wingfiled

crime lord!Jason Todd who hates that title, because prince suggests lineage and legacy, and Jason has everything but that. Because prince implies a father, and he almost had one. He remembers the first night he stood at the edge of the abyss of stone and shadow and thought that his story was changing, remembers the weight of the suit. Remembers when Bruce approved of his actions. 

He also remembers the warehouse. The crowbar. The bomb ticking down to zero. He remembers calling out for his dad to break every rule he ever had and come tearing through the door. Princes inherit. Princes are protected. Princes are avenged. He almost had lineage. And that makes it worse.

crime lord!Jason Todd who doesn't bother with the suits or the jewellery. Lets others don silk and polish and diamond cufflinks. He'll stick to the leather gloves and combat boots, guns strapped to his thighs. The one shine he'll wear is blood, the only symbol that matters is the one on his back, sewn in red. He doesn't need to prove power with glittering displays. It's enough that everyone stops breathing when he walks into the room.

crime lord!Jason Todd who runs his empire like a military operation. All efficiency and fallback plans. He trains his people like soldiers, and punishes like a general. Every warehouse, port, back alley safehouse is mapped, catalogued and monitored. Because chaos, he learned, kills you. Because no one came for him when everythng was burning and we won't let that happen to the people under his watch. 

crime lord!Jason Todd who doesn't know if he's doing the right thing. Who sometimes, in the quiet before dawn, sits on the edge of his bed, head in hands, and wonders: Am I the one who's wrong?

Wonders if he is saving Gotham, or just rewriting its sins in his own handwriting. Because the criminals fear him; the innocents never see him; and Bruce still looks at him like a body he can't bury. He wants it to all be necessary, for the ends to justify the means, for Gotham to need a sword, not a symbol. But sometimes he wakes up gasping, thinking of a child in a cape who believed in mercy. Who thought maybe, just maybe, he could be good.

crime lord!Jason Todd who has everything he could ever want but is still so fucking lonely. He has an empire. A name that opens doors and shuts mouths. He has territory, loyalty, money, power. But everyone he ever loved fear him - and he can't blame them. 

crime lord!Jason Todd who doesn't touch you for weeks after you meet. Who can slit a throat without flinching, who can curl his fingers into a stranger's face and crack bone like knuckles in the winter. Who pulls a trigger with a steady pulse and doesn’t lose sleep over the echo. But who flinches when your fingers brush his sleeves too gently; his hands hanging useless at his sides any time you stand close enough that he can feel the warmth of your body through his shirt. 

Because he's afraid his hands won't know the difference between restraint and ruin. Because your throat and the trigger. He thinks about touching your cheek once and the image of blood on his knuckles flashes so vividly that he steps back like you burned him.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” you tell him gently.

He almost laughs. He isn't afraid of you. He's afraid of what marks he might leave behind. 

crime lord!Jason Todd who buys you things you don't ask for. Not flowers or jewellery. Instead: a building - the one down the block from your apartment. He renovates it before you know it's his: new facade, soundproof windows, a rooftop garden planted in your favourite colours. A rare book, out of print and impossible to find. It arrives in a plain box with no note, but when you look inside you find small scraps of paper with the thoughts he was too careful to stain the pages with. A vintage coat, perfectly your size, hanging on the back of his chair one night like it's always belonged to you. A ceramic dish in your favourite shade that shows up in your kitchen after he spends the night. 

A building on your block, a rare book, a vintage coat, a ceramic dish in your favourite shade. He leaves the receipts unsigned, but every one is an investment, not a gift. Not because he's generous, but because he wants the world to bend around to make you comfortable.

Jason who cannot control the past or what happened to him in the warehouse or Bruce's silence or the way Gotham rots from the inside out. But he can control this. He can make sure your rent never rises. He can make sure the streetlights outside your door never flicker out. He can shape the world around your comfort. You accuse him of spoiling you. He tells you they aren't gifts, they're investments. 

crime lord!Jason Todd who likes the ritual of being undressed. Likes when your fingers go for the gloves first. Soft leather, molded to the shape of him. You work one off slowly, brushing each knuckle. Sometimes, when he’s still riding the high of blood and adrenaline, you take one between your teeth - tug it slow - and when the glove comes free, your lips are stained rust-dark at the edge.

Next comes the gun. You check the chamber, flick the safety, unload it with practised ease and tuck it into the velvet-lined drawer he had installed for you. The knife at his ankle. The spare rounds at his belt. The secondary holster under his arm. Every time you toss a weapon aside, his hands find you. Palms wide at your hips. Thumbs tracing slow circles into your waist. Each piece of him dismantled by your hands.

crime lord!Jason Todd who asks you to get a tattoo for him. Doesn't say where, doesn't say what, simply says "something that's mine, please". You expect him to smirk. To clarify with something crude or cocky. But he doesn’t - he just swallows hard and looks at you like it’s killing him to ask. You say yes, of course. How could you not?

When you finally show him - lifting your shirt just enough to reveal the small red bird tucked beneath your ribcage - he stops breathing and sinks to his knees. His hands hover before they touch. He traces the ink with reverent fingers. Then his mouth follows, pressing against your skin like he’s memorising it.

"You’ll wear me forever now," he murmurs, voice thick. "Even if I don’t make it. Even if this ends messy. You’ll still have me."

Crime lord!Jason Todd who's fucked people before - a lot, probably - but never like this. Who is used to drunk, sharp, fleeting attachments to fill time or silence. He never needed to kill them, never needed them to look at him.

But with you? He can hardly wait to get into the hallway of your apartment - he doesn’t make it past the office door - before he’s already crowding you against the wall, mouthing at your collarbone, pressing his forehead to your chest, trying to catch his breath like he's already had you and he still isn't close enough.

Jason who talks a big game - tells you he's gonna fuck you hard, that he wants it to be messy, that he's fantasised about seeing you wrecked - tears in your eyes, marks on your thighs, begging through bitten lips. But who whimpers the first time you're on your knees for him - one hand tangled in your hair, the other braced uselessly against the wall; his head tipped back, throat bared, pulse hammering. And when he finally slips between your pretty, dripping lips - his knees buckle. Who ends up slow every time because he wants it to last, because he needs to remember it. Who likes it more when you're the one who leaves marks - when your teeth catch his neck, when your nails drag over his back, when he can stand in front of a mirror the next morning and see the proof of you on his skin: purple blooms, red scrapes, crescent moons where you held on too tight. 

crime lord!Jason Todd who still wakes up sometimes to the sound of a ticking clock. Who sits bolt upright in the dark, breath shallow, heart hammering, convinced for half a second that he's back on concrete floors with smoke in his lungs and blood in his mouth. Until he feels hands pulling him out before the panic fully sets in. Your hands. You don't ask what he saw, don't tell him it was just a dream, don't flinch when he curls his fingers into your wrists too hard. Jason, who once begged the universe for help and was met with fire and silence; Jason, who built an empire so he would never kneel again - finds himself clinging to you in the dark, shaking in a way he would never allow anyone else to see.

And for the first time in his life, when he reaches out -

someone answers.