this later,” Chris informs you and Adrian firmly. “Once you’re, you know— in one piece again.”
“Mmkay,” you agree, eyes closing. “Wake me up then.”
You let the pain throw your mind into fog, and you let your exhaustion finally take hold, and you sigh in relief as Adrian carries you out of the shed and into the warm sun.
i did the math and when i counted up everything i posted/published in 2022........ it was well over a million words ☠️ and that's just what i finished and shared!! proud of myself and also excited to find a balance this year between reading and writing?!
So I'm not gonna lie I think you and I have the same reactions to fics posted by @honeycombstrawberry and I always scroll to see what ur reactions are. Sorry if that's weird 😅
LMAO isn't weird at all, thanks for saying so I don't feel so crazy
OH MY GOD ADIRAN REQUESTS OPEN AGAINNNN I haven't watched any of the new season (idk how much is out yet lol) but I have. request for you.
I love all the angst and whump with Adrian so like what iffff Adrian and reader got in a car crash? neither of them are hurt EXTREMELY badly, but enough to land them both in the hospital and all. how would Adrian handle that situation? :0
wind is really blowing
pairing: adrian chase x reader (gn pronouns)
rating: m+
word count: 2,532
one-sentence synopsis: you and adrian are in a car accident, and he does everything he can to save you— and everything he can to stay by your side as you both begin healing.
read now on ao3!!
It’s a normal day, for once.
Not a day where you’re protecting the city, or fighting aliens, or defending the world. Not a day where you deal with interdimensional beings, government officials, or heinous supervillains. You don’t even have a shift at work, or errands to run, or places you have to be.
It’s nice, for it to just be you, Adrian, and your journey out to the apple orchard.
And the radio, which Adrian has blasting top volume as he drives you both down the highway. You’re lucky that there’s hardly any traffic, and he steers easily, hands thumping out the music’s rhythms on the wheel. He’s singing along, loud as the music, encouraging you to do the same. With a laugh, you do, letting him reach over and tap out the rhythm on your thigh instead.
When you catch his hand, kissing the back, he glances towards you with a smile, glasses slipping a little. You reach up with your joined hands to nudge his glasses back up into place.
“Eyes on the road,” you remind him over the loud music.
He laughs, but does as you say, attention returning to the mostly-empty highway. In this rural area, it’s only your one lane heading north, and the other heading south, single lanes with no division between them except a solid yellow line painted on the road.
“I am going to eat so many apples, I might actually die,” Adrian informs you as the song comes to a fading close, starting to transition into the next one. When you laugh, he smiles, insisting, “No, seriously! Did you know that if you eat, like, hundreds of apple seeds, you can technically die of cyanide poisoning?”
“Then don’t eat hundreds of apple seeds?” you suggest. “Seems simple enough to avoid.”
“No, no, that’s my point,” Adrian tells you. “You won’t be able to stop me! I will eat hundreds of apples and hundreds of apple seeds and—”
“Adrian!” you shout, hand shooting out to grab onto his forearm on instinct, your other hand flying upwards in an aborted motion towards the windshield—
—And towards the massive tractor trailer truck that has come barreling out of the southbound lane, crossing the yellow line to head straight for Adrian’s little four-door replacement for the Vigilantemobile.
“Shit, shit, shit—” Adrian curses, cutting the wheel so hard to one side that the car spins to the side. “Hold on—”
You grip his arm tighter, bracing yourself in your seat as the world outside blurs and Adrian fights to avoid getting crushed by the truck and—
There’s an impact at the front of the car that jars you, and then suddenly you have the stomach-dropping sensation of weightlessness. You tighten your hold on Adrian’s forearm in the last moments you have, the world flipping end over end outside the windows, before everything goes dark.
— — — — —
Something keeps hitting you in the face.
You frown, scrunching your face up a little bit. When you try to lift your hand to swat whatever it is away, you realize you can’t manage to move your arm.
As you’re waking up, coherence slinks in a little bit at a time. The pain comes in in waves as your body starts recognizing it, processing that there is a throb in your skull, a burning in your back and legs, and a piercing, radiating agony high on your chest.
Whatever is hitting you in the face strikes a little harder this time, and you groan, forcing your eyes open.
The entire world is upside-down. Adrian’s face fills your vision, and you blink again, disoriented, as his hands grasp your face and his forehead comes to rest against yours, just— in reverse, because he’s upside-down—
Or you are, you realize, because you’re still buckled into your passenger seat in the turned-over car, flipped on its roof. You shift, and the pain in your chest and back explode.
“Hey, hey, don’t move, stop moving,” Adrian insists. “It’s fine, you’re fine, you just— You gotta stop moving, okay? Or it’s just gonna hurt worse, but— I am going to get you out of here, okay?”
Your head spins, thoughts coming through foggily. His words are difficult to process, but your body responds to his intensity, to the panic he’s just barely keeping a lid on, to the terror that’s clear across every line of his face despite his attempts to keep you calm.
Looking more closely at his face, you realize one of the lenses of his glasses is gone, shattered out of the frame, and there’s blood on his face, splattered across his cheek on the right and dripping from a cut on his temple on the left.
“You’re hurt,” you mumble, your throat feeling sore and rasping. Had you been screaming? You don’t even remember; the last thing you remember is the truck coming at you, Adrian trying to avoid it, and then, just— nothing. “Are you okay?”
Adrian huffs a half-hysterical breath of a laugh, though you can’t help but feel that he’s not finding this particularly funny. “Am I okay? Am—” He takes a steadying breath, holds your upside-down face between his palms again. You’re starting to get even dizzier, looking at everything from your wrong angle while your head hurts and your body throbs with pain. “Yeah, I’m okay. Nothing we can’t stitch up, right?”
You try to move your arm again, wanting to wipe the blood off of his face, but the pain in your chest doubles, triples, and you cry out in a whine you bite back, hating how it sounds ripping out of you.
“Stop— Stop moving,” he repeats, firm, looking you right in the eye. “I’m—” He looks around, as if he’ll miraculously find something that will help him, before he lands on his cellphone, dangling from its mount precariously, just as upside-down as you are. “Okay, I’m calling for help, we’ll get you out, okay?”
If Adrian’s calling for help, that means whatever it is that he’s panicking about isn’t something he can handle, isn’t a problem he can solve.
He’s fumbling with his phone, blood-slick fingers sliding on the screen as he taps into an emergency call, and he’s distracted enough to give you time to look down— or, rather, up at yourself.
You realize immediately why you can’t move, why the pain is there. A massive fragment of glass— maybe from your windshield, maybe from the truck, you can’t tell— has shattered off and broken its way into you, right through the space above your collarbone and through, pinning you to the seat. You twitch your fingers, and all the muscles burn; one arm is trapped by the glass, unable to move while it’s stuck in you, and the other is pinned by the twisted-up seatbelt, keeping it caught at a hard angle against your chest.
Your legs are caught above you, the blood flow coming down. You see more blood on yourself than you think you ever have before, and your spinning vision starts tunneling into blackness.
“Adrian,” you mumble, a wave of dizziness washing through your body. You can feel unconsciousness coming this time, and you see his wide, terrified eyes land on you just as you manage to tell him, “I don’t feel good.”
“Hey, you have to stay awake, though,” Adrian insists. “Gotta stay with me, can’t go anywhere else, right?”
“Mm,” you agree, letting your eyes drift closed. It’s easier than watching the world spin and tunnel and splotch out the way it is.
“Hey, hey, look at me— Look at me,” he begs you, but you can’t. It kills you that you can’t do what he wants, especially when he’s asking so desperately, and when you know it’s what you need to do, but you just can’t manage it. You’re not even sure where your eyes are anymore; everything becomes nothing again with a sigh.
— — — — —
This time, when you wake up, everything feels soft.
It’s like you’re inside of a cloud. You have a weightless feeling that’s much nicer than the one you’d felt in the car— and even thinking of the accident, horrifying and traumatic as it is— was?— doesn’t bring you any panic. You’re just floaty, foggy, all the pain and panic and fear held further than arm’s length away.
Shifting, you realize everything really is soft. You’re laying someplace soft; your head is on something soft; something soft has been placed over you.
The only thing that isn’t soft is whatever’s held tight in your hand.
You squeeze your fingers around the shape and feel it squeeze back. A smile comes onto your face automatically, and you hum, drifting off again.
— — — — —
This time, you’re a little more coherent as you start coming into consciousness.
You manage to open your eyes this time, blinking sleepily upwards towards a grey-and-green speckled ceiling. It reminds you of a cardinal’s egg. It’s also definitely unfamiliar, and you turn your head just enough to feel the crinkling of a pillowcase beneath your cheek.
The hand in yours tightens, and you blink down to find Adrian’s fingers woven into yours, sitting in a chair scooted up to your bedside, slumped over the edge of your mattress. His head is pillowed on your thigh as he sleeps bent over. The position looks incredibly uncomfortable.
You reach down, your fingertips just barely grazing a pad of gauze that’s been taped over his temple where you remember he’d been bleeding from. He’s wearing a hospital gown, and a thin white hospital robe thrown over it. A tan blanket is draped over his shoulders; you wonder who else has been here, how long it’s been.
Glancing down at yourself, you see that you’ve been positioned sitting halfway-up, and that your torso is heavily bandaged. One of your arms has been immobilized against your chest, but the other is free to move; reaching up, you find a bandage on your head, too— though probing around it makes your skull throb, so you stop searching out the wound after a second.
Instead, you reach down towards Adrian again. He’s got his backup glasses on, though they’re smushed at a sideways angle with how his face is pressed into your thigh over your blankets; when you let your hand rest on his head, lightly running through his dark curls, he stirs only a little bit, humming contentedly, a smile slipping onto his face even in sleep.
Soft, you whisper, “Adrian,” and he just shifts again, cracking a yawn against your thigh. “Adrian? You shouldn’t lay like that if you’re hurt.”
“Whuh?” he mumbles, confused, blinking his eyes open. He seems lost for a moment— and then you see the instant he remembers everything that happens.
Jolting upright, his hands are on you in an instant, slipping from your hold so he can frame your face between his palms, then skate down over your chest. You can only assume he’s already done this countless times, but you still allow him to do it again, to take inventory of you, just like you have with each other every time you’ve been hurt in a fight or an accident or just doing something goofy.
“I’m okay,” you tell him, when he’s straightening your blankets, fidgeting with them over your legs.
He scoffs, turning to look at you over the top edge of his glasses. “You are not okay, I— I will be the judge of when you are okay, and when you’re— you’re in the hospital after I saw— I watched them—” His words come to a stammering stop, and he frowns down at his hands before fiddling with the blankets again. “I’m just saying, you were not okay, you are not okay—”
“I will be okay?” you interrupt.
With how stressed and on-edge he clearly is, it’s a risky move, but you earn the small huff and the smile that you’re angling for.
“Yeah,” he tells you, the wind leaving his sails, sitting heavily on the edge of your bed. “They all kept saying you’ll be just fine. I just—” He waves one hand vaguely through the air. “Seeing that—” His voice breaks, and he curses, “Shit—”
“It’s okay,” you promise him. He shakes his head, so you reach out with your good hand, catching his in yours. “Hey, it is. I swear. We’re both here, aren’t we?”
His eyes are bloodshot, his face flushing. You can see the shine of tears welling up before he swallows thickly and looks down at your joined hands, taking a shaking breath, in and out in tremors.
“You nearly weren’t,” Adrian mumbles. “It should’ve been—”
“Stop,” you interrupt him. “Stop right there. It’s bad enough you’re hurt—”
“I’m not hurt—”
You used your joined hands to point right at his temple. “Then what’s this? And I’m sure that’s not everything, Adrian. You have to tell me when you’re hurt. That’s the deal, remember? We’re honest with each other.”
“This is different,” Adrian insists.
“How?”
“I don’t— I don’t know, it just is,” Adrian says. “I was the one driving—”
“It’s not your fault,” you tell him. He’s about to protest, but you cut him off with, “No, it’s not your fault. The truck came at us. You tried to get us out of the way— we’d probably be dead if you didn’t.”
It seems like he’s still going to argue, for a moment, but your last words draw him up short. Instead, he shivers a little, then tilts towards you.
“Come here,” you tell him, releasing his hand so you can wrap your arm around him instead. He’s ginger, gentle, trying not to hurt you as he curls up into your side. You rub his back, kissing the top of his head; he winds his arm around you, slow and easy, waiting for a wince from you that never comes.
“I should be comforting you,” he mumbles into your throat.
“You are comforting me.” You kiss the top of his head again, letting your lips linger there as you murmur, “Thanks for saving my life.”
He sniffles. You feel his chest hitch.
“Thanks for saving mine,” he says, muffled by your skin, growing humid and slick with his tears.
You press your cheek to the top of his head, just holding him for a while. When he’s able to calm down, he lifts his head a little, shuffles you around a bit, slow and steady with you as he guides you to rest against his chest instead. His fingertips trace nonsense patterns into your uninjured shoulder, and you yawn, letting yourself relax.
After a moment, you realize, “Wait— Where’s your bed?”
“Down the hall,” Adrian tells you in a sleepy murmur.
“Wh— Adrian.” You shift a little, but Adrian doesn’t let you sit up. “You should be in your own bed, you’re going to hurt yourself—”
His grip tightens on you. “Do you want me to leave?”
You think about it for a moment, and he did promise to be honest, and he doesn’t seem to be in pain, so—
“No,” you confess.
“Good.” He snuggles back in. “Just relax, okay? Everything’s going to be fine.”
Bruce Wayne intimacy, caring for him, washing the dirt and grime out his hair, helping alfred stitch his wounds and make him eat and sleep, reassuring Dick when things look bad, being there for him when he feels he has nobody…. ya know…. the good stuff
it's just a feeling
pairing: bruce wayne x reader (gn pronouns)
rating: t
word count: 4,296
one-sentence synopsis: bruce returns from a night out as the batman in gotham, and you remind him what it is to just be bruce, and to let himself be taken care of, for just a little while.
author's note: oh god the intimacy........... a hot scoop if ever i had one buckaroo
read on ao3!
You’re usually lucky if Bruce is home before dawn.
Tonight, you’re not so lucky.
The sun’s already started to spread back up into the sky, beams of dim grey light fighting through Gotham’s near-constant cloud cover. The curtains are drawn throughout Wayne Manor, however, keeping the palatial spread of Bruce’s home in darkness until he’s actually ready to start his day later.
Alfred joins you in the window, watching the trees outside the estate, waiting for the telltale flash of neon and the rumbling engine that promise the Batmobile’s back— that Bruce is back, that another night as Batman is over, that he’s survived long enough to come home to you once more.
When you see it, you visibly relax. The house is so silent that the distant purr of the engine seems like the loudest crash. When it skims underneath the property, vanishing into the bowels of Wayne Manor, Alfred sighs beside you. You glance over at him.
“Another night,” Alfred says. He doesn’t elaborate before he turns to make his way to the elevator that’ll take him down to the Batcave, and you follow after him. You don’t speak, either; there’s really nothing that needs to be said, right now. The two of you have long since fallen into a routine with Bruce. As the two (adult) people who live with him, who take care of him, who love him most, it’s difficult for you to see Bruce like this.
You hear pounding footsteps before the elevator doors close, and then a tiny hand is slamming in, stopping them from shutting. Dick stares up at you from the other side as the doors snap back open. He still looks half-asleep, pillow lines on his face, pajamas as rumpled as his hair, but he’s alert enough to glare at the both of you.
“Is he home?” Dick asks. His jaw cracks around a yawn in the next second, and you hold your hand out to him.
“He is,” you tell him as Dick comes to you, slipping his hand into yours. He leans into your leg sleepily, letting his eyes drift shut as he yawns again. “You, however, should be asleep.”
“I want to make sure he’s okay,” Dick informs you. It’s just an explanation, not an argument.
Alfred crouches, and Dick steps into the circle of his arms, letting him lift him up onto his hip. Dick refuses to release your hand, clinging tightly as Alfred keeps him close.
The elevator dings into place in the dark subterranean Batcave, the doors clattering open. You can see the Batmobile at the far end of the space, the lights still glowing as the machine cools down enough to be turned off again, and the shadowy shape of Bruce moving through the aisles of worktables and equipment. His cowl, cape, and armor are all still in place, though you can see a fray in the material near his eye, a tear along the left edge of the cape, a chunk ripped out of the armor covering one thigh.
You’ll need to make repairs today and patch together other armor for him to take when he goes out tomorrow night; the last thing you’d ever do is let him go out with less than perfect protection from you.
Bruce finally lifts his eyes, when he’s drawn close enough. You can see the bright glint of them as they hit you first.
In that moment, there’s no filter, no screen, no divide; the wall that Bruce likes to hide behind most often isn’t there, and he’s just looking at you, connecting with you, raw and exhausted and worn. Your lips part slightly; you’re not sure if you need a breath, or if you’re going to say something.
“Bruce!” Dick exclaims, wriggling to get out of Alfred’s arms. The both of you release him, and he sprints to Bruce, colliding with his legs. You don’t miss the way Bruce staggers backwards, catching himself against the worktable behind them.
He still wraps an arm around Dick in response. He bows to hold him for a moment before he lifts him.
“You should be asleep,” Bruce informs him. It sounds like he’s trying to be stern, but he’s landing at slightly concerned instead.
“I just wanted to say hi,” Dick says. He pulls at Bruce’s cowl, and so Bruce reaches up to tug it off, dropping it aside. He looks absolutely fucking exhausted, his face drawn, hair crushed flat, skin wan and split here and there. You can’t see the bags under his eyes, smudged as the space around his eyes is with impossible amounts of reflective black paint, but you know there’s going to be tired bruises there when his face is clean again
“Hi,” Bruce tells him. “When did you go to sleep?”
Dick immediately appears sheepish, and lies, “Eight o’clock.” Bruce looks up at you and Alfred for confirmation, and Dick hurries to correct himself, saying, “I meant ten!”
“You shouldn’t stay up so late,” Bruce tells him, moving to set him down again. “You need your rest. Go back to sleep, kid, okay?”
Listen to your own goddamn advice, you can’t help yourself from thinking. It’s different, you know that. And you can’t help being impossibly endeared by how deeply Bruce cares about Dick and his well-being, even if it’s offset by the obvious contrast in how little he cares about himself and his own well-being.
At least, you think, he has you. And Alfred, and Dick, you mentally amend, but mostly you, because Alfred keeps Bruce functional and the house running, and Dick keeps Bruce balanced and controlled and happy, but you keep Bruce alive. You care for him the same way he cares for Gotham: absolutely, without concern for yourself, determined to do this one job right and protect what matters most to you.
Dick is frowning, but Bruce says, “Alfred, would you?” anyway.
Alfred extends his hand, and Dick hesitates for a rebellious moment before he gives in. He must still be tired, and you wonder how long he waited up after you put him to sleep still waiting for Bruce. You’re sure he’s still lying about ten o’clock, but you’re not about to call him out on it, not right now. Later, you can try and convince him about the merits of a good night’s sleep, even when his father— or, father figure, or mentor, as they insist, but you know better— is setting a terrible example.
“I’ll return in a moment,” Alfred informs you both, but Bruce waves him off, already turning away to start unfastening the latches on his armor.
“No need, Alfred,” Bruce replies. “I’m all set tonight, you can go to bed. Thanks for waiting up.”
Alfred is obviously skeptical, hesitant, and he’s about to argue with him before the two of you make eye contact. You and Alfred have gotten excellent at nonverbal communication; it’s easy for you to talk about Bruce without Bruce ever hearing a word.
Now, Alfred lifts an eyebrow at you slightly. You incline your head. When Alfred’s eyes flick over to Bruce, then back to you, you shake your head slightly, a small furrow coming between your brows.
I can still come back, he’s saying.
No, you tell him, I’ll take care of him. I can do this.
“Get some rest, Alfred,” you tell him. Alfred nods, now, surrendering Bruce to your care. It doesn’t look like Bruce has been busted up in any major ways, no enormous lacerations or deep injuries that need immediate wound care from somebody trained under fire. When Bruce needs a different kind of care, it’s better if it’s only you there. He tries so hard to stay strong for Dick and Alfred, no matter how often you— all of you— insist he doesn’t have to.
You all love him, and he loves you all. The hard part is just convincing him that it’s as true in one direction as it is in the other. You have an unconditional love for him, as does Alfred, as does Dick— but Bruce is terrified that he’ll someday still find the one condition that’ll stop that love, the one thing that will leave him alone again.
He loved so deeply before, only to lose everything, to be broken completely. He’s always so terrified to love again— to lose again— but you know that he’s losing every second he’s not letting himself love.
When Alfred and Dick vanish behind the closed elevator doors, the machine carrying them up and away into the proper body of Wayne Manor, you return your attention more fully to Bruce.
With nobody here but the two of you, Bruce is starting to crumple. He grasps for the fixture on the cape, and you step up without hesitation, stretching to unclasp it yourself. You send the fabric slithering to the floor. It’s important; of course, it’s important. Everything Bruce makes for Batman is important.
Bruce, however, is more important, and takes precedence over his uniform. You unwind the wraps from his hands, freeing each finger in turn until his bruised hands are free. Each piece of his armor gets separated and set aside next, either placed on a worktable or dropped to the floor to join the cape. You’ll pick it up later, or Alfred will, or Bruce himself will; whoever gets to it first. Right now, it doesn’t matter. They’re just things, just clothes. They can be mended in time. Bruce needs mending immediately, needs care he can’t wait for.
When you’ve got him down to his tight black boxer briefs and his black undershirt— all soaked in sweat— you can take a better catalogue of his injuries.
Really, compared to other nights, it’s not that bad tonight. There’s a long cut looping near his hip that must’ve slipped through his armor; luckily, though it stretches for a fair length, it’s shallow. A slightly deeper cut is near his collarbone, and there’s a few fresh bruises, which you’ve grown horribly used to.
“C’mon,” you tell him, and take his hand to guide him. He grabs his notebook on the way, letting you take him upstairs into the proper house, through the dark, twisting hallways and up the stairs to his bedroom.
In the enormous bathroom attached to his bedroom, you sit Bruce down on the edge of the bathtub. You run the hot water, letting the rushing sound fill the room, steam thick with heat following after. In that roaring silence, Bruce scribbles in his notebook, his hand flying in his struggle to keep up with the pace of his own thoughts.
While he works and the bathtub fills, you start examining his wounds. His skin prickles everywhere your fingers drag. You make a soft noise when you see a little fresh blood around the injury near his collarbone, and his eyes flick up to meet yours.
“I’m going to stitch this one,” you tell him.
He nods, then says, “Thank you,” his voice rough. You nod, leaning in to kiss his cheek, tasting paint and sweat and dirt and God knows what the fuck else.
Bruce keeps up his rapid scribbling while you dig out the massive first aid kit you and Alfred keep under the sink for him in here. You clean the wound on his hip first, then neatly close it with butterfly stitches. He barely seems to notice. When you move up to his collarbone, he switches to writing with his other hand. He only reacts once, when you first dab this wound; his expression tightens a bit, the muscles in his jaw jumping.
You move more carefully, cleaning out the deeper cut as tenderly as possible. He doesn’t respond again, still writing, mumbling softly to himself as he works. It’s a rhythm the two of you have long since established. In the beginning, he used to apologize a lot. It took you telling him many, many times that you’re here for him, not some changed and different version of him, for him to actually believe you, letting it sink in that he can sometimes just be quiet and think. You know he needs to process his time out as Batman when he gets home; this is just another part of the routine.
You finish cleaning Bruce’s injuries and stitching him up before he’s finished writing. You let the water run a little bit, letting a bit of it out so he can finish up. It’s only once he’s done that you finally allow the bathtub to fill up the entire way. He seems surprised, nearly as if he’s forgotten where he was, when you reach out to lay a hand on his wrist.
“Can I take that?” you ask, and he nods. Slipping the notebook from his hand, keeping his pen inside to keep his place, you tug him into standing again.
He starts to strip off his own undershirt, so you kneel to hook your fingertips in the waistband of his underwear and tug them down. His clothes end up in the laundry basket; the notebook is safely removed to the nightstand in his bedroom; the first aid kit is replaced to its home beneath the sink.
Bruce takes your hand, lets you lower him down into the hot water. His face screws up slightly in response to the heat. You watch Bruce start to sink back into his own body, bit by bit, coming back to you.
The physical sensations are going a long way towards dragging him up out of the trance he usually ends up in when he comes home on nights like these. You roll your clothes up so you can sit on the bathtub’s edge without getting anything wet, your own legs submerged in the water up to your knees.
You stretch to reach for Bruce’s bath sponge. He tilts forward obediently, and you reach down to soak the sponge in water before you bring it up over his back and squeeze it out, letting the water rush down his skin. It drags dirt and grime with it, leaving trails of slightly cleaner skin behind.
You take up Bruce’s soap and start working it through the sponge until there’s a lather. His eyes drift closed when you bring the sponge to his back again, starting to scrub at his shoulder blades, suds washing away the filth that’s gathered on him over the course of the night. You work over every inch of his back, taking care to make sure you don’t miss anything. You go back over it again, to loosen his muscles, and he sighs, his head hanging forward, shoulders slumping.
You take Bruce’s wrist in your hand, stretching out one arm so you can scrub it clean. You do the same with the other, and Bruce tilts his head back to watch you, his bright eyes hazily half-focused on your face as you work.
Every now and then, unable to resist him, you lean in and press a kiss to some part of his face. The corner of his mouth, the space next to his eye, the skin between his brows, the side of his nose. He smiles slightly every time, tipping just a bit into each kiss like he’s chasing after them with half a mind, slowly, drowsily returning to his own body.
While you’re focused on his face, you bring a washcloth up to scrub the paint and sweat and filth away. You swipe under one eye, sponging the paint off of him in sweeps to reveal pale skin and the bruises you knew would be underneath his eyes. You scour his entire face until he’s pink and raw when you bring the filthy cloth away. The thing is stained, but you just chuck it towards the laundry. It’s more important that Bruce is clean than the washcloth is.
You take up the sponge again to bring down between his legs, dipping into the creases near his hips, his thighs. His head tilts back against the rim of the tub, and he shifts. You let your hand glide over his cock once, but there’s no intent. He’s clean, he’s warm, he’s safe, he’s here. That’s all you want— right now, anyways.
Gliding to his inner thigh, you make sure he’s clean everywhere. You scrub behind his knees, along the fine bones of his ankles, winding around and back up the other side. You make sure he’s clean everywhere, not a drop of the night left on him, before you abandon the sponge and take up Bruce’s shampoo instead.
Bruce tips his own head into the water to wet his filthy hair, sweat-soaked and crushed flat to his scalp as it is. He has such beautiful hair, not that he seems to realize it.
You scratch your nails down to his scalp, working out every tiny bit of grit, every speck of dirt, every oil-slick strand. He relaxes under your ministrations, his eyes drifting open and closed and open again, slipping up to find your face. He flickers back and forth as he watches you, a small smile at the edges of his lips.
When his hair is completely washed, you rinse it, then start again. He gets scrubbed twice before you carefully condition his hair, even as he huffs a laugh at you.
“How was it tonight?” you ask, when he starts to engage with you again.
“Mm.” He shifts, the water rippling slightly against the sides of the bath. “It wasn’t bad. Nothing terrible. Just another night in Gotham.”
For Bruce, ‘just another night in Gotham’ can mean anything from stopping a couple of muggings to witnessing somebody’s death, so you’re not about to let him just blow off whatever happened tonight. However, you also know he processes in his own time, so you rinse his hair again before kissing him on the temple.
“Up,” you say. “Get in the shower, let me clean the bathtub.”
“I’m s—”
“Go,” you tell him, and he goes. A trail of dripping water is left behind in tiny puddles in his wake. Really, the bathtub isn’t so hard to clean; you rinse it out twice and it’s mostly fine. You find Bruce in the shower after, his forehead pressed to the tile, hot water cascading over the crown of his head to sluice down his body.
“Come on,” you say. You tangle your fingers with his, and he comes with you to stand on the rug in front of the sink. You stretch to towel his hair dry, combing it with your fingers before you twist to find his actual comb on the counter. He stands still as you comb his hair back for him, then pat him dry all over, kneeling to rub the towel down the backs of his thighs.
Small goosebumps are lifting on his skin when you finish, so you reach for his bathrobe to wrap him in it, soft, dark fabric sliding over his skin. He follows you from the bathroom to his bedroom.
When you’re sitting him down on the edge of the bed, sweeping his hair back from his face, there’s a soft knock at the door. You leave him there with a kiss on the forehead before you go to answer the gentle sound.
On the other side of the door, Alfred waits with a tray. He passes it off to you, asks, “How is he tonight?”
“He’s okay, I think,” you tell him. You glance over your shoulder, and Alfred does the same, the both of you watching as Bruce shuffles himself back against the pillows, still on top of the covers. “Just tired.”
“Aren’t we all?” Alfred asks, and you smile slightly. When you turn back to Alfred, he leans in to give you a kiss on the cheek. “You get some sleep, too. Don’t think your hours have gone unnoticed—”
“Goodnight, Alfred,” you say, giving his hand a squeeze before you balance the tray again. “You get some sleep.”
“Rest assured, I will,” Alfred replies. Raising his voice slightly, he says over your shoulder, “Goodnight, Master Wayne.”
“Goodnight, Alfred,” Bruce says. He looks up, asks, “Is Dick asleep?”
“Soundly,” Alfred replies.
Bruce is smiling when he says, “Thanks, Alfred.”
“Get some rest,” is all Alfred says. He eyes you, says, “The both of you. And eat that,” he adds, pointing at the tray he’s given you. “All of it.”
“Yes, Dad,” Bruce says from the bed. It’s a joke, but it’s not a joke, between them. Every time he makes the joke, the both of them get this smile that makes your chest feel tight, and you’re not even involved. It’s nice, to see Bruce, who sometimes feels like the most well-known orphan in the world, not be completely without a parent.
Alfred bids you both goodnight again before leaving to retire to his own room. You nudge the door shut gently, quietly, before taking the tray he’s brought to Bruce in bed, slipping the cover up and off.
It’s not much— it’s hot oatmeal, and warm water, and cornbread with butter melting in. It’s not food that Bruce makes himself when he’s being specific with what he eats; it’s what Alfred makes him to comfort him.
Bruce accepts the food without comment, leaning back against the pillows to pick at pieces of it. You tear the cornbread and bring a piece to his lips.
He smiles. “You’re feeding me, now?”
“It’s more for me than you,” you tell him. Leaning in slightly and lowering your voice, as if sharing a secret with a co-conspirator, you tell him, “I have a little bit of a crush on you, you know.”
Bruce laughs again, a soft noise that accompanies a bit of pink flushing on his sharp cheeks. You lean in to kiss the corner of his mouth before you feed him the cornbread. His tongue chases the shine of butter on your fingertip, and you smile, too, watching the sleepily joyful edge that he has as he nears sleep.
You can’t help but feel partially responsible for him, right now. For his contentment, for his happiness, for the way he’s stretching lazily and yawning when you know that, before you, he used to come home and lock his bedroom door and collapse in bed until he woke up the next day, if he slept at all. It’s difficult to keep Bruce home— impossible, actually— but you can at least make home a good place while he’s here, can make sure that he’s comfortable and safe and happy while he’s here with you.
Softly, unable to stop yourself, you ask him, “Bruce. Are you happy?”
Bruce looks up from where he’s scraping the last of his oatmeal from the bowl, his brow furrowed. “What makes you ask that?”
Your chest hurts a little bit. “I just wanted to make sure.”
“Oh.” Bruce looks back down at his spoon, then sets it down, abandoning the empty dishware. You take it from him as he says, “I am.”
“Yeah?” you ask.
He reaches out, his long fingers encircling your wrist. You set the empty tray aside, joining him in bed again, bringing him painkillers from the bottle on the bedside table to take with the last of his water.
“Yeah,” he agrees.
He takes the painkillers you offer, then draws you in. You climb over him to get under the covers, bringing them up and around the both of you. Snapping off the light beside the bed, you throw the room into darkness, despite the fact that you know the sun must just be rising outside. For Bruce, this is the time to sleep, the only time. You’re going to make sure not a drop of sunlight comes in to ruin that before he’s ready.
Bruce twists to burrow into you in the darkness. You can’t see each other, but you can feel Bruce wrapping himself around you, burying his face in your throat. His chest is rising and falling steadily, but his face feels warm as he tucks it into your skin.
His lips move slightly, but you can’t hear what he says. Letting your hand drift up, you start carding your fingers through his damp hair, scratching lightly along his scalp.
You press a kiss to his hairline, then whisper, “What was that?”
Bruce takes a soft breath in. The inhale feels a little shaky, but you don’t have time to ask if he’s okay before he’s murmuring again, voice raised slightly from before, “Thank you for not… leaving me alone. Thank you for being here.”
He’s saying that, but he’s saying more, so much more. He’s saying thank you for staying when I told you to go. He’s saying thank you for knowing me better than I know myself. He’s saying thank you for caring for me when I don’t know how. He’s saying I love you and I can’t be alone if it means being without you. He’s saying nobody has ever loved me like this. He’s saying I never thought I had anybody before I had you.
You tighten your hold on him, and he does the same in return. Burying your face in his hair, inhaling the warm soap-clean smell of him, you smile through the burn in your eyes.
“I love you,” you tell him. “You don’t have to thank me for loving you.”
He huffs a laugh that doesn’t feel like it’s humored. You can still feel the smile against your skin, the hot burn of salt-wetness that soaks from his eyes, melting into you.
“I love you,” he murmurs back, voice warm like steam, absorbed by your skin. You kiss his skull, close your eyes, grounding yourself in the feel of him and in the knowledge that he’s here for another night, safe in his bed— your bed— your shared bed— with you, at least once more.
