Chapter Text
You unlock the door with your heart already half inside.
The hallway light’s off, and the apartment smells faintly like burnt toast and rosemary shampoo. That combination alone tells you exactly what kind of evening it’s been - chaotic, probably, and stubbornly managed. You toe off your shoes by instinct, the floorboards cool beneath your socks, your shoulders already softening beneath your coat. Outside, the city is winding down, all engine noise and slanted golden light. But in here, it should be quieter. Softer.
Home.
And maybe that word means different things to different people, but for you, tonight, it means Roy on the couch and Lian on the floor with her markers and glitter glue, a throw blanket tangled around her shoulders like a cape. It means the TV murmuring in the background, your name written in fridge magnets, an arrow tucked into the umbrella stand (because Roy never remembers it doesn’t belong there), and the smell of something actually edible wafting out of the kitchen.
That’s what you hope for.
That’s what you let yourself imagine, the second before the lock clicks open.
You hope that Roy sat this one out like he was supposed to. That when you told him this morning - cupping his face gently, careful not to press too hard on the bruising at his jaw - that he didn’t need to prove anything, he actually listened. You hope he let himself rest. Took the damn pain meds. Put his feet up and let someone else carry the weight of the world for once.
But you're not that naïve. Not when you know the man you love like this.
Roy Harper doesn’t know how to sit still, even when he’s bleeding. Especially when he’s bleeding. There’s a part of him that still believes he's only worthy when he’s useful, when he’s moving, fixing, doing. He wears his pain like an afterthought, wraps it in jokes and shrugs, then hides the limp until it becomes a stagger. Until he can’t hide it anymore.
You push the door open and brace for whatever version of that you’re walking into.
The apartment is warm. Dim except for the glow of the TV, which flickers soft blue light across the living room. Lian’s blanket-cape is crumpled on the rug, her little sparkly sneakers kicked off at odd angles. There’s a plastic bowl of dry cereal abandoned on the coffee table and a construction-paper crown draped over the lamp.
You smile, just a little. It’s the kind of mess that means a good time was had.
Then you hear him - low curse, sharp intake of breath - from the kitchen.
Of course.
You follow the sound, and there he is.
Leaning on the counter, trying to dice a red bell pepper with one hand and his full weight resting on the other. There’s a dish towel tucked under his elbow and tension in his shoulders. His hair’s still damp from a shower (good), but he’s in a pair of worn shorts and a T-shirt clinging to the curve of his back with sweat (less good). The gauze at his thigh peeks out from under the fabric, fresh enough to make your heart squeeze.
He doesn’t see you at first.
He’s too focused on pretending everything is fine.
You exhale softly and set your keys down, letting the jangle announce you.
His head lifts, and the smile he gives you is instant, bright, and just a little guilty.
“Hey, babe. Dinner’s almost ready. Don’t freak out.”
Which, of course, only makes you want to freak out more.
You walk toward him slowly, tugging your coat off your shoulders, folding it over the back of a chair. You don’t say anything yet. Not until you’re close enough to see the way he’s favouring his left leg, the pinched set of his jaw, the way he instinctively straightens when your gaze catches on the bloodstain seeping through the side of the gauze.
You rest your palm on the counter beside his, not quite touching him yet.
“You were supposed to rest today.”
He shrugs, like he’s just remembered. “I did. For like, most of the day. Lian wanted grilled cheese. You gonna say no to that face?”
He tilts his head toward the living room, where the faint sound of a child’s giggle bubbles up from behind a cushion fort. It’s such a Roy answer it almost makes you laugh. Almost.
But instead, you reach out, brush a strand of hair from his forehead. Let your fingers linger there a moment longer than necessary. Feel the slight fever under his skin, the soft puff of his breath when he leans into your touch despite himself.
There’s so much you want to say. That he’s allowed to rest. That the world won’t fall apart if he doesn’t cook dinner. That being soft doesn’t make him less. That loving him means wanting him whole.
But instead you say:
“Go sit down. I’ve got it from here.”
And because he’s tired - because maybe part of him wants to be looked after, even if he doesn’t know how to ask - he lets you.
He lets you guide him to the couch, and this time, he doesn’t argue.
You take over the kitchen in practiced motions - pan to low heat, cheese to the good bread, not the cheap stuff Roy buys when he’s pretending to budget. The comfort of movement helps. Helps keep your heart steady, your hands calm. Helps keep you from marching back into the living room, throwing his ass over your shoulder, and duct-taping him to the couch until he figures out what "rest" actually means.
You steal a glance toward the hallway, where Roy’s just out of sight, and the memory rises before you can stop it. A sharp, familiar flicker that always follows close behind the sight of bandages and bruises.
***
You're colouring with Lian when the phone rings.
Well - she's coloring. You're mostly trying to keep the glue from permanently bonding her to the floor while pretending not to notice that the princess in her drawing looked suspiciously like a sparkly version of Wonder Woman.
You hadn’t expected the call. At least, not from him.
Hey,” Jason says, casual in that way that means it isn’t casual at all.
You hear the wrongness in it immediately - too even, too slow. The sound of someone trying not to say something.
“Jay, what’s up?” you ask, shifting the phone to your other ear as Lian climbs into your lap, babbling about her purple crayon being a magic wand.
“Just checking in,” Jason says. “How’s the gremlin?”
You blink. “Lian?”
“Yeah. You mind putting her on?”
That's when the first real shiver of unease crawls down your spine. Not because Jason doesn’t love Lian - he does, in the rough, reluctant, soft-hearted way of someone who’d never admit it - but because he never asks to talk to her first. Not when it' Roy who's supposed to be meeting you after patrol. Not when he should be the one calling.
“She’s a little busy,” you say slowly. “Drawing a portrait of an Amazon warrior. What’s going on?”
You can hear voices in the background then - muffled at first, until someone (Roy) barks:
“Jason, seriously, stop stalling and tell her I’m fine. I’m literally walking right now, aren’t I?”
You don’t even flinch.
It isn’t the first time. It won't be the last.
You inhale through your nose, heart skipping like it always does - but not out of panic. You learned long ago that Roy’s injuries aren’t usually the problem. The way he handles them is. Or doesn't.
“Can you ask him, Jay,” you say into the phone, pressing a kiss to the top of Lian’s head as she hums and kicks her feet. “Does he want me to bring Lian to the hospital?”
There's a pause. You can hear Jason’s exhale - short, dry.
You can picture it, too: Roy half-perched on an alley wall, bleeding from somewhere stupid, Jason standing next to him with that impatient look he wears like armour, both of them momentarily stumped by the assumption in your voice.
Because of course you’d assume he's going to the hospital.
Because that’s what people do. When they're hurt. When they aren't trying to prove they're indestructible.
“He’s, uh. He’s not exactly hospital-level,” Jason finally says. “It’s a cut. Couple cracked ribs. Nothing-”
“Jason.”
Another pause.
You don't raise your voice. You don't have to.
“Fine,” Jason grumbles. “Leslie it is. But he’s telling her you made him come.”
“Deal."
And that was the compromise. Not a hospital, but Leslie Thompkins’ clinic. Familiar. Trusted. Somewhere Roy wouldn’t have to explain the scar tissue or dodge eye contact or feel the kind of vulnerable that makes him shut down completely.
He hadn’t liked it. But he’d gone.
Which was something. A start.
***
The grilled cheese hisses quietly in the pan, and you press it down with a spatula, the scent warm and buttery and grounding. You hear a soft thump from the living room, followed by a muffled “ow,” and resist the urge to sigh.
He’s here. He’s safe. And he’s still very, very bad at letting himself heal.
But you’re here too.
And if it takes grilled cheese and stubbornness and every ounce of patience you have to get him to stop doing this alone - so be it.
You’ve got all night.
You turn the burner to low, wipe your hands on a dish towel, and step into the living room, already bracing for whatever version of chaos Roy has allowed in your absence.
It’s not as bad as it could be.
But still.
The couch cushions have been repurposed into some sort of fort-adjacent structure, blankets draped in unconvincing angles from the coffee table, one of Roy’s old T-shirts acting as a drawbridge. A Barbie doll peeks out from under the recliner, missing an arm but proudly wearing a cape made from what you strongly suspect is a torn sock. There are Batman stickers on the wall and crayon scribbles on the whiteboard Roy uses to track Lian’s school schedule and snack inventory.
And in the middle of it all: Roy Harper, in full dad-mode glory, pinned beneath a giggling five-year-old as she straddles his good hip and waves a plastic sword triumphantly in the air.
He’s holding her steady with one arm - his uninjured one, you note with both relief and exasperation - and grinning like an idiot despite the clear strain in his jaw.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he says the moment your eyes meet, breathless and smug. “She needed entertaining.”
Lian chimes in with a fierce little war cry, followed by a smooch to Roy’s cheek that leaves a glittery lip print behind. Roy winces - whether from pain or the sheer sticky chaos of it all, you’re not sure.
You cross your arms and tilt your head, trying to maintain even an ounce of your resolve. It’s a losing battle. Because there’s something about this - about him, sprawled out like a wounded rogue action figure, covered in sparkle slime and stubborn devotion - that’s so irritatingly, unfairly adorable you have to bite your lip just to keep from smiling.
“You’re an idiot,” you murmur fondly, walking over.
“Your idiot,” he says, already triumphant.
You crouch and carefully lift Lian into your arms - she’s buzzing with energy and absolutely sticky from who-knows-what, but she leans into you with all the weight of a child who knows she’s loved. She smells like apple juice and crayons. You smooth her hair down and plant a kiss on her temple.
“C’mon, peanut,” you whisper into her ear. “Let’s go set the table and let Daddy not re-open his stitches.”
She gasps like it’s the most thrilling mission in the world and nods solemnly. “Yes, chef!”
Roy groans dramatically as you help her over the cushion barricade and back into the kitchen.
“I was winning,” he mutters.
“You were about to throw out your back.”
“Still winning.”
You don’t even dignify that with a response. Just flick a glance over your shoulder as you settle Lian on her feet by the counter and pass her the napkins. “Okay, go - two at every seat, remember?”
“Yes!” she says again, already dancing over to the table with them clutched to her chest.
You turn back to check the grilled cheese - perfectly golden now - and plate them with a small sigh of domestic victory. It’s only when you look up, mid-reach for the tomato soup, that you catch sight of Roy again.
He’s still on the couch.
Still reclined, arm slung lazily behind his head, a heating pad balanced somewhere beneath him.
And watching you. Really watching you.
Like he’s seeing something too good to believe, like he’s memorising it.
Like he’s seeing everything.
His daughter setting the table with solemn importance, her hair in lopsided pigtails. You in your work clothes, barefoot now, flipping grilled cheese like it’s sacred. Your voice coaxing calm from chaos. Your hands moving through this space like it’s yours. Like you’ve always belonged here.
And his face-
That look.
It’s the softest, most open you’ve ever seen him. No cocky grin, no smart remark. Just wide, aching affection in those eyes. A kind of quiet awe that makes your breath catch.
Like he doesn’t know what he did to deserve this. Like he doesn’t believe, even now, that it’s real.
You feel your cheeks warm, and there’s something in your chest - something gentle and fierce and rooted - that tightens, just a little.
You glance down, adjust the sandwiches on the plate like it matters, and say the only thing you can manage in that moment:
“Dinner’s ready.”
And from the living room, soft and hoarse:
“Yeah. I know.”
***
The plates are stacked in the sink, the crusts of Lian’s grilled cheese untouched (but the soup bowl suspiciously empty), and the overhead lights are dimmed to that soft, amber hue that means the day is winding down.
You swaddle Lian into her dinosaur pajamas while she chatters through the whole ordeal - tiny feet kicking, arms flailing, somehow resisting every sleeve despite clearly being exhausted.
“But I promised to finish my map,” she yawns, as you wrestle the shirt over her head. “It has the haunted swamp and the secret strawberry village and the-”
“We’ll finish it tomorrow,” you say gently, smoothing her hair away from her face. “After breakfast. Right now, it’s story time.”
“Story time,” she echoes with a grin, already halfway out of your arms and bounding toward the living room. “Daddy reads it best!”
Of course he does.
You trail after her, slower now, hands rubbing tired circles into your lower back. Roy’s still on the couch, one leg up, an ice pack poorly hidden under a throw pillow, a well-worn copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends in his lap. He holds it in his uninjured hand like a sacred text, dog-eared and loved, the spine taped together twice over.
Lian clambers back onto the couch like a cat in a windstorm - knee to shin to chest - finally settling in beside him with a blanket wrapped around her like a burrito. She’s wriggling with excitement, but Roy just raises his brows at you like, “See? Everything’s fine.”
You fix him with a long look, just to make your point clear: If she elbows your ribs, I’m not dealing with your whining later.
He winks.
You roll your eyes and back out quietly, ducking into her room to grab her night blanket - the soft purple one, the one she insists she can’t sleep without because it smells like sunshine and dryer sheets and "home." You breathe it in for a second without meaning to.
And when you come back into the living room-
You stop.
There they are.
Lian, already asleep, her tiny face smushed against Roy’s side. Against his injured thigh, no less. One hand curled in the fabric of his shirt. The book slipped from his fingers, still open to a page he clearly didn’t finish. He doesn’t seem to mind. He’s not even trying to move.
His arm is around her, gently. Protective. As if every part of him, even the bruised, broken ones, knows exactly how to hold her without waking her up. Without letting her go.
You want to be mad. You really do. You should be mad.
That’s his bad leg. That’s the reason you’re heating soup instead of chasing him down Gotham’s rooftops. He shouldn’t be her mattress right now.
But.
God. Look at them.
You stand there for a second longer, blanket in your hands, chest soft with the kind of ache that has no name. The kind that just is. The kind that builds quietly and lives somewhere behind your ribs, deep and warm and rooted.
Roy looks up when he hears you. His face is quiet. Easy. That tired, half-lidded look he gets when the adrenaline finally fades and the pain’s dulled into something slow and bearable.
But his voice is soft when he speaks. Almost shy.
“She wouldn’t stop asking when you’d be home.”
He glances down at the little person passed out on his hip, his fingers brushing her hair back with instinctive tenderness.
“Guess you’re her favourite too.”
You walk over and kneel beside them, laying the blanket across her shoulders, careful not to shift her too much. Your hand grazes his in the process, warm skin to warm skin.
You don’t say anything for a moment.
You just look at him.
At them.
And then you whisper, like a secret just between the three of you:
“She has good taste.”
***
The house is quiet now.
That specific kind of quiet that only comes when a child is truly asleep - room dark, limbs flung wide across a stuffed animal kingdom, the faint sound of slow, even breathing through a cracked door.
You linger in the hallway for a moment, just listening. Letting the silence wrap around you. Your hands are still scented faintly with baby shampoo and warm milk.
Then you turn, barefoot and soft-footed, and make your way back to the living room.
Roy’s where you left him - half-sprawled on the couch, one arm draped over the back cushion, his eyes fluttering open at your return like it took too much energy to keep them closed.
He smiles, sleep-drunk and lopsided.
“Hey,” he says, voice scratchy. “Missed you.”
You arch a brow and lower yourself beside him. “You’ve been unconscious for five minutes.”
“Still counts.”
You don’t argue. Instead, you pat your thigh and murmur, “C’mere.”
Roy obliges with a quiet groan, maneuvering himself slowly, gingerly, until his head is in your lap. He exhales like your lap is his home base, and maybe it is. His hair spills across your thighs - messy and somehow still slightly damp, curling at the ends where it brushes your skin.
You run your fingers through it with absent care, and his eyes flutter shut again.
“God, that’s not fair,” he murmurs, voice all gravel and ache. “You do that and I start thinking you might actually like me.”
You hum softly, checking the gauze at his side. Still clean. Still holding. But your hand lingers anyway. Just to feel the warmth of him. The solid weight of someone here.
“You always say the dumbest things when you’re tired,” you murmur.
He’s quiet for a beat. Then-
“I don’t deserve you.”
The words are barely audible, more breath than voice, and they land between you like a confession meant for the dark. Like they’d slipped past his lips before he had the chance to swallow them down.
You still hear them.
Your fingers pause in his hair, tangled in strands longer now than they used to be, brushing just past his shoulders. You wonder absently, almost tenderly, if he’ll finally let you cut it now that he’s stuck sitting still. He always used to grumble through it, but he’d let you anyway, let your fingers shape the wild mess into something vaguely manageable - like he liked the excuse to feel your hands on him, even then.
He keeps talking. Quietly. Eyes still closed.
“I’ve done some real shitty things,” he says, and the weight of the words presses against your chest like a bruise. “You know that. Stuff I don’t even talk about. Stuff I don’t want Lian to ever know. And I keep thinking - any second now - you’ll remember you could be with someone easier. Someone... I dunno. Less patched together.”
There’s no venom in it. No self-pity. Just the raw, vulnerable scrape of a man who’s spent too long believing he’s only the sum of his mistakes.
You slide your hand down, from his hair to the sharp line of his cheekbone, fingers warm against the roughness of stubble. You turn his face gently, coaxing his gaze toward you. You want him to see your face when you say this. You want him to know.
There’s no pity in your expression. No wide-eyed, naïve affection. Just steady knowing. The kind that comes from time. From history. From nights spent curled up together with too many wounds between you and still choosing not to let go
“Roy,” you say, voice low, steady, “I didn’t fall in love with you because you’re perfect.”
His eyes flicker, searching your face like he’s bracing himself.
“I fell in love with you because you keep trying. Because you love so damn hard it spills into everything you do. Because you made grilled cheese with a bruised rib and one good arm just to make our daughter smile.”
He blinks. Swallows. You can see it - the way his throat works around the swell of emotion he’ll pretend isn’t there later.
“And,” you continue, brushing a curl back from his forehead, “you’re not alone anymore. You don’t have to keep proving you’re worth staying for. I already stayed.”
He exhales hard, like the wind’s been knocked out of him, but gently this time. From inside. From somewhere deep.
You know what it costs him. To be this still. This open. This seen.
“God, you’re gonna make me cry,” he mutters, the corners of his mouth tipping up, even as his eyes shine. “That’s a dirty move.”
You smirk. “You like my dirty moves.”
“I do,” he says, that crooked Harper grin coming in hot, even through the haze of fatigue. “Speaking of - since you’re already fussing over me, I’d like to file a formal request for a sponge bath. Very official. I can email the paperwork.”
You arch a brow, lips twitching. “I think you’re forgetting what happened the last time you pulled a stitch.”
“That was not my fault,” he says quickly, eyes wide with theatrical innocence. “You were - very distracting. I can’t be blamed for biology.”
You lean in, letting your fingers drift down to rest over the bandage on his ribs, gentle but unmistakably firm. Your voice drops to a hush, the kind that curls heat low in his belly.
“When you’re healed,” you murmur, letting your breath tickle the shell of his ear, “and only when you’re healed - I will personally ruin you.”
He makes a noise - something between a groan and a whimper - and tips his head back with a grin that could outshine the city skyline.
“God, marry me.”
You laugh, warm and fond and thoroughly unfooled.
“Bandage first. Proposal second.”
“Fine,” he sighs dramatically, but you can feel the happiness radiating off him, even in his half-broken body. “But just so you know - I’m proposing the second I can walk without limping.”
You smile, soft and fierce and entirely his. You’ve seen this man at his worst, held him through withdrawals, patched up bullet wounds, cried in his arms when you didn’t know how to help, and kissed him breathless when you did. You’ve built something out of those nights. Something stronger than either of you thought you deserved.
So when you press your forehead to his and whisper-
“Looking forward to it.”
-you mean every word.