In which Jason Todd accidentally message a girl when he has the wrong number. She then doesn’t leave him alone and he hates it. At least he thinks he does. Slowly, but surely though she is working her way into his daily life and heart.
The roof is Jason's. Roy finds it by instinct. You fit into the configuration without requiring adjustment — three people on compatible frequencies who stopped needing to explain themselves to each other a while ago. Roy produces cigarettes from somewhere. Jason has stopped asking where. This is the best bad idea I've had all week, Roy said. There's a spectrum, he clarified. Tuesday was worse. Jason told him to shut up. Roy said see, that's more like it. Gotham kept being Gotham below them.
Jason died at seventeen. Most days the architecture he's built on top of it holds. Then the Joker's laugh comes through a feed — filtered, distant, from a screen in a cave where he is safe — and it bypasses everything. His jaw tightened. His breathing changed. His hand was trembling when he extended it toward you. You good? This stuff can be a lot. You can — if you need to. The framing was for your benefit. The hand was shaking. Both of you understood which one was true. You took it without saying anything. His fingers closed immediately. Too fast for someone doing this for you. He didn't let go until it was over.
Jason Todd does not take vacations. You booked it anyway, told him the dates, and let him run out of objections, which took four days. He put his phone away an hour in. Checked it twice when he thought you weren't looking. Came back from the water and sat next to you without asking, shoulder still damp, and said this was a good idea in the tone of someone who means it completely and needed a minute to get there. Your idea, he said. For the record. A relationship already built — about someone who doesn't have an off switch, trying anyway, because you're the reason he wants to.