#gahhhh

// hold me like you love me, baby, it’s all i need. your arms are my cage and your heartbeat the only balm to my chaos. // Part I //

Jason Todd x f!reader

notes: this is like sooooooo bad guys im sorry idk what this is i just needed to get it out of my system. bye. there’s a part 2 to this btw. let’s hope it’s better than this one.

warnings: none. just Jason having self doubts and hating himself. yk the usual. some fluff. mostly angst.

Jason never imagined he could have a life like this.

Even now, as he rests his head in your lap and your fingers rake though his hair and the only sound in the room is your breathing and the pages of your book turning one after another—he cannot believe it.

Jason Todd is made of filth. He’s made of anger and pain and horrors—he’s made of all the awful things that grow in the darkest corners of Gotham.

He doesn’t deserve this. How could he?

He has hands dipped in blood soaking from the bodies he’s dropped in his path, in his revenge, in his anger. He’s a terrible man. He’s a murderer—full of guilt and confusion and regret. He cannot change that. He cannot rewrite his history or trauma and he most definitely cannot replace the choices he has made.

His hands are soiled in the blood of others, it cannot simply be wiped off. It won’t disappear, it won’t be licked clean with love. He will stay how he was born—stained and unworthy.

Yet here you are—not refusing to see those parts of him, but choosing to see the man he is past them. Jason doesn’t understand you. He doesn’t understand how you look at him and not see a monster. Or a mistake—that’s all his family sees, at least they make it easier.

But you? You stand beyond his understanding. He cannot comprehend what goes through your mind when he walks into your house, covered in Gotham’s dirt and crime, covered in blood that he doesn’t have in him to wipe off.

He can’t comprehend what you see when you sit him on the closed toilet lid and deal with his torn skin and blood soaked knuckles. He doesn’t know why you kiss his forehead afterwards, why you tell him to take a bath and heat up the water for him and hold his hand to your chest because you know exactly what grounds him. Because you care enough to notice.

He doesn’t understand why you love him.

Because Jason Todd is a lot of things but loveable is not one of them. Or that’s what his unshakeable belief was before he met you.

Jason can’t even ask you why. It feels too… stupid. Too childish. Too dumb.

“Why do you love me?” He’d say, probably at a moment like this one, when every demon in his head seems to quiet down simply because you’re near.

“Why not?” You’d probably reply, smiling in the way that almost makes him think that he’s not as doomed as he believes himself to be.

But Jason doesn’t ask. Not when it comes to you. He just listens—after a long time in his life, he wants to follow someone and it’s you. It’s always you. He follows your words, your ideas, even your orders.

Like he did the first day he met you. It was raining too hard and both of you were waiting on the bus stop—except the bus never came. And you decided to take matters into your own hands. You’d laughed when you stepped into the rain, “cmon, stranger!” you’d yelled, waving your hand at him. And he’d followed. Like an awe-struck, hypnotised man. It was at that moment a part of him realised he’d do about anything you asked him to. He never knew it was that easy to want to follow someone’s lead and never look back again.

But there are ghosts clinging to Jason’s skin, ghosts that whisper in his ear when things get too good, too easy, too calm.

Like right now.

You inhale deeply, turning another page and he can feel your heart beating near his ear, he can feel the movement of your chest with every breath, the little—almost unnoticeable noises you make when you’re just existing, the sound of your hands soothing through his hair.

And he loves it. He loves every part of it, he notices every little thing and he melts a bit more every-time you do them. And that terrifies him in a way bullets and wounds and bombs never could and never will.

So Jason just holds on tighter, buries his face into your stomach. The soft fabric of your clothes tickles his skin and he closes his eyes against the smell of you.

He could die right here and he would die happy.

With you, he feels something dangerously close to peace—the kind of peace people like him cannot have, the kind of peace people like him do not deserve.

His life with you is a dream he never let himself have. You’re a dream. He is a nightmare.

If there’s anything that scares Jason more than his love for you, it’s his fear of staining you with his past, his mistakes, with him.

Even touching you is a mercy and a gift. Being with you feels like god’s apology for everything he has been through. You bring him every good thing this world has to offer—but can he ever be good enough for you?

You give him life. You’re the air he breathes. You’re the feeling in his chest, reminding him that he has left the grave behind and has a beating, human heart sitting inside of him. That maybe, just maybe there’s still hope, even for someone like him.

You make him feel alive. You—

“Jay?” Your voice reaches him through a fog. Jason lifts his head to look at you, eyes heavy lidded and tired.

“Yeah?” His voice is rough from being silent too long. You’re smiling at him—you’re smiling at him in that way you do when you think he’s looking adorable. Jason almost rolls his eyes. It’s bizarre to him that you could find him adorable—that you could even look at him and not be disgusted.

He notices that you’ve put your book aside and now both your hands are in his hair, rubbing slow circles against his scalp. God, you’re too good to him.

“I’m sleepy now,” you mumble, taking off your glasses to rub your eyes.

And Jason smiles—despite every ghost, every bad memory, every uninvited, terrible thought—you always make him smile.

“Alright, princess,” he mutters, “we should sleep then.”

You nod, but you don’t move. You just stare at him; as if committing every little detail to memory. As if you could look at him forever. It makes Jason’s heart beat painfully in his chest.

How can you love him? How can you look at him and not see all the terrible things—

“Are you okay?”

Jason blinks, caught off guard once again. Something sharp and spiky rises in his throat. The obvious reply sitting heavy on his tongue. “I’m fine” or “of course” or “why won’t I be?”

But he can’t bring himself to say any of those words. Instead, he moves his hands up and down your sides—grounding himself, reminding his undead heart that you’re still here, letting him hold you. “Just… feels like I don’t appreciate you enough.” There’s a quiet scoff attached to his words to make them sound less vulnerable than they feel.

You stare at him for a beat before smiling wide. Jason’s throat dries up—is this when you finally realise how pathetic he truly is? How dumb he is? Is this when you laugh at him? He tenses up like he could somehow pull the words back in his mouth. And then—you giggle.

You lean down and nudge his nose with yours. “You appreciate me too much already.” You say, still giggling. He swallows. Jesus, what’s wrong with him?

Jason nods, trying to muster up a smile despite the knot that tightens itself in his chest every single time his emotions threaten to take over. He’s going to cry. He can feel the lodging in his throat, the sting in his eyes.

He doesn’t want to cry. Not over something like this. Not now.

“Let’s sleep now, okay?” You say, shifting to lay down with him. Jason nods again, not trusting his voice.

You lay down beside him and you let him rest his head on your chest. You hold him—the infamous red hood, the violent antihero with a kill count, the man with an unsteady conscience and too much guilt in his bones—you run your fingers through his hair and you fall asleep next to him without a care in the world.

You trust him. You treat him like he’s something special. Like he’s not just a replaceable soldier or a ghost mourned by no one.

And Jason holds onto that. He presses himself against you, craving the warmth that was stolen from him along with life. He wraps his calloused palm over your softer, smaller one and closes his eyes, letting a single tear fall free.

He loves you.

Nothing else in the world has scared him more.