#loserrrr

his tail is striped like his straw

and his fin sorta looks like a handle

You’re gonna hate how late this is it has been a year and a half since you asked this but ontop of this I made a playlist. It doesn’t match the fic but I make character playlists when I feel like it so; you do not have to read it w/ the fic at all

special thanks to @bambambooey for proof reading !!!

JASON TODD X MALE READER (ANGST)

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There’s a certain guilt you can associate with not being who you once were. Knowing that your body, your brain, your eyes down to the small ridges in your fingertips have been the same, yet you’re completely different from who you were years ago. To all the traumas you survived then, to know now that you need to heal from something you never inflicted on yourself. Could you argue you’re the same person, just having gone through new experiences, or being completely new and trapped in the body of them?

The resurrection of Jason Todd was a miracle supposedly. To be granted the gift of rebirth, bigger and stronger, to know what actions led him to his untimely death. To see the faces of the ones he loved back when they were his entire world, and to create a new world altogether.

But the universe had continued to move on without him. Bruce, Dick, Joker the bastard, Gotham felt like a visual of that guilt. It was the same, the crappy corner store on 47th Avenue with the cockroaches in the coffee, the deli with the sweetest old woman that closes at 3pm for some reason, the union square bustling with tourists wanting to catch a glimpse of the infamous Batman, but like Jason, it felt as hollow as his mind has become. It was the same, no matter how it looked. No matter the renovations, no matter the new people, no matter the maturing, it was the same shithole it would forever be.

When he knew you, you were a smaller time hero. Like an after school, every other weekday “I’m gonna use my powers to help Gotham out in a shitty superhero suit I made and some bullet proof material I got from the sketchy kids at the football game behind the building,” type of thing.

Someone Bruce told Jason he could trust. Someone who wouldn’t mind talking about how if they weren’t busy saving lives in Gotham, they’d both be MotoGP racers with cool bikes to impress girls with.

Someone who’d call Jason and do a run some mornings during your winter breaks to try every burger you could find in Gotham and rate them on a list.

Someone to share a memorable kiss with. Not yall’s first or anything, but it was special. At least to Jason. Not everyone would realize one of your unintentional best friends would be the one to help you understand your feelings for dudes.

Someone to go to church with him the day after. Not to pray if you didn’t want to, just to let him know you’re there.

When he found you again after the pit, you had grown taller obviously, finally understood how to handle your hair, thank God. You talked with some friends on the campus of Gotham University, and guess you’ve remained as funny as usual, seeing how your little group can’t keep a straight face around you. The grin is still there. The grin he poked fun at, because you’d always show it to him when all he did was open his mouth.

Jason wouldn’t have considered it stalking. More like helpful check in’s when he gets a chance. Out of all the crimes to commit in Gotham, stalking is probably more common than someone helping an old lady cross the street. Never know if that lady has a bomb strapped on her from a random psycho trying to imitate Joker.

You didn’t do hero work anymore. Figures to Jason. What’s there to do? There’s no difference you can make in Gotham until Bruce would realize his no-kill rule is not what this city wants, but sure as hell what this city needs when it comes to some. You studied, you went to work; you made a call now and then, acting all secret-like when it was so obviously just Bruce or Dick wanting to check in. He hopes they at least paid for this apartment, and your school. Maybe it’s to keep you silent. Maybe Bruce saw you as a distant Wayne after passing.

Jason felt stupid. He was looking at you and expecting to find the same teenager he once was, some semblance that he’s still the same kid, just like you were. He feels like the same teenager when he sees you at least. It’s pointless though, because if he really wants that, if he really wants to be that same person again, he’d get back in that goddamn grave and reject the miracle he was given.

It’s when you acknowledged him, the little chemical in his brain of dopamine that he hadn’t felt in years came back, even for a second. When you looked out your window, and stared directly at him, eyes wide like you were looking at a ghost rather than a corpse.

Maybe he wanted to be seen. Maybe he was tired of gazing at the one person he was willing to forgive from his anger, that wasn’t a part of Bruce’s weird family, at least directly. You deserved to at least speak to him. If you even felt grief after his passing and had wanted to speak to him again.

That’s the worst part. He doesn’t even know if you felt anything after his death.

When he was staring into the hellfire of Joker's eyes, then moving to his hands, unable to tell where the flesh starts and the skin stops, he wanted many things. A hug from his mother, a 70 cent pack of noodles, stealing Bruce’s car for a joyride again, a petty argument with Alfred, the new issue of the book he had yet to open on his shelf, and Lord, he wanted to do something as stupid as go to an aquarium with you. Listen to you get excited over whatever bullshit marine life you love. Least he saw…something in your eyes.

Lowering himself hesitantly down to your window, he remembers grabbing your biceps, grunting as you tried to push him off, scared out of your mind about the “shapeshifter” in front of you.

It’s when Jason took a clean blow to the face, and dropped to his knees, like a knight admitting defeat in front of the beast, and looked into your eyes. He saw that something again. The bloody nose was nothing but a sting compared to that feeling.

You must’ve realized who he was by that point. By the lack of fight.

He remembers being dropped to the carpet in a tackle, both your tears mixing, yet neither one of you daring to acknowledge it even. As much as your voice scared him, having grown up a bit since he’d heard it, it felt like you. He doesn’t know how long that hug lasted. Not enough. Even if time had stopped indefinitely, it wouldn’t feel like enough.

He would’ve given anything to have just fused with you there. Live through your eyes and know he’s always there, yet never face the world that chewed him up and thought it was okay to spit him back out.

You let him stay. Swore on your life you wouldn’t let anybody in his weird family know. Tried to update him on new additions, much as you could, till a noticeable dent was on your kitchen counter, and you decided to maybe zip it.

That hurt a bit. He liked your voice a lot, even if he zoned out more now.

Cigarettes still feel nice, even if he hadn’t aged too much physically. They weren’t a thrill to smoke anymore, no longer a feeling that you’ve become more aware of who you’ll one day be, but a connection to a stable peace of mind that he wouldn’t believe he’d still have if it wasn’t for the Marlboros.

He didn’t think it was fair to explore the feelings he still had towards you. He wasn’t the same Jason, and God knows how you’ve changed. Do his feelings — romantic or platonic, or whatever they are because who can be bothered to figure it out at this point — even matter, when you're looking at him like he's the miracle you've wished for? Is he yearning for someone who will never even come back, or are you longing for someone who's still dead?

You almost refused to leave him. You had your best friend back after…Lord. To Jason, it was half a year. To you, it must have felt like an eternity of grief. Jason definitely didn’t look like a teenager, and to Ras, he should have matured mentally to some extent, along with the physical changes.

He felt, he thought, he processed differently, like an older version of himself, but it was a trapped feeling. Like his whole existence was jumbled up into bits and pieces of different puzzles, and nobody would ever be bothered enough to figure him out. He felt like an adult; he looked like a tank for a young adult, but to him, he had just grown up from a teenager to…whoever overnight. His memories are of a teenager, of a child, and no transition to now. It’s incoherent, he’s incoherent.

Your insistence to know he’s there, his need to sneak into your room at night and wake you to ask if you can just sit with him on the couch, and stare at the Gotham skyline was constant. You’re probably behind on college work. On work in general. You don't mention it as you play with the little white strand in his hair, when your lap becomes his pillow. Till he thinks it's too close and moves you to sit up and lean on his shoulder. More control this way. Maybe some day, there will be more to say. More words than “I need you.” Because the few angels that watch over Jason knows he needs them, even if he himself doesn’t.

Did you put your life on pause like this when you lost him too?

Is y'alls relationship now just a victim of your grief?

You fall asleep on him every time he does this to you. He gave up on trying to understand what either of you felt that wasn’t more than just relief that the other is still there, now next to each other. The English language was made to define what we know, not to label what’s yet to be understood.

So he started sleeping in your bed. Looking for the comfort of your hands against the deep divots in his cheeks that make a variety of shapes, including a certain letter of a madman who has cheated life like how Jason has cheated death, finding any excuse under this sun to talk to you. It’s a complex feeling to have the urge to talk to you. One of his last memories is being reminded of every small thing he’d want to see again, from a Gotham street rat to his blue pajama pants with the mysterious stain on the left leg. So many of those wants revolved around you.

He thinks he needs to walk through a jungle with nothing more than a shirt and some shorts to even deserve this. To understand this person; that he brushed up against in his youth, holds the most vulnerable parts of his being. A stranger with every secret of his. The shitty part of him hopes you ache just as much as he does sometimes. Maybe then, you’ll realize you don’t have to be tied to him, just because you were at some point in time.

This could mean something, nothing, or everything to you. He’s too exhausted to want to know anymore.

He knows it hasn’t been long since he’s started staying here. He’s felt stagnant. He’s not an idiot either. He knows the constant ghosting of Bruce’s, Dick’s, your friend’s calls are going to get anybody wondering about your wellbeing. He’s been worried too. Were you like this a week ago? How much of your life did he violate just by doing the selfish thing of returning? A part of him, the stupid little bug in his brain that gnaws on anything he believes is logical around you, knows to the veins down to his mangled arms, he’s the one ruining your wellbeing.

He can name 1000 things wrong with him, but he can’t name the thing in him, the thing that ruins every single atom around him. He can’t pinpoint the exact part of him that wrecks and fucks everything up.

And the evenings felt the worst. The fears of falling asleep, squeezing your arm in the stuffy room, before telling you to go to the couch, and then regretting his tone and saying he’ll go to the couch instead. Crawling back into the bed. He was as pathetic as a weed in a rose garden. Unnoticeable, weak, and will overtake your hard work into an ugly mess if you don’t rid of him now.

He swears your neighbors probably think you let in a madman. You’ve seen him take on bullet wounds, but you give him that stupid look of worry Alfred used to give when Jason had a fit anytime Jason yells after a flashback triggered by God knows what. It could be you breathing in the wrong direction and the world is a bright neon green assaulting his eyes.

“Why do you fucking live like this? Get out of Gotham, there’s nothing for you here!”

You’d end up holding his wrists as he screeched almost,

“You want me dead again, don’t you? You can’t let me stay here and be all whiny! You don’t even have to say it, I can tell!”

Why can’t he be the fun Jason you knew back then? Why does he have to say this shit? The shit he would cringe at again in the bathroom when you locked him in there, and told him to calm the hell down.

“Why do you still talk to Bruce?” He’d whisper in your ear, expecting an answer at 2am as he held you in front of him in your bed, when you clearly wanted to at least make it to your early morning class, seeing how you’ve skipped almost everything else. Maybe that’s why he asked. He didn’t want to catch you at a good time. He wanted to avoid the answer. He just wanted to ask about it.

At 15, you’d both playfully wrestle on the couch in Jason's room at the manor for a controller when y’all played Mortal Kombat. Now you guys are fighting on your floor to convince Jason against confronting Bruce at the manor. Telling him he needs to “process” and all this bullshit that must’ve only started existing when he was dead.

He’s inconsistent. And god you used to hate inconsistency. Getting pissed off when he’d be even a bit late seeing you after a big test in high school. Annoyed when he’d say he’d “maybe” try to kiss you again after y’all did your patrol around Gotham, just to bail on you right after and say Batman needs him back at the manor by sunrise.

In a week and a half, he’s made a toxic hole in your home. And yet your obsession with him never falters. Asking him what he wants from the store, trying to answer every question he had in his absence when you had time, at his pace. And the superhero experience probably is what made you perfect. The one who could yell back, who could hold him with hell of a grip, the one who can remind him what he fights for at all.

Why he endured any torture to begin with.

To Jason he’s sinned for living again. So to deserve a place in your life, he deserves the torture he’ll inflict on himself. But he’s so goddamn tired. He’s so goddamn tired of fighting, he’s so tired of hurting you, he’s so tired of admitting he loves you, when he hasn’t gone through the pain to be allowed to say that.

To you, intimacy and peace is a right of Jasons, something he can receive from you if he would just ask. To Jason, it’s hot iron that will only cool down if he holds onto it. But it burns. But every time he holds onto it, it gets a little easier. He just has to hold onto it.

He has yet to recognize what it is in your eyes that moves him to act this stupid. What that something is. To act out and be that stupid man that’s torturing you. Repeating the cycle of what was inflicted on him to what only seems like a short while ago to himself. The small actions, washing dishes, meeting his lips to yours in a melting pot of apologies for who he was as a teenager, for who he is now, for how he’s been treating you, trying to stop himself from whatever new shitty behavior he’s learned for his sin of living again.

When he remembers you’re a grown ass man just like him, you’re both learning the new people you’ve become, he remembers will never understand you. At least, what about you makes y’all work. Not until he can look at himself in the mirror again, with the confidence Bruce has wanted to instill in him since he was a child. He grieves who he used to be, because when he longed for you, he knew he was deserving of it. Now that he has you, and you assure him that his outbursts are okay, and you’ll kick him out the second he genuinely becomes too much, he grieves who he is now. Because every iota of his being believes you long for who he used to be too.

You’re grown, and you know what you want. But Jason has to learn what you need, because there can’t be any way it’s him.

He’ll believe your shitty lies today. He’ll believe you want to be the one he relies on now. Maybe you see the younger him. The naïve one who was killed, and can’t let go despite the shitty remade version now. Like a fan of a comic character that will never receive a good comic again. You stay dedicated though, because maybe one day, you get a glimpse of the man you keep idolizing him as. But maybe that’s his problem too. He can’t forget how you made him feel, because God he’s reminded every second he sees that grin again. It’s a comfort he’s been longing for.