#fuck toxic masculinity

[ok-notgood-probablybad]

that's exactly what I ordered

[hersheysmcboom]

The floor was cold. That was the first thing I registered. The sterile, unforgiving chill of industrial-grade tile seeping through the leather of my pants. The second was the light, a single, buzzing fluorescent tube overhead that cast everything in a sickly, palliative glow. My safehouse. Or it was supposed to be.

But they were here. Dick, Tim, Steph. Arrayed around me like a tribunal. My heart wasn’t beating; it was a trapped bird, slamming itself against the rusted bars of my ribs. This was it. The charade was over.

“Okay, whatever prank this is, just get it over with,” I bit out, the words tasting like ash. My voice was steady, a miracle. Inside, I was screaming. “Is Oracle recording this? Are you trying to get a confession so you can throw me back in Arkham?”

I tried to lock the fear away, shove it down deep where the Joker’s laugh couldn’t find it. But they could hear it. Of course they could. They’re detectives. They’re trained to hear the things people don’t say. They could smell the lingering stench of antiseptic and madness on me, the trauma of being caged with a monster.

Why not? You’re basically the same to them, a voice, my voice, whispered in the hollows of my skull. It was right. They’d seen me at my worst. They’d lived through it.

Maybe they’re right. Look at what you had. A family. A purpose. Look at what you became. You tried to kill each of them. At once.

The fight went out of me. My shoulders slumped, the weight of it all—the pit, the training, the rage—pressing down until my spine curved. I slid down the wall, the cold tile now against my back, and curled into myself. A pathetic, broken thing. A cornered animal.

They’re right. I am a monster. An undead freak come back from the dead to terrorize everybody who dared to care about him.

What was the point in fighting? The outcome was inevitable. I’d always known it. Bruce’s patience wasn't infinite. My probation had an expiration date, and I’d long since passed it. I put my hands out, wrists together, and waited on the floor. For the cold bite of the cuffs. For the heavy weight of an inhibitor collar. For the profound, silent disappointment that would be worse than any cell.

I didn’t look at them. I couldn’t.

But the cuffs didn’t come. Instead, a different pressure. Hands on my shoulders. Firm, but not harsh. Dick’s hands. I flinched, hard, expecting a blow. It never landed.

“Okay, first,” Dick’s voice was low, strained, but impossibly gentle. “Not Arkham. Never again Arkham. Maybe Blackgate if you ever… you know, acted like before, but we would never put you in Arkham again.”

A laugh ripped out of me. It was a ugly, shattered sound. “Yeah, right.” The words were a sob and a sneer tangled together. “Why keep around the sociopath who tried to kill everyone more than once?!”

And then the dam broke. The confession they supposedly wanted came pouring out, a toxic flood I couldn’t stop. I screamed it at the floor, at them, at the unfeeling walls. My crimes. The warehouse. The Pit. Coming back wrong, a fucking demon wearing a boy’s skin. Willingly training with monsters to become the very thing Batman taught me to never be.

I screamed about the jealousy, a green, viporous thing that lived in my heart, that made me hate Dick for being everything I wasn’t, that made me see Tim not as a kid but as a thief who stole my life. I screamed about fighting Dick on the rooftop, the way he’d begged me to stop, to come home, while I shot at him. I screamed about the knife. Tim’s gasp. The wet, hot shock of it as I pulled the blade from his gut. The sheer, unforgivable act of threatening Barbara. Of kidnapping the Replacement and trying to force Bruce to choose.

“I killed people!” I was hoarse now, my throat ragged. “Not for justice! Innocent people! Because I was in pain! Because I wanted him to hurt like I did!”

Bruce: I tried to save you.

Can’t save a monster.

Dick’s voice cut through the haze. “The point is, do you feel bad for what you did back then?”

The question was so absurd, so utterly simplistic, that it didn’t just stop my tirade. It stopped my world.

Feel bad?

The memories weren’t memories anymore; they were a 4D film projected on the inside of my skin. I felt the knife handle in my palm. Saw the blood on Tim’s uniform. Heard the desperation in Dick’s voice. Smelled the gunpowder. Feel bad? That was the understatement of the fucking century. It wasn’t guilt. It was a nuclear reactor of self-loathing melting down at my core, and the worst part? I still felt the echo of that green rage. The monster was still in the room. It was me.

I couldn’t breathe. There was no air. My lungs were stone. My vision tunneled, the buzzing light fading to a pinprick.

“Jason, Jason, breathe!” Dick’s voice was sharp with panic now. His hands shook my shoulders.

Breathe? How? The thought was distant, clinical. Corpses don’t breathe. I should have stayed dead. This is a malfunction. A glitch.

I heard Steph’s voice, high and scared. “What about CPR?!”

“Not gonna work!” Tim snapped back, his own voice tight. Of course not. CPR is for the living.

“911! My friend is maybe dying! Can you send an ambulance?” Steph was on her phone. Friend. The word meant nothing. It was a sound.

“Barbara, we need help!” Tim was yelling, probably into a comm.

“Jason, stay awake!” Dick was in my face now, his own breath coming in short gasps. His fear was a tangible thing. For me. It made no sense.

The edges of everything were turning soft and black. I was leaving. Finally.

Then Dick’s words pierced the static, clear and desperate. “Jason, listen to me, you are not that person anymore!”

It was the only lie I couldn’t let stand. With the last molecule of oxygen in my body, I clawed my way back, my eyes flying open to meet his. The truth had to be the last thing I said. My final confession.

“Yes,” I gasped, the word a raw, broken thing. “I am.”

The world dissolved into a chaos of shouting and static. But I was gone, falling back into the black, waiting for the cold steel.

I came back to the smell of antiseptic and the steady, electronic beep of a heart monitor. Not a safehouse. Not a cave.

A hospital.

My eyes fluttered open. White ceiling. Daylight filtering through blinds. And, slumped in chairs around the bed, were my judges. Dick, asleep in an uncomfortable-looking plastic chair, his head tipped back, dark circles under his eyes. Tim, scrolling silently on a tablet, one hand absently rubbing at his side, right where the scar would be. Steph, dozing with her head on Dick’s shoulder.

They were still here.

I shifted, and the movement jolted Dick awake. His eyes found mine instantly, wide with relief and exhaustion. “Jay?”

Tim looked up. Steph stirred.

I tried to speak, but my throat was sandpaper. Dick was there in an instant, holding a cup of water with a straw. I took a sip, the coolness a miracle.

The silence was heavy, full of everything that had been screamed and everything that hadn’t been said.

It was Tim who broke it. He didn’t look angry. He looked… tired. “For the record,” he said, his voice quiet. “The feeling bad part? That’s the part that means you’re not a monster. Monsters don’t feel bad, Jason. They just try to burn the world down with them.”

I stared at him. At the kid I’d left bleeding on a Titan’s Tower floor.

Steph nodded, her usual bravado replaced by a soft solemnity. “Yeah. What he said. Also, next time you decide to have a panic attack that codes your vitals, maybe give a girl a warning? I almost broke my phone yelling at the 911 operator.”

A sound escaped me. It wasn’t a laugh. Not yet. But it wasn’t a sob either.

Dick sat on the edge of the bed, his weight a solid, real presence. “They pumped you full of sedatives. You’ve been out for a while.” He looked at his hands, then back at me. “We weren’t there to take you anywhere, Jason. We were there because… because we were worried. You’ve been quiet. Too quiet. We came to check on you.”

“We came to bring you lunch,” Steph added, pointing to a forgotten paper bag on the windowsill. “I got you that disgusting spicy Thai place you like.”

They came to bring me lunch.

The belief was a physical pain, a fissure cracking open the stone in my chest. It was too much. The cuffs I expected. The collar. The righteous anger. Not this. Not concern. Not lunch.

I looked away from them, out the window at the Gotham skyline. The monster in my head was quiet, for once, stunned into silence.

“I don’t know how to… not be that person,” I whispered to the glass.

Dick’s hand found mine on the blanket. His grip was calloused and strong. A vigilante’s grip. A brother’s grip.

“You don’t have to know how,” he said, his voice firm. “You just have to keep trying. And we’ll be here. While you do.”

The heart monitor beeped its steady, rhythmic proof of life. For the first time since I’d clawed my way out of my own grave, the sound didn’t feel like a lie.

[dgct2]

Belmont Cameli wearing the Venice Pearl Necklace x

[potatopegger]

"Someone's future wife is someone else's Friday night" Yeah and someone's future husband is someone else's Friday night. People fuck, get over it.

[wherethefuckkisnatalie]

Every time Hudcon calls the other "baby", and angel gets their wings.

[poppydoppy925]

Toxic Masculinity PERFECTLY describes how I was treated throughout my childhood.

I was told that "Boys don't cry" on a regular basis (I cried a lot as a kid), was encouraged to be interested in stuff I didn't like (I.e. Sports, Nascar, getting dirty, monster/regular trucks, Farming (I live in the American South, and yes it sucks so bad down here), steak (I can't stand steaks), Hunting (Why would I shoot a cute baby deer's poppa on mount his head on the wall? I'M ALREADY A TAXIDERMIPHOBIAC!!!), Oh, I think I also remember being encouraged to harass women.🙃.)

Yeah no fuck the American South, and ESPECIALLY fuck it's toxic masculinity ways....

[nikkotrashmouth]

Whoever told men they couldn't do their nails or dress up ruined a lot of shit

[hersheysmcboom]