#<- if you know ANYTHING. at all. that sounds even a little bit like bowery electric ill actually suck your dick

[briefcasejuice]

current stats since i mentioned it

[spacedace]

Still thinking about the Social Worker Jazz concept that @gilbirda posted about and it's slowly turning into a full Anger Management fic send help

-

Jason at length - much longer than it really should have taken really - set the resume down.

The new Social Worker’s resume. Because she was there, in his office, trying to convince him to hire her as a member of his criminal organization.

Crime Alley’s new social worker. A bright eyed Midwestern transplant from some tiny speck of a place that only qualified as a city because there was nothing bigger in a hundred miles in any direction to claim otherwise. The new social worker who had a Psy D. and three masters degrees and who had graduated Valedictorian. The one that had high paying private gigs lined up all over the country with the offering companies fighting over her.

The one who had, apparently, decided to take a shit job in Gotham’s shoddy social services department instead. The one that got kicked to Crime Alley - which was its own division despite technically being a small neighborhood in the grand scheme of things - within her first month. Supposedly for the sole purpose of scaring her off or getting her killed for all the questions she was asking and secret dealings she was sticking her nose into.

That social worker.

“I’m gonna need you to run this by me again.” Jason said, never so grateful for the voice modulator in his helmet as he was in that moment. It stripped out the bewilderment that had bled through into his words and made him sound stoic instead.

“I’d like to work for you.” The social worker - one Dr. Jasmine Nightingale - repeated primly. Back straight, clothes neat - if skewing more on the librarian side of professional - expression confident and hopeful. Completely and utterly oblivious of how fucking insane she sounded. “I was told that you’re the person in charge of Crime Alley.”

He resisted the urge to scrub at his face. It’d just look weird with his helmet on and not do anything to actually settle him in that moment anyway. “I understood that part.”

“Look, Doc,” She earned a doctorate and she was crazy enough to waltz into the office of one of Gotham’s most powerful Crime Lords, he’d be respectful about using her proper title at least, even if he suspected she was ten pounds of crazy in a five pound bag. “You’re going to have to tell me why. I was under the impression the only reason you ended up dumped on our end of the city ws because you wouldn’t play ball. But now you want to sign up for my crew?”

Nightingale frowned a little at that.

“Is that what people are saying?”

“What else are they gonna say?” Jason answered, leaning back in his seat, “Head of the department only dumps Crime Alley on folks he don’t like. And everyone knows he doesn’t like anyone that can’t or won’t play his game by his rules.”

“Alright, well. I’ll give you that.” Nightingale conceded, “Payne doesn’t like me. The feeling’s mutual. But for the record,” She added giving him a wry smile, as if sharing wry smiles with Red Hood was just something people did, “I asked to be assigned to the Park Row and Bowery neighborhoods.”

“You wanted to work here.”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit.”

Nightingale laughed. It was a bright sound. Not especially clear or pretty, but warm and welcoming in a way that carefully calculated giggles or overdone guffaws couldn’t be. Something with real and honest amusement in it, that encouraged those nearby to laugh along. Not the kind of involuntary, nervous chuckling people tended to slip into when they thought they had pissed someone that scared them off.

She just wasn’t intimidated by him at all, was she?

Behind his helmet, Jason found himself smiling. Just a bit.

“I’m serious.” She assured, blue-green eyes meeting the dark stare of his helmet without a moment of hesitation. He watched as she brushed a lock of her bright red hair behind her ear and out of the way. She’d woven it all into a practical, neat braid but a few sly pieces had snuck out to bounce around her. Gilding her quiet professionalism with a playful charm that worked well with her academia but make it cottagecore kindergarten teacher aesthetic.

“I’ll admit, Gotham wasn’t part of my plan when I first graduated. Time and choices take you funny places sometimes.” She plucked an invisible bit of lint off her soft blue cardigan, not nervous but absent as her gaze went distant for a moment. Thinking back on the events that had led her to his fine city. In a blink, those sharp eyes were back to focusing entirely on him. “But Gotham is where I am now, and I want to help.”

She looked at him, a serious, determined expression settling easily on her face. “The city as a whole has so much chaos and crime breaking out all the time.” No censure or horror in her voice, just a neutral fact to be observed. “But where the rest of the city has millions of dollars poured into it by various foundations or charities run by the Waynes, Park Row is largely ignored.”

Jason watched as steeliness sharpened her gaze, the blue-green shifting from the shine of a bird’s wing to the warning hue of something poisonous and deadly. “No one deserves that. No one.” Her chin tilted up, proud but not imperious. “So yes, I want to work here. There are people in Park Row and the Bowery who need help and I refuse to let any of them feel like they are going to be ignored.”

Jason considered her.

Really looked at her. Pealing back his initial off handed impression of her as some clueless transplant in over her head with no idea of what she was doing or what she was poking her nose into to find the real woman beneath. Her confident poise, her clear unshakable belief, her unflinching willingness to look danger in the eye and not blink. The tense curve of her frown, the lines of pain at the corners of her eyes, the simmering anger beneath it all. There was an edge to her, too. Something sharp and dangerously well hidden by the cardigan and folksy charm of her accent.

It was personal for the woman before him, Jason realized. Maybe not Crime Alley specifically, but something about the whole situation. The treatment the neighborhood and its residents received from the city at large, from those even beyond it.

Crime Alley wasn’t a place that received much in the way of charitable thought. The average joe with their house in Somerset and job at some corporate shithole hating every second of their life but thinking at least I don’t live in Crime Alley. Those asshole hoity-toites in city hall throwing money around equally between shit that’d get them re-elected and their off-shore slush funds in the Caymens doing their damn level best to pretend the black mark on the other end of the city just didn’t exist. Bruce, flooding the entire city with charitable programs and carefully constructed infrastructures shying away from the manifested grief and trauma that was the place he watched his parents get murdered.

For the most part no one from outside of the Alley gave a shit about the Alley other than as a place to avoid at all costs. And most of the time those natives that manages to claw their way out into better and brighter lives didn’t ever turn to glance back. Orpheus could have learned a thing or to from an ex-Alley Kid who managed to eek out a steady 9-to-5 and move to Burnley.

And something about that seemed to piss Dr. Jasmine Nightingale Psy. D right the fuck off.

He could see why Bill said he liked her enough to let her in.

“Alright.” He said, tilting his head, watching the woman seated across from him carefully, “Still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here. Why you’re trying to get on my payroll.”

“I’m not trying to get on your payroll.” She said, some of the glinting edge softening, but the steel remaining. Strong and unyielding. “I’m trying to get into your community outreach program.”

Jason thanked god and all the saints once again for the gift of his helmet. That baby had saved his ass more times than he could count both by keeping his head in one piece and keeping his stupefied expressions wrapped up and hidden from view. Dr. Nightingale was one hell of a woman to make him have to rely on that fact twice in one conversation.

“Wasn’t aware that was something I had.”

Nightingale, not fortunate enough to have a full face covering helmet of her own, had nothing to hide her stupefied expression behind. Jason had a feeling she might have removed it to make sure he saw even if she did though. She looked like she had caught him eating glue like it was a cheese stick.

“Yes you do.” She said, sounding deeply confused but unshakable confident in what she was saying. “I’ve seen it. The soup kitchens, the shelters, the collection boxes for donating old clothes, the after school day care.” Nightingale ticked off on her fingers, “I’ve lived here for less than two weeks and I’ve lost count of all the things I’ve seen setup to help people struggling in the area that I’ve been very reliably informed you and your organization are behind.”

Oh.

Those.

“Those aren’t part of some community outreach program.” He said, “We are simply locals offering services for our neighbors.”

He watched as her caught-him-eating-glue expression shifted into one that said she’d stumbled upon him licking electrical sockets for a mid-day pick-me-up instead. He had to give it to her, the woman was not afraid to let one of the most dangerous men in the city know she thought he was a fucking idiot.

“Let me see if I understand this right.” She said, and he appreciated that there wasn’t any kind of condescension in her voice, even though she very clearly thought he’d been dropped on his head as a baby. Possibly from the top of a three story building. “You have a large group of people working together to plan, organize and execute multiple services in your area - your community, if you will - that provide aid and support to those that otherwise would not receive it. Reaching out with your available time and resources to offer these services, that you provide. For free.”

Alright, Jason got it. He had stumbled ass backwards into creating a community outreach program. But he wasn’t just going to let her think she won this one. He was Red Hood, he had a reputation to uphold here.

“What makes you think any of that is free?” He tilted his head at just the right angle, the one that cast shadows across the planes of his helmet and made him look hell-touched and terrifying. “Just because we don’t charge money, doesn’t mean there isn’t a price to pay.”

Dr. Nightingale, dressed like a damn kindergarten teacher, laughed at him.

[zimms]

new york city

you called me last night on the telephone and i was glad to hear from you cause i was all alone you said, "it's snowing, it's snowing! god, i hate this weather" now i walk through blizzards just to get us back together

Derek twists the telephone cord around his finger, straining to hear Will's words down the phone. "Sorry, you're cutting out. The landline's a little dodgy."

He definitely doesn't fail to hear the crackle of Will's laughter down the phone. "A landline? What is this, Nurse? The eighties?"

"Shut up! My moms prefer it for some reason. And, I don't know, it has a bit of je ne sais quoi, a bit of nostalgia, a bit of style, y'know." To emphasise the point, even if only to himself, Derek winds the cable around his fingers a couple more times.

"I don't, but I'll take your word for it."

Derek huffs his own laugh before softening his voice. "Look, the point is that I missed what you said the first time. Please could you repeat it, babe?"

Will's voice comes through the phone. "I said that it's snowing here."

"Isn't it always snowing in Maine in December?" Derek says, "Like I thought that was a given?"

"Yeah, but it's the first time I've seen snow since I last saw you." Will's voice goes quietier. "I miss you."

"That was literally two weeks ago, Dex." Derek rolls his eyes, knowing full well that Will can't see him. "You can't possibly miss me that much; you literally went almost two years without talking to me between leaving Samwell and the spring." He sighs and grins to himself "But- I miss you too."

we met in the springtime at a rock and roll show it was on the bowery when it was time to go

One second Derek is bouncing along to the song that the band is playing, the next, his gaze is fixed on a very familiar head of red hair that's darting through the crowd at the gig.

Dex?

Derek is too packed in by the surrounding crowd to do anything but watch, tracking the figure of a man who, two years ago, he never thought he'd see again. Well, maybe not never, after all they'd been to two weddings together this summer alone. But the point is, it would never be just the two of them again.

He allows himself to be swept back up in the words of the song, singing along with the rest of the crowd, but he never truly stops staring at the back of Dex's head. It's fine; Derek will catch him at the bar after the show. He has to.

The gig is in a tiny bar that masquerades as a club/concert venue, packed to the brim with people here to see bands make their first stumbling steps into the music industry. Derek first listened to these guys in his Senior Year at Samwell and fell head over heels in love with their music. They were even the soundtrack to his alarms for the year, greeting him before every 5am practice (because Dex was a total hardass).

After the final song, the crowd starts to disperse and Derek seizes his moment to chase after Dex.

He can't let him slip away from him.

Not this time.

Derek pushes through the crowd, apologising every step of the way, until Dex is finally within reach. Naturally, as soon as Derek goes to close his hand around Will's shoulder, the man in question takes a step forward and Derek takes a big handful of just air. "Dex! Hey! Dex!"

Will spins around and suddenly they're chest to chest for the first time in- Derek doesn't even know how long.

He forgets how to breathe.

"Nursey?" Dex's eyebrows furrow in that familiar way: the way they would when he couldn't figure out the problem with a particularly tricky bit of code, or when he was trying to figure out the best way to shut down the opposing team's attack. Derek hasn't realised until now just how much he missed that expression.

"Dex!" he says, trying desperately to sound normal and not at all breathless and relaxed. "How are you? I didn't- I didn't know you were in New York?"

Dex rubs the back of his neck. "I'm, erm, I'm not really, but I guess, I am?"

"Dex, I say this lovingly, but genuinely what the fuck does that mean?" Derek takes the opportunity to step back, breaking the physical contact between them at last. He can finally breathe.

"I'm living over near Lincoln Park, but I'm working for a start up here."

Derek laughs. "Dude, you could have just said that!"

"I was suprised to see you, okay!" Dex mumbles. "Though I'm not sure why I'm that surprised considering that you were the one that got me into this band, but it's whatever."

Derek pauses and considers what to say for a second, looking Dex up and down to try and gauge how much interaction with him Dex would be willing to stand. He takes another second to throw all of that consideration out of the window and just say fuck it.

He grins up at Will. "Can I buy you a drink?"

we kissed on the subway in the middle of the night i held your hand, you held mine, it was the best night of my life

One drink turns into two and two turns into four and so on and so on until the two of them stumble out onto the Bowery and into the open air at 3am.

Derek doesn't know how to describe it, but everything always feels easier at 3am. As they walk along the street towards the subway station, he brushes his hand against Dex's once, twice, three times until finally Will takes his hand in his.

They tangle their fingers together, relaxing into the easy rhythm that they lost at some point during senior year, and falling into each other's orbits yet again.

Derek tugs Will towards the Houston Bowery Wall, gravitating towards the explosion of colour in the night light. "C'mere." He squeezes Will's hand. "This is the Bowery Wall Mural. It's one of my favourite pieces of art in New York, especially this one."

"This one?" Will's voice trembles a little as if they're in a holy place rather than stood on the intersection of two busy streets in New York.

"They change the wall every so often, a constant fresh start, constant new opportunities. Sometimes they decide that a mural has had its time, sometimes other people decide for them, covering up the work with graffiti, showing the world what matters to them. But the wall always comes back with a newer piece of art, a never-ending cycle of hope and new beginnings."

Derek looks down at his and Will's interlocked hands and gives them another squeeze. "Last year, they decided to stop commissioning new murals because they kept being destroyed, but out of the ashes came this mural."

The wall is painted in a bright array of portraits, depicting people of all shapes and sizes. It takes Derek's breath away as he looks at it, even though he walks past it every week; there's something different about bringing Will here.

Will's voice catches in his throat. "It's beautiful. Thank you for bringing me here."

Derek grins back at him. "Thank you for coming with me."

Will's expression shifts and his eyes begin to dart around. "I should be going."

"What? All the way back to Jersey at this time? You're not going to get back until like 8am. Seriously, come back to my place; you can take the guest room."

(Internally, Derek kicks himself.)

"No, no, I can head back; I wouldn't want to impose."

"No, seriously I insist," Derek says, slowly beginning to steer them towards the subway station. "We're like ten minutes from my place on the subway; way better than going back to Jersey."

Will huffs a sigh, knowing that he's lost this battle. "Okay, fine. But I'll pay you back somehow, y'know."

Derek smiles at him as they enter through the ticket barriers. "I know."

(Derek will unashamedly admit that they made out in the empty subway carriage. Like c'mon, how could he resist waiting until he got home?)

because everyone's your friend in new york city and everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty the streets are paved with diamonds and there's just so much to see but the best thing about new york city is you and me

Derek wraps his arms around Will's waist and pulls him in closer, letting their bodies slot together in the warmth of the bed. "I'm so glad that I spotted you at that gig," he whispers into the crook of his neck. "I couldn't let you get away again."

Will leans back into the embrace. "I'm glad you found me too." He wriggles a bit, getting more comfortable. "It feels like I was stumbling blindly around the city before you found me. Like New York and you are so intertwined; you are New York, New York is you. It was weird to be in the city without you, to be honest.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.” Will turns around to look at him. “Seriously, Derek. I’ve loved the past four months of you dragging me around the city.”

Derek tickles his sides and Will squirms in his arms. “Drag?! I seem to recall you were the one that made a whole list of places that you wanted to see, including Co-Op City.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Will mutters, ducking his head. “Maybe we shouldn’t have trekked all the way out to the Bronx just for it, but I thought I should see it, okay? It was a big case study in my urban planning class.”

“I know, I know. I’m just teasing you.” Derek leans down to kiss his boyfriend. “I think it’s sweet, honestly. Especially considering you didn’t think to do any of this stuff in your first two months of living here.”

“I was getting used to a new city! I wasn’t trying to sight-see; I was trying to survive!”

Derek hums to convey his total belief in Will’s statement. “Uh, huh.”

“It’s true!”

Derek hums again and grins down at him. “Anyway, do you still have that list somewhere? I need to figure out what’s left on your New York bucket list.”

Will blindly flails his arm onto his bedside table. “Yeah, yeah. Lemme just find it.” He rummages around a bit more, before finally producing a crumpled-up piece of paper. “here you go.”

statue of liberty, staten island ferry, co-op city, katz's, and tiffany's, central park, brooklyn bridge, the empire state, where dylan lived, coney island, and times square, rockefeller center

“Okay, I think I have the perfect idea for what our final stereotypical New York sightseeing trip will be,” Derek says.

“Mhhm, am I allowed to know what it is?”

“You’ll find out in, like, three months, I promise.” Derek can’t resist and gives Will another peck on the cheek. “It’ll be worth it.”

wish i was there

Derek finally removes his hands from where they’ve been covering Will’s eyes for the past ten minutes. “Surprise?”

They’re stood just outside the Rockefeller Centre ice rink, which is filled with a hurricane of screaming children and couples desperately trying to keep their balance whilst holding hands.

Will chuckles. “I’d say yes, but somehow the fact that you blindfolded me when you caught me looking at a sign for the Rockefeller Centre says otherwise.” He pauses. “Also, the fact that I caught you stealing my skates from my apartment the last time we were there.”

“Okay, you got me,” Derek says, “but it was good choice, yeah?”

“Yes, definitely.” Will threads his hand in Derek’s. “It was a great choice. Plus it’s like full circle, y’know. We first met at an ice rink and it’s nice to bring the list to a close with an ice rink too. Especially considering how much our relationship has changed over the past seven years, though it was a bit touch and go for a while, eh.”

Derek can’t help himself; he laughs. “Eh? Have you been spending too much time with Jack, huh?”

“Shut up.” Will lets go of his boyfriend’s hand so that he can elbow him instead. “I’m trying to be romantic and poetic and shit; don’t make fun of me.”

“Okay, okay.” Derek says. “You said exactly what I was gonna say, is all.”

“Oh?” Will mock-gasps. “So, I was in fact being poetic and shit?”

Derek kisses him – mostly to wipe the smug grin off his face – and then pulls back. “Are you ready to go and show these kids and tourists how it’s done?”

“Aren’t we technically tourists for this exercise?”

“Shhhh.” Derek kisses Will again, just for the fun of it this time and as they break apart, he feels something wet on his cheek. “Wait, are you crying?”

“No, you idiot, it’s snowing.”

Oh.

So, it is.

Derek feels a little stupid right now, but he can’t tell if that’s because of the kiss or because he was so obviously wrong.

Will taps him on the shoulder. “Come back here, idiot. This feels like a pretty perfect ending to my first year in New York.”

Derek waggles his eyebrows at him. “Yeah?”

He’s met with an eyeroll, but Will also rewards him with a “yeah” and another world-stopping kiss.

Derek has to agree with Will: with the snow falling down on them and the hubbub of the city around them, it does feel like a pretty perfect ending to their first year in New York together.

you wrote me a letter just the other day you said, "springtime is coming soon so why don't you come to stay" i packed my stuff, it's on the bus, i can't believe it's true. i'm three days from new york city and i'm three days from you.

Will has to laugh when his mom hands him the mail stack, an envelope with his name on it sat on top. Did Derek seriously send him a letter for the two weeks that he was back in Maine? Well, yeah, clearly – that much is evidenced by the fucking letter in his hand.

In fairness, the gesture does have Derek written all over it.

He carefully rips open the letter, thankfully not wax-sealed like some of the love letters that Will had watched Nursey send in his earlier years at Samwell, and the contents spill out.

Will pick up the letter first and begins to read it.

Dear Will,

It’s hard to believe that it’s only been nine months since I found you again at that gig on the Bowery; it feels like we’ve been exploring New York together for years. But springtime is coming soon again and I’m hoping that I’ll never have to find you again, but instead that you’ll always be in easy reach by my side. You know how you said one night that to you New York is me? Well, in the past nine months, New York has instead become You and Me. I feel like you’re pulling back the curtain and I’m seeing the city I’ve lived in for my whole life in a completely different light. Everything is suddenly so much brighter and more beautiful with you around. I hope that this new light continues with the dawn of this new spring, a third new beginning for us perhaps, but just to make sure, would you do me the honour of moving in with me? I mean, if nothing else, it saves you (and, rather selfishly, me) the commute the Lincoln Park every other night.

I know it’s only been a week, but I miss you so much.

I love you.

Derek.

The other item sitting on the kitchen table in front of Will is a keyring with two keys and a picture of the one of the windows from the current Bowery Mural. The keys are engraved with the numbers #24 and #28 and Will can’t quite hold back the mistiness that begins to gather in his eyes.

Of course, after everything, Derek brings it back to hockey, back to Samwell, back to that period of time when they were inseparable, but constantly at odds with each other, so similar, but so different.

Will carefully threads his old keys onto the new keyring. A third and final new beginning sounds perfect to him.

because everyone's your friend in new york city and everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty the streets are paved with diamonds and there's just so much to see but the best thing about new york city is you and me

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

I don't have enough musical knowledge to say if this is true, but I feel like when I do hear people talk about Wings having a sound they tend to talk about Linda. The blend of Linda, Paul's, and Denny's voices is the one I hear most often. But also, a tendency to build songs around simple keyboard parts that Linda was capable of executing is one I've heard. No idea if there's anything to those theories, but I adore the concept of Linda being that central

So I do think Linda's singing voice was distinct and it's a big part of the sound on more acoustic or sparsely arranged songs (Bluebird, Mamunia, Little Lamb Dragonfly) but there's a few songs where I can identify a female vocal (Get On The Right Thing, something on VaM not sure which song rn), but I don't really recognize it as Linda per se. Also I cannot tell you what Denny sounds like lol, but I do think that if anything is a signature Wings sound it's probably their harmonies (which, is also what I'd say is the single most distinctive Beatles signature – anyone else notice how the backing vocals on Call Me Back Again sounds like it's straight from Abbey Road? I swear John is spiritually singing on it). I've never noticed the keyboard thing, tbh, the only two keyboard bits I can even think of are the Band On The Run intro (which I think Paul recorded himself lol) and the mellotron flutes on Call Me Back Again.

(Interestingly I've noted a trend kind of like this on William Bowery-cowritten Taylor songs though, so lol, namely three of their co-written song include a simple piano line that follows the main vocal melody which I believe, based on all sources available to me, is a staple of Joe specifically. I know you probably don't care about this though anon lol)

[whltlock]

The Cosmic Horror of Gotham City

CHAPTER TWELVE / MASTERLIST / Subscribe on AO3

Pairing: Jason Todd/Non-binary!Reader

Summary: It's time for Jason to face facts. But these facts have hands. And teeth. And, like, tear gas.

Word Count: 7760.

Your next question sounded even more suspicious. “Have you been following me?”

His eyes rolled. “No, you brat. I’m on patrol.”

“It’s a bit early.”

“It’s dark,” he countered.

Unable to devise another argument, you retorted, “Don’t call me a brat.” You stepped into his personal space as you decided to kick the heavy sole of his boot in retaliation.

Red snorted, unflinching. “You are one.”

You moved to do it again, but he stepped first and knocked you off kilter. You stumbled, trying to fix your balance so you could resume your attack. However, you stopped purely out of shock as Red suddenly grasped your chin. He held it firmly between his gloved thumb and forefinger.

All expression melted off your face, save for your wide, alert eyes that stayed on him. It was weird, looking into the red slate but unable to see much.

You weren’t sure if he pulled you closer or you leaned forward, but as the distance diminished, you were abruptly reminded of the circumstances. The lack of space meant you heard his faint breathes from beneath the disguise. If you shifted your chin a little more, you might even feel the strange pulse that beat under the skin of his wrist. Only then could you confirm that this was really happening.

If you were honest, you didn’t entirely hate the proximity. You were coming to enjoy the careful caresses others gave you. Craved it, even, after being in captivity with only wretched touch for so long.

You chewed the inside of your cheek as you tried to imagine what went through his mind. You wondered if it was anything similar.

“You’re a spoiled brat,” he said, careful to enunciate each word.

A/N: The ride's gonna be bumpy for the next few chapters, so buckle in.

Red Hood’s patrol was relatively slow that night. A few prevented muggings with a few pistol whippings in turn. And if there were some smug insults exchanged to keep things exciting, Jason would plead the fifth.

He’d managed to traipse the entirety of Gotham City in one night, following a wonky path from Old Gotham, to Chinatown, and then across the park.

He’d paced the length of Crime Alley several times over now, having checked in with the general population. He’d offered food to stragglers. Sometimes they’d accept and sometimes they wouldn’t. He didn’t blame them for the mistrust. He’d been the exact same growing up. He still was that person.

Jason let them know that the Bowery was being patrolled more often as of late; that it was perhaps a more enticing option. He didn’t think there were fights for squatter’s rights with all the available space. But safety was always a rocky issue to tackle.

The air tasted stale to him, wrought with rusty pennies. Gotham served it chilled as she did every night. Jason flexed his fingers, feeling the ache that settled in his joints. His knuckles had become harder to move with every hour and every fist thrown. He needed to make some modifications to his gloves if he wanted to stop the cold from seeping in so much. The downside, he thought, would be the diminished ability to feel anything at all through a thicker or sturdier material.

His mind flashed to an image of you. You, clambered up on his work desk, with your knee bobbing out of flagrant annoyance. It had been a standstill of sorts: he refused to give in to your self-pity or demands, and you spitefully wouldn’t leave the garage.

Jason had stood up to snatch the tablet from your hands. He was worried that you would break it—it wasn’t like he could steal anymore of the Batcave technology. But when he’d touched your knee, it was like he was possessed. He didn’t need to do that. He most definitely didn’t need to start drawing the pin code into your skin.

Surprise softened the features of your face. That look alone goaded him on. For a moment, it was safe —meaningless. Poison wouldn’t leak from his veins and broil your flesh. You weren’t really touching his skin, even if he was able to feel the steel-cold burn of yours.

But as soon as your fingers nudged his, he’d felt sick. Jason had pulled away, head bowed with a thousand billowing thoughts. You were real. Not something he could toy with, nor spurs he could hurt himself on for fun. You were a person who gave him the time of day and trusted him.

He almost choked on the guilt as he’d heard your surly parting.

His brain rewound the memory like a tape that was scratched and skipped to the start. He zeroed in on that moment again, as he looked down at you, palm on your knee. There was a flicker of something dangerous there, hidden amongst his shame. It was in the seconds as your expression changed from ire to curiosity. This time, the closeness felt different, charged with the tug of power dynamics. His heart lapped up the attention you gave him, just barely quenching his sudden impulse.

Perhaps it was merely his desire to assert himself, he considered. A misjudged, arrogant gesture to remind you of who you dealt with.

That answer, despite its easiness, sat uncomfortably with him. He was unconvinced. He hated the emotional limbo of it.

Jason’s eyes refocused, noticing his subconscious drift towards the Narrows. He remained on the side streets, although even then it was fairly crowded for this time of night. Occasionally, he’d bump shoulders with someone, but when they looked up to hurl an accusation at him, their mouth clamped shut and they instead hurried on.

Guess they didn’t want to get knocked on their ass, he almost snickered.

His phone vibrated. Jason pulled it from his pocket, willing to bet money on it being Roy or Dick.

But it wasn’t. No, it was you, with an alarming message.

YOU: SOS

Speak of the Devil, he figured.

You’d never messaged him first. His expression pinched and his heart stuttered a beat. Jason scaled the closest fire escape, pulling himself off the street. He didn’t need prying ears.

Swiftly, he dialled your number. The tone echoed for far too long. As soon as the call connected, he demanded, “What’s wrong?”

“I’m hungry,” came your sullen reply.

At first, he didn’t quite comprehend the words. The detective part of his brain torpedoed into action; he was too busy trying to catch a trace of fear in your voice, captors in the background, or any other identifiable sounds.

Understanding trickled in after a few lacklustre seconds. The adrenaline that coursed through his body slowed and shrivelled into humourlessness. Flatly, he repeated, “You’re hungry.”

“Yes.”

He was silent for a bit before, “What did I tell you?”

“This number’s for emergencies only.”

“So?”

“So, this is a burger emergency,” you said as if it were obvious.

Jason huffed in disbelief. “Is that right?”

“First of all, you texted me two days ago asking if I prefer Thai or Cantonese, so you’re full of shit—”

He sighed loudly to interrupt your tirade. He should’ve waited till he saw you in person to ask that.

“—and second, you’ll tell me off if I go now,” you finished, righteousness laced into your tone.

Of course it was the truth. He made another noise but it was muffled as he ground his face into his shoulder.

All things considered, he didn’t think a great deal of harm would come if he left patrol early. He could always swing by afterwards.

“Fine,” he grumbled. Although he would find somewhere else to go instead of the diner. That suspicious waitress seemed to work late nights, and he didn’t need her on his ass again.

Jason heard your enthused thanks right before he hung up.

Twenty minutes later, his feet landed on the balcony with a heavy clank. The noise set him off instantly—it sounded too much like loose bolts. Jason made a mental note to check the railings and ensure their structural integrity. He didn’t want to go lights out because he plummeted several stories. Worse yet if it happened to you.

By the time he looked up, you’d leapt off the couch. You lurked near the window, sizing him up with an eager smile. It only grew when you spotted the food bundled in his arms. He wanted to roll his eyes at your obvious desperation to get your hands on the bag.

Shifting closer, your fingers found the bottom of the window. You lifted the frame so it was open enough for him to slide through. He propped one leg over the sill, half-sat, then passed the bag into your awaiting arms.

You stepped back, allowing him space. He climbed through with a gruff, “Thanks.” His boots made a much more comforting thud on the floorboards. Jason shut the window before trailing after you.

You’d already gotten stuck into the food, rifling through greasy paper and napkins.

“The onion rings are...” he started, but as soon as you turned, he saw one hung from your mouth, half-devoured already. “Mine,” he said and plucked it from your lips. Too bad he couldn’t eat the soiled goods in front of you for dramatic effect, he thought.

“I just wanted one,” you whined. You rummaged for something else to munch on.

Jason pushed you out of the way with his hip, effectively vacating your pesky hands from the bag’s innards. He ignored your aggrieved mewl. Instead, he picked out the food he’d chosen. Promptly, you gobbled up the fries he handed you.

“You weren’t kidding, huh?” he asked, jest filtering into his mechanical tone.

You nodded in agreement. “I was this close to running down the street.”

Jason snorted as he imagined you raging into the nearest dining establishment. Hangry Bull Runs Wild, Destroys Everything in Path.

“Thank you for saving my life,” you uttered sincerely, your mouth full.

That pulled a laugh from him. “Might’ve saved more than one,” he joked.

You tried to voice your upset, but it was swept up in the sounds of chewing.

It wasn’t until you’d swallowed half a burger that Jason spoke again. “Why didn’t you eat earlier?”

You shrugged, not meeting his searching gaze. “I fell asleep.”

“And you didn’t think to check the fridge?”

“I did,” you told him matter-of-factly, “but my chef hadn’t prepared anything.”

A bewildered smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Your chef, huh?”

You nodded at him seriously. “He’s been slacking off, I guess.”

“I happen to know your chef left a pizza in the freezer,” Jason said.

Your tongue clucked. “I don’t pay him to freeze stuff,” you complained. A teasing smile was sent his way when he shook his head. He traced the soft curve, copying it himself. Abashedly, he dropped his gaze.

His attention moved to a tall cup that was filled with a bunch of fresh flowers. He went up to it. “What’s this?” he asked, thumbing over the petals with a delicate touch as he took in the variety of pastel shades. Some of the buds were tiny, whilst others were bold and blooming.

He glanced back, eyebrows raised in exasperation. “You bought flowers but not food?”

You pulled at your sleeve. “They were for my chef,” you mumbled.

He blinked. Once, twice, and then again.

When he said nothing, your unease visibly grew. Awkwardly, you said, “I thought they matched the place.”

He was still left with a swirl of perplexity. Jason’s head tilted as he confirmed, “You got me flowers?”

“I... yeah.” You seemed to think for a moment. “Is that weird?”

“The last time I got flowers...” he petered. Was for my grave, he’d almost said.

A smattering of boutique flowers neatly piled on top of dirt, watered by salty tears. Alfred had replaced them regularly when no one else would. When they could no longer stand to look down at the headstone that read: beloved son, fought till the end. He tried to catapult the thought out of his brain.

Confusion flooded your features, uncertain where his mind had run off to. “I can throw them out?”

“No,” Jason said, somewhat hasty. “I like them.”

You swallowed, poking at the fast-food papers. “Oh. Okay.”

There was a sheepish moment where your eyes met, and then he looked down again.

He scanned over the colours till his eyes landed on the flower that reminded him most of you. It was a pale imitation of your aura, but it was in the same family group as your usual purple. In a quiet voice, he recited a line of a poem to himself: “Bright little day stars, scattered all over the earth.”

You heard his mumble but let him be, instead taking another bite of your burger before you embarrassed yourself further.

However, a different thought struck you. You remembered the other thing you’d brought home and twisted in the chair. “I borrowed a new puzzle for us to do,” you said as you directed him to the coffee table.

Jason dragged his eyes from the flowers to look at you, then at the food, and finally the unopened puzzle. Heat ripped up his cheeks at the cosy display. If only Alfred could see him now, playing house.

Maybe, he thought sluggishly, maybe what he was feeling wasn’t entirely... unethical.

Maybe it was just juvenile.

It wasn’t like he’d had the chance to explore much of his feelings due to an untimely demise. And then the seemingly endless trauma after his untimely return.

Jason came forward. “Uh. I have to... eat first,” he said, his words a jumbled mess. Your eyes widened a fraction with an inkling of hope. He saw it too, but it fell as he scooped up his onion rings and burger. He marched over to his bedroom. “I'm going to eat first,” he repeated dumbly over his shoulder.

You shot him a funny look. “Are you malfunctioning?”

He garbled something unintelligible before he pulled the door shut.

Jason was downright terrified as he sat in the sterile office. Which was strange in its own right, considering his living quarters. The walls were far too white which gave the impression that they were closing in. It was like being contained in a box, and unfortunately his back faced the only escape.

His knee bounced as he grew more agitated. His eyes flicked between each thing on the wall: a mural, nature photographs, and a couple of proudly-hung certificates. By all means, he should have felt at peace in the space. But he didn’t. Everything was so staged.

“Jason. Shall we begin?”

His alert stare snapped back to the doctor in front of him. They sat tall in an oversized chair. Jason had moved his own closer to the door before he’d even sat down. They’d regarded him through watchful eyes but spoke nothing of it.

Their persona was imbued with self-assurance. He didn’t like it. He felt like he had very little control over the situation.

He should have told Alfred to eat a bag of dicks.

“Don’t call me that.”

This stranger—Doctor August—considered his words before replying, “What should I call you?”

He wasn’t entirely sure himself, but anything was better than Jason coming out of their mouth. Especially in a situation like this, where they were aware of his alter ego.

Nothing. He didn’t want to be addressed.

Jason crossed his arms as the silence stretched on. The doctor met him measuredly, waiting for him to speak first. The frown on his face deepened.

But, he noted, not once had their eyes drifted to his cheek. So, they got props for that, I guess.

His glare didn’t last. “Whatever,” Jason muttered as he dropped his head. He felt the brand burn under defeat.

“Well, if your preference changes, let me know,” August said.

He could only muster a, “Hmph.”

“Can you tell me why you’re here?”

Because Alfred wanted it, was the blatantly smartass version, but he bit it back. Even through his spite, he knew he was here for a reason, was he not? At the very least, he could put aside some of his cynicism and give it a try.

“I don’t like when you sit like that,” Jason blurted. “It makes me nervous.”

He heard the doctor exhale, but nonetheless shifted into a more relaxed position. “I’ll remember that from now on.”

Nodding half-heartedly, his eyes remained on the floor. He distracted himself with how the carpet had been meticulously vacuumed.

“Do you have a goal in mind?” August asked as their head tilted in interest.

“No,” Jason said. “Why us?”

“I presume you mean vigilantes and the sort?” they replied. Their mouth curved. “Untapped market, I suppose.”

His eyebrow raised warily, not finding the joke as funny as they did.

“Well, everyone needs an ear sometimes. It’s hard to find someone to trust in your line of work,” they elaborated.

“It’s dangerous.”

“Yes, it can be. But I’ve found myself on neutral grounds.”

Jason mulled those words. He didn’t think neutral could ever be neutral forever. But they didn’t seem afraid.

“Right,” he said. “So, how does this usually work? I spill all my childhood trauma and you zonk me?”

“Medication is an option, of course,” August said. “But you get to tell me where to start. We can talk about what’s on your mind or about your day. It’s your time to choose what we do with.”

He pondered that. He always had a million things stuck in his brain, but what did he want to talk about right now? And especially with the doctor?

“You can even tell me more about yourself, if you would like,” August added. “All details help in some way.”

Jason circled around something he wanted to ask, again and again, although unsure how to voice it. He didn’t want to give too much away, despite the very nature of this room.

He settled on, “I... how do I know if I’m abusing my power?”

He saw August scribble something before answering. “Are you concerned about this in your day-to-day life?” He nodded. “With a specific person? Or those close to you in general?”

“Yes,” he said vaguely. “But—we’re not close. Not unless I can be sure.”

August tapped the pen against their notepad. “Think of one person and go from there. Do you have someone in mind?” Almost imperceptibly, Jason agreed. “What’s your relationship to this person?”

“Uh. We’re... we share...” His eyes immediately skittered to the darkest corner of the room. He knew heat blazed up his neck and his palms started to sweat at the simple question. He argued that it was because he still needed to protect you. You weren’t consenting to being known like this. “Roommate.”

“I see,” August said, cognizant of his hesitance. “Do you hurt them?”

Jason’s wide eyes darted to the doctor. “What? Of course not.”

He would be exactly like those he hunted, then.

“Remember, we’re just trying to answer your question, Jason,” August soothed. He let out a shallow breath as he tried to reign in his defensiveness. They prompted, “Do you threaten them?”

“No.”

“Intimidate them?”

“Maybe...” He wished he could wring his gun straps for comfort, but resolved to rub his clammy hands over his thighs.

August leaned forward. “Expand on that. Can you tell me how?”

“I mean... I’m big and scary.” He subconsciously wiped his knuckles over his marred cheek. “They do a lot of stupid shit that pisses me off.”

“How do you react?”

“By being a jackass.”

“Can you give me an example? Do you insult them?”

He sighed. “I stay quiet. Or I snap.”

August wrote something down, nodding all while. “We can talk more about productive discussion tools,” they offered, re-focusing their attention on him.

But that wasn’t what caused the guilt that kept him up at night and haunted him when he had too much time to think. Jason tugged at the curls at his nape. “What if I keep them around for attention? To make myself feel better?” Or worse—normal.

August looked him over slowly, assessing his change in posture. Was this what he was worried about all along? This was the sore spot? “What makes you think that?”

“We had a stupid argument. I wanted ‘em to go to bed and they kept refusing and I—I touched their knee,” Jason said.

“What’s wrong with that?”

He pressed his finger into his thigh until it hurt, mimicking the scene he described. “I stopped when I got them to agree. And they were... annoyed.”

“Ah,” August mused. “Touch is just a form of deepening a connection, and perhaps they felt you abruptly cut it off.”

Jason blinked, denial bubbling under the surface of his skin. “I liked having that power over them,” he objected.

The doctor stared at him, eyebrows raised. “Did you still feel powerful when you upset them?”

He paused for a minute. “No,” he answered, his baritone quiet.

“Did they do something to make you feel seen? Accepted?”

“They made me laugh.” He looked down at his hands, tracing the silvery, raised scars. Jason bit the inside of his cheek with his next words, “They let me get close.”

“Is that something you’re afraid of?”

“I know they’ll hurt me. And inevitably, I’ll hurt them.”

Rigidness fell from August’s shoulders at the confession. “That’s a part of the human experience, Jason.”

He didn’t like that answer, and August saw it in the growing lines on his face. August didn’t want to lose progress, so they changed tactics. “Let’s take a couple of steps back. You believe they willingly hang around, solely to give you attention?”

When the doctor put it that way, it didn’t sound so straightforward. He felt frustration build again—they just didn’t get it.

“Do you not reciprocate?” August continued when he didn’t answer. “Not do anything thoughtful for them? That’s your whole schtick, isn’t it?”

“I guess,” he shrugged, arms folding across his chest indignantly. “But they don’t know me.”

The doctor didn’t reply as they processed his words. Squirming, Jason’s eyes roamed the room. He was spilling his guts to this stranger he had just met when he couldn’t even reveal himself to you. It was pathetic, truly.

“They don’t know who you are?” August seemed exceedingly intrigued by the tidbit. “For the reasons you’ve stated, I assume?”

Jason barely managed a roll of his shoulders in confirmation. He wondered when his ears would grow pointy, cementing him as a lab bat.

The quiet that ensued was uncomfortable, but he suspected it was one-sided.

“Anything else?” he said, if only to break the silence. He was sure August had a million questions lined up, and a trillion more written down.

“Do you follow them without their knowledge?”

He sighed. “Yes.”

“I would recommend starting there,” the doctor said. “It would be best practice if you let them know. It might make communication easier for you.”

“Let them know I stalk them?” he huffed. “Great.”

August smiled at him, and strangely, he didn’t detect malice in it. “Yes, they might react negatively, but it also proves that you care enough to give them attention,” they stated plainly. “It may give them an idea of where you stand. It can promote further discussion, too.”

Well, the doctor’d lured him into a trap, he decided, still sitting stiff. Although they’d made their point loud and clear, Jason wasn’t entirely convinced.

His eyes moved to August’s phone as the alarm chimed. He knew what it meant: time’s up.

“So, what’s the verdict, Doc?” he asked bemusedly, gaze levelled on them.

Their response was worse than taking shrapnel to the head while being engulfed in blue flames: “Jason, what you’ve described sounds like friendship to me.”

He made a disgruntled noise under his breath, head tipping backwards in an act of agony.

Why couldn’t August make it easy and just confirm his worst thoughts?

Nightwing basked in dribbled moonlight and pretty stars as he sat atop the apartment building. The white little dots cascaded as far as the eye could see. Dick’s legs dangled over the ledge. He swung them, the heels of his boots moving back and forth from air to brick. His palms ground into roughly-finished rock as he rested on them.

Dick’s gaze didn’t stray far from you. He’d followed you from your work, as he so happened to grapple by at the exact time you finished. Lately, you’d taken on a lot of night shifts. Dick was worried, and that worry had mutated into him skipping from roof-top to roof-top until you were in the clutches of safety once more.

You walked down the street at a leisurely pace, periodically peering into alleyways. You held your bag close, the same way you had when you two first met. You were probably ready to run, and he was glad for it.

Swiftly, Dick’s head manoeuvred to meet the soft footsteps that landed near him.

“They don’t want to talk to you,” Donna said in an even tone as she leaned into him. She was suited in her Wonder Girl uniform. He eyed the golden whip wrapped around her wrist before his eyes tread upwards. She gave him an expectant look.

“I’m not talking,” he shrugged. Donna tutted, unamused.

They both looked back at you, watching as your steps grew closer to where they watched from.

“Are you going to tell me you haven’t checked on them?” Dick retorted defensively.

It was her turn to balk. “Well... we were friends.”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t think they feel the same way.”

Donna let out a defeated sigh. “I hoped they’d come around.”

The two lapsed into silence for a few moments as you journeyed under Dick’s swinging legs. He caught sight of your hand as it raised and waved at something nearby. Curious, he searched for what had taken hold of your interest.

“Jason,” Donna said as she spotted him first.

“Huh,” Dick murmured, eyes on the red-clad figure that rounded the corner. Quickly, he crossed the road and met you at the next building down. While there was no physical contact, Jason stood close enough that you could probably whisper to each other and still hear it.

If Dick so desired, he could’ve turned on his hearing device and listened in. But he felt off doing that, knowing it would cross yet another boundary. He desperately wanted to, though. His ankles flexed wantonly.

“He has to know we’re here, right?” Donna wondered aloud.

Dick nodded. Surely.

Maybe he was going to scale the wall and tell them to fuck off and stop lurking.

Donna’s questioning gaze settled on Dick. He was hyper-focused, as if trying to decipher the conversation by reading the movement of their mouths. She got the feeling he knew more than he’d told her.

“You’re not surprised,” she stated.

He glanced at her briefly. “Jason seems to,” he paused, wetting his lips, “trust them.”

Her eyes widened slightly. What was he implying?

“Are they...?”

Dick felt a bitter pang of jealousy strike his chest as he hoped they weren’t together. How come someone else could have his little brother back when he couldn’t? His family was missing a limb. The ache had never eased, not in all these years. It was only compounded with Bruce going MIA, Tim avoiding the manor, and the others scattered across the country.

She waited, optimistic that his next words would be of enlightenment. Jason deserved to have some help being guided back, even if it wasn’t from them.

He squinted, re-assessing the scene before them. “No, I don’t think so,” he said finally. Donna let out a hollow breath as her chest deflated.

She heard your shared laugh float up the side of the building. She smiled softly, glad you weren’t all gloom after all that had happened.

“Let them be,” she decided with an exhale and pulled away from the edge. “Jason will keep them safe.”

Dick took one more look before surrendering, hauling himself upwards. Glum, he replied, “I know.”

Red Hood was upon you in no time at all. As soon as you’d caught his eye, he headed towards you. You loitered, waiting for him to catch up.

You smiled as he hopped onto the footpath, lithe as ever. “Hey, Red.”

“Hey,” he returned. You felt him scope you out. “You good?”

You nodded. “I’m fine.”

He stood stock still for a moment, eyes searching your face. Eventually, he asked, “You know Nightwing’s been following you, right?”

“What?” you recoiled, eyebrows shooting up and forehead furrowing in alarm. You immediately scanned the street but found nothing of note.

Red jerked his thumb towards the sky. You looked to the top of the building you stood under. If you squinted, maybe you could make out a speck of a human being.

You cursed under your breath, debating whether to shoot Dick a blessed middle finger. Irritated, you muttered, “I guess that’s the favourite vigilante vantage point.”

“Best seat in the house,” Red agreed breezily. You didn’t know the half of it, he thought, as a wry smile overcame him.

You frowned. “Have you been following Nightwing?”

“Nah.”

Your next question sounded even more suspicious. “Have you been following me?”

His eyes rolled. “No, you brat. I’m on patrol.”

“It’s a bit early.”

“It’s dark,” he countered.

Unable to devise another argument, you retorted, “Don’t call me a brat.” You stepped into his personal space as you decided to kick the heavy sole of his boot in retaliation.

Red snorted, unflinching. “You are one.”

You moved to do it again, but he stepped first and knocked you off kilter. You stumbled, trying to fix your balance so you could resume your attack. However, you stopped purely out of shock as Red suddenly grasped your chin. He held it firmly between his gloved thumb and forefinger.

All expression melted off your face, save for your wide, alert eyes that stayed on him. It was weird, looking into the red slate but unable to see much.

You weren’t sure if he pulled you closer or you leaned forward, but as the distance diminished, you were abruptly reminded of the circumstances. The lack of space meant you heard his faint breathes from beneath the disguise. If you shifted your chin a little more, you might even feel the strange pulse that beat under the skin of his wrist. Only then could you confirm that this was really happening.

If you were honest, you didn’t entirely hate the proximity. You were coming to enjoy the careful caresses others gave you. Craved it, even, after being in captivity with only wretched touch for so long.

You chewed the inside of your cheek as you tried to imagine what went through his mind. You wondered if it was anything similar.

“You’re a spoiled brat,” he said, careful to enunciate each word.

“I know you are, but what am—”

Your childish retort was cut short as his index finger left your jaw and swiped your nose. You pulled away with a yell of disbelief, covering your face as if he had really injured you.

When you looked up again, he was several paces away, laughing as he started to sprint down the street. “Hey!” you cried, not hesitating to run after him.

How did he somehow always have the upper-fucking-hand?

You should’ve known he’d be fast. For a few seconds, he’d jogged backwards, making sure you were behind him. And then when he was satisfied, he turned around and upped his speed, putting several feet between you two. Asshole.

You couldn’t help but laugh, a loud mixture of wrath and genuine mirth as you tried to keep up. It urged him on as he dodged your hands every time you reached out. Sometimes your fingertips would just brush his jacket and then he would be gone again with a chuckle, playing with you. It was utterly infuriating—but also... it was a bit of clownery you were totally on board with.

“Got you now!” you gleamed. Only, you couldn’t tell that he’d come to a dead stop. So, when your hands reached out to grab him, they kept sliding. You fell forward with all the momentum you’d gained in your silly desperation. Your fingers lost their hold which sent you sprawling.

Somehow, Red managed to catch you before you hit concrete.

Awkwardly, you were pressed into his side as you attempted to right yourself again. His grip on your arms was uncharacteristically unyielding, making it hard to disengage. You glanced up at him, ill at ease with his sudden change in temperament.

“Red?” you asked warily.

He stared intently ahead. You tracked his line of sight, not seeing whatever had put him on edge. “Red?” you tried again, your own palms coming to lay overtop his gloves.

“You don't see that?” he croaked, eyes not moving from where his attention lay.

You looked between him and the empty road before you. It had to be bad, considering how fearful he seemed. “See what?”

It was the oddly clear sky that made him forget the shenanigans he participated in. He was struck still, wide eyes cast across the open air. There was no smog, nor did a single cloud hide the faintly twinkling stars. The colour of the night sky rapidly darkened to pitch black as the seconds ticked by. And it wasn’t just quiet—it was dead silent, except for your pleading voice. Not a cricket, or a honk, or a shout.

Something was very wrong.

The hair on Jason’s arms rose, accompanied by goosebumps. He felt the pit of his stomach drop as he watched the darkness descend from the sky and blanket the tallest buildings in the area.

No—No, no, no, no, no, he begged internally. Not this, not again.

Jason’s heartbeat grew erratic. He hardly heard you over the loud thumping that flooded his ears. He didn’t even realise how tightly he clutched at you until he looked back. You gripped him in turn, a look of concern splashed across your features.

He shoved you behind him then, shielding you from the street. Whatever this nightmare was, he wasn’t taking you with him.

“Red,” he heard it again, a muffled buzz in the back of his brain. Jason could only focus on how the world fell away to a void, brick by brick.

Tears pricked his eyes when he realised he couldn’t stop this. He might’ve been superhuman, but he couldn’t control reality. He was frozen in sick fascination, watching as the shadows swept away everything in its path.

And then the cacophony of voices started. It wasn’t Bruce’s, or Joker’s, or even his own. This one was deep, disembodied. Wraithlike.

Ours. Mine. Ours. Mine.

The words kept ringing in his head. The sound of it felt like sludge that slowly crept up his limbs, readying its attack. Numbly, he knew it would suffocate him once it wound around his neck. How a voice could do that, he wasn’t sure. But it didn’t stop panic from crawling up his chest; made it tighten out of sheer terror.

He remembered he wasn’t alone as prying fingers pressed into his sides. He whipped around, ready to tell you to run—

But Jason was ripped away by something that grabbed him by the throat. The sharp sting of gravel went unnoticed as he was dragged along it. He didn’t pay mind to how it shredded his clothes. Instead, he fought against the invisible force through a coughing fit, to no relief. It didn’t abscond until he was at the very lip of the darkness. He pushed it aside for a moment, desperate to scramble back to you.

He realised too late that it was behind you, too. Jason let out a strangled sound at the sight of you dissolving into the pitch black and echoes. “No!”

He was all alone.

Ours. Mine.

Everything was gone. He was staring down the barrel of the gun that enveloped Gotham in its entirety.

Ours. Mine. Ours. MINE.

“Shut up,” he rasped in no particular direction.

Hot tears flowed over his cheeks, only exacerbating the choking sensation that bogged him down. He tried to move but that muck—whatever it fucking was—oozed across his skin like horrendous alien slime. It groped at him as if it were quicksand. Welcoming him back down to the abyss.

And then you came flying out of the void, plummeting clumsily between his knees. You fell into him and simultaneously tugged him into you.

Jason blinked and he was back on that very same street. He heard the crickets, smelt the putrid city smoke. He heard your incoherent babble and felt how your hands glided over him frantically.

It didn’t stop his strangled gasps though. He still struggled to breathe as sobs racked his body. It was an out of body experience, watching how his chest heaved with each attempt to stop hyperventilating. He heard it too, extraordinarily loud amongst the muted sounds of the night.

You felt real, but that had also felt real. Those bruising hands that had choked him left his neck tender. His brain spun around in incomprehensible circles. Could he trust this? Could he trust his eyes or his mind? Maybe he’d imagined you for comfort in his last moments.

Your palms slapped either side of his helmet then, and he was aware of being pulled closer to your face. He flinched when you touched where the J brand was hidden beneath.

You stared at him, saying something. He tried to focus, eyes tracing the movement of your lips.

“It’s me, Red. You’re safe. You’re with me,” you repeated, over and over again. It was the same words that you’d told him at the diner.

Jason latched onto your wrist, the limb shaking. “Is this real?”

“Thank God,” you exhaled. “It’s real, Red. I’m real,” you assured him. You didn’t let go.

He wasn’t sure he believed you.

“It’s me. The spoiled brat.”

That pulled a hysterical laugh from him. It sounded terrifying and crackly through the modulator. You looked offput by the noise.

His chest still thumped, but he could see without black dots scattered across his vision. His hand dropped from your wrist at once. Instead, he covered his helmet as his head fell against his knees. Your hands moved to his elbows. The simple touch was like being scorched by acid. He tried to shrug you off but you were determined to maintain your hold.

He looked up. “Don’t touch me,” he said, voice a mere rasp. And then his head dropped again pathetically.

This time, you did as he requested and withdrew your hands, hurt by his defensiveness. The man in front of you had been in a whimpering frenzy just minutes ago, and now he wanted you gone?

“Red...” you murmured wistfully. Your glazed eyes swept over the street. It was empty, but the way both of you crouched left you ripe for the picking. “Tell me what happened.”

“Nothing happened,” he sniped, but it was lost to his knees.

“You saw something I didn’t,” you pointed out, looking back to him. You wished you could see his face, understand what had crumpled this giant. “You asked if I was real.”

“It’s nothing,” he insisted, tone stern. “Just a panic attack.”

“A panic attack doesn’t make you hallucinate!” you said, your voice rising involuntarily.

He stared at you. Maybe not head-on, but an unignorable hostility emanated between you two. The spinning fireball grew hotter the more you prodded. That fear he was cloaked in waited for its moment to explode, wanting to take you both with it.

The intensity made you pause, reassess. You remembered those feelings that came from being trapped.

Jason saw something akin to pity move across your face and his jaw clenched. Abruptly, he jumped up. Like a switch turned off, he bluntly said, “Let’s go.”

The distance got bigger then. Your empathy fizzled to a cold agitation.

“What?” you asked, eyes trailing after his figure. He didn’t repeat the command or look back. He left you to scurry after him.

“Red!” you called, but he kept stalking down the road. If anyone were around, he was sure they would rather leap out of the way than get within an inch of his menacing stride.

His entire body bristled with unshed fury. Jason propelled himself forward with it. He tuned into the repetitive smack of his boots against the pavement. Every so often he would make sure your footsteps were behind him, but they weren't loud enough to keep his mind clouded.

If he allowed quiet—God forbid—it meant he would have think about it all. Think about how his hallucinations were gaining momentum, begging him to walk back into the darkness. Think of his loneliness and of how he continued to destroy his own life.

Before long, he let you into the safehouse through the garage. He remained mute, head drooped so he wouldn’t make accidental eye contact. Most of the adrenaline had worn off and he was left with a gaping chasm in his chest. The blinking dullness hurt, maybe more than his muscles did.

He heard the soft click of the elevator button. He risked a peek at your shoes as the door opened and consequently closed. Neither of you moved.

“Aren’t you coming?”

Jason swallowed through the razorblades jammed in his throat. After a second, he stepped into the garage, but he didn’t make his way to the elevator. He slung himself onto his motorbike. His tone was terse when he said, “No.”

Your lack of reply was unusual and prompted him to glance up.

He wished he hadn’t. You looked gutted.

He already had more than enough images to keep him awake for the rest of his life. It was a bitter thought that now he had one more.

Jason turned away, hands wringing the bike bar. His pulse spiked again. There was a strange mix of grief and shame that lingered even when he couldn’t see your face.

So much control lost in one night.

He switched on the engine, drowning out anything you could have possibly said. He zoomed out into the night without another word.

Jason awoke with a start, eyes blown wide. The sound of something metallic had clanged behind him, ripping him from sleep. Steadfast, he sat up straight, ears pricked and fingers itching around the gun that lay under his makeshift pillow.

Suspicious, he peered around the sitting room. Nothing jumped out at him.

“Oop,” he heard a low mutter come from behind him. “Sorry, dude,” Roy said, a little louder this time.

Jason finally turned to see how his friend pottered around the kitchen. He waved breakfast ingredients in the air as he made his way back to the pan—the noisy culprit. All at once, the stiffness fell out of Jason’s shoulders as he took in the scene. Thankfully, he wasn’t in danger.

Roy looked over at him. “You want some eggs since you’re up?”

Jason didn’t respond for a few seconds as his brain lagged behind. It still wanted to sleep, but his twitchy limbs and racing heart would never agree. So, he jerked his chin once. In the back of his mind, he hoped Roy was competent enough to not poison their food.

“Coming right up,” Roy chirped, much too cheerily for this early in the morning.

Well, he didn’t really know what time it was. His hand groped under the cushion, pulling out his phone from where he’d left it. The screen lit up and it was—oh, only a cool eleven-thirty AM. Despite the fitful sleep, he surprisingly hadn’t woken up once?

Shock sank into his stomach, devoured instead by discomfort as he spotted one of the notifications he had. Jason’s eyes stayed glued to the screen even as it dimmed. You’d messaged him during the night.

He didn’t know how many times you’d rewritten the text and deleted it in a fit of passionate anger, only to come back to craft your concern once more as it gnawed at you. Jason only read ‘are you safe?’

His gut somersaulted at the choice of words. You didn’t ask if he was okay, you asked if he was safe. Without meaning to, his fingertips brushed against his neck, searching for that same ache. He dropped his hand as he felt it.

The culmination of your message and the memory of last night made him want to throw up. Jason flipped the phone over and pushed it under the cushion.

He flinched again as Roy clumsily banged utensils together. This time, his eyes resettled on the floorboards. More specifically, the rubble underfoot. As he stared at the gritty mess longer, he realised it dug into his undersoles. It wasn’t just next to him, either; it trailed towards the window like something had been dragged in.

He glanced at his boots which sat by the other end of the couch. They weren’t noticeably muddy. Jason swallowed through the thickness of his throat as a sickly intuition ebbed into his veins. He looked about the room for Roy’s shoes. He couldn’t see them but he had an inkling they weren’t dirty either.

“Why is there mud?” Jason said, voice hoarse from sleep. He didn’t look at Roy as he spoke, but he felt the man move nearby. Roy peered over his shoulder.

“Huh,” he pondered. “Must’ve brought it in last night. Didn’t realise.” And then he was gone again.

Jason’s knuckles rubbed at his eyes, hoping the mess would disappear. After last night, this was... too much—it felt like more than a coincidence. Yet, when he blinked back his vision, it remained. He tried to refrain from thinking about the way dirt felt under your nails when you dug through it.

He pushed the disturbing thought aside as Roy returned, goodies abound. He carried two plates as if he were a waiter. “Move over, you lump,” Roy ordered, trying to muscle some space on the couch.

Jason observed how he didn’t seem to mind the mess. It made him relax, just a little. He shifted to make room for Roy.

Jason took a plate from him. It looked like some sort of creamy omelette gone wrong, topped with chives for cohesion. He stuck a forkful in his mouth, fingers crossed. “Huh,” Jason said, surprised by what he tasted. It was actually good. In fact, he would finish the plate unless something intervened.

Roy met him with an overdramatic tsk.“O, ye of little faith.”

Jason shrugged, hiding a smile behind another bite of eggs. “Can you blame me? Last time you made tuna mac ‘n’ cheese.” His nose scrunched at the memory, still able to recall the notes of fish and cheese intertwined. It had stunk the apartment out for days.

“It’s a super protein combo,” Roy grumbled defensively. Jason made a noise of disgust in turn.

They devoured their food in shared silence until Jason’s eyes landed on a pile of cardboard boxes. It reminded him that Roy needed to vacate the premises within a couple of weeks.

Distracted, Jason asked, “You packing already?”

“Yeah. Responsible decisions and all that,” he said. “You gonna help?”

Jason let out an exaggerated puff of air. “S’pose I got nothing better to do.”

The redhead rolled his eyes. “Thanks for fitting me in between morning brooding and afternoon brooding.”

“S’no problem.” A smirk flittered across Jason’s face. “What’s wrong with this place, anyway?”

“Nothing, really. Just think it’s time for more space. You know, considering...” he trailed off bashfully.

“Donna?” Jason suggested.

His friend scratched his jaw in an awkward fashion. “Nah. Well, yeah, but...” He gave Jason a pointed look. “I’d rather you crash in a bed than the couch.”

“Oh,” Jason said. He looked down as the tips of his ears went red. Roy was moving for his comfort’s sake? God, that was utterly humiliating. He mumbled, “Guess I owe you, then.”

Roy laughed and gave his shoulder a light shove. “Glad we’re on the same page.”

A/N: I wasn't kidding about the therapy tag ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

NB doctor is another win for the gays.

[mountaingoatsfirstlineaday]

HOW is he supposed to be like "we will all be fixed up as good as new" and expect us not to latch onto that

IDK??? John, we deserve answers.

In all honesty, if I'm thinking about the big picture, it's kind of on-brand. He wrote some of the most tender lines I've ever heard in songs about wrestling. Outer Scorpion Squadron sounds like a super epic ballad about scorpion astronauts but it's actually a song about trauma and has made me cry on multiple occasions. so, like, my point is he seems to enjoy being subversive in a very John Darnielle way? so he writes songs that sound really hopeful but if you analyze the lyrics or even just listen to his commentary on them, you realize they're absolutely not. But there's still the effect the individual line has on us, the instant reaction of hearing mr. mountain goats say "we will all be fixed up good as new" and feeling a little bit better because, at least for me, there's something about goats music that makes me trust it to hold my heart for a couple minutes. and for long-time goats listeners there's the context of all the other tmg songs out there, a couple of which are genuinely hopeful, as well as john himself being... John Himself. The signal flares, the monologues about songs before he plays them, it's interestingly intimate in a non-intimate setting which i think inherently makes fans more willing to open up to him, or at least open up to themselves in the face of his music.

on that note, i would like to appreciate for a moment how one of the very few songs they have about getting better in an honest sense has the lyrics "I'm gonna bribe the officials/I'm gonna kill all the judges/It's gonna take you people years/To recover from all of the damage" and this is what convinced me mountain goats music was For Me as much as anything ever could be, because this is exactly the kind of "I'm getting better" song I needed and never knew that until I heard it. Triumph over the adversary!! It's also subversive in that weird jd way -- most songs/poems/movies/whatever about recovering don't focus on the hungry, angry parts of us that are going to go down the path your anger wants you to take, even though you know it's pointless, because "that's just the kind of person you are." (from the 2007-10-01 - Bowery Ballroom - New York, NY show).

essentially, i think we're all looking for someone we trust to tell us it'll be okay. The Mountain Goats do that with their music, whether they mean to or not.

thank you for coming to my ted talk lol. i hope this wasn't annoyingly in depth, you've made me think about this more than i intended to

[invisibleanonymousmonsters]

no grave can hold my body down – 2/2

Character: Jason Todd x Fem!Reader

Summary: It took time to get Jason Todd away from the darkness. Sometimes it felt like he was always standing at a tipping point, at risk of completely losing himself. But not when he was with her. She made him better and she would continue to make him better.

Word Count: 9,000

A/N: I know there are a lot of contradicting opinions on Jason Todd’s height. But for my own wish fulfillment, he is 6′3/6′4ish in this fic. 

Part 1

Y/N had fallen asleep after getting home from work. She had a long day and was so exhausted that she passed out as soon as she sat down on the couch. Jason had to take off her heels and drape a blanket over her.

Now he was dressed in his armored undershirt, cargo pants, leather jacket, and tactical boots. His red helmet was tucked under his arm, but he was already wearing a domino mask. If Bruce had taught him anything, it was to be prepared to a point of paranoia.

He crouched down to his knees.

Ever so gently, he brushed Y/N’s cheek.

“Y/N,” he whispered.

She stirred and winced a bit when she opened her eyes, the glare of the quiet television was suddenly harsh.

“What’s going on?” She asked, still half asleep.

“Nothing. Go back to sleep. I just wanted to tell you I’m leaving to go on patrol.”

“Mhmm. OK.” She hummed. “Be careful, J.”

If Y/N ever found out how un-careful the Red Hood was, she would never sleep and she’d probably beg Jason to quit his vigilantism.

“I love you,” he told her before kissing her on the forehead.

“Love you, too,” she said back so dreamily that it sounded like she was talking in her sleep.

Jason slipped out of the window. He purposely chose this apartment due to the direction the windows faced, the distance from approximate apartments, and the darkness that would prevent any wandering eyes from the neighbors.

He’d been patrolling for a few hours. It was oddly a quiet night. He assumed it had to do with how cold it was outside. Sometimes criminals were weak in the most obvious ways.

Jason was standing on a rooftop, taking a breather when he felt someone drop behind him. He knew his family all too well and could differentiate all of their footsteps. Which was why he didn’t immediately shoot Dick when he thought he’d try and surprise him.

“So, Y/N was quite the hit…” Dick said without giving Jason a proper greeting first.

“What are you still doing in town?” Jason answered.

Dick sighed. “B still needs a little help on the case.”

Jason nodded, not actually caring why Dick was still in Gotham. 

Then an awkward silence washed over them. Well, Dick thought it was awkward. Jason couldn’t care less. 

“Why won’t you talk about her with us?” Dick’s teasing was gone and his tone serious now.

Jason turned his head away from the city view and finally acknowledged his brother. “You don’t need to know anything about her,” his helmet distorted his words to make them sound even harsher than they already were.

“Doesn’t seem like she completely shares that view.”

Jason didn’t respond. He didn’t appreciate Dick speaking on Y/N’s behalf.

“Bruce seems to like her,” Dick added.

Jason’s head snapped to him. “As if I give a fuck,” he snapped.

Dick had the audacity to laugh. “How did the two of you meet anyway? She was living in New York City when the two of you first met, right?”

“Jesus,” Jason growled. “Did all of you run a background check on her?”

Dick shrugged. “What did you expect?”

————

Y/N didn’t have any idea where she was going. With the sun having already set, she couldn’t even figure out what direction she was headed.

But she had typed the address to her hotel into the Uber app and trusted it from there. She was also too preoccupied still answering the dozens of work emails on her phone.

“Hey lady, we’re here,” the driver said rudely after she didn’t realize they had stopped.

“Oh, sorry!” She said, writing the last few words of a sentence before pressing send.

She jumped out of the car and yelled a thanks before slamming the door shut.

To her surprise, the car raced off without a second’s hesitation.

But when Y/N turned around, she realized she was definitely not in the right place. And for the first time throughout the drive, she realized she was definitely in a bad area.

Y/N heard all of the terrible things about Gotham. Sometimes she wondered if the things about all of the crime were exaggerated by the news or if the city was really rotting from the inside like everyone said. What she definitely didn’t believe in was all the vigilantes that seemed to be protecting the city. No one could ever offer up any proof, even with every single human having a video camera in their hands at all times.

But now she wishing she’d taken people’s warnings a little bit more seriously.

This was definitely not Gotham Heights, where her nice hotel was located.

“Fuck,” she muttered as she whipped out her phone and instantly tried to call another Uber. But the app was being finicky and she was getting a loading screen for far too long.

Then she heard a group of men whistle at her. The streets were filled with literal dumpster fires. There were countless inoperable cars with broken windshields and without wheels. The only women she spotted looked like they were working the streets.

‘Walk, Y/N. Just walk. Act like you know where you’re going.’ Her brain was screaming at her.

So she did while remaining on high alert.

No matter how much she pretended to blend in, she was obviously out of place and sticking out like a sore thumb.

Her heart was racing and she tried to walk as fast as she could without fully running. She just hoped to get to a main street soon and try to catch a yellow cab, since apparently all her car-service apps decided not to work.

But suddenly, a man stepped onto the sidewalk, blocking Y/N’s path forward.

“You lost, sweetheart?” He cooed.

Y/N stopped and started backing away. But when she turned around, she saw that two men were waiting behind her.

“No need to be scared,” the same men said behind her, closer this time. “We just want to talk.”

‘Fuck this,’ Y/N thought before she decided to make a run for it.

But one of them grabbed her and shoved her to the side, pushing her into the alleyway she hadn’t realized they were right next to.

It was so dark that she could hardly make out the silhouettes of her attackers. But that wasn’t going to stop her from fighting. She immediately tried to shove past anyone in her vicinity and hit whoever was grabbing her.

“Get the fuck away from me!” She screamed, hoping that there was someone in this poisoned city that would try and help her.

Except she was outnumbered by three men, which ended in her getting shoved up the brick wall that lined the alley.

“I don’t have any money,” she gasped as a last ditch effort to save herself.

“Who said we wanted your money?” One of them chuckled darkly.

Before their words could hearten Y/N to try another defensive attack and escape, there was a strange zipping sound that echoed down into the alley.

Next thing Y/N knew, the man that was pressed up against her and pinning her to wall was flung off.

Y/N gasped and tried to get her eyes to adjust to the darkness enough so she could actually see what the hell was happening.

“It’s the hood!” One of the men yelled to his friends before making a run for it.

Then a gun was fired off – two shots.

Y/N yelped at the noise and covered her ears.

But when she looked back up, the man who had tried to escape was now on the ground, screaming in pain as he looked down at both of his knee caps that had been shot.

When Y/N turned her attention to the other two men, she finally saw who had interrupted their assault.

It was a man – if that was even what he was – dressed in military gear of some sort. But what really caught her attention was the red helmet that was reflecting the night light and allowing her to actually follow what was happening.

Y/N watched as he punched the daylights out of one of her attackers. She saw the man’s face get more and more covered with blood with each punch.

If Y/N was scared before, she was now terrified.

Without hesitating any longer, she too made a run for it, hoping she wouldn’t be shot like the other runaway.

She sprinted around the corner. But she only got a few yards before the same behemoth landed in front of her.

He was tall, and had to be at least 6’3. Men were confusingly short in New York, so Y/N was still trying to wrap her mind around having to tilt her head slightly up. But then she realized it wasn’t even his height that was jarring; it was how utterly hulking he was. His shoulders were so wide and his chest was massive. His thighs seemed to be the same width has her entire torso.

Everything about him was intimidating and imposing.

“I gotta give you credit for being that fast while wearing heels,” he said to her as he glanced down at her shoes.

It wasn’t exactly comforting that his voice seemed to also be distorted by the helmet.

Y/N was frozen in fear, truly not knowing what he was capable of or even what he wanted.

“You can relax. I’m not gonna hurt you,” he told her with his hands raised. His guns were no longer in his grip, but in their holsters at his thighs.

“You just killed three men,” Y/N told him with a shaky voice as she took a step back.

“I didn’t kill them. But if you want me to, I’d be happy to go back there and finish the job.”

“What? No!” Y/N cried out.

He had the audacity to chuckle at her reaction.

“Where exactly did you think you were going?” He asked her.

“This whole damsel-in-distress thing is new for me. But I thought it made sense to run away from the guy who was shooting people,” she told him quickly.

Jason was grateful that his mask hid all his emotions and facial expressions, because he was smiling at her sass.

He looked her up and down, taking in her outfit and just her overall look. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“What gave me away?”

He shrugged, ignoring the question. “What the hell are you doing in The Bowery? This is the most dangerous neighborhood in Gotham.”

“My Uber dropped me off here. I thought I was at my hotel and by the time I figured out I wasn’t, my driver had already sped away and left me for dead.”

He took a step toward her. “What’s a gal like you doing in Gotham?”

“I work for an art gallery in New York. But there was an event that I had to attend. I’ve been here all weekend.” 

Why was she telling him any of this?

Jason nodded in understanding. “Come on,” he told her.

“W-What?” She asked nervously.

“You’re not gonna get a car in this area. You should report the driver who brought you here in the first place. He knew better.”

He walked past her.

Y/N looked around her, trying to figure out if she even had any other option. She knew he was right about a car, which was probably why she’d gotten a loading screen for all of them when it realized her location.

Yes, he was technically a masked criminal. But he did just save her life, no matter how terrifying it was to watch.

Y/N decided she didn’t have much of a choice.

Before she could move, a motorcycle was being pulled up alongside her.

Y/N eyed it for a moment.

“What’s your name?” She asked him, as if it would make the situation any safer.

“Red Hood,” he told her.

Y/N nodded, not surprised that it didn’t make her feel any better. She realized she was in no position to ask for his real identity. She knew enough about vigilantes to understand that they only survived from hiding their true selves from the criminals they fought and the law enforcement who thought what they were doing was wrong.

“Where are you staying?” He asked her.

“Crest Hill Hotel,” she told him.

“Fancy,” he teased. “Hop on.”

Y/N hesitated before following his instructions. She sat awkwardly on the back of the motorcycle, unsure of what to do.

“You’re gonna want to hold on, beautiful.” He told her over his shoulder as he revved the engine.

Y/N tried to ignore the heat that rushed to her face as he called her ‘beautiful,’ and then she tried to ignore how wide and strong his torso felt as she reached to hold on.

It took 20 minutes to get to her hotel, proving that the Uber driver really hadn’t given a crap about how incorrect her original address had been.

Jason had decided to drop her off in the back entrance to avoid a scene of the infamous Red Hood dropping off an average citizen. He didn’t need that type of attention and Y/N shouldn’t be tied to him in any way.

Y/N got off the motorcycle with a surprising grace and turned to him.

“Thank you for…saving me,” she told him gently.

“It was nothing,” he told her.

Y/N just watched him for a moment, wondering what he looked like under that red helmet and without all the armor.

“What’s your name?” He surprised her by asking.

“Y/N. Y/F/N Y/L/N.” 

She didn’t know why she felt comfortable giving her surname. But it just came out.

“Nice to meet you, Y/N. Though, I wish it had been under better circumstances.”

Y/N suddenly dug into her purse, making sure she still had her phone and even just the key to her hotel room.

“Fuck,” she muttered without realizing it.

“What is it?” Jason asked.

“Nothing. I just…it sounds stupid, but I have a little notebook to write down ideas for – well, for my artwork. But it must’ve fallen out back in that alleyway when those guys shoved me against the wall.”

When she looked up at him, it was impossible to know what he was thinking.

“Anyways, thank you again.” She turned to finally walk away.

“Y/N?”

She shouldn’t love how much she loved the sound of him saying her name.

Y/N turned around.

“Stay close to the hotel. Gotham is different than New York City.”

She nodded.

————————

“So, when did you see her again?” Dick questioned after he listened to Jason’s retelling.

“I was helping out a friend with a job in NYC. Things got ugly. I may or may not have been shot when I showed up at her window. Her apartment was in the area and I needed a place to lay low.”

Dick laughed. “Uh huh. Sure you did.”

Jason ignored him. “Anyways, I’d gone back to the alley that night and found that notebook she was talking about, and gave it to her to make up for bleeding all over her couch.”

“Always the romantic,” Dick teased.

Their conversation came to a halt. Instead of talking, they both listened to the city noises that Gotham brought.  

“Listen, Jason, I know I did a poor job of being there for you and actually acting like a brother. And I also know you haven’t always been my biggest fan.”

Jason stayed quiet.

“But you deserve to be happy. And we both know Y/N does that.” Dick sighed. “But you don’t talk about her with us and you kept her from even just meeting us after years of you two dating. If we weren’t all noisy and paranoid, we wouldn’t know a thing about her.”  

“What’s your point, Dick?” Jason asked roughly.

“No one ever wants to acknowledge this, especially you…but you’re more like Bruce than any of us. And you’ve seen how he pushes people away, keeping them at a distance. Y/N wants to be a part of your life, your whole life. And that includes all of us – whether you like it or not. So, what I’m saying is you don’t have to hide her from us.”

Dick knew not to expect a response from Jason. So he left him where he found him and gave him his space once again.

Jason didn’t have anything to say anyway. 

Dick’s words made him angry more than anything. Because he knew they were true. Yes, he saw how Bruce behaved with women. It was promiscuous and casual, because anything else was too close for comfort. Bruce’s priority would always be Batman. And Bruce knew that no significant other deserved his lack of commitment – no matter how much they might love each other.

—————

Y/N was doing her nightly routine and applying moisturizer to her face when she heard it. She could be acting paranoid, but her instincts were telling her something was off. 

No, someone was here.

Jason made a point of being loud and immediately announcing when he got home as to not scare her. So, it couldn’t be him.

As quietly as possible, Y/N tiptoed out of the bathroom and to her side of the bed where she kept a titanium baseball bat. Jason had offered her multiple times to teach her how to shoot a gun. But Y/N wanted nothing to do with them.

With the bat in hand, Y/N snuck her way to the living room where she heard the sound.

She had turned off all the lights, making it hard for her to see clearly.

But she did see a large mass standing in the middle of her living room. With just a bit of hesitation, Y/N swung the bat. But the intruder caught the bat, stopping her attack.

They stepped into the moonlight, finally allowing Y/N to see that it was Batman in his full uniform, cowl still on.

“What the fuck. Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” Y/N snapped at him.

“I apologize. I didn’t mean to startle you,” Bruce defended.

But Y/N was still irritated. “Jason isn’t here.”

“I know. I came to talk to you.”

She froze. “Me?”

“I need a favor.”

Y/N narrowed her gaze. “I highly doubt I could do anything to help you.”

“You’re wrong. This has to do with your job. You work at The Drago House.”

Y/N tilted her head and crossed her arms. “Yes.”

“It’s owned by the Ibanescu family. They use it as a front for human trafficking.”

Y/N shook her head. “That can’t be possible…”

“Don’t underestimate the crime families of Gotham, Y/N.”

“So, why do you need me?”

“There are files and codecs that would decipher who their buyers are and where they hold auctions around the world. Nothings digital. They’re old school. With that information, we could shut done their operation forever.”

Y/N’s face was serious now. “What do you need me to do?”

“You have always had access to all the information. You just never knew it. All I need is for you to scan the files.”

She now looked at him suspiciously. “Don’t they say you're the world’s greatest detective? I find it hard to believe that you’d have problems breaking into the gallery after hours to get them for yourself…”

“It’s only completely lockdown as soon as it closes every night. Their security system is high-end and resets every 24 hours. Could we get into it eventually? Yes. But we’ve already been at it for weeks. And we’ve received word that there’s a big…” He hesitated. “…shipment happening any day. We don’t have time to waste.”

Y/N thought about what he was telling her.

“Why didn’t you go to Jason?” She finally asked.

“You said Jason doesn’t tell you what to do.”

Y/N glared at him for using her own words against her.

The apartment went quiet again.

Then Y/N nodded slowly. “There’s an opening tomorrow night. I can get them then.”

—————

Dick’s words haunted Jason for the rest of the night. He wanted to cut patrolling early and just get back to Y/N.

Now he swiftly moved into his apartment from the fire escape and immediately took off his helmet and domino mask underneath.

But Jason froze when he saw Y/N’s bat in the middle of the living room.

His heart raced at the immediate assumption that something happened to her. The furniture was untouched and there were no other signs of trouble, but he still rushed towards the bedroom anyway.

“Y/N?” He called out, despite it being nearly 4AM.

He let out a sigh of relief when he found Y/N slowly waking up from their bed.

“J?” She murmured, half asleep.

“Y/N, why is the bat in the living room?” Jason asked as he rubbed his face and then sat on the edge of the bed near her. Without even thinking, he cupped her cheek.

She rubbed her eyes, trying to wake up more. “I thought I heard something and freaked myself out. But it was nothing.”

“Y/N, how many times do I have to tell you? Call me when shit like that happens.”

“But it was nothing,” she repeated. “What?” She added with a sigh when he was giving her that disapproving look.

“I don’t care if it ends up being nothing. If you’re scared, then I’m going to be here. OK?” Then he finalized his point with a quick kiss to her lips.

She nodded. “OK.”

Then she looked him up and down, realizing that he was still completely in his Red Hood gear, only without his helmet.

“You OK?” She asked in a whisper. Her eyes already scanning his body for any obvious injuries.

“I’m fine,” Jason sighed. “I was just worried about you when I saw the bat. I thought something…”

Y/N quickly sat up in bed. “Hey, hey, hey. I’m fine. I’m OK. I was just being paranoid. I should’ve put the bat back. I’m sorry.”  

A comfortable and reassuring silence settled between them.

“Why don’t you take a shower and come to bed?” Y/N offered softly.

Jason nodded and kissed her again.

As soon as he was out of the room, Y/N ran a hand over her face. 

She hated lying to Jason. He didn’t deserve it. But she also knew he wouldn’t let her anywhere near an operation that Bruce was trying to pull off. This had to be the same thing that Tim had pulled Jason aside for at the gala.

But Bruce made one thing clear: he needed her help. And he wouldn’t do so if he wasn’t desperate.

———————-

The next night, Y/N couldn’t stop sweating and her heart rate was out of control. She tried to act like this was just another day of work, greeting customers, explaining the pieces, and answering questions.

But the need to get into the back offices when everyone else was gone would not stop nagging her.

With shaky hands, she tapped her ID on the scanner. Usually at this point in an event, all of her colleagues were either on the floor or had called it the end of their work day and headed home.

By some miracle, that was exactly the case.

Y/N locked the door behind her, never having seen a purpose for doing so any other day of working at the gallery.

“OK. OK. OK. Breathe,” she muttered to herself as her eyes scanned the room.

She knew where all the files were in the room. And Bruce had given her the keys to knowing what to look for. Now it was just a matter of putting the two together.

Y/N instantly went to work and started shuffling through papers, finding what was needed.

Bruce had given her a special pen that would scan every file within a second no matter what angle it was pointed at, so Y/N wouldn’t have any suspicious photos on her cellphone.

Y/N was almost done, covered in sweat and with shaking hands, when the door started jiggling.

She swore her heart was about to burst out of her chest.

With pure adrenaline, Y/N quickly put back the files that were in her hand.

But the person on the other side of the door was clearly getting impatient quickly and continued to mess with the doorknob.

Y/N jumped when it was finally kicked open. She whipped around to stare at a man who was nearly the size of Jason, but looked far deadlier. She’d never seen him at the gallery before, which meant he was definitely part of Ibanescu’s gang.

“Can I help you?” She snapped rudely, trying to use her authority to hide her fear.

“What are you doing in here?” He accused.

“I work here. Who the hell are you?”

He ignored her question. “Why was the door locked?”

“You still haven’t told me who you are,” Y/N shot back.

And with that, she straightened her posture and started walking past him. But this man wasn’t as stupid as he looked. Just as she thought she’d slipped away, the man grabbed her by the arm.

“Excuse me,” Y/N hissed.

But he ignored her and started dragging her into the back storage area of the gallery and further away from the crowd.

Y/N tried to rip her arm from his grasp but his grip was vice-like and didn’t even seem fazed by her efforts to escape.

This was not good.

While Y/N was still hopeful that she could possibly talk her way out, she was also realistic. 

Which is why she hit a button on her watch.

Jason had gifted it to her very early on in their relationship. It was a classic chronograph watch. But he had installed a panic button onto it.

“If something ever happens – even if you think you’re being overly cautious – you push this and it will send out a signal that I can track. I’ll be there before you know it.” That’s what he had told her when he gifted it, and she’d worn it every day since.

A few seconds later, Y/N was being shoved through the door that led to the back alley.

There was a group of men, just as large and intimidating as the one who still had a grip on her arm.

It was pouring rain and freezing outside. But the slight overhand of the building into the alley protected them slightly.

“What the fuck is this?” One of them asked.

“I found her snooping around in the offices,” he announced.

“I’m one of the directors of this gallery!” Y/N bit back. “I was checking the price points on pieces for a potential customer.”

“The door was locked,” the man added.

They all seemed to be looking at each other.

Y/N was frozen, trying to wait for the perfect moment to make a run for it.

But then she saw one of the men, who appeared to be in charge, eye the pen that was clipped to the pocket of her pants. She prayed that he was too stupid to think it was anything more than just a writing utensil.

But then he slowly walked up to her. He grabbed the pen from her pocket and inspected it.

Y/N swore time froze. She couldn’t hear anything. She couldn’t feel the tight grip on her arm that was surely going to bruise her.

Then the man’s gaze shifted from the pen to her eyes.

“Get her in the car,” he told the group.

Y/N’s heart dropped.

Without hesitating, she immediately started to fight the man holding her. With a swift motion, she kneed him hard in the groin, making him let out a growl and keel over. But he dropped his grip on her arm.

Despite wearing heels, she made a run for it. She didn’t get far, but she got far enough into the rain that she was already drenched.

Another man grabbed her, shoving her against the building and clenching her throat to a point of suffocation.

“You stupid bitch,” her original captor spat as he backhanded her across the face.

Y/N blinked as a ringing started in her ears and her face stung with pain.

“Get her in the car before you make a fuckin’ scene,” the leader warned.

But before they could respond to the command, the street lights went out, causing a surge of darkness to blind all of them.

Y/N tried to step away from her attackers as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. But she couldn’t see a damn thing. The pouring rain was only making it more impossible.

It wasn’t until one of the men cried out in pain and guns started firing that she could see anything. Except it was too fast for her to make out a clear picture. Every so often, a lightning strike or a muzzle flash would give her a short glimpse.

Lo and behold, Batman was taking out the men one by one. But every time Y/N’s eyes focused on his tall silhouette, he’d disappear. She couldn’t keep track of his movements. And apparently neither could any of Ibanescu’s men.

“Shoot the girl!” One of the men yelled.

Y/N’s eyes widened when two of the men turned their guns on her.

But just before they fired off their rounds, a small force tackled her to the side and behind the safety of a giant dumpster.

Y/N looked up to see a young boy shielding her with his own body.

Damian. 

Things were so chaotic that she hadn’t even registered he was there, too.

Before she could say anything to him, there was another presence that dropped down beside her. The next second, she was being grabbed and pulled into the sky.

From the feel of his arms alone, Y/N immediately recognized it as Jason.

His grappling gun had brought them to the roof of the building.

Once their feet were grounded onto the roof, Jason barely stepped away and grabbed her shoulders.

Y/N couldn’t read his face from his helmet. But the subtle movements of his head made it clear that he was scanning her body to see if she’d been hit. It only took a few seconds to be convinced that she was clear.

Then he was grasping her face. “Stay here,” he told her before he used his grappling gun to vault back down into the alleyway.

Y/N ran to the edge of the room to look down.

When Jason returned to the fight below, he was ruthless.

Damian had seen the Red Hood with a vengeance many a time. But this… this was something different.

No bone was left unbroken.

Jason wasn’t just neutralizing these men…he was out for blood and pain.

The leader of the little gang was on his knees, covered in his own blood, when he looked up at Jason, who had a gun pointed just centimeters from his head.

“Red Hood, no!” Bruce growled as he threw a batarang, knocking Jason’s gun away from its almost-victim.

Jason whipped his head around. “They were going to kill her!”

“I wasn’t going to let that happen,” Bruce countered.

While they talked, Damian knocked out the man Jason almost murdered. By now, all of them were knocked unconscious or so injured that they couldn’t even open their eyes.

Jason’s entire body froze, realizing what had really happened. Bruce and Damian didn’t just happen to be there to save his girlfriend. This was their doing. They were the ones who had put her in this dangerous situation to begin with.

“What the fuck did you do?” Jason thundered.

Just as a flash of lightening struck, he turned to face Bruce, finding his new prey.  

“She had an in and I asked her to use it,” Bruce explained evenly. “She agreed.”

“Of course she fucking agreed!” Jason yelled over the rain. “She’d never say no to helping! And you knew that, and you took advantage of it!”

Then he raised his gun, pointing it at Bruce.

“Put the gun down, Red Hood.”

“Fuck you,” Jason hissed.

The next thing Y/N knew, Jason shot a bullet towards Bruce, causing her to let out a yell from above. In her heart she knew he hadn’t aimed to kill, but Bruce dodged the shot anyway.

Now the two men were fully fighting each other. Bruce seemed to be pulling his punches and just trying to remain on the defense. But Jason wanted revenge. Yes, Bruce and him had a dark history. But putting Y/N in danger erupted something inside Jason that made him see red in a way he never had before.

Just as Y/N was going to call out for Jason to stop, she heard someone drop beside her on the roof.

Dick stood a few feet away, standing tall in his Nightwing uniform.

“Dick, do something!” She begged.

“I can stop Bats, but I can’t stop him,” he told her.

“Then get me the fuck down there! Use your zip-line thingy!”

“Zip-line thingy?” Dick repeated, clearly offended. “This is a grappling–”

“Dick!” Y/N cut him off.

“Right, sorry.” He grabbed her, held her body tight to him, and lowered them down back to the alley.

When Y/N looked up, Bruce was on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

But Jason wasn’t done with him.

“You made it clear that you don’t give a shit about me. But putting the one person I love in danger just for you to solve a case? You’ve reached a new low,” Jason yelled as he slowly started to walk towards Bruce.

But before Jason could reach him, Y/N blocked his path.

She was soaking wet and shivering from both the cold rain and the shock.

Jason could already see the bruises covering her neck and face. He also didn’t miss the small line of blood that had trickled down her nose.

“Jason,” she whimpered. “That’s enough.”

He froze.

Y/N walked to him. “Please, just take me home,” she whispered.

Just seeing her made Jason’s entire body relax. But he was also reminded that she was the priority, not Bruce.

Noticing her shivering, he took off his leather jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders.

Bruce, Dick, and Damian were barely able to see the short, loving moment before Jason flung a smoke capsule onto the ground, covering him and Y/N as he brought her into his arms.

By the time the smoke disappeared, Jason and Y/N were gone.

—————-

When Jason and Y/N got back to their apartment, Jason when into autopilot mode of nursing Y/N. He pulled her into their bathroom and immediately started helping her out of her wet clothes. Y/N couldn’t stop shaking, and he noticed.

Jason only left her side for the split moment when he turned to start the shower, making sure to make it extra hot.

Then he was right back at her side, taking off his uniform and matching her nudity.

When he gently tugged her into their abnormally large shower, there was nothing sexual about it.

Now that Y/N’s skin was bare to him, he looked at all the injuries she had.

There were a few scrapes that would heal in a week or so. But Jason’s gaze went dark every time they lingered on the bruises across her throat, face, and bicep. He should’ve killed all of those bastards.

Y/N leaned into Jason’s chest. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Because she knew that’s what this was. Jason wasn’t mad at her – at least, not yet. That could very much come later. But no, right now, he was scared. He put so much energy into keeping Y/N away from his other life, only for her to be thrown right into the center of it. And it wasn’t even his doing; it was Bruce’s.

“I know,” he bent down to whisper in her ear as he wrapped his arms around her.

Y/N didn’t know how long they stayed in the shower. But eventually Jason turned off the water and wrapped Y/N around in a fluffy white towel. She looked so young and innocent.

He moved her to their bedroom and sat her down on the edge of the bed.

Y/N watched him as he moved about the room, getting each of them clothes – all from his own closet.

“Are you hungry?” He asked her carefully as he handed her a pair of his sweatpants and one of his hoodies.

She shook her head.

Jason wasn’t surprised. One of the side effects of trauma and shock was a loss of appetite. But he made her drink a huge glass of water before he let her get in bed. And he made a mental note to make a big breakfast tomorrow when her body recovered and realized how starving it was.

When they were both finally under the covers, Jason didn’t hesitate to pull Y/N completely in his arms, smothering her with his giant frame. She welcomed his touch and warmth, burying her face into his chest.

Neither of them knew who needed this closeness more.

Tonight had been scary. Y/N knew Jason’s anger was bound to show up at some point. But right now, both of them were just grateful they were okay.

————————-

To Y/N’s surprise, she woke up in bed alone.

But her concern didn’t last long as she heard Jason moving around in the kitchen and she could hear soft music was playing if she listened hard enough.

When Y/N moved to get out of bed, she felt all the soreness that came from being grabbed and thrown around like she was last night. She winced, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. But she made a mental note to hide any signs that she was in pain from Jason.

Over their time together, Y/N and Jason got disturbingly good at reading one another. So, when Y/N walked into the kitchen to find Jason making breakfast, she immediately sensed things were not good. It wasn’t the cooking that tipped her off. His naked back was to her and she could somehow see the tension in his shoulders – in his whole body.

Y/N knows he heard her as soon as she walked into the kitchen.

“There’s coffee,” he says without turning around from the stove. He’s making pancakes. Chocolate chip pancakes, to be precise.

Y/N pours herself some coffee and sits at the table, watching him.

A few minutes pass before she’s had enough of the tension.

“If you’re gonna yell at me, then yell at me,” she told him.

Jason froze for a moment, but then quickly looked at her over his shoulder. “When have I ever yelled at you?”

He had a point.

Yes, Jason was once filled with only rage. There was a reason some feared Red Hood more than the Batman. He was ruthless. Fueled by vengeance, his temper, and his disappointment in the evil that plagued the world. He fought his enemies, but he also fought with his friends and family.

But Jason Todd was none of those things with Y/N. He never lost his temper with her. He never projected his rage and hardships from what he saw as Red Hood onto her. He’d never even raised his voice with her.

“I know,” Y/N admitted. “But I also know you’re still angry.”

Jason sighed, turning off the stove and bringing a giant plate of pancakes to the table.

But Y/N couldn’t eat while having this discussion.

Jason leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You wouldn’t have let me do it,” Y/N countered.

“Yeah, and for good reason.”

“He used you, Y/N.” Jason tried to explain. “You’re untrained… with no exposure to this world. He knew not to involve you and he went behind my back to do it anyway.”

Y/N lowered her head in shame. There was a part of her that felt useless. She couldn’t jump around rooftops and save those who needed it. She was just…normal.

“I just wanted to help,” she mumbled.

Jason leaned forward from seeing her upset. “Y/N, come here.” He reached for her hand and baited her towards him.

She took his offer and moved from her chair to straddle his lap.

Jason held her waist tightly as he pressed his forehead to her’s. “I don’t want to lose you,” he whispered.

“You’re not going to,” she reassured him.

“Please, I’m begging you, don’t ever do something like that again.”

Y/N’s heart hurt at how desperate he sounded. She had realized far too quickly that Jason wasn’t scared of death. He was only scared of her death.

“I promise,” she told him.

“You scared the fucking shit out of me, Y/N.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Jason accepted her apology with a kiss. But it didn’t end quickly. In fact, it got more heated and hungrier. His grip got firmer on her waist.

Y/N knew where this was going, especially as he thumbed the hem of her hoodie and sweatpants. But they both needed this.

“The pancakes, Jason.” She warned him.

Jason smiled as he pulled away from her lips. “Fuck the pancakes,” he told her in between kisses. “I’m takin’ you back to bed.”

—————————

A few weeks had passed since the incident. Y/N tried to get her relationship with Jason back to normal. He still insisted on keeping his vigilante life away from her. But there was more of an understanding for why now.

However, tension had risen again a couple days after the attack, when they received an interesting gift in the mail. They had opened a rather large envelope addressed to the both of them. 

Inside were two first-class plane tickets to Paris with their names on them and an open reservation at Hotel Le Royal Monceau.

Y/N had stared at them with more of an understanding than Jason.

She’d looked up at Jason. “I…I told him I’ve always wanted to go to Paris when I first met him at the gala.”

He’d glared at the gift. “Typical Bruce. If he can’t punch his way out of an issue, he’ll try and buy it.”

Neither of them had said anything about actually using tickets and reservation. It just collected dust on one of their end tables.

Now Y/N sat in their apartment alone, reading another one of Jason’s books, when her cell started ringing.

It was a number she didn’t know, but she decided to answer it anyway.

“Hello?”

“Ms. Y/L/N, it’s Alfred Pennyworth,” a charming voice answered back.

Y/N couldn’t help, but smile. As if she knew more than one Alfred in the world. “Hi, Alfred.”

“I thought it would be a good time to give you that lesson you asked for. Are you free today?”

Y/N looked around her apartment. All of her plans for today had consisted of laying around, drinking coffee, doing a bit of reading.

“Yes, today would be great.”

—————

Y/N wouldn’t make the same mistake twice and had given Jason the heads up on her change of plans.

Seeing as Jason had no issue with Alfred, he didn’t seem too bothered bit it all. But he did still tell her to be careful and ended the call with a sincere, “I love you.”

It was strange going back to Wayne Manor when there wasn’t a gala being held there.

Y/N thought it would seem more like a home this time around, but it still felt like a museum to her. And yet, she still had imposter syndrome as she walked through the threshold.

Alfred gave her a warm smile as he opened the door. “It is lovely to see you again, Ms. Y/L/N.”

“Alfred, please, it’s just Y/N.”

He nodded. Then he gestured for her to follow him. “Come. I have a station set up in the cave.”

Y/N stuttered to a stop. “Cave? As in the Bat Cave?”

Alfred seemed amused with her hesitation and concern. “Of course.”

“Should I be – Is that even OK?” Y/N fumbled through her question.

“Well, I don’t see the point of hiding it from you. It’s not like you don’t know all the family secrets already, dear.”

Y/N blinked at that and finally continued following him.

Alfred led her through the secret passage way as if he was taking her to the dining room. She tried to control her reactions and not come off too interested in the details of it all. But it was rather hard.

Just like Alfred told her, there was a little medical station set up in a brighter lit area of the dark and dingy cave.

Y/N half expected him to bring up the recent drama that she’d caused. But ever the gentleman, Alfred didn’t so much as mention it.

He also did as he promised, going through everything she could ever need to know while tending to Jason. He even had little models to practice sewing stitches on. He was a good teacher and Y/N was soaking it all up like a sponge.

She couldn’t imagine her going to med school at any point. But knowing these skills were going to be used to help Jason made it easier to retain.

After hours of teaching, the cave awoke as a carport opened and the batmobile sped in.

Y/N internally swore. She’d hoped not to run into Bruce with this visit. He never seemed to be home, so the odds had seemed low. But clearly she’d messed that up.

Bruce stepped out of the car, taking in the two of them.

“Any injuries, Master Wayne?” Alfred asked politely.

Bruce was about to lie, but he glanced down at his abdomen where it was quite obvious he was bleeding.

“Perfect. My pupil can practice on you,” Alfred announced. 

Y/N’s eyes widened in panic. “Oh! That’s definitely a bad idea…”

“Nonsense. Best way to learn is under pressure,” he winked. “I shall go off and start dinner. Let me know if you’re near death, Master Wayne.”

Y/N watched him leave, regretting ever having come here.

When she turned back around, Bruce was removing his cowl.

“He’s right,” Bruce admitted. “Best way to learn is under pressure.” Then he moved to sit in the medical chair.

Y/N swallowed, realizing how dry her mouth was. “Right.”

Her hands shook as she tried to remember everything Alfred had been through. But she knew in the back of her mind that Bruce was fully capable of stitching himself up. So, as much as this was a set up from Alfred, Bruce wasn’t running away from it like she had tried to.

Y/N hadn’t said a word as she cleaned his wound, only apologizing when she thought was necessary – even though he never made a sound of pain or even so much as winced.

Bruce seemed to be following her lead, not wanting to force her to talk if she didn’t want to.

But after 20 minutes or so of silence, Y/N couldn’t take it any longer.

“You know, you can’t buy his forgiveness,” she said as she focused on her stitches.

“I wasn’t only looking for his forgiveness…”

Her eyes flickered to meet his awaiting gaze. “You can’t buy mine either.”

“I owe you an apology,” Bruce began to her surprise. “I should have never involved you. It was dangerous, despite how in control of situation I thought I was.”

“I agreed to it,” Y/N offered. Then she looked at him again. “But I accept your apology.”

A moment passed before Y/N asked, “Are you going to say that to him, too?”

“I would if he would even consider talking to me.”

With that comment, Y/N put down her tools for a second and straightened her posture. “I may not know you very well, Bruce. But I do know that you and Jason are more alike than either of you care to admit.”

She hesitated on continuing. Did Bruce even deserve advice from her?

“He was hurt. And he showed all of you that hurt by being angry, because he didn’t know how else to tell you. He doesn’t feel heard and he doesn’t feel seen. He was lost. And it’s hard for him to just forget how you all handled it.” She took in a deep breath. “But I know he still sees all of you as his family. And you’re the closest thing he’s ever had to a real father.”

Then she quickly grabbed her tools again and cleared her throat. “So, get over yourself, and just talk to him. And I mean actually talk to him – not as Batman and Red Hood, but as Jason and Bruce.”

The cave went quiet.

Y/N couldn’t help herself and looked up at Bruce. Either she was losing her mind or he was giving her a very shy smirk.

“What?” She blurted out.

But before he could answer, a motorcycle sped into the cave.

Y/N would recognize Jason’s bike anywhere. But he wasn’t in uniform. Instead, opting for his black leather jacket and a normal tinted motorcycle helmet.

After he took it off, he eyed the two of them, trying to read the room.

“Hey,” Y/N said shyly.

“Figured I’d come and pick you up,” Jason answered her unasked question, ignoring Bruce.

Y/N looked down at Bruce’s injury. “Actually, I’m all done here.”

“Thank you,” Bruce said sincerely as Y/N covered the wound with a bandage. “You’ll be a better nurse than Alfred in no time.”

Y/N grinned and took off her gloves.

But then she met Jason’s unsure gaze. They had a silent conversation.

“I’m gonna go say goodbye to Alfred,” she quickly told Jason, but really she was telling both of them. “Meet me out front when you’re ready?”

Jason hesitated, but nodded.

Y/N walked to him and gave him a quick kiss for comfort and encouragement.

And then she was off, leaving the two men alone.

Jason shifted his weight, not knowing where to start.

“You’re lucky to have her,” Bruce finally spoke.

Jason winced even though it was a compliment. “I don’t deserve her.”

Bruce stood up. “That’s not true.”

“You of all people know I’m not a good man, Bruce.”

He shook his head. “We may have different views on how to save this city. But we both want the same thing. That doesn’t mean you’re not a good man, Jason.”

Jason blinked at his statement.

“I owe you an apology for... a lot,” Bruce began. “The first is putting that girl in danger.” He paused. “The second was not protecting you – before and after everything that happened.”

“You mean before and after I died?” Jason wasn’t going to make this easy for him.

Bruce’s jaw clenched at that.

“Anything else you want to apologize for?” Jason challenged.

“Yes,” Bruce confirmed. “But I get the feeling that you don’t want to hear it all right now.”

There was a pause.

��You’ll always be my son, Jason. Even if you no longer see me as your father.”

Jason’s eyes filled with tears at Bruce’s words. But he held them back. He couldn’t break down. He couldn’t be weak. Not here. Not now. Not like this. 

He couldn’t take any more of this discussion. But he knew this was what he’d been wanting to hear from Bruce for so long.

“I’ll see you around, Bruce.” He told him before putting his helmet back on.

But Bruce had one last thing to say. “Keep her close. Don’t be like me, Jason.”

‘Don’t push people who love you away and make this darkness be your only life,’ was what Bruce would never actually have the courage to say.

Jason now had the cover of his helmet to hide his expressions. But he gave Bruce one last glance before tearing out of the cave.

—————

As Jason pulled his motorcycle up to the front of the manor to pick of Y/N, Damian was playing out front with Titus on the gravel drive.

“Hey, Demon Spawn,” Jason greeted after taking off his helmet.

“Todd,” the boy replied coldly.

To his surprise, Jason got off his bike and walked to him with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.

Damian eyed him.

“I saw what you did that night. You saved her life,” Jason said.

Damian waited.

Jason held out his hand. “I just wanted to thank you.”

The boy hesitated before finally shaking it.

Jason didn’t expect Damian to say anything. But he did know talking to him like an adult, instead of a kid, was the only way to get through to him.

Then Y/N was walking out to them with Alfred lingering in the doorway.

“Hi, Damian,” she greeted sweetly before greeting his dog as well.

“Hi, Y/N.”

Jason was surprised he even remembered her name.  

“Ready to go?” He asked Y/N.

She nodded. But then reached up to touch the white in his hair. She seemed to have a fondness for it. And Jason didn’t seem to mind.

“You OK?” She asked.

He nodded. “Better.”

She gave him a shy but encouraging look. “I’m glad.”

“I love you, you know,” Jason breathed.

“I know,” she smiled.

---------------------------------

Oh lordy. That took way longer than I was expecting. But kept my mind off of this dumpster fire of a country. And I hope reading it did the same for you ❤️

[abizarreyodelingincident]

Braaaaaaains...

Jason Todd is legally – and biologically – dead. His family noted his lack of pulse at three in the morning, inside the cave, his body laid out on a table with medical instruments.

No, really, tell him something he doesn't know.

What else crawls out of a grave moaning and groaning?

Or, Jason thought his family full of the world's greatest detectives was smarter than this. Apparently not.

****************************************************************

It had been an ordinary night. Calm. The stage for very little costumed crime and barely more regular, non-insane crime as well. Half the menagerie that made up Dick's loving ragtag bunch of younger siblings had even taken the night off.

Nothing should have make him arrive to silence this thick, to this faint echo of sniffling.

He sprinted after the noise.

Damian's fine, left before me. Duke didn't go out, nor did Steph. Babs spent the evening with Cass in the cave, Tim swept the bowery and said he was going to stop by Jason's place to-

He collided with a shaking, tear stained Tim right outside the medbay.

There was a body on the closest table. Others around it, crying, pacing, muttering in denial.

Dick couldn't look.

No, no, please, please no. I can't do that again. I can't!

Scarred skin, too pale – to be Duke or Cass – by death. His breath hitched. No. He. Fuck.

He knew those scars. Those arms. That chest and that fucking Y from navel to shoulders.

“Dick! Jason... he was...  I found him in his apartment. And I brought him to the cave... but... Jason doesn't have a pulse. He's... cold...”

Dick stumbled.

No.

No, no, no, that... that couldn't be real.

He caught himself on his little brother. Brought himself into a hug too tight, as painful as the arms gripping his ribs and back. A grip meant for a lifesaving light at sea. For a safeline over a ravine.

Twice. He'd lost the same brother twice. And this time, he didn't even have the excuse of inexperience and unstable situations. He... he patrolled the city whilst his brother was dead, completely oblivious to the fact. How could he? How dare he not know?!

“Shh, Tim, I'm here. I'm here.” But not for Jason, whispered a vicious part of him.

“What's all this?”

Dick's heart just about stopped.

Damian stood at the entrance to the lockers' room, uniform folded under one arm, hair slightly damp from a shower and Bat-themed pajamas worn without shame. His mild annoyance was proof he had no idea of the drama that had happened not twenty feet from him.

With reluctance, he let go of Tim, a gentle hand lingering on his shoulder, before he took a few steps toward his youngest, most vulnerable brother.

“D-Dami, I... ”   Damn it, he had to be the one to tell Damian about this. Because otherwise, the person to break the news would be Bruce, and-

Shit.

Bruce.

Oh God. How could they possibly tell him- ? After all their fights, the goddamned shattering that had broken the man he had been, and their last conversations even being more admonishment about protocols that Jason had flippantly disregarded. Bruce would never recover. That was it. The end of Batman.

...But first, God he hated himself, wanted to just curl up in a corner and forget everything, first he had a young brother he needed to talk to. One... one little brother less than just this afternoon.

“Jason... ” He swallowed, his throat tight, his heart in denial, the words so damning, but needing to be said. “Jason did not make it. He... he's dead.”

Damian stayed thoughtfully silent.

Not... not the tearful reaction he had expected, but Damian had grown up surrounded by so much death and horror that he would obviously be guarded. And oh, Dick's heart went to his baby brother, and he truly wished he could

“I do not understand. Why such theatrics for the zombie?”

Dick gasped, knowledge warring with the flash of anger.

“Damian! He's our brother!”

“Did he lose his head?” Damian demanded, and Dick's mind buckled.

“Huh, no, but that doesn't have anything to d-”

“Then, why are you acting so weirdly emotional, Richard?”

Before Dick's temper could catch up to his mouth, the longest and most painful-sounding gasp erupted from the medbay, where, to the general shock of all, Jason's gray-ish body shot upward with both his arms raised.

Electroshocks didn't make you jolt like that.

Electroshocks, in fact, remained in their kit on the other side of the medbay, unused. Because Jason had seemingly been dead long before he had been brought to the cave.

That was roughly the moment when Dick's brain caught up with the first of many hints. Latched onto it with a fool's hope.

“... Damian... When you were calling Jason a 'zombie', what did you mean?”

Damian's brows scrunched up together, a look he meant to be intimidating, but had more in common with a disgruntled kitten. “Exactly that, Richard. Do we not have files on zombies in the computer? Dead bodies walking about animated by unholy powers?”

Jason's not- Dick forced the half formed thought to a halt. For once, he rather wanted to be very, very wrong in how he perceived his family.

“What's with all the noise? Can't someone try to sleep like the dead without screaming?” Jason groused. “Should have gotten myself buried ag-OOF!”

“JASON!” screamed the hysterical teenager that had launched himself at a very lively dead body.

“Huhh? Hi, Timmy?” Jason said blearily, ruffling Tim's hair, eyebags suspiciously prominent. “... Fear gas?”

The blinking slowed, the fog of sleep drifting away as he silently begged the rest of them for an answer.

Happily provided by a still crying Tim. “I thought you were gone!”

“What is dead may never die,” Jason quipped, his mouth twisting in that cocksure grin from his Robin days.

And Dick wanted nothing more than to stop right there, pass out from the relief and joy of his little brother being alive and kicking, but...

But... 

That joke. One of many morbidly unfunny jokes and puns.

Bone-deep fatigue crushed his back. A bitter curse for whatever higher forces messing with them echoed strongly inside his skull, before he gave in to the inevitable and inhaled a few times for patience.

“Jason. We thought you were dead-dead.”

With prickly, hedgehog style affection, Jason pushed Tim back and stood up, stretching. “Come off it, Goldie. I wasn't even decapitated. I mean, if you were really worried, you could have just called a necromancer or something.” His expression hardened. “But if you ever call a necromancer on my ass, I'll shoot your perfect glutes.”

Yup, yup, yup, this is happening.

Tim finally wiped the rest of the tears away, helped by one of Stephanie's handkerchiefs, when he froze. “Wait. Your skin's still pale as a corpse.”

The flicker of amusement in Jason's eyes killed it for Dick.

God, how could they have all been this idiotic? If Wally ever learned about this – Shit, did Roy and Kory know before him?!

They were going to laugh their asses off at him.

Jason, unaware of the world recalibration happening in his poor big brother's mind, shrugged and rolled his shoulders – who creaked suspiciously loudly, more like rusty hinges than normal body parts. “Eh, I'm just a bit hungry. Nothing a meal or two won't fix and get some blood flowing back under my s-”

“You're a zombie.”

They turned toward him.

“Way to cross the finish line on time, Mister Rabbit,” Jason drawled.

Barbara, for once, looked completely unprepared. “A zombie,” she repeated, dazed.

Stephanie's nervous giggle died out when she noticed the lack of humor. “... No!”

Cassandra furiously looked down, muttering in her fist. Duke, by contrast, had the expression of a person stuck in a very awkward nightmare.

Even Jason's good-natured ribbing faded in when faced only with the distant screeched of bats. “... Hm, guys, bats, roostery, parasites and octopi? This is old news. What's with all the... ”

He vaguely gestured at their faces.

“Old news?” Tim rasped like he was being strangled.

“I came back from the dead years ago! Come on! Am I in a parallel universe? Hey, Demon Brat,” Jason called, baffled, “you knew, right? I didn't imagine that, right?!”

“Of course, Todd. Mother informed me of everything. Besides, Grandfather's interest in your state of being was of interest for a few weeks. How could I have been ignorant about your zombified state of being?”

In the corner of his eyes, Dick noticed Tim's, Barbara's and Cassandra's expressions all pinching in displeasure. In a way, Dick was reassured. He hadn't been the target of a family-wide hoax to discredit him as an attentive and loving eldest brother. No, he was just naturally blind, apparently.

“He knew?” Tim growled, like it was a personal failing of the fabric of time and space.

Damian's tone was the exact opposite. “And none of you realized...?”

Dick squirmed. “I... huh... you see...”

His baby brother eyed him, completely unimpressed, and for once after years of partnership, Dick felt he deserved every single ounce of it.

“I see... I shall reevaluate the value of this 'detective training' I've been given if this is the result then,” he said, the nearest thing to completely disavowing his older siblings without saying so.  

In other circumstances, perhaps the others would have demanded that Damian stay and explain, but he suspected the quelling look it would have deserved prevented them. Not one of them spoke until Damian had disappeared upstairs and the elevator doors had closed.

“Jason, since when have you been a zombie?”

Jason blinked, jaw hanging. Juuuust enough for some of the scar tissue on his face to stretch past normal. Why did Dick only notice that now?

“Wait, you're all serious? How could you not know? I told you guys!”

And there was Dick's pride rearing its ugly head, because no, no he had not been told and maybe his deductive skills needed a very complete overhaul, but his memory was still excellent!

“You never said that. Heck, we weren't even talking until two years ago!”

“I literally told you all that I crawled out of my grave by myself, groaning the entire time. No experiment, no Lazarus Pit, just a body waking up in its own coffin and deciding to breathe fresh air. Does that not scream 'zombie' to you?”

They cringed.

“Not the only one that returned from beyond,” Babs mumbled. He could see her pull up the mental list right there.

“I greeted you all last meeting with a 'What's up, my bat folks? It's me, your favorite zombie!'. What did you think that meant?”

“That you're an asshole with a morbid sense of humor?” Stephanie quipped, and Jason momentarily paused his indignation to high five her. Fair's fair.

“Okay, but what about that time I got shot in the chest and I told you all not to worry about it?”

“I just figured you were going to get stitched up by Leslie or yourself, you know, regular bat neuroses,” Tim confessed.

Dick made a mental note to keep a much closer eye on Tim's patrols for the next few months.

“From a bullet chest wound?” Jason asked with an incredulousness that was not at all earned, because he was a freaking zombie!

“I thought your armor had blocked it! The hole wasn't bleeding!” Tim protested, cheeks red and tone defensive.

“Well, yeah,” Jason replied. “I don't bleed. It's like some fruit pulp or something. Ain't coming out if you don't press. My heart's not pumping.”

That's a 'nevermind' on the smoothie I saved for after patrol.

“Well, I know that now,” Tim said.

“I feel like I should write it down on the plaque or something,” Jason still sounded amazed, and might have pinched his arm just to be sure he hadn't been daydreaming, “Like, 'a good soldier AND A VERY DISCRETE ZOMBIE!' in big flaming letters. With a spotlight. And a dictionary opened on 'Zombie' or 'Undead'. You know, just in case the next batbrat to come along needs a few subtle hints about my true nature. What'd you think, Dick?”

He could not have been blushing harder than he currently was. “I think shut up.”

“Of course. What about when I shoved my deadly cold toes at Tim under a blanket?”

“Cold feet.”

“Never eating around you guys?”

“Daddy issues with Bruce,” Barbara deadpanned, and got a sock thrown at her for her honesty.

However, Duke, poor kid, turned green. “Wait, so when you offered me some jellied brain... was that not a death joke?”

Dick's stomach spontaneously shrivelled.

By the grimaces and sharp inhales all around, that was a common reaction.

Then the worst possible thing happened: Jason grinned.

He strutted, all confidence and brashness, and viper-quick, snatched an arm around Duke's shoulder. “Narrows, Nightlight, my tiny bitsy bro, everything I do is a death joke. My very existence laughs at death.”

Inside the batcave, the groaning was long-suffering and shameful.

“But that was actually brains,” Duke countered.

“Yeah. Calf brains. It's a delicacy.”

Tim massaged his forehead. What a mood.

Duke narrowed his eyes. “It was purely for the joke, wasn't it?”

Jason patted him on the back so hard Duke faltered. “One tragically wasted on your obtuse mind. I prefer me some Tête fromagée instead. Less like grainy jello.”

Stone-faced, Barbara wheeled herself toward the batcomputer. There, upon a series of quick clicks, she opened up the Bats's files. “Alright, you had your fun. Do you need to eat brains or are you just the world's least funny meathead?”

“I'm the world's most misunderstood vigilante!” Jason loudly protested, milking their pain for all it was worth. And then some. “But yeah, I do. No grey matter in there” -- he tapped his belly -- “no thinking up here.” -- his skull.

“Need some better quality brains then,” Tim stage-whispered to Stephanie.

Cass pointed the finger at Jason. “No killing for brains.”

Jason's good humor flickered with a flash of green. “Ain't ever done it, never will. It's a matter of morals, not hunger, Cass.”

Dick swooped in that minefield before it exploded.

“Great! Proud of you, Jay! You're the good kind of vegetarian zombie,” he said, putting an arm around his ginormous little brother's shoulders.

Wait a minute...

“Hey, you're older than when you died! Zombies don't age.”

“No, I was thrown into a Lazarus Pit, and the evil waters cured the malnutrition-induced delay on my growth. Haven't aged a day since.”

“I just thought you had a weird babyface thing going on,” Tim said.

Jason's grin turned sardonic. “Quite the opposite, Timber.”

Dick put his head in his hands in some vain attempt to prevent his brain from leaking through his ears.  With his luck, his little brother would 'playfully' eat some of it. “There's no way you look this rugged at biologically sixteen! I refuse to believe that.”

“Can you imagine my power if I'd been allowed to reach my full potential?” Jason leered, eyebrows waggling like waves in a sea at storm. “So many heart attacks.”

Barbara and Cassandra exchanged a silent look, and, after a solemn nod, Cassandra reached up to slap Jason upside the head.

“Thank you, Cassandra,” Barbara told her. “Jason, never do such a thing again.”

The disgruntled groan that followed must have been on purpose, because Jay was indeed an asshole.

“Besides, it's not like the world will ever know,” Tim said, cutting, a smirk hiding by his hand.

Dick really thought his little brother was far too relaxed upon learning that Jason was one with the undead. Sure, they had all encountered various levels of zombies during their missions, from all sorts of oral traditions and cultures, alien viruses and hidden nanobots piloting meat puppets. It wasn't even classified as a nation-wide crisis to encounter free-roaming zombies. But since the chronically unalive individual in question was one of their own, Dick felt he was owed at least a whole evening of frazzled panic and incomprehension for once.

“Oh?” Stephanie instead asked, sensing blood.

Tim shrugged. “Well, you know, no pulse, no blood flow,” he said with an angled eyebrow nodding at Jason's crotch

Stunned silence followed, their expressions varying from disgust, horror, unholy glee and, from Jason himself, wide-eyed shock that his shrimp of a little brother had had the balls to assimilate the zombieness fast enough to mock him for him.

Dick prayed for patience. For fortitude. And for an alternate timeline where he was an only child.

Why, for all the love of cotton candy and professional uncriminal clowns, did Tim put THAT image of Jason inside their brains? What had he done, him, a loving model for all of society, to suffer like this?

Maybe if he asked nicely, Jason would eat the image out of his head. He owed Dick that much after this clusterfuck of a conversation.

“Ooooooooh,” Stephanie crooned, miming getting dunked on. With acrobatics.

Jason huffed. “Like I was ever interested in the first place. I ain't Dick.”

“Okay, no slut shaming or virgin shaming, in fact, no shaming at all, please. In this house, we accept all sexualities, but we don't give out raunchy details about any of it, I only have so much brain bleach.”

“Share?” Duke pleaded in a whisper.

Oh, I wish I could, you young innocent soul.

A few beeps turned their attention back to Barbara and the batcomputer. “Well, that's one long overdue update to Jason's files. Anyone else want to share their 'obvious' medical condition?”

“Excuse you, being dead is not a medical condition.”

“I will make you wish for the peace of the grave, Jason.”

Droplets dripped from nearby stalactites.

A few bats flew overhead.

Jason turned to them like nothing had been said.

“Right. That was fun. Best night of my month. Can't wait to tell the Outlaws.”

Dick resigned himself to a series of unflattering texts by the absolute dickheads that were his second family. He could already tell the messages would blow up his phone to the Moon. 'You didn't know your brother that came back from the dead is a zombie?!'

“Have mercy and wait tomorrow morning?”

That smile could have been great or terrible. “You're lucky I'm in a spectacularly good mood, Dick.”

He had lifted his leg over his bike's seat when Duke was struck by genuine worry.

“Wait. Does Bruce know?”

Jason barked out a laugh.

“Of course he does! God knows he's got some massive blind spots, but he's obsessive, paranoid and I find subcutaneous trackers on me every week. No way he didn't get the hint before now.”

But, as his gaze went over the rest of them, his good cheer dimmed, his grin slipping off his face as surely as a bit of decayed flesh.

“... Right?”

[miss-choco-chips]

Umm... I was wondering if you could Maybe do a follow up on your mini fic Last Line from dicks pov? It gave me alot of feelings and i would love to see the fallout?

Your work is really good! Its so cool how your brave enough to put pieces of yourself out there for other people!

Hey babe! Thank you for your kind words! It made me smile getting this, you are very sweet <3

I totally forgot about Last Line lol, but when I saw it reminded me that I actually wrote a bit more of it, both before and after the scene I posted. So, this isn’t exactly what you asked, but here’s some backstory and then the fallout!

---.---

Four years old, and he watches the red string on his finger pulled taunt towards the crying boy, the color of the thread well disguised among the red blood of the murdered acrobats.

Nine, and he watches from the shadows as it swings right and left, following Robin’s pirouettes from building to building. The thread, that usually goes a few feet before ‘vanishing’ from sight, was almost completely visible now, at such a short distance from the person holding onto its other end.

He’s on his twelve when he tries to explain to Dick the importance of him going back home. He wasn’t sure of his success, even though the older hero took him to the manor, because during his whole speech, Nightwing hadn’t looked up from the red joining them together. It wasn’t exactly how Tim wanted him to find out, but… Batman needed a Robin, and he was out of options.

At fourteen, he feels Kon’s hand clenching on his shoulder, as they both watch from the side how Nightwing swept Barbara off her feet and twisted her around, laughter falling from both their lips even as Dick thread’s end was pointing towards Tim. The third Robin didn’t turn to look at his best friend, didn’t meet Bart’s eyes or react to Cassie taking his hand on hers. He just made sure his face was perfectly devoid of any emotion when he muttered, low enough only a kryptonian would hear, ‘I wish it was any of you’. 

(A few nights later, when he and Conner were sitting quietly on the Tower’s roof, the clone took Tim’s hand with his own, his lack of red string blatantly obvious as he said ‘If I had any, I wish it could be you’. To this day, it’s the sweetest thing anyone ever said to him)

He is so, so tired, and he’s only sixteen. But keeping up with the shitfest that was the Battle for the Cowl, helping Dick while ignoring his red string (pulling him towards Nightwing, now Batman, stark contrast against the dark of his suit, with distracting insistency), dealing with Damian’s abuse as expected of him as the ‘mature, older brother’, coping with Bruce’s death, the shock of Dick throwing him, his soulmate, away so so easily…

(Shouldn't be surprising; Dick had been discarding him in favor of others since they met, shamelessly displaying his various relationships in front of him with an attitude that might be called cruel from anyone else but that just earned him playful shoves from other Leaguers while Tim was expected to swallow his pain, because a red string isn’t a promise, Dick is free… and yes, he knows that, but it doesn’t mean shit to his dying heart)

(Maybe, when he left for proof of Bruce being alive, it wasn’t so much for his old mentor than it was for himself)

----.----

Tim is seventeen and halfway across the world, looking at the string attached to his hand that never truly meant anything to any other than him (not to Bruce, who never took Dick aside and talked to him about consideration with his soul mate; not Dick's conquers, who never gave a fuck  about the red string in the hands that touched their skin, even when a lot of them knew who was on the other end of it; not Dick himself, who after asking every thing out of Tim and having it, forcefully took the one thing Tim wouldn't give by choice and claimed Tim was his equal, his soulmate, so he never could be his sidekick... even if it was the first time ever that Dick even mentioned the string tying them both together), when he thinks 'you were always free; now, I'm freeing myself’.

He gingerly bites on the string, and with his other hand takes a handful of it and pulls.

The pain piercing his heart is expected, but not new. He had been feeling it since the first time he saw Dick's back as he walked away with someone else.

He times it carefully, too. He doesn't think Dick would care, but just in case, Tim waits until it's morning in Gotham, when he's sure Dick is probably sleeping after patrol.

Maybe he would wake up without noticing

---.---

In Gotham, Dick is carried by Alfred and Damian to the cave, when the new Batman's screams of pain woke everyone in the Manor up. They are suspecting cardiac arrest, and then Dick looks down to his hand and notices the string, always tense, signaling him where his north is, where Tim is, laying loose and lifeless.

He panics, asks Superman to track Tim down or something, and when the man confirms Tim is still alive somewhere in the Middle East, he knows.

And like a freight train, the parting words Kori told him the last time they saw each other hit him right in the chest.

"He isn't going to wait for you forever"

----.-----

When Tim does come back, at nineteen, it’s a quiet thing. 

He spent the last how many days carefully setting his systems up, making sure his mainframe would outstand Oracle’s scrutiny when she realized he was back in town and tried to hack her way into his life.

(He didn’t blame her, of course not. Dick was charming enough, good enough, anyone he set his eyes into would be helpless to nothing but fall in his arms.

And, wasn’t Tim the one who would have been intruding, had he tried to chase after the first Robin? Everyone knew he and the original Batgirl were a perfect match, thousands of times better than Tim, whom Fate just wanted to screw over.

But not anymore)

The first thing he did, once the safe houses were chosen and his programs up and running, was to ruthlessly hack into the Batcomputer and take a look at patrol routes. 

He would need to keep clear of Diamond District and Old Gotham, least he risked crossing paths with B and R. The Financial and City Hall Districts were apparently Batgirl’s playground for the night, and if he wanted to drop by and let Cass know he was back, he could always search for her by the Upper West Side down to Chinatown.

He would avoid the Upper East Side like the plague, though. Maybe Coventry too, just to be safe. Lots of skintight blue in that direction.

Which left… Crime Alley, the Bowery and Burnley, mainly. He needn't check to know who’s house that was.

And that’s how he ended, on his very first night back on the streets, dragging Red Hood’s bleeding ass away from a blowing up building.

-----.-----

Apparently, saving a recently rehabilitated murderous vigilante was a bonding experience, because Jason didn’t kick him out of his side of town, nor tell on him. 

He couldn't, however, do anything to prevent the criminal gossip mile from spreading, and before a week had passed, half the city was aware of the new player on the board.

-----.------

Jason was taking a breather, smoking while sitting on his favorite rooftop, when the rustling sound of fabric told him his peace and quiet was over.

“I thought you were back at being N”, he greeted, not bothering to turn around or get up. 

“B was out of town, and Robin needed someone to watch over him during patrol.”

A quick glance around had Hood snorting, “Then y’re doing a shitty job. Don’t see the midget anywhere.”

It would never NOT be weird to hear a strangled laugh coming out of the Bat suit, as tight and humorless as it was now. It seemed big ol Dick wasn’t doing so great tonight.

“Batgirl took him to a party in Diamond District. Gang war.”

He humms in response, not bothering to keep on the smalltalk. N, no, B was here for something, and it wasn’t Jason’s job to ask it out of him; if it was important, he would do it himself.

“Where is him, Hood?”, he finally went to the heart of the matter. 

Jason tilted his head, still looking over his city, unmindful of the steps coming closer to his position, “Robin? Ya just said it, B. Going senile? Gang war, wasn’t it?”

“Don’t play around. You know I mean…”

Oh, yeah, Dickie still wasn’t sure what to call Timbo. Criminal gossip only went so far, for someone who didn’t bother to shout his hero name to everyone he beat up. It was very possible only  Jason was aware of his new monicker. All gothamites knew was a young vigilante showed up recently, wearing red and black and hanging out with the Hood, which immediately upped his street rep to ‘not to be fucked with’.

“Lil red?”, he completed for his older brother, feeling both charitable and petty. Batman’s wince was more evident by the rustling sound of his cape; he had hit a sore spot, hadn’t he? 

“Where? I’m not asking again.”

“Good, ‘cause I’m not answering. Must be ‘roundere somewhere, the little creep.”

“Hood, I’m running out of patience.”

“And I’m out of cigarettes, your point? I don’t have him on a leash asshole. We just share the same hunting space, it’s not like we go home together and do face masks while we talk about feelings.”

They did go to a safespot, though, and share beer and pizza while cursing their relatives and Fate as a whole, but it wasn’t necessary information for the fucker. He just breathed in the last of his smoke before dropping the cigarette butt and stepping on it, stretching as he did.

“Now, any more of this riveting conversation, or can I go? No, wait, it was a rhetorical question; get out of my part of town, ass. I’ve been plenty generous by letting you come this far, but our truce lasts as long as the lot of you don’t build any sandcastles on my playground and you know it. Now, scram.”

He could feel Dick’s reticence at leaving without what he came here for, but Oracle must be talking him into letting it be for tonight, because he didn't push. Jason turned just in the right moment to catch the way Dick looked down to his gloved hand, as if expecting the lifeless red string to be pulled taunt in Tim’s direction by some miracle. Jason felt the smallest ping of pity, quickly washed away by the memory of the younger hero’s haunted eyes as he told Jason the story of his severed soul bond and how he came to do it.

Thirty seconds after the bat vanished into the night, a little red bird landed softly on the spot next to him.

“Thanks, Hood”, he muttered, just as tired and hurting as he’d been ever since he saved Jason’s ass and they became partners, but with the smallest hint of lightness that made him prouder of driving Dick away than he’d ever been.

“Don’t mention it, but fair warning, the big B scomin back home in a few days, and he’s harder to kick out than a hurting, annoying bluebird.”

“I know”, Tim sighed, well aware of both facts. “I’ll play it by ear. For tonight, what about bashing some skulls and ruining Two Face’s new op? Good intel says it’s just a few blocks from here, and shattering bones always makes you smile.”

“Babybird, you speak the language of love.”

“Wasn’t that french?”

“I’m trying to compliment you, don’t be a smart ass about it.”

“I am smart, and I do have a good ass. That seems like an impossible request.”

----.----

[path-of-my-childhood]

How Aaron Dessner and Taylor Swift Stripped Down Her Sound on ‘Folklore’

By: Jon Blistein for Rolling Stone Date: July 24th 2020

At the beginning of March, the National’s Aaron Dessner traveled back to the United States from Paris, where he’d been living with his family, to shack up at Sonic Ranch Studio in Tornillo, Texas to work on the next Big Red Machine album with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. Those plans - obviously - soon shifted, as the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic set in. Dessner and his family were able to relocate to their home in upstate New York as lockdown orders went into effect, and the musician soon settled into a groove of homeschooling his kids and able to focus fully on music in a way he hadn’t in a while, due to the National’s regularly rigorous touring schedule.

In the middle of what Dessner describes as one of the most productive moments of his career, Taylor Swift called. A longtime and avowed fan of the National, Swift asked if Dessner wanted to try collaborating on a few songs remotely. He said of course, and asked if she was looking for anything in particular. He noted that he had plenty of material at the ready, but acknowledged he’d been in a more experimental mood, due to the Big Red Machine sessions; not to mention, Dessner added, he’d never really ventured into the pop world Swift has dominated for well over a decade. She told him to send everything he had.

“I think she was interested in the emotions that she feels in some of the music that I’ve made,” Dessner tells Rolling Stone.” So I just sent her a folder of things I’d done recently and was excited about. Hours after, she sent back a fully written version of ‘Cardigan.’ It was like a lightning bolt struck the house.”

Over the next few months, Dessner and Swift crafted the bulk of Swift’s eighth studio album, Folklore. Dessner spoke with Rolling Stone about working with Swift, their instant chemistry, how the album developed under a thick cloud of secrecy and more.

When Taylor first reached out, did she have a specific vision in mind for the album? She was a bit cryptic. I didn’t know that we were actually working on a record for quite a while. It just seemed that she was seeking me out to collaborate. And then we were both feeling very inspired by it. Once there were six or seven songs that we had written over a couple of weeks, she said, “Hey can we talk?” Then she said, ‘This is what I’m imagining,’ and started to tell me about the concept of Folklore. Then she mentioned that she’d written some songs at an earlier stage with Jack [Antonoff], and they felt like they really fit together with what we were doing. It was a very inspiring, exhilarating collaborative process that was almost entirely remote. Very sort of warp speed, but also something about it felt like we were going toe-to-toe and in a good pocket.

After “Cardigan,” how did these songs develop and do you think she pushed you in any new directions as a songwriter? When you’re working with someone new, it takes a second to understand their instincts and range. It’s not really conscious. She wrote “Cardigan,” and then “Seven,” then “Peace.” They kind of set a road map, because “Cardigan” was this kind of experimental ballad, the closest thing to a pop song on the record, but it’s not really. It’s this emotional thing, but it has some strange sounds in it. “Seven” is this kind of nostalgic, emotional folk song. Even before she sang to it, I felt this nostalgia, wistful feeling in it, and I think that’s what she gravitated towards. And “Peace,” that just showed me the incredible versatility that she had. That song is just three harmonized bass lines and a pulse. I love to play bass like that - play one line then harmonize another, and another, which is a behavior I stole from Justin Vernon, because he’s done that on other things we’ve done together. And actually, that’s his pulse, he sent me that pulse and said, “Do something with this.” But when she wrote that song, which kind of reminds me of a Joni Mitchell song over a harmonized bassline and a pulse, that was kind of like, “Woah, anything can happen here.” That’s not easy to do. 

So, in the morning I would wake up and try to be productive. “Mad Woman” is one I wrote shortly after that, in terms of sound world, felt very related to “Cardigan” and “Seven.” I do have a way of playing piano where it’s very melodic and emotional, but then often it’s great if whoever’s singing doesn’t sing exactly what’s in the piano melody, but maybe it’s connected in some way. There was just some chemistry happening with her and how she was relating to those ideas.

“Epiphany” was something she had an idea for, and then I imagined these glacial, Icelandic sounds with distended chords and this almost classical feeling. That was another one where we wrote it and conceived it together. She just has a very instinctive and sharp musical mind, and she was able to compose so closely to what I was presenting. What I was doing was clicking for her. It was exhilarating for us, and it was surreal - we were shocked by it, to be honest [Laughs]. I think the warmth, humanity and raw energy of her vocals, and her writing on this record, from the very first voice memos - it was all there.

Do you think that chemistry might’ve had something to do with her being a National fan, and you being a fan of her music? We met Taylor at Saturday Night Live in 2014, or whenever that was that we played and Lena Dunham was hosting. We got to meet her, and that was our first brush with a bona fide pop star. But then she came to see us play in Brooklyn last summer and was there in a crazy rainstorm, like torrential downpour, and watched the whole show and stayed for a long time afterwards, talking to me and my brother. She was incredibly charming and humble. That’s the nice thing about her, and a lot of people I’ve met that have that kind of celebrity. It’s great when you can just tune it out and be normal people and chat, and that’s how that felt. So, we knew that she was a big fan, and we really got into the 1989 album. Our Icelandic collaborator, Ragnar Kjartansson, is a crazy Swiftie. So we’ve kind of lived vicariously through him. I’ve always been astonished by how masterful she is in her craft. I’ve always listened to her albums and put them in this rarefied category, like, “How did she do that? How does anybody do that? How do you make ‘Blank Space?’” There was an element that was intimidating at first, where it just took me a second to be like… Not because I think her music is better than what we’ve done, but it’s just a different world.

Were there particular songs, albums or artists the two of you discussed as reference points for this album? “Betty,” which is a song she wrote with William Bowery, she was interested in sort of early Bob Dylan, like Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, I think. “Epiphany,” early on, felt like some weird Kate Bush-meets-Peter Gabriel thing. I think we talked a little about those things, but not a lot. Actually, I think she really trusted me as far as my instincts to where the music would ultimately go, and also the mixing process.  We really wanted to keep her voice as human, and kind of the opposite of plastic, as possible. That was a bit of a battle. Because everything in pop music tends to be very carved out, a smiley face, and as pushed as possible so that it translates to the radio or wherever you hear it. That can also happen with a National song - like if you changed how these things are mixed, they wouldn’t feel like the same song. And she was really trusting and heard it herself. She would make those calls herself, also.

You mentioned William Bowery - who is he? He’s a songwriter, and actually because of social distancing, I’ve never met him. He actually wrote the original idea for “Exile,” and then Taylor took it and ran with it. I don’t actually know to be totally honest.

We’ve been trying to track him down, he doesn’t have much of an internet presence. Yeah, I don’t fully know him, other than he wrote “Betty” and “Exile” with her. But you know she’s a very collaborative person, so it was probably some songwriter.

So it’s not an alias for anyone? No, no, no. I mean, I don’t know - she didn’t tell me there was a “Cardigan” video until literally it came out, and I wrote the song with her [laughs]. So I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure he’s an actual songwriter. She enjoys little mysteries.

With the National, you and your brother write the music, Matt Berninger adds the lyrics, and then you fuse it - was it a similar process on Folklore? Taylor is very collaborative in that sense that, whenever she sent a voice memo, she would send all the lyrics and then ask me what I thought. And sometimes we would debate certain lines, although generally she’s obviously a strong writer. So she would ask me if I liked one line, and she would give me alternate lines and I would give her my opinion. And then when she was actually tracking vocals, I would sometimes suggest things or miss things, but she definitely has a lot of respect for the collaborative process and wants whoever she’s writing with to feel deeply included in that process. It was nice, and was a back and forth, for sure. And she would sometimes have ideas about the production if she didn’t like something, especially. She would, in a tactful way, bring that up. I appreciated that, too, since I wanted to try to turn over every leaf, take risks and sometimes get it wrong. That always takes a second, to get over and then you start again.

You mentioned earlier that once you had six, seven songs, she was able to describe a concept behind the album. I’m curious what that conversation was like. She would always explain what each song was about to me, even before she articulated the Folklore concept. And I could tell early on that they were these narrative songs, often told from a different… not in the first person. So there are different characters in the songs that appear in others. You may have a character in “Betty” that’s also related to one in “Cardigan,” for example. And I think that was, in her mind, very, very important. It doesn’t seem like, for this record at least, that she was inspired to write something until she really knew what it was about. And I think I’m used to a more - at least lately - impressionistic and experimental world of making stuff without really knowing what it is. But this was more direct, in that sense. That was really helpful, to know what it was about and it would guide some of the choices we were making.

Every time she would send something, she would narrate a little bit, like how it fit, or what it was about. And then when she told me about Folklore as a concept, it made so much sense. Like “The Last Great American Dynasty,” for example, this kind of narrative song that then becomes personal at the end - it flips and she enters the song. These are kind of these folkloric, almost mythical tales that are woven in of childhood, lost love, and different sentiments across the record. It was binding it all together and I think it’s personal, but also through the guise of other people, friends and loved ones.

You were working in secret - how did that affect the process? Was that a difficult burden? It was. I was humbled and honored and grateful for the opportunity and for the crazy sort of alchemy we were having. But it was hard not to be able to talk openly with my usual collaborators, even my brother at first. I didn’t know if I could really tell him, because we normally… Ultimately, he helped me quite a bit, he orchestrated songs. But we always help each other. But eventually, we figured out how to do it. Towards the end of the process, I said to Taylor, ‘I really feel that I need to try a few experiment and try to elevate a few moments on the record because we have time, and we’ve really done a ton of work here, and it all sounds great, but I think we can go even further.’ And then she said, ‘Well what does that mean?’ And I explained how that would work, and the way that we work. Our process is very community-oriented, and we have long-time collaborators that we have a good understanding with. So I was able to say, to my friends, ‘This is a song I’m working on, I can’t send it to you with the vocals, and I can’t tell you what it is, but I can explain what I’m imagining.’ And the same with my brother, he knows my music so well that that was very easy for him to just take things that we were working on, add to that, and do his kind of work. So it was all remote and everyone was in their corner and we were shipping things around. It was incredibly fast because of that, because you didn’t have eight people needing to come to the studio. You had eight people working simultaneously - one in France and one in L.A. and one in Brooklyn. This is how it went, and it was fun. We got there.

When were you able to tell everyone who contributed that this was the Taylor Swift record, what was their reaction? You can imagine. I think they realized it was something big because [of] the confidentiality, and they were like, ‘It could only be a few things.’ I couldn’t tell them until, basically, when she announced it. Just in the moments after she announced it, I basically told everyone. I was like, ‘By the way…’ And they were thrilled. Everyone’s thrilled. Nobody seemed mad, everyone was thrilled and honored. Even Justin Vernon had not heard anything else except “Exile,” even though the pulse of that song “Peace,” he gave that song to me. It was important to have it be a surprise, and you know how it can be with someone in her position, with all the speculation, and she’s always under a lot of pressure like that. So it was really important to the creative freedom she was feeling that this remained a secret, so she could just do what we were doing.

Being such longtime friends and collaborators with Justin, what was it like hearing “Exile” for the first time? His voice and Taylor’s together? He’s so versatile and has such a crazy range, and puts so much emotion… Every time he sings when I’m in his presence, my head just kind of hits the back of the wall. That’s the same on this song. William Bowery and Taylor wrote that song together, got it to a certain point, then I sort of interpreted it and developed a recording of it, and then Taylor tracked both the male and female parts. And then we sent it to Justin and he re-did obviously the male parts and changed a few things and also added his own: He wrote the “step right out” part of the bridge, and Taylor re-sang to that. You feel like, in a weird way, you’re watching two of the greatest songwriters and vocalists of our generation collaborating. I was facilitating it and making it happen, and playing all the music. But it was definitely a “Wow.” I was just a fan at that point, seeing it happen.

Are there any moments that really stick out to you as particularly pivotal in shaping the sound of this record? The initial response. When we first connected, and I sent a folder of music and Taylor wrote “Cardigan,” and she said, “This is abnormal. Why do you have all these songs that are so emotional and so moving to me? This feels fated.” And then she just dove into it and embraced this emotional current. And I hope that’s what people take out of it: The humanity in her writing and melodies. It’s a different side to her. She could have been every bit as successful just making these kinds of songs, but it’s so great that she’s also made everything that she’s ever made, and this is a really interesting shift, and an emotional one. It also opens other doors, because now it’s kind of like she can go wherever she wants, creatively. The pressure to make a certain kind of… bop - or whatever you want to call it - is not there really anymore. And I think that’s really liberating, and I hope her fans and the world are excited by that because I am. It’s really special.

[octalove]

II: Blood and Ghosts

(Batgirl/Red Hood)

Description: Reader tries getting a clue. part one

“Typically, they steer clear of the Village, but that doesn’t appear to be the case as of recent. Oracle found out about an operation out of a Hadley’s Deli there- standard money laundering, but it also could’ve been linked to the shipment of cocaine that we found at the Yacht Basin.”

“Right. So what changed?”

“A better question would be what didn’t?”

A beat. The contrasting silence that followed jarred me from my thoughts as I glanced over and realized that Bruce was prompting me for an answer. Tim looked expectant and inquisitive, but that was sort of his default expression.

“Oh. Sorry. What?” I said apologetically.

“Maroni.” He said simply. Nothing came to mind. He didn’t express verbal disappointment as he turned back to Tim, but I knew it was there.

“Red Hood has been operating out of The Bowery. Maroni and Falcone are stubborn, but they’re losing. He’s pushing them north.”

“So moving to the Village isn’t expansion. It’s desperation.” Tim muttered thoughtfully.

“I believe so.”

“May I be excused?” I asked. Bruce glanced back to me, studying a moment. Scrutinizing every detail; not deciding whether or not to let me leave- rather, deciding why I wanted to. Then, he nodded. Seems he wasn’t in the mood to ask.

I swept up my laptop and phone, and ascended the stairs from the cave to the manor quickly, trying to escape the eyes boring into my back. Only when the cool, lemon-scented air of the manor filled my lungs did I breathe a sigh of relief. Alone. All I needed was few minutes alone. I scaled the marble steps to my room and shut the door.

I hadn’t told anyone that I saw him three nights ago. That I watched him murder a man in retribution for me. My alter ego, anyway. I don’t know why. Maybe because it would mean having to tell them I snuck away. Having to walk through every detail again; sights, sounds, smells. What Red Hood was wearing and what he sounded like, what gun he was holding and how he held it, what prompted him to fire, how many shots and how he acted when he did.

But if ever there was a time to be high-strung and anxious, it was when you were keeping secrets from Batman. And Oracle. And Nightwing. And Red Robin. And Robin. Damian in particular could smell a lie like blood in the water, and he wasn’t too polite to hold your gaze until he was certain you weren’t hiding anything. That, and the art of solidarity was still foreign to him- even if I did tell him in confidence, he would take it right to Bruce. Possibly the police. Maybe a news outlet or two just because it soothed his vindictive nature. I’d been avoiding him.

Evening bled into night, and I was barred from masked business on school nights, so I couldn’t even patrol to ease the anxious energy. Still, that meant less opportunity for Bruce to analyze my musculoskeletal ticks or whatever the hell he did to tell when I was nervous, so I decided it was a worthy trade-off and resigned myself to independent research.

Who the hell was Red Hood, anyway? Half of Gotham was looking for him, the other half was running from him. I opened my laptop.

His debut was The Viper House, a strip club in Little Italy that also functioned as a human trafficking hub when the owner, Renaldo, needed to buy his wife (or handful of mistresses) a new Blue Nile diamond. By the end, the building had to be gutted. There’s only so much crime scene clean-up can do with carpet.

Next came the kingpins. Blowing open a trafficking operation had a short grace period if you didn’t cut out the source. Italian mobsters, the Romani families, the crews that had built empires on drug and sex trade dropped like flies until they found that their numbers dwindled for the first time since Joker finally bit it. The dozens of loyal men on their payroll decided that empty pockets were better than a full grave, and when it came to the business of death, Red Hood was very persuasive. It went on like that for six months; he amassed men, power, weapons, and tech. Most importantly, a potent reputation. This was due in no small part to his creative footwork; he liked to send messages. One file covered an incident where Alphonso Kuznetsov decided to write Gotham’s new player an open letter in the evening column suggesting that if he decided to bring his business to Port Adams, he might find himself in a ‘watery grave’. Kuznetsov was found a week later when a fishing vessel drug an entire coffin from the bottom of the harbor, padlocked and full of water. He was bound, drowned, and gagged with a copy of the very paper that featured his message. Red Hood must have been in touch with his artistic sensibilities; it was all very Shakespearean.

Of course, these were all just words. Rumors and hearsay. All I knew of the Red Hood from my intimate encounter was that he had a quick hand, an incendiary temper, and he didn’t fucking like creeps. All the makings of vigilante, if you chose to see it like that.

I sighed. Two hours and none of my research gave me any indication of why me. Why the hell should Red 57-kill-count Hood care if some goon told me he like the way I looked in my suit? I may has well have been the veiled threats of Kuznetsov’s evening column for all my inconsequence to him.

But it all kept running through my mind. Backwards and forwards. The vitriol in his voice preluding the barbarity of his reprimand. The way he said little Batgirl, like the crime was that I’d been engaged at all. More than the memory, something was telling me to keep digging. Something dragging me back to Crime Alley with the current of the running blood through Little Italy’s gutters.

I had to do something. And if that something wasn’t going to Bruce, then school tomorrow would have to wait.

The morning went along as per usual. I woke up at six, dawned my Gotham Academy uniform, grabbed a muffin and coffee, completed a complicated and well-practiced secret handshake with Tim (that Dick was secretly jealous of), and was out the door at 6:30, keys jingling in Alfred’s hand.

He dropped me off outside the ornate gothic academy, and I waved goodbye as I skipped backward along the cobblestone walkway. Once his black Mercedes was a pinpoint on the horizon, I promptly turned heel from the front doors, heading East toward the Narrows. Catching the subway there would take me as far as the Knight’s Stadium, and from there it was a short distance to the Alley. I wasn’t exactly inconspicuous in my academy uniform- anyone who gave a shit could pretty confidently deduce that school was in session at 8am on a Tuesday, and no student native to the Alley could afford a private education, so I was bound to draw eyes. I hadn’t packed an extra outfit incase Tim or Alfred got suspicious- that was paranoia puppeteering. I wasn’t used to skipping school. I’d have to make due.

Crime Alley in broad daylight was a brand new experience. At night, at least the smoke unfurling from the sewer grates hit the flickering streetlights and offered an unconventional charm. During the day, it was like shedding light on a foul sin. I was starkly out of place, and even the lapdog-sized rats seemed to know it, scurrying back across gritty concrete when I passed by. I looked for familiar things I’d seen the other night- a run-down apartment complex, a gated liquor shop, a meager but menacing corner-store, busy with glaring laymen reluctantly dragging out their wallets for a pack of cigarettes. I caught the eye of a woman sitting on the curb with a paper-bag bottle for company, and she scowled.

Spurned by the rats, and now by the people, I was running out of options. Sticking close to the buildings that perimetered the square, I moved in tandem with the motion of the locals, so as not to draw any eyes by looking lost. It was an unnerving scape; too quiet for my liking, but just empty enough to feel safely underseen. I made my way past familiar landmarks until I finally stood before the warehouse where I’d been.

I listened; no sound from inside. Even henchmen have day jobs. Jimmying the rusty padlock was just a matter of brandishing a bobby-pin from my hair, and the heavy metal door swung open without much resistance. I cautiously picked my way around crates and boxes, unsure of what I was looking for. Clues, maybe. Proof that he was here and dropped a body in my name, amen.

There was a dark, daunting stain on the floor where Hoffman’s body was. A phantom gunshot echoed in my ears, along with a nauseating sound of flat-back weight slapping concrete.

“Ain’t school in session?” I spun on my heel, meeting the red helm of a towering man draped in leather and armor. My mouth went dry. My right foot slipped back into a fighting stance before I remembered I was in cashmere and plaid, not kevlar. Not that I even stood a chance either way; but at least he seemed to harbor good will toward Batgirl. Wordlessly, I took a few steps back until I was standing over the blood and ghosts of Hoffman’s demise.

“P-please. Don’t- don’t hurt me.” I rasped.

I could play the rebellious, morose teenager and come up with something like it was a dare, or I could offer no explanation and simply cry.

Red Hood’s head tipped one way. His hands were empty- for now. Two heavy-looking glocks hung on his waist. I didn’t want to die on top of Hoffman’s blood stain. There was a level of symbolism there I was deeply unprepared to spend my final moments analyzing.

“Lookin’ for something, darlin’?” I swallowed- unable to say you.

“Wh-What do you want?” I asked.

He laughed, but it was humorless. Lacking whatever key component made laughs so appealing. As though the sound rung off the gravestones of uncanny valley before reaching my ears. “I think we’re both asking stupid questions.” He said. I was fucked. He outweighed me by a hundred pounds, and could out-draw me even if I had a weapon. I had no explanation for my being here that suited a civilian, and my phone was in my bag, meaning help was a world away.

But just as soon as he advanced a few paces, he stopped, and gestured to the crimson beneath my feet.

“Enjoy the show the other night?” He asked, before pulling something out of his jacket pocket and twirling it between his fingers with practiced ease. A batarang.

“You forgot somethin’.”

Cold, knife-like fear erupted in my spine, driven to the hilt. He knew. How did he know? What the hell was I supposed to do? My terror must have shown on my face, because he stopped fidgeting.

“It’s okay, babydoll. Your secret’s safe with me.”

“H-how-“

He moved again, slow, lazy strides until he was no more than an inch from me.

“Who are you?” I asked, figuring if I was gonna die, I should at least know that much.

His hands grabbed mine. The leather of his gloves was cool on my skin, but it barely registered for the closeness of him. I stared at the red bat symbol on his chest, jagged and angry looking. I blinked and looked down slowly as he closed my fingers around the cold metal of the batarang.

“Go home, little bird.” It was a cold, seething demand, his voice snagging on the scrambler to make it sound like a low growl.

“Tell Batman when he’s ready to stop sending his toy soldiers,” His hand went under my chin, tilting my head upward. My breath shook as I drew it, hitching, even though the man before me was faceless. Clean, red monochrome, glinting in the light.

“I’m getting impatient.” *

I walked through the manor door in a daze, the cold steel batarang searing my palm.

Bruce and Damian were in the living room, each invested in their own reading material. The grandfather clock ticked his steady tempo, and I inconspicuously adjusted the bag on my shoulder. Bruce had a steaming cup of coffee on the glass side table beside his leather chair.

“How was school?” He asked, not looking up. My paranoia convinced me it sounded rhetorical, but I shrugged anyway.

“Same old.” A glance, to see if my lie had landed.

Damian was the spitting image of his father. He, along with Tim, operated in the wake of being an only child, so he never did care about how I did in school, or much of anything else in my orbit. If at any point he did, he never thought to ask. Father and son looked like a matching set of dolls sitting there, cross-legged, with dark hair and gaunt eyes, both leanly muscular, and habitually poised; a consequence of being from the upper echelon of each of their respective backgrounds.

“Hey, um, are you going out tonight?” I asked.

“I am.”

“Can I come?”

“Are you certain you want to?” He still didn’t look up.

I blinked. “Um… yeah. Why?”

“You’ve been distracted since the last outing.”

Damian visibly tuned in.

“Oh. Sorry. I had a big paper I was worried about for school, but I turned it in today, so I’m good to go.” I threw him a thumbs up, even though he wasn’t looking.

A beat.

“Very well, then. Nine o’clock.”

I nodded, and headed toward the stairs.

“Y/N,” I stopped, and turned around. He was looking at me now, eyes blue and steady.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think you did well?”

“…”

“On the paper.”

I threw him a smile. “The best.”

[willowistic22]

August - Javid

Ship : Javid

Genre : Angst

Song : August - Taylor Swift

Warnings : fighting (arguing), slap, cursing, if there’s more feel free to remind me to tag it :)

A/N : so long overdue i am sorry but school is a bitch quote me in that one idc lol. Anyways, this is an almost 5 k words of angsty javid songfic (thank you @nowisthetimetocarrythebanner for helping me choose which ship to write first :)) Hope yall like it and not get tired of me being a huge swiftie hehe

Salt air

And the rust on your door

This isn’t what he’s used to. Davey always tells his parents if he’ll be going out no matter what, even if he knows they wouldn’t like it because Davey will always find a way to get around their disapproval. This is out of his disciplined nature, and he knows it. Yet, he’s so drawn to this idea. Of course he’s drawn to this idea if it isn’t Jackie boy’s idea.

The moment he heard a tapping noise coming from his window, his mind is no longer in between the words of the book his father had lent him for the night. He saw the boy’s figure waving frantically on the rusty fire escape and he knows it only leads to a bizarre idea Davey will end up regretting.

I never needed anything more

“This better be worth it,”

Oh, but it’s always worth it. It’s Jack for crying out loud. When will it not be worth it for Davey when it’s Jack knocking on his window?

He folds the corner of the page and closes the book. Tossing the book on the rickety bed that he and Les share and takes a few steps across his packed bedroom to get to his window.

He slides the window open. The gust of the summer night wind instantly entering his room, along with the remaining sounds that can be heard down in the streets. But his focus is all on the boy that came to visit him. Crooked smile, dirty coarse cheeks, ruffled dark brown hair, and a lighter shade of brown in his twinkling eyes.

Whispers

Of "Are you sure?"

“What if we get caught?”

“We won’t”

“You don’t know that”

“Well, we will if ya keep standin’ around in the middle of the street like that!”

“Jack, I’m serious!”

“And so am I, Dave!”

The nickname. It caught Davey off guard. It instantly stops his jabbering. He hasn’t heard that name in awhile, Davey forgot the effect it has on him. A fast heart rate, stiffen posture, and an uncontrollable mind.

Jack being Jack, took his silence as compliance. He continues to lead him in Ms. Medda’s theatre through the back door. Ms. Medda wouldn’t mind Jack sneaking around the theatre for whatever reason. But he’s still frowned upon by the bulls, which would mean their shady looking actions would be a reason to capture him.

Davey is still standing in front of the doorway in the alleyway, whilst Jack is already a few feet ahead of him inside. Jack turns around to see if he was following and walks back to the door to convince him one last time. 

He gives him his hand and voices out gently, “It’ll be fun. I promise”

And just like that, Davey is lured in his schemes once again. He reluctantly places his hand in Jack’s palm, which was instantly pulled through the door and into the backstage of Ms. Medda’s theatre.

“Never have I ever before”

Ms. Medda couldn’t be found as the two bolts passed the people working backstage. She’s performing with the rest of the Bowery Beauties. Jack’s been hearing Ms. Medda and the other performers practice this new song and was told that it’s being performed in front of an audience for the first time tonight.

Jack pulls Davey up to the scaffolding backstage so they can have a better view of the performance and a place to sit down peacefully. They let their legs dangle freely under the railings since no one will be able to see it. As Jack expected, Davey was captivated. As he puts his hands on the railing and leans forward for a clearer view, his green eyes twinkle like the stars and his smile as pure as gold. He usually hides his emotions well, but this time it was obvious this was his first time watching a performance in a theatre.

“You do this often, huh?” Davey said, eyes still glued down to the stage.

“Yeah, I’se like to sneak out after puttin’ the littles to sleep,” Jack answered. A moment of silence followed. Then Jack flips his head to gaze back at Davey and says, “It’s just the first time I brought someone with me”

Davey twists his head to face Jack. He sees the boy staring back, but he can’t decipher what about this stare that made it different from the other times they’ve shared a gaze like this. A weird feeling settles in Davey’s stomach. The feeling heats his cheeks and he knows it’s a blush.

The sudden sound of applause pulled them away from their made up universe. A standing ovation full of cheers and whistles. Jack twirls his head first, clapping softly to the feathery and glimmering ladies bowing towards the audience.

Davey’s composure hasn’t returned yet, he couldn’t find the strength to clap. He can only gaze down upon the bowing and try to decipher what had happened.

And when he least expected, Jack places a hand on the railing right next to Davey’s. His pinky slowly brushes over Davey’s. He keeps his hands absolutely still, stiffening up his whole left arm as their pinky intertwine. All while avoiding each other’s gaze in hopes to not ruin this little moment they’re sharing.

Oh, God, not again…

Your back

Beneath the sun

There’s this love hate relationship he has with Jack Kelly. The obvious reason is that the good person and amazing leader side he has is hidden under all the stupidity and spontaneous decisions that mostly leads to a catastrophe. Sure, he’s a figure to look up to for younger newsies taking on the world. But when he gets some space to do something self-indulgent, it can get a bit out of hand.

And then there’s also the not-so obvious reasons. The gentleness, the vulnerability, the oddly intense moments, the small kind gestures, all of which only Davey gets to see. He turns into a nervous wreck but seems to be addicted for more. It’s a different treatment from his other newsie friends, even a different kind of gentleness the littles receive.

When these moments first started happening, Davey thought this was a gateway to project his real feelings towards the boy. And every time after they have those special private moments together, Jack always pretends it never happens the next time they meet each other. It confuses Davey to no end. One moment they’re alone on the fire escape sharing deep secrets they’ve never told anyone before, soaking up whatever’s left of the sun before it sets. The next moment, they’re just ‘your super close pals being normal pals’.

He still hasn’t fully decided what to feel about this game he’s playing with Jack. It’s obviously dangerous, physically and emotionally. But it’s the only soft interactions Davey has ever gotten from Jack. He’s been aching for it the moment he fell for him back when the Manhattan newsies dragged him to strike.

So here he is now, standing in the circulation gate with his stack of paper in one hand and Les’ hand in the other. Ready to play along with whatever game Jack has in store for the two today. He hasn’t seen him this morning, and maybe it’s better that way.

Wishing I could write my name on it

Davey watches Les run across the circulation gates towards where his own newsie friends were waiting for him before they can start marching towards their usual selling spot. He smiles and waves back at the ten year old who seems to already be having too much fun with his friends to notice.

“They grow up so fast, huh?”

Davey twists his head around towards the source of the voice. The same boy from last night stands in front of him, proudly wearing a smirk while carrying his stack of paper.

“Well, it’s bound to happen one way or another” Davey replied, somehow being able to keep his cool.

Jack lingers in his green eyes for a moment. Davey can sense there’s a hidden meaning behind his gaze. And if his gut serves him right, it’s the same kind from last night.

Wait, what’s he doing?

He’d usually initiate the play pretend game early in the morning. But asking Davey to sell with him? That’s not pretending. Even if that game is still on his agenda for today, selling together would only make things harder.

Could it be an idiotic move for Davey to accept this invitation? Most likely. But with that offer on the table, it sparks a small flame in Davey’s curiosity. He wants to know what Jack has in mind for them.

Will you call when you're back at school?

After the two were done selling, Davey thought they were going to Jacobi’s to meet up with the rest of the newsies. But Jack turns out to have a different plan of his own. One which, like most of his other plans, brought fear upon Davey.

He led the two back to Medda’s theatre, where everyone was working backstage. They’re too busy to notice two rapscallion looking teens sneaking in the theatre.

“Jack, where are we going?” Davey finally asked as Jack continued to drag him towards the rows of seats in front of the grand stage.

They stop once they arrive in front of two specific chairs on the very last row. Jack takes a seat on one and puts his newsie bag on his lap. Davey can see a shape forming in it, despite knowing Jack had sold all of his paper earlier.

“Come on, sit down with me” Jack said, patting the empty seat next to him. Davey froze for a second, eyeing Jack skeptically. He rolls his eye with a little chuckle before pulling out the item hidden in his bag, revealing a sandwich he bought from Jacobi’s, “I got us lunch. So come sit down!”

Despite complying to the invite, Davey can’t figure out what were his intentions behind this plan. They sit in silence for the first few seconds, taking a few bites in their own respective sandwiches while staring at the stage being redecorated for tonight’s show.

“I wanted to ask somethin’… but… wasn’t sure if you’se okay talkin’ about it in front of the others…” Jack started out slowly without meeting Davey’s eyes.

At this point, Davey’s heartbeat was getting faster and louder. He so badly wants to hide his face in his hands, but his muscles have frozen in place. He keeps control of his eyes from moving, not wanting to take one glimpse at Jack to avoid a long drawn out stare.

“What is it?” Davey’s lips seem to have a mind of his own, growing impatient at the excessive silence. He mentally slaps it from thinking it was a good idea to make any sort of move.

In the corner of his eyes, he can see Jack turning his head to face Davey. Though he still doesn’t dare to look back.

“Are ya still gonna come by the lodge once you’se back to school?”

A silent sigh of relief escaped his lips, though it did kind of hurt when the question wasn’t what he expected. Nonetheless, he answers, “Well, not as often as now. But I’ll definitely come back every now and again”

August is ending and all the newsies knows Davey and Les are bound to go back to school. They’ve grown comfortable with the brothers, so it’ll definitely feel weird not having them around as often.

Never in his wildest dreams would Davey expect Jack asking about that topic. But going out of his way to drag him all the way here? And buying the two lunch while he’s at it? There has to be more than that, right?

I remember thinking I had you

“Are you gonna miss me?” Davey rounds up the last bit of courage in him to ask.

He hears Jack scoff and can feel the eye roll directed towards him, “Keep dreamin’, Dave!”

He finds the strength to look back towards Jack. Seeing the brunet cracking up a laugh through his smile, he laughs along with him.

Their sandwiches are now left as crumbs, but they didn’t bother walking out of the theatre. They were too entertained with their conversation. Davey noticed how quiet they’re being, despite being too far from anyone to hear what stupid nonsense spilled out of their mouths. There’s also that oddly intense feeling between their breaths, giving all their stupid nonsense a double meaning to it.

As time passes on, things start to escalate even further. It could be just Davey, but there’s something about the way Jack looks at him. His brown eyes look more cheerful and his smile is wider. Unprompted hand touches, so soft and slow yet utterly meaningless. There was no reason for Jack’s hand to dance around the palm of Davey’s. Nor was there a reason for said hand to travel to playfully touch his cheeks. And could their heads be slowly gravitating towards each other? Or could that just be Davey’s head playing tricks with all of this happening to him?

“So… will you be able to run the lodge without my help?” Davey asked, filling in the little silence settling between the two after a fit of giggles turned into a lingering gaze.

“I’se ran the lodge just fine before you and Les showed up,” Jack started, “ I’ll be fine without you!”

“Sure glad I won’t be missed” Davey joked, turning his head down to his hands on his laps.

“What? No! That ain’t what I meant!”

He reaches over to grab his hands gently, causing the taller boy to go beet red. He draws reassuring circles on the back of Davey’s hand, the goosebumps returning once again as he watches it unfold on top of his lap.

“We’ll be fine, but we’se gonna miss you guys,” Jack said.

The hand reaches up to Davey’s chin, forcing him to properly face Jack. His green eyes grew wide at the sight of the brunet boy staring longingly at Davey. He was for certain that their heads are slowly gravitating towards each other. With every inch closer, his heartbeat grows louder and faster. He couldn’t bear to keep his eyes open the moment he could feel Jack’s hot breath dancing on his face. His lips, already parted and so ready to be able to welcome Jack’s—

BANG!

The door right beside them swung open, causing the two boys to jump and return back to their respectful seats.

“Funny seeing you boys here!” A femenine voice rang through their ears, high and pitchy but with a friendly tone. 

They turn their heads towards the sound. There stood a tall figure. Head full of long red curls and clever light brown eyes darting between the two. Cheeks with some freckles animated to form a smirk on the pearl white face.

“And you have a proper excuse to be here, Kath?” Jack challenged her, “I’se sure you’se smart enough to know the first show of the day doesn’t start till later in the evenin’”

Jack’s smile was no longer centralized towards Davey again. He gets himself lost in Kathrine as she makes her way towards the stage with her notepad and pencil, brushing his witty remarks off with a little eyeroll.

Davey watches as he smiles at Kathrine’s presence and remembers the reality. He shifts back in his seat, trying his absolute best to make sure Jack doesn’t hear his heart breaking. That would be embarrassing if he found out Davey thought this wasn’t a game after all.

Back when we were still changing for the better

He quickly departs from the scene, not wanting to meet Jack’s face as he gets up from his seat. He left the theatre quickly, recollecting himself with a deep breath as he made his walk.

Davey repeatedly beat himself up for being such an idiot. There’s been multiple times that happened. When he thought something was going to be different between the two, something around them would remind them that it’s all just a game. It isn’t different than those previous times and will never be different. It’s just a concept Davey still needs to get used to.

Wanting was enough

For me, it was enough

Oh, how badly he longed for the feeling. The feeling to be held by him. The feeling to share a loving kiss. To share more little moments with him. With that infuriating and equally charming Jack Kelly.

Davey would scream in his head, over and over again, how that’s not possible. He isn’t meant to love and be loved by Jack. His heart was already reserved for Kathrine. He knew that from the moment he saw the way Jack acts around her. He could see hearts in his eyes, a brighter smile, and maybe a cockier manner.

When Jack was around him, it felt just like that but slightly different. Jack would be more gentle, tamed, and shier. Davey made up so many excuses in his head for that contrasting behavior, all of which benefits his own feelings. Though, he’s smarter than to think that is what’s actually going on. So he’d usually proceed to make up more excuses of how happy he is that Jack found Kathrine. It did sort of help him through this wave of sadness. Without it, Davey might not be able to blend himself with the crowd of people rushing up and down the sidewalk.

Cancel plans just in case you'd call

And say "Meet me behind the mall"

“Dave!”

The sound of his name made him look back. His heart starts beating faster when he saw it was Jack Kelly. He shouldn’t be standing still like this, waiting for Jack to catch up to him. It’s obvious Jack has his heart for someone else. Davey can’t keep waiting for him to keep up and chase after him only to be tossed to the side once he’s bored with the little game they’re playing.

Jack stops in front of him, crouching down with both hands on his knees. He takes a moment to catch his breath before properly standing up to flash his slightly red and sweaty face.

“You forgot your bag,” Jack said, pulling out a dirty newsie bag out of his own and presenting it to him.

He didn’t realize it wasn’t strapped around his torso like usual till now. He takes it from Jack’s hand and chuckles out through his small smile, “Thanks, Jack”

Davey awkwardly turns around, back to focusing on his trek. Before he took a step further, something grabbed his arm from behind and stopped him.

Before he knows it, Davey finds himself in an alleyway. Backed up against the wall by Jack, uncertainty makes up the lines and curves of his face. But Davey isn’t focused on his face. Rather, the lips that had crashed onto him with no warning.

So much for summer love, and saying “Us”

A few days have passed and Davey could still feel the feeling of those lips against his own. How it remained frozen for a moment when they first connected, but soon moved together once they’ve registered to what’s happening. It creates a sweet feeling that makes the two tremble in each other's grasps. He couldn’t describe what Jack tastes like, mainly because he was too focused on the feeling caused by the movement, but it was addicting and he wants more of it.

The feeling buzzed through him for the rest of the day till the next morning. Sarah and Les noticed it and kept on bugging their brother to spill, but nothing worked. Davey was still feeling the high of it after a few days but was able to ground his feelings so it won’t show up to the surface all that much.

Though, he’s still unsure if he should make a move. Jack somehow acted a bit stranger than usual. The ‘pretending that nothing happened’ game was on again, but this time he was more distant than usual. While the others were smiling and properly greeted Davey and Les when they arrived at the circulation gate, Jack just waved and quickly got himself busy on his own.

'Cause you weren't mine to lose

After a long day of selling, Davey sits down on one of the empty chairs at Jacobi’s for some lunch. His rousing newsie friends filling in the, once peaceful, deli with their chattering and laughter. Davey stays silent while Crutchie, Finch, and Specs talk about their day.

In storms, Race comes running in followed by Albert and takes up the last two chairs on their table. Their energy contrasts with the previous four, but they’re always welcome with their stupid grins.

“You’se two are excited” Crutchie commented after putting down his glass of water, “What happened?”

“You’se guys would never believe what just happened!” Race started, followed by a fit of laughter with Albert. Confused glances were shared between the other four. Upon seeing this, Race and Albert stopped to tell the story.

But I can see us

Lost in the memory

Race was wrong. Davey would absolutely believe what just happened. Though, he wishes he didn’t believe it. Or that it was just a lie. Whatever he can say that can dismiss what Race and Albert just told him. Because Jack kissed Kathrine and Davey can’t believe it’s true to save his poor heart.

He didn’t want to make it noticeable that he was storming out of Jacobi’s, but he desperately needed to see Jack again. His heart is fully shattered this time, he can’t take it any longer. Davey waited for a few minutes before he walked out, trying his absolute best to not let his shattered heart appear to the surface.

August slipped away into a moment in time

It didn’t take long for him to reach the lodge, Albert and Race had briefly mentioned from his story where Jack was. For the most part, Davey had ground his emotions. The sorrowful note in his heart, and just a little bit of anger, was hidden in front of his friends to avoid any questions. But the further away he got from them, the more of his emotions started to seep out of his skin.

He steps into the completely empty lodge. If Jack isn’t found inside, he’d probably be up on the roof. Davey walks up the rusty fire escape. He pops his head up and sees Jack sitting on the other side of the roof, to what Davey suspects to be, sketching something on a piece of paper with the way his back is bent forwards.

Davey is completely perplexed, seeing Jack going about his day as if he didn’t do anything. The lines on his face are drawn by anger, green eyes glowing with fire, hand forming into a fist that’s ready to strike.

He makes Jack notice his presence by purposely stomping loudly as he steps on the roof. Jack turns around from his drawing. Once he noticed it was Davey, he put his drawing down and stood up with a bright and innocent face to greet his friend, a huge contrast to Davey’s. Jack takes a few steps closer to him but still left a good amount of space between the two.

“Dave!”

'Cause it was never mine

He didn’t act up towards that nickname. He simply walks past Jack and purposely bumps their shoulder in a fit of rage. It was Jack’s turn to be perplexed.

He takes a moment before he turns around to hear why Davey was here. Jack got a vague answer when he was met by a strong slap to the face from Davey.

“Do I mean nothing to you?!”

Jack stands completely still in front of Davey, rage visibly coursing through his veins. Jack was left speechless from that unprompted slap. The pain still stinging on his cheek as it slowly turns redder and redder as the second passes.

He looks down to his feet, propping his hands on his hips before looking back up to Jack. Davey’s green eyes now slowly overflowing with water and holding a sob in his throat.

“Why’dju do it?” Davey’s voice cracked a bit at the end, “Why did you set me up in this... game?”

Davey lets one sob escape his lips but holds back the rest in his throat. He blinks a few of the tears away and looks back to where Jack’s face slowly starts to crumble now that he knows what’s this all about.

“Kelly, why did you kiss me?!” Davey raised his voice a bit.

Jack looks at him with wide eyes. Fear in his gaze upon seeing this side of Davey for the first time. He can’t find the answers to those questions. Not even the words to excuse himself.

Davey wraps his arms around his torso to find some form of comfort in this situation. He turns to look past him because looking at him in the eye hurts.

“I don’t get it….Y-you held my hand, you shared secrets, you showed me remarkable things…” Davey went on, the memories flashing in his head like a movie, “... But then after a few days you act like you don’t even know me!”

Jack watches as Davey tries to hold himself together to continue. He watches as his heart crumbles in front of him. The sound ringing in his ears is painful, knowing that it was coming from Davey. And even worse: Jack was the reason.

Davey turns his head to face Jack again.

“Was it stupid of me to fall for you? Was it... stupid of me that when you started doing all of that…” Davey started, voice reflecting the state of his aching heart, “I thought that maybe... you actually returned my feelings?”

“No” Jack simply answered after taking some time to ponder over it.

“But you also kissed Kathrine” Davey brought up what Race and Albert said earlier, “I even heard… you’re going on a date together…”

“Davey… where’dju even get that from?” Jack asked.

“Race and Albert. Sounds like you’re pretty open about it…”

Jack couldn’t move a muscle. His brain fully blanks as it drives Jack’s focus all onto the sobbing boy in front of him.

Back when I was living for the hope of it all

“I should’ve known…” Davey breathes out, dropping his head to the floor, “I should’ve fucking known…”

“No… No, don’t say that” Jack takes a few steps closer, desperately reaching his hands towards him. But Davey violently steps away. Jack knows it means he’s close enough, so he drops his hands to his side again.

“I shouldn’tve hoped for much...” Davey continued, a little raise to his tone but laced with suffering, “I knew from the start you wouldn’t care…”

“Davey, wait! It’s not what you think!”, Jack tries to get closer but ends up stepping backwards as Davey forces him to back away.

“Oh, is it?!” Davey challenged. His face, now shattered in pieces by the tears he could no longer hold back, “Did you fucking forget all those stupid moments you spent with me?! Making me think I actually mean something to you?!”

“Of course you mean somethin’ to me!” Jack stops Davey from pushing him even further, standing his ground with his feet and words. Or whatever it is he can come up in his brain in this heated situation, “I-it’s just… it’s… I don’t know, okay?”

Davey recollects himself as best as he can, furiously sniffing his nose while wiping the tears off his cheeks and eyes. He slows his breathing down while cynically staring at Jack. He slowly makes his way towards the brunet, keeping just an inch of space between their faces.

“Then let’s find out”

His warm breath linger in the limited space between them. The two boys lock their eyes in an intense stare. Davey parts his lips slightly open, testing Jack’s words by pushing him to act up.

Davey aches for another kiss, but he only lets his head tilt to the side while he waits for Jack. But Jack didn’t move. No muscle in him acted up to what he said. He just stood there, staring. Once again making Davey look like an idiot.

He purses his lips, another drop of water falling down his cheek. Davey turns on his heel and walks away from the scene.

“No, wait, I can explain!” Jack chased after the boy, grabbing his arm and twirling him to get them to face each other once again. But Davey’s face is now in pieces, as he barely can hold it in any longer the moment he turned his face away from Jack.

“Let go, Jack,” His voice was shaky and breathy, “Please… I can’t do this anymore…”

The sound of his pressed down sob down his throat broke Jack’s heart even further. He loosens his grip from the boy, letting his hands slide down his sides. He watches as Davey sniffles and wipes his eyes with his sleeves.

“Take care, Jackie,” Davey said before turning around and walking away.

Watching Davey walk away like that left Jack speechless and heartbroken. A wave of guilt and regret rises from his stomach towards his eyes. It wells up with water, watching one of the most important people in his life walk away.

As Davey exits the empty lodging house, he takes in every detail of the house. Whether it’s a crack on the wall, a rust on the bunk bed, or even the precious little trinkets his friends left lying around, Davey examines it till it’s embedded in his brain. After this day, he might not have the strength to come back. Ever.

[newsies-and-the-nutcracker]

Theatre Banter

Summery: The theatre scene between Katherine and Jack, but from Les and Davey’s point of view.

Ships: Kind of Jatherine? None other than that, though. Unless you count the Davey and Les brotherly content I’ve provided for y’all.

I feel like my acc pic is this piece of crappy writing in a nutshell lol

I watched as Jack left Miss Medda just after she’d announced the Bowery Beauties, and started towards a box on the side of the theatre.

“Hey!” Les exclaimed. “Where’s Jack goin’?”

“Quiet down, would you?” I demanded, slapping a hand over his mouth. “I don’t know about Jack. Maybe Miss Medda asked him to do something for her.”

“I think there’s someone else up in that box,” he commented, eyes fixed on Jack’s every movement.

I looked up, and sure enough, he was right. A female with auburn hair was seated next to where Jack was standing, currently throwing an annoyed look at her - I assumed - uninvited guest. “Yeah, it’s a girl. Oh, that poor girl…”

“It looks like she likes him,” Les declared, watching as she over-exaggeratedly gestured to the audience.

“Eh...” I grimaced slightly in opposition.

At this point, Les had completely forgotten about the current act, and now seemed to be fully invested in Jack’s failed attempts to win over that girl’s heart. Who was, by the way, tilting back slightly as Jack leant against the railing of the box, slowly trying to close the distance between the two. I could see his lips moving, but I couldn’t make out what was being said.

That was until the redhead suddenly shot up from her seat, fists clenched tightly. “Do you mind?!”

“Man, Jack really knows how to pick up all the ladies!” Les said in admiration as the blue-clad newsboy was scolded by Miss Medda.

“Unfortunately for him,” I muttered, “I don’t think his so-called charms will work on her. Also, you should really think about getting a new role model.”

But my brother continued to ignore me as Jack stared at the girl wistfully, before grabbing a newspaper out of his sack, surprising me. I figured he was going to try to sell it to her. He then took out a pencil and started to draw on the paper, surprising me even more. He was really willing to lose even an extra penny, just so he could draw?

“I think he’s picturing her!” Les exclaimed in excitement, causing me to have to shush him once again. Looking back up, it did seem like it was her he was sketching out, if the constant glances at her were anything to go by.

He must have been very smitten with the girl.

“Yeah, maybe he is.” I placed a hand on Les’ shoulder, causing him to gaze up at me.

“I should paint as a job!” He bounced on the balls of his feet.

“Calm down,” I ordered. “You’re nine. Even Jack doesn’t paint as a job. He’s a Newsie, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“I know that.” Les rolled his eyes, as if I was the younger brother who knew nothing. “I just think it’d be a cool job, don’t you? Jack likes it!”

I chuckled, ruffling his hair. “We’ll see. You need a lot of patience to be an artist, though.”

“What does pa-tience mean?” Les asked, cocking his head to the side.

I fought back a smile and sighed. “Well, you need patience to sit in front of a canvas or something like that for a long time. It means you don’t get… restless while doing the painting. Well, not for a bit, at least.”

“Oh.” He furrowed his brows. “Will being an artist make girls get flustered?”

“More like disturbed,” I grumbled under my breath.

“What?”

“I’m not sure,” I said instead, louder this time, laughing nervously. “Maybe if you drew them, it would. You’d have to ask for their permission, though.”

Les seemed to take that into consideration, before glancing back at the pair in the box. “Hey, look! Jack’s coming down now!”

I followed his gaze, seeing that Jack was indeed heading down from the box. I also noticed the girl pick up the paper he left behind, before looking up in disbelief.

I guess drawing them did get them feeling flustered.

Les was already heading for the boy by the time I’d snapped out of my thoughts. I closed my eyes and exhaled for a long moment, before going after him.

“Is she your girl?” Les was asking, pointing up at the said female.

“Deep, deep down in her heart, she wishes she was,” Jack replied, sounding sure of himself. “I think she secretly enjoyed my company, in my humble opinion.”

I scoffed, rolling my eyes.

“She was all over ya,” my brother gushed, praising him. “Can ya teach me how to get-”

He wasn’t able to finish as my hand covered his mouth, punctuating his incomplete request. “We really should be getting home, now. I don’t want our folks getting worried…”

Jack blinked. “Yes, dat’s right. Well, I won’t make ya stay. See da two a’ ya tomorrow, huh?”

“If nothing happens,” I agreed. I quickly learnt that I probably shouldn’t have said exactly that as he frowned, and asked what could possibly happen.

“He’s just overthinkin’ things again,” Les brushed him off, causing me to look down at him in bewilderment. He then said in a lower tone, “it’s one of the side effects of bein’ smart.”

“Not true,” I denied, feeling embarrassed at the fact that even my little brother knew of my tendency to overthink things. “I just... like being prepared for any situation out there.”

“Ah, loosen up, Davey.” Jack pointed his chin towards me. “Nuthin’s gonna happen, so quit yer worryin’.”

I grunted somewhat at that. “See ya, Jack.”

He waved, before walking off. “See ya Davey, Les.”

Maybe getting closer to the newsies wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

[taylorswifthongkong]

Aaron Dessner confirms: folklore is Taylor Swift’s goth record. Or, at least, it’s her most gothic record. It’s also a few other things, depending on your mood: an unofficial Big Red MachineDessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon started Big Red Machine in 2008 as a loose musical collaboration. They released their official self-titled debut LP in 2018, and this year released “No Time For Love Like Now” with Michael Stipe. collaboration (Big RED Machine); a spiritual companion to The National’s 2019 album I Am Easy To Find, specifically its accompanying Mike Mills film, also shot in black-and-white and emphasizing a more natural setting; or just Swift’s attempt at a headphone record, one that, even if you don’t buy into the Taylor Swift mythology, rewards multiple listens as you pick up on all the intricacies of each song and realize wow, this is where the In Rainbows influence comes in. Dessner is the one to thank for all these little details.

The National multi-instrumentalist spoke to Vulture over the phone from upstate New York a few hours after the surprise release of Swift’s eighth studio album. (“A pretty wild ride,” he admits, sounding tired yet happy.) He was clear that he can’t speak on behalf of Swift’s lyrics, much like he can’t for The National frontman Matt Berninger’s either, or the thinking behind Jack Antonoff’s songs. (Here’s a cheat sheet: Jack’s songs soar, Aaron’s glide.) But Dessner was game to speak to his specific contributions, influences, and own interpretations of each song on folklore, a record you can sum up by two words that came up often during our conversation: nostalgic and wry.

“the 1″

“the 1” and “hoax,” the first song and the last song, were the last songs we did. The album was sort of finished before that. We thought it was complete, but Taylor then went back into the folder of ideasMany of Dessner’s songs started from him sending files of sketches from a folder of ideas to Swift, who then replied with updated files of her ideas and additions. Swift also would start some songs by sending voice memos to Dessner, who would then flesh them out or write music to it. Dessner would also send files to his brother, Bryce, and other collaborators to flesh out the music; he sums up the process as “sending files around.” that I had shared. I think in a way, she didn’t realize she was writing for this album or a future something. She wrote “the 1,” and then she wrote “hoax” a couple of hours later and sent them in the middle of the night. When I woke up in the morning, I wrote her before she woke up in LA and said, “These have to be on the record.” She woke up and said, “I agree” [laughs] These are the bookends, you know?

It’s clear that “the 1” is not written from her perspective. It’s written from another friend’s perspective. There’s an emotional wryness and rawness, while also to this kind of wink in her eyes. There’s a little bit of her sense of humor in there, in addition to this kind of sadness that exists both underneath and on the surface. I enjoy that about her writing.

The song [began from] the voice memo she sent me, and then I worked on the music some and we tracked her vocals, and then my brotherOn bringing in fellow The National member, Bryce Dessner: “My brother lives in France and that’s where he and his family were in lockdown. I would send songs to Bryce for him to add orchestration, and then he would send them back. He would compose to them and then I would have people record them over here remotely.” added orchestration. There are a few other little bits, but basically that was one of the very last things we did.

THE MEANING OF FOLKLORE

We didn’t talk about it at first. It was only after writing six or seven songs, basically when I thought my writing was done, when we got on the phone and said, “OK, I think we’re making an album. I have these six other ideas that I love with Jack [Antonoff] that we’ve already done, and I think what we’ve done fits really well with them.” It’s sort of these narratives, these folkloric songs, with characters that interweave and are written from different perspectives. She had a vision, and it was connecting back in some way to the folk tradition, but obviously not entirely sonically. It’s more about the narrative aspect of it.

I think it’s this sort of nostalgia and wistfulness that is in a lot of the songs. A lot of them have this kind of longing for looking back on things that have happened in your life, in your friend’s life, or another loved one’s life, and the kind of storytelling around that. That was clear to her. But then we kept going, and more and more songs happened.

It was a very organic process where [meaning] wasn’t something that we really discussed. It just kind of would happen where she would dive back into the folder and find other things that were inspiring. Or she and William BoweryDessner explains of the one unknown name who pops up in the folklore credits: “William Bowery is who she wrote ‘exile’ with, and ‘betty.’ He’s a singer-songwriter.” would write “exile,” and then that happened. There were different stages of the process.

Okay, but is it A24-core? [Laughs.] Good comparison.

“cardigan’”

That’s the first song we wrote [in early May]. After Taylor asked if I would be interested in writing with her remotelyOn folklore being recorded somewhat on-the-fly: “I prefer records when they have an element where the paint is still wet. We’re allowing some paint to be human and raw, so [collaborations were] not hired out too much. That was important to me, and that was important to her, too. That is definitely different from her past records.” and working on songs, I said, “Are you interested in a certain kind of sound?” She said, “I’m just interested in what you do and what you’re up to. Just send anything, literally anything, it could be the weirdest thing you’ve ever done,” so I sent a folder of stuff I had done that I was really excited about recently. “cardigan” was one of those sketches; it was originally called “Maple.” It was basically exactly what it is on the record, except we added orchestration later that my brother wrote.

I sent [the file] at 9 p.m., and around 2 a.m. or something, there was “cardigan,” fully written. That’s when I realized something crazy was happening. She just dialed directly into the heart of the music and wrote an incredible song and fully conceived of it and then kept going. It harkens back to lessons learned, or experiences in your youth, in a really beautiful way and this sense of longing and sadness, but ultimately, it’s cathartic. I thought it was a perfect match for the music, and how her voice feels. It was kind of a guide. It had these lower register parts, and I think we both realized that this was a bit of a lightning rod for a lot of the rest of the record.

THE NATIONAL’S INFLUENCE ON SWIFT:

She said that she’s a fan of the emotion that’s conveyed in our music. She doesn’t often get to work with music that is so raw and emotional, or melodic and emotional, at the same time. When I sent her the folder, that was one of the main feelings. She said, “What the fuck? How do you just have that?” [laughs] I was humbled and honored because she just said, “It’s a gift, and I want to write to all of this.” She didn’t write to all of it, but a lot of it, and relatively quickly.

She is a fan of the band, and she’s a fan of Big Red Machine. She’s well aware of the sentiment of it and what I do, but she didn’t ask for a certain kind of thing. I know that the film [I Am Easy To Find] has really affected her, and she’s very much in love with that film and the record. Maybe it’s subconsciously been an influence.

“the last great american dynasty”

I wrote that after we’d been working for a while. It was an attempt to write something attractive, more uptempo and kind of pushing. I also was interested in this almost In Rainbows-style latticework of electric guitars. They come in and sort of pull you along, kind of reminiscent of Big Red Machine. It was very much in this sound world that I’ve been playing around with, and she immediately clicked with that. Initially I was imagining these dreamlike distant electric guitars and electronics but with an element of folk. There’s a lot going on in that sense. I sent it before I went on a run, and when I got back from the run, that song was thereJust how fast of a songwriter is Taylor? Dessner marvels, “It’s almost like a song would come out like a lightning bolt. It’s exhilarating. The shared focus, the clarity of her ideas, and the way she structures things, it’s all there. But I think she works really hard when she’s working, and then she tweaks. She keeps going, so sometimes things would evolve or change. By the time she actually sings it, she’s really inside of it. She doesn’t do very many vocal takes before she nails it.” [laughs].

She told me the story behind it, which sort of recounts the narrative of Rebekah Harkness, whom people actually called Betty. She was married to the heir of Standard Oil fortune, married into the Harkness family, and they bought this house in Rhode Island up on a cliff. It’s kind of the story of this woman and the outrageous parties she threw. She was infamous for not fitting in, entirely, in society; that story, at the end, becomes personal. Eventually, Taylor bought that house. I think that is symptomatic of folklore, this type of narrative song. We didn’t do very much to that either.

“exile” (ft. Bon Iver)

Taylor and William Bowery, the singer-songwriter, wrote that song initially together and sent it to me as a sort of a rough demo where Taylor was singing both the male and female parts. It’s supposed to be a dialogue between two lovers. I interpreted that and built the song, played the piano, and built around that template. We recorded Taylor’s vocals with her singing her parts but also the male parts.

We talked a lot about who she thought would be perfect to sing, and we kept coming back to Justin [Vernon]. Obviously, he’s a dear friend of mine and collaboratorSo, is folklore secretly a new Big Red Machine album? Dessner coyly offers, “I mean, you might not be far off the truth there, but I think I won’t say more.”. I said, “Well, if he’s inspired by the song, he’ll do it, and if not, he won’t.” I sent it to him and said, “No pressure at all, literally no pressure, but how do you feel about this?” He said, “Wow.” He wrote some parts into it also, and we went back and forth a little bit, but it felt like an incredibly natural and safe collaboration between friends. It didn’t feel like getting a guest star or whatever. It was just like, well, we’re working on something, and obviously he’s crazy talented, but it just felt right. I think they both put so much raw emotion into it. It’s like a surface bubbling. It’s believable, you know? You believe that they’re having this intense dialogue.

With other people I had to be secretive, but with Justin, because he was going to sing, I actually did send him a version of the song with her vocals and told him what I was up to. He was like, “Whoa! Awesome!” But he’s been involved in so many big collaborative things that he wasn’t interested in it from that point of view. It’s more because he loved the song and he thought he could do something with it that would add something.

“my tears ricochet”

This is one of my absolute favorite songs on the record. I think it’s a brilliant composition, and Taylor’s words, the way her voice sounds and how this song feels, are, to me, one of the critical pieces. It’s lodged in my brain. That’s also very important to Taylor and Jack. It’s like a beacon for this record.

“mirrorball”

“mirrorball” is, to me, a hazy sort of beautiful. It almost reminds me of ‘90s-era Cardigans, or something like Mazzy Star. It has this kind of glow and haze. It feels really good before “seven,” which becomes very wistful and nostalgic. There are just such iconic images in the lyrics [“Spinning in my highest heels”], which aren’t coming to me at the moment because my brain is not working [laughs].

HOW JACK ANTONOFF’S FOLKORE SONGS DIFFER FROM DESSNER’S

I think we have different styles, and we weren’t making them together or in the same room. We both could probably come closer together in a sense that weirdly works. It’s like an archipelago, and each song is an island, but it’s all related. Taylor obviously binds it all together. And I think Jack, if he was working with orchestrations, there’s an emotional quality to his songs that’s clearly in the same world as mine.

We actually didn’t have a moodboard for the album at all. I don’t think that way. I don’t really know if she does either. I don’t think Jack … well, Jack might, but when I say the Cardigans or Mazzy Star, those aren’t Jack’s words about “mirrorball,” it’s just what calls to mind for me. Mainly she talked about emotion and to lean into it, the nostalgia and wistfulness, and the kind of raw, meditative emotion that I often kind of inhabit that I think felt very much where her heart was. We didn’t shy away from that.

“seven”

This is the second song we wrote. It’s kind of looking back at childhood and those childhood feelings, recounting memories and memorializing them. It’s this beautiful folk song. It has one of the most important lines on the record: “And just like a folk song, our love will be passed on.” That’s what this album is doing. It’s passing down. It’s memorializing love, childhood, and memories. It’s a folkloric way of processing.

“august”

This is maybe the closest thing to a pop song. It gets loud. It has this shimmering summer haze to it. It’s kind of like coming out of “seven” where you have this image of her in the swing and she’s seven years old, and then in “august” I think it feels like fast-forwarding to now. That’s an interesting contrast. I think it’s just a breezy, sort of intoxicating feeling.

“this is me trying”

“this is me trying,” to me, relates to the entire album. Maybe I’m reading into it too much from my own perspective, but [I think of] the whole album as an exercise and working through these stories, whether personal or old through someone else’s perspective. It’s connecting a lot of things. But I love the feeling in it and the production that Jack did. It has this lazy swagger.

“illicit affairs”

This feels like one of the real folk songs on the record, a sharp-witted narrative folk song. It just shows her versatility and her power as a songwriter, the sharpness of her writing. It’s a great song.

“invisible string”

That was another one where it was music that I’d been playing for a couple of months and sort of humming along to her. It felt like one of the songs that pulls you along. Just playing it on one guitar, it has this emotional locomotion in it, a meditative finger-picking pattern that I really gravitate to. It’s played on this rubber bridge that my friend put on [the guitar] and it deadens the strings so that it sounds old. The core of it sounds like a folk song.

It’s also kind of a sneaky pop song, because of the beat that comes in. She knew that there was something coming because she said, “You know, I love this and I’m hearing something already.” And then she said, “This will change the story,” this beautiful and direct kind of recounting of a relationship in its origin.

“mad woman”

That might be the most scathing song on folklore. It has a darkness that I think is cathartic, sort of witch-hunting and gaslighting and maybe bullying. Sometimes you become the person people try to pin you into a corner to be, which is not really fair. But again, don’t quote me on that [laughs], I just have my own interpretation. It’s one of the biggest releases on the album to me. It has this very sharp tone to it, but sort of in gothic folklore. It’s this record’s goth song.

“epiphany”

For “epiphany,” she did have this idea of a beautiful drone, or a very cinematic sort of widescreen song, where it’s not a lot of accents but more like a sea to bathe in. A stillness, in a sense. I first made this crazy drone which starts the song, and it’s there the whole time. It’s lots of different instruments played and then slowed down and reversed. It created this giant stack of harmony, which is so giant that it was kind of hard to manage, sonically, but it was very beautiful to get lost in. And then I played the piano to it, and it almost felt classical or something, those suspended chords.

I think she just heard it, and instantly, this song came to her, which is really an important one. It’s partially the story of her grandfather, who was a soldier, and partially then a story about a nurse in modern times. I don’t know if this is how she did it, but to me, it’s like a nurse, doctor, or medical professional, where med school doesn’t fully prepare you for seeing someone pass away or just the difficult emotional things that you’ll encounter in your job. In the past, heroes were just soldiers. Now they’re also medical professionals. To me, that’s the underlying mission of the song. There are some things that you see that are hard to talk about. You can’t talk about it. You just bear witness to them. But there’s something else incredibly soothing and comforting about this song. To me, it’s this Icelandic kind of feel, almost classical. My brother did really beautiful orchestration of it.

“betty”

This one Taylor and William wrote, and then both Jack and I worked on it. We all kind of passed it around. This is the one where Taylor wanted a reference. She wanted it to have an early Bob Dylan, sort of a Freewheelin’ Bob DylanBob Dylan’s second LP, released in 1963, features some of his most stripped-down acoustic folk songs, with plenty of harmonica. To this day, its lyrics still cause debate. The album’s famous cover, shot in New York on Jones St., is one block away from Cornelia Street. feel. We pushed it a little more towards John Wesley Harding, since it has some drums. It’s this epic narrative folk song where it tells us a long story and connects back to “cardigan.” It starts to connect dots and I think it’s a beautifully written folk song.

Is ‘betty” queer canon?

I can’t speak to what it’s about. I have my own ideas. I also know where Taylor’s heart is, and I think that’s great anytime a song takes on greater meaning for anyone.

Is William Bowery secretly Joe Alwyn?

I don’t know. We’re close, but she won’t tell me that. I think it’s actually someone else, but it’s good to have some mysteries.

“peace”

I wrote this, and Justin provided the pulse. We trade ideas all the time and he made a folder, and there was a pulse in there that I wrote these basslines to. In the other parts of the composition, I did it to Justin’s pulse. Taylor heard this sketch and she wrote the song. It reminds me of Joni Mitchell, in a way — there’s this really powerful and emotional love song, even the impressionistic, almost jazz-like bridge, and she weaves it perfectly together. This is one of my favorites, for sure. But the truth is that the music, that way of playing with harmonized basslines, is something that probably comes a little bit from me being inspired by how Justin does that sometimes. There’s probably a connection there. We didn’t talk too much about it [laughs].

“hoax”

This is a big departure. I think she said to me, “Don’t try to give it any other space other than what feels natural to you.” If you leave me in a room with a piano, I might play something like this. I take a lot of comfort in this. I think I imagined her playing this and singing it. After writing all these songs, this one felt the most emotional and, in a way, the rawest. It is one of my favorites. There’s sadness, but it’s a kind of hopeful sadness. It’s a recognition that you take on the burden of your partners, your loved ones, and their ups and downs. That’s both “peace” and “hoax” to me. That’s part of how I feel about those songs because I think that’s life. There’s a reality, the gravity or an understanding of the human condition.

DOES TAYLOR EXPLAIN HER LYRICS?

She would always talk about it. The narrative is essential, and kind of what it’s all about. We’d always talk about that upfront and saying that would guide me with the music. But again, she is operating at many levels where there are connections between all of these songs, or many of them are interrelated in the characters that reappear. There are threads. I think that sometimes she would point it out entirely, but I would start to see these patterns. It’s cool when you see someone’s mind working.

“the lakes”

That’s a Jack song. It’s a beautiful kind of garden, or like you’re lost in a beautiful garden. There’s a kind of Greek poetry to it. Tragic poetry, I guess.

source

[itzagothamcitysiren]

Welcome to the Family

hey everybody, how are we all doing? I’m sorry that it’s been a few days since I’ve posted but with everything going on in the world I haven’t been feeling up to anything lately. Everything going on in this country right now is just making me sad, disappointed and angry but I’m not here to talk politics or whatever you want to call it anymore. My personal accounts I have spoken out but this isn’t what this account is for so I won’t keep going. I’ll end it on that note and just say that I hope we’re all doing okay, being safe, doing the right thing, looking out for one another and speaking up.

You’re Taking Up a Fraction of My Mind pt.4

           It had been a while since Nightwing had taken to swinging throughout the rooftops of Gotham.  There was a part of him that missed it, but there was the part of him that didn’t. There was just something about being back in his home town that just made feel slightly off of his game. He didn’t want to admit it but he was out of shape, or more so out of step.

           Truthfully, he was in the best shape of his life but he didn’t take to the streets of Jump City every night like he did during his formative years in Gotham.  Jump City was relatively safe compared to Gotham. Of course they had their fair share of dangers with the random super villain here and there who was trying some end of the world or some get rich quick scheme, and also you had the occasional off world or inter-dimensional mission which was always fun. But, for the most part he’d be in bed by now or watching a movie in the common room with his teammates.

           “Having trouble keeping up?” Jason, Gotham’s new Robin, taunted, landing on the rooftop of the G.C.P.D. a few minutes before Nightwing had. He had noted how Nightwing was a few paces behind the new Dynamic Duo and couldn’t help but feel smug. “Maybe you should hang up the tights again.”

           “Look kid-,” Nightwing growled, pointing a finger at him.

           “Enough.” Batman cut them off, not giving them a chance to further start their bickering.

           He gave them a sharp glare through his cowl, daring them to make him regret allowing them to accompany him tonight. He knew the pair didn’t hit it off right away when they first met three years ago when Dick officially hung up the Robin costume and joined the Titans full time as Nightwing. Dick hadn’t taken too kindly to being replaced so quickly and especially by some street kid who had the audacity to try and steal the tires of the batmobile; Dick was always known for being, as Alfred put it, a ‘tad bit dramatic’.

           He shared a few choice words with Bruce upon hearing about Jason through Alfred. Bruce couldn’t even face Dick himself to tell him about it, Dick still scoffed about it. After all the years of servitude and comradery, it meant nothing to Bruce. Dick couldn’t help but feel bitter about it, seeing him being teamed up with someone else in a new Robin costume. Yes, he gave up the mantle of Robin, wanting to grow out of Batman’s shadow and make a name for himself. But regardless of if he gave it up or not Dick Grayson was Robin, not Jason Todd.

           Without another word coming from the two boys, Batman let out a low grumbled hum. His demeanor changed back from slightly agitated dad to the cold bat that lurked around Gotham City as night. Satisfied with their compliance, he made his way over to where Jim Gordon stood, next to the Batsignal that had been lit moment ago while the batfamily had been patrolling over Gotham.

           “I see you have a guest tonight,” Gordon nodded from his spot next to the spotlight, nodding towards Nightwing. He hadn’t seen the kid in a couple of months now and sort of missed him; his bright attitude was a good balance to the Dark Knight’s more stoic one.

           Batman let out another ‘hmm’ as response, sounding almost like a tired father with a pair of fighting toddlers.  He nodded towards the signal, “What do you have?”

           “Mail,” Gordon said reaching into his coat pocket pulling out an envelope addressed to the G.C.P.D. but the name above the address was addressed to Batman. He handed off the envelope, having already opened it and knew what was inside. “It wasn’t sealed, I took the liberty of having a peek.”

           Batman took the envelope from Gordon, pulling out the contents carefully. Inside he found five playing cards; two kings, two jokers and a 2 of spades. He inspected the cards closely, his mind already going off into full work mode to figure out their purpose. Nightwing stood to Batman’s right, eying the playing cards over his shoulder. He felt like a kid again, catching himself saying the first that came to mind, as if trying to impress the older man.

           “Joker?” Nightwing offered, causing the Batman to look at him as the he still pondered to himself.  

           Even though Nightwing hadn’t been in Gotham for a while but he still remembered how the Joker and a few of Gotham’s citizen’s gave him the title of the Clown Prince of Crime. It was pretty safe to assume with the whole two Joker card thing that it would belong to the clown, Nightwing thought. And since there was no prince card in a deck of cards, a king would suffice. It was obvious that the Joker had sent the envelope.

           “Joker’s locked up in Arkham.” Gordon said with a hint of malice, knowing that he deserved the chair but for whatever reason the justice system in Gotham wouldn’t let that day come.

           “So?” Robin cut in, with a roll of his eyes. He let out a disgruntled laugh, crossing his arms against him chest, a look of disbelief overlapped with amusement appearing on his face.  “That means jack in this city. What just happened with Zsasz?”

           “Robin.” Batman warned, his voice stern and sharp.

           He turned back to look at Nightwing after Robin gave him an apologetic look. He flipped the cards over, looking at the backside of them. The king’s had the same address written on them, same as the joker’s. Batman recognized the addresses of those belonging to two different banks.  Looking at his former protégé, he thought about his idea. It was a possibility. Joker did tend to make his stays at Arkham short in the past years.

           But simple bank robberies weren’t something he just did anymore. He’d always been unstable but the clown had seemed to be turning more volatile in his deeds in recent years. Bruce still shook when thinking about it, somewhat still in disbelief that the Joker could stoop so low. It took everything in him to not break his one rule; he’d never been that close in breaking it until that day. It’d been almost a year since then and it still haunted Bruce that he was unable to stop him. The Joker had blown up a middle school in the Narrows and it was all just for a punchline.

           “I’m just saying.” Robin raised his hands up in surrender, knocking Bruce out of his train of thought. He let a hand fall, there other than pointing to the cards Bruce held. “I don’t think it’s him.”

           “Oh yeah? And please share with the class who you think sent it then?” Nightwing quipped, rolling his own eyes now even though his masks whited out his eyes. He ignored the side glance his former mentor gave him, still looking at Robin, who apparently knew better than him.

           “I’d love to share actually,” Jason smirked, mimicking Nightwing’s stance. He didn’t like this guy one bit and didn’t appreciate how he was being talked down too. He deserved to be Robin just as much as he had. He was just as good as he was. “I think this looks like someone who we know has a thing for pairs. Not only are there two of the same type of cards, one’s literally a two. And I don’t know if you guys know anything about poker but it’s also a two-pair hand. It’s pretty obvious,”

           Dick widened his eyes, gapping to himself as Jason spoke, looking back at the cards. He saw Batman bring his hand to rest on his chin, cogs clicking and turning in his head. Nightwing bit his tongue as Batman gave Robin a ‘good work’ nod. It was pretty obvious and Nightwing hated it. He’d just been shown up by some kid. He wanted to smack the smug look right off Robin’s face as Batman told Gordon that he’d keep him updated.

           That had been their cue to head out, as Batman then put the cards in one of his utility belt pouches and reached for his grappling hook. Gordon watched as the batfamily turned to leave, grappling off into the city. Batman had landed them a few buildings away already dealing out a game plan. They’d split into two teams in order to stake out both addresses, unsure which one Two-Face would strike first. Dent had been laying low for the last couple of years and it was a little off putting that he’d want his comeback advertised to the Dark Knight before he could really pull it off.

           Dick had wished Halley was here for he started to tune Bruce out the moment he revealed that Nightwing and Robin would be paired up together. He wanted to protest, he wanted to insist that Robin belonged with Batman and Nightwing would handle himself for a night alone in Gotham. But he didn’t do any of that, instead just kept clenching his jaw tightly and grinding his teeth together as Batman turned his back to them and took off towards the direction of the bank he assigned himself too.

           Once they were alone, Nightwing looked at Robin who also had looked displeased with this arrangement. With a grunt, Nightwing leaped off the building, heading to the next rooftop, wanting to get this night over with.  When they eventually reached their location, they set up shop on the office building across the street from one of the Gotham National Bank’s branches in the Bowery. They staked out the area, looking for signs to Two-Face.

           Jason took it personally as they sat in complete silence. Halley had told him how talkative Grayson was and how doing missions with him was annoying sometimes, as the man just talked the entire time. Even with the couple of times they had hung out, like during the few times he’d come to visit and take Halley out for burgers, always giving Jason a pity invite, he noted how Dick Grayson just didn’t know how to stop talking.

           He huffed, leaning against an air conditioning unit atop the roof, pulling out his cell phone from its hiding place within his suit. He checked the time and huffed again, the boredom fully setting in now. He took his attention away from the bank again, now scrolling through his phone, debating which game to play. Deciding to play draw something, he clicked on the app. He lazily drew a lion and sent it to Halley, the only person he ever played with. He downloaded the app on her phone a while ago and occasionally the two would play during commercial breaks when they watched TV.

           He looked up from his phone as he waited for her to reply, checking to see if Dick caught him on his phone yet. He would never pull his phone out when he was with Bruce; hell, if Bruce knew he even brought his phone out on patrols he’d most likely be benched again but he just couldn’t stand here in silence with dickweed. He looked back down at his phone and away from the man he had been scorning when it vibrated. It wasn’t a notification for the game, instead, it was a text message from Halley.

           Aren’t you on patrol?

           Yea, he replied back, smirking as he continued to type. Bored and paired up with Dick. Who by the way is really living up to his name.

           He tapped his fingers against the back of his phone as he saw that she was typing. He stole another quick glance up, making sure he wasn’t caught yet. He wouldn’t put it past Dick to go ratting on him to Bruce if he did.

           Is everything okay?

           What’s he doing?        

           Where’s Bruce?

           I can talk to Dick for you…

           He rolled his eyes as she rapidly texted him back, knowing that she was probably in a frenzy on her bed wondering what happened between them. He quickly typed back, not wanting her to stress as he started to regret saying anything to her about it in the first place.  It’s cool, not a big deal. He’s just butthurt that I outsmarted him on a case we’re working on now.

            “B know you have that on you?” Jason should’ve known he’d be caught but something in him didn’t seem to care as Dick’s voice rang out. “You lose that thing or get captured and someone gets their hands on it, you’re screwed. That’s incredibly ire-,”

           “Irresponsible, yeah yeah,” Jason cut him off, waving him off with his hand before going back to read Halley’s response.  He clicked his phone off, sliding it into his hidden pocket after finishing reading over her text. It was nothing important, just telling him to stay off his phone. He rolled his eyes, pushing off the ac unit and walked towards the edge of the building where Dick stood.  

           “I get this part of the job can be boring, but you need to stay on your toes. You need to-,” Dick slacked his shoulders, over the kid’s attitude as he was cut off once again.

           “Yeah, yeah,” Jason snorted. “This isn’t my first rodeo, I’ve been doing this long enough.”

           “Clearly not.” Dick shot back, kicking the foot he had resting on the ledge to stand facing Jason face to face. He towered over the boy, having a good couple of inches on him. He peered down at him almost threateningly.

           “You made a good guess at the station, but you’re still sloppy. B’s told me about how you rush into things without thinking. You’re brash and dangerous. You’re going to get yourself hurt one of these day or worse; get someone else hurt.” Dick said, narrowing his eyes as he continued to lay it out onto the younger boy.

           Dick eyed the boy take in his words. He reacted how Dick expected, immaturely, by rolling his eyes and letting out an over exaggerated groan. Dick stood firm though, not knowing what either Halley or even Bruce saw in this kid. “You’re also disrespectful. If I talked to B the way I’ve heard you talk to him, I’d have my suit permanently taken away from me quicker than Flash can put his on. You still have a lot to learn kid.”

           “You know,” Jason started, scoffing and trying to bury Dick’s words deep. He didn’t want to show that Dick’s word’s had an impact on him but the former sidekick basically just laid out all of his insecurities right in front of him.  

           He knew Bruce wasn’t always pleased with him and his performance, but he thought he was getting better; Bruce told him in training today he was getting better.  Jason was still thrown off by the compliment and only slightly gushing over it, and he was sure as hell not going to let Nightwing bring him back down. Taking a step forward, trying to assert himself, Jason jabbed a finger into Dick’s chest continuing, “I didn’t know what you’re problem with me was until the police station and now.” Jason pulled his finger back, letting his hands fall to fists at his sides.  “You’re just jealous.”

           “You think I’m jealous?” Nightwing almost laughed, loosening his stance wanting to get comfortable as the boy nodded in confirmation.

           “No, I don’t think, I know you are.” Jason chuckled, knowing he could lay everything out just as neatly as Dick did for him. “You’re gone for months at a time; sure you come peek your head in every now and then to say hi but then you leave again. I think you realize you’re not needed here anymore and it eats you up inside.” Jason said with venom. “Gotham doesn’t need Nightwing and Batman doesn’t either. Batman and Gotham have me, Robin, not you. Hell, even Halley doesn’t need you anymore because she’s got me. You’re not needed anymore.”

           “You don’t know anything about me or her, or Bruce. You think you do, but you don’t.” Dick spat, feeling heat begin to rise in his cheeks. This kid didn’t know a goddamned thing.

           “Nah,” he smiled, taunting him now, feeling a nerve being struck in the older man as he mention Halley. “That’s where you’re wrong. You dumped her off here and have done the bare minimum to keep in contact with her. I’ve been there for her since you’ve left and it shows who she likes more and you can see that and it’s driving you crazy.”

           “Look kid,” Dick said, letting the anger get to him. He reached out grabbing Robin by the neckline of his suit, lifting him up off the ground as he pulled him closer, almost until their faces were inches apart.

           He was about to really drive it into him when the sound of tires squealing from below dragged his attention away. Still holding onto Robin, Nightwing craned his neck to look behind him and down to the street below. A van parked outside of the bank, the back door opening as a handful of guys filed out. The last one was their guy: Two-face. He jumped out of the back of the van as another pulled up next to him. He flipped his coin, Nightwing unsure as to why but assumed it wasn’t good as Two-face signaled for his now close to twenty guys to head to the doors of the bank.

           “Two-Face is at our location,” Nightwing let go of Robin, calling in Batman on his comms. He waited for Bruce to reply, preparing to grapple across to the bank.

           “Copy.” Batman’s voice cut through his ear piece. “I also have some of his men here. I’ll take care of them and head your way. Get Two-Face.”

           “Got it,” Nightwing replied, turning to face Robin to quickly try and make a plan of attack together but snarled when he saw the boy already swinging across to the next building.  This kid was going to get himself killed one day.

[bananaofswifts]

At the beginning of March, the National’s Aaron Dessner traveled back to the United States from Paris, where he’d been living with his family, to shack up at Sonic Ranch Studio in Tornillo, Texas to work on the next Big Red Machine album with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. Those plans — obviously — soon shifted, as the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic set in. Dessner and his family were able to relocate to their home in upstate New York as lockdown orders went into effect, and the musician soon settled into a groove of homeschooling his kids and focusing fully on music in a way he hadn’t in a while, due to the National’s regularly rigorous touring schedule. 

In the middle of what Dessner describes as one of the most productive moments of his career, Taylor Swift called. 

A longtime and avowed fan of the National, Swift asked if Dessner wanted to try collaborating on a few songs remotely. He said of course, and asked if she was looking for anything in particular. He noted that he had plenty of material at the ready, but acknowledged he’d been in a more experimental mood, due to the Big Red Machine sessions; not to mention, Dessner added, he’d never really ventured into the pop world Swift has dominated for well over a decade. She told him to send everything he had. 

“I think she was interested in the emotions that she feels in some of the music that I’ve made,” Dessner tells Rolling Stone.” So I just sent her a folder of things I’d done recently and was excited about. Hours after, she sent back a fully written version of ‘Cardigan.’ It was like a lightning bolt struck the house.” 

Over the next few months, Dessner and Swift crafted the bulk of Swift’s eighth studio album, Folklore, which was released today, July 24th, after being announced the day before. Folklore is yet another mesmerizing musical move from Swift — a shift in sound, style and palette towards a vaster indie sound (à la, of course, the National) that still feels distinctly Swift-ian, as if she’s been making music like this her whole career. Lyrically, too, the record finds Swift playing with character and myth in new ways that — befitting the album’s title — recall the great American folk tradition. 

Dessner wasn’t the album’s only collaborator; Swift wrote several songs with regular producer Jack Antonoff, as well as songwriter named William Bowery, who doesn’t seem to have much of an internet footprint. Vernon also contributed to two songs, singing on one of the album’s many stunners, “Exile,” while Dessner’s brother and National bandmate, Bryce Dessner, helped orchestrate it with a mix of musicians scattered around the globe (none of whom even knew what they were playing on when they recorded their parts).

Dessner spoke with Rolling Stone about working with Swift, their instant chemistry, how the album developed under a thick cloud of secrecy and more.

When Taylor first reached out, did she have a specific vision in mind for the album? 
She was a bit cryptic. I didn’t know that we were actually working on a record for quite a while. It just seemed that she was seeking me out to collaborate. And then we were both feeling very inspired by it. Once there were six or seven songs that we had written over a couple of weeks, she said, “Hey can we talk?” Then she said, ‘This is what I’m imagining,’ and started to tell me about the concept of Folklore. Then she mentioned that she’d written some songs at an earlier stage with Jack [Antonoff], and they felt like they really fit together with what we were doing. It was a very inspiring, exhilarating collaborative process that was almost entirely remote. Very sort of warp speed, but also something about it felt like we were going toe-to-toe and in a good pocket. 

After “Cardigan,” how did these songs develop and do you think she pushed you in any new directions as a songwriter? 
When you’re working with someone new, it takes a second to understand their instincts and range. It’s not really conscious. She wrote “Cardigan,” and then “Seven,” then “Peace.” They kind of set a road map, because “Cardigan” was this kind of experimental ballad, the closest thing to a pop song on the record, but it’s not really. It’s this emotional thing, but it has some strange sounds in it. “Seven” is this kind of nostalgic, emotional folk song. Even before she sang to it, I felt this nostalgia, wistful feeling in it, and I think that’s what she gravitated towards. And “Peace,” that just showed me the incredible versatility that she had. That song is just three harmonized bass lines and a pulse. I love to play bass like that — play one line then harmonize another, and another, which is a behavior I stole from Justin Vernon, because he’s done that on other things we’ve done together. And actually, that’s his pulse, he sent me that pulse and said, “Do something with this.” But when she wrote that song, which kind of reminds me of a Joni Mitchell song over a harmonized bassline and a pulse, that was kind of like, “Woah, anything can happen here.” That’s not easy to do.

So, in the morning I would wake up and try to be productive. “Mad Woman” is one I wrote shortly after that, in terms of sound world, felt very related to “Cardigan” and “Seven.” I do have a way of playing piano where it’s very melodic and emotional, but then often it’s great if whoever’s singing doesn’t sing exactly what’s in the piano melody, but maybe it’s connected in some way. There was just some chemistry happening with her and how she was relating to those ideas.

“Epiphany” was something she had an idea for, and then I imagined these glacial, Icelandic sounds with distended chords and this almost classical feeling. That was another one where we wrote it and conceived it together. She just has a very instinctive and sharp musical mind, and she was able to compose so closely to what I was presenting. What I was doing was clicking for her. It was exhilarating for us, and it was surreal — we were shocked by it, to be honest [Laughs]. I think the warmth, humanity and raw energy of her vocals, and her writing on this record, from the very first voice memos — it was all there. 

Do you think that chemistry might’ve had something to do with her being a National fan, and you being a fan of her music? 
We met Taylor at Saturday Night Live in 2014, or whenever that was that we played and Lena Dunham was hosting. We got to meet her, and that was our first brush with a bona fide pop star. But then she came to see us play in Brooklyn last summer and was there in a crazy rainstorm, like torrential downpour, and watched the whole show and stayed for a long time afterwards, talking to me and my brother. She was incredibly charming and humble. That’s the nice thing about her, and a lot of people I’ve met that have that kind of celebrity. It’s great when you can just tune it out and be normal people and chat, and that’s how that felt. So, we knew that she was a big fan, and we really got into the 1989 album. Our Icelandic collaborator, Ragnar Kjartansson, is a crazy Swiftie. So we’ve kind of lived vicariously through him. I’ve always been astonished by how masterful she is in her craft. I’ve always listened to her albums and put them in this rarefied category, like, “How did she do that? How does anybody do that? How do you make ‘Blank Space?’” There was an element that was intimidating at first, where it just took me a second to be like… Not because I think her music is better than what we’ve done, but it’s just a different world. 

Were there particular songs, albums or artists the two of you discussed as reference points for this album?
“Betty,” which is a song she wrote with William Bowery, she was interested in sort of early Bob Dylan, like Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, I think. “Epiphany,” early on, felt like some weird Kate Bush-meets-Peter Gabriel thing. I think we talked a little about those things, but not a lot. Actually, I think she really trusted me as far as my instincts to where the music would ultimately go, and also the mixing process.  We really wanted to keep her voice as human, and kind of the opposite of plastic, as possible. That was a bit of a battle. Because everything in pop music tends to be very carved out, a smiley face, and as pushed as possible so that it translates to the radio or wherever you hear it. That can also happen with a National song — like if you changed how these things are mixed, they wouldn’t feel like the same song. And she was really trusting and heard it herself. She would make those calls herself, also. 

You mentioned William Bowery — who is he?
He’s a songwriter, and actually because of social distancing, I���ve never met him. He actually wrote the original idea for “Exile,” and then Taylor took it and ran with it. I don’t actually know to be totally honest. 

We’ve been trying to track him down, he doesn’t have much of an internet presence.
Yeah, I don’t fully know him, other than he wrote “Betty” and “Exile” with her. But you know she’s a very collaborative person, so it was probably some songwriter. 

So it’s not an alias for anyone?
No, no, no. I mean, I don’t know — she didn’t tell me there was a “Cardigan” video until literally it came out, and I wrote the song with her [laughs]. So I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure he’s an actual songwriter. She enjoys little mysteries. 

“These are kind of these folkloric, almost mythical tales that are woven in of childhood, lost love, and different sentiments across the record.”

With the National, you and your brother write the music, Matt Berninger adds the lyrics, and then you fuse it — was it a similar process on Folklore?
Taylor is very collaborative in that sense that, whenever she sent a voice memo, she would send all the lyrics and then ask me what I thought. And sometimes we would debate certain lines, although generally she’s obviously a strong writer. So she would ask me if I liked one line, and she would give me alternate lines and I would give her my opinion. And then when she was actually tracking vocals, I would sometimes suggest things or miss things, but she definitely has a lot of respect for the collaborative process and wants whoever she’s writing with to feel deeply included in that process. It was nice, and was a back and forth, for sure. And she would sometimes have ideas about the production if she didn’t like something, especially. She would, in a tactful way, bring that up. I appreciated that, too, since I wanted to try to turn over every leaf, take risks and sometimes get it wrong. That always takes a second, to get over and then you start again. 

You mentioned earlier that once you had six, seven songs, she was able to describe a concept behind the album. I’m curious what that conversation was like. 
She would always explain what each song was about to me, even before she articulated the Folklore concept. And I could tell early on that they were these narrative songs, often told from a different… not in the first person. So there are different characters in the songs that appear in others. You may have a character in “Betty” that’s also related to one in “Cardigan,” for example. And I think that was, in her mind, very, very important. It doesn’t seem like, for this record at least, that she was inspired to write something until she really knew what it was about. And I think I’m used to a more — at least lately — impressionistic and experimental world of making stuff without really knowing what it is. But this was more direct, in that sense. That was really helpful, to know what it was about and it would guide some of the choices we were making. 

Every time she would send something, she would narrate a little bit, like how it fit, or what it was about. And then when she told me about Folklore as a concept, it made so much sense. Like “The Last Great American Dynasty,” for example, this kind of narrative song that then becomes personal at the end — it flips and she enters the song. These are kind of these folkloric, almost mythical tales that are woven in of childhood, lost love, and different sentiments across the record. It was binding it all together and I think it’s personal, but also through the guise of other people, friends and loved ones.

You were working in secret — how did that affect the process? Was that a difficult burden?
It was. I was humbled and honored and grateful for the opportunity and for the crazy sort of alchemy we were having. But it was hard not to be able to talk openly with my usual collaborators, even my brother at first. I didn’t know if I could really tell him, because we normally… Ultimately, he helped me quite a bit, he orchestrated songs. But we always help each other. But eventually, we figured out how to do it. Towards the end of the process, I said to Taylor, ‘I really feel that I need to try a few experiment and try to elevate a few moments on the record because we have time, and we’ve really done a ton of work here, and it all sounds great, but I think we can go even further.’ And then she said, ‘Well what does that mean?’ And I explained how that would work, and the way that we work. Our process is very community-oriented, and we have long-time collaborators that we have a good understanding with. So I was able to say, to my friends, ‘This is a song I’m working on, I can’t send it to you with the vocals, and I can’t tell you what it is, but I can explain what I’m imagining.’ And the same with my brother, he knows my music so well that that was very easy for him to just take things that we were working on, add to that, and do his kind of work. So it was all remote and everyone was in their corner and we were shipping things around. It was incredibly fast because of that, because you didn’t have eight people needing to come to the studio. You had eight people working simultaneously — one in France and one in L.A. and one in Brooklyn. This is how it went, and it was fun. We got there. 

When were you able to tell everyone who contributed that this was the Taylor Swift record, what was their reaction?
You can imagine. I think they realized it was something big because [of] the confidentiality, and they were like, ‘It could only be a few things.’ I couldn’t tell them until, basically, when she announced it. Just in the moments after she announced it, I basically told everyone. I was like, ‘By the way…’ And they were thrilled. Everyone’s thrilled. Nobody seemed mad, everyone was thrilled and honored. Even Justin Vernon had not heard anything else except “Exile,” even though the pulse of that song “Peace,” he gave that song to me. It was important to have it be a surprise, and you know how it can be with someone in her position, with all the speculation, and she’s always under a lot of pressure like that. So it was really important to the creative freedom she was feeling that this remained a secret, so she could just do what we were doing. 

Being such longtime friends and collaborators with Justin, what was it like hearing “Exile” for the first time? His voice and Taylor’s together? 
He’s so versatile and has such a crazy range, and puts so much emotion… Every time he sings when I’m in his presence, my head just kind of hits the back of the wall. That’s the same on this song. William Bowery and Taylor wrote that song together, got it to a certain point, then I sort of interpreted it and developed a recording of it, and then Taylor tracked both the male and female parts. And then we sent it to Justin and he re-did obviously the male parts and changed a few things and also added his own: He wrote the “step right out” part of the bridge, and Taylor re-sang to that. You feel like, in a weird way, you’re watching two of the greatest songwriters and vocalists of our generation collaborating. I was facilitating it and making it happen, and playing all the music. But it was definitely a “Wow.” I was just a fan at that point, seeing it happen. 

Are there any moments that really stick out to you as particularly pivotal in shaping the sound of this record? 
The initial response. When we first connected, and I sent a folder of music and Taylor wrote “Cardigan,” and she said, “This is abnormal. Why do you have all these songs that are so emotional and so moving to me? This feels fated.” And then she just dove into it and embraced this emotional current. And I hope that’s what people take out of it: The humanity in her writing and melodies. It’s a different side to her. She could have been every bit as successful just making these kinds of songs, but it’s so great that she’s also made everything that she’s ever made, and this is a really interesting shift, and an emotional one. It also opens other doors, because now it’s kind of like she can go wherever she wants, creatively. The pressure to make a certain kind of… bop — or whatever you want to call it — is not there really anymore. And I think that’s really liberating, and I hope her fans and the world are excited by that because I am. It’s really special.