chatouna

— JASON TODD

— BRUCE WAYNE

— DICK GRAYSON

— DICK GRAYSON

( third screenshot is meant to say "if you even think of" not "if you even think os" .... )

— JASON TODD

— TIM DRAKE

— DICK GRAYSON

— JASON TODD

— TIM DRAKE

— DICK GRAYSON

— JASON TODD

— TIM DRAKE

Because Persuasion is the Austen about second chances, about a woman who lost the person she loved when she was young and gets him back as a different and harder person years later. About whether you can come back from the thing that broke you and still be loved, about the man returning from war salt-bitten and changed, wondering if the past will have him.

And the fact that this is the Austen Jason Todd has read seven times and keeps coming back to is the kind of detail that'll sit in your chest for a week the first time you put it together.

The first time you read together is going to be an accident, the way most intimate things with Jason are an accident.

You'll be at his apartment, the rain will be coming down, neither of you has anywhere to be, he'll be on one end of the couch with Anna Karenina open, and you'll be at the other end with whatever you brought.

At some point your foot will end up in his lap and his free hand will land on your ankle absently, and an hour will go by, and then another, and neither of you will have said a word. You'll look over and he'll be deep in it, his lips moving very slightly the way they do when something has caught him, and you'll realise that this is (for Jason) intimacy. This is one of the most intimate things he can offer, the act of being quiet together, the act of being trusted enough to read in your presence.

And once you've stumbled into it once, it becomes a thing (not a routine, Jason doesn't do routines, but a pattern).

Sunday afternoons, rainy nights, the long quiet hour before he has to leave for patrol, you on opposite ends of the couch or one of you in the armchair and the other on the rug with their head against the armchair leg, both of you with books, the radio playing something low in the background (Jason likes old blues, Billie Holiday, the kind of music that goes through you), the lamp on, the coffee going cold on the table, and the silence between you the kind of silence that's not absence but company.

He has opinions, and once you've earned them you can't make them stop coming. He'll look up from his book and go "god, listen to this," and read you a paragraph in that low, rough voice that you didn't know was a thing you needed in your life.

The paragraph will be something (a passage about grief from Anna Karenina, a sentence from Dickens about hunger that he reads with a particular weight, a line from Auden that he won't explain but that you know means something to him) and the way he reads aloud is good. Technically good, he was in school plays as a kid, he can hit the rhythm of a sentence, and you'll think the first time he does it that you would listen to Jason Todd read the phone book.

Jason's normal handwriting is a quick slashing scrawl, but his marginalia is careful. Small enough to fit between the lines, and the annotations are a mix of things: the occasional disagreement (a no he doesn't next to a character motivation he finds unconvincing), the underlining of a sentence with a single star meaning this, a !! next to a turn of phrase he loves, very rarely a longer note in the bottom margin, and once (just once) you'll find, in his copy of Persuasion, the words "this part" next to a passage about how she's loved him for years in silence and the words have a different quality of pressure than the rest of the annotations. Like he wrote them harder, and you will close the book and put it back and never mention that you saw.

He recommends books to you with a specific, careful generosity that is unlike anything else he does.

He doesn't push, doesn't insist, he'll just leave a paperback on your kitchen counter with a sticky note that says "thought you'd like this. don't have to." and walk out, and the books he picks are uncanny. He gets you right, he picks things you would have chosen yourself if you'd known they existed, and the precision of his curation tells you that he's been paying close attention to how you think for a long time.

He gets jealous of your books, in a small absurd way that he's mostly embarrassed about.

If you're reading something and laughing and won't tell him what, he will demand to know, hauling himself across the couch to look over your shoulder, "what, what is it, what's so funny, sweetheart, c'mon".

If you make him read a passage out loud he will, but he'll grumble about it, but then halfway through the passage he'll get caught by the writing and finish it seriously, and look up at you with new respect for whatever you were reading, and the next day there'll be a copy of it on his bedside table.

He reads in bed, often, after you've gone to sleep.

Jason doesn't sleep well, this is something you'll know early, and one of the things he does instead of sleeping is lie next to you with the small reading lamp on and a book propped on his chest. You'll wake up in the small hours sometimes to the soft sound of a page turning and the warm presence of him next to you, and you'll roll over without opening your eyes and put your hand on his stomach and feel his free hand come down to cover yours. You'll go back to sleep, and in the morning he won't mention it but the book will be a chapter further along.

The first time he reads to you, properly (not a "god, listen to this" paragraph but actually reading to you) is going to be one of those nights, a sleepless one, where you've woken up and you can't get back under.

He can tell, and instead of asking what's wrong (Jason knows better) he'll reach over and pick up whatever he's currently reading and say "c'mere," and you'll fit yourself against his side with your head on his chest, and he'll read to you, quietly, in that low voice, your ear pressed to his ribs so that the words come through both his voice and the vibration of him.

You'll fall asleep before he gets to the end of the chapter, and he'll mark the page with his finger and just stay there, holding you, the lamp on, the book open against his thigh, for as long as it takes for him to be ready to sleep too.

He reads to you in the bath, sometimes. You'll be in the tub and he'll be on the closed toilet seat in sweatpants with the book open, reading you a chapter of whatever you're currently working through together, and the casualness of it (the fact that Jason Peter Todd reads to his girlfriend in the bathtub on a random Tuesday night) is the kind of detail that will hit you in the chest in the grocery store six months later and you'll have to stand still in the cereal aisle for a minute to recover.

He buys you books for every occasion, and the books are always thoughtful, always specifically calibrated to you and to where you are in your life. The inscriptions in the front are always in his small careful annotation-hand and they're always short, never sentimental on the surface ("happy birthday, sweetheart, thought of you" or "saw this and grabbed it" or just "J.") but the choice of book is the love letter, and you'll learn to read the gifts the way you read everything else with him: by paying attention to what he does instead of what he says.

He takes you to bookstores (used bookstores, specifically, the kind that smell like dust and damp paper, the kind with handwritten signs and a cat sleeping in the front window) and watching Jason in a used bookstore is like watching a different person.

Because he goes soft, he goes quiet, his shoulders come down, his hands get gentle. He turns the pages of old hardcovers with the careful precision of someone who knows exactly how fragile they are, and he'll spend an hour in a single aisle and emerge with three things you wouldn't have predicted.

He'll pay in cash, always, and he'll carry the bag himself, and when you get home he'll sit down with the new acquisitions and examine them, smelling the pages, checking the binding, opening to a random middle page to read a paragraph as a kind of greeting.

He reads when he's upset. This is something you'll work out over time.

Jason has a few coping mechanisms, and one of them (the healthiest one, the one you'll come to recognise and protect) is that when he's wound too tight, when something has happened that he can't talk about, when he's one bad hour away from doing something he'll regret, he'll pick up a book and lie down somewhere quiet and read until his breathing slows.

The book, in those moments, is almost always something he's read many times before, comfort reading, the literary equivalent of a worn-soft hoodie (Persuasion, mostly, but also David Copperfield, also a particular edition of Frost's collected poems that he keeps in the drawer of his bedside table) and if you ever come home and find him on the couch with one of those specific books, you'll know, without asking, what kind of day it has been.

The right move is to make him a coffee and put a blanket over his legs and sit on the floor next to the couch with your own book and not say anything, and he will, eventually, put his hand in your hair and leave it there, and that'll be the conversation.

And then there'll come a night (and it'll be a bad one, the worst you've seen, the kind where he comes through your window instead of the door because his hands are shaking too hard for the lock, the kind where there's blood on his jacket that isn't his and a particular set to his jaw that means something has happened he's not going to be able to talk about for days) and on this night his coping mechanism isn't going to work.

On this night he won't be able to settle, on this night he's going to pace, going to check the window, going to clean a gun he already cleaned this morning. He'll physically bristle, all surface, no give, and he's going to try to leave ("I should just go, sweetheart, I'm not — I'm not okay, I'm gonna — I should go") and the temptation is going to be to argue with him or to ask what happened or to try to fix it, and you aren't going to do any of those things, because you've learned him by now, you know what works.

What you're going to do is reach for his hand (not his arm, not his shoulder, his hand, where you know he can take it) and you're going to say, quietly, "come lie down. just lie down. you don't have to do anything," and Jason is going to resist, his whole body is going to resist.

He's going to make some half-sentence about how he can't, about how he won't be able to, about how if he stops moving the noise in his head is going to be worse, and you're going to say, "I know. lie down anyway. I'll read to you," and something in his face is going to flicker, briefly, because this is not a thing he's ever asked for and not a thing anyone has ever offered, and the offer is going to land somewhere he didn't know existed.

He'll come, eventually (slow, like a wounded thing, still bristling) and he'll lie down on the bed on his back, on top of the covers, fully dressed except for the jacket, his hands folded tight on his stomach, his jaw still set, his whole body radiating the kind of held tension that means he's one wrong sound from being back up and out the window.

You're going to sit on the bed next to him, against the headboard, with your hip pressed against his shoulder, and you're going to pick up Persuasion from the bedside table because it's the safest thing you have, and you're going to start reading, somewhere in the middle, somewhere you know he loves (quiet, even, no performance, no rush, just reading) and for the first ten minutes nothing is going to happen.

He's going to lie there, jaw clenched, eyes open, staring at the ceiling, still wound tight, still half-gone, and you're going to keep reading. You're not going to look at him, not going to comment on him not relaxing, but you're not going to stop.

You're going to read like the goal is the reading itself and not the fixing of him, because Jason can smell a fix-attempt a mile off and the moment he thinks you're reading at him he will get back up and you won't see him for a week.

And then, slowly (and you'll feel it happen against your hip more than you will see it) the tension is going to start to leak out of him. The jaw will unclench by degrees. His hands will unfold from his stomach. His breathing will slow, fractionally.

His head will turn, at some point, to look at you, and once he's looking at you he's not going to stop (and this is the part you'll remember for the rest of your life) he's just going to watch you, eyes huge and a little stunned, as if you're a thing he's seeing clearly for the first time, as if your voice reading these specific words to him is doing something to his nervous system that he has no language for and no defines against.

His face is going to soften the way it does when his armour is failing, the thing very few people have ever seen, the soft young thing that lives underneath the rest of him.

You'll keep reading, won't stop to acknowledge that he's watching you. You won't turn to meet his eyes, because if you do he'll catch himself and re-armour, and that's not what tonight is for. You'll just keep your voice steady and your eyes on the page, and after a while (five minutes, ten, you won't be able to track the time) Jason's hand is going to come up slowly. Like he's approaching something that might startle, and he's going to put it on your thigh, palm-down, warm and heavy, and he's going to leave it there.

You'll keep reading. You will, carefully, casually, free up your non-page-turning hand and let it come to rest in his hair, and you'll start, slowly, to run your fingers through it. Not stroking outright, not petting, just being there.

Your fingertips against his scalp, and at the first pass through, his eyes are going to close, and his whole face is going to do a small involuntary softening. You're going to know, in that moment, that you have him, that he's here, that the worst part of the night is over.

The chapter will end but you won't stop reading at the chapter break because you know that the silence would be a kind of question and tonight is not a night for questions.

So you'll turn the page and start the next one, and Jason's hand will tighten briefly on your thigh and then relax again, and at some point (without his permission, without his planning, without him quite registering it happening) he's going to shift, slowly, by inches, until his head is resting against your hip and his arm is draped across your lap and his whole body is curled toward you on the bed instead of laid out straight on it, and the curl is going to be a thing his body has done on its own, the way bodies do when they finally believe they're allowed to when they're safe.

And you'll read until your voice gets tired, and then you'll read a little longer, and somewhere (somewhere in the middle of a sentence about Captain Wentworth, somewhere in the part about how love survives the parts of us we thought it couldn't) his breathing is going to even out, and his hand on your leg is going to go heavy.

You'll glance down and Jason's eyes will be closed, and his mouth will be soft, his face will be the face of a man who's genuinely asleep, the face you've only seen a handful of times because Jason almost never sleeps in front of you on purpose.

And you'll close the book around your finger to mark the page, and you will not move. You'll sit there in the lamplight with his head against your hip and your hand still in his hair, and you'll look at him (really look at him, in a way he would never let you while he was awake) and you'll think about everything that has been done to this man.

Everything he's survived, everything he's been carrying that he won't put down, and you'll think about the fact that on the worst night you've ever seen him have, the thing that brought Jason back from the edge was not a fight, was not a fix, was not sex, was not even comfort in any of the ways the word usually means... it was being read to. Slowly, in lamplight, in a bed, by someone who had no agenda except being in the room with him, and you'll understand that you've just learned the deepest possible thing about Jason Peter Todd, which is that what he's always wanted, underneath all of it, is for someone to sit next to him in a quiet room and not require anything of him.

He'll sleep through the night. Won't wake at the small sounds the way he usually does.

In the morning he'll be embarrassed, but will not say anything about it. Refuses to. He'll make you coffee with his back to you, and somewhere around noon he'll hand you a fresh copy of Persuasion that he's gone out and bought new, and he'll mumble "figured we needed a less beat-up one" and walk away before you can answer.

You'll understand that this is a thank-you, and you'll understand that the next time it's a bad night, he will not try to leave.

The first time you put a book down on the bedside table and Jason picks it up later and reads the chapter you were on so that he can talk to you about it the next morning, you'll realise that the man you're dating is courting you in the language of his soul.

That the books are not just a hobby you share. Books are how he's loving you, and the specific tenderness of being loved by Jason Todd through literature, through the act of him sitting down with the same words you sat down with so that the two of you have been somewhere together without him having to use his own voice... is going to be one of the central facts of your life with him.

And there'll come a night, probably six months in, probably nine, when he'll be lying in bed with you after, the lamp on, both of you reading, his shoulder against yours and his sock-foot hooked over your ankle, and you'll look up from your book and look at him.

Just look at him. His hair a mess, his mouth moving slightly the way it does when something has caught him, the whole man warm and present and yours in that small lit circle of the lamp, and you'll understand that this, this exact arrangement, this Wednesday night in your bed with Jason Peter Todd reading Jane Austen next to you, is something he should not have lived to have.

This is something that was taken from him and that he fought his way back to, and the fact that he's here, the fact that the world gave him back to itself enough that you're getting to sit next to him while he reads, is going to break something open in your chest.

There was another one, less noticeable, not as deep, just over his eyebrow on the other side of his face. Jason had accepted them, mostly, it helped that he didn’t look at them more than he had to, didn’t stare into a mirror or metallic reflective surfaces.

But what he did notice, was your reaction to it.

The pretty librarian to the smaller of the two Gotham libraries, the one that smiles at him and struck up conversations. The one that Jason bright coffee too because the barista accidentally made two (in this city they don’t).

Suddenly, he’s taking you out to a place that’s way too fancy, Bruce Wayne fancy. Oh, when you showed up in that dress, Jason’s knees nearly buckled. Then you looked at him sideways even before the appetisers arrived and pulled him out to your favourite hamburger food truck, Jason swears he fell in love right there.

It’s been three months since then.

The relationship is still new, new as hell. To put into perspective, Jason hadn’t even stayed over at your place yet! He’s had lunch there a few times, but both of you mostly met at the library where you worked at.

Back to the point, his scars.

Jason has been cursed with the ability to notice small things, it’s kind of his job, but it felt like a curse nonetheless, especially when that sense turned on around you. You never specifically shied away from them. When you held his face, you never favoured a side of his face when you held his face, but you looked.

You stared at the scarred side of his face when you thought he wasn’t looking. Your gaze would linger, not in disgust, or apprehension. But how could he? When you smiled up at him with the prettiest smile and shining eyes? What if you didn’t like them? What was he supposed to do then?

“Are you listening to me, Jay?”

Your voice breaks you out of his stupor. “New book, January release, author book tour, yep.” Jason watches as you continue putting away books, something you prohibited him for helping because you didn’t want him to overwork himself even outside of work. You didn’t know what he did but you knew he was exhausted after his shifts.

“You’re being very, very pensive.” You slide the last book into its place, looking back at your boyfriend who’s dangling his legs off of one of the many libraries tables, one tucked away behind shelves to give the both of you a tad bit of privacy.”

Jason’s leaning back, his palms flat against the table as his legs almost reach the floor even though he’s comfortably perched on the table, emphasising his size. He tilts his head at your words, eyebrows twitching up a tad bit. You abandon your cart, the one you use to move large quantities of books around, but in a few steps, you reach him, standing between his spread legs.

Your hands come up to rest on his shoulders, palms running from the base of his neck to the corner of his shoulder, dipping down to run over his biceps to his elbow and back, soothing motion. “I’m down to talk if you want to.” You whisper, watching Jason watch you.

Jason’s large palms come to rest on your waist, straightening up and pulling you closer, the front of your thighs hitting the edge of the table under him, his knees bracketing you. “Can I ask you something then?” Jason murmurs. His palms scoot a little back, fingers resting on your lower back, thumb still resting on your waist.

“Do you…What do you…? Jason begins, trying to articulate the question properly. He watches as you wait for him patiently, running your tongue over your lips to hydrate them. “What do I…?” You prompt softly.

Jason pauses for a moment, before one of his hands leaves your waist, coming up to gesture vaguely to his face the side that has the more prominent scar. You clock your head to the side, slightly confused as his hand comes back to your waist.

“Think about your handsome face?” You finish you him, one hand coming to gentle grabbing his face, moving it just a little to plant a kiss, leaning back to see the slight imprint it leaves on his scar. “I think I like it very much.” You lean back in as Jason grin, redness blossoming on his cheeks, planting a kiss on the other side of his face.

“No.” Jason chuckles, feeling you pepper kisses all over his face, both sides, your lipstick sticking to his face, his laughter rumbling low in his throat. “The scars, baby.” He finishes,

Jason watches as you lean back, hand still on his chin, your eyes jumping between his scars and your kisses. You pout slightly, his eyes zeroing in your eyes, lipstick now slightly smudged and blurred on the outline of your lips. “Honestly?” You ask, head tilting slightly.

“I was a little…” You pop a hip, leaning back with your pout more thoughtfully now, your hand going from his chin to laying flat against his face, his scarred cheek. Jason nuzzles his face into your hand, making you smile. However intimidating the man looked, he truly was just a softie on the inside.

“Hesitant, at first. You know, Gotham, scars, usually equals bad guys.” You finish, voice a little bit hesitant still, hoping it doesn’t…anger him? Not really. You don’t really know. “I’m hoping there’s a ‘but’ in there.” Jason whispers, hearing footsteps echoing through the library.

“But…” You smirk, “That day when we first met? When you saved that woman who was getting harassed.” You begin narrating, watching Jason nod as he remembers. It was technically before he met you, he was on the way into the library for the first time but there was a drunk man who was harassing a man outside the building, classically Gotham.

He remembers throwing a few punches, teaching the guy a lesson before walking into the library, small bruises blooming on his knuckles, when he ran into you, the librarian who was half way back to the front desk, now piecing together that you were walking from the door, after seeing him, back to the desk. “You saw that?” Jason asks.

You nod, pride peaking into your smile, hand still on his cheek, thumb stroking the scar that ran from his ear to lip. “No way you’re a bad guy after that.” You whisper, both of you wearing a soft smile on your lips. “I’m sure you’ll tell me how you got them when you’re comfortable to do so. I won’t pressure you.” You finish, love blossoming in Jason’s heart.

He leans in, closing the short distance, pressing his lips against yours, both smiling into the kiss, your hand snaking down to scrunch his tshirt into your hand, pulling him even closer. “Personally, I’m more interested in finding out what other scars you have.” You mumble again this lips.

“Oh yeah?” You feel Jason’s lips curl into a smile against yours. “I’ll just have to show you then” He whispers back before pressing into you even harder, you arching to his touch.

ᯓ★'s P.S. haven’t written jason in a hot minute so this is kinda ass i apologise 🙏 also i was supposed to be finishing my zuko series but jason side tracked me lmao

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← ゛masterlist ⸝⸝.ᐟ⋆

PANEL 1 Out

PANEL 2 (fear/desire) The Permanent Rain Press

PANEL 3 (vegas bathroom) Numero Netherlands

PANEL 4 (tears) Harper's Bazaar

PANEL 5 (ilya inverse) Teen Vogue Image: [x]

PANEL 6 (additions) (4 gifs) Numero Netherlands Entertainment Weekly

PANEL 7 (good job) Them

PANEL 8 (dichotomy) eTalk CTV CBC News Images: [x] [x] [x]

PANEL 9 (cottage home) Variety

PANEL 10 (heart eyes) Timid

PANEL 11 (evolution) Much Image: [x]

PANEL 12 (yuna) Variety