Cassandra Cain X Platonic!reader - Tumblr Posts
JASON TODD & CASSANDRA CAIN (generalized fanon | maybe wfa)
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“Blind Spot” (Jason Todd x Fem!Reader) and (Cassandra Cain & Platonic!Reader)
| Reader is introduced (this time “formally”) to the second of their new boyfriend’s extended family.
| SFW, stalking(?), batfam shenanigans, worried!Jason
| The pictures used are just for aesthetics and have no contextual meaning to the story. (pic sources: beg.=batman:under the red hood, middle=dceaced, and end=batgirl#1 • all comics)
| part of the meet the bats series
| 3k+ words
Jason’s roof is bumpy. Not like asbestos bumpy or anything, though in Gotham you could never be too sure, but it certainly wasn’t smooth.
“Hey, baby, was your apartment built before or after 1989?”
Jason answers immediately.
“After. I needed a place without a sprinkler system though, so I wouldn’t bet anything special on this building being too up to code.”
“Mm,” you hum, letting your head drop to the side. That still didn’t rule out asbestos.
The new view that greets you is of the back of Jason’s head and the broad scarred expanse of his back.
You’ve decided you’re not going to worry about the possible poison in the walls yet. Hopefully Jason’s paranoia extends to that type of stuff and he’s checked it out already.
“Hey baby?”
In the beat it takes for Jason to let out an acknowledging grunt your eyes catch the black glint of yet another weapon being picked up. You snort.
“You got all those guns, any of ‘em actually do anything interesting?”
His shoulders shake as he laughs.
“Like what?”
You shrug. “I don’t know, just...” your brown fingers snap and you sit up, legs crisscrossed over the cushions, “…there was a rumor going around the other day ‘bout Harley and a beanbag shotgun. Got anything like that?”
Jason scoffs, “You have got to stop listening to whoever is spreading these rumors and giving you your theories.”
“Shut up.” You wait until he’s taken the last piece of the pistol in his hand apart to knock him in the head with one of his throw pillows. “Answer the question, Todd.”
For a good minute he can’t, keeled over laughing as he is, but you have no problem waiting him out, laughter of your own occupying you.
“Alright,” he gasps in air, talking through his giggles. His voice is a little higher than usual. “Short answer is no.”
When he’s done he lets his head fall back into the couch so he can look at you with raised brows.
“Satisfied?” He grins, voice back to normal.
“Believe it or not,” you wiggle around so you can bend over and smack a wet kiss onto his lips, feeling his smile widen, before sitting back up, “no. What’s the long answer?”
He shakes his head at you, muttering something that sounds a lot like ‘insatiable’ under his breath, before going back to his assigned task for the night. You shrug, but a shiver down your spine cuts off whatever response you might’ve given.
Brows furrowing, you lean back on the couch as an uneasy feeling settles in your gut, gaze moving to slide around the apartment until you settle on a familiar item on the small table near the window.
The aloe plant you’d gifted Jason a few weeks ago sits atop it. Surprisingly, it still looked healthy, which was nice. You’d gotten it for him because they were low maintenance, but you could never be too sure with the vigilante schedule he operated on. There’s a small bit of movement behind the plant though and - without your say so - your eye focuses on it instantly. Or at least tries to. For some reason what you’d thought was a bug ends up disappearing on you though.
The longer you look out at what amounts to nothing the more severe your frown gets, face morphing into a grimace.
The darkness feels like it’s watching you back and the prospect makes you queasy. The possibility of a potentially deadly game of hide and seek runs through your mind; somebody popping up from the darkness and smashing the window—
A particularly harsh clink from in front of you snaps your mind back to reality. Jason’s reaching for his briefly disregarded rag and gun oil, parts of a good sized rifle laid out before him, shoulders rising and falling in easy, tempered motions. Instantly you begin matching your breaths with his own, doing your best to shake the feeling of unease off.
Jason starts talking again with a low contemplative tone and you let his voice settle over you like a blanket, slumping back into the couch as you watch the back of his head.
“The barrel of a shotgun isn’t even big enough for a regular sized bean sack—”
“—Bean sack,” you parrot quietly and Jason flips you off without looking. You snicker.
“A bean sack gun,” he continues like you hadn’t interrupted, “just isn’t practical as a primary weapon. It’ll probably lock up and misfire then - look at that - you're dead.”
You huff, “Jason this is supposed to be a fun conversation.”
“This is fun,” he grunts, picking up a tiny brush to clean with.
Your eyes roll.
“Alright, whatever, what about glitter?”
“Please stop.”
You buss out laughing.
“I don’t think I want to. But- just hear me out,” you cut in when you see the furrow that takes over his face, “If Sam and Dean can shoot salt guns then I don’t see how much different glitter would be if you factor in the weight difference.”
The new expression that takes over his face is even worse than beforehand and he gives you this narrow look like he can’t believe you’re being serious.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Those guns aren’t designed for impact, just range, and,” he scoffs, “to look cool probably.”
“Ohhh—” you stop as the confusing patch of night outside the window catches your attention again before scooting farther away from the window. Why it’s even throwing you off you can’t tell, but you don’t want to stress over nothing. You clear your throat and go back to joking with him. “—You don’t think the salt shotgun is cool, Jay? Is the Red Hood too good for the Winchesters?”
“Absolutely.”
He grins at you over his shoulder and you scoff, kicking out to shove him with your foot. He barely rocks from the force of it.
After that an easy silence fills the space once more and you rest your head onto the back of the couch, breathing in deep in an attempt to quell the clench in your stomach.
When you look over again the image through the window is clearer. On the apartment across from Jay’s there’s a fire escape just slightly above his own and — you squint, crawling to the end of the couch to get a better look — and there! Right there! A short burst of breeze causes a heavy piece of fabric to flutter and what’s wrong finally becomes obvious.
You lean even further.
What should be the rest of the metal railing is blocked by a large patch of darkness that you do your best to follow with your eyes, only going a little cross-eyed and blurry in your efforts.
Passively, it occurs to you that maybe this was something you should bring to Jason’s attention. The night coming to life and inching closer wasn’t normal after all, but—
There! The fabric shifts again, another larger piece this time, and with your gaze now having something concrete to focus on more and more of the misplaced darkness starts to come into place.
Glinting stitches, a brief flash of yellow as another gust of wind displaces fabric. Then a light in the house across from you flicks on. Barely any of it leaks through their curtains, but it’s just enough to make the outline of a person perched on the railing, what you can now tell is the smear of a cape draped over the outside of the fire escape and catching the breeze every few seconds, come into staunch focus.
Your eyes go wide.
“Jason?”
His head whips around and he’s looking up at you from his disassembled cache of guns on the floor, gaze sharp. You don’t know what the hell he detected from your voice, but you can see the way his face crests once he gets a look at your expression and your stomach twists.
You didn’t think you looked that alarmed.
Jason’s gaze follows yours when you turn your head back for confirmation, and it’s brief but for a second still the same blotch of black is there before you take your next breath and it’s - the person’s - disappeared.
“Crap,” he curses and you go rigid, falling back as the sounds of him quickly reassembling a gun fill the room.
Next thing you know he’s up and walking over to open the window.
You scramble up from the couch, “Jay! Hold on, are you sure—?”
The window slides open with a small click and a few beats pass before - baffled - you watch Jason sigh and set his firearm down on the side table beside the aloe.
He sticks his head out the window.
“Cass,” he whisper-yells.
From behind Jason you watch nothing happen. It’s quiet except for the city’s usual ambiance and there's a cursory creak of old metal before—
“No, not you too, get out of here. Don’t you have a city to patrol?”
—a face appears in the window, right in front of Jason, and you take in such a harsh breath you stumble back a few steps.
So close to the window with the light from the living room as an aid you can make out the long pointed ears at the top of what you can now tell is the person’s — Batgirl’s, that was Batgirl’s — mask.
Right. Okay. You suppose if Robin popped in to visit and your boyfriend rocked a red helmet and killed people in his spare time then Batgirl also popping in wasn’t too far a stretch of the imagination. You suck in a breath until your lungs fill with enough air to make your chest twinge.
Batgirl’s low scratchy voice fills the quiet.
“The city.” Batgirl seems to fix Jason with a look but the mask makes it hard to tell, before finishing, “Will survive…five minutes.”
Then she pats the hand he still has on the window sill. “Kind of you,” you hear her say before she’s slipping in past the width of his bulk. Jason makes an exasperated noise and moves to let her in - not that she wasn’t already doing that perfectly fine on her own.
After the incident not even a full week ago Jason can’t seem to not throw you a panicked look from behind the woman. You only shrug, heartbeat steadily settling back down. At least you were awake this time. You look over the faceless vigilante, not an inch of skin - of the person underneath - showing. Though you were no less perturbed.
The only huge difference is that it was the blank mask of the Black Bat that’s staring at you from the darkness and you’re not at imminent risk of being beheaded. That was…something. You purse your lips, rocking back onto your heels with your heart in your throat.
The Bat doesn’t say a thing, just looking at you with indents that probably indicate eyes behind them and a face full of more of those glinting stitches.
Jason clears his throat, moving around so he can stand beside you.
“Is this some kind of trend now?”
His irritated grumble brings Batgirl’s attention back to him and you relax, leaning into the arm he presses into the dip of your back.
“Oh,” she breathes. You’d be pressed to think she was being sarcastic if it wasn’t for: “Heard about Robin. Seemed like…fun,” she proclaims.
You briefly wonder at the fact that you’re apparently an interesting enough deviation for Jason that you’re piquing the interest of vigilantes.
Then Batgirl’s attention shifts squarely back to you and you can’t remember how to breathe again, let alone what you were just thinking about.
“Um,” you choke out, “Hi.”
Jason’s tan hand snakes under your shirt to rub at the dark brown skin there. You focus on the warmth from the point of contact, breathing out slowly.
Batgirl’s head shifts, indicating the window behind her. “You noticed me.”
It’s not a question.
“I mean - barely,” you say. A half aborted chuckle falls past your plush lips. “I pretty much just thought I was losing it.”
“That’s good,” she says and you pause confused. She turns to Jason, tone brightening. “Robin was right. She’s impressive. For a civilian,” she concedes at the end.
When she walks up to you next she holds a hand out. After a moment of hesitation you reach out to take it, her grip is strong and when she shakes your hand you have to steady your arm or else risk her jerking you around.
“You have a good eye. Good instincts. Useful starting point…for learning.”
“She won’t be,” Jason grunts. You roll your eyes at him, you didn’t even want to be a vigilante but he didn’t have to shoot the idea down so hard.
Batgirl shrugs, “I know,” she dismisses. She squeezes softly at your hand. “Y/n. It was nice meeting you. Had to see. Who’d…put up with him,” she ends snidely.
Jason huffs and you laugh despite yourself, squeezing her hand back in turn. That seems to have been enough for her because you can just make out the smile underneath her cowl before she lets go.
She sends a parting nod Jason’s way and he scoffs quietly.
“Yeah, I know,” he says to Batgirl’s retreating form. "See you later, yeah?” he adds, voice dropping.
She stops part way through slipping out the window, half her body already lost to the darkness, before giving a curt nod. A jaunty wave is sent your way next and then…nothing.
You don’t even hear the fire escape creak before she’s melted into the shadows and disappeared back into the night.
─────
Jason doesn’t know how to conceptualize this, but he has to know. He needs that confirmation before he can truly rest easy.
There’s no one else who reads people as well as Cassandra. Maybe she’ll be able to finally get rid of the way he can’t help but jerk away from your closeness sometimes, from the natural pull you have over him. How much he can’t stay away even as reluctance and fear pulls at him.
Jason sighs.
Or help him figure out how comfortable you really were with the whole Red Hood thing. It’s not that he didn’t trust you to keep the secret, just that he wasn’t sure if you were saving face with him or not. The last thing he wants is for you to feel obligated to stay with him. Or intimidated.
Cass waits until he’s just settled beside her on the roof before speaking.
He’s silently grateful for it. For some reason verbally asking for her assessment seemed like more a betrayal than needing the read at all.
This way he can delude himself into thinking she offered the information up unprompted. Something tells him it won’t change anything; he ignores that voice.
“She’s good,” Cass nods. She pointedly doesn’t leave it at that though so Jason stays still, let’s the wind lap at his hoodie and whisp at his hair.
Cass sighs, so still her shoulders barely move, and then turns to him. There’s a low tuft in her voice like she knows exactly what he’s doing here, knows he’s looking to her for salvation.
“Good,” she stresses. Breathes in once. Exhales. “But hiding.”
Jason’s heart doesn’t skip a beat but his gut does twist, caving in on itself in a bid to hide. He starts shaking his head.
The thing about Jason, he stopped trusting his heart a long time ago. Too late to save him from some other grievances in his life but good enough to keep him alive for this long. To protect this second chance, trusting his gut has been crucial. So why did it feel like he was being gutted?
“…hiding what?” When she takes too long to answer Jason finally turns. “Cass—”
She intercepts him easily, barely a rustle of fabric before her closed fist is pressed against his breastbone. It holds him in place more firmly than it has any right to.
“She’s hiding.” She manages somehow to make him feel the weight of her eyes meeting his own before tutting at him. “So are you.”
The plea Jason’s about to let out gets stuck in the base of his throat and he clears it.
“What do you mean?”
Even in the cowl the disbelieving look Cass throws his way is clear, fabric over her brow creasing.
“You are…leading her.” Her head canters barely a centimeter to the side. “She won’t…move. Not without…looking to you…first.”
All he can do for a moment is breathe deep and swallow back the argument bubbling up his throat. They both know Cass didn’t talk if she wasn’t sure, and Cass didn’t make mistakes about these things.
This wasn’t emotions; it was pure science, and body language for someone like Cass was near impossible to skew at the base intention level. And well…Jason can’t even lie to himself enough to believe he hadn’t expected her assessment to be anything other than confirmation for what he already knew.
He shakes his head, hands shoving into his pockets, “How am I supposed to fix that Cass?”
Cass gives a blithe little shrug, turning away from him again. Her cape billows out wide behind her, wingspan almost large enough to wrap the whole of Gotham in her protective embrace.
She snipes, unrepentant, “Why do I? Have to…know?”
Her voice carries on the wind with more leniency than the question suggests.
Jason sighs, rolling his shoulders back and shifting to look out over the stretch of rooftops laid out before them also.
“You don’t,” he grunts. “Sorry— thanks for this Cass. I owe you.”
She nods, shrugging.
“Cool,” she says. “I’ll call. If I…feel like it.”
He can almost hear the smile in her voice. He imagines it’s the little barely tolerate one she tends to give him. It’s not the smirk he knows she’s prone towards sporting with the others, but the fact he gets anything more than the blank look she gives when she’s mad but doesn’t have the energy or the words to say anything more to him is miraculous enough. He’s lucky to have any of her good will at all considering how heated some of their past conversations have gotten.
Cass never treats him like he’s a ghost, more so like she’s doing him a favor; looking past all the skeletons peeking over his shoulder to see Jason. Just Jason.
It’s not great. Even if he does know why.
It’s not the way you look at him; like he’s whole. Like the him that you want is exactly what’s in front of you, not some specter from the past or poor imitation you have to put up with.
One of Cass’s hands moves to rest against the holster on her belt and she raises one foot to prop up on the border surrounding the roof before leaning into his space.
She punches his shoulder, softly for her, and he takes it.
“You. Should keep her…a civilian. Jason,” she stresses. “An alive one.”
Jason hasn’t even begun to react before Cass is tilting forward, firing off her grappling gun and dropping off the roof in a second.
‘I’m trying,’ Jason thinks at the charcoal of her cape.
He takes another few minutes to look out over the city, let the sounds of a broken metropolis and its people wash over him - for his gut to settle back into stone - and then he climbs down the fire escape.
NOTES: Hope you enjoyed!!!
Alright, so, this is my first time really writing Cass so don’t hate me. I didn’t want to shove her into a ‘woman who soothes a man’s woes’ role, but I did still want to give her and Jason a more tolerant and supportive relationship than they’d ever have canonically (and this is a Jason-centric story so some centering is inevitable). Also, I tried to match her speech patterns from the 2000’s comics so don’t come for me, she usually only speaks in four word sentences at the longest and breaks her sentences up so she can presumably search for the word she needs, otherwise her grammar is totally fine so yeah, hopefully my portrayal of her wasn’t too too bad. I will be advancing her sentence structure and speech patterns when she shows up again in a later part in order to depict how her speech advances in the comics too, just because I want to practice with her some more. Also just believe that once Cass realized the Reader-Insert had sensed her she stayed in a more compromising position (in front of a potential light source) just to really test how well she’d be at actually finding her after sensing something was off.
Keep in mind that this is “wholesome” bat family fanon, but that I lean towards post-crisis when it comes to characterization and comics I read for reference (except for Duke obviously) because I largely like post-crisis canon more. Though, how I write Damian is definitely more based on the DCAMU version of him because that was my introduction to his character, but I am working on getting closer to his canon character voice for my own sake since he will be showing back up later in this series (& just in general I’ve slightly shifted how I write Jason as well since part one).
btw: if you’d like to leave a comment I’d very much appreciate it!
Slightly Rewritten - 6/30/24 (bc the way I reread this and was like “well, tell the woman thank you, goddamn” immediately told me I needed to rewrite some dialogue; like, even though I was trying not to I still ended up prioritizing Jason too much at the end)
Alt. Banner (scrapped) —
(source - Batman: Wayne Family Adventures)
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