If you want a woman to have fat titties and a fat ass but can't handle the accompanying fat tummy, arms, and legs, then you are a coward and your bloodline will not survive the winter.
jason todd who makes everything in your home kiss.
it starts with your toothbrushes.
when you wake up before him, groggy and yawning. rubbing at your eyes as you pad to the bathroom when you see it. both of your toothbrushes facing one another and touching at the bristles. part of you is grossed out by the germs, but the other part thinks it’s the cutest thing to just naturally happen.
but you didn’t know he’d meticulously placed them like that the night before, giggling to himself before he shut the door after him to sneak into bed.
when you finishing brushing your teeth, you move them apart, leaving yours on the other side of the ceramic cup.
though when you get home, there they were, kissing again.
he did it after washing the dishes too, setting aside your mug next to his and letting their handles touch one another like an inanimate lovers embrace. when he’d brew both of you coffee in the morning, he’d have the handles facing outwards and the mugs clinking together until you took yours. he wouldn’t even take a sip until you pulled them apart first, watching you drink over his own mug. glasses fogging up as he pretends to read and drink at the same time.
sometimes he’d take pictures of it like people do with their food at restaurants.
the front door that was littered with different pairs of shoes, he made sure were also in love. the inanimate objects touching the other pair close. he’d even take a shoe off on either side of yours, pressing your pair between his.
the teddy bears he won you at the fair were also not safe from this. especially while sitting on your bed, he makes them face one another and smooch with the arms of the bigger bear around the smaller one. sometimes he does it while you’re in bed. he moves them to the bedside table, being sure to squeeze them face to face again.
after a long day of work you walk into your bedroom with the bed still made and jason out on patrol. you plop onto the bed when you open an eye and huff at what he’s done. the jingling of his keys and the crinkle of takeout echoes through the apartment.
he calls out your name, “i’m home princess. where are you?”
“jason get in here,” you call from the bedroom, already standing up. when he gets there your arms are crossed and you’re looking back and forth from him to the bed. “what is this?”
you pointedly ask as he looks to where you were. blinking at him, you struggle to compose yourself and giggle too at the position he’d placed them in. the pink bear, that was supposed to be you, was bent over and the red one that was him was pressed up behind, mounting teddy bear you.
he genuinely blinks, “uh, two bears in love?”
he says it so seriously that you can’t help but burst out laughing.
“you’re so annoying,” throwing your head back and putting your hands on his chest as he crowds over you, staring.
that familiar hunger in his eyes that makes you feel like you feel all warm and fuzzy. the calculated kind of stare that told you that sleep was not longer at the forefront of your mind.
without realizing it, he walks you backwards until the backs of your legs hit the side of the bed. he gets you off balance just to press you against the mattress and leave his hands on both sides of your head. like a familiar dance, your arms wrap around his neck to pull him in even closer. jason smiles with that irresistible face of his that lets you know you’ll cave on whatever he says next.
shifting his eyes to the bears before training them back on your face, his grin spreads more.
Jason Todd who knows no personal boundaries with you. Once you moved in together, it just flipped a switch in him. If you thought he was clingy before, that was nothing compared to now.
He trails after you. Follows you around everywhere and somehow despite being one of the smartest men you know, doesn’t always recognize the need for personal space.
Standing too close while you’re cooking breakfast, bowl of batter in hand being splashed all over him when you turn and he’s not even three inches away from you. That’s the least of your worries on the ever-growing list.
You figure if he wasn’t an incredibly stealthy vigilante it wouldn’t be as much of an issue, but when you aren’t expecting him to be up your ass it leads to constant bumping into each other.
~
He follows you into the bathroom one day and you have to pee so bad you can’t even be bothered to stop him. You allow him to stand against the counter facing you and continue the conversation.
When you reach to grab toilet paper you just look at him, “Are you seriously gonna watch me wipe?”
“Yeah.” Jason says it so plainly, as if you asked if he wanted a cup of water.
“You’re such a freak.” You say with a shake of your head, finishing your business.
“It’s literally just pee, babe. I don’t care.” He argues. “Besides, you’re just as much of a freak as me. You’ve got no room to talk.”
“Look at us, a pair of freaks.” You’re beside him at the counter now washing your hands.
Jason doesn’t offer a reply, simply leans over to place a gentle kiss to your cheek.
~
“Jay, I’m plucking my eyebrows. Why are you so close to me.”
Your boyfriend slithered up behind you to wrap his arms around your waist while you leaned into the mirror for a better view.
“‘Cause I wanna be. Can’t I be close to my girl?” His words are muffled in your shoulder blade.
Sighing, truly not that upset, you mumble. “Okay.”
He stays curled up behind you as you finish your mission: making your eyebrows perfect. The entire time his face is either in your back or watching your reflection in the mirror as if you’re the most beautiful thing he’s seen. As if you aren’t making the most egregious faces trying to get the angle you need.
“So pretty, baby.”
~
“Okay, that’s it!” You scream out at Jason one day.
You’d walked into the bathroom 30 minutes ago to give yourself a pedicure. Soaking your feet in a warm bath with fancy products.
Jason has been sitting with you the whole time. Not saying a word, simply providing company while you both do your own thing.
When you’d pulled your feet out and began to dry them off, ready to trims your nails, Jason pulled the tools from your hands and dragged your feet into his lap.
That’s when you’d lost it.
“Why the hell are you trying to cut my fucking toenails, Jason Todd!”
His head whips up to look at you, deer in headlights look at your outrage. He makes no comment, looking confused.
“Doesn’t any of this get to you? Watching me piss and pop pimples and cut my damn ingrowns!” You feel insane. Surely this isn’t normal behavior. Not that you mind it, but why is he doing it?
You refuse to admit that deep down you worry all of this was gonna make him sick of you one day. That he’d see a flaw too closely, something about you that’s too real, and maybe he wouldn’t like it.
“Because it’s you.” His reply comes easy. Simple.
“What?” You’re slightly breathless. Chest previously heaving with bewilderment now struck with a deep wave of love for Jason.
“It’s just you, baby. I don’t care what you’re doing, I just wanna be with you. It’s not gross if it’s you. I want to help you with everything. If you’ll have me, that is.” As if to prove his point, he lifts your still damp foot up and places a kiss to your ankle.
“Jason, that’s- you.” You struggle for words. “That’s actually really fuckin’ sweet.” Tears start to form in your eyes as you take in his admission. “You really feel that way?”
“Remember the first time I opened up to you- the day we moved in together. Told you about how hard it might be to live with me?” Jason’s words are soft. You nod in affirmation.
“You told me, that loving me would never be hard. That no matter how much work it was, you’d never mind it because it was me.” His hands rub gently over your legs.
“It changed something for me, I dunno.” He mumbles, “Made me realize how you’ve never once balked or shied away from anything I ever showed you. How you’ve never made any part of me feel wrong. That’s what it’s like for me, too.”
The tears are falling freely now, warm salt dripping down your cheeks.
“I love you.” There’s nothing else you can think to say.
“I love you.”
“And here I was thinking you’re some freak.” You joke, tears still wetting your shirt.
summary: the softest moments between you and jason happen when you take turns reading your favorite book, ‘pride and prejudice’ out loud to one another
word count: 0.6k
warnings: none
“Elizabeth had settled it that Mr. Darcy would bring his sister to visit her the very day after her reaching Pemberley; and was consequently resolved not to be out of sight…” Jason’s deep, yet comfortingly soothing voice filled the otherwise quiet air of the night.
You lay, curled up with your head in his lap, as he ran his fingers absentmindedly through your hair and propped his worn copy of Pride and Prejudice up close to his face with his free hand.
This had to be at least the seventh time that the two of you were reading this book together- you alternated who read aloud every reread- and yet, you could never tire of it. Nothing could ever take the warmth that spread through your chest as you and your boyfriend dove into your favorite piece of literature together.
It was actually the novel that brought the two of you together in the first place, funnily enough. Perhaps that was why it held such a special place in your heart other than simply immensely enjoying the text.
About two years ago, you had been in an old bookshop not too far from your apartment that you frequented, in search of a new copy after quite literally wearing out your old one from years upon years of going everywhere with you. From high school, to college and beyond- from bus stations to cafes.
Jason had also just so happened to be in the shop, and had just picked up the last Pride and Prejudice that the store currently had in stock- set on getting himself a new one to write new annotations in after filling the pages of his other- and a conversation between the two of you had blossomed from there.
It had started out about the literary genius of Jane Austen and others from around her time, and had somehow snowballed into the two of you exchanging numbers- a task that Jason still to this day cannot believe he completed without passing out right on the spot from sheer nervousness- and the rest was history.
A small, content hum escaped your lips without you really meaning it to as you curled further into Jason’s thigh, allowing your eyes to momentarily flutter shut. You pressed a small, chaste kiss to the fabric of his sweatpants as you lay there, far more tired than you would care to admit.
“You comfortable down there, sweetheart?” Jason teased, a loving lilt to his words as his eyes trailed from the words on the page before him down to the woman who owned his whole heart and soul and was currently curled up in his lap like a cat.
“Mhm,” You replied, ignoring the light tugging of rest at the edge of your consciousness, “Keep reading, Jay, I wanna know what happens next.”
The man let out an amused snort, nothing but soft adoration in his eyes as he continued gently play with a strand of your hair between his finger tips, “You know what happens. We’ve both read it a combined total of two hundred times.” The teasing came easily to him, just as it always did between the two of you.
“Yeah,” You agreed, “But every time you read it out loud to me, it’s like the first time I’m ever hearing it.”
He was quiet for a moment, staring down at you until your eyes fluttered open to meet his gaze, “Is that so?” Came the question from his lips, voice dropped to be quieter and even softer than from before.
“Yep.” You informed him, closing your eyelids once more and turning onto your side with one cheek squished adorably against his muscled leg, “Now keep reading, Todd.” You ordered.
summary: jason thought you didn’t know he was red hood. he preferred to keep it that way for now. you knew that jason was red hood. you just figured he didn’t like to talk about it all that much.
word count: 2k
warnings: none
Jason was being as quiet as he possibly could be, which wasn’t easy when geared up from head to toe in his heavy Red Hood suit.
From his steel toed boots- that he could not figure out how to tiptoe in to save his life. Which was pointed out by his brothers, who made fun of him relentlessly whenever he failed to sneak up on someone in the field. To even the way his trusty leather jacket creaks over his chest plate agonizingly loud in the otherwise silent apartment.
His one goal: to not wake you up from whatever peaceful slumber you had fallen into since he left you last.
You had been dating for a few months now and as much as he loved you- god, did Jason love you- he didn’t exactly know how to broach the whole… vilgilante topic.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust you to keep it a secret, he did, his only fear was that you looked at him differently once you knew that he was the feared Red Hood of Crime Alley. He was worried beyond belief that you would view the relationship that you built together- the one he treasured more than anything in this world- as one built on lies.
And while that couldn’t be further from the truth, he still couldn’t stop the way his lungs seized and practically collapsed in on themselves whenever he even thought about letting you in his nightlife secret.
How would he even start that conversation? ‘Oh, hey, babe. You know that Red Hood guy? The one that everyone fears- the one that kills people? Yeah? Well, that’s me! Plus, and my dad is Batman! Anyway, what do you want for dinner?’
Yeah, fat chance.
Jason grumbled inaudibly under his breath as he attempted to shed himself of his gun holster, that appeared to pick that specific time to get slightly tangled and stuck, and therefore inconvenience the man who wanted nothing more than to slip into bed discreetly beside you.
Just as he went to pass the kitchen and make his way to the bathroom to rid himself of the rest of his ensemble, however, a soft clattering had him freezing directly in his steps.
The man swore his heart stopped beating all together in his chest as he slowly turned his head- still with his red helmet over it- to face you, standing innocently with your back towards him, clad in nothing but one of your boyfriends old sleep shirts as you filled up a glass of water at the sink.
Before the vigilante could even attempt to move out of your line of sight- his fight or flight instincts all of a sudden completely nonexistent, apparently- you shut off the tap and turned to him calmly, sipping gingerly on your drink.
“Hi, baby,” You greeted quietly, giving the man a small smile as you padded forwards against the hardwood floors.
It was pathetic, really, how every thought completely vanished from the man’s mind right then and there. As if the mere sight of you had stolen away any ounce of common sense he may have had clanging around in his head.
Jason was rendered completely useless, frozen with his mouth hanging open and pupils blown wide as he stared directly at you. You continued to approach him, undeterred by his whole getup.
You stood on your tiptoes, placing a quick, chaste kiss to the side of his helmet, “Come to bed soon, I missed you.” Is all you said before taking your glass of water and disappear back into your room as if you had just had the most normal exchange in the world.
As if this were just an average night for you.
“Uhh…” Jason stuttered out into the empty space, breaths coming out as nothing more than practically a wheeze at this point, “What?”
He had to have been hallucinating. He must’ve been, right? After all, there was no way you had just acted as if you knew the Red Hood, had just kissed him on the cheek as if he were Jason.
Which, to your knowledge, he wasn’t.
Sleepwalking. You had to have been sleepwalking. That was the only way possible he could even begin to explain what the hell had just taken place.
You had slept-walked into the kitchen to pour yourself a late night glass of water and in your hazed mind, had seen a man in your apartment that you could only assume to be your boyfriend, and then went on your merry way back to bed.
Todd quickly shook his head, ridding himself of all thoughts of anything other than the possibility of you having just been sleepwalking in front of him. True, you had never done so before, but there was a first time for everything, wasn’t there?
Quickly slipping out of the rest of his suit and into nothing but a pair of low hanging sweatpants, Jason timidly made his way to your bedroom, peering inside as if fully expecting a bomb to be chucked directly in his face if he stepped in too fast.
“Hey, Jay.” You greeted softly, causing the man’s green eyed gaze to snap directly to you, where you sat propped up against the headboard, smiling welcomingly at the man.
You, who was very much awake, and very much not sleepwalking.
The cup you had fetched now sat discarded on your bedside table, and you held your open arms out to your boyfriend, a silent invitation if Jason had ever seen one.
He shuffled into the room awkwardly, hand coming up to tug slightly at the back of his dark hair as he eyed you wearily, “Hi, sweetheart,” He mumbled back, almost as though he were testing the waters as he approached you, “Havin’ a good night?” He asked when he came to a stop in front of the mattress, gulping.
Humming in response, you reached over and gently but firmly tugged your boyfriend down onto the bed beside you, making yourself comfortable snuggled against his chest without further delay, “Very. It was nice and relaxing. How about you, baby?” You asked, tracing idle shapes against his bare chest while you allowed your eyes to flutter shut.
Jason swallowed harshly once more as his arm came to wrap itself around you unconsciously, unsure of how exactly to bring up what had just gone down in the kitchen. How you had seen him in his vigilante getup and hadn’t even batted an eye.
“So, about what you just saw-” He started, unsure of what else he could even say, but you swiftly cut him off as your head popped up and your serious gaze met his.
Whatever lingering sleepiness that had been clinging to your expression vanished in and instant, a sense of alertness coming over you.
“Oh, Jay, I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.” A small frown was pulling at your lips as you spoke.
He blinked down at you once. Twice. “I-what?” He tripped over his words, a jumble of syllables falling out in turn.
You sighed, dropping your chin against his pec so you could still gaze up at him with a soft pout now adorning your features, “I know you don’t like to talk about the whole Red Hood thing, so I’m sorry if I made you upset by talking to you while you were still- what? In costume? Suited up?” You shook your head softly, “Sorry, baby, I don’t know the correct term.”
The words rolled off your tongue so casually, as if you were merely discussing the weather. Not the possibility of your boyfriend of a few months being a vigilante.
Jason practically leapt to his feet, though he was careful to gently move you off of him before he did so, “I- you knew?” He spat out, complete and utter bewilderment overtaking his features.
He didn’t know what was happening. Everything was so confusing and he felt as though the walls of your bedroom were spinning around him suddenly, trying to knock him off kilter.
You rose to your knees on the mattress in front of your boyfriend, confusion mirroring his own spreading throughout your face, “Knew about what, Jay?” You asked as gently as you could manage at exactly 4:24 in the morning.
Pacing commenced before your very eyes as Jason ran his hands repeatedly through his hair, “Red Hood! You- you knew about Red Hood?” It sounded more as though he were speaking to himself, trying to wrap his mind around such possibilities that seemed so far fetched from him a mere twenty minutes prior.
“About… you being Red Hood?” You asked so slowly, eyebrows furrowing as what he was questioning you about finally processed in your head, “Of course I knew, I’ve known since the second week of us dating.” You said it slowly, gently, as if speaking to an unstable toddler.
Jason froze for what felt like the tenth time that night, “What?” He asked, completely horrified, “You- knew?”
You shook your head back and forth, “Of course I knew. I thought you… knew that I knew?” The more you talked, the less certain on the topic you seemed, “I mean, you’re not exactly slick about it.”
If it was even possible, his eyes had just been blown wider than they had been, “What- what’s that supposed to mean?” He sputtered out.
“I mean how you leave your vigilante suit in the closet.” You explained slowly.
“In a duffle bag!” He defended, mind reeling as he went over any single moment that he could’ve tripped up on the whole ‘secret identity’ thing in the last few months of you dating.
“That you often leave not only opened, but flipped upside down.” You continued, “I swear it spends more time across the closet floor than it actually does on you at night. And speaking of, you keep very odd hours, Jay. Even by Gotham standards. There’s only so much detective work that could possibly go into figuring something like that out.”
Jason dropped his head into his hands, “I thought I was careful.” He all but groaned, words becoming muffled through his fingers.
Gently, you reached out and took his hands into your own, pulling them away so he would look you in the eyes as you soothingly ran your thumbs across his wrists, “Not to mention the fact that I saw you changing into your suit on our second week of dating. I think you thought I was asleep so you were trying to be quiet, but you actually bumped into the dresser pretty loudly and started cursing like a sailor.” You giggled slightly under your breath at the thought, “It was kinda hard to miss.”
He swallowed thickly, eyes now taking in every inch of your face, scanning for those signs of fear and regret he had dreaded looking upon the moment you knew about his Red Hood life, “So… you knew all along?”
Nodding gently, you squeezed his hands once, “Well, I kind of assumed you knew that I knew and just didn’t like to talk about it.” You shrugged almost bashfully now, as if realizing that you very poorly misread the situation, “I always just thought you liked to keep that life and this life with the two of us separate. I thought I was respecting your wishes by never bringing it up.”
“And you’re not…” He searched for the right words, “Scared of me- of Red Hood?”
Your eyebrows shot up at the suggestion, as if it were the most unhinged and improbable thing he could’ve possibly asked you in that moment, “Scared of you? Of course not, Jay, you keep me- and so many other people safe- each and every night. I have nothing to be scared of from you.”
Jason had not realized until that moment just how much he had needed to hear those exact words fall from your lips. He all but deflated as what felt like the weight of a thousand burdens lifted from his shoulders and were obliterated before his very eyes.
“Oh, sweetheart,” He sighed, somewhat dreamily, sweeping a piece of hair away from your eyes, “All this time, I saw so worried about you knowing and… and looking at me differently. When, in reality, you knew all along.”
You leaned into the man’s touch without thinking twice, eyes fluttering shut as you planted a soft kiss to the inside of his hand that gingerly cupped your cheek now, “Nothing you could do could ever make me look at you differently, Jason.” You assured him, “Now, get in bed, it’s late and I’m tired.” You teased, tugging him down alongside you once more.
He allowed you to do as such to him and he stayed still for a moment, with you curled up at his side and letting out a content hum when he began moving his fingers through your hair.
“Sweetheart?” Jason asked after a few moments of silence, “…I can be subtle right?”
request kungpaochicken15 how would the batfam react if they had a partner, but dies (up to your interpretation on how), and then, a person who comes to their earth looks like them (multiverse shenanigans) and they actually experienced the inverse (so like, their batfam partner dies in their world). like the vibe is angst and I will love you in every universe type thing. am I making sense??
content jason todd x gn!reader, multiverse!reader, hurt/comfort, angst, major character death, grief, traumatic loss, survivor's grief, blood/injiry, discussions of resurrection/lazarus pits, nightmares, panic responses, cemetery visits, emotional breakdowns
word count 6.6.k
masterlist | jason masterlist
The first thing Jason forgot was the sound of your footsteps.
Not your voice. Never your voice. That remained trapped in a dozen places around the apartment—the voicemail you had left asking him to buy milk, the video of you laughing as you tried to teach him how to make dumplings, the quiet recording he had taken without your knowledge because you had been reading aloud on the couch and he had wanted to keep the sound of peace somewhere permanent.
Your footsteps disappeared first. The soft drag of your heel when you were tired. The quick rhythm of you crossing the kitchen because something was burning. The shuffle you made in the mornings, wrapped in one of his shirts and searching blindly for coffee.
One day, Jason realised he could no longer summon the exact sound.
He sat at the kitchen table for three hours after that.
The apartment was silent around him, the kind of silence that was not the absence of noise but the presence of something dead. Your mug remained beside the sink. Your jacket remained hooked by the door. A paperback lay facedown on the arm of the couch, opened to a page you would never finish.
Everyone had told him not to make decisions too quickly. Grief counsellors. Alfred. Dick, with his soft eyes and careful hands. Bruce, who had stood inside the apartment as though he were trespassing, his gaze catching on every piece of you Jason had refused to move.
Do not pack anything away yet. Do not sell the apartment. Do not go looking for the people responsible.
Jason had listened to two of those instructions.
The people responsible were dead.
The apartment remained exactly as you had left it.
It had been six months since the warehouse collapsed. Five months and twenty-nine days since Jason had clawed through concrete until his fingers bled inside his gloves. Five months and twenty-nine days since he had found you beneath a fallen support beam, your body curved around the space where he had been standing moments earlier.
You had shoved him clear.
He remembered the force of your hands against his chest. The startled sound that had left him as he stumbled through the half-collapsed doorway. The ceiling had come down between one heartbeat and the next.
Jason remembered screaming your name.
He remembered digging.
He remembered Dick arriving and trying to pull him back while the building burned around them. He remembered hitting him. He remembered Bruce lifting pieces of concrete that should have required machinery. He remembered Tim going frighteningly still when he found your comm unit crushed beneath a slab of stone.
He remembered finding you.
What he did not remember was the moment hope left the room.
Maybe it had not. Maybe hope had become something diseased inside him, lingering long after it should have died, whispering that Jason Todd had returned from worse.
Death had never been permanent for him. Why should it have been permanent for you?
He knew the answer, of course. He was not stupid. He knew the Lazarus Pit had not been salvation. He knew what it had done to him. He knew there were things worse than death, and that dragging you back through poisoned green water would not have been love.
Knowing did nothing. Grief was not logical. It was an animal with its teeth in his throat.
Jason survived because that was what Jason did.
He woke up. He ate when Alfred appeared with food and stared at him until he took a bite. He patrolled when the apartment became unbearable. He slept only when exhaustion hit hard enough to resemble unconsciousness.
He continued. It was not the same as living.
On the night the universe tore open, Jason was standing on a rooftop three streets away from Crime Alley. Rainwater ran from the edges of his helmet. Gotham stretched beneath him in shades of black and jaundiced gold, its streets shining like open wounds. Oracle was speaking through his comm about an energy surge near Robinson Park, but Jason had only been half listening.
“Repeat that,” he said, turning towards the distant pulse of blue light.
“I said the anomaly is growing.” Barbara’s voice sharpened. “It matches the readings from the Watchtower incident last week. Bruce is already en route.”
“Great. Space nonsense.”
“Dimensional nonsense, technically.”
“Somehow worse.”
The air above Robinson Park split apart. There was no other way to describe it. The night opened like fabric beneath a blade, a jagged seam of white-blue light cutting through the sky. Buildings trembled. Car alarms began screaming below. Every screen on Jason’s helmet flickered with static.
Then someone fell through.
Jason moved before Barbara could issue an order. He fired his grapple, swung from the rooftop and landed hard enough to crack the pavement. The tear in the air buckled inward behind the falling figure, collapsing with a sound like thunder heard underwater.
They hit the grass.
For one second, everything was still.
Jason approached with both guns raised.
The stranger wore body armour scorched black along one side. Their face was hidden behind a broken mask. Blood soaked the fabric at their shoulder. One hand remained wrapped around a small metal device that sparked between their fingers.
“Don’t move,” Jason ordered.
The stranger coughed.
Their head lifted.
The damaged mask fell away.
Jason’s finger tightened against the trigger.
The world stopped.
Rain touched a face he knew better than his own.
Your face.
Not similar. Not reminiscent. Not some stranger with your eyes or the familiar shape of your mouth.
You.
Your hair was different, cut shorter than it had been when he buried you. There was a thin scar through your left eyebrow that had never existed before. Blood coated the corner of your lips.
But it was you.
Jason could not breathe.
The guns slipped lower in his hands.
You stared at his helmet as though you could see through it. Your expression fractured slowly, disbelief giving way to something so nakedly desperate that Jason felt it like a blade beneath his ribs.
“Jason?”
His name in your voice destroyed him.
He staggered backwards. “No.”
You pushed yourself upright, visibly fighting against the pain in your shoulder. “Jason, wait—”
“No.”
His helmet disengaged with a hiss. He tore it from his head because he could not breathe inside it, because he needed air, because your face had become the entire world and he was drowning in it.
The moment you saw him, you broke.
Your mouth opened. No sound emerged.
Then you were moving towards him.
Jason raised one gun between you. “Don’t.”
You stopped.
The rain soaked your face. Tears mingled with it, impossible to separate.
“You’re alive,” you whispered.
Jason’s hand began to shake.
Behind him, the Batmobile tore across the grass. Bruce emerged before it had fully stopped, cape snapping behind him, but Jason could barely register the movement.
You looked at him as if he were a miracle. Jason looked at you as if you were a ghost.
Neither of you moved.
“Jason,” Bruce said carefully.
“Tell me that’s Clayface.”
“It isn’t.”
“A clone.”
“The scans don’t indicate—”
“Tell me it’s something.”
You flinched as though he had struck you.
Jason saw it. He hated himself for seeing it. He hated you for wearing that expression. He hated the universe for giving your face back to him while leaving you dead beneath the ground.
Bruce stepped closer to you, one hand held where you could see it.
“I am Batman. You’ve crossed some form of dimensional breach. We need to assess your injuries and determine whether the rupture is stable.”
Your gaze remained fixed on Jason.
“Dimensional,” you repeated faintly.
Bruce inclined his head.
Something inside you seemed to collapse.
You looked down at the device in your hand. Its blue lights had gone dark.
“No,” you said.
Jason recognised that word. He had said it beneath the warehouse rubble until his throat tore.
“No, no, it was supposed to—” Your fingers tightened around the machine. “It was supposed to take me back. It was supposed to fix it.”
“Fix what?” Bruce asked.
Your eyes lifted to Jason again.
This time, when you looked at him, there was grief inside your face.
Not his grief.
Yours.
“My Jason died.”
The gun fell from Jason’s hand.
It struck the wet pavement between you.
Neither of you seemed to hear it.
You woke in the Batcave thirteen hours later. Jason knew because he had spent twelve of those hours watching the medical bay camera from the other side of the cave.
Leslie had treated your shoulder. A through-and-through gunshot, clean enough not to require surgery. Two fractured ribs. A concussion. Dehydration. Exhaustion severe enough that you had stopped responding halfway through Bruce’s questions.
Jason had not entered the medical bay. He had considered leaving the cave entirely, but every time he approached the motorcycle, something dragged him back.
So he remained in the shadows, staring at the shape of you beneath white sheets.
Tim worked at the computer nearby. Bruce examined the damaged dimensional device. Dick had tried to speak to Jason twice and retreated after receiving no response.
No one knew what to say.
Jason suspected there was nothing to say. Language had not been designed for this.
The computer confirmed what your blood had already suggested. Your DNA was nearly identical to the records stored for you, with small deviations in several non-coding regions. Scans of the residual energy matched a universe the Justice League had encountered briefly during an earlier crisis.
You were you. You were not his.
Jason repeated those truths until they lost all meaning.
When you woke, your first word was his name.
He heard it through the cave.
“Jason?”
Not a question. A reflex.
He closed his eyes.
Dick looked towards him from across the platform.
“You don’t have to go over there,” he said quietly.
Jason’s laugh emerged rough and humourless. “Yeah? Think they know that?”
“They’re confused.”
“So am I.”
“Jay—”
“Don’t.”
Dick went silent.
The curtain around the medical cot shifted. You sat upright slowly, one arm wrapped around your ribs. Leslie said something Jason could not hear.
Your attention moved past her. Across the cave. Directly to him.
Of course you found him. You had always been able to find him, even in crowds, even in darkness. Jason had once teased you about having some kind of supernatural tracker lodged in his chest.
You had pressed your ear against his heartbeat and told him it was simply very loud.
You stood.
Leslie protested. You ignored her.
Jason remained frozen as you crossed the cave. Your bare feet made almost no sound against the stone.
Footsteps.
He would remember these.
You stopped several feet away. Without the blood and rain, the differences became clearer. Your scar. Your shorter hair. A silver ring on a chain around your throat.
Jason knew that ring. He had worn its twin for nearly two years.
His remained in the drawer beside his bed because wearing it had begun to feel like walking around with an exposed organ.
Yours hung above your heart.
“My Jason gave me this,” you said when you noticed him looking.
Jason’s jaw tightened.
“He wore one too.”
“So did they.”
You inhaled sharply.
The cave seemed to contract around the two of you.
“I’m sorry,” you said.
“For what?”
“For looking like them.”
Anger flared before Jason could stop it. “You don’t.”
Your expression shifted.
“Not really,” he continued, voice harsher than he intended. “Not when you look long enough.”
You looked down. Guilt followed the anger almost immediately, but Jason did not apologise. He did not know how to stand in front of your face and behave like a person.
“You look exactly like him,” you whispered.
Jason went still.
“My Jason,” you clarified. “You’re different, too. I can see it now.”
“Good.”
“It doesn’t feel good.”
“No,” Jason said. “It doesn’t.”
You lifted one hand as if you meant to reach for him.
Jason stepped back.
The hurt on your face was immediate. Familiar. Unbearable.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he snapped.
Your hand dropped. “Like what?”
“Like I’m yours.”
Silence spread between you.
When you spoke again, your voice was quiet. “I know you’re not.”
Jason wanted to believe you. He wanted to hate you. Instead, he saw the bruised exhaustion beneath your eyes. He saw the way your fingers kept finding the ring around your neck. He saw someone standing before the impossible, trying not to shatter beneath it.
You were not his.
But you had loved him somewhere. Some version of him had woken beside you. Had argued with you. Had learned the shape of your body beneath blankets and the rhythm of your breathing in sleep. Some version of Jason had been chosen by you.
And that Jason was dead.
The anger drained from him.
“What happened?” he asked.
Your fingers closed around the ring. You studied him for a long moment, as if deciding how much truth he could survive.
“A warehouse,” you said.
Jason stopped breathing.
Your eyes flickered shut. “There was an arms deal. We had bad information. The building was rigged to collapse if anyone interrupted the exchange.” Your voice trembled, but you continued. “I didn’t see the trigger. Jason did.”
The scar across Jason’s chest began to ache.
“He pushed me out.”
The cave disappeared.
Jason saw smoke. Concrete. Your hands against his chest.
“He was still inside when the ceiling came down,” you whispered. “I tried to get back to him, but the entrance was blocked. By the time I found another way—”
“Stop.”
You did.
Jason turned away, one hand gripping the edge of the workbench hard enough to make the metal groan.
Behind him, you breathed unevenly.
“He died saving me,” you said.
Jason stared down at his hands. “They died saving me.”
You made a broken sound.
For the first time since you had fallen through the universe, Jason understood that the cruelty was larger than resemblance.
In one world, you had seen the danger first. In another, he had. The universe had flipped a coin and demanded payment either way.
“You built the portal,” he said.
“I helped build it. Our Justice League found traces of another reality during an incursion. I thought if there were other worlds, there might be one where he survived.”
“You came looking for him.”
“Yes.”
“And you found me.”
Your laugh cracked in the middle. “Apparently, the universe has a sense of humour.”
“Yeah,” Jason murmured. “It’s a real comedian.”
You stood behind him for several seconds before speaking again. “Were we happy?”
The question struck harder than anything else had.
Jason looked back at you.
You were crying silently now.
“Were you and… them happy?” you asked.
He could have lied. He could have protected both of you with something vague and bloodless.
Instead, he said, “Yeah.”
Your face crumpled.
Jason continued because stopping would have been worse. “We fought. A lot. They stole the blankets and put the empty carton back in the fridge like some kind of monster.”
A wet laugh escaped you. “They did that too?”
“Constantly.”
“My Jason kept threatening to buy a separate fridge.”
“I did buy a separate fridge.”
You stared at him.
Jason almost smiled.
Almost.
“They hated it,” he said.
“I hated it.”
The words settled strangely between you.
Not a shared memory. An echo.
You wiped at your face. “He was terrible at folding clothes.”
“Shirts. Towels. Grocery bags. Don’t know what the hell they thought was going to happen if a towel had a wrinkle in it.”
You smiled through your tears.
It was not your smile. It was.
Jason looked away.
“I should go back to the medical bay,” you said.
“Probably.”
You hesitated. “I really am sorry.”
Jason’s eyes remained fixed on the floor.
“You didn’t kill them,” he said.
“No.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“No.”
Neither of you believed it yet.
It was still the first kind thing either of you had offered.
The portal could be reopened. Tim discovered that after three days of calculations, several arguments with Mister Terrific and one minor explosion that left Bruce’s cape smoking.
The breach had not been random. Your device had locked onto a parallel frequency and pulled you into the nearest universe with enough similarities to hold the connection.
Returning would require time.
Two weeks, according to Tim.
Two weeks in the same world as Jason. Two weeks inside the manor, because Bruce refused to let you disappear into Gotham while injured and dimensionally displaced.
Jason considered moving out.
Instead, he began spending more time there.
He told himself it was because you knew too much about him. His identity. His family. His methods.
He needed to assess the threat. It was a bad lie, but everyone politely pretended to believe it.
You did not approach him again.
That should have made things easier. It did not.
Jason found you in the library most mornings, sitting in the window seat with one of Alfred’s blankets around your shoulders. You read books that his version of you had hated. You drank tea instead of coffee. You hummed beneath your breath when you concentrated, a habit that made Jason’s skin ache because you had done that too, though your songs were different.
You were quieter than you had been. Or perhaps your Jason had simply loved a quieter version of you.
Jason began to wonder about him.
It felt like betrayal.
He wondered whether the other Jason still had the white streak in his hair. Whether he cooked. Whether he read to you. Whether he woke from nightmares and found you waiting beside him.
Whether he had died knowing he was loved.
Jason hoped he had. The thought came unexpectedly and left him gripping the kitchen counter while Alfred politely busied himself with the kettle.
“You might speak with them,” Alfred suggested.
Jason glared at him.
Alfred poured hot water into a cup. “Or continue haunting the manor’s corridors whenever they enter a room. Both are options, Master Jason.”
“I don’t haunt.”
“The curtains have begun moving independently in your presence.”
“Drafty house.”
“Indeed.”
Jason took the tea Alfred offered him, despite not having requested it.
“They’re leaving in nine days,” he said.
“So I understand.”
“Talking won’t change that.”
“No. It may change the nine days.”
Jason leaned against the counter.
Alfred’s expression softened. “Grief is not disloyalty,” he said. “Nor is kindness.”
Jason looked down at the steam rising from the cup. “What if I look at them and forget?”
“Forget whom?”
“Them. Mine.”
Alfred was silent for a moment.
“You have not forgotten,” he said. “You are frightened of surviving.”
Jason’s mouth twisted. “Survived plenty.”
“Yes,” Alfred replied. “But rarely without punishing yourself for it.”
Jason left the tea untouched.
That evening, he found you on the roof of Wayne Manor. You sat near the edge, wrapped in a jacket that belonged to Dick, your legs extended over the slate tiles. Gotham’s distant lights glowed against the clouds.
“You always climb houses while recovering from broken ribs?” Jason asked.
You glanced over your shoulder. “My Jason used to ask me that.”
“Did you listen?”
“Never.”
“Sounds about right.”
Jason lowered himself beside you, leaving several feet of space between your bodies.
For a while, neither of you spoke. The wind pulled at your hair. Jason kept his eyes on the horizon.
“He was different from you,” you said eventually.
“Figured.”
“He didn’t come back angry.”
Jason’s shoulders tensed.
“In my world,” you continued, “the Pit was destroyed before Talia found him. She brought him back another way. Magic, I think. He never knew the details.”
“So he wasn’t—”
“He was still angry. Just differently.”
Jason gave a quiet huff. “Good to know I’m a delight across realities.”
“You were.”
His head turned.
You smiled faintly. “He was.”
Jason looked away again.
“He didn’t use guns,” you said. “He carried them for a while, but stopped after we met.”
“Did you ask him to?”
“No. He decided on his own.”
Something defensive rose inside Jason. “That doesn’t make him better.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“Sounds like it.”
“You asked how he was different.”
“I didn’t ask anything.”
You went quiet.
Jason pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Sorry.”
The apology scraped on the way out.
You shifted slightly closer, not enough to touch.
“He had a scar across his mouth,” you said. “From the crowbar. It pulled when he smiled.”
Jason’s hands lowered. “He smiled a lot?”
“Eventually.”
“With you.”
“With everyone, sometimes. He was still difficult.”
“Obviously.”
“He adored Damian but would rather have swallowed glass than admit it.”
Jason snorted.
“He was convinced Alfred was immortal.”
“He might be.”
“He read every night.”
Jason’s chest tightened. “What?”
“Usually aloud,” you said. “Even after I fell asleep.”
The manor roof blurred before his eyes.
You kept your gaze on the city.
“He loved me,” you whispered.
Jason swallowed.
“Yeah,” he said. “He did.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know me.”
Your breath hitched.
Jason stared at your profile, at the scar that did not belong to the person he had lost.
“They loved me too,” he said.
“I know.”
“You don’t.”
“I know myself.”
For several seconds, you both sat suspended in the strange symmetry of it.
Then you laughed.
It was soft. Grieving. Real. Jason joined you, though it hurt.
The laughter faded into silence.
“I keep thinking this is a second chance,” you admitted.
Jason’s body went rigid.
“Not with you,” you added quickly. “I know you’re not him. But being here, seeing your family, hearing his voice come out of someone else’s mouth—it feels like I’ve stepped into a life where the worst thing never happened.”
“The worst thing happened here, too.”
“I know.”
“They’re buried ten miles away.”
Your eyes closed. “I know.”
Jason regretted the words instantly, but you did not recoil.
Instead, you pulled the ring from beneath your shirt.
“I carried this through the portal because I thought I might find him,” you said. “I imagined handing it back. I imagined him laughing at me for thinking death could stop him.”
Jason’s eyes burned. “I thought they’d come back, too.”
You turned towards him. “Because you did?”
“Because I did.”
“Would you have used the Pit?”
The question was gentle.
Jason hated that it still felt like an accusation.
“I thought about it.”
“What stopped you?”
“They did.”
You frowned.
“They made me promise once,” Jason explained. “Long before the warehouse. They said if anything ever happened, I wasn’t allowed to let grief turn me into somebody they’d be afraid of.”
A tear slid down your cheek. “My Jason made me promise the same thing.”
“Guess we knew ourselves.”
“Not well enough.”
“No,” Jason said. “Maybe exactly enough.”
The wind moved between you.
Your hand rested on the roof tile, palm turned upward. Not reaching. Not asking.
Simply there.
Jason stared at it. Your hands were different. A small burn marked one knuckle. Your nails were bitten short. The person he had loved had worn a silver band on their thumb and painted their nails when anxious.
Jason knew every line of those vanished hands. He did not know yours.
That should have been enough to make him leave. Instead, Jason placed his hand beside yours.
Not touching. Close enough to feel the warmth.
The first time Jason touched you, it was because you screamed in your sleep.
He had fallen asleep in the library armchair sometime after patrol. The manor was quiet, sunrise still hours away.
Your cry tore through the silence.
Jason woke with a knife in his hand.
He found you in the guest room, tangled in the sheets and fighting something that no longer existed. Your injured shoulder had begun bleeding through its bandage.
“Wake up,” Jason said.
You did not.
Your hands shoved at the air. “Jason, move!”
His heart cracked open.
Jason crossed the room and caught your wrists. “Hey. Wake up.”
“Jason!”
“I’m here.”
Your eyes snapped open.
For one terrible second, you looked relieved.
Then recognition returned.
You stopped struggling.
Jason released your wrists, but your hand closed around his before he could move away.
Neither of you breathed.
Your fingers were warm. Alive.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered.
Jason should have pulled away. Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed.
Your grip tightened.
“He was trapped,” you said. “I could hear him under the rubble.”
Jason stared at the dark window. “They were already unconscious when I found them.”
“Was that better?”
“No.”
You nodded as though he had confirmed something important. “I heard his heartbeat stop.”
Jason’s thumb moved across your knuckles before he realised what he was doing.
You looked down at your joined hands.
He stopped.
“Keep going,” you whispered. “Please.”
Jason did.
The movement felt both familiar and completely new. His thumb traced the burn scar on your knuckle. He wondered where it had come from. You wondered about the scars across his hand.
“He didn’t have this one,” you said, touching the pale line beneath his index finger.
“Knife fight.”
“Did you win?”
“Obviously.”
A tired smile appeared.
Jason’s chest hurt.
“You shouldn’t smile like that,” he said.
Your smile disappeared.
He cursed quietly. “That came out wrong.”
“How should I smile?”
“You shouldn’t have to think about it.”
“I think about everything around you.”
“Why?”
“Because he was my home.”
Jason’s hand went still.
“And you have his face,” you continued. “His voice. His hands. But you aren’t him, and every time I forget that for half a second, it feels like losing him again.”
Jason understood. Every glance at you was resurrection followed by death.
“I see them too,” he admitted. You swallowed. “But then you do something wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“Different.” Jason looked at you. “You hate coffee.”
“It tastes burnt.”
“You sleep on the left side.”
“He preferred the right.”
“You don’t know how to pick locks.”
“Your version of me knew how?”
“Better than Tim.”
“That’s hot.”
Jason laughed before he could stop himself.
Your eyes widened.
His laughter faded.
For a moment, you both stared at each other.
Then you smiled again. This time, it was entirely yours.
Jason’s heart moved.
Not healed. Not replaced.
Moved.
The distinction frightened him more than pain ever had.
“I miss them,” he said.
Your fingers curled around his. “I miss him.”
Jason bowed his head.
You remained like that until morning, two grieving strangers holding hands in the shape left behind by people who no longer existed.
The portal stabilised on the fourteenth day.
A circular frame of white-blue light filled the centre of the cave. Through it, Jason could see another Batcave.
Yours.
The platform beyond the breach was empty. Dust covered the consoles. One large monitor had been cracked through the centre.
Your universe waited for you.
Tim checked the readings for the third time. “The connection should remain open for twelve minutes. Once it closes, we won’t have enough residual energy for another attempt.”
Dick stood near the stairs. Bruce remained beside the computer, expression unreadable. Alfred had packed a bag with medical supplies and food, though no one seemed certain whether you would take it.
Jason stood furthest from the portal.
You wore the armour you had arrived in, repaired where possible. The silver ring hung visibly around your neck.
“This is it,” you said.
Tim nodded.
You looked around the cave. At Bruce. Dick. Damian, who refused to admit he had come to say goodbye. Alfred. Tim.
Finally, you looked at Jason.
He had rehearsed this moment. He had imagined saying something careful and final. Something you could carry home without mistaking it for a promise.
Nothing emerged.
You approached him.
Jason’s hands remained inside the pockets of his jacket.
“Thank you,” you said.
“For what?”
“For letting me know he was happy somewhere.”
Jason’s throat tightened. “He was happy with you.”
“I hope so.”
“I know so.”
Your eyes filled with tears.
Jason wanted to touch you.
He did not.
“You should go,” he said. “Before it closes.”
You glanced at the portal. “Right.”
You stepped away.
Something inside Jason began to panic. It was not the same panic he had felt beneath the warehouse ruins. He was not watching you die. You were returning to your life, your world, the place you belonged.
A world where you had no Jason. A world where he had no you.
You reached the portal.
Stopped.
Jason’s heartbeat became deafening.
You looked through the opening at the empty cave beyond.
Then you looked back at the people behind you. At him.
“What are you going back to?” Jason asked. You stared at him. “Your family?”
“Gone,” you said. “The incursion that gave us the dimensional technology destroyed most of Gotham. Bruce died before Jason. Dick disappeared during the evacuation. We never found him.”
Jason felt Dick shift behind him. “Friends?”
“A few. Scattered.”
“A home?”
Your gaze moved through the portal again. “I suppose.”
Jason walked towards you. He stopped an arm’s length away. “Don’t go back because you think you owe a dead universe something.”
Your face tightened. “And I shouldn’t stay because you look like him.”
“No.”
“What else is here for me?”
Jason looked towards the others.
“A Bruce who will adopt anything that stands still long enough.”
Bruce’s expression flattened.
“A Dick who will force you into family game nights.”
“I do not force—”
“You absolutely force.”
A small laugh left you.
“Tim will probably make you help fix the portal technology. Damian’s gonna pretend he hates you until you feed him.”
“I heard that,” Damian said.
“Alfred makes better tea than anyone in either universe.”
“That is statistically unverified,” Tim muttered.
Jason stepped closer.
“And me,” he said. “Maybe.”
Your breath caught.
Jason forced himself to continue. “Not him. I’m never going to be him. You’re never going to be them. Some days, looking at you might hurt so bad I can’t be in the same room.”
“I know.”
“Some days you’ll hate the way I talk. The choices I make. The things he would’ve done differently.”
“I know.”
“I’m not asking you to stay for me.”
Your eyes searched his. “Then what are you asking?”
Jason looked at the portal. At the abandoned cave on the other side. He thought of the apartment he had preserved like a tomb. The mug beside the sink. The jacket by the door. The life he had mistaken for loyalty because living without you felt like betrayal.
“I’m asking whether going back is living,” he said, “or whether it’s just another way to stay dead with him.”
Your face crumpled.
Jason moved before he could reconsider.
He caught you as you folded forward, your hands gripping the front of his jacket.
For one heartbeat, your body fit against his exactly as theirs had.
Then you inhaled.
Different rhythm. Different weight. Different person.
Jason wrapped his arms around you.
You buried your face against his chest.
“I loved him,” you sobbed.
“I know.”
“I love him.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know how to stop.”
“You don’t.”
Your hands tightened.
Jason closed his eyes.
“You don’t have to stop,” he said. “Love doesn’t turn off because there’s nowhere left to put it.”
The portal hummed behind you.
Ten minutes.
Nine.
You pulled back enough to look at him. “Did you stop loving them?”
Jason glanced towards the cave floor. “No.”
“Do you think you ever will?”
“No.”
The answer did not wound you.
It seemed to steady you.
You touched the silver ring at your throat.
Then you looked at the portal. At the world you had lost.
The light flickered.
You stepped towards it.
Jason released you.
One foot crossed the threshold.
Then you unclasped the chain from around your neck.
You held the ring in your palm for several seconds before closing your fingers around it.
“I’m not leaving him behind,” you whispered.
Jason shook his head. “No.”
You stepped back into his universe.
The portal collapsed.
Light rushed inward. Air cracked. The other Batcave vanished.
Silence followed.
You stood where the breach had been, trembling.
Jason did not approach until you turned towards him.
“I’m not staying for you,” you said.
“Good.”
“I might hate you.”
“Probably.”
“You’re much more annoying than he was.”
“Impossible.”
“And I don’t drink coffee.”
“Character flaw.”
Your mouth trembled.
Jason extended his hand.
Not to his lost love. Not to a ghost.
To you.
After a moment, you took it.
You moved into an apartment three blocks away from Crime Alley.
Bruce offered you a room at the manor. You refused. Dick offered you a room in Blüdhaven. You refused that, too. Jason offered nothing, which was why you eventually asked him to help carry your furniture.
The apartment had tall windows and terrible plumbing. You filled it with plants that kept dying despite your best efforts. You bought mismatched plates from a second-hand shop and argued with Jason about where to hang the shelves.
You did not replace the home he had lost. He did not replace yours.
You made something else.
It took months before Jason entered your apartment without feeling as if he were stepping into an imitation of his old life.
It took longer before you stopped freezing when he removed his helmet.
Grief remained. It sat beside you during movies. It slept between you when nightmares became bad enough that one of you called the other. It followed you to the cemetery when Jason finally introduced you to the person who had worn your face.
You stood before the grave for nearly an hour.
“They sound wonderful,” you said.
Jason looked down at the name carved into stone. “They were.”
You placed flowers beneath it. “I would’ve liked them.”
“They would’ve liked you.”
“You don’t know that.”
Jason nudged your shoulder. “I know them.”
You smiled.
Weeks later, you brought him to the memorial you had built for your Jason.
Not a grave. His body had never been recovered.
You had recreated the inscription on a small plaque and placed it beneath the bridge where the portal had first opened.
Jason crouched before it.
The dates were different. The name was the same.
“He sounds like a better man than me,” Jason said.
You stood beside him. “He was different.”
“That diplomatic, huh?”
“He was afraid of geese.”
Jason looked up sharply. “He was not.”
“He was.”
“Fake Jason. Clearly defective.”
You laughed.
Jason touched the plaque.
“Thanks,” he said quietly.
You did not ask what for.
Perhaps for loving him. Perhaps for making sure some version of Jason Todd had known a gentler life. Perhaps simply for surviving him.
On the first anniversary of your arrival, the two of you returned to the roof of Wayne Manor.
The city glowed in the distance. Summer wind moved through the trees.
You sat beside him, closer than you had the first time. Your shoulders touched.
Jason had learned hundreds of things about you during the year.
You hated coffee but loved tiramisu. You could not pick a lock, but you could disable almost any alarm system. You read historical biographies when anxious and watched terrible reality television when sad. The burn on your knuckle came from attempting to cook for your Jason on your first anniversary. You had set the kitchen curtains on fire.
Your laugh became breathless when something truly amused you. You slept on your left side because of an old injury to your hip. You hummed songs from a world whose lyrics were subtly different.
Jason had learned you.
Not all at once. Not because he already knew the map. He had learned you slowly, with care, respecting every border that grief had redrawn.
You had learned him too. You knew when the Pit was loud behind his eyes. You knew he preferred silence after difficult patrols. You knew he kept your counterpart’s voicemail but had finally moved the mug from beside the sink.
You never asked him to delete anything. He never asked you to remove the ring from your chain.
“I’ve been thinking,” you said.
“Dangerous.”
“About the multiverse.”
“Even worse.”
You leaned back on your hands. “Do you think there are worlds where none of it happened?”
“The warehouse?”
“All of it. Your death. His death. Mine. The Pit.”
Jason watched the clouds. “Probably.”
“A universe where we’re happy.”
“Maybe.”
“A universe where we hate each other.”
“Definitely.”
You smiled. “You think?”
“There’s gotta be at least one universe where you have terrible taste.”
“I have terrible taste here.”
“Rude.”
Your smile faded into something softer. “Maybe we always find each other.”
Jason’s chest tightened.
“Don’t know,” he said.
“I’d like to think we do.”
He looked at you.
There were things he had not permitted himself to say. Not because they were untrue, but because they had become true slowly, and truth frightened him more than ghosts.
He loved the person beneath the ground. He loved the memory preserved in recordings and old books and a jacket that no longer hung beside the door.
And he had begun to love you.
Not as an answer. Not as a second chance. Not as the universe returning what it had stolen.
You were not returned.
You were discovered. A new country beyond the edge of a map he had thought ended at grief.
“I think I could love you in every universe,” Jason said.
Your eyes widened.
His pulse roared. “But that’s not what I want.”
Pain flashed across your face before he could finish.
Jason reached for your hand.
“I don’t want some cosmic rule that says we always belong to each other. I don’t want destiny making the choice for us.”
Your fingers tightened around his.
“I loved them because of who they were,” he continued. “You loved him because of who he was. Not because the universe decided our faces matched.”
You watched him carefully.
Jason lifted your hand to his chest. His heartbeat struck against your palm.
“I want to love you here,” he said. “This version. On purpose.”
Tears gathered in your eyes. “I’m not them.”
“I know.”
“You’ll still miss them.”
“Every day.”
“I’ll still miss him.”
“I know.”
“I might compare you.”
“I might compare you, too.”
“That sounds messy.”
“Most good things are.”
You laughed shakily.
Jason touched your cheek.
The first time you had fallen into his universe, he had flinched from the sight of your face. Now he traced the scar through your eyebrow with his thumb.
Yours. Only yours.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked.
You leaned into his hand. “Yes.”
The kiss was not familiar. That was what made it beautiful.
You tilted your head differently. Your hand rested against his throat instead of sliding into his hair. Your breath caught at a different moment.
Jason felt no ghost between you.
Only grief. Only love. Only the terrifying, impossible distance between losing everything and choosing to live again.
When you pulled apart, your forehead rested against his.
Somewhere, perhaps, another Jason held another version of you beneath another sky.
Perhaps there were universes where you never met. Universes where one of you arrived too late. Universes where you passed each other on crowded streets and felt nothing.
Jason no longer needed every version. He had this one.
This scar beneath his thumb. This hand above his heart. This person who had crossed the grave between worlds and found not what they had lost, but what might come next.
i really thought the point of "being lgbt+ doesn't absolve you of racism as a white person" was that white people arent absolved of racism by being marginalized but it really seems like people think other marginalizations make it okay. no being disabled doesn't do it. no being poor doesnt do it. we need to fight against racism actively no matter what.
"my great grandmother who survived 3 wars and raised 10 children by herself while working in a factory watching me go to therapy because my parents yelled at me" ok but your great grandmother was also miserable. maybe your great grandmother would be happy you try your best to not be miserable
oopsie i tripped and spilled my link to archive dot org's downloadable copy of Microsoft office suite for 2007, which features no AI tools and is a powerful word processor that still holds up just fine on windows 10!
oops i tripped and spilled my link to massgrave because you shouldnt be forcing yourself to use software from 20 years ago just use massgrave oh my god
just unfollowed someone for rbing anti-manhating sentiments. it's very weird to me and I'm not sorry. there's a rise in conservatism and a big societal push to strip women of our rights and make us men's property, and your biggest priority is lecturing women on how we talk about men?? fuck right the fuck off actually
"but it hurts their feelings!" it hurts MY feelings when my sisters and mothers don't have rights.
"but it doesn't help your goals!" meanwhile men are beating, raping, oppressing, and killing women everywhere to advance the goals of the patriarchy. don't tell me what I should and should not feel about that.
"but it harms trans men/men of color/other oppressed men!" does it? because trans men and men of color have way more serious shit to deal with than women expressing their feelings on the internet. such as transphobia and racism. meanwhile, women in their communities (trans women, women of color) have to deal with all of that PLUS oppression from the men.
you simply cannot convince me that anti-manhating arguments are anything more than patriarchy propaganda. "unhh we have all the power and rights, but if you don't worship at our feet, you're just as bad as us." fuck offfffff
the people yearn for jason todd x sensory issues girlfriend who cannot stand his motorcycle because it’s so loud
TOO LOUD
SUMMARY: jason picks you up for a date on his bike, unaware of how much you feared it
warnings: fluff, hurt/comfort (???), f!reader, established relationship, reader has sensory issues, probably OOC jason, a lil suggestive, reader is shorter than jason, pet names
wc: 1k
A knock sounds against your apartment door and you smile at yourself in the mirror. You already know exactly who stands on the other side, likely holding a big bouquet and wearing a cheesy grin.
You fluff up your hair a bit more before making your way to the door, swinging it open. As you suspected, your lovely boyfriend is at your doorstep, holding a bunch of roses. He's wearing his usual date night outfit: leather jacket, jeans, and a t-shirt. He's basic, sue him.
"There she is," he coos, reaching for your hand to spin you around in a slow twirl. "Hey, pretty."
You grin. "Hi, Jay," you reply as he enters, shutting the door behind him.
"These are for you, m'lady," he smiles, theatrically holding the bouquet out to you.
A giggle escapes your lips as you happily accept the flowers. "Thank you, baby." You make your way to the kitchen, already in search of a fresh vase to house them.
As you fill the vase, you can feel his eyes burning holes into your back. "You're staring, honey," you hum as you trim the flower stems.
His grin is audible in his tone. "Sorry, doll. You just look so pretty. You wear that red just for me, hm?"
He pulls you into his arms from behind, hands feeling over your thighs, up your torso, then back down. "Mmm. So beautiful…"
"Jay," you chuckle softly. "We have our reservation, in case you've forgotten."
He sighs, dropping his head to your shoulder. "Right. I don't wanna go anymore."
You blink. "What? Why?"
"You look too good. Wanna keep you in bed all night and just ravish you." His voice is breathy, as if it physically pains him to not be able to keep you home with him.
You laugh, turning in his arms to face him. "C'mon, baby. I didn't get ready for nothing!" you say, already reaching for your purse slung over a chair. "Let's go, or we're gonna be late."
He whines softly, earning a glare from you. "Jason Peter T—"
"—Okay, okay. Jesus, woman, I'm going," he groans, trailing ahead of you and opening your front door. "Let's."
All was well. So well. You both talked quietly during the walk to the elevator. You shared fleeting kisses as the otherwise-empty elevator made its descent. You wiped your lipstick from his cheeks as you walked through the lobby.
But the moment your eyes landed on the red motorcycle parked at the curb in front of your building, you froze.
He kept walking at first, but when your stationary hand tugged his own back as he passed, he frowned. "What's wrong, ma?"
"…You brought the bike?"
He nods. "Yeah. Don't worry, the helmet will only mess up your hair for a bit but I'll fix it once we stop—"
"—I'm not worried about my hair, Jason," you sigh, all your energy leaving your body as you continue to look at the machinery.
It breaks Jason's heart, seeing your once-lively body entirely deflate. You'd been so excited for tonight, what changed? "Baby," he murmurs soothingly, approaching you. His big, warm hands cup your cheeks. "Talk to me, ma. What's goin' on?"
The way your sweet eyes look up at him, all big and sad, sends an ache straight to his chest. "I don't…I can't ride the bike."
"…" he blinks a few times. "I don't understand. Are you scared? Because I can go slow, doll. I know I usually go fast, but for you—"
"—No, Jay."
"Tell me what the problem is, lovey. I bet I can fix it," he urges calmly.
Your head shakes, eyes darting away from his. "You can't."
"How can you be so sure, hm?"
"You definitely can't," you press, sighing. "It's just…the bike is too loud."
You look up at him tentatively, awaiting his reaction. Surely he'll call you a baby, laugh at you, wonder why the hell his girlfriend can't handle loud noises.
"Oh, baby," he croons softly, smiling gently. "I can 100% fix that."
"You can make the bike quieter?"
"No, we just won't take the bike," he declares, standing up to full height. He smooths down your dress and hair. "Gimme your hand, let's walk."
You blink, frowning but handing him your hand nonetheless. "We won't make it for 7:00 if we walk."
"Then I'll move the reservation to 8:00," he shrugs.
"But they were fully booked, remember?" you continue, already feeling that familiar dread crawl up your spine at having your plans disrupted. But the soothing strokes of Jason's thumb over the back of your hand slow your thoughts.
He nods. "I can pull some strings," he assures you, pulling his phone out. "Anything for my baby."
The two of you walk through Gotham in silence for a bit, save for the chatter between Jason and whoever's on the other end of the line. Alas, the call ends and he pockets his phone. "K. Reservation is now at 8 PM with VIP seating in the back lounge, so it's nice and quiet. Away from the kitchen and all the people."
Your shocked eyes find his soft ones, glowing with the reflection of Gotham's streetlights. "Oh, Jay, you didn't have to…"
"But I wanted to," he counters, ducking to press a kiss to your forehead. "This night is for us. I want you to enjoy it, dollface. I love you too much to see you get overwhelmed and shut down, okay?"
"I…" You're at a complete loss for words. Never in your life have you had someone care so deeply for you so as to selflessly cater their entire night toward you. Before Jason, your troubles with loud noises and bright lights was merely an inconvenience and a punishment. "Thank you."
He nods, smiling all casual and bright, as if he didn't just reroute your entire brain. "I— I love you, too," you add.
"I know you do, baby," he hums, rubbing your back. "I see you, doll. I'll always see you."
you noticed that you couldn't move. you blinked slowly, staring at the ceiling as your sleepy brain pieced together why.
an arm was wrapped securely around your waist.
another was tucked beneath your pillow.
one of jason's legs had somehow ended up tangled with yours.
"…jason."
nothing.
you tilted your head just enough to glance over your shoulder.
his face was half-buried against the back of your neck, dark hair sticking up in every direction. his breathing was slow and even, though you were almost positive he wasn't actually asleep anymore.
you smiled to yourself.
"jason."
a low hum vibrated against your shoulder.
"so you are awake."
"no."
"you literally answered me."
"didn't."
you laughed quietly.
"i need to get up."
"no, you don't."
"i do."
"you've got nowhere to be."
"i have to use the bathroom."
"…"
his grip tightened just a little.
"jason."
"five more minutes."
"you said that twenty minutes ago."
"i don't remember saying that."
"you were awake?"
"no."
you couldn't help laughing again.
"you are impossible."
"so i've been told."
finally, he cracked one eye open, meeting your amused expression.
his lips twitched. "there she is."
"good morning."
"mornin'."
his voice was rough from sleep, making it sound even deeper than usual.
he studied your face for a second before reaching up and brushing a loose strand of hair behind your ear.
"what?"
"nothin'."
"you've been staring."
"i know."
"…why?"
"'cause you're pretty."
the words came so casually that your brain stopped working for a moment.
"…you can't just say things like that before coffee."
jason smirked.
"sure i can."
"you fight crime."
"i multitask."
you nudged him lightly with your shoulder.
"you are ridiculous."
"so are you."
you tried sitting up again.
his arms immediately pulled you back against him.
"…seriously?"
"i'm comfortable."
"i'm trapped."
"exactly."
"you've become a human weighted blanket."
"i'm hearing zero complaints."
"there are several complaints."
"liar."
you sighed dramatically, though the smile on your face betrayed you.
"…fine."
jason buried his face into your shoulder again with a satisfied hum.
"there it is."
"what?"
"acceptance."
"i accepted my fate."
"same thing."
silence settled over the room again.
it wasn't awkward.
just… peaceful.
outside, rain tapped gently against the apartment windows.
jason lazily traced circles against your side through one of his oversized hoodies you'd stolen weeks ago.
"you know," he muttered, "i was looking for this hoodie."
"no, you weren't."
"i absolutely was."
"you watched me steal it."
"i thought you'd give it back."
you looked over your shoulder.
"you've known me for how long?"
"…fair."
"i've claimed it."
"my hoodie."
"our hoodie."
he groaned dramatically.
"you've become a wayne."
"i'll start calling it 'our emotional support hoodie.'"
"i regret teaching you sarcasm."
"you practically invented it."
he laughed quietly, that alone made your heart melt. after another comfortable minute, he spoke again.
"…thanks."
you frowned.
"for what?"
"for staying."
the joking tone had disappeared.
his gaze was fixed somewhere on the blankets instead.
"you know… most mornings after patrol, i wake up expecting the apartment to be empty."
you turned around carefully until you were facing him.
his expression was softer than usual.
guarded, but honest.
you reached up and rested your hand against his cheek.
"i'm not going anywhere."
his eyes searched yours for a long moment.
"…promise?"
"i promise."
something in his shoulders finally relaxed.
he leaned into your touch almost instinctively.
then, with a tiny, almost embarrassed smile, he rested his forehead against yours.
"…good."
"you worry too much."
"i know."
"you know i like waking up with you..."
"i was hoping."
"i'm telling you."
another small smile.
"the apartment's a lot quieter when you're not here."
"so i'm loud?"
"you sing while making pancakes."
"i hum."
"you perform concerts."
"they're private concerts."
"they're not private if i can hear them from the bedroom."
you gasped dramatically.
"i've been exposed."
jason chuckled.
"i kinda like it."
"you do?"
"mhm."
"you'll never admit that in front of the others."
"absolutely not."
"good."
"dick would never let me live it down."
you both laughed.
the room felt warmer somehow.
jason reached over and pulled the blanket higher around both of you.
"one more minute?" he asked quietly.
you smiled.
"one more minute."
he nodded once, satisfied.
"…then coffee."
"and breakfast."
for just a little while longer, neither of you moved. the rain continued to patter softly against the windows, and wrapped up in blankets and each other, the rest of the world could wait.
you guys should totally give me more sfw ideas for this series 👀
also i js started posting on this acc too @cityafterdark so go check that out!!
stormborns
tangentwithtanner
gracieabrams
pixelskylines
origamiaround
discoholicmusic
