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The moonlight flutters inside, illuminating the sparsely furnished room for Jason's eyes to behold. His head rests on your stomach, and if he listens closely, he can hear the faint drumming of your heart above his head. For some odd reason, it calms him down. Steels his nerves. Grounds him. Reminds him that this, this is real. That you’re real.
Jason's arm is sprawled across your waist. You’re still asleep and he’s tempted to wake you up so he can talk to you. He’s not sure as to what he wants to talk about, but the emptiness in his chest is growing and he wants to hear your voice. Your voice always makes him feel better. It’s not rough, but it’s not soft either, it’s just right to him. The way you say certain words has butterflies erupting inside his stomach. Their wings tickling him and forcing his heart to stutter. And while he adores every single word that drips out of your honey coated mouth, his favorite has to be his name. He loves the way his name rolls off your tongue. He loves the way you call for him. And God does he love the way it sounds when you’re moaning it.
No - stop it, he reprimands himself.
His legs shift underneath the blanket, the cool sheets causing him to shiver. He swallows down the ball of emotions forming in his throat before letting out a shaky sigh. Unconsciously, he scoots closer to your body, fingers slipping underneath the hem of your shirt to trace patterns and figures into your skin. He draws stars, moons, at one point he even write his name followed by words that make him flustered.
Jason's head moves back and he glances at your sleeping face before making himself comfortable once more on your stomach. Mindlessly, his eyes bore into the scenery outside the window and he takes in the stars that dimly shine against Gotham's polluted skies.
Thoughts about the past take over Jason’s mind, forcing him to recollect his life and every action he’d ever made. His mind specifically wanders back to the time before he met you. Before he’d been ‘reborn’. His heart stings and his breathing labors. It feels like a lifetime ago, but it also feels like it happened yesterday.
Nobody ever tells you how hard it is to come to terms with who you are until you die. Then again, nobody tells you how hard it is to do the same thing after you die and then come back to life.
His nose scrunches. He was doing it again. Letting his mind wander freely. Letting himself think about the past when he knew he shouldn’t. He knows he can’t change it. He knows that, he swears he does. He’d be an idiot to try and convince himself otherwise. Even so, he knows there’s something he can change. He can change the way his future plays out. It’s because of that he hardly interacts with anyone from his previous life.
Or at least that's what he tells himself so that he isn't staying up on nights like these, trying to imagine life with those people in it.
Jason hasn’t talked to Dick since before... what happened. He also hasn’t talked to Alfred, surprisingly. He most certainly hasn’t talked to Bruce. He just doesn’t know if he can do it. If he can force himself to interact with the people who let him down. His heart burns when he thinks about them. The blood in his veins boils when he thinks about his premature death. He gets irrationally - is it even irrational? - angry when he thinks about how the people he would have - and still would, if he was more honest with himself - done anything for just let him down.
Sure physical pain sucks. Stubbing your toe isn't fun. Being scratched by the old cat you brought home on a rainy Sunday morning isn't fun either. But mental pain... Could he even call it that? It didn't sound like it did justice to what he had faced. If anything, it was more like mental torture. Being continuously told he wasn't enough. That no one, no one was looking for him...
Jason’s eyes screw shut. He needed to stop. He was trying to move away from the past, but he kept coming right back to it. It was like one endless circle. Every time he thought to himself that this, this would be the last time he thought about them, he’d do it again the very next day. It was getting annoying. It was taking a toll on him.
It didn’t help that you noticed his behavior. He hated that he was worrying you.
Jason remembers watching as your eyebrows furrowed together in worry when he would reply a little too late to your words. Jason remembers watching your pretty lips purse into a thin line when he would come home more bruised and battered than usual. Jason remembers watching your eyes gleam with worry and anxiousness when he’d randomly fall asleep before forcing himself awake.
You didn’t say anything, though.
And it wasn’t like you didn’t care! He knows that. He knows you’re not saying anything because you don’t want him to feel like he needs to tell you whatever is going on his brain. He's thankful for that, honest. But, sometimes, he'd just wish that you’d force him into a corner and make him spill his guts about whatever it was that was hanging onto the tip of his tongue.
But you’re not that type of person. You’d rather not make him feel uncomfortable, even though it's been so many years since he's been back. He doesn’t-
"Baby, are you awake?" You ask, voice low as to not disturb him if he was asleep.
Jason bites his tongue when he feels his heart flutter at how cautious you are even when you’re half asleep. Don't you realize it makes him feel guilty? That he feels like he doesn't deserve your love? Doesn't deserve you?
He decides not to reply.
He feels you shiver. "I'm sorry." You whisper again. If Jason wasn't focusing on just the sound of your voice, he would have missed it. It would have gotten tangled up with the sounds of Gotham City's bustling night life.
"I'm sorry you're hurting and I'm not doing anything." You continue. Your hand moves from your side and runs through Jason's messy black curls.
He bites his lower lip.
"I promise, when you wake up, I'm going to talk to you. We're going to figure this out."
A tear falls from his eye. It travels down his cheek before landing on your shirt. He prays you don't notice the drop.
"I love you," you repeat. Your voice is so sincere, so sweet, that Jason believes you.
You really are his light.