“Alright. Let’s fucking do this one more time.

My name is Jason Todd.

I grew up in Gotham. I learned pretty early that this city doesn’t exactly give a shit about people like me. Then one night, I broke into a laboratory looking for something I couldn’t afford, got bitten by a genetically modified spider, and woke up with the strangest fucking problem imaginable.

Super strength. Wall-crawling. Reflexes that make absolutely no sense. And this annoying little feeling in the back of my head that tells me when something’s about to go wrong.

So, yeah.

I became Spider-Man.

I didn’t exactly plan on it. I didn’t wake up one morning thinking I was gonna be some fucking hero. I just figured if I could stop someone from getting hurt, maybe I should.

And then it kept happening.

One person became two. Two became ten. Ten became a whole fucking city.

Some nights I get my ass kicked. Some nights I wonder why the hell I keep doing this. Sometimes I’m scared, angry, exhausted, and pretty damn sure I have no idea what I’m doing.

But then I remember the people I’ve helped.

The people who looked up and saw someone coming.

The people who thought nobody was going to save them and were wrong.

That’s when I remember why I put the mask back on.

Because being Spider-Man was never about being fearless.

It’s about being scared as hell and jumping anyway.

And you don’t have to be perfect to wear the mask. You don’t have to be chosen. You don’t have to have your life figured out.

You just have to care enough to try.

So, yeah.

I’m Jason Todd.

I’m Spider-Man.

And if you’re wondering whether someone like you could ever wear the mask too?

You fucking can.

Because the mask was never mine.

It belongs to anyone willing to put it on and keep moving forward.

And believe me,

Gotham’s got plenty of people worth fighting for.”

𖤐 ───── 🕷️ ───── 𖤐

Jason hung upside down from the edge of a half-finished office tower in midtown, one boot hooked around a steel beam, the other dangling lazily in open air. The midday sun turned Gotham’s usual grimy haze into something almost golden, which he found personally offensive. Midday patrols were a special kind of stupid. Too many people looking up. Too many phones. Too much chance of some tourist deciding the guy in the black-and-burgundy spider suit was free entertainment.

His earbuds were in. Current track: something loud and angsty with a bass line that matched the rhythm of the elevated train clattering past three blocks over. He mouthed the lyrics under the mask without singing, because singing while inverted made him look like an idiot, and he already had enough of that on his permanent record.

From this angle the city stretched out in messy layers, neon signs still glowing stubbornly in daylight, laundry lines strung between older buildings, a food truck park jammed with lunch crowds. Jason scanned automatically, Spider-Sense quiet for once, just the usual low-level background hum of a city that never stopped trying to kill itself.

Then he saw you.

You were crossing the plaza below, halfway between the coffee cart and the steps of the university annex. English building. Same English building he was theoretically supposed to be inside of right now for the lecture he was definitely not attending. You had a bag slung over one shoulder, headphones of your own in, walking with that focused, don’t-talk-to-me energy of someone who’d rather not be interrupted by the general chaos of Gotham.

Jason’s brain did the automatic classmate recognition first. Same seminar. Third row, usually. The one who actually seemed to take notes instead of staring at the wall like a sleep-deprived cryptid (hi, that was him). Name… something. He’d heard it during attendance enough times that it sat somewhere in the back of his head next to “probably doesn’t hate me yet” and “please don’t ask me about the reading.”

That was as far as the rational part got.

The rest of him just… stopped.

You looked different in sunlight. Or maybe he’d never actually looked before, because in class he was usually half-dead and calculating how many minutes until he could disappear again. Out here you were just a person moving through the city, and for some reason his entire nervous system decided that was suddenly the most important piece of information in Gotham.

He kept staring.

The song in his earbuds hit the chorus. He didn’t notice.

A pigeon landed on the beam near his head and gave him a judgmental side-eye. He didn’t notice that either.

Somewhere in the back of his mind a tiny, mortified voice was screaming you are hanging upside down in a spider suit staring at a classmate like a total freak, but the rest of him was busy cataloguing details he had no business cataloguing. The way the light hit your face. The way you adjusted your bag. The fact that you were, objectively, unfairly pretty in a way that made his stomach do something deeply unprofessional.

Jason blinked hard behind the lenses.

“Oh my god,” he muttered under the mask. “Get a grip, Todd. You’re not a raccoon spotting shiny trash.”

He forced his gaze away for half a second, then immediately looked back like an idiot. The expressive lenses narrowed in what would have been a very unimpressed scowl if anyone could see it.

“Congratulations,” he told himself dryly. “You’ve achieved peak loser behavior. Staring at the pretty person from English while inverted and listening to sad-boy music. Peak. Performance.”

You paused near the edge of the plaza, checking your phone. Jason’s brain helpfully supplied the fact that he still hadn’t looked away.

That was the moment his Spider-Sense finally decided to do its job.

It flared sharp and sudden, less “incoming bullet” and more “something’s about to go sideways in your general vicinity, genius.” The warning crawled up his spine and settled behind his eyes with the subtlety of a fire alarm.

Jason’s head snapped up properly this time, body already shifting from lazy hang to ready tension. The music kept playing, oblivious. Down in the plaza you were still there, still completely unaware that Gotham’s local disaster in a spider suit had just spent a full thirty seconds having a quiet crisis about your existence.

He exhaled through his nose, equal parts exasperated and weirdly grateful for the interruption.

“Alright,” he muttered, voice low and dry. “Message received. Stop being a creep, start being useful. Classic.”

The lenses flicked once more in your direction, quick, almost reluctant, before he pushed off the beam, twisted in midair, and fired a web toward the next rooftop.

Whatever the Sense was warning him about, it could wait three seconds.

He still glanced back once as he swung away.

Just to make sure you were okay.

Definitely just that.

Jason slammed through the lecture hall doors a solid seven minutes late, backpack half-unzipped and one earbud still dangling around his neck like he’d forgotten it was there. The professor didn’t even look up from the slides. Classic. At this point the entire department had collectively decided that Jason Todd existing on time was a statistical anomaly not worth addressing.

He scanned the room on autopilot, already bracing for the usual empty stretch of seats near the back. Instead, some new transfer kid was planted firmly in his spot, the one he’d claimed since week one because it had the perfect combination of wall proximity and easy escape route. Jason’s eye twitched.

Great. Perfect. Love that for him.

His gaze swept the rest of the rows. Almost full. Of course it was. The only open chair left sat two seats in from the aisle, right beside you.

He hesitated for half a second longer than necessary.

The rooftop from earlier flashed unhelpfully through his head, the way the sunlight had hit your face, the thirty solid seconds of him hanging there like an absolute disaster. His stomach did that same stupid little flip again. He crushed it immediately.

Nope. Not doing this. Just sit down, Todd. Be normal for once in your miserable life.

He dropped into the chair with zero grace, the metal legs scraping just loud enough to earn a couple of glances. Notebook came out. Pen followed. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the blank page like it held the secrets of the universe.

You were right there. Close enough that he could catch the faint scent of whatever shampoo you used. Close enough that if he shifted even a little their elbows might brush. Jason sat rigid, shoulders slightly hunched, radiating the universal energy of a man who would rather be literally anywhere else, including a burning building.

The professor kept talking. Something about the semester structure. Jason only half-listened, already calculating how many more minutes until he could vanish again.

Then the words landed.

“—and for the rest of the term you’ll be working in fixed pairs. Same partner for every major assignment, presentation, and peer review. Look to the person beside you. That’s your partner.”

Jason’s pen froze mid-doodle.

He turned his head just enough to glance sideways at you. The expressive lenses of his actual face weren’t there to narrow, but the expression in his eyes did the job just fine.

A beat of silence.

Then, under his breath, low enough that only you could catch it:

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Jason was three songs deep into his patrol playlist when the Spider-Sense lit up like a bad mood.

He’d been crouched on a water tower overlooking one of the quieter stretches of the East End, earbuds in, boots dangling, half-watching the street below while the bass thumped against his skull. Night patrols were better. Fewer phones. Fewer people staring. Just the usual Gotham soundtrack of distant sirens and the occasional argument that might or might not turn into something he had to deal with.

Then the warning hit, sharp and specific, the kind that meant someone was about to have a very bad time.

He yanked one earbud free and scanned. There. Half a block down, under the flickering streetlight near the old laundromat. You. Walking alone, bag over your shoulder, the same focused energy you carried around campus. And three guys moving in from the alley like they’d been waiting for exactly this kind of opportunity.

Jason’s jaw tightened under the mask.

“Of course,” he muttered. “Because the universe has a sense of humour.”

He didn’t think. He just moved.

One clean drop from the water tower, webs catching the corner of a fire escape to swing him low and fast. He landed behind the nearest guy with a soft thud of boots on wet pavement, already talking before the criminals had fully processed the new arrival.

“Evening, gentlemen. Hate to interrupt your little team-building exercise, but the sidewalk’s for walking, not for whatever sketchy group project you’ve got going on here.”

The closest one spun, knife already out. Jason sidestepped, caught the wrist, and used the guy’s own momentum to send him face-first into a trash can with a very satisfying metallic clang.

“One down,” he said cheerfully. “Do we have a participation trophy for last place, or are we just doing participation punches tonight?”

The second swung a pipe. Jason ducked under it, webbed the guy’s ankles together mid-step, and yanked. The man hit the ground hard. Jason immediately webbed his wrists for good measure.

“Two. You’re making this look easy, and I haven’t even stretched.”

The third tried to grab you. Bad idea. Jason’s Spider-Sense flared hot. He fired a web line, yanked the guy sideways, and followed it with a solid boot to the ribs that sent him sliding into the alley wall.

“And three. Congrats, you all fail the entrance exam for Crime School. Collect your participation bruises at the door.”

He stood there for a second, breathing a little hard, mask lenses narrowing as he scanned the three groaning figures. Satisfied they weren’t getting up anytime soon, he turned toward you.

And immediately remembered every single reason this was a terrible idea.

Classroom. Partner project. Rooftop staring incident that still made his ears burn under the mask. You, standing there looking shaken but unhurt, eyes wide on the guy in the spider suit who’d just dropped out of the sky like an idiot with a punchline problem.

Jason cleared his throat and deliberately dropped his voice a full register lower than usual, aiming for something deeper and more mysterious. It came out sounding like he’d swallowed gravel and regret.

“You good?” he asked, the fake-deep voice only slightly cracking on the second word. He winced behind the mask. Smooth. Real smooth.

He took a careful step closer but kept a respectful distance, hands open and non-threatening. “Didn’t catch a blade or anything? No mystery bruises I should know about? I’m asking because the last person who said ‘I’m fine’ was actively bleeding on my boots, and I’d rather not repeat the paperwork.”

The deeper voice was already slipping. He forced it back down, determined not to sound like the exhausted, sarcastic guy who sat next to you in English and muttered curses under his breath about group projects.

You were staring at him like you weren’t quite sure what to make of the whole situation. The sarcasm, the stupid jokes, the way he’d just dismantled three armed guys in under a minute, and then the genuine concern underneath it all.

Jason scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, lenses flicking away for a second before coming back to you.

“Look,” he said, still trying (and mostly failing) to keep the voice low and unfamiliar, “Gotham’s not exactly famous for its welcoming nighttime hospitality. You shouldn’t be walking alone through this stretch if you can help it. There’s a twenty-four-hour diner two blocks over that actually locks its doors properly. Or, y’know, a cab. Cabs are great. Love a good cab.”

He paused, then added quieter, the fake depth slipping again into something closer to his real tone despite his best efforts,

“You really okay, though?”

The three criminals were still webbed and groaning. Somewhere in the distance a siren was getting closer. Jason knew he should already be gone. Instead he stayed right there, waiting for your answer, trying very hard not to think about the fact that the person he’d just saved was the same person he was stuck working with all semester, and that if you recognised his voice even a little he was completely, thoroughly screwed.

Jason swung in hard and fast, already cursing under his breath as the campus clock tower came into view. Late. Again. Of course he was late. The morning had started with a rooftop chase that turned into a warehouse scuffle that turned into him nearly getting impaled by a very enthusiastic guy with a crowbar, and now he had approximately four minutes to become a functional college student before the English lecture started.

He aimed for the usual spot, the flat rooftop of the old science annex that sat just close enough to the English building to make the whole double-life logistics slightly less impossible. Boots hit gravel. He stumbled once, caught himself, and immediately reached for the backpack straps, already planning the world’s fastest costume change behind the rusty AC unit.

Then he looked up.

You were standing there.

Right there. On his rooftop. Bag over your shoulder, halfway across the open space like you’d taken the exact same shortcut he used whenever he was cutting it this close. Your eyes were wide. Your mouth was slightly open. And you were just… staring. Blinking. Once. Twice. Three times, slow and disbelieving, like your brain was buffering the image of Spider-Man standing six feet away in broad daylight with a backpack and zero dignity.

Jason froze so hard the expressive lenses of the mask went completely round.

Oh no.

Oh no no no no—

His brain short-circuited for a solid second. The backpack suddenly felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Civilian clothes. Notebook. The half-eaten protein bar he’d shoved in there this morning. All of it screaming Jason Todd is Spider-Man if you so much as glanced inside. Worse, you were about to connect the dots between the guy who sat next to you in English and the idiot currently wearing the suit.

He did the only logical thing available to a man whose entire secret identity was currently flashing neon warning lights.

He yeeted the backpack.

It sailed over his shoulder in a perfect, panicked arc and vanished behind the AC unit with a soft, incriminating thud.

Jason straightened up like nothing had happened, hands awkwardly open at his sides, and immediately dropped his voice into that same forced-gravel register he’d used the other night. It still sounded like he’d been gargling rocks and bad decisions.

“Uh,” he started, brilliant as ever. “Hey. You. Person. Who is… here. On the roof. Casually.”

You were still blinking at him.

He scratched the back of his neck, lenses flicking away and then back like they couldn’t decide whether eye contact made this better or significantly worse. The fact that he was standing on a campus rooftop in full costume right before class was currently the loudest thing in the entire city, so he did what any reasonable disaster would do.

He changed the subject as hard as humanly possible.

“So,” he said quickly, voice still unnaturally low and only cracking a little, “you’re okay, right? From the other night? With the three idiots and the alley and the general Gotham hospitality special? No lingering weirdness? No mysterious bruises I should know about? I’m only asking because people sometimes say they’re fine and then later it turns out they are very much not fine, and I prefer my civilians in the ‘still in one piece’ category.”

He shifted his weight, acutely aware that he was still fully suited, still masked, and still standing on a rooftop in the middle of the day while the person he was partnered with for an entire semester’s worth of English assignments stared at him like he’d just materialised out of a fever dream. The longer the silence stretched, the more he kept talking, because silence meant you might start asking why Spider-Man was loitering on a university building like a very lost mascot.

“Really, though,” he added, the fake depth slipping again despite his best efforts, “you good? No nightmares about trash cans or anything? Because that one guy went into the trash can pretty hard and I’d hate for that image to stick. Not that I’m fishing for compliments on the trash can technique. It was just… efficient. Very efficient.”

He cleared his throat, lenses narrowing slightly in pure secondhand embarrassment at himself.

“Anyway. You’re alright. That’s the important part. Definitely the only reason I’m asking. No other reasons. At all.”

Well shit.

Jason sat cross-legged on the floor of your dorm, notebook open across his knees, pen hanging uselessly from his fingers. The low table between you was covered in printed articles, half-scribbled outlines, and two open laptops that had been glowing for the better part of an hour. Somewhere in the background a playlist of yours was playing softly, something calm that should have made focus easier.

It was not making focus easier.

He stared at the same paragraph for the third time in a row and absorbed exactly none of it. His brain had decided that the most urgent academic priority right now was the way the late-afternoon light from your window caught the side of your face while you typed. Or the small focused frown you got when you were concentrating. Or the fact that you’d laughed earlier at one of his half-muttered complaints about the assignment and the sound had done something deeply unfair to his chest.

You should not have said yes so fast, you absolute disaster.

That was the thought on loop. When you’d asked if he wanted to work on the project at your place instead of the library, he’d shrugged and said “yeah, sure” like it was nothing. Like he hadn’t spent the last few days hyper-aware of every time your arm brushed his in class. Like he hadn’t already saved your life once in a spider suit and then panicked on a rooftop about it. Like he was a normal person capable of normal decisions.

He was not a normal person capable of normal decisions.

Jason shifted, trying to look busy by underlining a random sentence that probably didn’t need underlining. His ears felt warm. He refused to acknowledge it. Blushing was for people who had their lives together. He was currently sitting on a dorm floor in jeans and a hoodie that had seen better days, pretending the most attractive and genuinely decent person in their entire English seminar wasn’t three feet away being competent and kind and quietly funny in a way that kept catching him off guard.

It wasn’t just the pretty. That would have been easier to shut down. Pretty he could have filed under “objective observation, move on.” But you were also the person who actually listened when he half-assed an answer in class, who didn’t make a big deal when he showed up looking like he’d lost a fight with a brick wall (which, technically, he sometimes had), who offered the floor space and coffee without making it weird. You were patient. Sharp. Weirdly easy to exist around even when his brain was trying to short-circuit itself.

And now he was here. In your space. Close enough to notice all of it at once.

Abort mission. Abort. You are going to say something stupid. You are already thinking stupid things. Look at the notes. Look at the notes, Todd.

He risked a glance up. You were still focused on the screen, chewing lightly on the end of a pen. Jason’s stomach did that unhelpful flip again. He dropped his eyes so fast the movement was almost audible.

The urge to blush sat right behind his teeth, waiting. He clenched his jaw against it and forced his pen to move, scratching out a sentence that made zero sense just so it looked like progress was happening.

This is fine, he told himself unconvincingly. Totally fine. You’re partners. This is academic. You are allowed to sit on someone’s floor and not have a quiet crisis about how much you actually like being around them. Completely normal behaviour. Happens every day.

It did not happen every day.

He cleared his throat quietly, still not looking up, and muttered mostly to himself,

“Okay. Focus. Words. English. The subject we’re supposed to be good at. Or at least passing.”

His ears were definitely warm now. He pretended they weren’t.

Well shit was not a strong enough phrase for what the night had become.

Two months. That was how long it had taken for the awkward project partners to turn into something that felt dangerously close to real. Late study sessions that stretched past closing time, shared complaints about professors, the quiet way you always seemed to notice when he was running on fumes without making a big deal of it. Jason had gotten used to the sound of your voice in the dark, the way you matched his pace without comment, the small orbit the two of you had fallen into like it was the most natural thing in the world. He still hadn’t told you anything that mattered. He still showed up to class looking half-dead. He still disappeared at odd hours. But you stayed. And that was the part that scared him more than any rooftop chase ever had.

They were walking back toward the dorms after the coffee shop, paper cups long since empty, the conversation easy in the way it only got after enough shared hours. Gotham at night always felt louder than it should, neon bleeding across wet pavement, distant traffic, the usual low thrum of a city that never truly slept. Jason had one hand shoved in his jacket pocket, the other gesturing loosely as he finished some half-sarcastic story about a professor who still couldn’t pronounce his name correctly. You laughed. The sound settled somewhere under his ribs the way it always did lately.

Then the world tore open.

The explosion hit like a physical blow, a deep concussive roar that rolled through the street and turned the windows of the nearest building into glittering rain. Heat and smoke punched outward. Car alarms screamed. People started running in every direction at once. Jason’s Spider-Sense detonated behind his eyes so hard he staggered, the warning already late, already useless against something that size.

He moved on pure instinct.

In the chaos of shouting and smoke he angled his body just enough to slip from your side without a word, already calculating the nearest alley, the nearest shadow, the nearest thirty seconds of cover. His heart was slamming against his ribs hard enough to hurt. Civilians first. Always civilians first. He told himself that even as every nerve in his body screamed to turn around and make sure you were still upright, still breathing, still there.

The change was ugly and fast. Jacket and jeans shoved into the backpack, suit pulled on with the kind of practiced violence that left no room for thought. Mask down. Lenses adjusting. The second the white eyes locked into place he was already swinging toward the burning structure, web lines biting into brick and steel.

Spider-Man hit the burning building in under a minute.

The rest was muscle memory and rage. Civilians trapped behind warped doors. A staircase collapsing under its own heat. A child coughing so hard she could barely stand. Jason moved through the smoke like something born for it, webbing, carrying, dragging people into clearer air until the fire crews finally pushed him back with shouted thanks he barely heard. When the last of the flames were drowned and the structure groaned but held, he stayed.

Something about the blast pattern felt wrong. Too clean in places. Too theatrical in others. He dropped to the lower level where the epicentre had been, boots crunching over glass and scorched paper, lenses narrowed against the residual heat. In the far corner, half-buried under a fallen ceiling tile and a drift of grey ash, something rectangular caught what little light remained.

He crouched. Brushed the ash away with careful fingers.

A photograph.

You.

Smiling at the camera in a way he recognised from the rare times you’d let your guard down completely. The edges of the print were curled from heat. On the back, in looping, manic handwriting that made his blood run cold, were three lines.

Pretty one, isn’t she J.T? Hahahahahaha

Jason’s entire body went still.

The Joker.

Only the Joker.

The one person in Gotham who had ever looked at him and truly seen, who had peeled back the jokes and the webs and the stubborn refusal to quit and found the angry, terrified kid underneath. The one who had always known exactly where to press. And now the bastard had your face in his pocket and Jason’s initials written like a love letter from hell.

The realisation landed like a second explosion. Everything else fell away. The civilians. The fire. The careful distance he had kept between the suit and the life that sat next to you in lecture halls. It had all been bait. The bomb. The chaos. The photograph left exactly where a certain stubborn spider would find it. A message written in the only language the Joker ever bothered with.

I know what you care about. Come and get it.

Jason was already moving.

He had never swung through Gotham that fast. Webs snapped taut hard enough to sting through the gloves. Buildings blurred. Wind screamed past the lenses. His Spider-Sense was a continuous high howl now, no longer warning of danger so much as confirming that the worst thing had already happened and he was late to it. He knew the places the Joker favoured when he wanted an audience. Old theatres. Abandoned broadcast stations. Anywhere with good lighting and an exit that could be turned into a punchline. Jason picked the most likely one on pure instinct and hate and the cold certainty that the clown would want him to see.

The building was dark except for one room.

He crashed through the upper window without slowing down, glass exploding inward, boots hitting the floor in a scatter of shards. The spotlight hit him immediately, harsh and white, pinning him in place like the opening of a show he had never asked to star in.

You were in the centre of it.

Strapped to a metal chair. Gagged. Wrists and ankles bound tight enough that the skin around the restraints already looked angry. The light carved every detail into sharp relief, the way your shoulders were drawn tight, the rapid rise and fall of your chest, the wide eyes that found him the second he landed. Jason’s heart tried to claw its way out of his throat. Every protective instinct he had ever buried under sarcasm and late nights and the refusal to let anyone get close surged up at once, so strong it made his hands shake inside the gloves.

He took one step forward.

Laughter spilled out of the shadows like oil.

The Joker stepped into the edge of the light with the unhurried grace of someone who had planned the seating chart weeks in advance. Purple suit only slightly singed at the cuffs. Smile already too wide. Eyes bright with the particular delight he reserved for moments when the punchline was about to land.

“Spider-Man,” he crooned, spreading his arms like a ringmaster welcoming the main act. “Right on time. I was beginning to think the pretty little classmate might get lonely. We’ve been having the most fascinating chat. Well. I’ve been chatting. She’s been an excellent listener. Hasn’t said a word. Rude of me, really, keeping her quiet when she has such a lovely voice.”

Jason’s entire body had gone cold and burning at the same time. The lenses of the mask narrowed to furious slits. He could feel the old familiar rage rising, the kind that used to have nowhere to go except outward, the kind the Joker had always known how to aim like a loaded gun.

“Let them go.”

The words came out low and flat and nothing like a joke.

The Joker tilted his head, delighted. “Oh, we’re past the witty banter already? Shame. I had a whole monologue prepared about dual identities and the tragedy of pretty things that get too close to angry boys in masks. But fine. Direct it is.”

He moved.

Jason moved faster.

The fight was ugly from the first second. No swinging theatrics. No clever web tricks for an audience. Just pure, vicious momentum. Jason closed the distance like he meant to put the Joker through the far wall, fists and elbows and the full weight of every sleepless night and every time this particular monster had looked at him and seen the cracked places underneath. The Joker laughed through the first few hits, still talking, still performing, even as blood painted the corner of his mouth.

“There he is,” the clown gasped between strikes. “There’s the real one. Not the friendly neighbourhood anything. Just a kid who never learned how to stop being angry. Tell me, does she know how hard you hit when you’re scared? Does she know what you look like when the jokes run out?”

Jason didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Every part of him was locked on the single goal of putting the Joker down hard enough that the needle never became an option. He almost managed it. Almost.

The Joker had always been better at the long game.

One moment Jason was driving him backward. The next the clown had twisted, used the chair as cover, and come up behind you with something thin and gleaming pressed to the side of your neck. The needle caught the spotlight. Jason froze mid-step, chest heaving, every muscle screaming to keep moving and every instinct screaming louder that one wrong twitch would end everything that mattered. One gloved hand fisted in your hair, yanking your head back. The other held a syringe, needle, pressed just under the hinge of your jaw where the pulse fluttered hard and visible.

Jason froze mid-step.

The warehouse went very quiet.

Joker’s smile was radiant.

“Ah,” he said softly. “There it is. The look. I do so love the look. All that righteous fury curdling into something much more interesting. Fear. Actual fear. Not for yourself, of course. Never for yourself. You’re far too broken for that. But for them?” He gave your hair another little tug. “Oh, they’ll do nicely.” Jason’s hands were open at his sides. Every muscle in his body screamed to move. The Spider-Sense was a continuous white noise of danger focused on the point where metal met skin.

“Let them go.” His voice came out rough, stripped of every joke he had ever used as armour. “This is between us. You want me, you’ve got me. They don’t belong in this.”

Joker tilted his head, delighted.

“But that’s the entire point, little spider. They belong to you now. Or you belong to them. I can never quite tell which way the infection spreads. And I have been ever so curious about the face under all that self-righteous red and black. The face that sits in lecture halls and pretends to be ordinary. The face that walks this one home at night like a proper gentleman. Show them.” The needle pressed a fraction deeper. A thin bead of red welled up against your skin. “Show them who you truly are, Spider-Man. Take off the mask. Let your pretty little partner see the boy who thought he could keep one good thing without it rotting. Or I press the plunger and we find out together what this particular cocktail does to a human nervous system. I’ve been dying to field-test it.”

Jason’s hands were shaking openly now.

He looked at you.

The gag. The restraints. The way your eyes were locked on him, wide and terrified and still somehow trusting in a way he had never earned. Two months of coffee and late walks and the quiet miracle of someone choosing to stay close even when he gave them every reason not to. All of it balanced on the edge of a needle and a laugh he had heard in too many nightmares.

Everything he had built, every night of swinging and bleeding and choosing to keep going, every carefully maintained distance between the suit and the civilian life that was already fraying at the edges, narrowed down to the single point of that needle against your throat. He could see the way your eyes tracked him, the recognition already half-formed, the trust that had grown over months of shared tables and late walks and quiet laughter. He could feel the weight of the photograph still crumpled in his fist. He could hear the Joker’s soft, expectant breathing. There was no version of this where he kept the mask and kept you breathing. The Joker’s smile widened until it looked painful.

“Clock’s ticking, Spider-Man.”

The name landed like a blade.

His hands rose slowly.

The gloves found the edge of the mask.

For a moment he hesitated, fingers trembling once against the fabric. Every instinct he had screamed that this was the moment everything ended. The moment the one person he had let close enough to matter saw exactly how much of a disaster he truly was. The moment the last thin barrier between Jason Todd and Spider-Man collapsed in a warehouse that smelled of smoke and old blood and carnival music.

He pulled the mask off.

Dark hair fell damp across his forehead. Blue eyes, raw and furious and terrified, met yours across the short distance that suddenly felt like miles. The expressive lenses were gone. There was nothing left to hide behind. Just him. Just the boy who sat on your dorm floor and couldn’t concentrate because you were too close. Just the one who had swung through fire for strangers and still somehow believed he could keep you separate from the cost.

Joker’s laughter started soft and rose like a wave.

Jason didn’t look at him.

He looked only at you, mask dangling from one hand, the other still half-raised like he could somehow stop what had already happened, and the full weight of every choice that had led them both here settled onto his shoulders like a building coming down.

Jason sat across from you in the small corner booth of a quiet restaurant that was definitely too nice for someone who still occasionally ate cold leftovers out of a can at three in the morning, and he was trying extremely hard not to blush.

It was not going well.

Two weeks. Fourteen days since the warehouse, since the needle, since the mask had come off under that single ugly spotlight and everything he had tried to keep separate had collapsed in the same breath. Fourteen days of silence that still sat in his chest like a bruise that refused to fade. He had done exactly what every instinct screamed he should do. He had stepped back. Hard. No more late walks. No more shared tables. No more letting himself exist in the same soft space as you if it meant the Joker (or anyone like him) could use that space as a weapon again. He had erased himself from your life with the same ruthless efficiency he used on patrol, because the alternative (another photograph, another trap, another moment of watching a needle press against your skin) was unacceptable.

You had needed the distance too. He knew that. The recovery wasn’t just physical. It was the quiet, disorienting work of rewriting every memory of the sarcastic classmate who showed up late and half-asleep into the knowledge that the same person spent his nights bleeding under a mask for a city that barely noticed. Jason had given you that space without being asked. He had watched from rooftops as Spider-Man, silent and careful, making sure the streets around your dorm stayed clear. He had existed as Jason only in the absolute minimum required by shared classes, nodding once if your eyes met and then looking away before either of you could decide what the look meant. He had not pushed. He had not asked. He had simply made certain you were still breathing, still moving through the days, still here.

Somehow, slowly, the silence had stopped feeling like a wall and started feeling like something that could be crossed again. A brief exchange after class. A shared glance that didn’t immediately shatter. The careful return of trust that felt more fragile and more important than anything he had ever swung for.

And then, three days ago, his mouth had betrayed him completely.

You had been packing up after the lecture. He had been hovering near the door like an idiot who had forgotten how exits worked. The words had just… fallen out.

“Do you want to get dinner sometime? Just to talk. Properly. If you want. No pressure. At all.”

He still replayed the moment in his head with the same secondhand horror he reserved for his worst patrol failures. The way his voice had gone slightly too high. The way he had immediately wanted the floor to open and swallow him. The way you had actually said yes.

Which was how he ended up here.

The restaurant was warm and low-lit, the kind of place where people spoke quietly and the waitstaff didn’t rush. A single candle sat between them on the table. Jason had ordered water and then immediately regretted not ordering something stronger. His hands were under the table so you wouldn’t see them flexing against his knees. Every time he looked up and found you looking back, the heat climbed a little higher in his face and he had to pretend very hard that the menu was the most fascinating document ever written.

This is fine, he told himself, the same useless mantra from months ago on your dorm floor. You’re just talking. You’re allowed to sit across from someone you nearly got killed and try not to make it worse. Completely normal. Happens every day.

It did not happen every day.

He risked another glance. You looked steady. Present. Here by choice. The knowledge still felt impossible. After everything, the distance, the watching, the careful rebuilding of something that might be friendship or might already be tipping into something he was too much of a coward to nam, you had still said yes to dinner.

Jason cleared his throat, ears warm, and managed a crooked half-smile that felt more nervous than charming.

“So,” he said, voice low and a little rough around the edges, “I, uh. Realised I never actually asked if you even like this place. Or food in general. Or the concept of me sitting across from you trying not to make this weirder than it already is.”

He looked down at the table for a second, then back up, blue eyes honest and a little raw in the candlelight.

“I’m glad you came, though. Even if I’m currently failing at the whole ‘acting like a functional person’ thing.”

Jason’s shoulder hit the windowsill harder than he meant it to, and the rest of him followed in a less-than-graceful tangle of limbs and damp fabric. He landed on your bedroom floor with a muted thud, one boot skidding slightly on the rug, and immediately twisted to yank the curtains shut behind him like the night itself might try to follow him in. The city noise cut off. The soft lamp light of your room settled over him instead.

He stayed crouched for a second longer than necessary, just breathing.

The Spider-Man suit was still on under the half-zipped jacket he’d thrown over it in the alley two blocks over. The fabric clung in places where sweat and something that was probably not water had soaked through. His hair was a complete disaster, sticking up in every direction from the mask and the wind and the fact that he hadn’t exactly had time for a mirror. A fresh scrape ran along his left cheekbone, still stinging, the kind that would bruise by morning if he didn’t bother cleaning it properly.

He straightened, dropped the mask onto your desk with a soft plastic clack, and finally looked at you.

You were halfway through studying, notebook open, pen still in hand, the exact picture of someone who had been having a perfectly normal evening until a disaster in a spider suit decided to use their window as a personal entrance. The sight of you (safe, here, existing in the quiet of your own room) hit him harder than the rooftop he’d just left.

“Before you say anything,” he muttered, voice rough around the edges, “I’m fine.”

He took approximately three steps toward the bed.

His body chose that moment to remember every single fight, swing, and near-miss of the last six hours. The adrenaline that had been keeping him upright finally clocked out. Jason’s knees dipped. He managed one more half-step, then simply gave up and collapsed face-first onto your mattress with all the elegance of a dropped sack of laundry.

The sheets smelled like you. That fact alone nearly finished him.

He turned his head just enough to speak, words muffled by the pillow but still perfectly clear in the quiet room.

“…Okay. Maybe I’m a little fucking tired.”

He didn’t move after that. One arm hung off the side of the bed. The other stayed bent under his chest. The jacket had ridden up enough to show more of the suit beneath, the stylised spider half-hidden in the folds. His eyes were already half-lidded, the scrape on his cheek pressed against your sheets, and the only thing keeping him from dropping straight into sleep was the low, stubborn need to make sure you were still looking at him like this was allowed.

Like he was still allowed to climb through your window after the city had tried to take pieces of him again.

Like the relationship you’d built (slow, careful, hard-won after everything the Joker had tried to burn down) was solid enough to hold the weight of him showing up like this.

Jason exhaled once, long and uneven, and let his eyes close the rest of the way.

“Five minutes,” he mumbled into the pillow, already losing the fight. “Just… five minutes. Then I’ll be a functional person again. Promise.”

He didn’t sound like he believed it.

He sounded like someone who had finally made it home.

Jason had spent the entire day refusing to explain the surprise, which, in hindsight, was probably the most Jason way possible to handle it. Every time you’d asked he’d just given that crooked half-smile, shrugged, and said something unhelpful like “you’ll see” or “trust me” or “stop looking at me like I’m about to commit a felony.” He had not, in fact, stopped looking like he was about to commit a felony. He’d simply refused to elaborate.

So when the soft tap-tap came against your bedroom window later that evening, you already knew who it would be.

Jason hovered just outside in full Spider-Man gear, one boot braced on the fire escape, the other dangling in open air. The lenses of the mask were soft and open, almost sheepish. He held out a gloved hand.

“Come on.”

No further explanation. Just the offer, steady and waiting.

You took it.

The swing was short and controlled, the kind he used when he was carrying someone he refused to risk. One clean arc over the alley, another up the side of the neighbouring building, and then the quiet scrape of boots on gravel as you both landed on the wide, empty rooftop of the old insurance tower. Gotham stretched out beneath you in every direction, a restless sea of neon and sodium light, elevated trains cutting red lines through the dark, traffic moving like blood through the city’s veins. The wind up here was cooler, cleaner, carrying the distant hum of a place that never really slept.

Jason reached up and pulled the mask off in one smooth motion. Dark hair fell into his eyes. The scrape from a few nights ago had faded to a faint mark along his cheek. He dropped the mask beside him, sat at the edge of the building with his legs hanging over the drop, and glanced over at you with a soft smile that still looked a little surprised to exist on his face.

“Best view in the fucking city,” he said quietly. “Figured you deserved to see it.”

He was silent for a while after that, just watching the lights with you. The usual restless energy that lived under his skin seemed quieter up here. Eventually he exhaled, long and slow, and started talking the way he always did when something important was trying to claw its way out of him, sideways and half-defended and completely incapable of arriving in a straight line.

“You know I used to come up to places like this alone all the time,” he said, voice low, eyes still on the skyline. “After patrol. Or before. Or when everything down there got too loud and I needed to remember the city was bigger than whatever had just tried to kill me. I’d sit here and think about how fucking angry I used to be. Like, permanently. At the city. At the people who never showed up when they should’ve. At myself for still giving a shit about a place that never once made it easy.”

He huffed a soft, self-deprecating sound.

“Used to think that anger was the only solid thing I had. Made sense of the powers, the nights, the whole stupid costume. If I stayed mad enough, maybe it would keep me moving. Maybe it would keep me from noticing how quiet it got when the suit came off and there was nobody waiting.”

Jason’s gloved hands rested on the edge of the rooftop, fingers flexing once against the concrete.

“Then you happened. And I kept waiting for the part where you’d realise what a disaster this whole thing is and leave. That’s what people do. Or what I make them do, because it’s easier than letting them get close enough to decide for themselves. But you didn’t. You stayed. Even after the warehouse. Even after I tried to erase myself from your life like that would somehow keep you safer. You still let me climb through your window and pass out on your bed like I have any right to that kind of quiet.”

He finally looked over at you properly, blue eyes open and a little raw in the city glow.

“I don’t know how to do this without waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don’t know how to stop checking the shadows for the next thing that’s going to try and take you away. But I know that when I’m up here alone now, the quiet feels different. It’s not empty anymore. It’s just… waiting to get back to you.”

Jason’s mouth twisted into something that was almost a smile and almost a grimace.

“Which is a really long and messy way of saying that I-” He cut himself off, huffed again, and scrubbed a hand through his already ruined hair. “Fuck. I’m bad at the important parts. You already know that.”

He shifted a little closer on the ledge, shoulder almost brushing yours, and the soft smile returned, smaller this time but steadier.

“I just wanted you to see the view. And I wanted you to hear it from me, without the mask and without the jokes getting in the way first. You’re the best thing that’s happened to the mess that is my life. And I’m still learning how to stop being terrified of that.”

The city kept moving beneath you both, neon and distant sirens and the low constant heartbeat of Gotham. Jason stayed where he was, close enough that the wind couldn’t quite get between you, and for once he didn’t try to fill the silence with anything else.