Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: So I've been having some killer writer's block with both the devil's daughter and my favorite things and I decided to see if I could get this written up, and it was...easy? Like they'll need to be rewritten which might take me a bit 'cause I have some other stuff I want to work on before the next chapter, but I have chapters 2 and 3 done with as well. Hence me posting this now, because while my favorite things is going to be important to this fic for reasons you'll probably imagine after reading this chapter because of worldbuilding + etcetera, this can be read without reading its immediate predecessor. (Technically all of the works in this series can because as readers you can choose to do whatever you want, I just don't recommend it LOL.)

Don't worry, though; I'll still be endeavoring to get the devil's daughter and my favorite things finished. The other fic I haven't written yet in this 'verse too, the servant of gotham, but those other two are much more important for reasons that you will seeeee...

Anyways, in terms of warnings for this fic...there aren't really any for once? I mean, the descriptions of bodily functions in chapters 2 and 3 might be a little weird, but that's really it. No age-inappropriate sexual content or anything like that; they're fifteen, y'all. I guess Jason's history with HYDRA can also apply, but come on, it's HYDRA. Need I say more?

Story title comes from Break the Rules by Charli XCX, and the chapter title comes from Rubberband Girl by Kate Bush.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Until the next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~the black and gold 'verse~

~break the rules~

~chapter 1: rubberband girl~

It was the night before his first day of school back from spring break, and Jason was currently patrolling the city with his older brother, Dick.

Yep, you heard – or maybe read was the more accurate term? Whatever – that right, Dick. Aka, his brother who had just given birth to his niece not even six months ago, the one and only Mari Grayson, who might or might not have been one of the most adorable babies ever, right up there with Kamala.

It probably should've gone without saying that it wasn't...the best of ideas for Dick to be patrolling again so soon. Mari was still well in the age when she was waking up during the night for her feedings, albeit she was prone to waking up after midnight. Dick had decided to take the earlier shifts in the night to help deal with this. But his body hadn't really had the appropriate amount of time to recover from making a baby for nine months and then having a twenty-three hour labor to give birth, either. Dick hadn't cared about that.

Their parents, however, naturally had, and that had led to a bit of an argument (read: a massive fucking one, of even greater proportions than the ones over his decision to not tell Zatanna about her being Mari's amither) between them. In the end, a compromise had been reached: Dick was only allowed to go out for three nights a week as long as he lived in the Glass House.

Of course, he was an adult now, so once he got his own place Bruce and Tony had (very begrudgingly) said that he could theoretically do whatever he wanted. For now, though, while he lived under their roof, this was the rule.

This wasn't Dick's first night patrolling since he'd come back from his "maternity leave" and under his new mantle. Since Jason had taken over the Robin persona, he'd had to come up with a new one, which he hadn't minded in the least bit.

"It's time for a change," Dick had told Jason when the younger omega had asked.

His new name was Nightwing, and his suit was a sleek black with a blue bird symbol on the front rather than the Bat or the Robin "R." He'd kept the domino mask from his Robin era, making it three vigilantes of the Batfamily now who wore it – the others were Jason and Dinah. He'd also started – "started" in the sense that he'd already been training to use them before he'd gotten pregnant, rest assured – using two electric escrima sticks as his weapons of choice. He was pretty badass at using them, Jason had to admit.

But this was their first night patrolling together, just the two of them, and Jason was having a hell of a time. There was something different about how the wind went through his hair and whistled in his ears as they ran from rooftop to rooftop, something different in every single step he took.

It was...special, in comparison to the nights that he'd started off patrolling with Selina and Dinah while Bruce had been gone, and in comparison to the nights that he had been patrolling with Bruce ever since he and Tony had come back from Afghanistan, this past summer serving as a relatively brief intermediary.

"Come on, little wing!" Dick goaded him from where he was about five paces ahead, looking behind his shoulder slightly with a smirk. "I know you can do better than that!"

Jason grinned. "I'll get you for that, Boy Wonder!" he shouted back as he ran even faster.

They hadn't really come across any criminals tonight, as they were in the borough of Elizabeth. Now that there were four well-experienced vigilantes on certain nights, they were able to get a borough each: Bruce was in Edgewater – aka, in the Narrows – tonight, Selina in Coventry, and Dinah in Brideshead.

Jason did not count as a "well-experienced" vigilante yet. As you can imagine, he wasn't particularly happy about this: he had been Robin for a year, minus the summer, after all, and he had more experience than Dick had had in fighting when he'd been allowed to patrol on his own at seventeen. But he was very reluctantly agreeing to the terms of a driver's license before he could do solo-patrols, because he knew that it was only because Bruce and Tony had his best interests in mind.

They'd always had his best interests in mind, ever since Bruce had come to the HYDRA base in Siberia and rescued him and Bucky all those years ago. The same couldn't be said for the people who had been his handlers there.

("Again," Haywood instructed. She was the only one who they knew the name of outside of the guards and the Солдат, although of course "Солдат" wasn't really her name. She was a tall beta woman, with blonde hair that she always wore in an impeccable bun and blue eyes. Cold eyes, the kind that had no life in them not because it'd been electro-shocked out of her, like with the Солдат, but because Jason was pretty sure she didn't have a soul at all.

He grimaced as he looked at the guard in front of him, Lagunov, bound to a chair and bloodied by Jason's own hands. He didn't want to keep on doing this. Lagunov was one of the nicer guards. He'd never really been able to show it outright, because otherwise that would have been bad, but he'd snuck in candy for Jason before. Some chocolates and caramels, which he'd shoved the wrappers of into the vents so that neither of them would get caught. He'd asked him before, too, if he was alright after a particularly grueling training session.

Just the once, and Jason thought that it was only because he'd known the reason why Jason had been given that training session: even after a year and a half since he'd lost his sister, he was still impertinent over it when he wanted to be.

Then again, Lagunov couldn't have been too subtle about it, since he'd gotten caught.

And now, he was going to pay the price of his kindness with his life. Jason was going to pay the price for it by being the one to kill him.

"Again!" Haywood shouted.

Мне жаль, Jason thought, just before he struck yet another blow.

Somewhere in Lagunov's eyes, he thought he might've seen a recognition of what he was thinking. That Lagunov was thinking back to him, Все нормально.

But he would never be sure about that.)

He and Dick ran on top of the rooftops for a little bit longer, playing their game of catch-and-chase because there wasn't much else better to do. They took a break when they were both pretty much out of breath, the hair on the back of their necks slick with sweat. "Damn," Dick said, panting. "I'm out of shape."

Jason thought about saying something about that, but then at the last moment decided not to. He didn't want his ass to get kicked by his older brother tonight.

They sat on the rooftop that they were on with their legs dangling over the edge. Dick nudged at him with his shoulder gently. "So, you excited about school tomorrow?" he prodded.

Jason shrugged. "I guess."

"'You guess?'" Dick repeated incredulously. "You mean to tell me that my little brother, the one and only Robin – " it wasn't a good idea for them to be using their actual names when they were in their suits, no matter what, but Jason knew that he meant his full name, Jason Peter Todd. And though it was neither here nor there, Jason would admit that he wondered sometimes if it really was his actual name, or just the name that HYDRA had given him. He didn't know the circumstances surrounding his conception, besides who his biological parents were. But even that, he shouldn't have been able to know " – is not looking forward to school tomorrow? To learning maybe some things that he didn't already know?"

The fifteen-year-old felt his right eye twitch. "Shut up."

Dick didn't. "To get to see his friend, the illustrious, the grand – ?"

"I said shut up!" Jason growled. He knocked Dick's shoulder away from him, his face feeling like it was going to light on fire.

Dick only laughed.

It wasn't a secret among them – but only among them, Jason felt like he would just about die if the rest of their family found out – that, ever since Barbara and her family had been told that she was going to present as an alpha due to in her genetics, Jason might've had a crush on her.

The news had been quite the shock to her, to everyone, because while it did happen a few times a century (even longer than that, really) that the Θ allele of a person was changed into something else, they hadn't known that her family had the allele. No thetas had been in her family for generations. But apparently somewhere in her mother's family tree, there had been one, and bada bing, bada boom, the allele had carried down through the centuries and changed to an Α allele in Barbara.

And okay...so maybe he'd had a crush on her before they'd found out all of this, before he had even presented as an omega. But then he had, and that had come with its own set of problems: while homosexual relationships (e.g., two omegas, two alphas, two betas of the same primary gender, or whatever sort of relationship in between that couldn't produce children because of their designations) were slowly gaining acceptance in society, they still had a long way's to go, like with those who were transdesignation. And he'd never thought that Barbara was pansexual like he was, either: she'd never really liked talking about romance at all.

So he'd pushed those feelings down. Told himself that they didn't matter.

Then they'd been told that she was going to present as an alpha last October, and something inside Jason had ignited. He'd started to hope again. Hope that once Barbara presented and went into rut, she would notice him like that, and maybe –

– Oh God, he was sounding like one of those stereotypical omegas in media, or one of the several preppy ones at St. Philomena's, wasn't he? He was sounding practically verbatim to that Taylor Swift song that had come out in the last week, too – You Belong With Me or something like that.

With a groan, he fell back onto the rooftop so that he was looking up at the night sky rather than the city. It was as starless and cloudy as ever.

This made Dick laugh harder, before he got a hold of himself. "Has she texted you ever since her rut started?" he asked.

That was the other thing. Not only was Barbara supposed to be an alpha, but she'd gone into her first rut the Friday before break started. So, technically speaking, she already was one.

Well, she'd always been one, really.

But you knew what he meant.

Because of this, he hadn't gotten to see her for all of spring break, not like how they'd almost always spent their spring breaks in the past unless his family had gone on vacation or something.

And not only that again, but:

"No," he said miserably. "She hasn't texted me."

He knew that didn't necessarily mean anything. Ruts, like heats, caused a huge surge of hormones to be unleashed. They didn't cause their own form of brain fog, that was true, but it was reasonable to assume that she was busy doing...otherthings.

Things that made him feel like his face was going to spontaneously combust all over again.

Besides, it seemed like she'd slowly been feeling better about being an alpha since she'd found out she'd be one.

"But you'll see her tomorrow?"

"Probably?" Jason gave a shrug. "It's been two weeks. 'Feel like she would've texted me if it took longer or something."

Then again...

"It'll be fine," Dick said optimistically. "I know it will."

Jason did not feel the same way. "Yeah, sure," he mumbled.

"Oh, don't be like that," the nineteen-year-old (as of a week ago) chided him, playfully hitting him on the shoulder. "But, be forewarned: B and T are probably going to give you the contraception talk soon, since they haven't already. They don't want you ending up like me."

"Jesus Christ," Jason groaned, running a hand down his face. "No. That's never going to happen."

"All it takes is one time, little wing."

"Like I said, it won't happen, WingDings."

Dick cracked up at the nickname that Jason had coined for him ever since he'd announced his new persona. He couldn't help himself.

There was some activity after they stopped taking their break: they caught two guys trying to rob a bodega. The fight wouldn't have been hardly any work at all for one of them, let alone both, but it gave them something to do.

Afterwards, Dick checked the time on his watch. "'Think I'm gonna go back to the Cave," he said. "Wanna come with me?"

"Nah." Jason wasn't really tired yet. He still had too much pent-up energy – especially considering what he maybe-possibly-might have wanted to happen tomorrow.

"Do you want me to drive you to where one of the others are?"

"No, I'll be fine." They were within walking distance of Coventry now; he was already making his plan to meet up with Selina.

Dick frowned. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, WingDings." He made a shooing motion with his hands. "Now, go."

Thankfully, his older brother knew not to press too much. "Alright," he said. "Just make sure you go straight to her, no patrolling or anything like that in between."

"Of course." Jason gave a salute. "Scout's honor."

"You've never been a Scout."

"So, what? T does it all the time."

Dick shook his head. "Whatever. See you back at the cave."

"See you."

Once Dick had left, he activated his comms to ask Selina where she was. Thankfully, she wasn't too far away from the borders between the two boroughs, so he didn't have too much of a journey ahead of him.

As he started on his journey, Jason hummed a tune under his breath, a song that he'd heard coming from Tony's lab at home the other week while he'd been working on Rhodey's suit. The omither himself hadn't gone out as Iron Man again yet, even though the world now knew who he was; he'd told the press that not only was he on maternity leave from Stark Industries, but also from being a superhero or whatever else they wanted him to be for the foreseeable future. His surgery to take out the arc reactor was weeks away from happening and he didn't want to mess that up, albeit naturally the public didn't know about that yet.

"See those trees bend in the wind? I feel like they've got a lot more sense than me. You see, I try to resist..."

(The first time he and Cass had gotten to listen to music, ever, was only months before she would be taken from him, though they didn't know it at the time.

It was New Year's Eve, and the guards had gotten drunk. Haywood was off on some sort of business, and the Солдат had been placed back in cryo, so it was probably the only reason why they thought they could get away with it. Which they wouldn't, Jason knew that, and Cass knew that, but it wasn't like they could do anything about it from where they were locked in their room.

And the guards must've been blaring the music loud, if Jason and Cass were able to hear it all the way from here. True, the walls of the base were rather thin, but they weren't that thin.

The sound of the guards, most of them Russian alphas, singing did bring a smile to Cass' face. "Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen! I don't know when...but just saying it could even make it happen!" they belted out at the top of their lungs.

It made Jason smile, too. It did sound absolutely ridiculous.

"Они глупые, не так ли?" he asked.

She made a gesture with her hands, the one that represented, "Да."

Later, years later, after she'd been taken away from him and he'd been rescued by Bruce, about six months after that, when he would hear Cloudbusting for the first time since then, he wouldn't let himself react in front of his newfound family over it. He would know that he probably should've, that there was no shame in crying for his family, but it was for a veryspecific reason. One that he would have already promised to himself to not admit to unless prompted. Even if that meant taking it to his grave.

Because if his family would find out, if they would finally see what would have been in front of their eyes all along, what would have been in front of his eyes every time he would look in the mirror since Bruce had rescued him and Bucky, that would be one thing, but if not – )

When he was halfway to the meeting point that he and Selina had agreed upon, however, Jason suddenly heard a...strangepiece of dialogue, he guessed was the easiest way to put it.

And maybe it wasn't all that weird, in retrospect, because this was Gotham at night he was talking about, but –

"Who the fuck are you?" a distinctively masculine, most likely alpha, most likely criminal judging by the inflection of his voice (maybe some would consider that rude of Jason to think, but his years with HYDRA and now his year being Robin hadn't taught him nothing) shouted.

Jason paused in his step. He knew that, whatever was the cause of a man like that screaming at the top of his lungs, he should not investigate. Or, you know what, in theory maybe investigating it himself was fine, but he shouldn't interfere.

Which was the problem with him investigating this, because in reality he would interfere. He wasn't too full of himself to say that he wouldn't.

But then –

"Are you a new fucking Bat?" the guy continued to say.

And that –

It was like a record scratch went off in Jason's brain.

Wait, what?

He was definitely going to have to check that out.

"I guess you could say that," a feminine voice chuckled. She didn't speak as loud as the guy, so Jason had to strain his ears to hear her. Still, he heard her.

He looked down the street from the rooftop that he was standing on, in the direction of where the voices were coming from. He saw the owners of them fairly easily enough: the man was true to his expectations, at least the same height as Bruce, but fatter and older. If Jason had to guess what he had been doing, based on the presumably beta woman who was calling the police as she was clutching at the broken strap of her dress –

Jason's jaw clenched. The bastard.

As for the girl, he didn't know what exactly he had been expecting from her.

Whatever he had been, it certainly wasn't what he got.

She was all, around his height of five-foot-seven (he was hoping he would have at least two more inches still to go), if not a little taller, which meant that she was probably either an alpha or a theta. Could be a beta or an omega, too, but that was unlikely. Red hair – the color he could tell because of the street lamps – fell down to her shoulders.

But the thing that stood out the most about her was her costume, because she did look like a member of the Batfamily, as they were called. Her suit was a dark color, not quite black. Maybe it was dark purple? It had a cape and a cowl with the pointy ears, like Batman's. Her gloves, boots, and utility belt were a distinctive yellow, and so too he assumed were the inside of her cape and the Bat insignia on the front of her costume, because he absolutely knew she had to have a Bat insignia.

Even though she couldn't be a member of the Batfamily, because it wasn't like Bruce was taking recruits. Hell, Jason had had to steal one of Dick's Robin costumes in order to become Robin in the first place.

What the fuck? his mind screamed.

Knowing there wasn't really time for him to question things, he hopped down from the rooftop as quickly as he could. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded as he stepped forwards.

The male alpha snarled at him. "Oh, great, you've brought the replacement!" he told the girl. It was a common name for Jason on the streets.

Yeah, he was about as thrilled with that as you probably thought he was.

The girl barely spared a glance at him. "Don't worry," she said. "I've got this."

Now, usually when people said that kind of thing in the movies and the like, it never went well for them. Thus, Jason felt a supreme sense of dread as she leapt forwards.

...Yet, surprisingly, she was able to hold her own fairly well. She got in a punch straight off the bat, landing it squarely on the male alpha's nose, somehow taking him by the element of surprise. Maybe he'd been more surprised by the appearance of Jason than he'd thought.

The male alpha staggered back with a cry, the blood already spurting from his nose. He tried to take a swing at her, his mighty fist flying through the air. He wasn't successful. The girl evaded him easily, and then placed another hit on him that sent him even further back.

Jason was so stunned, he was ashamed to admit, that it wasn't until the girl got a hit to the face that he was called into action. He ran forwards as the girl fell to the ground, groaning in pain. She was obviously somewhat experienced in fighting, probably martial arts lessons given their age, because he thought she was the same age as him roughly.

But she simply wasn't experienced enough.

"Why, you little – " the male alpha growled.

Jason had him dealt with in hardly any time at all.

In the aftermath, he whirled around to gaze at the girl as she got to her feet.

"Are you stupid?" he snapped at her. "What the hell were you thinking?"

Perhaps not too unsurprisingly, this got a rise out of her. "I had that," she told him, even as she held a hand to her face.

"Um, I don't fucking think so," he said. Maybe it was unfair of him, because she had had it better than he suspected most people would, but could you blame him?

There was a person right here in front of him, wearing his family's insignia for crimefighting when it wasn't hers. She had no claim to it.

And she was an alpha. He could tell by her scent. She was wearing some sort of perfume, one that he could smell even six feet away from her. It smelled like honeysuckle and...fresh linen? That was a weird choice for a perfume. Whatever.

His nose tingled.

From somewhere deep inside him, he also felt something...twinge.

He'd think about it later.

"I knew what I was doing," she insisted stubbornly.

"Sure you did," Jason snorted. "You know, as much as I hate to say it, this douchebag – " he gestured to the male alpha, who was now knocked out " – had a good question. Who even are you?"

The girl, he noticed, stood up a little straighter. Puffed out her chest a bit. "I'm Batgirl," she said.

Jason made a face. "Very creative, are you?"

"I could say the same about you," she retorted smoothly.

...Point.

"Why name yourself after my family, though?" he pressed further. "Couldn't you, like, I don't know, come up with your own name? Your own...brand?"

She shrugged. "There's only one name that strikes fear into all of the crime families of Gotham," she reasoned. "And that's the Bat."

An incredulous noise spilled out of his throat. "Are you wanting to try to go toe-to-toe with the criminal families of Gotham already? Are you crazy?"

"No," she said. "But I've gotta make my reputation somehow, don't I?"

That...made sense.

Still, Jason didn't just not like it, he really didn't like it, and for a reason that he couldn't explain. Something about the female alpha before him was making him feel really protective over her. The mere thought of anyone wanting to try to hurt her made him want to bare his teeth and kick their ass into next week. The thought of somebody actually hurting her –

Fuck, it made him want to kill that hypothetical person, and they didn't even exist! Not to mention, although he had been raised by HYDRA for the first half of his life, he had come to agree with Bruce's morality...mostly. Killing people was almost always bad; there were only a few exceptions where he could see it being worth it in the end. But that was irrelevant.

Strangely, the girl – Batgirl – seemed to be having a similar reaction as to him. She had opaque lenses in her cowl, as did all of them for their lenses, so he couldn't see her eyes, nor the movement of them because of the rest of her cowl. But her body posture, the way she held herself, did change, and Jason had been taught to read that in people practically since birth. She was caught off-guard, just as he was.

There was something familiar about her body posture, too. Something that he couldn't quite place.

"Are you...are you wearing perfume?" Batgirl asked.

"What? No!" Jason spluttered. He considered himself very tomboyish, even by male omega standards. That is to say, he would rather be caught dead than wearing perfume and any makeup besides the occasional eyeliner (he'd been leaning into the punk style as he'd gotten older). Even the nail polish that Lili, Peter, and Bea forced onto him sometimes, he always made sure to wash off before he went out in public the next day. "You know, I could be asking the same about you!"

"What do you mean?"

"You – " he started to say.

He was cut off by the sound of police sirens in the distance, coming closer and closer. It seemed like the police were finally arriving to do their jobs. Good. The beta woman, who he and Batgirl had basically ignored up until now (their bad), looked relieved at the prospect of finally getting to see the man who had almost raped her be arrested and (hopefully) put on the path of being brought to justice.

Batgirl wasn't. She tossed her head in the direction of the police sirens, and as dark as it was, he thought he might've seen the color leech from the lower half of her face. "Shit," she spoke. "I've got to go."

"You can't just leave!" Jason complained. "I haven't even finished interr – !"

But she was already running down the street and taking something out of her utility belt – a grappler, by the looks of it, like the kind that he and the rest of the Batfamily used.

How had she even gotten one of them? Had she made it? Or had she paid someone to make it for her?

He looked over at the beta woman. "Will you be okay for the few more minutes that it takes for the police to get here?" he demanded.

Uneasily, she nodded. Jason felt bad about that.

Right now, though, he had a more important matter to deal with.

He took off after Batgirl, using his own grappler when necessary. Like he had with Dick not too long before, he chased after her on the rooftops. She shouldn't have been able to get away from him. She didn't have the experience of doing this for the past year like he did.

Yet somehow, she did. Within no more than ten or fifteen minutes, she was able to leave him in the dust, staring after where he had thought she had gone as that same organ from before twinged again.

He panted, shaking his head as he slapped his hands on his knees. Just what the hell was that?

Who was this Batgirl?

"What took you so long?" Selina asked when he finally got to their meetup point. She had her hand on her hip, but she didn't seem to be too pissed. More so concerned.

Jason thought about telling her about Batgirl. He even almost did. It wasn't like it would be a good idea for him to keep the secret of a new vigilante on the streets claiming their name from her or the others for long, not that he should be keeping it a secret in the first place.

Yet, something – his instincts – didn't want him to tell her. Batgirl, they said, was a problem that he needed to deal with himself for now.

(...Really, she wasn't a "problem" at all.)

So, he didn't.

"Nothing," he lied, straight through his teeth.

He was a good liar when he wanted to be. Had to have been, in order to survive his life before Bruce had saved him. Still, the adults of his family were all either geniuses, vigilantes that relied on their own detective work to help them fight crime, or both. In Selina's case, she had also been raised in the Red Room, the formerly Soviet, then formerly Russian, program that had kidnapped little girls to raise them to become the perfect spies, assassins, or whatever else they'd wanted them to be.

The Red Room, as Natasha had told Bucky over this past summer, who had in turn told it to Selina, had been destroyed a few years ago. For good. Both of the women had been extremely glad at this, albeit wary of what that sort of power vacuum meant for the future.

Anyways, all of this was to say, the Catwoman obviously didn't quite believe him. "You sure about that?" she asked. "You didn't get into any trouble? You came straight here from where you were with Nightwing?"

Now sometimes, as Jason had learned, the best way to cover up a lie was by telling a little bit of the truth. Which he reluctantly did.

"I stopped a woman from getting assaulted," he said, crossing his arms. "There, you happy?"

Selina stared at him. "That could've been dangerous, doing that on your own."

"I know."

"Well, just so long as you know," she quipped back. Her stance relaxed and she grinned. She was always the most lenient with him out of the Batfamily: she knew what it was like to be at his age, having all of the knowledge and experience that she did. "We just don't want you to get hurt again, Robin."

"Yeah, yeah," he huffed, thinking back to that night when he'd had to get the thirty-some stitches, which he still had the scar from. Urgh. Never again. "Are you going to tell B?"

"Not this time."

He was able to keep too much relief from showing, if only barely. "Thanks, C."

"Just don't give me a reason to tell him, and we'll be good," she warned.

Jason spent the remainder of the night patrolling with her, which wasn't too long, until Bruce came to pick him up. They drove back to the Batcave, where Alfred and Rebecca were waiting for them. "Did Dickie already go to bed?" he asked as he got out of the car.

"I believe so, Master Todd."

He resisted the urge to sigh: he knew it was unfair of him to be disappointed with Dick having baby Mari and all. But, still: so much for seeing him when he got back.

Jason's thoughts were busy as he got changed out of his suit and into the pajamas that had been placed for him in the locker room by Alfred. Busy with thoughts about Batgirl and that strange scent of hers, busy with thoughts of Barbara and whether or not he would get to see her tomorrow, what he would say to her if he did tomorrow. Strangely, both of those thoughts caused butterflies in his stomach with equal measure.

As such, it wasn't until he went to the upstairs, then further upstairs to his room, as he was about to use the toilet in his bathroom, that his overall "what the fuck" feeling of the night became even more pronounced.

Because as he was undoing the fly on his underwear, you see, he accidentally jostled it a bit too much. This made the drying dampness of the fabric further back slide up against his skin.

A dampness, drying or not, that should not have been there. He'd already had his heat at the beginning of the month and he hadn't been aroused at any point during the night. Not that he'd been aware of, at least.

Not only that, but he hadn't noticed the dampness up until now, either. That shouldn't have been impossible, him being unaware of his biological functions to such a degree.

Yet, his eyes widening, he pulled his underwear and flannel pants down and seemingly confirmed it all anyways:

His underwear was coated with slick.

Word Count: 5,639

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