⤷ ALMOST SAID , JASON TODD .
summary 𓂃 the one where Jason breaks a pen, walks home in the snow, and almost says the thing he's been biting back for fifteen years.
cast 𓂃 Jason Todd and posh dickhead Oliver (irrelevant side character)
tags 𓂃 childhood best friend!jason todd x fem!reader , university au , canon compliant , jealous!jason todd , study group , gotham city , grumpy!jason x sunshine!reader , pre relationship , mutual pining , Jason’s pov , idiots in love , unspoken feelings.
wc 𓂃 2.1k.
— oneshot request ! part two of this series.
Snow.
It's fucking snowing, and Jason Todd is already in a bad mood.
Not because of the snow—Gotham in December is basically a slushy, gray, miserable hellscape regardless of precipitation—but because of him.
That posh dickhead Oliver.
Even the name sounds like wet cardboard. Like someone tried to invent a pretentious trust fund baby in a lab and accidentally created the most punchable face on the Eastern Seaboard.
Jason adjusts his grip on his pen, the cheap plastic creaking under his thumb. The seminar room's fluorescent lights hum overhead, casting everything in that sickly institutional pallor that makes even the most beautiful people look vaguely jaundiced. But somehow, somehow, Oliver still looks like he just stepped out of a J.Crew catalog.
Dark academia aesthetic, Jason thinks derisively, watching Oliver gesture expansively with both hands while explaining something about Keats's odes. The guy probably owns a tweed jacket with elbow patches. Probably drinks Earl Grey from an actual teapot. Probably has a father who plays tennis and a mother who calls brunch "luncheon."
Jason's own fingers are stained with ink and old calluses. His leather jacket is draped over the back of his chair, revealing the faded henley underneath — something he'd bought secondhand three years ago and hadn't bothered replacing. His combat boots have salt stains climbing up the sides from last week's patrol in the Bowery.
He looks like he walked into the wrong building.
And Oliver keeps. Touching. You.
It's subtle. A hand on your shoulder when you laugh at something. Fingertips brushing your wrist when you reach for the same annotated anthology. Leaning in closer than necessary to point at a line of poetry, his breath warm against your temple.
Jason's jaw aches. He's clenching it so hard his molars might crack.
"Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind' is obviously about revolution," you're saying now, your voice bright and familiar and so goddamn warm that Jason wants to wrap it around himself like a blanket. "It's not just about autumn — it's about death and rebirth. About tearing everything down so something better can grow."
You tuck a piece of hair behind your ear, and Jason watches the motion like it's sacred. He's watched you do that a thousand times. A million. Since you were both nine years old and you sat next to him in Mrs. Albright's fourth-grade classroom, your ponytail askew and a pencil tucked behind your ear, asking him if he wanted to share your crayons because his were all broken.
"Your crayons are sad," you'd said, already pushing half the box toward him. "These are the good ones. The ones that don't have paper. They feel nicer."
He'd stared at you like you were insane. No one shared with the kid from the bad part of town. No one offered him anything without wanting something back.
But you just smiled at him — that ridiculous, sunshine smile — and went back to coloring your tree purple because "green is boring, Jay, don't you want to live in a world where trees can be purple?"
Jay. That was the first time anyone had ever called him that.
He'd colored his tree orange that day. Just to be contrary.
You'd laughed.
He'd felt something crack open in his chest that he didn't have a name for yet.
"Interesting interpretation," Oliver says now, and his voice is smooth. Educated. The kind of voice that's never had to shout to be heard over gunfire or police sirens. "But I think Shelley's more concerned with the personal than the political. The west wind as a metaphor for creative inspiration, not violent upheaval."
He looks at you when he says it. Like he's inviting you into a secret.
Jason's pen snaps.
The sound is sharp in the quiet seminar room. Heads turn. Professor Chen glances up from her notes, eyebrows raised.
"Everything alright, Mr. Todd?"
"Fine," Jason grits out, and he pulls another pen from his jacket pocket. This one's metal. Harder to break. "Pen was cheap."
You're looking at him now. You've got that expression on your face — the one you always get when you're worried about him but don't want to make a thing of it. Your forehead creases slightly. Your lips part.
He looks away before you can ask.
Don't. Don't ask. Don't make me say it out loud.
Oliver is still talking. Something about Keats's "l on a Grecian Urn" now. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" — that is all you know on earth, and all you need to know. Oliver thinks it's about transcendence. Jason thinks it's about how beauty and truth are both violent, both painful, both things you can't hold onto no matter how hard you try.
He thinks about the urn. Frozen. Perfect. Preserved forever in a moment that never actually happened.
He thinks about how he came back wrong. How his hands don't feel like his hands anymore. How sometimes he looks in the mirror and sees a ghost wearing Jason Todd's face.
You've never treated him like a ghost.
You were there when his mom — Catherine, not Sheila, never Sheila — got sick. You used to sneak him food from your own kitchen because you knew the Todds didn't always have enough. You sat with him in the hospital waiting room when he was ten and terrified and trying not to cry.
You were there when Willis went to prison. When the social workers came. When Catherine died.
You were the one who found him in the cemetery afterward, sitting on the wet grass in the rain, and you didn't say anything. You just sat down next to him and put your head on his shoulder.
"I'm cold," you'd whispered.
"So go home," he'd said, his voice wrecked.
"Not without you."
You were there when Bruce took him in. You met Batman when you were twelve years old and you didn't even flinch. You just looked Bruce Wayne in the eye and said, "You take care of him. Or I'll find you."
Bruce had been impressed. Jason had been embarrassed.
He'd also been — something. Something warm and terrifying and too big for his chest.
The study group ends eventually. Forty-five minutes of Shelley and Keats and Byron, forty-five minutes of Oliver finding excuses to touch you, forty-five minutes of Jason fantasizing about putting his fist through a wall.
Or Oliver's face. Oliver's face works too.
You pack up your things slowly. Jason shoves his notebook into his bag with more force than necessary, the spiral binding catching on a loose thread.
"Same time next week?" Oliver asks, and he's looking at you. Only at you. Like none of the other students are there. Like he isn't even there.
"Sounds good," you say, and your voice is casual. Friendly. Oblivious.
Jason wants to shake you.
He's flirting with you. He's been flirting with you for three weeks. How do you not see it? How do you not—
"Great." Oliver smiles. It's a nice smile. Perfect teeth. Probably had braces. Probably never been punched in the mouth in his entire privileged life.
Jason shoulders his bag and starts walking. He doesn't wait for you.
He knows you'll follow anyway. You always do.
The snow is coming down harder now, fat white flakes dissolving against the asphalt. The campus paths are empty — everyone else has gone inside, or gone home, or gone somewhere that isn't here.
Jason walks fast. Too fast. His boots crunch against the frozen ground, and his breath clouds in front of him, and his thoughts are a hurricane of everything he can't say.
I've known you since we were nine.
I watched you cry at my mother's funeral.
I died, and I came back, and you were the first person I wanted to see.
You're the only person who makes me feel like I'm still human.
And I can't—
"Jason!"
Your voice cuts through the snow. He hears your footsteps hurrying to catch up, the familiar rhythm of your stride. He doesn't slow down.
"Jason, wait up! What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Bullshit."
He grits his teeth. You always call him on his bullshit. You always have.
You fall into step beside him, slightly out of breath. Your coat is unzipped — you always forget to zip it — and your scarf is trailing behind you like a banner. Your cheeks are pink from the cold, and there's snow in your hair, and you look so alive that it makes something in his chest ache.
"Is it patrol? Did Bruce say something? Was it—"
"It's nothing," he says again, and his voice comes out harsher than he meant. "Drop it."
You don't drop it. When do you ever?
Your hand catches his elbow, and he stops walking because he can't not stop. Not when you're touching him. Not when your fingers are curled around his arm like you're anchoring him.
"Jay. Come on. Talk to me."
Jay. No one else calls him that. No one else is allowed.
He stares at the snow on the ground. At the footprints they've left behind. At the way your shadow overlaps with his on the white pavement.
"Do you like him?" The words come out before he can stop them. Low. Rough. Almost angry.
You blink. "Who?"
He won't repeat it. He can't. Saying it once was bad enough.
"Forget it." He pulls his arm away from your grip — gently, as gently as he can manage when everything inside him is screaming — and shoves his hands into his jacket pockets.
The rest of the walk is silent.
He ends up at your apartment because you live closer, and because Jason can't bring himself to go home to his own cold, empty space. Your apartment is small and cluttered and warm, full of mismatched furniture and stacks of books and fairy lights that you never turn off because "they make everything feel softer, Jason, don't you think?"
He thinks they make everything feel like a lie.
But he doesn't say that. He just sits on your couch and watches you put on a kettle, and he tries very hard not to think about Oliver's hand on your shoulder.
You make tea — chamomile, because you always make chamomile when he's upset — and you sit down next to him, close enough that your knees almost touch.
"Okay," you say softly. "Start talking."
"Nothing to talk about."
"Jason Peter Todd."
He flinches. You only use the middle name when you're serious.
"I'm not going to let you sit there and pretend everything's fine when you broke a pen with your bare hand in the middle of a seminar," you continue. "That was terrifying. And also kind of hot. But mostly terrifying."
He snorts — and sighs — despite himself. "You're impossible."
"You've known me for fifteen years. You should be used to it by now."
Fifteen years. God.
Fifteen years of you. Fifteen years of sunshine and stubbornness and never, ever letting him push you away.
Because god knows he’s tried… and failed. Terribly. You’re like a living, walking, breathing boomerang.
He looks at you now — really looks — and you're watching him with those eyes that see too much. That have always seen too much. You know about his parents. About the streets. About Robin and the Joker and the crowbar and the grave.
You know about the pit. About the rage. About the things he's done since he came back, the blood on his hands, the monsters he's become.
And you're still here.
You're still here.
"He likes you," Jason says finally. The words scrape against his throat like broken glass.
"Who?"
"Oliver."
You tilt your head. "Oliver's just being friendly."
"He's not." Jason's jaw tightens. "He's not just being friendly. He touches you. He—" He breaks off, running a hand through his hair. "Forget it. I'm being an idiot."
"You're not an idiot."
"I'm acting like one."
You're quiet for a moment. The kettle clicks off, but neither of you moves to pour the tea.
"Jason," you say, and your voice is different now. Softer. "Why do you care if Oliver likes me?"
Because I love you.
Because I've loved you since fourth grade when you gave me your purple crayon.
Because I died and I came back and the only thing that made sense in the whole world was you.
Because I'm afraid one day you'll realize you deserve someone who isn't broken. Someone who isn't a monster. Someone like Oliver with his perfect teeth and his perfect life and his perfect hands that have never hurt anyone.
Because if you choose someone else, I don't know who I am anymore.
He doesn't say any of it.
He just looks at you, and you look at him, and the snow keeps falling outside the window, and the fairy lights glow soft and warm, and his heart is beating so loud he's sure you can hear it.
"Jason," you whisper again.
And he thinks — maybe.
Maybe this is the moment.
Maybe he could reach out. Touch your face. Kiss you. Finally, finally stop pretending he doesn't want to spend every night wrapped up in you, breathing you in, being someone better because you make him want to be better.
His hand moves before he can stop it.
His fingers brush against yours.
You inhale sharply.
And then—
"Aren't you going to pour the tea?" he asks, and he hates himself for it. Hates the way his walls snap back into place. Hates the way you blink, confused, and then slowly, slowly, pull your hand away.
"Right," you say, and your voice sounds strange. "Tea."
You stand up. Walk to the kitchen.
Jason watches you go and feels like he's just lost something he never had the courage to claim.
Later, after the tea is gone and the silence has stretched thin and he's standing at your door with his jacket zipped up to his chin, you stop him.
"Jason."
He turns.
You're standing in the doorway, haloed by the warm light from inside. Snowflakes catch in your hair. Your eyes are bright.
"Oliver doesn't matter," you say quietly.
He stares at you.
"I don't care about Oliver," you continue. "I've never cared about Oliver. I care about—" You stop yourself. Swallow. "Just. He doesn't matter."
"...Okay," Jason says, because he doesn't know what else to say.
You smile. It's not your sunshine smile. It's something softer. Something sadder. Something that looks like hope and fear and everything in between.
"Goodnight, Jason."
"Goodnight."
He walks home in the snow, and his hands are freezing, and his heart is pounding, and he thinks—
Maybe.
Maybe next time.
A/N : He’s such a chud loser I love him
