✺𝒜𝓁𝓎✺

you'd known him for three years, watching him curiously until a familiar nervousness coiled in your stomach around him, your cheeks flushed when he smiled timidly at you, and you giggled innocently when he recommended literature for you and him to read together.

( "personally, i like margaret atwood," he had nodded, scratching shyly at his neck. "and while the handmaid's tale is good-- i'd tell you to read alias grace first. it's a whole experience... you'd enjoy it." jason had been so beyond his years-- interested in classic novels and literature like it was his oxygen. he was a nerd, by all traditional standards. and it had you infatuated. )

minutes blurred into hours with jason, and when his father had caught you both kissing for the first time in his sizeable library, he hadn't been surprised.

( "mr. wayne, i'm so--" you had started, feeling your face heat up at an impeccable speed. jason sat beside you, grinning like he had won the lottery; speechless and ecstatic. bruce had glanced between the two of you, his face blank, before slowly backing away and closing the library door behind him. jason's freckled cheeks tinted a deeper pink, his hand coming up to cup your jaw;

"see? old man didn't say anything-- it means he likes you."

oh how happy you had been. jason's father liked you! )

nobody had been surprised when you became a regular at the wayne mansion; often times, being greeted by his sibling like you were apart of the family. there had been no question about your future with the youngest master in the mansion; your days ahead as a wayne looking bright.

( "jaybird told me he's gonna marry you," his older brother had told you one night-- jason had gone to the bathroom, leaving you and dick alone in the living room together, movie on the large television paused. "obviously not now, but soon." dick had tossed kernels of popcorn into his mouth with a practiced ease. you flushed, stomach swirling wildly at the thought of getting married to jason. "i told him i'd sucker punch him if he didn't." )

the night you learned jason had died replays over and over and over again in your mind, like some sick film stuck on repeat. every time you're left in silence, you hear the scream you had let out-- throat left fatally raw. every time you dream, you see his casket being lowered into the ground. every time you stare at your reflection in the mirror, the same words flash in front of your face:

jason peter todd. forever sixteen.

grief had been a terrible thing-- swallowing your life up whole, consuming every fibre of your being, and resting heavily on your shoulders like a suffocating fog infecting your lungs and making it impossible to breathe.

the last you had heard from the waynes had been a package in the mail; arriving to your parent's front doorstep, exactly two months after jason's funeral. neatly wrapped, your name written delicately on a gift tag attached to a red ribbon that encased the entire package.

your hands were shaking when you had opened it; like somehow, you knew this was their version of closure-- this was them saying good-bye.

there was a small note resting on the gift itself, addressing you:

this was in jason's school bag; its annotated, cover to cover. we all figured you'd enjoy getting to pick at his brain one last time. you're a sweet girl, and jason would never let us forget it. happy seventeenth birthday.

all the best,

the waynes.

below the note was jason's copy of alias grace.

four and a half years years later, it still remains unopened; like jason's ghost would appear should you even dare to flick through the pages.

so your apartment is cold; not just cold, freezing. because moving on, getting over it, and growing up was hard. especially knowing jason would never get the chance, forever trapped in a mindless pit of death and grief and being forever sixteen.

✰

you cannot believe your eyes. surely, this had to be some horrid joke someone was playing on you-- maybe you had even been unknowingly exposed to fear toxin; you cursed mentally, because shit. you can't remember the last time you checked the news.

jason's voice is a shock to your system, your name leaving his mouth sounding like a foreign language. jason's entire being is a shock to your system-- standing in your doorway, holding a large bouquet of your favorite flowers, looking simply bashful.

"uh," he starts, scratching at his jaw. the sound of his fingers connecting to slight stubble echoes within your apartment's corridor. "hello."

...

"what the fuck."

you don't mean to be so crude, but... what the fuck! your dead boyfriend is standing right in front of you, very much alive. instead, he's grown-- wiser, older, bigger. his chest and shoulders are broad, barely contained by the sweatshirt he's adorning; his cheeks are still freckled to the moon and back, but mean looking scars litter his face; the most noticeable one being a 'J' along his left cheek.

you remember his eyes being blue-- a soft, loving, knowing blue. like the ocean, or maybe even the sky on the sunniest of spring days. they blink back at you now almost an un-natural shade of green, and you swear they're flickering.

jason swallows, nodding his head slowly. he extends two arms gently, as if to soothe you like you're some sort of wild animal. which, in his defense, is what you feel like; probably what you look like too, considering your hair is mussed from sleep and you've dragged your hands down your face a solid thirty-six times since you've opened the door. "it's okay, i- i know you're probably really confused,"

"confused?" you exasperate, eyes widening maddeningly. "i'm--"

scared. insane. hurt. sick. grieving.

you shake your head, unbelieving of the sight in front of you. "you're supposed to be dead."

jason's shoulders fall ever so slightly. "well. i was, and now i'm not." he offers slowly. it comes out harsher than he intended, and he cringes inwardly at his tone.

"you're supposed to be dead." you repeat. your chest, you think, has not felt this tight since you were told jason had died. your mouth is parted, air beginning to enter and exit you at a quickeningly alarming rate. your throat is so tight-- you cannot breathe, cannot think, cannot see-- all you feel is your chest heaving, throat closing, and hands trembling. your eyes are watering too; you can feel them begin to shed salty tears, fat droplets rolling down your cheeks.

is this what shock is like? i think i'm going into shock, you think vaguely, hand bracing the frame of your apartment's front door. it's too hot, is another thing that floats into the edges of your mind; which is ironic, given the thermostat in your apartment's entryway reads nineteen point five degrees celcius. "fuck." you manage to mutter, still hyperventilating.

jason moves. like its habit, like its practiced, like its muscle memory-- he moves. swiping you up into his arms from underneath your knees, he cradles you to his chest. his grip on the flowers tighten, as well as your body, as he manages to shut your apartment's door behind him. his eyes scan the floor-- quickly, he places you down on one of your couches, kneeling in front of you.

"hey," he starts softly, and the way he says your name is so tender, you think if you hadn't already been crying, that would have sent you over the edge. "it's just me. which, okay, i know is a lot for you to take in-- but it's just me, jason. your jason." his hands find yours, and his thumbs begin to stroke the back of your palm comfortingly. "you don't need to be upset, baby," the petname falls from his lips like muscle memory, and his heart clenches. "i'm sorry i left you for so long; i promise i won't do it again, my poor girl," he whispers, squeezing your hands tightly. "but i'm back now, and everything s'gonna be alright, okay?"

you nod, unable to form any coherent words. tears continue to fall from your eyes, dampening your face further-- it isn't shock, though, that drives your emotions high anymore. through your upset, your palms find his cheeks, grasping gently onto this boy who you truly believed you would never see again.

it is relief.

✰

if you didn't believe jason could rip your heart to shreds any further, you would be a sorely mistaken woman.

he explains, about half an hour later, everything. his mother, the joker, the explosion, dying, being resurrected, the pit, the league. all of it.

it wrenches something deep within your gut, and you truly cannot fathom how he's just talking about all of this while cutting the stems of your flowers and gently placing them in a vase.

"so," he sighs, snipping a stalk, watching the end fall carelessly into the trash bin beneath him, "then i moved back in with bruce. which, i didn't want to at the time, but i think it's been good for my whole..."

"coming back to life thing?" you offer.

"yeah," he replies, the corner of his mouth snaking upwards the smallest bit. "that."

there's a silence that envelops your apartment afterwards. jason keeps moving methodically, apparently quite captivated in the act of prepping flowers for your kitchen table.

"why did you come back?" you ask suddenly. so suddenly, it even catches yourself off guard-- like it had been an intrusive thought that was more of an intrusive comment. "back to me." you clarify.

jason stills. "because," he says after a few moments, "don't you want to see me?"

"i do," you answer easily, ignoring how selfish the question inherently is in nature. "but if you're just here to--" you gesture vaguely to the plants within his hands. "do that, then maybe..."

you shouldn't have come.

you don't say it, your voice trailing off-- but its clear the implication hangs in the air like dead weight.

jason sets both a flower and the plant cutter down, bracing both of his arms onto the edge of your counter. "are you seeing someone?" he asks abruptly. his face has hardened, going colder. again-- you swear his eyes are flickering.

"what?" you question, face contorting into confusion. "no-- i-- shit," you swallow, chuckling quietly. you're laughing because even the thought of a date with someone else makes you nauseous. "i haven't even been out once like that since... well, you." the confession makes your cheeks burn, and you feel some form of embarrassment wash over you like cold water.

jason's face softens, and he glances downwards towards his feet. "oh." he says quietly.

"yeah." your fingers drum anxiously against the fabric of your couch.

silence overtakes your apartment again; though its charged this time, with something else-- something you haven't felt in a long time.

it takes jason only a few steps to cross your entire apartment, before he's sat beside you on the couch. there's barely an inch of space between both of you, and you can feel the heat radiating from his body; it calls to you, and your fingers twitch.

"i came back to see you because i'm in love with you." he says carefully.

if you didn't know jason todd, you'd assume he said it in a detached sort of way-- but you do know jason todd (or at least once you had known jason todd) so you read him easily; he's nervous.

"seeing all of my shit from... before, in my old room, it just..." he pauses. "there was a lot of stuff i had that was for you."

his admission makes your throat tight again.

"pictures of you, poems from you, some of your books--" the tips of his ears go a romantic shade of pink, "i even found a bottle of your old perfume that i used to spray on my pillow."

"oh, jay," you taunt, (as if things are normal, as if he wasn't dead, as if he's never been gone), bringing a hand up to your mouth to conceal your giggle.

jason turns to face you, as if he's trying to figure something out; trying to decipher something in your chuckle. his solemn expression immediately quiets your laughter, and you whisper: "oh, shit, m'sorry-- i shouldn't have laughed--"

"can i kiss you?" he cuts you off. his eyes flicker from your own to your lips, and your tongue darts out subconsciously to wet them. he mirrors you.

there is something within you that twists, so deeply, so fully, it almost makes you topple over. as you're staring at jason, the question lingering in the air, suddenly-- he doesn't look so different than from before. he looks shy, he looks timid, he looks youthful; his hair resembles the way it did, all those years ago in the back of bruce's library. his eyes-- despite the colour difference-- are soft, warm, familiar. the longer you stare, the less you see the scars that paint his cheeks, and the more you see the same freckles you used to count naively, knowing there would be no end.

all those years ago, you believed there would have been no end. you and jason would be as permanent as the stars in the sky, bound to each other in every life time and every universe.

and then there had been an end. and you had never been so lost before.

now, there's a beginning. so you tell jason:

"yes," it's breathless, and whispered so quietly, he has to lean forward to hear you like you're telling him a secret. "please kiss me."

your lips meet almost apprehensively, slotting against one another like puzzle pieces. it's sweet and its slow, your hand inching its way towards jason's thigh-- as if he'll shatter should you touch him. it's him who pulls away first, his eyes half-closed as he glances down at your now saliva-soaked lips, before they flit upwards to meet yours.

jason smiles, corners of his eyes crinkling gently.

your eyes water, and you see him falter. before he can speak-- you beat him to it, shaking both your head and hands. "m'okay," you say, though its not very convincing.

jason whispers your name skeptically, raising one of his eyebrows.

"sorry, i just--" you sniffle. "i just can't believe you're here. you're back. and sitting in front of me, with your heart beating and your lungs working and--" you need to cut yourself off, so you inhale.

"let me kiss you again," jason says, reaching a hand out to cup your jaw. his thumb swipes against your cheek, catching a stray tear. "please."

so you do. its far less timid this time, like everything is coming back to the both of you. jason's second hand reaches to gently grab the nape of your neck, pushing your face into his, deepening the kiss.

you're no less enthusiastic-- arms immediately going to rest around his own neck, your head tilting to the side, craving him deeper. all at once, it feels like you have to make up for lost time.

every minute your hands could've been intertwined with his, you laid grieving, so many people having stolen that reality from the both of you. your tongue darts out, swiping against jason's bottom lip, and you feel his movements stutter before he opens his mouth wider. every night you could have been enraptured within jason; he was out there-- cold, afraid, and alone.

you're fumbling clumsily to get into jason's lap, pressing your hands to his chest-- forcing him to lay back in the couch-- while you both still remain connected at the mouths. he obeys easily, and you swear you hear him whine when you begin to suck on his tongue.

"jay," you sigh softly, breaking the kiss; a string of spit keeps you both linked.

jason keeps his palms glued to your jaw like you're his life-line; dipping his head low, he begins to press chaste kisses to your neck. he breathes your name out-- like its serious, heavy, means something to him-- and his voice cause your skin to prickle against the vibrations.

"i don't think you understand," a kiss lands beneath your ear. "how much i've missed you." another kiss to your cheek. "every day, every night-- didn't matter where i was; i thought of you," he guides your head to turn, giving him access to the other side of your throat. "i don't remember much from the night i died," he confesses, lips cemented to your skin. "but i remember-- your face, it had been one of the last things i thought of."

jason peels himself from your body like it physically pains him, and when you look-- really look-- at him, you see his eyes are foggy. "and you're the first thing i thought of when i came back too."

you're silent. for what seems to be ages, you cannot find the words to articulate how you're feeling. your brain wracks for the right things to say, the right thing to do with your hands, or maybe even the right thing to do with your lips.

"jason." your mouth trembles, and god, you are so sick of crying tonight.

but you can't stop it; can't stop how deeply you feel for him, can't stop how badly you've needed him since he's been gone, and you can't help how much you wish he hadn't left-- no, been taken from you-- in the first place.

"i know i'm selfish." jason speaks, running a hand through his dark hair. "for coming here, ambushing you-- and expecting you to take me back like nothing's wrong," he really can't keep his hands still, can he? "but i was so sick of being apart from you, i couldn't-- fuck, i couldn't bare to not see your face, not hear your voice, not be with you for any longer."

jason doesn't know where all these words are coming from; they're flying out from his mouth unfiltered and raw, and he thinks hazily that they're cutting and jabbing and hurting you-- just like he's hurt everyone else.

but he's not hurting you-- jason peter todd is the last man on earth who could hurt you. through your tears, you take hold of his hands, finally giving them something to be still within.

"we should stop," you say, looking intensely into his beautiful green eyes. "not because i want to-- but because i think,"

you swallow. what do you think?

you think that you're overwhelmed, in shock, perhaps even hallucinating-- but mostly that you're in love.

you think that your soulmate has come back from the dead and fuck, not everyone gets the chance to start over-- so you want to do it right. when you're not overwhelmed, in shock, and certain you're not hallucinating.

you think you want to tell jason that you're in love with him too; but that truth is scary when love is a permanent thing meant for very temporary people.

"i think we should go out."

"on... a date?" jason questions, as if there was any other way you meant it. as if he cannot believe you're proposing such a thing.

"no. to the moon." you roll your eyes, swiping at them with the heels of your palms. "yes, on a date."

jason's quiet for a few moments, and you can practically see the cogs turning within his head. then he smiles-- a gentle, kind, bashful smile-- and whispers: "alright."

he can barely hesitate, reverence so clear in his voice it almost makes you sick, before adding on: "and if you wanted to go to the moon, i'd figure out how to get you there."

your face crumples, and you reach a hand out to smack jason's arm. "that's really fuckin' cheesy,"

jason shrugs-- not bothering to pretend like your jab had any effect on him. "s'true."

the air conditioner turns on-- the noisy rumble from deep inside your apartment walls whirling to life. the routine of it doesn't shock you; you've become far too accustomed to the deep ache of needing to feel something, resorting to a cold that'll seep into your bones and take ages to defrost.

goosebumps raise along your arms. for the first time in four and a half years, you finally feel cold.

PLUVOiA '25 ® - masterlist

loren's thots: i am in love w this req. in love. except im at the point where if i stare at this post for any longer, ill delete it all lmfao... also jason todd reading alias grace is so important to me bc A. its fantastic i liked it way more than the handmaids tale go read it if u have time and B. its got central themes of the mistreatment women have faced over time and how overlooked we've always been in terms of the justice system, our health, and within relationships w/ all types of diff men. and ofc!! our little feminist jason todd would be reading that!!!! like hello!! and im not even js saying that theres like,,, vids abt jason's character and how he was made to be more 'feminine' so the target audience [men] of dc would grow to dislike him. sigh hes so important to me. oh also i was totally picturing jason from ak when writing this hes so. yum. (reqs are open!!)

You were both sitting behind the old drive-in screen on the edge of Gotham, the one that hadn’t played real movies in years unless some bored burnout found a way to hotwire the projector. That night, someone had managed it. The screen flickered with a slasher film from the seventies, all bad acting and red syrup, the sound skipping every few minutes like even the speakers were too tired to scream.

Jason had holes in his sneakers. You remembered that more than anything. Not the fight he’d been in before he found you. Not the bruise darkening under his eye. Not even the way his hands shook when he tried to wipe someone else’s blood off his lip with the back of his wrist.

The holes in his sneakers.

His toes were cold.

You’d said, “You look like shit.”

He’d said, “You always know how to make a guy feel pretty.”

And then he had smiled at you like the world had not yet killed him.

That was Jason’s first miracle.

Not coming back later. Not the pit. Not the resurrection or the red helmet or the way he turned himself into a warning sign.

His first miracle was being a hungry kid in Gotham and still finding ways to smile like he had something left to offer.

You sat beside him in the weeds while the movie played. A girl died onscreen, dramatically, under blue lighting. Jason didn’t watch. His eyes kept dragging back to you like gravity had changed its mind and chosen you instead of the earth.

“You’re staring,” you said.

“No, I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m observant.”

“You’re weird.”

“I’m charming.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I contain multitudes.”

You laughed then. You tried not to, because laughing around Jason always felt like surrendering territory, but it slipped out anyway, soft and helpless.

His face changed. Not much. Just enough that you saw it—the hunger beneath the hunger. Not for food, not for warmth, not even for safety.

For being chosen. For someone to look at him and not look away.

You had known that feeling too well. It lived in your ribs like a trapped bird.

So when he leaned closer, you didn’t move back.

The rain began as a mist, silvering his curls and the torn collar of his hoodie. Jason looked up like the sky had personally offended him.

“Great,” he muttered. “Perfect.”

“You scared of a little rain, Todd?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

He glared at you. “I’m not scared of rain.”

“You look betrayed by precipitation.”

“That’s different.”

You smiled, and he stared again.

The movie shrieked behind you. Somebody died. Somebody always died.

Jason kissed you like he was trying to prove he was alive.

It was clumsy. Too fast. His mouth was split, and when you tasted copper, he pulled back immediately, embarrassed in a way you had never seen before.

“Shit,” he said. “Sorry. That’s gross.”

You grabbed his sleeve before he could retreat into sarcasm and teeth.

“Jason.”

“What?”

“You can kiss me again.”

His eyes went wide.

For one second, the whole city shut up.

Then he kissed you again, softer this time, still trembling with all the violence he’d survived just to get there. His hand hovered near your jaw like he was afraid touch could be theft. Like no one had ever taught him gentleness except books and stray cats and maybe you.

You made a pact that night.

Not a real one. Not with knives or candles or anything dramatic, though Jason insisted all proper pacts required at least one of those.

It was just words, whispered behind a broken drive-in screen while rain soaked through your clothes.

“If Gotham gets me,” he said, trying to make it sound like a joke, “you gotta haunt it for me.”

“You first,” you said. “If it gets me, you burn the whole city down.”

Jason grinned. “Deal.”

You didn’t know then.

That was the mercy of childhood, maybe. You could make promises to death because you had not yet seen it collect.

You thought you were being romantic.

You were really writing prophecy in wet grass.

Years later, Jason came back wrong. That was what people whispered, anyway.

Not to your face. Never to your face.

By then, you had learned the cruel economy of Gotham grief. How people lowered their voices around names that had become wounds. How they said accident when they meant murder, tragedy when they meant failure, he’s in a better place when they didn’t know what else to do with their hands.

Jason Todd died, and the city kept moving.

That was the part you hated most.

The buses still ran late. The bodegas still overcharged for milk. The rain still came down oily and cold. Somewhere, kids still stole tyres and slept in stairwells and learned early that hunger could make an animal out of anyone.

The world did not split open.

It should have.

You waited for it. For weeks after the funeral, you woke up expecting the sky to crack. Expecting the streets to cave in. Expecting every window in Gotham to burst outward from the force of a universe correcting itself.

But nothing happened.

Jason was gone.

And the city had the nerve to continue.

So you left.

Not forever. No one really left Gotham forever. The city hooked itself into you; even distance couldn’t pull out all the barbs. But you ran as far as you could afford, which turned out to be a half-dead house in the rural South that belonged to your mother’s side of the family. Alabama clay. Heat like a hand around your throat. Roads long enough to make you believe in escape if you squinted.

The house had peeling white paint and a porch that sagged like an old man’s mouth. Behind it, there was a strip of dirt where your grandmother had once grown violets.

You didn’t know why you started tending them.

Maybe because they were stubborn. Maybe because they were small purple things that kept coming back from terrible weather. Maybe because Jason had once told you, very seriously, that flowers were “just plants with better public relations,” and you had thrown a French fry at him so hard it bounced off his forehead.

You planted violets for a dead boy who would have mocked you for it. Then you watered them anyway.

Years passed like a drought. You built a life out of almosts. Almost peace. Almost forgetting. Almost going a full day without hearing his laugh in some stranger’s mouth.

You learned to fix the porch. You learned which gas station sold decent coffee. You learned that grief did not leave; it only changed clothes.

And then, one night, during a thunderstorm, someone knocked on your door.

Three times.

Hard.

You knew before you opened it.

Maybe that was love. Maybe trauma. Gotham had made a prophet out of your nervous system.

You opened the door, and Jason Todd stood on your porch.

Older. Taller. Broader. A white streak cut through his dark hair like lightning had kissed him and left a scar. His jacket was soaked. His boots were muddy. There was a bruise along his jaw and a pistol tucked openly against his thigh, because apparently, death had not improved his subtlety.

For a second, neither of you spoke.

Rain hit the porch roof like static. Jason looked at you with the eyes of someone who had crossed hell and still wasn’t sure he’d arrived anywhere better.

You should have slammed the door. You should have screamed. You should have demanded explanations, proof, apologies, and blood.

Instead, you said, “Your shoes are better.”

His mouth twitched.

Just barely.

“Yeah,” he said, voice rough as gravel. “Moved up in the world.”

Then he collapsed.

Getting Jason Todd out of wet leather was exactly as difficult as it sounded.

He was half-conscious, bleeding from a shallow knife wound near his ribs, and deeply committed to being annoying about it.

“I’m fine,” he rasped while you cut his shirt open with kitchen scissors.

“You passed out on my porch.”

“Tactical nap.”

“You bled on my welcome mat.”

“Didn’t like it anyway.”

“You’re literally impossible.”

“Yeah, but I’m pretty.”

The scissors paused.

Jason’s eyes flicked to your face.

The kitchen light hummed above you. Outside, thunder rolled over the fields, long and low, like something hungry turning in its sleep.

He looked older, but sometimes grief was a cheap magician. It kept pulling the boy from the man when you least expected it. There he was again: fourteen, bruised, grinning through blood, asking to be seen and terrified that he would be.

You finished cleaning the wound in silence.

Jason didn’t flinch. That bothered you more than if he had.

Pain should have meant something. His body should have still believed in warning bells. But he sat at your kitchen table like being stitched back together was an ordinary Tuesday.

When you were done, you stepped away.

He caught your wrist.

Not hard. Never hard.

His hand was warm.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

You laughed once, sharp and humourless. “For bleeding on my porch?”

“For knocking.”

“That’s what you’re sorry for?”

His fingers loosened, but he didn’t let go. “No.”

The room seemed to shrink around you.

You looked at him. The scar near his temple. The white in his hair. The new weight in his shoulders. The old hunger in his eyes, buried now beneath rage and resurrection and whatever men did when grief had nowhere soft to land.

“You were dead,” you said.

Jason closed his eyes. “I know.”

“No. You don’t get to say that like it’s something you misplaced.” Your voice broke, and you hated it. “You were dead, Jason.”

“I know.”

“I buried you.”

“I know.”

“I loved you.”

That did it.

His face cracked.

Not dramatically. Jason had never been dramatic when he was truly hurting. Drama was for anger, for performance, for keeping people at arm’s length with fireworks.

Pain made him quiet.

His hand slipped from your wrist. The absence felt worse.

“I know,” he whispered.

You wanted to hit him. You wanted to hold him. Both urges rose in you with equal violence, which was how you knew Gotham had raised you too.

“Where have you been?” you asked.

Jason stared at the table. “Underground.”

“Don’t.” His jaw tightened. “Don’t give me riddles. Don’t show up bleeding in a storm after years and make me drag honesty out of you like a body from a river.”

He looked up at you then, and for the first time since he’d appeared on your porch, you saw fear.

Not of death. Not of pain.

Of being known.

“I came back wrong,” he said.

The thunder answered.

You breathed in. Out.

Then you sat across from him. “Tell me.”

So he did.

Not everything. Not at first. The story came out in broken pieces over bad coffee and the sound of rain. A warehouse. A crowbar. An explosion. Waking up in a coffin. Dirt under his nails. The kind of screaming that didn’t stop just because the throat tore. The Pit. Green light. Rage like a second skeleton.

He did not tell it like a man asking for pity.

He told it like evidence. Like he expected you to examine the facts and reach the correct conclusion: monster, weapon, ruined thing.

When he finished, dawn had begun to blue the windows. Your coffee had gone cold.

Jason looked emptied out.

“I get it,” he said finally.

You blinked. “Get what?”

“If you want me gone.”

There it was. The old Jason instinct. Leaving before he could be left. Turning abandonment into a magic trick where he controlled the timing and called it dignity.

You stood.

He went still.

You walked around the table. He watched you like you were a storm, like you might save him or strike him dead.

You stopped in front of him and took his face in both hands.

Jason stopped breathing.

“You came back,” you said.

His throat worked. “Not clean.”

“You came back.”

“Not good.”

“You came back.”

His eyes shone, furious and wet.

“I don’t know how to be him anymore,” he said.

You brushed your thumb over the scar cutting through his eyebrow. “Then don’t.”

He stared.

“I loved who you were,” you said. “I grieved who you were. But you’re here. So be here.”

Jason made a sound like something breaking behind a locked door.

You pulled him against you.

For a moment, he resisted—not because he didn’t want it, but because wanting had always frightened him more than violence. Then his arms came around your waist with sudden desperation, and he buried his face against your stomach.

He held on like gravity had offered him a deal.

You threaded your fingers through his wet hair.

The white streak felt soft.

“You’re shaking,” you whispered.

“Am not.”

“You are.”

“Shut up.”

“Still charming.”

His laugh came out ruined.

You bent over him and pressed your mouth to his hair.

Outside, the rain slowed.

The violets survived.

Jason stayed three days. Then five. Then a week.

He claimed it was because his bike needed work after the storm, which was a bold lie considering he fixed it on the second morning and then spent the afternoon pretending he hadn’t.

You didn’t call him on it.

Not immediately.

You let him haunt the house.

He moved through it like a man unused to rooms that did not demand anything from him. He checked the locks every night. Sharpened knives that did not need sharpening. Sat on the porch at dawn with a mug of coffee balanced on one knee, staring out at the fields like he expected the dead to come walking through the heat shimmer.

Sometimes, you found him by the violets.

That was the strangest thing. Jason Todd, crime lord, vigilante, resurrected cautionary tale, crouched in the dirt with his elbows on his knees, glaring at flowers.

“You’re going to intimidate them into blooming?” you asked from the porch.

He didn’t look back. “They’re suspicious.”

“They’re violets.”

“Exactly. Too cute. Hiding something.”

“You’re insane.”

“Probably.”

But his hands were careful when he touched the leaves.

Jason had always been gentler than he wanted anyone to know. That was the tragedy and the miracle of him. Gotham had handed him a blade, and he’d still learned how to cup water in his palms.

On the eighth day, the rain came back.

Not a storm this time. Just a slow, steady fall that turned the yard dark and fragrant. The kind of rain that made the whole world feel paused.

Jason stood at the back door, scowling.

“You really do hate rain,” you said.

He glanced at you. “I don’t hate it.”

“You’re glaring at the weather like it owes you money.”

“Everything owes me money.”

You leaned against the counter. “What did rain ever do to you?”

His expression shifted. A shutter falling.

You regretted the question before he answered.

“Made the dirt heavier.”

Oh.

You said nothing.

Jason stared past the glass.

“I used to think about it,” he said quietly. “After. When I remembered enough to remember the coffin. I’d think about rain. How if it had rained harder, maybe the ground would’ve packed down. Maybe I wouldn’t have—”

He stopped.

Your chest hurt.

“Jason.”

He shook his head once. “It’s stupid.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“I’m six feet tall and armed in your kitchen having beef with water.”

“Very on brand, honestly.”

That startled a laugh out of him.

Small victory. Tiny banner planted in the battlefield of his body.

You walked over and stood beside him.

The rain blurred the violets into purple shadows.

After a while, Jason said, “I thought about you.”

Your heart did something dangerous. “When?”

His mouth twisted. “Kind of all the time.”

You looked at him.

He kept his eyes on the yard. “When I came back, things were… messed up. I was messed up. Some days, I couldn’t remember my own name right. Some days, I remembered everything too much. But you were always there.” His voice roughened. “Not clear, maybe. But there.”

You swallowed.

“I thought if I found you, I’d ruin whatever life you had.”

“So naturally you chose the less dramatic option of bleeding out on my porch.”

“See? Personal growth.”

“Jason.”

His smile faded.

“I saw you,” he admitted. “A few times.”

The words landed slowly.

“What?”

“Before I knocked. I came here before.”

You stepped back.

Jason finally looked at you, guilt open across his face.

“I know.”

“You watched me?”

“Not in a creepy way.”

“There is no non-creepy way to finish that sentence.”

“I made sure you were safe.”

“I was safe.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

His jaw flexed.

“You don’t get to decide that from the tree line,” you said. “You don’t get to turn yourself into some tragic guardian angel and call it love.”

His flinch was almost invisible.

Almost.

You softened, but only a little.

“I would have opened the door,” you said. “Any time. Any version of you. Even angry. Even bloody. Even wrong.”

Jason looked away. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

The rain filled the silence.

There it was, then. The centre of him.

Not rage. Not violence. Not revenge.

Fear.

That if he came to you ruined, you would love him anyway. That if you loved him anyway, he would have to admit he was still someone who could be loved.

You reached for him slowly, giving him time to pull away.

He didn’t.

Your fingers brushed his.

“Jason.”

He looked at your hand touching his like it was holy and possibly explosive.

“You don’t have to earn the door opening.”

His eyes closed.

For a second, he was fourteen again. For a second, so were you. Behind a broken drive-in screen. Rain in his hair. Horror movie screams. A pact made by children who thought death was poetry instead of paperwork.

Then Jason turned his hand and laced his fingers through yours.

“I’m in love with you,” he said.

No build-up. No warning. Just the truth, dropped between you like a lit match.

You stared at him.

Jason exhaled shakily and gave you the saddest almost-smile you had ever seen.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know. Great timing. Real smooth.”

“You’re in love with me?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Unfortunately?”

“I had a whole plan.”

“You had a plan?”

“Several. Most involved leaving before saying anything.”

“That’s a terrible plan.”

“I’m aware.”

The laugh that left you was half sob.

Jason’s face changed again, fear rushing in.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey, don’t— I didn’t mean—”

“I cried over you,” you said.

His mouth closed.

“I cried over you so hard I thought it would kill me. And then I cried because it didn’t.” Your voice shook. “I hated you sometimes. For dying. For leaving. For making me love a ghost. And then I hated myself because you didn’t choose it.”

Jason stood very still.

You squeezed his hand.

“I loved you when we were kids,” you said. “I loved you when you were dead. I think I kept loving you because stopping would have felt like killing you twice.”

His eyes went red.

“And now?” he asked.

So quiet. So young.

You stepped closer. “Now you’re here.”

Jason made a sound like your name, except it wasn’t. Not quite. It was more broken than that. More honest.

You touched his cheek. He leaned into it before he could stop himself.

“Do you need me to be sure?” you asked.

He gave a rough laugh. “I need a lot of things.”

“Jason.”

His eyes searched yours.

You remembered him at fourteen, watching you instead of the movie. You remembered his split lip. His cold toes. His stupid jokes. His impossible smile.

You remembered the funeral. You remembered the grave. You remembered every year after.

Then you kissed him.

Jason froze for half a heartbeat.

Then he kissed you back like rain hitting dry earth.

Not gentle, not at first. He made a wounded sound and crowded closer, his hands gripping your waist, your back, your shirt—like he needed proof from every angle. Like touch could rewrite the years. Like maybe if he held you hard enough, neither of you would ever have to be alone in the dark again.

You kissed him until his desperation softened. Until his hands stopped clutching and started holding. Until his mouth slowed over yours, learning, asking.

He pressed his forehead to yours.

“I’m not good at this,” he whispered.

“Love?”

“Staying.”

You brushed your thumb along his jaw. “Then practice.”

A ghost of a smile. “Bossy.”

“You love it.”

His ears went pink.

Oh.

Oh, that was devastating.

Jason Todd, Red Hood, terror of Gotham’s underworld, blushing because you teased him in a kitchen while rain fell over violets.

The universe did not deserve this softness.

But you would take it anyway.

Greedy. Grateful. Human.

Jason looked toward the back door.

“Come outside with me,” he said.

“You hate rain.”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

His hand tightened around yours. “I don’t want to hate it forever.”

So you went. Barefoot into the wet yard, because apparently, love made idiots of everyone eventually.

The rain was cool against your skin. The dirt clung to your feet. Jason stood stiffly at first, every muscle braced against memory. His breath came too fast.

You didn’t speak. You just held his hand.

The violets bent beneath the rain and rose again.

Jason watched them.

Something in his face loosened.

Not healed. Not fixed.

Those were cheap words people used when they wanted wounds to become convenient.

But present.

He was present.

That was enough for one morning.

After a long time, he looked at you.

Rain traced the line of his cheekbone. Caught in his lashes. Darkened the white streak in his hair until it shone silver.

“You know,” he said, voice rough but lighter, “if anyone asks, this is not therapeutic.”

“Obviously not.”

“This is tactical weather exposure.”

“Very macho.”

“Extremely.”

“You’re holding my hand.”

“For balance.”

“You’re crying.”

“It’s raining.”

You smiled.

Jason stared at you. There it was again—that old look, the one from the drive-in. Like all the world had laid itself out before him, brutal and burning and wide, and somehow his eyes still found you.

Only you.

“You’re staring,” you said softly.

His mouth curved.

“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”

This time, he didn’t deny it.

This time, he didn’t look away.

And when he kissed you in the rain, there was no blood in his mouth.

Only warmth.

Only breath.

And if you ask what you are to each other he'll say something like "the hell kind of question is that?", not unkindly, just like the question itself is so ridiculous he can't believe you wasted a breath on it; obviously you're his, he thought you knew, he's been acting like it, hasn't he? Keep up!

He hasn't been acting like it in any way a normal person would recognise, but to him the fact that he hasn't killed anyone over you yet is a love sonnet <3

His texting habits are a horror show: he doesn't text first, ever, until suddenly he texts you twelve times in a row at 2 a.m. (u up. u home? answer the phone. fine. ignore me. fuck. txt back when u see this) he leaves you on read constantly (he's not ignoring you, he read it, he doesn't see why a "got it" was needed), his messages are all lowercase and full of typos because he texts with one hand while doing something else (cleaning a gun, driving, running across a roof), he'll send you a single question mark in response to a long vulnerable message and then forty minutes later show up at your door with takeout and not mention it.

He saves your contact under something stupid like Trouble or Headache or Don't pick up.

He works nights, he gets shot some of those nights, and he'll absolutely disappear for 48 hours with no contact and then reappear in your kitchen at 3 a.m. bleeding from somewhere he won't show you. When you panic he'll go "Jesus, breathe, it's not even that bad" (which is the sentence equivalent of holding a grenade) and he'll not apologise for the disappearing, but he will look slightly ashamed when he realises you actually couldn't sleep.

He doesn't know what to do with the fact that you worry about him; it short-circuits him, people don't worry about Jason, Jason worries, or Jason handles it, and the role reversal, the uncomplicated care, is a wound he can't reach to scratch.

Then comes the obnoxious-about-your-attention phase, which is when he gets very annoying and very hot simultaneously, because Jason is territorial in a way that would be a red flag if he weren't so weirdly principled about it.

He'll not tell you who you can talk to, will not check your phone, he will not get jealous in the openly controlling way that signals abuser. He's not that.

But what he will do is loom (when you're at a bar and a guy is talking to you, Jason who was across the room is now somehow magically standing directly behind you with a hand on the small of your back, not saying anything, just radiating, and the guy will leave, and Jason will not comment);

Scoff (anyone shows interest in you within his sightline, he makes a noise: short, derisive, almost a laugh, like the idea is so absurd it's funny anyone is trying);

Ask too-casual questions ("who was that on the phone?" he says, not looking up from the gun he's cleaning on your coffee table (concern.) and you can hear that the casualness is performed, that he's in fact extremely invested in the answer, and he's furious with himself for caring);

Mark you in stupid little ways (steals your hair tie and wears it on his wrist, leaves his jacket at your place "by accident" four times in a row, bites the side of your neck where it'll show above your collar and is unrepentant when you complain about it).

Now: the slap-on-the-ass-then-prickly move, which is the Jason behaviour pattern that will define the first six months of dating him.

He's physically affectionate in a way that's cocky, performative, almost rude (the hand on your ass when he's walking past you in the kitchen, the fingers around the back of your neck when he's leaning over to grab his beer, the bite (he's a biter, I'm afraid, that man cannot keep his teeth to himself) at your shoulder, your jaw, your ear, the teasing physicality of pulling you back into his lap when you try to get up, holding your wrist when you reach for something, hooking his ankle around yours under the table).

All of this is easy for him, it costs him nothing because he's performing the part of "guy who is comfortable touching his girl" because it's the closest he can get to being affectionate without admitting that he wants to be.

But the second you try to flip it, try to initiate genuine closeness, try to climb into his lap when he didn't put you there, or to cup his face and look at him too long. Even say something soft like I missed you in a voice that means it, Jason goes rigid. Not for long, a second, maybe two, but you'll feel it: the full-body lock, and then he'll deflect with a joke. A kiss that's more aggressive than tender, a hand on your waist that turns you around so you're not facing him anymore.

He can't take it when you mean it. He can give and give in the language of teasing physicality, but tenderness received, sincere tenderness, the kind that means I see you and I'm not going anywhere, that's the language of the family that buried him while he was still dying, that's the language his mother used, that's Bruce's voice in the cave and Bruce's silence in the alley after.

He doesn't trust it, he doesn't know how to be on the receiving end of it without flinching, and this will be one of the hardest things about loving him.

You can't push, he's spent his whole afterlife being pushed, and you have to be willing to let him deflect six times before he takes it on the seventh, and it takes months, sometimes longer, before he can let your hand stay on the side of his face for more than a second without turning into it like he's trying to escape his own want.

The way you eventually crack it is sneakier than confrontation. You do it in transit, in passing, when he's distracted: a kiss to his shoulder while he's at the stove, fingers through the hair at the back of his neck while he's mid-sentence about something else, I love you mumbled into the crook of his arm at a moment when neither of you is looking at the other.

It has to be cheap, it has to be easy to ignore, because if you give it weight he can't hold it. Over months, he learns to take it without flinching, then to lean into it, then (eventually, miraculously) to ask for it (never with words, he will never use words for this, but he'll plant himself within reach of your hands and wait, like a stray cat learning where the food bowl lives).

He's also annoying about your safety in ways that are sometimes touching and sometimes infuriating: he has opinions about every person in your life.

He's run background checks on people you went to college with and isn't sorry, he will text you the route home (not ask, tell) take 5th not the alley tonight, he has bought you (without asking) pepper spray (good), a small folding knife (lowkey concerning), a panic button that is wired to him specifically (worrying that this exists, kinda sweet that he thought of it), and a self-defence class he'll not attend with you because "I'll just correct her form and piss her off".

He gets weirdly quiet when you mention being scared of something (not comforting, quiet, you can see him processing: who, where, when, can I get there in under fifteen if she needs me) and you have to actively redirect him before he goes and breaks someone's hands.

He'll never, ever tell you not to do something dangerous, because Jason understands the impulse to walk into things, but he'll follow you in from a respectful distance where you can't see him. Close enough that if anything happens he's the second person who knows, and this is actually one of the most loving things he does.

He doesn't try to keep you small, he just makes sure that if the world tries to swallow you, it has to go through him first.

The intimacy doesn't really start in bed, it starts in his apartment.

The first time you're allowed in there (and you have to be allowed, because Jason has safehouses you'll never see and he has the apartment, and the apartment is the closest thing he has to a self he doesn't have to hold a weapon against) and the thing that will undo you is how much care lives there: there are books everywhere, dog-eared, some stained, there's good coffee, a record player, spices in the kitchen that mean he actually cooks for himself, and the bed is made.

The bed is made. This is the detail that will catch in your throat. Jason Peter Todd, who came back from the dead, who lives with a body that's been to war, makes his bed every morning (some habit from the manor, or from before the manor, or from somewhere he won't tell you about) the corners are tucked, the pillows are arranged, and he'll be sheepish and dismissive if you notice but he'll not stop doing it.

Now, the first time. It doesn't happen in his apartment, you don't get into his apartment for months. The first time happens at yours, and it happens because the tension has been so unbearable for so long that one of you finally has to break it, and it's going to be him, and the way it happens is going to feel (at the time) like an accident, even though it absolutely is not.

He's been at your place too late, he's been finding excuses to be at your place too late, and on this particular night the excuse is your faucet, sweetheart, you said it was leaking, I can fix it, no I'm not gonna pay some guy to do it when I'm right here, and he does fix it, except then he doesn't leave.

You open a beer for him, and the two of you end up on your couch, and there's a moment (a very specific moment) where you've been laughing about something stupid and the laughter trails off and he's looking at you and you're looking at him and the whole apartment is suddenly quiet, and you can hear the fridge humming, and the click of the clock, and the way his breathing has gone shallow.

He'll break it the way he breaks everything: with a joke, with a deflection ("what," he says, low, rough, daring you, half a smirk on his face) and you're going to call his bluff, because by now you know how he works.

You're going to lean in first, and his whole face is going to do something you've never seen it do before (a flicker of oh, fuck) and then he's going to kiss you back like he has been thinking about it for a year, which is because he has been thinking about it for a year, and the kiss is not soft. It's a hungry thing. The kiss of a man who's been holding himself back from this for so long that the moment he stops holding back, there's no halfway; his hand goes to the back of your skull, immediately, fingers in your hair, and he tilts your head where he wants it, and the small noise he makes against your mouth is the first time you've ever heard him sound undone.

Jason pulls back first, and his hand is on your jaw, his thumb on your bottom lip dragging across it. He's looking at you with an expression that's somewhere between starved and pained, and he says (and you'll remember this forever, "you sure?") and the question is not a polite formality, he needs you to look him in the eye and confirm it, and when you do, when you say "yes," clearly, no hesitation, he's on you in a heartbeat.

The first time is fast, not because he doesn't have control (Jason has frightening control), but because he has too much tension in his body and he genuinely can't moderate it on the first pass.

It's also slightly clumsy in places. He knocks over your lamp (oops), he'll laugh about this later, and you'll be on the floor before you make it to the bedroom. Your shirt doesn't survive (rip). He tears the collar of it dragging it off you, mutters fuck, sorry without sounding sorry in the slightest, and goes back to your throat, and it's intense in a way that doesn't feel like sex so much as like finally, like something that's been building between you for months has finally been allowed to happen.

His hands are everywhere and they're huge. You'd noticed the size of his hands in the abstract before. The way they wrap around a coffee cup, the way they look on the steering wheel.

But the first time you feel one of them spread flat across your stomach, fingertips just barely under the waistband of your jeans, you understand the reach of him in a way you didn't before.

The sheer span, the way one of his palms covers ground. He's careful with his strength even when he's gone. In a sense, he's been careful with it his whole life because he's had to be, and the carefulness shows up as a deliberate slowness even when everything else is fast. Fingers on the inside of your thigh that take their time getting where they're going, a thumb on your hipbone that presses just hard enough to be a question

He's going to be louder than you expected, with his mouth, not his volume.

He runs commentary even the first time, which is partly nerves (Jason gets mouthy when he's anxious, you'll learn this) and partly that he genuinely can't help himself. He'll mutter against your throat ("Fuck, you have no idea how long—") and then cut himself off, because he didn't mean to say that out loud, and instead he'll bite, hard, just under your jaw, like he's trying to put the sentence back in his mouth.

He'll say "look at me, look at me, baby," not as a command but as something closer to a request, and you'll realise later that he needs you to see him for this, that he can't do it with you looking at the ceiling, that some part of him needs proof of recognition.

He'll bury his face in your shoulder when he comes and his hands will go tight on your hips; tight enough to leave marks, you'll find them in the morning, four little crescents low on each side, and the surge you feel at seeing them in the bathroom mirror will be embarrassing to think about.

He will be, for one breath, two, completely undone, and you'll feel the shudder run all the way through him.

And then almost immediately, the second it's over, the shutters come back down. Not fully, but you can feel it, the way he reassembles himself, the joke he reaches for to cover the rawness of what just happened ("so, the faucet's fixed," he'll say, voice rough,) and you'll laugh, and that will be his way of saying don't make this a thing or I will lose my nerve.

He doesn't stay over that first night. He kisses your forehead in your doorway (which is somehow more tender than anything that just happened) and he says, "I'll text you," and you know he won't, and he doesn't.

Three days will pass and you will think, oh, that was it, that was the thing, and on the fourth day he'll show up at your door at midnight with takeout and a look on his face that says I tried to stop thinking about you and it didn't work, and the second wave begins.

The early sex (the first month, maybe two) has a specific flavour to it that's worth naming: it's frequent, very intense, and it has an undercurrent of him trying to prove something, though even he doesn't know what.

He fucks you like he's daring himself to keep doing it, like every time he expects you to be different in the morning, colder, distant, regretful (or maybe he's expecting himself to be those things), and every time he's mildly stunned that you aren't, that he isn't, and he punishes himself for the relief of it by being slightly more of an asshole about everything else for a few hours after.

Physically, in this period, he's exhausting in the best way.

His stamina is genuinely a problem (he's in extraordinary physical condition, he can go for an extremely long time, he has the recovery of a man who jumps off buildings for a living), and you will, at some point in the first month, look at him afterwards while you're trying to remember how to breathe and say something like Jesus Christ, Jason, and he'll grin at you, sweaty, smug, infuriating, and say "problem?", and you will hit him with a pillow.

He'll laugh, fully, not the half-laugh he gives most of the time but something that comes from his actual chest, and you will realise, then, you're going to love him for the rest of your life and it's too late to do anything about it.

He's also a tease from the very beginning. Catastrophically so, but in the early days the teasing has a sharper edge to it. Almost competitive, like he's trying to see how far he can push you before you break. Like he needs the proof that he can take you apart in order to believe that this is real.

He'll get you right to the edge and then slow down deliberately, two fingers stilling exactly where you need them to be moving, his mouth lifting off your skin at the worst possible second, and when you complain (when you swear at him, which he loves, which you'll learn fast he loves) he'll laugh (that low, mean, delighted laugh, mouth right against your ear) and say something like "you got somewhere to be, sweetheart? we got all night", and you'll want to kill him.

He loves it when you try, it's free foreplay, and the rule he has invented entirely for his own amusement is that the more you mouth off the longer he draws it out, and he'll absolutely tell you this to your face ("you wanna keep talking? we can keep going. I got nowhere to be") while you're shaking apart underneath him, and the bastard means it, too.

He's very good with his mouth, and he knows it, and he treats it like a settled fact you don't need to discuss.

The first time he goes down on you, he does it with the same focused, watchful attention he brings to everything else. Eyes up, watching your face, two fingers wrapped around your wrist where it's gripping the sheet because he likes feeling the pulse there, and he will not be hurried, will not be talked out of taking his time, and he will absolutely look up at you afterwards with his mouth still wet and say something insufferable like "yeah, I thought so," and you will want to push him off the bed, and he'll laugh every time you try.

The shit-talking is non-negotiable from day one, he can't keep his damn mouth shut.

He runs commentary the entire time, and the commentary breaks down roughly into three modes that he flips between without warning.

The first is mean (observational, smirking, designed to make you squirm) "oh, that's what does it for you, huh?" breathed against your ear when he's noticed exactly which thing is making you fall apart,

"look at you, fuck, you're a mess for me already and I've barely touched you," "yeah? you gonna ask nice?", "that's it, that's it, sweetheart, you can do better than that, c'mon, let me hear it,"

And the meanness is never actually mean, it's delighted, you can hear the smile in it. He's having the time of his fucking life winding you up and he wants you to know it.

The second mode is filthy, full stop. Jason at midnight with his hand between your thighs is saying things like "fuck, you're so wet, you're soaking through my fucking jeans, baby, you been thinking about this all day or what?"

Running narration of what his hands are doing right now ("that's it, just like that, you feel that? right there?"), running narration of what his hands are about to do ("gonna take my time with you tonight, gonna make you beg for it, you know that, right?"), running narration of what he's planning to do once he's recovered ("give me ten minutes, sweetheart, ten minutes and I'm gonna have you on your knees, gonna fuck your mouth till you cry, you want that?"),

and (most catastrophically) running narration of what he was thinking about doing earlier, when you were just standing in his kitchen in his t-shirt making coffee and didn't know he was watching: "you have any idea what you looked like in my kitchen this morning? in my fucking shirt with nothing under it? I had to leave the room, sweetheart, I had to go take a cold shower like a goddamn teenager, I was gonna fuck you on the counter, I was thinking about it the whole time you were talking to me about your friend, you didn't even notice—"

He likes hearing himself called things, sometimes. Likes the specific small power of Jay, please, Jason, fuck, please please please. And he'll work for it, he'll deliberately drag it out of you, "what do you need, baby, you gotta tell me, I can't read your mind," knowing perfectly well he can, in fact, read your mind, knowing exactly what he's doing.

The third mode is the one he doesn't mean to do, and it slips out anyway, usually when he's lost focus and his guard drops for half a second. Almost devastatingly tender things that he covers within two seconds because he didn't mean to say them out loud, "god, you're so fucking pretty like this," and then, immediately, recovering, "yeah, you like that, huh, you like when I say nice things to you?" with a smirk back in place, like the first half of the sentence didn't happen;

Or "shit, sweetheart, look at you, look at—fuck, c'mere" and then he kisses you hard enough to shut himself up;

Or, the worst one, the one he'll pretend for years he never said, said quietly into the curve of your shoulder when he thought you were too far gone to hear him: "I don't know what to do with you, I don't know what to fucking do with you,", and he panics about it the second he hears himself.

Because I don't know what to do with you is dangerously close to a confession he isn't ready to make, and so he bites your shoulder hard enough to leave a mark and follows it up with "you got such a pretty mouth, you gonna put it to use or what?" before the pause can land.

He calls you everything (sweetheart, baby, princess, good girl, brat), and in the early days these are all you get.

He uses your name only when he's serious, when he's looking at you and he means it, and you will learn to clock the difference: the pet names mean I'm having fun, your name means I love you and I'm not going to say it yet, and you will notice (months in, looking back) that for the first stretch of your relationship, he never said your name in bed, not once.

The night he finally does (really says it, low and ragged, looking at you, fuck, followed by ragged exhale of your name breathed against your temple, is the night you'll know something has changed in him that you don't have words for yet.

Jason, almost as a rule, likes when you talk back. He likes it when you mouth off. The single fastest way to get him to lose his composure is to be a smartass while he's trying to wreck you.

He'll go "oh, you've got jokes," and then he'll prove a point, and the dynamic this creates is one of the most addictive things about being with him: you can spar with him, in bed, all the way through, he will not shatter, will not get hurt feelings, he will meet you every time, and the back-and-forth is genuinely funny in a way that almost nothing else in your life is.

Sex with Jason is, weirdly, often fun, in a way you didn't know it could be. You laugh, sometimes, mid-thing, and he laughs too, his forehead dropped against your shoulder, his whole body shaking with it for a second, and it doesn't break the heat, it deepens it, because it's involuntary, it's unguarded, and he gives it to you anyway.

Jason has a body that has been through something. He has scars he doesn't talk about, he has somewhere in him a permanent tension (a vigilance) that doesn't fully go away, ever.

In bed that tension goes somewhere; he fucks like he's trying to outrun something, and there's a quality to it (especially in the early months) of too much, too hard, too fast, like he's trying to drown out a noise in his head with the sound of you. And it's incredibly hot but it's also, sometimes, a flag.

For the first stretch he refuses to be seen during sex, in a particular way that takes you a while to clock: he prefers positions where he's behind you or above you, where you can't easily reach his face, where his expression is something you have to work to read.

He keeps his shirt on more than you'd expect for the first month or two. A faded grey henley, usually, that he won't take off, even in your bed at 2 a.m., even with his hand down your pants, and you'll learn not to push it.

He avoids long eye contact; and if you reach up to cup his jaw mid-fuck he'll catch your wrist and pin it, gently, smoothly, like he's playing, but he's not playing. It's redirecting, and you'll eventually understand that he can't let you look at him like that yet because if you do, he'll feel it, and feeling it is what he came to bed to not do.

Jason's body is a map of the life he's lived, and you'll learn it in pieces. Slowly, over months, because he doesn't sit you down and explain it. You have to find each one and decide whether to ask.

It's worth saying clearly that his scars aren't pretty. They're the body of a man who's been beaten, shot, burned and stitched up by his own hands more times than is reasonable.

There's the long, ropy line down his left forearm from a knife in Hong Kong (he'll tell you that one, eventually, a clean story he can shrug off); there are the round puckered scars of bullet wounds in his shoulder, his thigh, low on his right side where it nearly took a kidney (these are boring to him, he genuinely thinks they're uninteresting, "occupational hazard, sweetheart"); there's a long pale stripe across his ribs from something he won't name, and a smaller jagged one at the corner of his eyebrow you'd noticed before you ever saw the rest of him.

There are the ones that don't have stories he wants to tell. The scars on his back that don't match anything ordinary, a clustered constellation of marks across his shoulder blades and lower spine that you won't ask about and that he will not explain, ever. The pattern of which you will eventually stop being able to unsee, and there is, at the back of his neck, just below the hairline, a thin curved scar he touches absently when he's thinking and will never tell you the origin of.

The crowbar is not a single scar, it's a map. A knot of healed, raised tissue along his ribs where one strike landed wrong, a notch missing from the side of one knee, a hairline kink in the bridge of his nose that you can feel when you kiss him, and a small permanent deviation in the way he holds his left wrist that you'll notice when he's gripping a glass. None of which he names for you, and none of which you ask about, because some part of you already knows, and he can tell that you know, and that knowledge is part of why he can let you near it at all.

The rule, for all of it, is you don't flinch.

The first time he lets you really look at him in full light (really look, not the half-dark of your bedroom but the morning sun coming in over the bed) he's watching you like he's waiting for you to recoil, holding too still, and what you do in that moment will determine what he can be with you for the rest of your life.

And the right move is to look, to actually look, not perform unbotheredness, not avoid; trace something, if he'll let you, with one finger, pick the smallest scar, the one at his eyebrow maybe.

Something he doesn't have feelings about, and start there slowly, and don't say anything stupid, don't say anything at all if you can help it, just look at him after like yeah, and?, because that's what he needs: not for it to be invisible, but for it to be uninteresting as a verdict on whether you want him.

After that morning, eventually, he stops keeping the shirt on.

Eventually he stops flinching when you touch the rougher places mid-sex. Eventually (months later, maybe a year) he'll let you press your mouth to the worst of them, deliberately, while you're on top of him. Your lips against the knot of healed tissue along his ribs, and his breath will catch and his hand will close hard around your wrist but he'll not stop you, and that (that, more than the first I love you, more than any of the words) is the moment you'll understand he has decided to stay.

When he's having a bad night (when something happened on patrol, or someone said the wrong name, or it's an anniversary of something he won't tell you about) he'll want you in a way that is almost desperate.

He won't say it, he'll just show up at your door at midnight with a bruise on his jaw and his hands already on you, your back hitting the door before it's fully closed. His mouth at your throat hot and wordless in a way it usually isn't, and the first time you realise he's doing this (that he's using you, sweetly and gently and not in a bad way, as anchor) you'll have to make a choice: you can either let him have it, no questions asked, every time, and let him use sex to skip past the feeling, or you can occasionally slow him down.

Catch his face in your hands, say his name, make him look at you, make him be present in his own body with you, instead of running through it.

He'll hate this but he'll need it, both, equally, and the very first time you do it (the first time you stop him, hand on his jaw, Jay, hey, look at me) he'll go completely still for a beat too long, like a circuit shorting.

His body braced against yours, his breathing ragged, and you'll see an emotion go through his eyes that you don't have a name for, and then he'll press his forehead to yours and exhale, hard, like he didn't know he was holding it, his nose against yours, his whole frame trembling with the effort of not running.

That exhale is one of the most intimate things he'll ever give you, and if you handle it right (don't say anything, don't make it a moment, just stay, just stay) he will, slowly, come back to his body with you in it, and the sex that follows that pause will be different. Slower, quieter, his hands less grabbing and more holding, his mouth against your shoulder more like a kiss than a bite, and afterwards he'll not joke, just lie on top of you with his face hidden and breathe.

That moment is the hinge of your sexual relationship. Before that night and after that night are different countries. Because once he's done it once, once he's let himself be slowed down, there's now a possibility in the room that wasn't there before. From that point forward the sex begins, very slowly, to deepen: still mouthy, still teasing, still possessive as hell, but with windows in it now, moments where he lets the noise drop out and just lets himself be there with you.

Around the three or four month mark you'll notice him starting to do small things differently: he'll keep the lights on instead of always reaching for the switch; he'll let you push him onto his back instead of always being above you; he'll let you take a turn driving the pace, which in the early days he wouldn't, he had to be running it (because if he was running it then he could control how close you got to him), and the first time he just lies there and lets you set the rhythm and watches you, eyes half-lidded, his hands loose at his sides instead of on you, a little stunned at the quiet of it.

Then his hands do come up, slowly, to settle on your thighs, not gripping, not directing, just resting there, his thumbs stroking idle patterns against your skin. You'll realise, then, that this is a gift, because he's not a man who gives up control easily, and what he's doing is showing you that he doesn't need to be the one with his foot on the gas to feel safe in this room with you anymore.

You'll also notice (and this is the one that hits haard) that he stops looking away: in the early months his eyes were always somewhere else (your throat, your mouth, the line of your collarbone, anywhere but your eyes), and one night, somewhere mid thrust, you look up and he's looking at you. Full-on, unblinking, eyes dark, expression open in a way you've literally never seen on his face before.

Jason doesn't break it, and the quality of the sex changes in the next ten seconds because he isn't running anymore, he's just here, and he stays here, and afterwards he doesn't joke. He just lies on top of you with his face in the curve of your neck and breathes for a long time.

That's the night you understand that he is in this, not just with you but in it, and you don't say anything about it because you know better, but you remember it for the rest of your life.

By six months in, he's started giving you the slow nights, the ones where he fucks you like he's trying to savour you. He'll go slow, keep his forehead against yours, say your name, your real name, in a voice he doesn't use anywhere else.

He'll move like he has nowhere else to be and nothing else to do, and his eyes will be on yours the entire time; on these nights his hands are different too, more reverent, less hungry. One cradling the back of your head, the other splayed flat on your back, holding you against him, and he kisses you between every other thrust he does, constantly, like he can't stop coming back to your mouth.

The rhythm itself is different, deep and unhurried, like he's trying to make it last, and you'll feel (for once) that you have his whole attention, not the part of him that's always halfway watching the door.

These nights are still rare, still precious, still earned, but they exist now, they're in the repertoire, and that's a thing that did not exist in month one.

The kissing on those nights is different too, and over time it becomes the way you can tell what kind of night it is going to be.

Jason normally kisses like the kissing is a fight he intends to win. With teeth, with intent, a hand at the back of your skull holding you exactly where he wants you. Deep, hot and a little punishing.

But on these nights he kisses you like he's apologising for something, slow, full and quiet, mouth soft, tongue languid, slipping deep, his hand on your jaw instead of gripping your hair.

He'll come back to your mouth between everything else like a bookmark, like he's checking you're still there, and the first time he kisses you like that you'll feel a shift in your chest, and after enough of those nights you'll learn to read it from the first kiss of the evening: oh, it's that kind of night, and you'll know, and he'll know that you know. Neither of you will say a word about it.

He has a thing (and you'll notice it over time, a thing that gets more pronounced as he gets deeper into his feelings) about your hands.

Jason likes them in his hair (and his hair, you'll discover, is soft, a fact that always weirdly disarms you given the rest of him, and he has a small tell that he likes having it pulled, just slightly, just at the back, and the first time you do it without thinking you get a sound out of him that he has clearly not meant to make).

On the back of his neck where the muscle is always tight, on his face if you've earned it, and he'll bring your hand to his mouth at strange unguarded moments and press his lips to your knuckles like a reflex, and he'll absolutely not acknowledge that he does this.

If you tease him about it he'll get pink at the back of his neck and tell you to shut up.

He also has a thing about your throat. Not in a violent way, in a possessive way. The flat of his hand resting there, his thumb at your pulse, like he's checking you're right there where he needs you, real and solid,a nd his. And he has, devastatingly, a thing about being held.

Actually held, after, with your arms around his ribs and your face in the curve of his throat, and he'll never, ever ask for this, but if you do it he'll not move for a long time.

And as Jason gets deeper into it, the things he wants change: in the early days he wanted you under him, fast, now; later he starts wanting things he doesn't have a way to ask for. Wanting you to stay over even when nothing is going to happen, wanting to be the little spoon (which he can't request and you have to figure out by trial and error, because one night you'll do it almost as a joke, fitting yourself behind him, and he will go extremely still in a way that you'll learn means yes don't make me say it, and then he will reach back and pull your arm tighter around his ribs without a word).

Wanting your hands on him in non-sexual ways during sex (your fingers in his hair, your palm flat on his chest over his heart, the small of his back, the back of his neck, you lips at his jaw, the corner of his mouth), wanting foreplay that's genuinely about touching him, not just escalation.

Wanting, in short, all the things he couldn't bear to want in month one, because back then wanting them meant admitting that he needed them.

In the early days the sex is frequent because the itch is mutual and unscratchable. He wants you, you want him, the chemistry is loud, and the hunger is mostly physical, mostly now, mostly the kind of want that has a clear destination and a satisfied stillness on the other side of it.

He texts you at midnight because he can't stop thinking about your mouth, you go over because you can't stop thinking about his hands, you fuck because the tension is unbearable and the release is the point. Afterwards he leaves or you doze and the want, briefly, quiets. That's month one. That's month two. The math of it is simple: stimulus, response, relief, reset.

But somewhere around the four or five month mark (somewhere after the hinge night, somewhere after the windows started opening) the math stops working.

He'll have you, fuck you properly, completely, and an hour later he'll still want you, more than he wanted you before, in a way that doesn't make sense by the old rules. He'll be lying with his head on your stomach, fully spent, your hand in his hair, and you'll feel him press his mouth against your skin like he's checking, like he's making sure you're still there, and then he'll roll up onto an elbow and look at you and you'll see it in his face.

Not finished, not in a sex way, in some other way, a way he doesn't have language for. And he'll kiss you again, slow this time, and you'll realise the wanting hasn't gone anywhere, it's just changed shape.

What it becomes (and this is the part he couldn't have explained to you on the night you met him, the part he can barely admit to himself even now) is anchoring.

Sex with you stops being an itch he scratches and starts being a place he goes to feel alive. Jason came back from being dead, and most of his life since has been spent at a slight remove from his own body, vigilant, watchful, half a step outside himself in case he needs to move; with you, in your bed, his face pressed against yours, your hands on his back, your breath on his throat, he is (for the duration) in his body, in the moment, here, and he can feel his heart going, and he can feel yours, and the proof that he's still alive is so loud it drowns out everything else.

That quiet, that presence, is something he can't get anywhere else and has stopped trying to find anywhere else.

So the appetite changes shape. He still wants you fast and rough (that mode never goes away, that's just in him) but a lot of the wanting becomes about closeness, about contact. Feeling you pressed against him in real time.

He wants long unhurried hours where neither of you has anywhere to be. He wants the lights on so he can see you. You on top of him with his hands on your hips so he can feel you moving, breathing, being there. He wants to fall asleep with his face against the back of your neck because the rhythm of your breathing is the only lullaby that ever worked. He wants (and this is the one that costs him the most to want) to be held while it's happening.

Your arms around his ribs, your mouth at his temple, your whole body wrapped around him while he moves inside you, and he will never ask for this, but if you do it, if you wrap your legs around his waist and pull him down against you and hold him tight, his whole frame will settle in a way you've never felt from him before, and the sound he makes will be something between a groan and an exhale and a quiet, broken fuck, and you will know.

You'll catch him, sometimes, in the middle of it (eyes closed, forehead against yours, his rhythm slowed almost to nothing, just staying there inside you, breathing, his hand splayed flat on your sternum over your heart) and he'll not be moving toward an end. He'll not be building toward anything. Just be with you, in his body, breathing in time with you, and you will understand that he isn't trying to come, he's trying to stay, he's trying to make the present moment last because in the present moment he is alive and you're alive and the both of you are warm, breathing and the world has not ended yet.

And the tell (the one that gives him away, the one you'll learn to read) is what Jason says at the end. In the early days, after, when he could still pretend, he'd give you the smirk and the joke: "yeah, that'll do, sweetheart," a kiss to your forehead, a stretch, a deflection.

Later, after the wanting changes, he stops saying anything at all for a long minute, and then what comes out (quiet, half-mumbled, into your hair, like he's not sure he means to let you hear it) is some version of "don't move, just—don't move yet," or "stay there, stay right there," or simply "god, I needed that," and he's not talking about the sex, not really, he's talking about you, about the warmth of you, about the proof of you, about the fact that he's here and you're here and for one more night he gets to stay.

He also gets quieter over time in general, which you will find a little shocking. Jason is mouthy, Jason is a shit-talker, Jason will happily narrate the apocalypse if he could.

But as he gets deeper into his feelings there are stretches in bed when he just goes silent, and the silence isn't absence, it's the opposite. It's him being so present he can't quite manage the words.

The first time it happens you'll wonder if something is wrong, and it's not, it's the most right something has ever been. You'll feel his breath ragged against your shoulder, his hand fisted in the sheet next to your head instead of running its mouth, his rhythm slowed almost to nothing.

The first time he comes quietly (without the muttered curse, without the bitten-off line of dirty talk, just a long shuddering exhale against your throat and your name, once, not loud) you'll know that something has migrated in him, that this is the version of him that didn't exist three months ago, and you will stroke the back of his neck and not say a word about it.

The vulnerable conversations happen at 3 a.m., in the dark, when neither of you is looking at the other, because he can't do them face to face. He needs the cover. He'll tell you things in bed, after sex, in the warm aftermath when his guard is down. About Ethiopia, about Sheila, about waking up in the dirt, about the year he can't really remember.

He'll tell it flatly, quietly, and wait for you to react, and don't react big: don't gasp, don't well up, don't reach for him too fast, he's testing whether you can hold it without dropping it. The way to win is to listen, to ask a quiet question, to not try to fix anything, to let him say the thing and then let it just exist in the air without you needing to clean it up or soften it.

If you do that, he'll tell you more, slowly, over months and months. The story of him will arrive in fragments and you will assemble it like a mosaic, and he'll never once say "thank you for listening", but the way he kisses your forehead before he leaves will mean it. You'll eventually realise that the sum total of what he's told you is more than he's ever told another living person, and you'll understand that this is what he has instead of words for love.

He will also, occasionally, ask about you (quietly, in roundabout ways, in the dark) and the rule there is the inverse: he wants the real answer, not the cleaned-up one, because he can smell a lie at fifty paces and the fastest way to lose his trust is to give him the version of yourself you give to people you don't know yet.

Jason doesn't want to be one of those people, even though he hasn't earned the right to ask not to be, and what he's doing when he asks you a question at 3 a.m. is asking let me in to the room I haven't earned yet, and the answer is supposed to be yes, but the yes has to come in the same coin he's paying in: quiet, unfussy, no big deal, while neither of you is looking at the other.

He doesn't say he loves you for a long time.

The first time will be by accident, muttered into your hair when he thinks you're asleep, and you have to pretend you didn't hear it because if he knows you heard it he'll panic and undo it.

The second time will be in a fight, yelling, angry: "Because I fucking love you, you idiot, that's why!" and then a horrible silence, then him walking out, then him coming back four hours later with takeout and not bringing it up.

By the time he can say it sober, calmly, looking at you, it will have been a year, maybe more. When he does it will undo you, because he will say it like it's been on his tongue the whole time and he's just finally letting it through, and his voice will be a little rough, and he'll not break eye contact, and the way he says your name after will be the kindest sound he has ever made.

And the first time he says it in bed (which is later, much later, because for him these are different rooms) the first time he says it mid-fuck, breathed against your throat, ragged and ungoverned, I love you, fuck, I love you, you'll know that the wall has come down all the way.

That this is the version of him no one has ever gotten to see, and what you do in the next thirty seconds will become the foundation of the rest of your life with him, and what you do is: you don't make it weird, you don't make him repeat it, you don't perform astonishment, you just say it back, simple and sure, and you let him hear it, and you let him have it, and you let him know that the room he just opened a door into is one he is allowed to live in.

Aftercare, which he would rather die than call aftercare but which he does, every time: he gets you water (always water, the man is on a mission), he cleans you up (his hands are surprisingly gentle for someone who breaks ribs for a living, there's a particular thing he does where he runs a warm cloth over your stomach, your thighs, with the same focused patience he uses for cleaning a wound, and you'll never quite get used to how careful his hands can be when he wants them to be).

He'll check casually like it's nothing whether anything hurts, and if it does he'll be quiet about it but he'll be careful with you for the rest of the night; he'll get you food if it's that kind of hour, he'll let you wear his shirt.

He likes you in his shirt, and he doesn't have the language for why, but there's a softness in his face the first time he sees you in one of his too-big henleys that you will think about for years, and if you fall asleep on him Jason will not move. He'll lie there dead-still for hours even if his arm goes numb, because he doesn't want to wake you, and this is the most romantic thing he's capable of and he does it constantly.

The aftercare also evolves: in the early days it was efficient, almost practical (water, check-in, joke, distance), and over time it becomes longer, more lingering.

He stays in the bed instead of getting up, he traces shapes on your back with one finger while you doze, he'll talk to you about nothing, real nothing, the stupid shit. What he ate that day, something a kid said in a bodega, the dog he wants you both to maybe think about getting (a sentence which makes him visibly regret saying it the second it's out of his mouth), and these post-sex small-talk hours become, by month eight or nine, one of the most important parts of your relationship.

Because this is when he's most himself, the least armoured, and also the funniest, and you'll find yourself looking forward to them in a way that has nothing to do with the sex and everything to do with the man underneath the noise.

On the nights when he needs aftercare (and there are nights) he won't ask, but you'll be able to tell: he'll be quieter than usual, his hands will linger longer than usual, he won't joke as fast as he normally does, and the way to handle it is the same way you handle his trauma stories: don't make it a thing, don't ask if he's okay (he'll lie), just stay close, bring him water, run your fingers through his hair while he's lying with his head on your stomach pretending to be asleep.

When he eventually says something (usually a half-sentence, half-mumbled, bad day, or just don't go yet) you say okay and you don't go, and that's how he learns, slowly, that there's somewhere on this earth where he's allowed to need things, and that the somewhere is you.

Jason doesn't sleep well. This is the single most important thing to know about being in his bed.

He doesn't fall asleep easily, and when he does he doesn't stay under, he's a light sleeper because if he wasn't he'd be dead again. He has nightmares all the time (about the warehouse, about the crowbar, about his mother, about the Pit, about Bruce's face, always the face), he wakes up with his hand already moving toward where his gun isn't.

Early on this means he doesn't sleep over: he'll fuck you and leave, or he'll wait until you're under and slip out the window, and he'll feed you a line about "shit to do" and you both know it isn't true.

When he finally starts staying (and it'll take time, and you'll want to mark the date) there are rules nobody told you about that you'll learn by trial and error: he sleeps on the side closest to the door, always, don't argue.

He keeps something within reach (a knife under the mattress, a gun in the drawer), he won't apologise, you'll get used to it or you won't.

Don't wake him by touching him. Say his name first, say it twice, thrice. He has exactly once grabbed your wrist hard enough to bruise it because you reached for him at the wrong moment, and the look on his face when he registered what he'd done was the closest you've ever seen him come to regret. He didn't sleep over again for two weeks after that, and the thing that finally fixed it was you showing up at his apartment with your wrist healed and saying nothing about it, just climbing into his bed like nothing had happened, because he needed to learn that you weren't going to keep score, and you needed him to learn it on his own.

He runs hot (stupid hot) he's a furnace and he steals all the blankets and he doesn't care, and if he stays the whole night you'll wake up tangled around him.

Because he's a clinger when he's actually under, he'd just rather die than admit this, and you can feel his face against the back of your neck and his arm heavy across your waist and his breathing slow and steady, and it's the only time you ever see him truly soft, and it's gone by the time he wakes up.

The morning after the first time he stays the whole night, he'll be weird about it. Quiet, gruff, making coffee with his back to you. You'll think you did something wrong, but you didn't; he's just rattled, because he slept, actually slept, and he didn't wake up swinging, and somewhere in the part of his brain that doesn't talk to the rest of him there's now knowledge that says safe here, and he doesn't know what to do with that, so he is, as always, an asshole about it for a few hours until he settles.

The big picture, the actual truth of dating Jason Todd is this: he will never be easy.

He'll never be the boyfriend who texts back in under ten minutes, who shows up on time, who tells you he loves you in the morning over coffee. He's been broken and reassembled and broken again, and the seams show. He's dangerous and grey in a way that means sometimes you'll not love what he does. He kills people (he has rules about it, but he does), he keeps things from you, he disappears, he's occasionally an asshole.

But he's also the man who, when you're sick, will sit on the edge of your bed for six hours and not check his phone once. He's the man who memorises your coffee order the first time and never gets it wrong.

He's the man who, when you tell him about a thing that happened to you when you were younger (a thing you've never told anyone, a thing that still wakes you up sometimes) will sit with you in the dark and not say anything at all. Because he understands that some things can't be fixed and he won't insult you by pretending they can.

He'll just stay, all night, without moving, and he is, against everything that was done to him, a person who chose to love you, knowing what love costs, knowing what it does when it goes wrong, knowing how it ends sometimes in a warehouse in Ethiopia with a crowbar and no one coming, and he chose anyway, and he keeps choosing, and that is not nothing—that is, for Jason Peter Todd, everything.

She'd gone against Jonah's advice while out hiking on a mountain blanketed with snow, refusing to set up camp and warm up in favor of trekking farther. It didn't matter to her that every joint and limb was sore, or that the frost nipping at the exposed parts of her face left her skin burning, or that tension and pain had burrowed itself into her skull. She had to find what she had been looking for.

The quicker she found it, the quicker she could be in your arms again. She figured that things would run smoothly since Trinity was no longer a threat, but it was made clear since the plane landed that there was very little relief to be found.

It wasn't just the weather that made things difficult, unfortunately. Her body had decided to give in to the environment, and before she knew it, she began to feel sick.

Jonah had noticed it rather quickly. He repeatedly tried to get her to rest, even testing the waters a bit and asking her if she'd rather go back to get better, then return later on when she was feeling alright. She declined, of course, and after a while of this, Jonah stopped bringing it up.

It wasn't until they were trying to hoist themselves up another cliff when he put his foot down and demanded she head back to the plane. While maneuvering with her climbing axes to try and avoid the thicker ice, Lara's strength gave way, her body nearly going entirely limp and ultimately resulting in Jonah having to catch her before she fell. He hollered down to her while shuffling back to where they had left the ground.

When they were on stable land, he huffed, once again telling her she was in no condition to keep going. She parted her lips to argue, but he spoke before she could. "Lara, little bird, you aren't gonna last much longer out here, and I don't know if I'll be able to catch you like that a second time. I get that you don't want to give up, but you're only putting yourself in more danger by pushing through whatever's making you sick."

Stubborn as ever, Lara shook her head and forced herself onto her feet. "I'm fine, Jonah." The shake of her head was mirrored, and Jonah put a hand on her back. "We can always come back later. Weren't you the one who said you're gonna try to not take yourself too seriously from now on?"

"Jonah-"

"I know you wanna keep going, but imagine the scolding you're gonna get when you get home. It's only gonna be worse if you stay out here."

She nearly pouted at the thought. You were always worried for her safety every time she went out on another expedition, and whenever she would return in a condition that could've been easily prevented, you'd essentially lecture her. There were always weak arguments made by her in her own defense, but she couldn't truly bring herself to be annoyed.

You cared, and that's something she appreciated more than anything.

She didn't want to upset you anymore than she already had just by leaving. If she came home tattered and torn, well, she could practically already hear the words you'd throw her way.

With her shoulders drooped in defeat, she gave a barely noticeable nod. "Fine, we can head back," she croaked. It was hard to get the words out with the way her throat burned.

Great.

The sickness was already getting worse.

She cleared her throat and watched for a moment as Jonah began to make his way back down the path. She trailed behind him shortly after, mumbling about how awful she felt.

It was a huge relief when she finally let herself collapse into the seat of the plane, though the altitude certainly didn't help her breathing, which was already labored from hiking while ill. After Jonah had offered her a blanket tucked away in one of the overhead compartments, Lara curled into herself in the seat, wrapping the blanket tightly around herself with a shudder and groaning as her limbs throbbed with sharp pain.

How she managed to fall asleep with the amount of pain she was in, she had no idea, but by the time her eyes began to open again, she could feel how drastic the change in temperature was. It was far warmer than before — something she was grateful for.

It felt like an eternity had passed when she finally stepped through the front doors of the manor. Her legs wobbled beneath her with every step, threatening to give out at any given moment, and she hissed with every throbbing sensation in her head.

The lights were way too bright. The sun was way too bright.

Everything was too loud.

It was too hot, and yet somehow too cold at the same time, like her body couldn't decide what it was actually feeling.

God, she wanted to just pass out where she stood.

"Lara? Oh, god, you look awful."

She blinked at the sudden voice, the action making her wince before her vision focused in on the figure swiftly approaching her. Hands were on her in a near-instant, one cupping her face, the other planting itself on her shoulder to steady her apparent swaying. When had she started swaying?

A cough bursted through her lips before she could stop it, then a handful of sniffles. Your name was the next to follow, and it seemed like her mind had finally registered who was standing in front of her. "I'm right here, love," you replied, voice soft enough to not hurt her head. "Let's get you to the room, okay? I'll run a bath, and then you can get some sleep."

She nodded and let you lead her upstairs to your shared bedroom. As much as she wanted to just curl up in bed with you and crash, she couldn't deny that a warm bath sounded heavenly, especially since she knew you were going to help her wash up.

Everything looked blurry as she passed through the foyer and up the stairs with you. She hardly even understood where she was until you sat her down on top of the closed lid of the toilet, then moved over to start running the water. While you waited for it to warm up, you moved to start undressing her, starting with her boots and socks, then her belt, then her trousers and top.

You waited to take off her boxers and bra until the water was warm and the tub was partially full. Keeping a firm grip on her in case she lost her balance, you pulled her onto her feet and guided her into the water, the sensation of it surrounding her legs prompting a relieved sigh from her. She hummed after lowering herself until she was fully submerged, save for her head, and closed her eyes.

In an instant, the warmth seeped into her limbs and brought an immediate relief to her muscles and bones. A hand returned to her shoulder to bring her back to the present for a moment as you spoke, "try not to fall asleep, okay? I don't know if I have the strength to physically pull you out of the tub." Too weak to nod, she only hummed. When your fingers eventually tugged her hair free from its tie and began to stroke through her strands, a part of her grew a little annoyed.

Not because she didn't enjoy the sensation — no, quite the opposite. It annoyed her because it was making it far harder not to fall asleep, something you'd specifically asked her not to do.

She didn't have it in her to ask you to stop though. She'd missed your touch so much while she was gone. A little irritation wasn't enough to make her slink away from your affection.

Silence filled the room as you worked towards cleaning her up. Whenever you'd lift her arm or leg, she'd grumble, trying to ignore the soreness pulsing through her limbs from each movement. To her, there was no indication of how much time she had spent in the tub with you watching over her. It wasn't until the water started getting cold that she realized she should probably get back out.

You were quick to help her out after lifting the drain plug. The softness of the towel as you began to pat her dry was a welcome contrast to every rough jolt of pain she could still feel. The bath certainly helped a bit, but not enough, to her dismay. She hardly managed to get herself dressed again — in the clean clothes you had brought her straight from the dryer — by the time you returned from setting up the bed.

You walked back in with a small smile on your face, something she would mirror in a heartbeat if it didn't feel like her skull had been stabbed from every angle. After taking your hand, she followed you out into the bedroom, offering no resistance when you ushered her under the covers.

A heavy sigh bursted past her lips the moment her head hit the pillow. The coolness helped soothe the heat still creeping up through her neck and face, although it felt like nothing compared to the relief the cold rag you laid across her forehead provided. She managed to pry her eyes open long enough to glance at the nightstand by her bed, where she found a glass of water, a small box of crackers, and a bowl with a second rag ready to be used.

Her eyes fell shut again, though the mattress shifting and sinking down beside her let her know you were still there. A hand readjusted the comforter to cover her properly before it slid farther up. The backs of your knuckles pressed themselves against her cheek. "Jesus," you whispered. "No wonder you look like you're going to pass out. You're burning up."

Another hum was all she could muster.

It wasn't hard to catch the way her brows would twitch and furrow together, nor was it hard to catch the clear grimace painting her lips. You frowned at the sight. How long had she been sick while she was gone? Why hadn't she come home sooner?

If she was still up and coherent, you'd press her for answers, but given that she could barely keep her eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time, you decided against it immediately. You were just glad she was safe now, even if she was completely out of it. You could always ask her about what happened later on.

For now, you would just watch over her to make sure she recovered properly.

Slowly, you let the tips of your fingers card through her strands, sliding them out of her face while simultaneously offering her a smaller form of comfort. It didn't seem like she could process most of what you said, so you'd reassure her through touch instead.

You found yourself gazing over her features as you did so, watching as she finally seemed to settle into a mostly restful state. It was no surprise to finally hear her breathing even out and deepen within such a short amount of time. Your fingers raked through her hair for a bit longer before you carefully pulled them away.

With your elbow propped up on your pillow and your palm cushioning your chin, your focus remained on her. The moment you lied down properly a few moments later, she rolled onto her side instantly, ignoring the rag falling from her head in favor of pulling you into her chest. You jumped at the sudden motion. Normally, it wouldn't be an issue for her to do such a thing, but you were a little worried she'd wind up getting you sick as well if you stayed this close to her.

You parted your lips and glanced up at her, ready to protest such a close proximity. Any argument you had died on your tongue, however, as she hummed and woke back up enough to slur out a gentle apology. "I'm sorry, love," she croaked. "I shouldn't have stayed."

It wasn't entirely clear what she meant at first, but it soon clicked that your worries had been right: she'd been sick for a while and tried to push through it.

You sighed and pulled her closer.

You'd expect nothing less from her, after all.

"Don't worry about it, hun. I'm just glad you're okay."