Work Text:
Marinette woke as the light peeked through her blinds. A cool breeze wafted through the air, and she tucked the blanket up to her chin, glad she had a heated blanket…
…Her heated blanket had just been washed. She hadn’t put it on last night. She opened her eyes and bit back a scream.
A man was gripping her around the waist, cuddling her into his side. Her leg was thrown over his lower body, and her head was resting on his chest.
What the hell?!
She knew she was a heavy sleeper, and that she had taken sleeping medication last night, but to not notice someone crawling into bed with her?!
She tried to squirm out of his arms without waking him, but every movement just made him grip tighter. She managed to get her torso free enough to make it to her nightstand, but his arms had squeezed around her bum. Her desperation grew and she finally let out the scream she had held back.
She grabbed the nearest thing, her alarm clock, and yanked it out of the wall, chucking it at his torso. He woke with a start, dropping his arm from it’s death grip and she rolled away as he sat up.
“What the-” he started saying, his voice gravelly from sleep.
She threw the lamp at him.
“Hey! What- Stop!”
He blocked the shoe she threw next.
“Get out!”
She threw the other shoe.
He grabbed that one in mid-air before it ever reached him.
“Me?! This is my brother’s place! You get out you crazy girl!”
She grabbed a red thing on the floor and threw it at his head. “This is my house!”
It connected with his forehead and he collapsed. Marinette inched forward after he didn’t move for a minute and looked at him.
Black hair with a white streak in it. Huge muscles that she was able to appropriately ogle, as he wasn’t wearing anything except a pair of black boxer briefs with a red bat on them.
She poked him with her finger, but he stayed unconscious.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she moved to the other side of the bed to collect her phone and call the police. On the floor was the red thing she had thrown. Red Hood’s helmet. It was sitting in a pile of haphazardly discarded clothes - Red Hood’s costume – and a concerning number of weapons.
Well damn, now she couldn’t call the cops. Plus, he was hot. He was so good-looking, it was unfair. Still, he was possibly hostile and might be angry at her attacking him when he woke up, so she collected all of his protective gear, weapons, and helmet and shoved them in her guest room and locked the door.
Returning to the room, she looked at her unexpected guest and felt a tad bad about it now. Her brain had finally woken up and caught up with their brief but panicked conversation. She registered something about him saying it was his brother’s house. He had likely gone in the wrong window.
He clearly hadn’t taken advantage of her. She was still in her pajamas.
Okay. Hot guy in her bed. She could work with this.
She decided to make breakfast for him as a sorry for knocking him out thing. However, she had no idea what he ate or if he had any allergies, so she started making a bit of everything. Looking at the spread of eggs, bacon, hashbrowns, sausage, toast, cereal, oatmeal, assortment of fruit, biscuits, tea and coffee she had on the table, she noted that she had completely overdone it and made enough for at least five people.
She sat down and started to sip on some coffee when she heard a groan coming from her room and went to go see.
~~~~
Red Hood, Nightwing, Batman and Robin were attempting to rescue Tim and Bernard, who had been taken hostage on their way to Tim’s derelict boat that he dared to call a home at the Gotham Marina, when Hood had taken a hit to his helmet. He was forced to take it off, the crack in the screen impeding his ability to see. That was fine. He had a spare mask in his pocket. He let off a smoke bomb in his area and used the cover to change, hooking the helmet onto his belt.
Apparently, his timing couldn’t have been worse, because his smoke bomb released right as Scarecrow threw out a canister of gas of his own – not that Jason could see that. Therefore, unlike everyone else on the team, he didn’t know to slip on a gas mask.
His mind flooded with visions of his past. He curled up against a wall, clutching his head and wishing for the visions to disappear.
“Hood! Hood!” a voice called and he flinched.
A figure shrouded in darkness came towards him. He had no clue if it were friend or foe… or even there at all.
“Jay? Little wing?” Dick’s voice finally filtered through the panic to him. “You need to get out of here. Go to my apartment. It’s closest.”
Dick held out a hand for him and Jason eventually reached forward to take it. Dick led him to the exit.
“Do you remember the way?”
“Yeah,” Jason said thickly. He was desperately trying not to attack the monster in shadows he knew was his brother.
“Just remember. Nothing out there is real. I’ll be there in a few minutes, okay?”
Jason nodded. “My bike,” he remembered. There was no way he was in a state to drive it.
“I’ll take it back for you. I’ll likely beat you there, so just let yourself in.”
“Right.”
Jason started walking at a leisurely pace, not wanting to make things worse. ‘It’s not real’ played in a loop in his thoughts, reminding him that the visions of pain and terror were only in his mind.
He finally made it to Dick’s apartment, and let himself in through the window that he had left cracked open for him.
He stripped down and climbed into bed. He collapsed on the bed and gripped onto the body pillow to help ward off the rest of the nightmares.
~~~~
Jason awoke to a twinge of pain. He looked down and saw a girl squirming in his arms. She screamed and he let go.
“What the-”
Something else hit his shoulder. Some girl was throwing a lamp at him!
“Hey! What- Stop!”
He had no clue why the strange girl was in his brother’s apartment, but he wasn’t about to hurt her, so he stopped a high heel from connecting with his face.
“Get out!” she screamed.
She threw the other shoe, thankful he had caught that one.
“Me?! This is my brother’s place! You get out you crazy girl!” Surely Dick had told whoever she was that he was there. Why was she in the spare room at all?
“This is my house!” She grabbed his helmet threw it at his head. This one connected and he knew no more.
~~~~
Jason awoke this time and grunted in pain. Something had hit his head hard.
He was sprawled out on a bed with flowery blankets he didn’t recognize. Actually, now that he looked around, nothing about this room seemed familiar.
He stood up and the blankets fell from his lap. He was mostly naked.
Naked and in a girl’s room.
His mind flashed to an image of him wrapping his arms around a woman with fire in her eyes.
Had he, in his semi-delirious state gone and gotten laid? Had he taken advantage of her? He remembered nothing past entering the building to get Tim.
Where had he met her? Had he gone to a bar or something and gotten wasted while still out of it, and picked her up? It would explain why he wasn’t at home sleeping off the fear gas.
The woman entered the room and he stared openly. She was gorgeous. Just his type. He could easily imagine being with her no matter what state his mind had been in. He gave a mental high five to his past self for the amazing hookup.
“Hi,” she said timidly from the door.
“Hey- uh- beautiful.” He tried to search his brain for a name, but came up with nothing. “Sorry, I don’t remember your name.”
She quirked an eyebrow up at him. “We never got names.”
“Ah shit. I’m sorry. I don’t normally do shit like this. I swear. I’m Jason.”
“Marinette.”
He held out a hand awkwardly for her to shake. She bit her lip as she tried not to laugh at him.
Right. He was mostly naked, trying to shake hands with someone he had slept with. He was such a dork. Someone put him out of his misery.
“Hey uh, how did we meet anyways? I’d like to say I remember a night with someone as gorgeous as you but…”
She held up his helmet. His Red Hood helmet.
Oh.
Shit.
“For the record, all you did was use me as a body pillow. A very cuddly one. You refused to let go.”
“Oh. That’s… good…. I guess.” He was both glad and sad that he didn’t hook up with her. He wouldn’t have wanted to forget that.
“So where am I? How’d I get here?”
She motioned to the cracked window. He peeked outside. He was across the street from Dick’s apartment. He must have tried to go there. It made sense – it was closer to the fight than his place.
She had a small balcony, similar to Dick’s, but with a lot of flower pots. She had likely thought her window safe to leave open, as there were no fire escapes on this side of the building.
“I made breakfast while you were out. Sorry about that, by the way.”
“About what?”
She pointed to her forehead.
He reached up and touched his own. There was a painful bruise. That would explain the oncoming headache he felt.
She tossed him his pants and shirt.
“Where is my gear?” he questioned her.
“Hidden until I could tell if you were going to hurt me or not.”
Made sense. “Did I pass?”
Her lips turned up in a smile. “Jury’s still out.” She motioned to the door. “Want anything to eat?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Just let me get dressed.”
“Right!” she squeaked and turned around, her face instantly turning red. “Sorry! I’ll just be in the kitchen!”
He laughed and started pulling on his clothes, finding his way through the similar building to the kitchen.
The table was full of enough food to feed his entire family. “Smells amazing.”
“Help yourself. I wasn’t sure what you would want…”
He sat down and helped himself to a little bit of everything hot. Cereal was more Dick’s thing than his if he could help it. Likely too many years of living off food stamps and cereal being one of the few things that could make his tiny belly full. He shoved away the thought as he took a bite. It was all excellent.
As they ate, they made easy conversation. She wasn’t nearly as freaked out about the whole vigilante stopping by thing as he would have thought.
He even found himself telling her about his plan to work from the inside to clean up the streets and make it safer for kids.
She nodded approvingly. “Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty to save others pain.”
It sounded like she understood.
They talked books, movies, music and goals. She wanted to be a designer, and was waiting for her big break. He made a mental note to connect her with Wayne Fashions, if nothing else, as a thank you for being so kind (minus the lump on his head).
The clock chimed for 11am, and he remembered he hadn’t checked in.
“I’ve gotta get going. Any chance I could get my gear back?”
“Oh right. Yeah.”
She left for a moment to get it, returning with her arms full of his jacket, guns, and knives.
Once he had put them all back on, he turned to say, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome any time. But… maybe if you want to sleep with me again, you could call first and ask,” she joked.
He laughed, but was quite serious when he responded, “I want to wine and dine you first.”
She grabbed a pen and wrote her number on the back of his hand.
“I’ll call you,” he promised.
He moved to put his spare mask back on his face and swing away from her balcony when she blocked his path. “Leave the normal human way…”
He looked confused at her.
“The door?”
Oh yeah. He laughed it off and headed for her apartment door instead.
“See ya later. Friday at 8 sound good?”
“Sounds great.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
He started his walk of shame... without even getting laid.