Hi Ghost! I would like to request an expansion on Jason Todd (Titans) and the reader listening to ABBA, please.
Thank you.
AH, OKAY. THANK YOU BECAUSE I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ON THIS ONE. <3
Jason Todd x ABBA Appreciation
Warnings: Feral Writer that has spent too much time thinking about this
It started a lot earlier than Jason probably realizes.
His time being bounced around from foster home to foster home was spent being mistreated by almost all of them. Almost.
There was an old woman who would come in to do upkeep in the small estate where Jason was staying.
The couple who had taken him in weren’t terribly rich, but as everyone knows, a little bit of money can get you a long way in Gotham.
They weren’t particularly cruel by Jason’s standards, but he was very aware of the role that he played in whatever game they were trying to win. The onscreen charity type. They only did good deeds when somebody was there to witness, but behind closed doors, they wanted nothing to do with him.
The only attention he was given was used to berate him. They were the type to scold him for things that weren’t his fault, out of his control, and lock the food pantries as a punishment. They’d eat their dinner right in front of him and send him to his room early if he was caught trying to sneak any for himself.
When the old woman would come in to do her job twice a week, Saturday and Sunday mornings while Mr. and Mrs. we’re out on some excursion Jason wasn’t invited to, well. Those days were always his favorite.
She’d wait until it was just the two of them and make him breakfast. He’d sit on the counter and keep her company while she washed the dishes.
He always liked the songs that she would hum under her breath during lulls in the conversation, leaving no room for awkward silences. It was comfortable. Comforting.
This carried over in a lot of ways. In the span of time he’d gotten to know Alfred before his passing and part of the reason Bruce buried him next to Alfred after he died was because Jason got attached from similar nature.
Alfred made him French toast just the way he liked it in the mornings and would always smile with pleasant conversation when Jason stuck around after breakfast.
The old woman would always make sweet comments about how she wished she could take him home with her, how she would have loved to have a son like him. A widow with no children to keep her company, she should have been in a long, happy retirement at her age, but she struggled to make ends meet, just trying to keep the house her husband had built when they were young and in love.
He always wished she would. That she would take him away from a place, where he was under the custody of people who managed to simultaneously neglect him and watch him like some kind of predator stalking its prey, just waiting for him to slip up so they could sink their teeth in and spew their venom.
There was only so much he could take before he ran away.
Sleeping in back alleys and under bridges, until he finally made himself a home above the school auditorium.
He would sit for hours and watch play rehearsals, bad high school renditions of Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was the end of the spring term, with summer break peeking around the corner that they all took a unanimous vote for their End of the Year Performance.
Mamma Mia.
Three days into rehearsals and two weeks after Jason had stopped shivering at night when the chill settled around the old building, the darkness grew shorter and the sun shined longer, he settled into a place where he felt comfortable. A place, in some strange way, he had made his own.
It was when they started rehearsing their songs that he recognized it. I Have A Dream. That was it. Unmistakable. He’d heard it dozens of times before, on the quiet mornings of the weekends when it was just the two of them. The way she’d hum, she captured the melody in its likeness.
That was the exact second Jason fell in love with ABBA.
He still thinks of the old woman from time to time. He’d thought about writing her letters, paying her a visit. He could never convince himself to take that final step.
But if a mysterious, unsigned envelope with more than enough money to close the mortgage on her house mysteriously showed up at her door one day, that’s nobody’s business.
He always thinks of her when he begins to hum Thank You For the Music. When he’s tired or stressed. Or just downright sentimental. He starts humming it under his breath before he even realizes he’s doing it.
Jason has two moods when it comes to playing music. When he’s blasting it as loud as it can go, because he needs to drown out his thoughts and maybe, if someone hears it. If they pay attention and listen, they’ll understand what he’s feeling. They’ll see him. Or alternatively, when he just needs the quiet comfort of not falling victim to the silence, when the soft melody barely above a hum from across the room is the only thing keeping him tethered without overwhelming him too much.
He puts a vinyl on every night before he falls asleep. If he doesn’t, then his mind starts reeling and he’ll jump on high alert at every sound he hears. Or his mind will trick him into thinking he heard something. This has resulted in him almost kicking the shit out of Gar on more than one occasion when he’s just trying to get a midnight snack.
Whether it’s the heightened sensitivity of his animal instincts and he just happens to overhear it or Jason confides in him in a lapse of vulnerability, Gar is probably the only person that knows about Jason’s full appreciation of ABBA. He keeps it a secret, but if anyone, at any point, brings it up, Jason will threaten them with death and/or dismemberment.
It’s when he meets that special person that he doesn’t mind not keeping it a secret. If they know about all the things he’s done, and they’re still there. They still love and accept him for some god forsaken reason, he doesn’t feel the need to hide anything. He’s silly and romantic and in the quiet hours of the morning, when everything’s warm and peaceful, sunlight peaking through the curtains and casting a soft glow across his faintly freckled skin, he’d press his lips against their neck and sing the words under his breath, whispered and a little raspy.
Still, as strange as it seems to be. It’s truly new to me. That affection. I don’t know what you do, you make me think that you will change my life forever. You thrill me, you delight me. You please me, you excite me. You’re all that I’ve been yearning for. I love you, I adore you. I lay my life before you.
