☾

He adores the sweet earthy smell and the soft, rhythmic pitter patter against his living room window, but above all, he loves spending time with you during the heavy monsoon season.

You walk out of the neighborhood cafe, hand in hand, into the gloomy streets of Gotham. The skyline is grey and somber. It’s quiet, peaceful, a juxtaposition to the city’s usual loud and robust atmosphere.

You scan Jason’s face and he looks content, despite the heavy drizzle that’s soaking him through his sweater. It’s poetic really, a man scattered with scars, a man who bears a heavy past, finds peace in the rain. How truly melancholic.

Loud thunder rumbles through the sky as if a large battle was being fought in the distance. You clutch on to Jason’s hand a little bit tighter, while your eyes still admire his calm demeanour.

“I think we should kiss right now,” he says, pulling you out of your thoughts.

“You’re so cliche, you know that right,” you say and he sucks his teeth while rolling his eyes.

His eyes look dark, the usual green colour is almost impossible to see. He stops walking and pulls you into him, his fingers tangling themselves into your wet hair. His lips move in close to yours, but they don’t quite touch.

“I know but can you blame me,” he whispers softly. You try to suppress the small grin on your lips.

“Been reading too much Nicholas Sparks lately,” you inquire, looking up at him through your lashes. Jason lets out a small laugh and the sound touches your heart.

He stares at you in admiration. He often finds himself getting lost in your eyes.

The moment is intimate, it brought his troubled mind to ease. Jason takes the opportunity to close the gap and kisses your lips. The rain dances on your skin. There’s a soft breeze and you pull Jason closer.

He tastes like the cigarette he smoked earlier and the strawberry cheesecake you split at the cafe. You want to savour this moment forever.

He smiles against your lips and you pull back only to cover his face in small pecks.

“I…” kiss, “love…” kiss, kiss, “you…” kiss.

summary: falling asleep on facetime with him when he’s away on a mission <3 soft, but a tiny bit angsty because jason is emotionally constipated (affectionate) and reader misses him a lot.

Your phone lights up at 2:47 AM with a FaceTime call. Jason.

You were already awake. You've been awake for hours, lying in the dark with the fan on, doing that thing where your mind won’t settle, but sleep won’t come either. Just existing in the gap between. You haven’t heard from him in days, and your thumb hits accept before the first ring is done.

It takes a second for the call to connect, for the black screen to resolve into a dark room—a safehouse, maybe, or a motel. The only light is the glow of a joint between his fingers, flickering softly against his face. 

His eyes are low and glassy from the smoke. They’re pretty in a way he'd hate you for noticing, lashes casting long shadows down his cheeks.

"Hi,” he says. His voice is rough, scratching raw against your ear through the shitty phone speaker.

“Hey.” You pull the blanket up over your shoulders and tuck yourself against the headboard. You’re mirror images of each other now, propped up in separate beds in separate cities. “You okay?”

It's a stupid question. You know it the second it leaves your mouth. He looks exhausted. It shows in his shoulders, in how stiff he is. Every muscle is locked in place because letting go means maybe not being able to pull himself back together.

Whatever this job is, it’s clearly eating him alive.

His jaw shifts. For a second, it looks like he might say something sharp. Instead, he takes a hit, holds it, then lets it go slow.

"Yeah," he says through the exhale, smoke curling up past his face. “No. I don't know."

He pauses, and all you can hear is his breathing. It’s deliberate, measured. A pattern you’ve come to recognize: him trying to manually override his own nervous system. He does it after nightmares, after patrol, after those long silences that mean he went somewhere in his head that he can’t easily get back from.

“Can’t sleep,” he adds eventually, like a concession. 

You don’t push or ask why. He won’t give you that. Not yet anyway.

The line goes quiet, and usually you can sit with it. But after the last few days, it’s harder, and a quiet me neither slips out before you can swallow it back.

That’s when he really looks at you. His gaze catches on the old shirt you’re wearing, his shirt, then drifts over the rest of you: messy hair, bitten lips, the dullness of your skin.

A frown pulls his brows together, the edge in his voice softening. “What’s going on?”

You hesitate. You didn’t want to tell him this stuff; you tried to tuck it away for a reason. Because how do you tell him you’re having a hard time without him when he’s out there risking his life every day? It feels like adding weight to someone already carrying too much. It feels ridiculous.

But those hazy, steady eyes stay on you, patient, waiting, and they pull the truth right out.

"It's just a lot right now," you finish after a while, sounding more vulnerable than you meant to.

"Yeah." He taps ash off the joint somewhere offscreen. "I know exactly what you mean."

And the knot in your chest finally starts to loosen. You can’t believe you almost didn’t tell him. Of course he didn’t dismiss you or downplay your feelings. He never has. For all his stubbornness, all the pulling away and going quiet, he’s never once made you feel small for needing him, even when you’d convinced yourself he would.

The next drag he takes is slower. Not so desperate.

"That helping?" you ask.

He glances at the joint, then back at you. "Not really."

He holds your gaze for a long moment. You can almost see him deciding whether to say it. When he does, it’s quiet, almost boyish: “Keep talking.”

The weight of that settles beneath your ribs, steady. Jason Todd, who would rather bleed out in an alley than admit he needs someone, is asking you to keep talking because maybe your voice is doing what the smoke can’t.

So you do.

You tell him about the book you've been trying to finish, how you keep rereading the same page because your brain won't hold the sentences. You tell him about the rain earlier, how it smelled. You tell him about the stupid thing that made you laugh three days ago that you saved to tell him and then forgot until right now.

He doesn't interrupt. The joint burns down between his fingers, forgotten, and his blinks start getting longer. He sinks lower against the pillows without seeming to realize it, the camera tilting with him until he's on his side with one hand resting on the mattress. Close to the phone, close to you.

You keep going. You tell him you miss him. You tell him the bed's too big without him.

His eyes flutter closed, and his breathing slows, deepens, losing that tight, controlled edge. He doesn’t open them again.

You smile, small and soft. He’s finally asleep. Truly asleep—the kind that doesn’t come easy, the kind that never seems to stay.

You don't hang up, just turn the brightness down, set the phone on the pillow beside you, and close your eyes to the sound of him breathing. It’s not the same as having him here. Not his weight on the mattress, not his arm heavy across your waist, not his heartbeat under your ear.

But it’s him, alive and still yours, even from miles away.

You fall asleep twenty minutes later, and the call runs until morning.

jason found himself empty, staring into what seemed to be a town filled with love and passion and still he sat there empty. the soft bustle of the cafe that surrounded him and roy only heightened his tension as he glanced outside the window, families and couples everywhere. the smell of roy's chocolate caramel latte filled his nose, reminding him of what he was supposed to be doing why he was here.

this small little town filled with coffee shops & happiness hid a dangerous secret, one that he and roy should have been investigating yet they had found themselves at a dead end and yearning to be home. and yet their ideas of home was so close yet so far apart. roy missed his daughter endlessly, and jason missed you way more than could've ever intended to. you were this small piece of this life that suddenly realized he didn't know if he could live without.

"I'm gonna go for a smoke"

jason push up from the table and without another word found himself at the nearest alleyway. He dug through his backpack, first grabbing onto your camera and quickly dropping it back down. he hadn't even found any pretty pictures to send home to you and that itself made him search more viscously till he found himself holding a box of virginia slims and for a moment again he felt completely empty. because these weren't his, they were yours and suddenly all those sad feelings finally crushed his poor heart. hot tears rolled down his cheeks and it felt like everything came crashing down at once.

you weren't much of a smoker, hell you probably hated it but there something sweet about going for smoke with jason. the heavy silence that made you feel like you closeset you could be to the man. for a man so closed off, you were really determined to break down those walls. he carefully opened up the box, seeing there was polaroid stuck behind the rows the cigarettes. jason pulled it out, staring at the photo you had taken of him sleeping on your couch. something about that photo made him let out a chuckle and realize that he is coming back to you. jason todd is coming home to you.

no matter how long it took.

i imagine it's a busy day in gotham, an early morning or a late afternoon, sunny. and he's leading to or away from your work, a little bit brisk, too brisk, if only to get through the crowd a tad quicker. someone dings your shoulder, just barely, just enough to slip your rhythm and ripple through jason's hand when you're tugged back a step.

(one of those things that overlaps with being a vigilante -- his sensitivity to pace and proximity no matter the occasion , even in the broad of day, or during the softest moments with you.)

but he’s turning before you can register--first to you, to give you one of those, not-so-secretly-a-bat (nor quick) onceovers to check for any kind of collateral (then to tuck you back into the side of his coat)... then to put those big, new jersey canines on display in a sneer that says much more than he'll ever need to...

the first time its because you’re journaling and he’s looking so cosy, sprawled out on the couch. his cheek is practically begging for a sticker. what are you meant to do? not give him one???? he’s befuddled when you stick the paper four leaf clover to his cheek and blushing when you follow it up with a kiss right over it. good luck for your good luck charm. jason saves it, sticks it to a scrap piece of paper and tucks it away. all the stickers you give him get saved.

he brings you flowers more regularly, tried to make it home early from cases, picks up that drink you like from the cafe downtown (the one that’s too far to go regularly) all in the hopes of another sticker. you struggle with choosing where to put your stickers they’re all so cute i don’t want to choose wrong but you hadn’t even hesitated. jason’s pulling out his hair because the same action doesn’t always get him a sticker.

it takes you awhile to catch on. sure you notice he’s been trying to get an even better grade in being boyfriend of the year than usual. you don’t connect it to the stickers until after you’re putting your journaling supplies away and he’s all puppy dog eyed and pouting.

“you know you can just ask if you want one, right?”

“but i want you to want to give me one.”

PAIRING: jason todd / reader WARNING(S): depictions of injury, brief mentions of poor medical care, hurt/comfort NOTES: poll winner! inspired by and title quoted from @revelutionize's headcanons

—

Despite the rough exterior, Jason carries with him a presence of softness—especially in his calloused and scarred hands. You noticed it often in the way he held your hand as you both spent the lazy evening absentmindedly watching old Hollywood movies or the way he handed you fresh tomatoes as you laughed and giggled at each other while making early-evening dinners. His roughed-up hands marked by the ever-unkind and changing world so easily contrasted the tender and gentle love that existed so profoundly in his veins.

So, when he finds you bathed in the fluorescent lighting of your shrinking Gotham bathroom, attempting to bandage a graze blooming bruises onto the garden of your skin, his hands rush towards you entirely out of instinct.