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Steph woke groggily to a distant banging.
“What?” She groaned out, still buried into Jason’s side. He, of course, was still fast asleep and snoring obnoxiously, because he was an asshole.
Steph stuck her elbow into his stomach hard, because she was even more of an asshole.
Jay’s sleep was always light and tepid, a skill he trained himself in years ago. He shot straight up, jostling her away from him as he instinctively reached for his nearest gun.
It was with the firearm already in his hand that he seemed to become aware of his surroundings, including her satisfied smile and the utter lack of a threat in the room.
“What the fuck, Steph?”
He glared at her as he rubbed at his face sleepily. To be fair, this was not the first time she’d woken him up like that.
She felt more justified this time though.
She watched him notice the banging sound and tense again. They were both topless, the blankets pooled around their waists, so she could see the flexing of his muscles as he shifted from casual back to alert.
Of course, that’s when the shouting started.
“Jason,” an annoyed voice called out, and they both froze because that was Dick Fucking Grayson. “I’m breaking out the lockpicks if you don’t open in the next sixty seconds.”
Fuck.
She saw her exact same level of panic reflected on Jason’s face. It would have been comical if she didn’t feel so utterly terrified.
See, Stephanie wasn’t a terribly prudish person—she’d happily blab about her period in excruciating detail just to watch Bruce’s face pinch into his unique brand of awkwardness—but there were some things she just didn’t need people to know.
She did not intend for anyone to ever discover she’d slept with Jason Todd.
Suddenly she was launching out of the bed, frantically scanning the room for where the fuck she’d put her clothes. The ripped scraps of her shorts were, for some reason, dangling from the arm of Jason’s desk chair, and it kind of made her madder at herself for liking this idiot so much.
The idiot who was still sitting there, just watching her as she moved naked across the room to collect her clothing.
“Get dressed, asshole,” she told him, though she didn’t let her voice raise with her frustration. She couldn’t give Dick any clues to her presence.
Jason reluctantly pulled himself up.
“Only for you, princess,” he smirked, just to piss her off, and she fought the temptation to hit him with something. Maybe a brick. Why did she only ever go for idiots?
“Just go out there and deal with your stupid brother before he comes barging in here and sees something no one wants him to.”
Jason rolled his eyes as he pulled on his boxers and a sweatshirt, mumbling something about ‘not having any fucking brothers.’ Just two weeks ago he took a bullet for Damian, so Steph ignored his stupid blustering to sniff at her t-shirt. How did it smell so much like sex? Like actually how was that possible? She ditched it on the floor and opened Jason’s drawers to steal one of his. It was obscenely big for her, hanging all the way down to her knees.
A hand caught her and pulled her into a strong kiss. For just a moment they melted into each other, his hands crawling under the long shirt to cup her bare ass while hers reached to tangle in his messy hair.
When they parted, faces still just inches apart, she whispered to him, “Get rid of them quickly and I might just let you fuck me again.”
That had him pulling away like she was something toxic, and she had to stifle a laugh as he stumbled to his door in his haste to get rid of his stupid brother.
Those idiotic Batboys, she thought fondly.
Her backpack was tossed on top of Jason’s desk, a piece of furniture that as far as she could tell went entirely unused and simply came with the apartment. She’d brought her biology textbooks on some delusional belief that she might actually get some work done. Maybe she could read a paragraph before Jason returned, just enough that he could tell herself she studied and it was the professor’s fault when she inevitably got a B.
She was just cracking open the spine, flipping through the hundreds of pages trying to find the part on hormones she was supposed to be studying, when the sound of footsteps echoed down the hallway.
That wasn’t just Jason, she recognized immediately, because he’d left in just his socks. Those boots coming down on hard floor sounded precisely like Dick Grayson’s favorite combat boots that he thought made him look really cool. (And of course he was right, that motherfucker.)
It was accompanied by voices—no, one voice. Jason was shouting in an incoherent bluster tinged with desperate warning.
Steph barely had the time to drop down and roll under the bed—simple with vigilante instincts—before the bedroom door was bursting open.
“Where is it?” Dick. God, she hates him so much sometimes. What could he possibly need so badly?
“I don’t fucking know! Give me a minute dude.”
Steph regulated her breathing carefully, horrifically aware of how obvious the truth would be if she was discovered under Jason’s bed wearing nothing but one of his shirts.
“Ooh, Jason,” she heard, and she stiffened immediately. That was Dick’s teasing voice. “Whose are these?”
Shit shit shit shit.
She could see their feet if she turned her head to the side. She could see that her panties were right there on the floor, tucked only slightly under the desk. That was Dick's hand reaching down to grab them for closer inspection. Shit.
“None of your fucking business,” Jason responded. A rustle of movement told her he tried to grab them from Dick.
The exaggerated sound of consideration Dick made proved that he failed. Dick was standing there, staring at her panties (which she knew were stained with signs of the previous night’s pleasure) and trying to figure out who they belonged to. A pit was growing in her stomach, irrationally.
Of course, it wasn't like being associated with Jason was the worst thing in the world. It was more so that everyone would make a big deal about it—about her seeing her ex's brother, all assuming that there had to be feelings involved.
What they had was simple. Fun. Dick was about to ruin all that.
“Purple,” Dick mused aloud.
Steph cursed herself for having a signature color. Her eyes squeezed shut as she awaited the sound of judgement. But then…
“She must be pretty cool.”
Nothing. He didn’t figure it out.
It almost felt impossible for a moment, but the excitement quickly won out.
Take that Dick fucking Grayson! She always knew she was smarter than him.
“What.”
Jason must have been similarly baffled by this. He sounded so genuinely confused that Steph found herself stifling hysterical giggles against the palm of her hand.
“I just mean—” and she could hear the amusement in Dick’s voice, the teasing-older-brother tone that drove them all crazy “—clearly she knows. And you seem pretty defensive of her, is all. Thought maybe it was somebody special.”
Steph strained her ears, curious if Jason would deny that. It wouldn’t be hard. So what if he fucked some girl in his real bedroom, with his Red Hood helmet out casually on the dresser like a piece of decoration? That just meant she knew his identity, and that didn’t inherently mean someone he trusted or someone he cared about. It meant he was smart to take what he could get, from whoever was willing to (happy to) give it.
But Jason didn’t say anything right away. Even straining her ears the best she could, Steph couldn’t make out any sounds other than Jason’s breathing, which was always a little louder, with a slightly wheezing tone at the end of a big breath.
Then, “I guess she is.”
That was all he said, but it floored Stephanie. Like, if she wasn’t already laying on the floor, she probably would have collapsed.
Because she thought she understood what was happening here. Two people with similar enough histories, who understood each other like no one else really could, came together for some fun.
(And it was fun. A lot. Jason was stupidly good with his tongue.)
She never imagined it could be more than a little sex. But the tone of Jason’s voice, it was almost reverent. The words were unimportant in comparison, because just the way his tone softened, the slightest smile seeping in, that was enough to tell her that she mattered to him. That he cared.
It was so sweet. It had Steph completely re-evaluating their last several weeks.
Of course Dick responded with a loud laugh. He was so good at ruining a moment.
“Awww, my little brother is in looooove,” he sang, and she could hear the furious snap of Jason reaching out to smack him for that, but it didn’t stop Dick’s laughter. “Hey, if you want to get rid of me, you’ve got to get that file. ‘Til then, you’ll have to suffer through my teasing.”
There was some shuffling, and then: “Fuck, wait. I put it under the couch.”
There was a moment of silence and then Dick, baffled and entertained, “Under the couch? And why did you put it there?”
“I was a little distracted.”
Steph realized suddenly that she knew what file they were looking for. The one Jason was working on last night, when Steph slipped through the window desperate for a fuck. She’d plucked it out of his hand and slid it across the floor to get lodged under the opposite sofa before distracting him with a passionate kiss.
Once again, her face was red with embarrassment and memory.
But the boys were finally clearing out, the door closed firmly in what must have been a signal.
Steph rolled out from under the bed swiftly, launching herself across the floor to grab her leggings and tug them up swiftly, barely keeping her balance.
With a last glance at the door, smiling at the faint drone of Jason and Dick arguing about nothing in the living room, Steph slid the window open and slipped out.
She didn’t take her bike there, but her apartment wasn’t a far walk, and it would give her some to… think things through.
There was also a flower shop nearby. Just another thing she was thinking about for no reason whatsoever. Not because she couldn't help but think of Jay as a horrible romantic who might just melt over a stupid gesture like that. That would be ridiculous.
This was the debate she held with herself as she dropped down from the fire escape onto the sidewalk. She was not thinking about her outfit, or how ridiculous she probably looked drowning in Jason’s shirt.
And maybe she wasn’t really using her vigilante instincts, as lost in her own mind as she was, because she didn’t even notice anything amiss until a voice called her name.
“Stephanie?”
Steph looked up in a panic and yes, that was Tim fucking Drake, sitting on a parked motorcycle. His arms were resting against the handlebars, his phone out like he’d been texting someone, but his gaze was entirely locked on her.
The way his mouth dropped open would have been hilarious in any other circumstance, but she could see his eyes roaming her body, taking in the disheveled mess of her hair and the absurdly oversized shirt advertising a band she'd never listen to. He was too smart not to reach the right conclusion, his gaze darting up to the now-open window of Jason's apartment.
“What the fuck?”
He looked a little bit like he was going to combust, which... fair.
Steph could relate. In fact, the longer she had to spend in his wide-eyed staring contest with Tim, the more she wished she'd spontaneously combust on the spot.
That conversation about feelings with Jason was starting to look real appealing.