Jason had already managed to stab himself in the neck with the tie pin—twice.

He glared at his reflection in the mirror like it was personally responsible for his current suffering, his shirt collar popped awkwardly, sleeves half rolled like he’d given up halfway through pretending to care. The black tie hung around his neck in a limp, sarcastic loop, taunting him.

“This is stupid,” he muttered to no one but the bathroom tile. “It’s a stupid party with stupid tiny hors d’oeuvres that taste like expensive cardboard.”

You said something from the bedroom—something suspiciously close to you’d look hot if you actually tied it properly—and he groaned, dragging a hand down his face.

“It’s not that I can’t tie it,” he called back, yanking at the silk like it had personally betrayed him. “It’s that I refuse to participate in the system. This is a protest.”

He tried to loop it again. Got it wrong. Again.

Jason tossed the tie on the counter like it had insulted his mother, then leaned both hands against the sink and stared at himself. The tux fit, sure. Because Alfred was a wizard and probably had some kind of deal with dark forces that made anything he tailored look good. But that didn’t mean Jason had to like it. Or feel comfortable in it.

He could sneak through cartel compounds and leap rooftop to rooftop blindfolded, but put him in a ballroom with Gotham’s wealthiest—people who still thought he was dead, or worse, a family embarrassment—and suddenly he was twelve again, tugging at a clip-on tie and counting the seconds until Bruce let him disappear.

You stepped into the doorway behind him, said something quiet.

Jason glanced at you in the mirror—and immediately forgot whatever snark he’d been lining up next.

You looked like you belonged there. Effortless. Beautiful. Like the part of the world that had always felt out of reach to him had somehow let him in anyway.

He sighed, already softening, even as he grabbed the tie again with mock aggression.

“I swear, this thing is cursed,” he grumbled, walking toward you like a man headed to the gallows. “But if you do it for me, I promise to suffer through exactly two and a half champagne conversations before I fake a headache and make us leave early.”

Jason grinned. Let you take the fabric from his hands.