Mr. Goodreads and Miss Letterbox || Jason Todd x reader
— Both of you just shared your love for books/films in social media, but your followers saw the potential of an amazing power couple. What happens when you find out about the ship and decides to check Jason's account?
!!: smau + a narrated part. fem!reader. not use of y/n. bookstagramer!Jason x cinephile!reader. Pictures are from Pinterest. enemies to lovers-ish (not really???)
[dc masterlist]
yourusername
liked by 101.344 people
photo dump of the last week of June 🌷
Watched Obsession yesterday. You guys know I don't usually watch horror movies in the cinema, I prefer to watch them at home, safe and cozy, but I've been hearing lot of mixed opinions about this film and I couldn't wait to finally watch it myself. I would rate it with 4 stars because it was really good and extremely disturbing. As always, you guys can find my complete review (with spoilers) in my letterboxd!!
-💋
comments:
user1 Just came from reading your letterboxd review and I agree with everything you said ♥︎ liked by the author
user2 Haven't watched the movie and never will, because I hate this genre, but I loved reading your review ♥︎ liked by the author
user3 If she has a boyfriend, he either has to be another film-obsessed freak or someone who is the total opposite of her, like someone who argues the book a film is based of is way better, even if it isn't
⤷ user4 there's this guy here whose user is @/j.todd who makes content about books and I believe they were made for each other, even if they haven't met yet 🙂↕️
⤷ user5 OMGGG JASON YESS THEY WOULD BE PERFECT TOGETHER
⤷ user6 now this gotta be my new favorite ship
j.todd
Liked by 412.802 people
Normal People by Sally Rooney. 3 stars. I can't deny Sally Rooney is a very talented author, and the start of the book was very powerful and entertaining. However, the ending disappointed me (complete review in my Goodreads). I can't consider Normal People a bad book, it was beautifully written and didn't feel boring, but it's not one of my favorites.
comments:
user1 Normal People is one of my top 3 favorite books but I agree with some of your points in your Goodreads review
user2 ONLY 3 STARS???
user3 love me a man who reads, is he single?
⤷ user4 get in line
⤷ user5 hope he is so he can date my beloved @/yourusername
user6 I'm finishing Normal People, but I kinda agree with you, It's a really good book, but I can't give it more than 4 stars
yourusername
liked by 98.864 people
Can you guys believe I never got to watch Wuthering Heights in theaters when the movie came out? (I still did the trend with the poster and my husband Jacob Elordi). Either way, I watched the movie yesterday night and I have a few comments on it. Over all the movie gets 3 stars and I'm being generous. I haven't read the book but the film was... something else... I have a lot of things to say about this so you guys can go read my review in letterboxd (contains spoiler)
-💋
comments:
user1 I loved the movie wdym 😭😭
user2 kinda weird for you not to watch a movie the second it's out on theaters
⤷ yourusername I know right? but I was very busy when the movie came out, and when I finally got time to go watch it it had already been removed from theaters
user3 Jacob Elordi the man you are
⤷ user4 idk he gives me weird vibes
user5 I love your reviews, they are so complete and so well written ♥︎ liked by the author
user6 nah guys have you seen Jason's post? This can't be coincidence
⤷ user7 this can either be coincidence or they know each other
⤷ user8 maybe they know about the ship and are just messing around with us
user9 you should read the book
⤷ yourusername not my thing lmao
j.todd
liked by 726.997 people
Haven't had much time to read this past weeks, so I figured I could talk about a book I read a while ago, that I really enjoyed, and never posted my review here.
Wuthering Heights gets five stars from me. It's impossible to sum up everything I love about this book in here, so I suggest you all to go and read my review in Goodreads. But it's darkness, and poetic story has made this book one of my ultimate favorites.
P.S: I don't usually mark classics, so I just decided to post some photos I took this month.
comments:
user1 WE GOT JASON'S FACE REVEAL BEFORE GTA VI
user2 blah blah blah proper name place name backstory stuff
user3 que sí quesito que sí
user4 whatever you say handsome
user5 just here to say that @/yourusername just posted her review of the movie
⤷ user6 idc if they know each other or not, they're my parents
⤷ user7 They would be the perfect couple istg
⤷ user8 mr. Goodreads and miss letterbox, straight from a romcom
⤷ user9 they're married in my head
yourusername
liked by 101.344 people
photo dump of this week before I got sick
Rewatched one of my favorite movies because I couldn't get out of bed and I'm so happy I finally get to talk to you guys about it. Dead Poets Society is my favorite movie of all time, hands down, no hesitations. A masterpiece. It's poetic, it's beautiful, it moves you and it's genuinely the only movie that has made me cry. As always you guys have my complete review in my letterboxd (with spoilers, just in case there's people that haven't watched it yet, in that case I'm so sorry).
-💋
comments:
user1 get well soon queen ♥︎ liked by the author
user2 so you got sick, that's why you were so active on social media lately
⤷ yourusername I'm so bored
user3 Dead Poets Society really is THE film
user4 getting sick in July, what's in Gothams air?
⤷ yourusername the real question is: what isn't in Gotham's air?
⤷ user5 WAIT are you from Gotham???
⤷ user6 one step closer to her and Jason meeting each other and falling in love
j.todd
liked by 611.135 people
Found the Dead Poets Society book in my local library and, since I never watched the movie and the book is short, I decided to read it. It gets 3 ½ stars. I found it quite plain and, although I think the story is moving, I'm not sure the book captured the feelings that well. Also, some of the characters were quite questionable. Either way, you guys can find my full review on Goodreads.
P.S: I think I like this photo dump thing, I might keep doing it.
comments:
user1 I think the same as you Jason, now lets kiss
user2 @/yourusername and him using their post's captions like letter, they're made for each other. She sings it with a kiss, and he uses P.S.
yourusername is this the guy chat??
⤷ user3 ariana what r u doing here????
⤷ user4 you really don't know the meaning of being nonchalant, don't you
⤷ user5 so this is the level of boredom you reach when sick
yourusername You should really watch the movie, you would rethink those 3 ½ stars you've just gave to my favorite story of all time
⤷ j.todd I don't think the movie would be much more different from the book, taking into account that the book came out after the film.
yourusername
liked by 99.056 people
Pride and Prejudice. 1 stars. Review in letterboxd.
-💋
comments:
user1 okay she's mad
user2 miss ma'am are you alright?
user3 Jason and her might not be dating after all
⤷ user4 idc this has potential for a enemies to lovers
⤷ user5 I think they should kiss, that would fix everything
user6 idk what happened, but please come back and be normal
j.todd we both know that movie is not 1 star movie
⤷ yourusername have you watched it?
⤷ j.todd no, but I've read the book and I know pride and prejudice is not a 1 star story
⤷ yourusername adaptations aren't always loyal to the original source
⤷ j.todd you really are annoying
⤷ yourusername I suggest you read my review on letterboxd
⤷ j.todd I did and it only says "fuck you Jason"
⤷ yourusername fuck you Jason
⤷ user7 this is like seeing my parents divorcing again
When did you think this was a good idea? Maybe when you saw an opportunity to prove you were right about your favourite movie. That the story changed completely by watching it rather than reading it.
You knew Jason hadn’t liked that one star you had given to Pride and Prejudice. You saw in his goodreads that it was one of his favourite books and decided to watch the movie and give it a low rating just to piss him off. Surprisingly, it worked, because he talked to you after seeing your post.
And now, waiting for him to arrive at your house, you kept checking the time, fixing yourself, walking around—doing anything to calm yourself down—because you had invited a handsome man to your house without thinking it through first.
Of course you had stalked his account. It hadn’t been until recently that he had started posting pictures of himself, at first all of his posts were the cover of the exact book he had read and then photos of some phrases highlighted. The man was truly a romantic. He mostly read romance novels, but his favourites were the classics.
You couldn’t help but wonder if he had checked your account too. You posted photodumps more regularly, your account was almost your online diary, so he knew how you looked.
While you were drowned in your own thoughts, Jason had arrived at your building. It was a funny coincidence that you lived in the building right across from Jason’s, and somehow you hadn’t known about each other’s existence until you decided to appear in his comments section.
Jason swallowed hard before knocking on your door. You opened it, with your hands shaking and your heart pounding aggressively on your chest. Jason was tall—way taller than you had imagined—and he looked like he had come straight out of Fight Club. His leather jacket, a worn black cotton t-shirt, and dark jeans were a very simple outfit—but combined with his piercing greenish-blue eyes, a fading bruise near his right eye, and a white streak on his hair? That man was breathtaking.
From Jason’s point of view you were a sight too. He had seen your posts, he knew how you looked, but in person you had a magnetic energy that no one could ignore. The only reason for him accepting your proposal, of coming to your house to watch a film, was because he found you attractive. He saw the opportunity, took it and he didn’t regret anything.
“Hi,” he said.
His voice woke you up from your trance. You moved to the side, letting him into your apartment.
“I’m Jason, I thought we should introduce each other properly. You have a nice house by the way.” He looked around, scanning your living room and kitchen with detail, like he wanted to find something. “You have a lot of movie posters.”
“Ah! yes. If you ask the correct people that work in the cinema they give one to you for free,” you explained, guiding Jason to your living room.
The movie was already paused on your TV, ready to be watched. Two bowls filled with buttered popcorn sat on the tea table, one for Jason and the other one for you. Once you were settled in the sofa you pressed play.
You couldn’t deny that the first few minutes of the movie were awkward. Jason sat rigid on one end of the couch, looking attentively to the TV, paying attention to everything that happened in the movie. You, on the other hand, kept drifting your gaze from the movie to Jason, to see his reaction, to make sure he liked it.
And when the scene of the party came, you whispered: “Now look at Knox, poor boy, he didn’t do anything wrong.”
Jason looked at you, smirked, and then turned his attention back to the film. “Well yes, but he still kissed her, and she has a boyfriend,” Jason remarked.
“He kissed her on the head,” you defended.
“Still, that’s not cool and she’s unconscious, I would’ve reacted the same way Chet did.”
And that started a friendly discussion between the two of you. You never stopped talking since then, commenting on everything about the movie, Jason criticizing it—just to see your offended expression—and you refuting everything he said, like you were the director herself. And when the movie ended, you kept talking and talking, until it was past midnight and Jason got a message from someone and told you he had to leave.
“It’s not a three star story,” you insisted, walking Jason to the front door of your house.
“Four stars,” he rated. You opened your mouth offended.
“Four and a half,” You suggested.
“I think I’ll have to watch it again to see if you’re right,” he smirked, walking out of your apartment. “Thanks for the date, it was nice.”
“It was not…” But Jason had left before he could hear what you had said.
It might not have been a date, but you had enjoyed Jason’s company, and something inside of you told you that you were going to see each other again, very soon.
six months later
j.todd
liked by yourusername and 457.901 more
Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I've been re-reading Pride and Prejudice with my girlfriend, and she's a slow reader, but it was fun to see her reaction to everything that happens in the book.
You guys already know this is my favorite book and my review has been up on Goodreads for a while, but you guys have my review of the movie in letterboxd, if you would like to read it.
comments:
user1 HES GOT A GIRLFRIEND
user2 I'm the girlfriend guys chill
user3 his girlfriend just won in life
yourusername I'm not a slow reader????? classics are hard ♥︎ liked by the author
⤷ j.todd whatever you say doll
⤷ user4 THEY'RE TOGETHER
⤷ user5 MY PARENTS ARE BACK TOGETHER
⤷ user6 this means they're now officially dating right?
⤷ user7 the ship became reality
⤷ user8 war is over
yourusername
liked by j.todd and 400.874 more
Yes, Pride and Prejudice did not deserve that 1, I'm sorry. My annoying boyfriend insisted on updating my letterbox review and on writing one in Goodreads about the book, so I forced him to download letterboxd, and he has written his very first review there!!
-💋
comments:
user1 the hardlaunch is crazy
user2 they both posted the same quote 😭
user3 they're perfect
user4 which book will be your next review about?
⤷ yourusername none 😊
user5 do we get an invitation to the wedding for introducing you to each other thanks to our ship??
j.todd ❤️
⤷ yourusername don't ❤️ me, you told me you weren't coming with me to the cinema this Friday
⤷ j.todd I promise I'll make it up to you ♥︎ liked by the author
⤷ yourusername good boy
⤷ user6 he's obsessed with her
"You're not always nice but you're kind. And you're not perfect but you're good,"
Supergirl 2026 CHANGED me, please don't listen to assholes online who tell you not to see it. Especially if you're a girl or a young woman- this movie is for you.
Y’all say this but don’t support fluff nor angsty fics if it doesn’t have smut attached to it. You can’t have both. And then y’all don’t reblog or comment on your favs works so they go back to the smut. In the words of Kendrick Lamar, it’s not enough.
on top of this, the month/year just started, let ppl breath
ive said this and i agree with it wholeheartedly. this, along with the constant complaints flooding the x reader tags. "i hate the ___ pet name. i hate the ____ kink. i hate this, i hate that." it is sooooo discouraging and not only does it overshadow actual works that are posted under the tag its incredibly rude and annoying to have the entire hashtag flooded with hate and complaints.
in conclusion engage with the fics you like so you encourage writers to put out more of that. like and reblog and comment on the fluff fics you want so bad instead of clogging the tags.
alternatively, could we have an au where Jason has to be the one that delivers Damian to the manor in Gotham, and he gets so distracted with trying to make Damian's first trip outside the league enjoyable (road trip, theme parks, bunch of stop-offs along the way) that he completely forgets to set up his own place to stay in for after Damian's gone to the manor. and the two end up in front of the Wayne Manor driveway in the middle of the night arguing about it like
Damian: it's just a night or two, and it's not like Father doesn't have spare bedrooms available.
Jason: that's not the issue, the issue is that i don't want them to fucking know i'm here.
Damian: ok so i'll distract them and you can sneak in the back entrance.
Jason, flatly: you want me to sneak into my old house to spend the night, when everybody thinks i'm dead and i want it to stay that way?
Damian: i'm just saying that his long lost blood son showing up is a good distraction, and it IS a big manor. i'll bet you anything that i could keep you hidden in there for as long as you needed.
Jason: you fucking could not.
Damian: i could.
Jason: could not.
Damian: i could and i'll bet fifty dollars on it.
Jason:
Jason:
Jason: alright.
Damian ends up keeping Jason hidden in Bruce's own house like a kid trying to hide a puppy they found on the street in the back of their closet. he's sneaking Jason food and building him a little hidey-hole in the attic above his bedroom and literally nobody else in the manor has a single fucking clue. Jason already knows all the hidey-holes and secret passages from when he lived there anyway, so it turns out not to be as hard as he thought.
to be clear, he still becomes the Red Hood. he's not spending every second in the manor; he's sneaking in and out on a daily basis while he sets up a rulership in Crime Alley. it gets to the point where he fully has his own apartment that he could move into at any point, but he and Damian are being so stubborn about this bet that he's just staying at the manor anyway to prove that eventually they'll figure it out. plus it's starting to get really fucking funny because he's started playing ominous ghost sounds in the ceiling above Tim's room and the poor guy fully thinks he's being haunted by his predecessor's ghost. a fact which is almost correct.
the only thing that's frustrating the hell out of Jason is the fact that after every single interaction with the bats, no matter how exhausted he is from working all night, he has to watch Bruce drive the others right back home while he waits and then has to walk back by himself. eventually there's an arkham breakout and it's so bad that the bats are readily accepting Hood's help with dealing with it and it takes so fucking long to sort everything out that when it's finally over and they're ready to 'go their separate ways', Jason is so genuinely dead on his feet/in pain and need of sleep that he stops caring about everything. Bruce tells the bats to get in the batmobile and Jason just trudges over and slides in next to Tim.
everybody freezes and. straight does not know how to respond. Jason's just half-asleep already leaning his head against the window, and Bruce eventually has to clear his throat and ask like "...would you like a ride home, Hood?" and Jason just grunts.
"where do you live?"
"Wayne Manor," Jason mumbles, barely conscious. the bats all bluescreen apart from Damian who is so resigned to his big brother's idiocy at this point that he just tells them to take him back to the cave with them.
"just- just bring him. look at him. what trouble is he going to cause? he's tired, Father. let him rest."
Bruce is... so confused. and so concerned. but if Hood's injured then what harm is there in letting him get checked over and sleep the worst off in the batcave medical suite? he did help out a lot that night, after all. except when they get to the cave Bruce and Dick start preparing to carry the asleep Red Hood onto a medical bed when Damian just kicks him in the ribs and says 'we're home', and they watch in baffled fucking silence as Hood wakes up, blearily blinks while he takes in his surroundings, and then gets up to start trudging straight up and into the manor.
the others can do nothing but watch in quiet disbelief as Hood proceeds to go through the manor like he truly knows it, gets to Damian's bedroom, and then sleepily climbs up through a secret passage in the ceiling that, when Bruce pokes his head into, reveals a fully renovated bedroom filled with the Red Hood's gear and personal possessions. Hood flops down onto the bed and passes out immediately. Damian just bids Hood a good night and calmly closes the opening behind him, before turning to face the incredulous faces of his entire family staring at him like he's a fucking alien. he narrows his eyes.
"we will talk about it. tomorrow."
"Damian-"
"we are all tired." Damian determines. "for now, let him sleep."
"IN OUR HOUSE-"
"WE WILL DISCUSS THIS TOMORROW."
the next morning Jason wakes up at like. noon. and remembers the night before. and he crawls down into Damian's room to nudge him awake and firmly tell him 'i am not giving you fifty dollars'.
the ensuing argument wakes up the rest of the family.
“Do it scared” “do it alone” are all great tips, but my biggest takeaway from therapy is do it messy. This is especially true if you’re getting out of a burnout, which I experience often. Literally just do it messy. You don’t need to pick the perfect trail to walk, the perfect playlist to listen to, whatever the fuck it is. You don’t need to have a meticulous to do list and wake up at the exact time you planned and drink the exact amount of water you planned to drink. Like the biggest thing for people like me to remember is sometimes it’s okay to do it messy. Put on a random yt workout and just get it done in sweats. Do 5 minutes of a daunting task and go from there. Sometimes just getting up is a win during intense burnouts or depressive funks. Literally just do it messy.
request reader who is in the league of assassins (damian's half-sibling) and was tasked with assassinating one of the major villains after they messed with the league. batman has to investigate the cause and they find out it's the league. the bats have to capture reader, but when/if they do, the reader is just the perfect assassin. something damian was supposed to be, but older and deadlier, having never escaped the clutches of al-ghul's...
content gn! reader, reader is damian's half-sibling (talia's child), platonic! x batfam, assassin! reader, loa! reader, violence, assassination, murder of canon villain, blood/injury, combat, knives/blades/guns, captivity, child soldier themes, emotional abuse, cult-like upbringing, implied physical abuse during training, dehumanisation/objectification as a “weapon,” references to torture-adjacent training, ptsd-like responses, dislocation/self-injury for escape, parental abandonment, controlling/abusive grandparent figure
masterlist
word count 8.2k
The first strange thing about Jonathan Crane’s death was that no one bragged about it.
In Gotham, murder had a language. The Joker made a sermon out of blood and bad jokes. Two-Face left symmetry where mercy should have been. Black Mask carved messages into the world because he had never learned the difference between power and tantrums. Even Penguin, for all his careful civility, liked his enemies found somewhere public enough to count as theatre.
But Crane was simply dead. No headline-ready pose. No riddle. No card. No coin. No punchline. Just a body in the centre of his hideout, hands folded over his chest, eyes open to the rafters like he’d seen God and found Him disappointing.
Batman stood over the corpse in silence.
Nightwing crouched near the shattered remnants of a fear toxin canister, expression stripped of its usual brightness. Red Robin moved through the room in slow, exact lines, scanning everything twice, then a third time because Tim Drake did not trust anything that behaved too neatly. Red Hood leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, helmet angled down at the body.
“Gotta say,” Jason said, voice crackling through the modulator, “I’ve seen worse interior decorating.”
“Not helpful,” Nightwing muttered.
“Wasn’t trying to be.”
Batman said nothing.
That was the second strange thing. Bruce had gone still in that terrifying way he did when the world presented him with an answer he didn’t want to understand. His cape pooled around him like a shadow trying to remember how to be human.
Tim straightened, tablet glowing pale across his face. “No forced entry. Security disabled from inside the system, but not remotely. Whoever did this physically accessed the building.”
“Crane has guards,” Dick said.
“Had,” Jason corrected.
No one laughed.
There were twelve of them, all unconscious. Alive. Bound with their own belts, positioned where they would wake slowly and painfully, but wake. No unnecessary casualties. No collateral damage.
A clean path through chaos. A blade through the throat of a monster.
Damian stood apart from the others, frozen near the far wall.
At first, Dick thought he was staring at Crane. Then he realised Damian wasn’t looking at the body at all.
He was looking at the cut.
A single wound. Precise. Merciful, almost, in its efficiency.
Damian’s face had gone pale beneath his mask.
“Robin?” Bruce asked.
Damian did not answer immediately.
Jason’s helmet turned toward him. “Kid?”
Damian swallowed. “I know this work.”
The cave went colder than winter.
Tim’s fingers paused over the tablet. Dick rose slowly. Bruce turned his head, just enough to make the cowl’s white lenses catch the dim light.
“Explain,” Batman said.
Damian’s mouth tightened.
“That is not merely League technique,” he said. “It is older. Ceremonial. Reserved for correctional executions.”
Jason pushed off the wall. “Correctional?”
“When an enemy of the League acts beyond the bounds Grandfather permits.” Damian’s voice was flat, but something underneath it trembled like a wire pulled too tight. “When an example must be made quietly.”
Tim looked at Crane’s body again. “Scarecrow stole from the League?”
“Or poisoned something they wanted,” Dick said.
Bruce’s gaze did not leave Damian. “Who would Ra’s send?”
Damian’s silence answered before he did.
A small, terrible thing passed across his face.
Not fear. Not exactly.
Recognition.
“There were rumours,” Damian said softly. “In Nanda Parbat.”
Jason went still.
Damian never sounded young when he spoke of the League. He sounded carved. Like every memory had been sanded down until only edges remained.
“Rumours of an heir before me,” Damian continued. “A child raised deeper within the citadel. Not displayed. Not praised. Not allowed failure.”
Bruce’s jaw tightened.
“Talia’s child?” he asked.
Damian did not look at him.
“My mother’s,” he said. “Not yours.”
The words landed like a blade placed gently on a table.
Dick inhaled. “Damian…”
“I never met them,” Damian said quickly, too quickly. “Not properly. I saw them only once.”
His eyes flicked toward Crane again.
“They were training in the eastern courtyard. Seven assassins against one. They were older than me. Perhaps by five years. Perhaps more. It was difficult to tell. The League does not allow children to remain children.”
Jason’s hands curled at his sides.
Damian’s voice lowered. “They won.”
Silence swallowed the room whole.
Then Tim’s tablet chimed. He looked down, and every bit of colour left his face.
“Bruce,” he said. “You need to see this.”
On the screen, a symbol appeared. Not carved. Not painted. Burned into the underside of Crane’s desk, hidden where only someone investigating properly would find it.
A black blade crossed through a green flame.
Damian stepped back like he’d been struck.
Bruce saw. “Robin.”
Damian’s lips parted.
“That is them,” he said.
Jason looked between them. “Them who?”
Damian’s eyes lifted, and for the first time since entering Crane’s hideout, he looked afraid.
“The Blade of Al-Ghul.”
You left Gotham before dawn.
Not because you were afraid of the Bats. Fear was a tool. A chemical. A weakness in the breath before pain. You understood fear intimately, the way a surgeon understood the body: by opening it, studying its shape, learning what made it stop.
You left because the mission was finished. Jonathan Crane had taken a vial of Lazarus compound from a League caravan six months ago. He had diluted it, corrupted it, tried to lace it with fear toxin and sell the result to the highest bidder. He had not known what he carried. Men like Crane rarely did. They saw the sacred and wondered how much it would fetch in dirty money.
The Demon’s Head had spoken. You had obeyed.
That was the whole world.
A command. A target. A blade. Silence after.
Gotham sprawled beneath you, ugly and glittering, all bruised neon and rain-slick rooftops. It was a city with too many heartbeats. Too many witnesses. Too many ghosts.
You understood, now, why Damian had changed here.
The city was a disease. Or perhaps a cure. You had not decided.
The wind shifted.
You stopped walking.
Three rooftops away, a shadow moved wrong.
Not civilian. Not police. Not League.
Bat.
You tilted your head.
“Come out,” you said.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the shadow detached from a gargoyle, and the Red Robin stepped into view.
He was smaller than you expected.
No. Not smaller.
Young.
Sharp-eyed. Tired. Dangerous in the way of people who had taught themselves to survive by noticing everything.
“You’re hard to find,” he said.
You watched him.
He smiled faintly, but it did not reach his eyes. “That was almost a compliment.”
“You followed the wrong trail.”
His expression flickered.
Then something clicked behind you.
A gun.
You did not turn.
“Did I?” Red Robin asked.
Red Hood stood at your back, weapon trained between your shoulder blades. His stance was aggressive, but not careless. He had positioned himself outside the most obvious range of your reach.
Good.
Not good enough.
“Hands where I can see them,” Hood said.
You lifted your hands slowly.
Red Robin’s gaze narrowed.
He knew.
Smart one.
The wire around his ankle went taut.
You moved.
Not fast.
Perfectly.
That was what the League had carved into you. Speed was sloppy when worshipped. Strength was crude when indulged. Perfection was not the rush of movement. It was inevitability.
You stepped sideways as Red Hood fired. The bullet struck the rooftop exactly where you had been standing. You pulled the wire, and Red Robin hit the ground hard enough to lose breath but not consciousness. Hood advanced; you turned into him, caught his wrist, redirected the second shot into the sky, and drove your elbow into the seam beneath his ribs.
He grunted.
You almost admired him for staying upright.
Almost.
Red Robin swept for your legs. You let him catch one, let his hope bloom for half a second, then twisted with the momentum and dropped your knee beside his throat.
Not on it.
Beside it.
A warning dressed as mercy.
Hood lunged again.
You threw one of your blades.
It pinned his jacket to an exhaust vent.
His helmet snapped toward the knife, then back to you.
“Okay,” he said. “Rude.”
Red Robin’s staff extended beneath your arm.
You caught it.
For one breath, the two of you stared at each other over the weapon.
His eyes widened slightly.
He knew he had lost.
Before you could break the staff, a body dropped from above.
Blue and black.
Nightwing came down like a falling star.
You released Red Robin and rolled away from the strike, cloak snapping behind you. Nightwing flowed after you, escrima sticks sparking to life. His movements were acrobatic, beautiful, almost joyful.
You hated that. Combat was not meant to be joyful.
Combat was prayer.
He struck high. You ducked. He spun. You moved inside the arc, fingers finding the pressure point beneath his arm. He saw it coming at the last possible second and shifted enough that you caught muscle instead of nerve.
Impressive.
He smiled despite himself.
“You’re definitely related to Damian.”
That name did what bullets had not.
It made you pause.
Only slightly. Only for the width of a heartbeat.
But a heartbeat was an eternity to the Bat.
Smoke exploded across the rooftop.
You held your breath before it bloomed fully. Standard concealment tactic. Irritant compound. Mild sedative underlayer. Designed for human reflexes.
You had been trained out of those.
Something moved in the smoke.
Small. Fast. Familiar.
A sword rang against your blade.
You turned.
Robin stood before you, cape whipping around his slight frame, katana held in both hands.
Damian Wayne.
Blood of your mother. Son of the Bat. The child who escaped.
For the first time in years, you felt something that did not have a name.
He stared at you through the white lenses of his mask. His jaw was clenched so hard it must have hurt.
“You,” he said.
You inclined your head. “Little brother.”
Everyone froze.
Nightwing’s escrima sticks lowered a fraction. Red Robin stopped trying to rise. Hood, still pinned by his jacket, went utterly silent.
Damian flinched as though the words had touched bare skin. “You are not permitted to call me that.”
“Am I not?”
“You do not know me.”
“No,” you said. “I know what you were meant to be.”
His grip tightened on the sword.
You studied him. He was smaller than you had imagined. Not weak. Never weak. But there was softness in him now, hidden badly beneath all that anger. Gotham had infected him thoroughly. It had put warmth in the cracks the League left behind.
How strange. How terrible. How lucky.
Damian lifted his chin. “Surrender.”
Behind you, Red Hood gave a rough laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure that’ll work.”
You ignored him. Your gaze stayed on Damian.
“And if I do not?”
“Then I will stop you.”
You looked at his sword. His stance. The tremor he thought he was hiding.
“You will try.”
He attacked.
For half a second, he was magnificent. The League had not wasted its training. Damian moved with the precision of a prince raised in war. His blade cut the air in clean silver arcs. His footwork was disciplined, his rage contained, his eyes always searching.
But he had left too early. Or perhaps you had stayed too long.
You caught the first strike, redirected the second, avoided the third by less than an inch. He pressed you toward the edge of the roof, exactly as he had been trained to do. He expected resistance.
So you gave him none.
You stepped backwards off the roof.
Damian’s eyes widened.
He lunged after you on instinct.
Predictable. Painfully brave.
You caught his wrist as you fell, hooked your line around a gargoyle, and swung both of you hard into the side of the building below. Glass cracked beneath your boots. Damian gasped, but did not cry out.
You pinned him against the wall with one arm across his chest, blade angled beneath his chin.
Above, the others shouted.
Damian glared at you, breathing hard.
“You should not have followed,” you said.
“You should not have come.”
“I go where I am sent.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
Something shifted in his face then.
Not pity. Damian would never insult you with pity.
Recognition. He saw the shape of the cage because he had once lived inside it.
“You can leave,” he said, very quietly.
The words were absurd. Almost cruel.
You stared at him.
Below, Gotham traffic whispered like distant rain.
“No,” you said.
His brows drew together.
“You think you cannot,” he said.
“I know what I am.”
“You are not a weapon.”
You smiled. It felt unfamiliar on your face.
“Then why does everyone keep reaching for me?”
The grappling line above you jerked.
Batman descended through the fog like judgment.
You released Damian and kicked away from the wall before the Bat could reach you. Your boots hit the side of the neighbouring building; you ran three steps across the vertical surface, launched yourself upward, and landed on a fire escape.
Batman landed opposite you.
No flourish. No wasted motion.
You understood immediately why the League had spoken of him like a storm given bones.
“Enough,” he said.
You drew your second blade.
Batman’s gaze flicked to it. Then to your stance. Then to your face.
“You’re Talia’s child.”
It was not a question.
You said nothing.
His voice lowered. “Damian’s sibling.”
Still, you said nothing. Words were openings. Openings were weaknesses. Weakness got children locked in rooms beneath mountains until they learned to stop crying.
Batman stepped closer. “You killed Crane.”
“Yes.”
“On Ra’s al Ghul’s orders.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Crane stole from the League.”
“That doesn’t justify execution.”
You tilted your head.
“No,” you said. “It explains it.”
His mouth tightened beneath the cowl.
There. Anger. Controlled, but present.
He cared too much. Damian’s father cared so much it bled through armour.
How inefficient. How devastating.
“How old were you,” Batman asked, “when they started training you?”
The question was so unexpected that you almost answered.
Your silence was answer enough.
Batman’s cape shifted as the others arrived around him. Nightwing first, landing light. Red Robin next, staff in hand. Hood last, knife gone from his jacket, gun lowered but ready.
Damian climbed onto the fire escape behind them.
He did not look away from you.
“They won’t let you keep killing,” he said.
“No,” you agreed. “They will try to stop me.”
“You don’t have to make this a fight.”
You looked at the five of them.
The Bat. The golden one. The detective. The dead man. The heir who ran. A family made of broken things that had chosen, impossibly, to hold.
Then you looked at Damian. “You already have.”
The fight lasted four minutes.
Later, Tim would replay the footage seventeen times and hate every second of it.
You fought like you had been built in a room without love. Every strike had purpose. Every dodge became an attack. Every attack became a lesson in anatomy. You used their hesitation against them, their teamwork against them, their mercy against them most of all.
Dick tried to bind your wrists; you dislocated your thumb without flinching and slipped free. Jason tried brute force; you turned his strength into momentum and sent him through a rusted railing. Tim tried distance; you closed it. Bruce tried pressure points; you knew counters older than his training.
Damian tried to face you alone. That was when you made your only mistake.
You could have cut him.
You didn’t.
Batman saw.
He adjusted instantly, changing strategy mid-breath. Not aiming to beat you. Aiming to protect Damian long enough for Tim to deploy the modified restraint foam across the fire escape supports.
You noticed too late.
The foam burst upward, hardening around your boots, your knees, your left arm.
You cut through the first layer.
A taser line struck your shoulder.
Your body locked.
Not enough.
You tore free with a soundless snarl and nearly reached Damian again before Nightwing wrapped both arms around your waist from behind.
“I’m sorry,” he said in your ear.
You slammed your head back into his face.
He held on.
Jason caught your right arm. Tim caught the left. Bruce stepped in front of you, one hand raised, waiting for the instant your balance shifted.
Damian stood behind him, sword lowered.
You met his eyes.
He looked horrified.
Not by what you had done.
By what had been done to you.
That was worse.
You bared your teeth. “Do not look at me like that.”
Damian’s voice broke around the edges. “Like what?”
“Like I am a warning.”
His silence was a blade.
Batman struck.
A precise blow to the nerve cluster beneath your jaw.
The world went white.
Then black.
You woke in the Batcave. You knew this before you opened your eyes.
The air was too damp. Too metallic. Too alive with machines breathing softly in the dark. Somewhere nearby, water dripped in slow, patient intervals.
You catalogued yourself first. Wrists restrained. Ankles restrained. Shoulder bruised. Thumb reset while unconscious. Three ribs tender but not broken. No sedative fog in your mind. They had either underestimated your tolerance or chosen not to drug you further.
Interesting.
You opened your eyes.
The Bat stood across from you.
No mask this time.
Bruce Wayne looked less like a storm without the cowl. More like a man haunted by every child he had failed to save.
You disliked him immediately.
Damian stood at his side. You disliked that more.
The others lingered at the edges of the cave. Nightwing had bruising along his nose. Red Hood’s jacket was torn. Red Robin watched you with the expression of someone solving a puzzle and hating the picture it made.
“You are in no danger here,” Bruce said.
You almost laughed.
Instead, you looked at the restraints.
“Is that what you tell all prisoners?”
“You’re not a prisoner,” Dick said gently.
Your eyes moved to him.
He stopped talking.
Good.
Bruce stepped closer. “We need to know what Ra’s is planning.”
“Ask him.”
“We’re asking you.”
“I heard.”
Jason snorted. “Oh, this one’s fun.”
Damian shot him a glare.
You looked at Damian again. He had changed out of uniform. No mask. No sword. Just a boy in dark clothes trying to stand like a soldier and failing because his hands kept curling and uncurling at his sides.
You wondered if your mother knew he did that. You wondered if she missed him. You wondered when you had started allowing yourself such useless thoughts.
“You called me little brother,” Damian said.
Bruce’s face tightened.
You said nothing.
Damian took one step forward. “Did Mother tell you about me?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“That you were gifted.”
His mouth twisted. “That is all?”
“That you were arrogant. Undisciplined. Brilliant. Precious to her plans.”
Damian swallowed. “And after I left?”
You studied him carefully.
This was a trap, though perhaps not one he knew he had set.
“She said,” you answered, “that Gotham had made you weak.”
Damian’s eyes flashed.
Then dimmed.
“And what do you think?”
The cave seemed to lean closer.
Even the bats above were silent.
You looked at him.
Really looked.
At the green eyes identical to your mother's. At the posture that had once been beaten into both of you. At the boy who had escaped the mountain and found a father waiting in the dark. At the Robin who had pointed a sword at you and offered you freedom like freedom was something you could simply hand another person.
Weak, the League would have said.
You thought of him pulling his strike when Red Robin crossed too close behind you. You thought of him saying you are not a weapon. You thought of his horror when Batman knocked you unconscious.
You looked away first.
“I think,” you said slowly, “that Gotham has made you inefficient.”
Jason gave a low whistle. “Ouch.”
Damian did not react.
Because he had heard what the others had not.
Not weak. Never weak.
Bruce heard it too.
His expression shifted, subtle as moonlight through water.
“You protected him,” Bruce said.
You looked at him sharply.
“You had three chances to injure Damian badly enough to end the fight,” he continued. “You didn’t take them.”
“Sentiment is not the only explanation.”
“No,” Bruce said. “But it is one.”
You leaned back against the chair.
The restraints hummed faintly with electricity.
“You want me to be redeemable,” you said.
No one answered.
So you smiled again, colder this time.
“How very Gotham of you.”
Dick’s face softened. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It is a foolish thing.”
“Usually,” Tim said quietly. “But not always.”
You looked at him. He held your gaze, brave and exhausted and breakable in ways he had somehow weaponised.
“You don’t know what I’ve done,” you said.
Bruce’s voice was steady.
“No,” he said. “But I know what was done to you.”
For the first time, you felt anger. Real anger.
Not mission heat. Not defensive calculation. Not the clean, cold violence the League preferred.
Anger.
It rose in you like a struck match.
“You know nothing.”
Bruce did not move. “I know children are not born blades.”
Your hands curled against the restraints. “They are forged.”
“Yes,” Bruce said. “And forging is violence.”
The words hit something buried so deep inside you that for one impossible second you could not breathe.
Damian took another step closer.
You could see it in him now. The awful hope. The desperate, childish thing he tried to bury under discipline and sharp words.
He wanted you to be saved because if you could not be saved, then maybe some part of him had never escaped either.
Poor little brother. Still looking for proof that cages could open.
You turned your face away from him.
“Send me back,” you said.
“No,” Damian answered before Bruce could.
Your eyes snapped to him.
His chin lifted.
“No,” he repeated. “I left. You can too.”
Your laugh came out too soft. “You think leaving is the same as being free.”
Damian flinched.
Good. Cruelty was safer than tenderness. Cruelty had handles. Tenderness was a blade with no hilt.
Bruce watched you like he knew exactly what you were doing. Annoying man.
“You are not returning to the League,” he said.
You stared at him.
The cave seemed suddenly smaller.
“You cannot keep me here forever.”
“No,” Bruce said. “But I can keep you here tonight.”
“Ra’s will come.”
“Let him.”
Jason laughed once. Sharp and delighted. “Oh, I love when he gets dramatic.”
Dick sighed. “Jay.”
“What? I do.”
Damian did not smile.
He was still looking at you.
Like a warning. Like a wound. Like family, which was worse than both.
“You should have stayed away from Gotham,” he said.
You looked at him for a long moment.
Then you gave him the truth. A small piece of it. So small it should not have hurt.
“I wanted to see what stole you.”
Damian went still.
The cave fell silent again, but this silence was different.
Not tactical. Not fearful.
Grieving.
Bruce’s face changed first. Then Dick’s. Tim looked down. Jason turned his helmet away.
Damian’s eyes shone, but he did not let anything fall.
Of course not. You had both been raised better than that.
At last, Damian stepped closer until he stood directly in front of you.
“You were not stolen from,” he said, voice low. “You were abandoned with them.”
Your throat tightened. You hated him for that.
You loved him for it too, though you did not yet have the courage to know.
Above you, the bats shifted in the dark. Below them, machines hummed. Water dripped. Gotham breathed.
And for the first time in your life, you sat in a cage that someone else was trying to open from the outside.
Ra’s al Ghul came before sunrise.
Men like him did not knock. They arrived like prophecy, certain the door had always belonged to them.
The first warning was not an alarm.
It was you.
You sat restrained in the Batcave, head bowed, wrists locked in humming cuffs, and went utterly still.
Damian noticed first.
He had not left. Bruce had tried to make him. Dick had offered tea, rest, a blanket, anything that sounded soft enough to pretend this was not a hostage situation with family trauma wearing ceremonial blades. Tim had hovered near the computer. Jason had leaned against the medbay entrance like he was only there for tactical reasons, which fooled exactly no one.
But Damian stayed in front of you. Guarding you.
Or guarding everyone else from you.
You were not sure he knew the difference.
Then your breathing changed.
Damian’s eyes narrowed. “What is it?”
You lifted your head. “They are here.”
The cave lights shifted red a second later.
Tim spun toward the computer. “Outer perimeter just went dark.”
Jason straightened. “League?”
Bruce was already moving. “Positions.”
Dick reached for his escrima sticks. “How many?”
Tim’s fingers flew over the keys. His face went grim. “Enough.”
Damian did not move.
Neither did you. Your gaze stayed fixed on the far tunnel where the shadows deepened.
“He did not send soldiers,” you said quietly.
Bruce paused. “What do you mean?”
You swallowed once. “He came himself.”
A silence fell.
Heavy. Ancient. Green-edged.
Damian’s hand went to his sword.
You looked at him. “Do not fight him angry.”
His jaw tightened. “Do not presume to instruct me.”
“You lower your left shoulder when emotionally compromised.”
Jason barked a laugh despite himself. “Oh, they are definitely related.”
Damian glared at him, then back at you.
For half a second, something almost like a smile touched your mouth.
Then the cave exploded.
Smoke poured from the tunnel. Not Tim’s smoke. Not Batman’s. This was darker, threaded with bitter herbs and the scent of old mountain incense. League smoke. The kind you had learned to breathe through when you were seven and crying was considered a disappointing use of oxygen.
Assassins dropped from above. Green and black. Curved blades. Silent feet.
The cave became motion.
Nightwing launched himself into the first wave with a bright, furious grace. Red Hood opened fire with rubber rounds, cursing in three languages. Red Robin vanished into the smoke and turned the cave itself into a trap, lights flickering, platforms shifting, drones waking overhead.
Batman moved like a wall given vengeance.
Damian stayed between you and the tunnel.
You hated that most.
You could have helped. You could have ended half the attackers in less than a minute. You knew their forms, their blind spots, the way League assassins were taught to favour the killing strike over the disabling one. You knew because you had been the lesson they failed against.
But the restraints held.
Then the smoke split.
Ra’s al Ghul stepped into the Batcave.
He wore no armour. Only dark robes, a green cloak, and the serene expression of a man walking through a garden he intended to burn for warmth.
His eyes found Bruce first. “Detective.”
Bruce’s face became stone. “Ra’s.”
Then Ra’s looked at Damian. “Grandson.”
Damian’s sword lifted.
Finally, Ra’s looked at you.
And smiled.
Not warmly.
Proudly.
“My blade.”
Something inside you went quiet.
Not peaceful.
Dead.
Your spine straightened before you told it to. Your breathing evened. Your face emptied. The cave vanished at the edges until there was only the Demon’s Head and the command he had not yet spoken.
Damian saw it happen.
His eyes widened.
“No,” he said.
Ra’s took one step toward you. “You have performed well. Crane’s theft has been answered. The League’s honour remains intact.”
Bruce moved in front of him. “You’re not taking them.”
Ra’s almost looked amused. “You collect children now as trophies?”
Jason’s gun snapped up. “Oh, I hate this guy.”
Ra’s ignored him.
His gaze remained on you.
“Come.”
One word.
That was all it took.
A word with ten thousand days of training behind it. A word carved into your bones. A word that had opened doors, sealed graves, ended lives.
Come.
Your body moved before thought could catch it.
The restraints sparked.
Your wrists twisted.
Damian turned sharply. “Stop!”
You did not.
You dislocated your thumb again.
The pain was clean. Familiar. Almost soothing.
Bruce lunged toward you, but two assassins intercepted him. Dick shouted your name—no, not your name, because none of them knew it, not really. Tim triggered the restraint override, but you had already shifted your weight exactly enough to crack the locking hinge.
Metal snapped.
You stood.
Damian stepped in front of you.
His sword was lowered.
That was his mistake. Or his mercy.
“Don’t,” he said.
Your eyes met his.
Little brother, you thought. But you did not say it.
Ra’s voice came from behind him. “You see, Detective? You cannot rescue a weapon from its purpose.”
Bruce slammed an assassin into the cave wall hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling. “They’re not a weapon.”
Ra’s smiled. “All children are weapons. The only question is whether their parents have the discipline to sharpen them.”
Damian flinched. Just slightly.
But you saw.
The dead quiet inside you cracked.
Not much.
Enough.
Ra’s noticed too.
His gaze cooled.
“Blade,” he said.
You turned your head toward him.
“Kill Robin.”
The cave stopped.
Even the fighting seemed to falter around the edges.
Jason’s voice went flat with horror. “No.”
Dick’s face drained of colour.
Tim whispered, “Bruce—”
Bruce moved.
Too far. Too late.
Damian stood before you, sword still lowered.
His eyes did not leave yours.
You could kill him. You knew seventeen ways from this distance. A strike to the throat. A blade under the ribs. A broken neck. A nerve severed beneath the jaw. Quick. Clean. Merciful, if mercy meant efficiency.
Damian knew it too.
He did not raise his weapon.
“Do it,” Ra’s said.
Your hand moved to your blade.
Damian inhaled.
But he did not step back.
“Look at me,” he said.
You did.
His voice shook once, then steadied.
“You are not what he made you.”
The blade slid from its sheath.
Ra’s watched with satisfaction.
Bruce fought like the cave itself was trying to hold him back.
Damian lifted his chin.
“If you must kill me,” he said softly, “then let it be your choice. Not his.”
Choice.
The word entered you like a foreign object.
Choice was not a thing the League gave. Choice was what undisciplined people called hesitation. Choice was the space between command and obedience, and you had been trained to erase that space so completely no one could find where the child ended and the blade began.
Your hand trembled.
Ra’s saw it.
His face hardened.
“Obey.”
The command struck deeper this time.
Your knees nearly buckled.
Memories flashed, brutal and bright.
Stone floors beneath your palms. Talia’s voice telling you pain was information. Ra’s standing over you while you held a blade too large for your child’s hand.
Damian, small and furious in a courtyard, watching you win against seven assassins.
Your mother saying Gotham made him weak. Your grandfather saying weakness could be cut out. Your own voice asking, years later, what stole him.
Damian’s voice answering: You were abandoned with them.
Abandoned.
Not chosen. Not honoured.
Left.
Your grip tightened on the blade.
Damian closed his eyes.
That broke you.
Not because he was afraid.
Because he trusted you.
You turned.
The blade left your hand.
It flew across the cave and buried itself in Ra’s al Ghul’s cloak, pinning the green fabric to the stone behind him an inch from his throat.
Everyone froze.
Your voice came out raw.
“No.”
Ra’s stared at you.
For the first time since entering the cave, he looked truly displeased.
Not angry.
Worse.
Disappointed.
“My blade,” he said softly.
You lifted your chin. “Not yours.”
The cave erupted again.
Ra’s tore free of the pinned cloak and drew his sword in one fluid motion. Damian moved first, stepping beside you, blade raised now. Not in front of you.
Beside you.
A strange thing happened then.
You fought with Damian.
Not around him. Not despite him. With him.
He was smaller, quicker, all sharp angles and righteous fury. You were older, colder, built from discipline he had survived and escaped. Together, you were terrible.
You knew the League’s rhythms. Damian knew how to break them.
An assassin lunged for his left side; you intercepted. Another came for your back; Damian cut their blade away before it landed. You moved like a sentence finished in two voices.
Across the cave, Jason laughed breathlessly while punching someone into a storage cabinet.
“Okay, that’s horrifyingly cool!”
“Focus!” Bruce snapped.
“I am focused! On how horrifyingly cool that is!”
Ra’s watched you and Damian carve through his guard, and something ancient twisted across his face.
Possession. Rage. Loss.
“You shame your blood,” he said.
Damian’s blade met his with a ringing clash. “No. I am improving it.”
Dick, somewhere behind him, made a wounded little sound. “That was so good. I hate that I’m proud right now.”
Ra’s pressed Damian backwards. He was stronger. Taller. Crueller with every strike.
You came in from the side.
Ra’s caught your wrist.
For a moment, you were close enough to see your reflection in his eyes.
“You could have been perfect,” he said.
There it was.
The hook in the wound.
Perfection. The holy word. The altar you had been raised upon and sacrificed to, piece by piece, until nothing remained but the shape of what they wanted.
Your wrist strained in his grip.
He twisted.
Pain flared white.
Once, you would not have made a sound.
Now you gasped.
And Damian heard.
He slammed the hilt of his sword into Ra’s ribs with a furious snarl.
Ra’s released you.
Batman arrived like judgment.
The fight between Bruce Wayne and Ra’s al Ghul was not beautiful.
It was history with fists. Every strike carried years. Every block answered an old argument. Ra’s fought like a king. Bruce fought like a father.
And fathers, you were beginning to learn, were far more dangerous when their children were watching.
Ra’s drove Bruce back toward the Lazarus containment case. Bruce caught the blade between armoured gauntlets, twisted, and forced Ra’s to one knee. For one breath, the Demon’s Head looked almost mortal.
Then he smiled.
“Detective,” Ra’s said, “you remain sentimental.”
He pressed a hidden trigger.
The cave lights died.
Not dimmed.
Died.
Complete darkness swallowed everything. You moved by instinct, grabbing Damian and pulling him low just as a volley of darts cut through the space where his throat had been.
He stiffened at your touch.
Then, incredibly, he leaned into your grip.
Only for balance.
Probably.
Maybe.
“Tim!” Bruce shouted.
“Working on it!” Tim called back.
Emergency lights flickered on in harsh red pulses.
Ra’s was gone. So were three of his assassins.
The rest were unconscious, bound, or being sat on by Jason, who looked deeply satisfied with himself.
The cave smelled of smoke, blood, and old ghosts.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Then Damian turned to you. “You saved me.”
You released him immediately. “You were in the way.”
Jason groaned. “Oh my God, it’s like listening to Damian argue with a mirror that has more knives.”
Dick wiped blood from his nose. “A scary mirror.”
Tim, bruised and breathless at the computer, looked between you and Damian. “A mirror that can dislocate its thumb on command, apparently.”
You flexed your injured hand.
Bruce approached slowly.
You tensed.
He noticed and stopped two steps away.
Ra’s had come to collect you. You had refused. Which meant you were no longer a blade of the League.
You were something worse.
A loose end. A traitor. A child who had stayed too long and finally stepped out of line.
You looked toward the tunnel Ra’s had vanished through. “He will not stop.”
Bruce’s voice was quiet. “No.”
“He will send others.”
“Yes.”
“You cannot protect me forever.”
“No,” Bruce said.
Something cold settled in your chest.
Then Bruce continued.
“But we can teach you how to protect yourself without belonging to him.”
You stared.
That was not how protection worked. Protection was ownership. Investment. Utility. No one guarded a blade unless they intended to use it.
Dick stepped closer, gentle but steady. “You could stay.”
Jason crossed his arms. “Or don’t. But maybe don’t go back to Murder Mountain with Grandpa Cult-Vibes.”
Tim blinked. “That might be your worst name for Ra’s yet.”
“I’m workshopping.”
Damian did not laugh.
He looked at you like the answer mattered more than he wanted to admit.
You wanted to say no. No was clean. No was safe. No meant no debt, no hope, no soft-eyed vigilantes trying to pry open the armour welded to your skin.
But your body remembered the command.
Kill Robin.
Your hand remembered trembling. Your blade remembered turning.
Not his.
The words lived in your mouth like the first breath after drowning.
Not yours.
Not yours.
Not yours.
“I do not know how,” you said.
It was not an answer. It was worse.
It was the truth.
Damian’s expression changed.
Small. Careful. Almost young.
“Neither did I.”
You looked at him.
He shifted, uncomfortable beneath your attention.
“Tt. I am still learning.”
Jason muttered, “Understatement of the century.”
Damian ignored him with royal intensity.
“You will be irritating,” he said.
Your brows lifted.
“You will be arrogant,” he continued. “Violent. Condescending. Emotionally stunted.”
Dick coughed. “Damian.”
“You will attempt to escape at least twice.”
Tim raised a finger. “Statistically, probably more.”
“You will insult Father.”
Jason perked up. “That part’s encouraged.”
“You will find our methods inefficient,” Damian said, voice quieter now. “You will think mercy is weakness. You will hate it here.”
You studied him. “And yet?”
Damian swallowed.
“And yet,” he said, “you should stay anyway.”
The cave softened around the edges.
Not physically. The stone remained stone. The machines kept humming. The bats above kept shifting in the dark like scraps of living night.
But something changed.
A door did not open. Not yet. But maybe, somewhere deep beneath the mountain inside your chest, a lock turned once.
Bruce held out his hand.
Not to grab. Not to command.
Just offered.
You looked at it for a long time.
Then you looked at Damian.
He gave a single stiff nod, as if granting permission to survive was something he could do without falling apart.
Your injured hand twitched.
You did not take Bruce’s hand.
Not yet.
But you did not step away.
For tonight, that was enough.
The first week was war.
Not open war. Not blades in the hallways or poison in the tea, though Alfred did catch you studying the spice cabinet with “strategic suspicion,” as he called it, and banned you from unsupervised kitchen access with the politest death glare you had ever witnessed.
It was quieter than that.
You slept facing the door. You stole three knives from the Cave and hid them around the manor. You mapped every exit. You refused to eat anything you had not watched someone else consume first.
You nearly broke Tim’s wrist when he woke you from a nightmare. You did break Jason’s nose when he startled you during training.
Jason, to his credit, only held a towel to his face and said, “Okay, fair, but next time aim for literally anyone else.”
Damian watched you with the grim satisfaction of someone seeing his worst qualities reflected back at him in 4K.
“You are impossible,” he told you on the fifth morning.
You looked at the breakfast plate Alfred had placed in front of you. “What is this?”
“Pancakes,” Damian said.
“Why are they shaped like animals?”
Across the table, Dick’s face lit up. “Oh, Alfred does that when he’s emotionally adopting you.”
Alfred, from the kitchen doorway, said mildly, “Master Richard.”
You stared at the pancake. It was shaped like a bat.
Poorly. Lovingly.
An inefficient food.
You ate it anyway.
Damian pretended not to notice.
He noticed everything.
The first time you laughed, it was Jason’s fault.
This surprised no one more than Jason.
He had dragged you into the Cave’s training area after you informed Bruce that firearms were “cowardly tools for those with poor wrist discipline.” Jason took this personally, spiritually, and with great volume.
He spent twenty minutes explaining why guns were not inherently cowardly, actually, and then tried to demonstrate.
You disarmed him in four seconds.
He stared at the empty space where his gun had been.
You held it by the barrel.
“Poor wrist discipline,” you said.
Tim made a strangled sound from the computer.
Dick turned away.
Damian looked like he was trying not to ascend to a higher plane through sheer smugness.
Jason pointed at you. “You know what? I liked you better when you were unconscious.”
And you laughed.
It was small. Barely a breath.
But it was there.
Everyone froze so abruptly that you stopped too.
“What?” you demanded.
“Nothing,” Dick said too quickly.
Tim looked intensely at his screen. “Nope. Nothing. Normal cave sounds.”
Jason grinned.
Damian’s expression softened by one treacherous inch.
You scowled at all of them.
It only made Jason grin wider.
“Oh, you’re stuck with us now,” he said.
You threw the gun at him.
Safety on.
Mostly.
Ra’s sent assassins on the twelfth night.
You knew before the alarms.
This time, when you woke, you did not run.
You went to Damian’s room first.
He was already awake, sword in hand.
For a moment, you stood in the doorway looking at each other.
No words. No old commands. No mountain between you.
Then Damian nodded. You nodded back.
Together, you went to wake the others.
Later, after the attack failed spectacularly and Jason declared the manor’s security “a group project from hell,” Bruce found you on the balcony overlooking the grounds.
Dawn bruised the horizon purple and gold.
You stood with your arms folded, watching the trees.
Bruce joined you but did not stand too close.
He was learning. Annoying man.
“They will come again,” you said.
“Yes.”
“You keep saying that.”
“You keep being right.”
You glanced at him.
His mouth almost curved.
Almost.
For a while, neither of you spoke.
Then Bruce said, “You need a name.”
Your body went very still. “I have a title.”
“You deserve a name.”
You looked away.
The League had given you many names.
Blade. Heir. Asset. Shadow. Failure, once, when you were nine and your hands had shaken too hard to hold the knife steady.
Your mother had called you child only when no one else could hear.
Ra’s had called you perfect only when you bled.
“What did Talia call you?” Bruce asked quietly.
Your throat tightened.
You almost did not answer.
Then you said it.
Not loudly.
The name felt strange in the air. Too soft for the life you had lived. Too human for the thing you had been made into.
Bruce repeated it once.
Carefully. Correctly. Like it mattered.
You hated him a little less.
Maybe.
A month later, Damian found you in the library.
You were sitting on the floor with three open books, a mug of untouched tea, and a knife hidden beneath your thigh.
Damian noticed the knife.
You noticed him noticing.
Neither of you mentioned it.
He stepped closer. “What are you reading?”
“History.”
“Which era?”
You looked down at the book. “All of it.”
Damian huffed.
He sat beside you.
Not close.
Closer than before.
For several minutes, you read in silence.
Then he said, “I used to wonder about you.”
Your eyes stayed on the page. “No, you did not.”
“Yes,” Damian snapped. “I did.”
You looked at him.
He scowled at the carpet.
“I saw you once. In the courtyard. You defeated seven assassins.”
“You said this already.”
“I thought you were extraordinary.”
Something in your chest shifted.
Damian’s voice became quieter. “I also thought if I became like you, Mother would be proud.”
You closed the book.
Damian’s hands were clasped too tightly in his lap.
“I am glad,” he said, each word dragged out like it cost him blood, “that I did not become like you.”
The old you would have taken offence.
The new you—still raw, still half-formed, still sleeping with a blade under the pillow—heard the grief beneath it.
“So am I,” you said.
Damian looked at you sharply. You looked back.
The silence held.
Then he leaned sideways, just enough that his shoulder brushed yours.
It was not an embrace. It was barely contact.
But Damian Wayne did not offer comfort casually.
You sat very still.
After a while, you allowed your shoulder to press back.
From the doorway, Dick made a muffled sound suspiciously like crying.
Damian threw a book at him without looking.
Ra’s came one final time in winter.
Snow fell over Gotham in thin, silver sheets, softening the city’s ugliness into something almost gentle.
He did not bring an army. Only himself.
He stood in the manor gardens beneath a dead tree, robes dark against the white ground. Bruce went out first. Damian followed. Then you.
The others watched from the shadows.
Ra’s looked older in the snow.
Not weaker. Never that.
But older.
“My blade,” he said.
You did not flinch this time. “That is not my name.”
His eyes narrowed.
Then he said your name.
It sounded wrong in his mouth.
You hated that it had ever lived there.
“You have been corrupted,” Ra’s said.
Damian stepped forward. “They have been freed.”
Ra’s glanced at him. “Freedom is a story weak men tell their children so they do not have to teach discipline.”
Bruce’s voice was cold. “You don’t get to speak about children.”
Ra’s smiled faintly. “And yet, Detective, here we stand among yours.”
His gaze returned to you.
“I offer you one chance. Come with me, and your betrayal will be corrected. Refuse, and the League will consider you an enemy until your final breath.”
Snow gathered on your shoulders.
Once, the threat would have hollowed you out.
Now, you only felt tired.
All that power. All that immortality. All those centuries. And still, Ra’s al Ghul could not imagine love except as possession. Could not imagine loyalty except as obedience. Could not imagine family except as inheritance sharpened into a knife.
You stepped forward.
Damian tensed. Bruce did too.
But neither stopped you.
You walked until you stood close enough for Ra’s to see your eyes clearly.
“I was your blade,” you said.
His expression remained unreadable.
“You honed me. Used me. Named my wounds discipline and called my silence devotion.”
The snow fell harder.
Your voice did not shake.
“You taught me perfection meant having no self left to save.”
Ra’s said nothing.
You drew a blade.
Behind you, Damian inhaled sharply.
But you did not raise it.
You turned it in your hand and offered it hilt-first.
Ra’s stared.
“This is yours,” you said. “The weapon. The title. The obedience.”
The blade dropped into the snow between you.
You stepped back.
“I am keeping the life.”
For a moment, Ra’s looked at you with something almost human in his eyes.
Then it was gone.
“Sentiment has ruined you.”
You looked past him, toward the manor.
Dick in the window, pretending not to hover. Tim on comms, pretending not to worry. Jason in the shadows with a rifle he absolutely claimed was “just decorative.” Alfred waiting inside with tea.
Bruce beside you, steady as stone. Damian at your shoulder.
Your brother.
Not little, not weak, not stolen.
Alive.
You looked back at Ra’s.
“No,” you said. “It found me late.”
Ra’s’s mouth hardened. “This is not over.”
Bruce stepped forward. “For tonight, it is.”
Ra’s looked at all three of you.
Then he vanished into the snow like a ghost too proud to admit it had been exorcised.
No one moved until the garden was empty.
Then Damian exhaled.
“You were dramatic,” he said.
You looked at him. “You carry a sword and wear a cape.”
“Tt. That is tactical.”
Jason’s voice crackled over comms. “For the record, that was dramatic as hell, and I support it.”
Dick added, “Ten out of ten emotional symbolism.”
Tim said, “The blade in the snow was a little much.”
You frowned. “Should I retrieve it?”
Everyone shouted, “No.”
You blinked.
Damian sighed. Then, after a long moment, he reached for your hand.
He did not hold it properly. Just hooked two fingers around yours like you were both still too proud to need anyone.
You looked down at the contact. Then at him.
He stared straight ahead, ears faintly pink from the cold.
“You are still irritating,” he said.
“You are still inefficient.”
“I am improving.”
“So am I.”
His fingers tightened around yours.
Behind you, Bruce said nothing.
But when you turned toward the manor, he walked beside you, not ahead.
Not leading. Not commanding.
Beside.
Snow covered the garden behind you, hiding the blade beneath white.
For the first time in your life, you left a weapon where it fell.
remus being sirius’ physics tutor, but not in the usual nerd x popular boy way. sirius only agrees because he’s failing, and james swears this guy from the astronomy club peter goes to is a genius whose lab work is always top of the class.
what james forgets to mention is the silver hoop in remus’ left ear. and the chestnut curls streaked blonde by the sun. and those veined forearms peeking out from under rolled-up sleeves. and the stretched-out the smiths shirt that hangs just low enough to show off his freckled collarbones.
so now sirius is sitting through two-hour tutoring sessions pretending he wants to understand physics when really he’s forgotten every law of motion except the one that keeps drawing his eyes back to remus.
…..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment
likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post
the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like.
After a tragic accident erased your memories, you no longer remember the man you married. Unfortunately for you, Ryomen Sukuna remembers everything. And he'll do whatever it takes to make you remember him too.
Everything was so much weird.
When you first opened your eyes, the world was a blur of harsh lights and a rhythmic, annoying beep that made your head throb. A crowd of people were hovering over your bed, their faces twisted into expressions of pure horror and desperation. It felt like they were looking at a ghost or maybe a god that had suddenly fallen from the sky. The moment you blinked and stared back at them with blank, unrecognizing eyes, the room dissolved into quiet, breathless weeping.
You were completely utterly lost. Who was the woman with the dark circles under her eyes calling herself Shoko? Why was she gripping your hand like her entire world was ending? You knew your own name y/n echoed clearly in the empty caverns of your mind, but beyond that single fact, there was only a vast, terrifying void. You understood the modern world. you knew what a smartphone was, you recognized the concept of Wi-Fi, and when you mumbled those details, the doctors in the room let out collective, gasping sighs of relief.
But the real shock came twenty minutes later.
The heavy door to the hospital room burst open with a violent slam. A man lunged inside like a madman, his chest heaving as he fought for breath. You had never seen anyone look like him. His hair was a soft, striking shade of pastel pink so pretty and unexpected that you wondered for a fleeting second if he had dyed it just to stand out. Dark, intricate tattoos mapped across his skin, curling around his sharp cheekbones and framing his eyes. And those eyes... they were a piercing, burning red, swirling with a volatile mixture of terrifying rage and profound, shattering sadness.
You just sat there in your oversized, faded blue hospital gown, looking small and fragile as your confused gaze met his. The man froze, roughly brushing a strand of pink hair out of his face. His clothes were covered in a layer of grey dust and dried grit, looking as though he had sprinted straight off a construction site the second he got the news.
"Fucking... God. Hey, princess... fuck, don't you ever scare me like that again" he breathed, his deep, gravelly voice cracking as he took two massive strides toward your bedside, staring down at you with a desperation that made the air feel heavy.
You shrank back into the pillows, your brow furrowing. Princess? Were you in some bizarre historical simulation? Did kings and horses still exist? No, the blinking medical monitors around you disproved that immediately.
"Mr. Sukuna, please. I need to speak with you in private for a moment" a woman in her mid forties interrupted, her expression incredibly grave as she stepped between you and the huge man. She glanced at the other people lingering by the door. There was a teenage boy, maybe sixteen, who had the exact same pink hair as the tattooed man, his face streaked with tears. Beside him stood another boy with unruly, spiky black hair and a dull, stoic expression that couldn't quite hide the anxiety in his eyes. At the doctor's quiet command, they all slowly filed out into the hallway.
Left alone for a moment, you stared at the stark white walls, the untouched glass of water on the bedside table, and the crushing, dull monotony of the room.
When the door clicked open again, the female physician returned, holding a thick medical chart. The tattooed man followed closely behind her. He tried to offer you a small, reassuring smile, but it looked incredibly strained on his rugged face. His crimson eyes locked onto you, tracking every breath you took as if you might literally vanish into thin air if he dared to look away for a single second.
"Hello, y/n. I am Dr. Jennifer" the woman said kindly, stepping up to the mattress. "Do you know why you were brought here today?"
You frowned, looking between her and the towering man. "No."
The syllable was short and hollow. Beside the doctor, Sukuna’s entire frame stiffened. His jaw clenched so hard a muscle feathered violently beneath his tattoos, his knuckles turning white as he balled his hands into fists.
"Right. But you do remember your name?" she pressed gently.
"Yes... y/n I am Y/N." you answered firmly. You knew the name belonged to you, even if the history attached to it was completely gone.
"And do you know where you are right now?"
"A hospital?"
"Correct" Dr. Jennifer nodded, opening the document in her hands. "Look, I am going to explain exactly what happened, and I need you to listen very carefully, alright?" You gave a small, hesitant nod. "You were in a severe accident yesterday evening. You were walking home from the local market when a car veered off the road and hit you. It is a miracle you walked away with minor physical injuries, but the trauma to your head has caused a severe case of retrograde amnesia. Honestly, it's a surprise you even remember your name right now."
You let out a quiet hum, your eyes drifting down to your own hands resting on the thin blanket. That was when you noticed it a slender, platinum band set with a brilliant, flawlessly cut diamond resting securely on your left ring finger. It looked incredibly expensive, classy, and entirely foreign
So you were married.
"Y/n" Dr. Jennifer’s voice pulled you from your thoughts. You snapped your head up to look at her. "This man standing beside me... he is your husband."
The doctor tilted her head toward the giant. He was massive easily over six feet of raw, intimidating muscle, his tattooed face giving him a terrifying, dangerous aura. Your very first instinctual thought was that this man looked incredibly scary.
Sukuna didn't say a word. He just stood there, letting you analyze him, before he offered you a tiny, incredibly vulnerable nod. You tilted your head, staring into his intense red eyes, desperately searching for a single spark of familiarity. Did I really marry this giant?
"His name is Ryomen Sukuna, and he is going to take care of you" the doctor continued, closing her chart. "For the next few weeks, you need to let your brain rest, but you also need to gently stimulate it to try and regain those lost memories. Spending time in a familiar environment, in your own home with your husband, is going to be the best medicine for you."
You nodded mutely. You didn't exactly have a choice. You were being handed over to a complete stranger who happened to hold a legal claim to your entire life.
"Alright then. I wish you a safe and speedy recovery" Dr. Jennifer said with a final, empathetic smile before slipping out of the room.
The heavy silence that followed was suffocating. Sukuna cleared his throat roughly, taking a few slow, tentative steps toward the edge of your bed. He moved with an immense amount of caution, as if he genuinely believed a sudden movement might break you into pieces. He pulled up the small plastic chair, sinking into it.
"Hey" he said softly. Even in a whisper, his voice was incredibly manly, deep, and rough.
"Hello" you replied shortly, your eyes tracking his hands.
To your surprise, his large, scarred fingers were trembling slightly as he fidgeted with them, refusing to meet your eyes. When he finally looked up, you realized the piercing red of his irises was completely glossy, swimming with unshed tears.
"Yo... you're getting discharged today" he choked out, taking a deep, ragged breath as if the mere act of speaking was causing him physical pain. "I'm going to go sign the paperwork, and then I'm taking you to... our house. I'm going to do whatever the fuck it takes to help you remember, princess."
You stared at his rugged, tattooed face for a long moment before letting out a soft, distant hum.
An hour later, you were sitting in the passenger seat of a sleek, black Jeep, The man Sukuna kept his left hand firmly on the steering wheel while his eyes flicked toward you every sixty seconds, his intense gaze making a nervous flutter erupt in your stomach.
You stared out the window, watching the city buildings, sprawling neighborhoods, and vibrant green trees blur past. Intrigued by the warm breeze, you raised your hand, pressing your palm gently against the glass as if you wanted to touch the passing leaves. Instantly, the window smoothly rolled down. Startled, you turned your head to find Sukuna adjusting the master controls, his eyes locked onto you with an unreadable warmth.
"Can I ask you something-" you murmured softly.
"Yes." The answer came incredibly fast, almost desperate. He was hanging on your every word, practically begging for you to speak to him.
"How... how did we meet?" you asked, leaning your elbow on the door frame as the wind whipped through your hair.
"We met in high school" he answered quickly, navigating a sharp turn onto a quiet, "We've been married for seven years."
"High school?" You tilted your head, a faint smile touching your lips as you extended your hand just slightly out into the rushing air. "Were we friends back then?"
"Careful" he commanded firmly, though there was no real heat in his voice. You obediently pulled your hand back inside. A faint, nostalgic softness crept into his red eyes as he looked ahead. "Friends? no. You could say we didn't liked eachother each other when we first met. You thought I was a loud, arrogant mannerless jerk and I thought you were a stubborn, bossy brat."
He smoothly pulled the Jeep into a long brick driveway, coming to a stop in front of a breathtaking, modern two story house. It was painted a crisp, elegant white with sleek charcoal-grey accents, boasting massive, floor to ceiling windows that caught the afternoon sun.
"This is...our house" Sukuna murmured, his voice dropping an octave. "We've been living here for about four years."
He killed the engine, threw his door open, and practically sprinted around the hood of the car to open your door before you could even reach for the handle. He extended a massive, tattooed hand toward you, his palm open and waiting. You stared at his hand, your eyes traveling up the thick muscles of his forearm, before you deliberately stepped down onto the driveway without taking it.
Sukuna’s hand froze in mid-air. You watched his fingers slowly curl back into a fist before he pulled his arm away, a flash of pure, agonizing heartbreak crossing his features before he quickly masked it with a stoic expression.
As your feet hit the pavement, you looked up at the towering structure, desperately begging your brain to spark even a single ounce of familiarity. Nothing came. But as you turned around, you caught a glimpse of the man standing beside you. He was on the absolute verge of tears. His chest was tight, his jaw locked as he stared at you. You were his entire world, his beautiful wife, and yet you were looking at him like he was a total stranger. He suddenly felt a wave of profound hatred for every single time he had ever been mean or stubborn with you in the past, even in jest. He just wanted his girl back. His sweet innocent girl.
"The house is beautiful" you murmured gently, walking toward the porch.
'The house.' Not our house. The detached wording made Sukuna’s jaw clench painfully.
"Of course it is. I built the damn thing" he muttered, following closely behind you.
It was your exact dream house. Years ago, back when you were just broke college students dating in a cramped apartment, you had traced a clumsy design on a napkin, telling him you wanted a modern white house with endless windows, three bedrooms, and a kitchen large enough for the two of you to bake and slow-dance together while listening to old jazz records. Sukuna had kept that napkin. The moment he made his fortune, he hired a crew but did the vast majority of the heavy structural work with his own two hands. He had gifted you the keys on your third wedding anniversary, and he could still vividly remember the way you had wept tears of joy, throwing your arms around his neck and kissing him until you were both breathless. He wanted that smile back. He would give anything just to have you look at him the way you used to.
You stepped inside, ignoring the heavy emotion rolling off him. Sukuna quickly gathered your small hospital bags and followed you into the foyer, shutting the door behind him.
Your eyes immediately gravitated toward the kitchen. It was vast, open, and undeniably stunning, featuring a massive quartz island and a huge sliding glass door that opened directly into a manicured backyard garden. The entire layout felt strangely perfect.
"Let me show you... around" Sukuna offered quietly.
He spent the next half hour guiding you through the corridors of what was supposed to be your life. But as he showed you the grand master bedroompointing out the side of the bed where you used to curl into his chest every single night your face remained entirely blank. You felt a twinge of heavy guilt pooling in your stomach. He showed you the living room, drawing your attention to a collection of large, breathtaking canvas paintings hanging on the walls.
"You painted those" Sukuna noted, a faint trace of pride in his rough voice. "You're a brilliant artist, princess."
You blinked in genuine surprise, looking down at your hands. "I drew these?" You were suprised, you don't even remember touching a brush in your life. But this is your new life. New start.
"Yeah." Sukuna stopped at the edge of the hallway, looking down at you with completely bloodshot eyes. He hadn't slept a single second since the hospital called him about your accident. All he wanted to do was wrap his massive arms around your waist, pull you flush against his chest, and bury his face in your hair until the nightmare ended. But he couldn't. "Look... you can sleep in the guest bedroom down the hall, or you can take our bedroom and I'll stay in the guest room. Whatever makes you feel comfortable. I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable you."
"Okay" you hummed softly.
His heart broke a little more at the compliant, distant tone. "I'll go start on some dinner, and then I'll get your medication ready. If you need a single damn thing, you just call out for me, alright? Your clothes are all in the dresser, undergarments in the top drawer, pajamas in the second..."
You nodded, offering him a polite murmur of thanks before retreating into the guest room. You changed into a simple, comfortable t-shirt and sweats. A little while later, his deep voice echoed up the stairs, announcing that dinner was ready. You walked down to the dining room, sitting at the large table like a polite houseguest waiting to be served.
"Do you need help?" Sukuna asked, carefully sliding a steaming bowl of homemade chicken soup and a large spoon toward you. You shook your head, grasping the utensil and taking a quiet sip. He sat across from you, his own bowl entirely untouched as he just stared at your face. "Y/n... you really don't remember a single damn thing about me?"
His voice cracked completely on the last word, the raw vulnerability of a ruthless man exposed right in front of you. You looked up, meeting his glossy red eyes.
"No... I don't. I'm really sorry" you whispered genuinely.
He let out a slow nod, swallowing the lump in his throat as he forced himself to look away. "Don't apologize. It's not your fault."
"Do I... do I have parents? Or friends?" you asked, a sudden curiosity about your own forgotten life bubbling up.
"Yeah. You have parents. Your father—"
"Where are they?" you interrupted quickly, leaning forward. "Do they know I was in an accident? Why aren't they here?"
"They haven't spoken to you in over seven years. Not since the day you married me" Sukuna said, his tone dropping into something cold and bitter.
"Why?"
"Your family is rich as fuck. Extremely strict, arrogant aristocrats" Sukuna explained, his red eyes locking back onto yours. "They completely forbade you from seeing me because I was just a rough, tattooed bastard from the wrong side of the tracks with a criminal record and a unstable future. They told you that if you walked out that door with me, you’d be cut off permanently."
You stared at him, a sudden spark of heat flaring in your chest. "Well, that's so stupid of them. It sounds like a good thing we don't talk to them then."
The sheer, unyielding loyalty in your voice made Sukuna’s lips twitch, a genuine, heartbreaking smile threatening to break through his stoic mask. Even with a wiped memory, his sweet wife still possessed that exact same fiery, protective spirit.
"Yeah" he chuckled hoarsely, letting out a long sigh. "You have an incredible best friend named Shoko. You two are both doctors. you work in the exact same surgical unit at the city hospital. We have a ton of mutual friends we met back in our high school days. And those kids at the hospital? The pink-haired teenager is my nephew, Yuji, and the dark-haired one is Megumi, our friend's kid. They practically worship the ground you walk on, princess. You love those brats to death."
"Can I see them?" you asked, a genuine smile finally breaking across your face.
"Of course. Whenever you want." he promised, his eyes tracking the way your lips curved.
Sukuna let out a sudden, rough snort, a wicked glint flashing in his eyes. "Old or not, woman... you're still completely breathtaking."
A deep, violent blush instantly stained your cheeks. You hadn't been around an attractive man or any man, for that matter in your conscious memory, and having this giant, dangerously handsome individual throw such a raw compliment at you made your heart do a chaotic somersault. You quickly looked down at your soup, missing the way his eyes softened at your reaction.
Over the next three weeks, the fragments of a life began to surround you, even if the puzzle pieces wouldn't quite lock into place.
Yuji and Megumi came over to the house constantly. Yuji spent hours enthusiastically teaching you how to make his signature protein shakes and weird jello molds, his loud laughter filling the quiet house, while Megumi sat nearby with his usual serious expression. But the moment you offered Megumi a soft, encouraging smile, his sharp features would instantly melt into something deeply tender. Yet, beneath their smiles, you could see the underlying sadness in their eyes every time you failed to remember a shared inside joke.
When Shoko finally visited, she broke down completely, throwing her arms around your neck and sobbing into your shoulder. It was a bizarre maybe stupid too, overwhelming feeling being fiercely loved by people you couldn't even remember and a heavy weight of guilt began to settle deep in your chest. You even met Toji, Megumi's father, a tall, stoic man who didn't say much but looked at you with a quiet, profound pity that made you realize just how broken your situation truly was.
And then, there was Sukuna.
Your husband spent every single day patiently guiding you through your routines, driving you past your old university, cooking your favorite meals, and trying every gentle trigger possible. But your mind remained a stubborn, locked vault. Sukuna was growing desperate furious and completely fucked up by the stagnation.
To make matters worse, just one week before the accident, you had playfully taken down every single one of your framed marriage photographs to rearrange the living room gallery wall, hiding them away in a "genius spot" that Sukuna had completely forgotten more like you didn't even told him. He had spent hours frantically tearing the house apart while you were out, searching for a single modern photo of the two of you together.
He was completely unraveling. He couldn't sleep. The woman he loved was sleeping in the room next to him, yet she looked at him with the polite, distant eyes of a stranger. He felt like a ghost haunting his own home. One evening, he sat alone in the dark kitchen and wept the third time he had ever cried in his entire life. The first had been tears of pure joy on your wedding day when he saw you walking the aisle. the second had been out of terror when the ER doctor told him a car had struck you. and now, he was crying simply because he missed his wife so damn much
His phone offered no help either. his gallery was filled entirely with candid photos he had taken of you you stepping out of the shower with a towel wrapped around your head, you laughing in a department store dressing room, or a hilarious picture of you biting into a raw lemon and making a completely disgusted face. He had no photos of the two of you together on his device, you had always been the one insisted on keeping the physical, printed albums. The only joint photos he could find were a few faded, wrinkled prints from your high school days, showing a younger, wilder version of himself wrapping his arms around you from behind while you laughed into the camera. When he showed them to you, you just stared at them blankly. It was killing him.
At the end of the third week, Sukuna was sitting heavily on the living room sofa, completely exhausted after another failed search through the house. He was mindlessly scrolling through the candid photos of you on his phone, a faint, melancholy smile touching his lips. His fingers traced your face on the photo, your bright smile. your bubbly laughter at his most unfunniset jokes, now all of that are vanished.
The heavy front door clicked open. Shoko had taken you out for an afternoon of shopping to get you out of the house, and she had just dropped you off at the curb. You stepped into the foyer, balancing several shopping bags in your arms.
Sukuna instantly locked his phone, shoving it into his pocket as he stood up, his red eyes drinking in the sight of you. "Had fun, princess?"
"Yes, I did. And thank you... for letting me use your credit card" you said softly, walking over to the coffee table and gently sliding the black card back toward him.
"You bought dresses?" he asked, pointing toward the bags. Honestly, he didn't give a single fuck about the money. you could have emptied his entire bank account and he would have gladly signed it away just to see you happy.
"I bought a few things..." You cleared your throat nervously, your fingers twisting together. "But... I actually bought something for you, too."
The words hit his chest like a physical blow. Even with her mind completely wiped, your beautiful, kind soul was still looking out for him. "Really?" he murmured, his voice thick with emotion. "Can I see it?"
You gave a small nod, walking over to the couch and tentatively sitting down right next to him. The close proximity made his heart start to hammer against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"I don't know if it's really your style, or if you'll even like it..." you mumbled bashfully, reaching into a small velvet pouch and pulling out a heavy, intricately braided silver bracelet studded with raw, brilliant red stones. "The color... it just immediately reminded me of you. Of your eyes."
You gently reached out, grasping his massive, calloused wrist to drape the metal over his skin. Oh God, if you only knew how fast his heart was racing beneath his chest. Your soft, warm fingers lingering against his pulse point was pure, exquisite torture.
"It looks incredible, Y/n. Thank you." he whispered, a genuine, breathtakingly soft smile spreading across his tattooed face as he looked down at the crimson stones.
"Thank you... for being so incredibly patient with me" you said quietly, looking up at him through your eyelashes.
Sukuna let out a long, ragged sigh, his hand hovering over yours for a fraction of a second before he pulled back. "I will always be patient with you, princess. Always."
You looked directly into his burning red eyes, and for the first time in three weeks, a warm, genuine smile broke across your face. Sukuna felt his breath hitch. he was entirely certain he was about to pass out from the sheer weight of his love for you.
"Can you stay right here for a bit? I need to go jump in the shower real quick. I'll be fast" he muttered hoarsely, his hand instinctively reaching out to gently ruffle your hair a comforting, domestic habit he had carefully maintained. You let out a soft chuckle at the gesture.
The moment his heavy footsteps disappeared up the stairs and the sound of running water echoed through the pipes, you stood up, wandering aimlessly around the quiet main floor. Your feet pulled you toward the small, cozy library nestled just off the living room. The walls were lined with hundreds of books some ancient leather volumes, others modern art textbooks. You pulled one off the shelf, flipping through the pages before sliding it back into place.
As you stepped back, your eyes caught a glimpse of something hidden on the absolute highest shelf, shoved far back into the shadows near the ceiling. It looked like a massive, heavy frame leaning flat against the back wall, obscured by a decorative ceramic vase. Intrigued, you stood on your tiptoes, stretching your arms up as high as they could go, blindly reaching for the top edge of the wooden frame.
Your fingers caught the molding, but as you pulled, the heavy ceramic vase shifted, losing its balance.
Crash!
The vase shattered against the hardwood floor with a deafening, echoing smash. Startled, you let out a sharp cry, stumbling backward as the massive hidden frame came tumbling down from the top shelf, striking the edge of the desk before landing flat on the rug. The backing of the frame split completely open upon impact, and a massive cascade of loose, glossy photographs erupted across the floor hundreds of them, scattering like playing cards across the room.
You gasped, placing a hand over your racing heart as you looked away from the broken pottery, your eyes drifting down to the sea of images covering the floor.
You froze.
Right at your feet lay a massive, professionally printed portrait. In the photograph, you were sitting securely on Sukuna's lap. You were wearing a breathtaking, flowing white lace wedding dress, holding a vibrant bouquet of sunflowers, and laughing so brightly your eyes were crinkled shut. Sukuna was clad in a sharp, tailored black tuxedo, his massive arms wrapped fiercely around your waist from behind, an absolutely massive, unbothered, triumphant grin plastered across his face.
Your breath hitched violently. You stumbled forward, falling to your knees as your hands frantically snatched up another photo from the pile. In this one, you were hoisted high up on Sukuna's broad shoulders at a crowded, flashing outdoor music festival; your mouth was wide open in a breathless scream of laughter, while his large hands were clamped firmly around your thighs to keep you safe, both of your faces painted with pure, unadulterated euphoria.
You grabbed a third photo, and the entire world stopped spinning. It was a quiet, intimate shot taken right in the backyard garden outside. You were sitting cross-legged on the green grass, wearing a simple summer dress with a soft, shy smile, while Sukuna’s heavy head was resting completely in your lap. He was looking up at you with an expression of such pure, unconditional adoration it made your soul ache, while your fingers were woven gently through his soft pink hair.
Pink hair.
The backyard.
The jazz music.
The napkin.
A sudden, violent explosion of memories ripped through the barriers of your mind. It wasn't a trickle; it was a catastrophic, roaring tidal wave. Seven years of laughter, fierce arguments, passionate late-night apologies, the smell of his skin, the exact weight of his body pressing you into the master mattress, the sound of his deep voice whispering "I've got you, princess" into the dark. It all hit your brain at once with the force of a freight train.
The sheer, overwhelming velocity of the memories made the room spin violently. Your vision blurred into a vortex of white light and crimson eyes. You let out a choked gasp, your strength entirely giving out as your body collapsed sideways onto the hardwood floor with a loud, heavy thud, the scattered photographs of your life pooling around your unconscious form.
When you finally opened your eyes again, the harsh glare of the ceiling lights was gone, replaced by the warm, dim ambiance of the living room. You were laying flat on the soft fabric of the sofa.
"She's waking up! Sukuna, look, her eyes are moving!" Yuji’s panicked, loud voice cut through the quiet room.
You blinked heavily, your vision slowly focusing. Megumi was standing right beside his cousin, his dark eyes wide and completely swimming with anxiety. Shoko was hovering over you, a small medical flashlight in her hand, her face pale as she checked your vitals.
But your heart didn't care about any of them. Your eyes frantically scanned the tight circle of people, instantly landing on the massive, tattooed man standing frozen at the foot of the couch. His pastel pink hair was damp from the shower, his chest heaving under a plain black t-shirt, and his face was a mask of pure, absolute terror.
As your eyes met his, a single, heavy tear spilled over your eyelid, tracing a hot path down your cheek. The vast, terrifying void in your mind was completely gone, replaced by the roaring, beautiful fire of your reality.
"Ryo..." you choked out, your voice a broken, breathless sob.
Sukuna froze, his entire frame visibly violently shuddering at the sound of the nickname the private, intimate name only you were ever allowed to call him.
Before anyone else could even blink, you threw yourself forward off the sofa cushions, completely ignoring the dull ache in your muscles. You lunged straight into his space, your arms wrapping fiercely around his massive neck. You buried your face in the crook of his collarbone, gripping the fabric of his shirt with a desperate, white-knuckled intensity as you pressed a hard, crying kiss directly against his tattooed jaw.
"I remember... us" you sobbed violently into his skin, your entire body trembling as the tears flowed freely. "I remember everything, Ryo... I remember you."
Sukuna’s mind completely blanked. For a single, breathless second, he couldn't even process the words. And then, a raw, ragged sound escaped his throat a mixture of a sob and a laugh. His massive, powerful arms came crashing down around your frame, pulling you so close against his chest you could barely breathe, lifting your knees entirely off the floor as he buried his face into the crook of your neck.
And there, in the middle of his living room, surrounded by his family and the scattered photographs of your love, Ryomen Sukuna closed his eyes and wept for the fourth time in his life.
"I fucking love you" he whispers
(not me me writing all night just for 36 like and one reblog😣🙏🏾)
Headcanon that when someone gets injured during a fight, (the clearly underaged) Robin at the time sometimes run into the nearest convenience store and buys vodka to clean the wound~
Imagine.......When Dick is Robin, he gets into a fight with a group of gangsters, and a civilian gets injured. Panicking, Dick runs into the nearest convenience store, looking for something to clean the wound with. Naturally, the workers are very confused as to why a little boy in a brightly coloured costume is attempting to buy a bottle of vodka. They eventually sell it to him on the grounds of "Batman would probably beat us into a pulp if we said no."
Over the years, this happens several more times, even continuing whenever there's a new Robin. Convenience store workers in Gotham have gotten so used to brightly coloured children coming in and purchasing alcohol that when a new person starts working at one of the stores, no one even thinks to explain what the hell is going on.
---
Store Manager: —and last but not least, remember to ask for an ID before selling alcohol to anyone who might be underage.
New Employee: understood.
Robin: *enters, in full costume and covered in blood. walks to the back on the store, before returning and placing a bottle of vodka on the counter with a thud*
Store Manager: *immediately begins ringing him up*
Store Manager, smiling: that'll be $20.
Robin: *hands over the money and leaves with his bottle of vodka*
New Employee: ...
New Employee: ......
New Employee: ........that was a child. That was a child in a Halloween costume. You just sold alcohol to a child in a Halloween costume.
Store Manager: oh yeah, that's Robin. We don't actually know how old he is.
— Bruce Wayne never expected to discover that his son was dating someone at one of his soccer games.
!!: fluff. 1.6k words. smitten!Damian. gn!reader but written with a fem! in mind. stablished relationship. aged up Damian. Not proofread. English is not my first language.
[dc masterlist]
The day you discovered Damian Wayne knew how to play soccer you never stopped insisting until he joined the university’s team.
He would often say that he didn't have time to play soccer with all the study you guys had to do. But you knew your boyfriends better than anyone, and he could be studying three different, very difficult, degrees at the same time and still have enough free time to play with a ball.
Damian quickly became an important player in the team, the striker. Most of the goals the team had scored this season and the last were thanks to Damian, and you were always there, like a lucky charm.
It was almost like you had an assigned seat on the bleachers now, the perfect place to see the game and admire your boyfriend. Damian already knew where to find you among the people.
However, that seat wasn’t always free. If you arrived later than usual there was a good chance that someone else had already taken it, forcing you to look for another place. Like today, for example.
When you saw the final exam schedule and realized that one of your exams clashed with the university team's most important football match, you felt like dying. You'd become a huge football fan thanks to Damian, and you loved supporting him by attending all his games. And this one, being the most important and coinciding with an exam, drove you crazy.
While your exam was halfway done, you could see from the window how the players had already appeared on the field, meaning that the match was about to start, and you weren’t there.
You had told Damian, he understood, of course, but he was missing you. Standing on the field, next to his teammates, waiting for the game to start and not having you on the bleachers made him nervous, and he was never nervous when it came to soccer, but he missed his lucky charm.
You finished your exam as quickly as possible, and the teacher almost laughed when she saw how fast you gathered your things and bolted through the classroom door.
When you arrived to the field the bleachers were packed with people. Almost every student of the university was there, and almost every teacher too. You knew the people from Gotham university were passionate about their soccer.
You couldn’t find a seat, everything was occupied, so you settled with standing on the top part of the bleachers. You didn’t pay attention to who was standing next to you, when the game was on your eyes were only focused on Damian, who was now running with the ball to score their team’s second goal of the game.
“GOOOAL!!” The bleachers erupted with joy. People standing up, clapping, shouting, hugging.
2-0. Gotham University on the lead.
You were celebrating too. Clapping and shouting like the rest of the people.
Damian, while he was being congratulated by his teammates, raised his head to search for you on the bleachers.
He had a proud smile on his face from the goal, that softened when he finally spotted you on the very top part of the stands. However, his smile disappeared when he noticed his father standing right next to you.
His father, Bruce Wayne, who didn’t know Damian was in a very happy relationship with you, his classmate. A relationship that had turned a year old last week.
You were standing next to him.
Damian’s mind started filling with questions. Had you introduced yourself to Bruce? Was his father going to scold him from keeping you a secret? Were you going to kill him for not telling his father about you?
But the game wasn’t even halfway done and he needed to concentrate.
By the end of the game the score was 4-4. While Gotham University had gotten the lead at the very start, they had lost a player due to a red card, and the other team had managed to equal the score.
However, as it was the last match of the season, they had to break the tie in a penalty shootout. It was their last resort after extra time had already been played.
The penalties were tough. Gotham University didn't miss any, but the other team missed one, saved by Gotham’s goalkeeper. Now everything depended on Damian. If he scored that penalty, Gotham University would be crowned champions.
The stands were tense. The ones supporting Gotham university were holding their breaths, while the people supporting the other team were praying for Damian to miss. But Damian never missed. Because he was that good, and because you were there.
“He’s not going to miss." The man next to you said when he saw how tense you were. Your nails were digging into your hands.
“Oh, I know, he’s really good, it's just that I get nervous every time.” You let out a nervous laugh.
“Have you been to any other game?” The man asked. Damia started moving away from the ball to get a running start.
“To every single one, I often sit there,” You pointed to your usual seat, which was now occupied by a girl. “Gotta support my boyfriend.”
He nodded and you glanced at him, but not closely enough to recognize him.
“Have you ever come to a game before, or is this your first? I think I haven’t seen you here before” You asked, looking back to the field.
“This is the first one I’ve been to since my son joined the university’s team.”
“Who’s your son?” You asked.
You knew everyone on the team, most of them from the afterparties of every match. Some of the boys were nice, the others were assholes.
“Number nine, Damian.” He answered and your entire body froze.
You didn't even react when Damian scored the penalty. You clapped slowly as the stands on the Gotham University side erupted in celebration of their immediate victory.
Now you noticed the resemblance: the man had the same eyebrows as Damian, and it was clear you were related. The man in front of you was none other than Bruce Wayne, your boyfriend's father. And since you hadn't introduced yourself, he was going to think you were rude.
So you did what seemed best: you ran. You left the stands as fast as you could and went to find Damian.
And there he was, in the middle of the field, holding the trophy, surrounded by his teammates singing a silly song they'd made up in the locker room before the game to celebrate the victory.
When he saw you approaching, he broke away from the group and walked toward you. You had a proud smile on your face that would take a while to fade. Damian was smiling too.
With the trophy in his left hand, he used his right to take you by the waist and pull you toward him.
“Congratulations, my love.” You smiled, wrapped your arms around his neck, not even caring of how sweaty he was, and kissed him.
He melted into the kiss, savoring the victory and the feeling of having you with him. For Damian the post-game kiss was far better than any trophy.
“How did your exam go, Beloved?” He asked when you pulled away.
“I did it as best and as fast as I could.” You answered.
He hummed and gave you a sweet but short kiss on your neck.
Bruce, who had come down the bleachers to congratulate his son, had seen the whole interaction between you and Damian.
He had waited for you to have your romantic moment, but seeing how strangely in love Damian looked, he realized that if he didn't make his presence noticeable then you two could go on like this forever. And Bruce wanted answers.
He cleared his throat. This made Damian look up, seeing his father standing a few feet away from you two.
“Father.”
“You played wonderfully today, Damian, congratulations!” Bruce said, approaching with a proud and happy smile. “Now, would you mind explaining?”
Your cheeks were flushed, and you lowered your gaze, avoiding Bruce’s. Damian looked at his father and then at you. “Thanks, Father, but it was an easy game.”
Bruce stayed quiet, waiting for his son to start explaining about his secret relationship.
“I think you two have already met.” Damian said, remembering you had been standing next to his father during the game.
“Indeed.” Bruce nodded.
“We’re a couple. We’ve been together for a year.”
Bruce would be lying if he said it didn’t hurt to discover his youngest son had been dating someone for a year without telling him. He expected something like that from Jason, but not Damian.
“Well then, It’s a pleasure to finally meet you…” Bruce extended his hand for you to take.
You told him your name and shook his hand shyly. “The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Wayne.”
“I don’t want to bother you two, I’ll be going now. Congratulations son, I’m proud of you.” Bruce smiled at Damian and patted him on the shoulder. But, before leaving he turned to you. “We’ll be expecting you next week for dinner.”
Once Bruce had left, Damian rolled his eyes. “Great, now you’ll have to meet the entire family.” The sarcasm in his voice was sharp.
You let out a sweet giggle and kissed him on the cheek. “ Don’t be dramatic, It can’t be that bad.”
You really didn't know what you were getting yourself into. But you loved Damian, and if dating him meant dealing with a strange family, a single billionaire father, and lots of siblings, then so be it.
𝜗ৎ Kenma absolutely hates public display of affection. Which is why Kuroo and his girlfriend are getting on his last nerves... But can a kiss between you change his mind?
wc: 2.5k
Tags: fem!reader x timeskip!Kenma, college au
cw: making out, very suggestive language
a/n: there isn't explicit smut in this, but I wanted to incorporate 18+ just in case as there is very suggestive thoughts and ideas between characters!
❀ all images are found off of pinterest! I do not own them. (credit to @/Freaka_LoonyZ for the middle picture!)
Kenma was a game addict; that everyone knew. He’d find ways to skip practice, use less exertion during games just to conserve more energy for when he got home — that way he could spend the rest of his hours online alone… without getting exhausted. Most of the time it was first-person shooters, strategy games, anything that allowed him to use his brain more than his body. And he liked that — figuring opponents out, finding loopholes in people’s minds that allowed for sudden victories. Winning meant he was smarter. So what if his teammates sucked?
Which was exactly why tonight was vexing him so badly. “You guys are disgusting. Y’know that, right?”
Kuroo remained impassive towards Kenma’s outburst, too busy kissing his girlfriend for what felt like the hundredth time in the past hour. God, it wasn’t even normal kissing anymore. Because by the time the thirtieth press to his lips had been managed, their bodies had become entangled, tongues practically licking each other’s organs.
Honestly, the entire reason the four of you had even gathered at Kenma’s apartment in the first place was for gaming. Kuroo, like always, had managed to irritate Kozume for days, twisting some farfetched tale that his newfound fling had wanted to try fps. So, he agreed to show her the ropes. That was until Kuroo placed his fucking hands on her hips, guiding her ass into his crotch until both of their eyesights couldn’t fixate on anything but each other’s skin.
Which unfortunately left you and Kenma alone with a story game you’d convinced him to try. At first, it was exactly what he expected — exactly like you explained: long, choice driven, full of tension and consequences that followed the same notion of a butterfly effect. It was as though one wrong move, one missed clue, and a character died. There were no second chances. No sense of safety when making such impactful verdicts; all the storyline did with your opinions was shift the outcomes, forcing a new wave of obstacles that only hastened anxiety.
Such an odd game of choice… though, it did surprisingly keep his attention away from the two imbeciles mouth fucking on the floor. So, that was a win.
Well, until the romance came. The sappy moments between fictional characters that overrode any achievement the two of you had accomplished. You managed to escape a monster? Eh, anyone could do that. You became mayor of the town and saved at least half the population due to your studious objectives? So what.
It was like the hours worth of dialogue options, the tiny decisions that somehow affected communities and personal growth didn’t matter. For fuck’s sake the main character nearly died three separate times and still the game wanted them to care more about whether they held someone’s hand at an opportune time.
It was like he was surrounded by unfettered lust; both the game and Kuroo made him miserable. There was no escape from such coitous actions; writer ploys, hormones… affection was everywhere. Couldn’t horror and mystery just rest on unsolved enigmas? Sure, Kozume could swallow Tetsuro ruining his floor with sweat, but a game built on strategy and decisions… that felt almost churlish.
Yet, still, here he was — letting the two of you play through such a dumbfounded game, allowing your body to position itself near the edge of the bed with his controller in hand. Kenma leaned against the headboard beside you, eyes fixed on the cutscene unfolded on the screen. And finally, after what felt like fucking forever, the main character sealed their choice of love with a makeout session.
Kenma rolled his eyes, puffed out cheek rested atop the grooves of his fist. I mean, c’mon, who would even fall for that? Probably an idiot — his eyes followed upwards, the glimpse of your kicked feet glinting in the corner of his eyes. “Finally,” you groaned. “That took, like, two hours of decisions just to get to this point.”
He couldn’t believe it. You had seriously based the majority of your decisions to get to this point? A mundane scripted sequence that only blasted shitty music to get an emotional rise. And their tongues… gross — all tangled together like they couldn’t function without devouring each other’s insides.
Stupid storytelling.
“What happened?” Kuroo poked his head from above, his girlfriend whimpering softly from the lack of attention she inadvertently received (so fucking abhorrent — he better dump her asap). “Wait. I thought we wanted Mira to end up with Asher.”
“That was before we found out he spread the rumors about Maeve.” Kenma affirmed. “So our decisions have been pinpointed on Kole since then,” his eyes glazed over his friend's enmeshed body. Idiot. “You’d know that if you paid attention.”
Kuroo furrowed his brows, palmed hands braced on either side of his lover's head while his eyes lowered at the frustrated setter. “Well sorry that I’m entertained over here.”
“I hope you get mono.”
You snorted at Kenma’s declared medical curse, the sound quickly joined by Tetsuro’s girlfriend. And if on cue, she peered her head just below the captain, irises fixed on Kozume’s exasperated glare. Yeah, he was definitely not letting her come back. Still, she seemed oblivious to the setter's attempts to cut their intimacy off, pressing her lips against Kuroo’s which earned a short grunt from the depths of his throat.
Kenma was fucking baffled. I mean, what was so pleasurable about kissing anyway? It was just two people pressing skin against skin. There was no way it felt good (if you get his gist). Yet, here his friend was, acting like his life depended on such foolish acts.
“If you keep staring like that, you’re gonna come off as a prude.” Kozume pushed his exasperated expression towards you. “Don’t get mad at me! Just saying…”
“I don’t get it.” Kenma grumbled, layered hair pushed back to take another look at the two bodies in constant movement. “Why do they have to keep kissing?”
“Because it’s cute.”
Cute? What part of it was cute? From the outside it looked like they were about to eat each other’s skin. “It’s disgusting.”
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you Kenma, it’s—” Kuroo was cut off by faint vibrations, a sound trickling near the middle of his girlfriend's shorts. “Babe… is that your vibrator?”
Okay. That crossed a line. Even your cheeks heated at that comment; something Kenma awkwardly took notice of. “Oh,” she said casually, reaching deep into her pocket. “It’s my roommate. She texted that she needs me.”
The tension dispersed after that resolute; soft chuckles and relaxed postures echoing across the room. Even Kenma visibly eased, a quiet and relieved sound murmured under his breath — a string of thank yous uttered to the universe.
Kuroo’s girlfriend didn’t seem to mind the thirty seconds of embarrassment however, already stepping back toward the door while Tetsuro followed behind her with exaggerated reluctance, still complaining the entire way like he hadn’t just spent the last four hours attached to her face. And when the front door clicked not even ten minutes later, Kuroo stumbled in like he’d been personally betrayed by every higher being for getting cock blocked.
Little did he know his anger should’ve been directed towards her roommates' need for support. That’s what he gets for dating a freshman.
“You still up for the game?” you asked.
But Kuroo didn’t respond properly. Instead, he made it exactly three steps into the room before collapsing face-first onto Kenma’s air mattress with a dramatic groan. “I’m emotionally drained,” he declared. And within seconds, his voice softened into something incoherent, phone slipping from his hand as his breathing evened out. “Don’t do anything… fun… without me…” he mumbled, already half-asleep — just like that, he was out cold, sprawled across the blankets like the sole reason to be at Kenma’s was just to face fuck his girlfriend.
“I hate her.”
Your palms pressed against the bed, pushing your torso sideways to get a better look at the setter next to you. His brow was raised, the edge of his lip downturned in pure repulse to the memories of displayed intimacy. “Huh. If I didn't know better, I take it you haven’t kissed anyone, Kozume.”
“Huh?” His cheeks seared with red; something he tried, and failed, to hide with his hair. “That’s… not the reason why. Besides, I’ve kissed someone before.” The ends of his fingers pulled at the drawstring of his hoodie, fabric pooling around his wrists due to your blatant declaration. Kenma wasn’t embarrassed about his inexperience, that much was certain. But for you to just expose his personal information… like it was normal? Now that — that made him retreat.
“Only one?”
Kenma’s eyes narrowed immediately. “Stop acting like it’s odd or something.”
“It’s not odd,” you added quickly. “It’s just… Kuroo, as uh we can see, is like always tongue deep in his girlfriend. I just thought maybe…” Your face warped promptly at your own thoughts. “Okay, don’t laugh. Just hear me out.” Kenma disregarded your comment entirely, chuckling lightly at the way your ears turned a soft shade of pink. “I just mean — he obviously thinks it's incredible. So I figured maybe he would’ve, I don’t know, dragged you onto a double date or tried getting you to kiss someone too.”
“I would die if he did that.”
Yeah, honestly, it was a stupid notion. There was no way in hell Kozume would ever follow Kuroo's egregious plans. For fuck’s sake it took you months just to get him to talk to you in English class. Let alone sit near you. “Look, all I’m saying is if you kiss someone you’re close to, you’ll probably understand why Kuroo can’t stop putting his lips on another girl. You can’t disregard the whole making out just cause your first kiss sucked.”
Kenma stared at you from beside the headboard, fingers still curled loosely around his hoodie strings. “Uh, and who would that be?” The room fell silent after that; the only noise coming from the forgotten game in the background, the characters voices incoherently reiterating the coded dialogue the developers inputted. And of course, Kuroo’s snores. “Do you have someone in mind?”
Fuck. Now it was your turn to hide — head pushed to the right to keep your eyes peeled away from the setter. Originally, there was no intention behind your comment. The declaration purely based on the notion of an unknown female. But you had to admit, it did sound like you meant yourself. And really, the more you thought about it, the more it made sense. If Kenma were to have a better kiss, the most plausible outcome would be with someone he knew. Someone he was comfortable with. “Why don’t you,” you paused, left hand coming up to press against your cheek. “Kiss me.”
“Oh.” His torso leaned forward, head tilted and hung low as he eyed your tense posture. “Okay.”
Really, it was that easy?
Okay, no, this is good — you’ll just take the kiss… slow. You heaved your body upwards, feet tucked beneath you as you scooted closer to Kozume, the boy whose hips still slouched against the headboard as he watched with cautious eyes. And for a second, neither of you moved. The two of you just stared, fixated on each other as if this was some ridiculous side quest triggered by a stupid captain who couldn’t keep his mouth off his own girlfriend.
But you’d be damned if you backed out now; especially with the way his attention had drawn on you, like the entire concept of affection had suddenly narrowed down to you specifically. And really, what kind of friend would you be if you didn’t let Kenma experience firsthand why people got so addicted to kissing in the first place? So, despite every echo of denial in your brain, you leaned forward, pressing the rounds of your lips against his.
Kenma stilled; his eyes wide and body trembled with nerves (or was it anticipation?). Either way, his eyes eventually shut, his movements promptly following suit of yours — slow pace, no tongue. Just pure inexplicit intimacy.
And for a while, just your mouths moved in tandem — until Kenma’s fingers innately sunk underneath the hem of your shirt, rough fingertips brushing against the skin of your waist. Honestly, he was better than you had imagined: His lips would consistently follow yours, head swiftly adjusting whenever you deemed it necessary to shift sides. Even his grip would unconsciously tighten when you moved away, hoodie sleeves bunched around his wrists while he tried tugging himself closer between every gasp for oxygen.
Really, you half expected the boy to deepen the kiss with the way he seemed so eager… until he pulled away, golden eyes peering at your flushed cheeks and pouted lips. Only, this Kozume seemed different than before. His pupils, which were now blown wide, looked almost half dazed, like his brain hadn't really caught up with what just ensued.
Huh, maybe he just isn’t a fan of kissing in general.
Nonetheless you still opened your mouth, prepared to ask the stunned setter if he could discern Kuroo’s reasoning now for such a public display of affection. But Kenma didn’t wait for the words to leave your mouth. Instead, he kissed you again: This time needier, sloppier, as if something in him had finally clicked to the idea of how much a turn on lips could be. A soft sound escaped your throat when his hands tightened around your waist, pulling you forward until your legs slid across either side of his lap. The sudden closeness dragged a shaky breath from both of you, mouths parting briefly just to breathe before reconnecting again. Even his hips ground upwards, the pure feeling of ecstasy just from kissing now prevalent in his own sweatpants.
God, how did Kuroo do this everywhere? Did he truly have a boner each time and just hid it?
Your fingers instinctively twisted into the fabric of his hoodie, tugging his torso forward until he had no choice but to switch positions; his frame now towered above your sprawled out body. Still, Kozume wasted no time in pushing his pelvis back against yours, grinding in slow, deliberate circles until a string of groans vibrated against your lips.
Truthfully, it seemed as though the poor boy was utterly lost in bliss — the very same feeling his friend had for the past four hours. And now? Now Kenma was pissed; because why the fuck wasn’t he having a makeout session for half the day?
But you didn’t mind the switch-up of your friend — the way he pressed eagerly against your shorts. Nor did you mind the string of saliva sealed against your neck every time he became too overwhelmed with kissing — the neurons of his brain not able to compute such a surge of hormones.
Frankly, Kenma was going to lose it. The way the hem of your underwear exposed itself from the constant tug and pull of his hips, the gasps you exuded from each push between your legs… Yeah, he wanted this to go farther. Who cares if Kuroo was in the same room.
Honestly it was too bad girls didn’t just carry around their vibrator like Tetsuro assumed… eh, he could always just use his controller.
No thoughts just Damian complaining about the chatter of guests at some event and wanting to go into a corner to play his game on his switch or something and Bruce is usually OK with that but he didn't bring any headphones so he calls the nearest Bat to bring some. Cue Tim who decides to be a shit, dropping off those cat ear headphones in blush pink and innocently stating that he had to borrow them from Cass. Damian doesn't take offense, "The pink will alert the surrounding people that I am not to be disturbed and cats have excellent hearing, do they not? These are adequate." So Damian wears them and then starts wearing they everywhere he doesn't want to be disturbed. And everyone assumes it's a sensory thing but he's in fact listening to a podcast about his favourite manga and it's all going well until Talia calls up Bruce and demands to know why he's attempting to replace her as Damian's mother? Bruce is confused because it's 9am in the morning and he's just woken up but Selina, who is next to him, takes the phone and tells Talia that since she took Jason that time, this is fucking payback. Cue the most peaceful war that either woman has ever been involved in, supplying the Bat Kids with LOA and cat related clothing.
all i want for 2026 is that gigantic rancid AI bubble to finally burst in such a catastrophic way that the consequences will be so good and i'll never have to see another AI generated image ever again
