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Your legs swing back and forth where you're sitting perched on the counter of your kitchen, scrolling idly through take-out options on your phone while you wait for Jason. You'd sent him into the living room to put music on, admittedly, long enough ago to get suspicious, having told him that your record collection is expansive enough that he should be able to find something he likes.
Hopping off the counter, you make your way after him, turning the corner to see him standing in front of the bookcase next to your TV stand, staring at the records piled onto the shelves.
"Jay?" You ask gently, moving next to him to put a hand on his arm, smoothing over his skin under his t-shirt. He doesn't look at you yet, his eyes staying forward with his fists balled at his sides. You bring your hand up to brush through his hair gently and sigh.
"You'd talked about it so many times, you know," you explain. "The kind of turntable you'd get, the records you'd collect. When I started buying them for myself, I just thought… I don't know, it just felt right." Jason, as you speak, reaches forward to brush his fingers along the spines, tracing titles of all his favourites. He knows what you're talking about, of course - remembers the days of the two of you, young and broke and wandering the streets of Gotham, dreaming about all the things you knew you'd never really become. He just didn't think…
"I didn't," he clears his throat. "I didn't think you'd remember all this." You don't quite have it in you to hide your hurt at that.
"Of course… I remember everything about you, Jay. It's all - it was all I had left of you. Of course, I held onto it." There's an honesty in your words and Jason thinks he should be grateful for it, should thank you for cutting open your chest for him and letting him see inside.
"You shouldn't have," is what he says instead, and you pull your hand away from where it had been resting on his shoulder, wrapping your arms around your waist, instead.
"I'm going to go order dinner," you say gently, and Jason squeezes his eyes shut. "Take your time." When you leave, going back to the kitchen to find your phone, he stays standing in front of the records, letting his fingers brush over all the edges of them. There's something real about seeing them, about seeing the ways in which your grief manifested, real and tangible and taking up all this space in your life.
He picks up one of them, eventually, the sound of you chatting on the phone with whatever restaurant you've decided on snapping him back into the present movement and leading him to grab it. When he gets it set up on the turntable, letting the music fill your apartment, your home, the life you built while you were waiting for someone you thought would never come back, Jason finds himself wishing, just for a moment, that you had just moved on.
The guilt, of course, immediately follows this as he digs the heels of his hands into his closed eyes before following you into the kitchen just in time to see you hang up and drop your phone back onto the counter. You smile when you see him, patient and understanding in a way that makes his stomach roll.
"Do you want a drink?" You ask him.
"I'll get it," is all he responds with, putting his hands on your waist to quickly move you back up to the counter, sitting you there before making his way to the fridge. You let him - you always let him, seemingly knowing when he needs to be kind, to do something good with this body of his. You let him pull a beer out of the fridge, popping the cap off and catching it. You let him wipe the condensation off of it before he hands it to you so that your palm doesn't get wet. You let him do whatever it is that he needs to do while he thinks whatever it is that he needs to think, sipping slowly while he stands between your parted legs.
"You shouldn't have waited for me," he says quietly, and you pause with the bottle half to your lips.
"I wasn't waiting. I was remembering." You put the bottle down next to you on the counter, placing a cold hand onto Jason's cheek.
"You should've forgotten," he pushes.
"I chose not to," you retort, voice still gentle, hands still kind. "I didn't want to forget about you, baby. I couldn't let myself." Jason sighs, letting his head hang as his hands tighten their grip on the edge of the counter on either side of your hips.
"You deserve better than that, baby," he says sullenly, and you cup his cheek in your hand as you coax him to look at you.
"There is nothing better than the ways that you've loved me, Jason. I couldn't possibly deserve more," you say, blinking as your eyes mist over. Jason notices it, naturally, making a wounded sort of noise and cupping your face in his hands, his palms solid and warm and grounding as he leans his forehead against yours.
"You wasted three years on me and I… I can't forgive myself for that. I can't forgive myself for doing that to you, for leaving you the way I did," Jason says, his voice choked. You pull back to look at him firmly.
"You didn't leave me, Jay - you were taken from me. I mourned you because I lost you. None of that is your fault… and it never will be." Your voice is clear when you say it and Jason almost, almost smiles at the stubbornness that you wear so well. But he can't help but see those records every time he closes his eyes and he can't help but imagine you buying them, putting them on your shelf one by one as you let the grief consume you.
"Did you ever date? While I was dead?" He says it easily - or, in a way that's supposed to seem easy, pulling away from you to get his own beer from the fridge and leaning against the opposite counter while he pops it open.
"Excuse me?" Is your only response. He doesn't say anything more. "No, Jason, I… No. No, there was never anyone other than you. You know that - I've told you that. If you don't believe me, I -"
"I believe you, baby," he says, and the relieved slump of your shoulders only lasts until he speaks again. "I just think you were wrong for that."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You should've moved on with your life," he says, and there's a hard edge to his voice that you're sure you don't appreciate being pointed in your direction. "You should've moved on from me ."
"Well…" you say carefully. "That's not a decision you get to make for me. And it's not a decision that holds a lot of weight now, seeing as you're, well, alive and standing in my kitchen wearing my sweater."
"You wasted three years on me," he presses on. You stiffen.
"I grieved for three years," you retort. "I sent flowers to your grave every week for three years. I - I built a home and a life for myself and I had to do it without you and, yes , I tried to fill that life with whatever pieces of you I could hold onto because I loved you and I missed you. And you're telling me now, what? I should have just gotten over it?" Jason stares at you through your outburst, at your trembling lip and watery eyes and your hands, fists clenched so tight he's sure your nails are digging into your skin. He stares, eyes wide and mouth open as he searches for words, until you burst into tears.
That, of course, is enough to have him lurching forward, slamming his beer bottle onto the counter as he gravitates towards you, slotting himself between your parted legs again to shush you and hold you and wipe the tears from your cheeks.
"I'm sorry, baby," he whispers, over and over. "I'm so sorry, please don't cry for me." Your palm connects with his chest as you slap him weakly, your other hand scrubbing at your eyes.
"You still don't get it, Jay," you lament. "You're the only person worth crying for." He laughs a bit at that, finally, and pulls you impossibly closer.
"I'm sorry, pretty," he says again, his lips pressed to your forehead. "I just…"
"I know, baby," you sigh, letting yourself relax against him, your tears slowing as you sniffle. "I know."
"I love you so much," he says earnestly. "And I - I'm grateful that you waited. That you remembered. I…" he sighs then, his grip tightening on you as he blinks back his own tears. "Thank you for remembering me," is all he says, and he hopes so desperately that the way he clutches onto you will help you realize how much it all means to him.
"Of course, Jay," you soothe, running a hand through his tousled hair. "That's what being loved is, I think. It's remembering. And I… I love you always, you know? I'm happy to remember you, always - even when that's all I have left of you." Jason sighs at your words, his eyes squeezing shut. He knows what you mean - knows his mask will claim his life once again, that you'll be left alone once more. You never talk about it, too scared to bring it up, but you both know the truth. The possibility is just too high that one day, Jason won't come home for the second time.
He isn't sure who takes more comfort in knowing that he's solidified in your life enough that he'll never really be gone. He isn't sure it's so good - that he wouldn't still prefer you move on to something with hope and safety and happy endings.
But he knows that he's loved and that he's remembered, and that's enough for him to settle for tonight.