The worst part is that Jason thinks he’s this mangled mess – he’s covered in scars that burden him down with memories of those six months he spent in an abandoned wing of Arkham Asylum with him, being beaten to a pulp with a crowbar and hollowed out from the inside.
Every bit of Jason is ugly he thinks, from his crooked smile with chipped teeth to his bruised knuckles to the J burned into his cheekbone. He’s a picture of violence personified. But, you don’t think so. You think his smirk is charming and that J stands for Jason not Joker. He’s uniquely his own hero – and the new medication helps him calm the swell of emotional storms that batter this mental shore.
Sometimes, though, when he comes in from patrol and hauls that ceramic body armor off you can feel the self-hatred roll off him. He shuffles around the small safe-house like a shell of a man, looking tired and weary and naked in the light of the Gotham City. Sometimes, you pretend to be asleep, you pretend not to watch how his muscles tense as he dresses any wounds from the night’s reaping, how he gasps out angry sobs, how he tells himself to be better.
Most of the time, though, you sit up and whisper his name and Jason melts right into your arms. The gauze and antiseptic is long forgotten in favor of your touch, and the hulking vigilante buries his face into your shoulder. Black hair tickles your nose and you kiss his head anyway, ignoring the blatant helmet hair and smell of gasoline and gun smoke that clings to him like a shroud.
He’s adamant about touching you, and you’re the same – he’s warm and nearly furnace-like and his skin is the same. Those scars aren’t so ugly when you kiss them or when you worry over him like he means something.
Jason’s grip is tight and he tells you that you mean the world to him.
You make him feel a little less worthless, a little less mangled.
jason is not letting any of us breathe with his gorgeousness
Published
Toad's Cave 