Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jason is all broad shoulders, intentful, deadly prowl, functional muscle of his core and thick thighs. You know him to be a book-nerd, an excellent chef due to Alfred and learning to cook from the british butler over the delight of finally having a stable, high quality food source. 

So it’s all the more starling whenever he comes home like a ghost.

He’s not moving with intention but on autopilot. The white snowflakes cling to him even in your apartment like the cold hands of death remembering that Jason was hers once instead of yours. Normally Jason is a furnace due to his size and they’d have melted by now. He’s not wearing his helmet but a thick scarf and balaclava that clearly did nothing as evidenced by his shaking.

Unless the trembling was from something else. 

He hasn’t said a single word, and simply stares at you with faraway eyes. 

“Sit for me, Honeylove? I can’t reach otherwise.” You break the silence like one stepping on ice they weren’t sure would hold their weight. You were not afraid of Jason hurting you-not anymore- but rather of seeing him retreat further into himself.  

He comes back to you. 

For you.

You see his faded green eyes light up to the same vibrant shade of the green Christmas tree lights in the corner. What does it mean to be the light at the end of the tunnel for one like Jason? You are the only person who has ever put him first. 

He rasps your name.

“Yes Jason, welcome home. You’re cold, can you bend so I can reach to get them off?” You gesture to his scarf. When he had died, you two were roughly the same height. 

Now,

He was head and shoulders and a little extra taller than you. 

“I….I drifted off there. Sorry.” He is quietly mortified. 

He doesn’t just stoop but obediently sits down so he is eye level with you. He likes being as close as possible to you. 

Jason never sits with anyone other than you. 

Red Hood prowled among his men. Jason’s visits to the manor are getting longer at your encouragement but he never sits for dinner, never gets off his feet in case he needs to run. 

 In this current moment his pupils never leave you even as his lashes flutter in exhaustion and guilty pleasure at the feeling of your fingertips tracing his features once the items are off. His skin is dry from the winter cold and you can imagine what that does to his sensitive scars. He seems to track your motions, how you have to strain to reach him even sitting. When you lift his arm to take off his gloves his bare, scarred, large hands twitch and wrap around your own. He focuses on how his palms swallow your fingers.

“No need to apologize ‘cause you didn’t do anything wrong.” You say to distract him. 

“I scared you.” He says roughly. The fluttering lashes are now blinking rapidly. His posture is noticeably shrunken, like he’s trying to make himself smaller to match you. To assure you. 

You pause. 

Jason had scared you, at first, to your eternal shame. 

You both grew up in Crime Alley together and you had a history with big violent men, how badly they could hurt you. When you had reunited with Jason again after thinking him to be dead from the Joker it had been with him as Red Hood fresh off of killing his murderer. You had been terrified thinking the mystery man had taken up one of Joker’s old titles to take over as the new insanely cruel King of Crime. When he had come to you you had begged.

Pleaded for your life.

Offered yourself up to him in any way that pleased him as long as he didn’t kill you. 

Only to be surprised when Red Hood had made the noise of a wounded animal, as if your tears and begging hurt his very soul. The huge man had stumbled back from you, looking at his large palm in front of him, to your own hand splayed across your chest, as if protecting your hummingbird fast heart. 

He had them raised, shaking as if to calm you, he surrendered, then lifted his helmet. 

You had looked at him in pure uncomprehending confusion and fear. He had a J scar on his cheek. He had scruff. His was the angular face of a young man you had never met before. 

He looked at you as if expecting you to know him. 

As you stared in blank fear Hood had collapsed to his knees, taken down in a way not even Gotham’s finest had managed by your lack of acknowledgement and told you the truth. 

He had changed so much. His body was not one you recognized. When you told him that in so many stammering words he had flinched. 

“You used to scare me.“ You admit. You are woman enough for that. 

“You don’t scare me anymore.”

“Not even when I get mad?”

“You have a lot to be mad about. And I know you're not the type to hurt your loved ones like that.” If you thought Jason was the type for domestic violence you would have gone to the rest of the Batclan long ago. 

This seems to startle him.

“Jason, you have a right to anger. I…I know I haven’t handled angry men well in the past but it’s different when it's you. I see how everyone was sad, grieving, and full of pity, but none of them were angry for you. It’s okay, really.”

He trembles harder. 

“C’mon. I got Alfred’s hot chocolate on the stove, A Muppet's Christmas Carol on in the background and the heated blanket on. Let's warm you up.” 

Jason seems hesitant to stand but does so at your beckoning. 

He winces.

You stop immediately. 

He was not dirty in a way that indicated a fight on a level high enough to hurt him.

“Jason?” Now you’re getting scared.

He looks away and mumbles something.

“Please? This is what's scaring me now.”

He whips his head back.

“I-uh, the cold. It hurts my scars.”

You close your eyes in grief.

“...Do you want a massage?”

Jason’s throat bobs, his eyes light in excitement and he seems to want to say yes, but he bits his lip. 

“You sure?”

“Of course I am!” You grin. 

You were studying to be a nurse, and already had a massage therapist certificate-you had gotten it as part of your studying of the human muscular system. 

The movie plays in the background and the scent of hot cocoa wafts through the room as you bring two mugs through the open bedroom door. 

Jason has dressed down to his boxers and a white undershirt. 

He seems to be hesitating.

His palm rests over the vivisection scar the same way your own hand often jumped to your heart. 

To even things out you also get down to your panties and a camisole you wore during winter. 

“Get on the bed for me?” You ask softly.

He scrambles to comply, whipping off his shirt.

You know exactly what it means for a man like that to leave himself vulnerable before you and you would rather die than throw away that trust. It took so long for Jason to reveal his body to you.

He had crawled onto your balcony and collapsed on your bedroom floor. It had taken you hours to pick out the glass, sterilize the wounds, and do the stitches. In part because seeing the extent of his scars had blurred your vision with tears and had made you so furious your hands shook with the urge to strangle anyone who had ever touched your childhood bestfriend turned lover. He was more injury than unmarred skin. You were aware the two of you were codependent but couldn’t bring yourself to care. 

Jason lays down.

His pupils have blown wide.

He looks like a painting laid out like this.

You oil up your hands and crawl onto the bed and onto him. You relish in the feeling of the slow drag of your lotion soft skin over his rougher, textured skin. Skin with history. Each scar a story, information. 

You lift yourself up and gently settle by straddling his thick waist. 

Right above the vivisection scar. 

“Hey honeylove. It's okay. Breathe with me, match my breaths, okay?”

It’s extremely intimate as his large hand comes up and under your cami, palms resting against the softness of your tummy, fingertips brushing the underside of your breasts. You feel the little nicks and scars on the pads of his fingers from a mishandled batarang as a preteen.

His hand follows the movement of your ribcage.

Under your thighs you feel his lungs expand, the effortless way he draws in a deep breath despite your whole bodyweight on him, the way his front rises with you on it. 

He looks at your skin. Soft. The occasional patch of stretch marks or acne scars.

Then his own.

That's it.

He breaks.

“Jesus! How can you even look at me?!” Jason spits. The sheer amount of self-disgust and horror catches you off guard. 

 His head turns sharply, his hair-overdue for a cut- flies in his face and cuts off his gaze. You can feel him trembling under your legs and the apex of your thighs. 

“Oh baby, no, don’t say that.” You whisper. 

“I-why put up with me? When I haul my ass through your door how are you not scared? Why don’t you call Batman on me?” He says tearfully. Your Jason had always been a cryer, going all the way back to your earliest childhood memories with him. He hid it well but his heart was big. A big target for a cruel world. Big like everything else was about him now. 

A huge arm comes up to place his forearm over his eyes. His chest heaves with muffled sobs and almost knocks you off.

His other arm comes up and around your waist before you’re sent to the floor.

“Sorry!” He sobs. 

Your face twists up.

You lean forward and press your chest to his, tuck your face into the junction of his shoulder because you can imagine no greater place of safety and comfort. When you had told him that the first time he had looked at you like you had hung the stars.

You both cry.

Jason holds you to him like your body could cover his own body that he hated so much.

“Jason when you died I felt a piece of my heart go with you. Having you back in any capacity, in any way, shape, or form, it’s a damned miracle. I am so grateful everyday, I-it doesn’t matter to me what you look like!”

Jason scoffs.

That hurts.

“You don’t believe me?” You whimper.

“No, wait, I-you don’t need to say that to make me feel better.”

“Well I was saying that ‘cause it’s the truth! Ya know what, I’m gonna say something else-I think you’re really handsome!” You say resolutely, sitting up on his torso to put your hands on your hips, mouth in a frown as if daring him to challenge you.

He doesn’t.

His eyes simply trace your mouth.

There has been a time Jason had felt shame and disgust towards himself about his attraction to you. You had also felt guilty the first time you realized that Jason’s size was a turn on for you, self-flagginating for the crime of objectifying Jason. You didn’t want to sexualize a man you knew had spent so much time dehumanized. 

“...you do?” He wonders. 

You smile softly at him.

To think, the terrifying Red Hood, the one all the online forms lusted over and characterized as a casanova with a million notches in his belt, was yours and only began to explore pleasure with you.

“I-I get so confused sometimes. I forget I’m alive. I forget that I’m this now. When we were Christmas shopping the other day past the store windows I nearly yelled at you to get down, cause I didn’t recognize that man walking next to you. But it was me!” Jason bursts out sounding completely devastated. He had died young, only 15. A few weeks before his murder you had taken him to your prom as you were a Junior and he was a Sophomore in highschool, and only Juniors and up had Prom’s. He had been an inch shorter than you.

“I don’t look like this in my head!” He follows up. His arm lowers from his face to scratch deep pink into his scar tissue. The vivisection scar.

You rock your hips forward to stop him, blocking his access as he’d have to go through your thighs. You take his hands and he lets you place them on your hips and he holds onto them like a lifeline.

“I’m not them. Please. I wouldn’t do that to you.” Jason begs you to understand, maybe to convince himself. 

“I know. I wouldn’t be here otherwise, beautiful.”

Jason shudders at your pet name. He looks like he wants to believe it so desperately. Others thought Jason was not the ‘pretty’ one. That was Dick. Tim was the handsome one. Duke was charming. Cass was graceful. Steph was beautiful. Damian was cute despite the murder attempts.

“Don’t go. Don’t…” Jason can’t finish his request. Can’t dare to ask you to stay forever and chain you to Frankenstein's monster. Mary Shelly’s book had been your favorite once upon a time and you and Jason used to read classics out loud to each other. When you tried to do so again and picked up Shelly’s book he had a panic attack. 

He was asking you to not leave him like everyone else in his life had. 

“I’m here. I’m real. See?”

You place his hand over your heart. Watch like a hawk as his adam's apple bobs, his pupils dilate-you notice how they never reflect that spark of life anymore. The pads of his thumb rub circles into your skin, his fingers outline your breast.

“I dreamed about you when I was trapped. They didn’t know about you like Batman so it was the one thing the Joker couldn’t take from me.” Jason murmurs. 

It devastates you all over again.

“I saw you everywhere Jason!” The confession burst out from you with a sob you hadn’t expected. 

“I sat at your grave and read out loud until I lost my voice!”

“I know.” Jason says quietly.

You desperately try to catch your breath. You need to let him know. 

“You’re stuck with me for life, unfortunately.” You try to say lightheartedly. “Now that you're back I’m sinking my claws in.” You take your oiled up hands and teasingly grip his biceps. Very muscular. 

He grins wobbly. 

You can’t help yourself and kiss that scarred lopsided smile, then his crooked nose from breaks, his jaw, his ‘J’ scar, both eyelids in a futile attempt to express the amount of love you feel for him.

“Alright alright!” He laughs, hiccoughing one last time. “My turn!”

You squeal as he effortlessly flips you beneath him, peppering you with kisses, pulling both your wrists into one hand that easily pins them above your head, wrapping your legs around his waist and effortlessly pinning you with his weight. Some of the only times he forgets to hate his size is when he uses his body to love you, loves how he can give it to you and you just have to take it.

Your peals of laughter turn into a surprised moan when he shifts and accidentally brings his front to your apex. He’s so big that even relaxed you feel the weight of him pressed to you. 

He stills.

His eyes are so dark as they look at you, searching, then hunting. 

“...Easy there cowboy. We’re not done with your massage.” You breathe. 

Jason takes the hint and slowly gets off you and settles on his stomach next to you. You straddle his waist again from the back this time. You work out deep knots in his shoulders and triceps and clench your thighs at his deep, rumbly moans, the vibrations shooting right through his back to where you're connected sitting on his waist. As you work out a kink in his back his hips jolt beneath you, harshly grinding himself into the mattress and you can’t help your high pitched whine in response as his movement also causes your hips to jerk forward and your barely covered clit to grind against the hard plane of muscles on his back.

He mutters something like a prayer and you grin.

You lean forward and then sink your teeth into his neck to give him a fierce hickey. 

He gasps. 

His hands clench the thin sheets so hard they tear. 

He reaches back and flips you onto your front. In a single motion he pulls your panties down to your knees, lifts up your camisole to expose your chest, and has kicked off his own boxers to reveal his dripping length. It’s a bright angry red and you are about to make a untimely joke about the color matching his Hood when he pins your arms again, spreads your thighs, and reaches down with a calloused thumb to flick your clit.

You wail.

“C’mon. Sing.” Jason breathes hot and heavy at your back, pressing his weight to you and pinning you. His index and ring finger spreads you wide and his middle finger rubs fierce circles to your clit.

The overstimulation causes your legs to snap together but his ankles wrap around your and pulls them open. His cockhead begins rutting against your entrance, the large tip catching and pulling, making you clench around nothing. 

You cum so hard your vision whites out and everything between your thighs is covered in your honey. 

Jason finally allows you to close your thighs only to use the new slickness to guide his length between and start thrusting. You feel each pass of veiny length against oversensitive folds, the blurring of his tip as it pulls your clitoral hood back with each thrust to fully expose your clit with the drag, then the hot wet pressure of his cock’s skin against your little bud.

You shake apart under him and he follows almost immediately, gasping into your hair, mouth on you neck like a wolf’s jaws around a rabbit, pinning you in a mockery of the hickey you gave him before, holding you close as you feel his cock jerk and sputter between your legs, as spunk shoots onto your chest and drips from your nipples. 

Jason collapses to the side, pulling you on top of him again as you both catch your breaths. The earlier despair is forgotten as the two of you clean up and laugh. Jason pinches the nipple he licked clean and you squeal in indignation as he takes a sip of the now lukewarm cocoa. 

You two settle in to watch the movie and you finally allow yourself to calm, knowing Jason isn’t going anywhere, and neither are you.