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There was something romantic about smoking- or just attractive, really. The way the dim light from the alley shone down, catching the wispy trail of smoke climbing up from his cigarette and casting yellow into the ashy white. It reflected over his face, scarred and shadowed and so effortlessly beautiful. Like each line and angle was plotted out in flowing ink, bringing him to life bit by bit, line by line, color by color.
He took another drag, the end of the cigarette glowing, embers fighting to reignite, and you couldn't help the way your eyes followed the puff of smoke that followed, drifting almost elegantly from between his lips, his fingers. It was pretty, you thought fleetingly.
And then you coughed. Your lungs burned their protest and your eyes watered in turn.
"That's shit for your lungs, you know," you commented with a wrinkle of your nose.
Gotham was cold and damp, especially at night. You couldn't help the shiver that made your spine ripple, even through your jacket with your arms crossed in a desperate bid for heat. Your back pressed into the textured concrete beside the door to your fire escape.
"Is it, now?" Jason asked back, sarcastic. Still, he took a final inhale, then pressed the end of his cigarette to the cool metal of the railing, extinguishing it and dropping it to the floor to safely scuff it out with his boot.
The red of his helmet glinted from the surface of your little wire table, the lonely little pot of mint that lived out here pushed to the side to make room. You used to have a matching chair, but that had been stolen right off your fire escape about two months into moving here. Even if it hadn't been, it probably would've been busted from the first time Jason had ever-so-gracefully crashed onto the rickety platform. It was why the wire legs of your table had to be bent back into place, and why you're missing your primroses.
"Y'g'na lecture me 'bout my lung health?" Jason asked in a mumble, casting a quick glance over to you.
You, who had welcomed him into your life and apartment only after some mild screaming and panicking. You, who had offered him decent painkillers and butterfly bandages because that was all you had in your first aid kit. You, who kept the blinds cracked for him and the door locked, but never told him to stop picking it to show up in the middle of the night. Sometimes Jason wondered if you were real or not. Perhaps just a piece of divine karma for all the shit he's been through in an admittedly short life.
Either way, Jason Todd was a selfish man. He'd take what you'd give him, no matter the lingering guilt.
You shook your head, still unsure of how exactly this little arrangement happened in the first place. You were still kind of upset about the primroses. "Nah." Lecturing a dead man about his health was redundant, anyway. You still weren't sure how to feel about that little detail. "You know. I just can't be around you."
He frowned at that, and the domino mask covering his eyes reflected eerily beneath the yellow alley light stuck into the side of the building above you. "Not a fan?"
Another head shake. "Asthmatic."
That, of all things, makes him tense. Guilty.
"Shit, sorry." He twists his boot against the grated floor of the escape, smushing the dead cig between the little holes like it would remove the lingering nicotine in the air. "Y'okay?"
He turns to you fully now, the red, metal bat-symbol on his chest reflecting your dim hallway light from past the glass door. The light wasn't intentionally dim, your landlord just didn't have brighter ones when he replaced it last month, apparently. It looked weird with the rest of your lights.
"I'm fine." You didn't miss how he pressed his back tighter against the railing, how he seemed to lean away from you like it could help. Considering the smoke in his breath, on his tongue and throat, it honestly could've.
Jason frowned deeper, the shadows falling harsher in the downwards angle of his head. His eyes were blocked out by his domino mask, but you could still feel their weight on you. If you squinted hard enough, you could delude yourself into thinking you could see the greenish-teal color of his irises through the white-out eyes.
For a long moment, you wished you could read him. To crack him open like a book and to read through his pages, analyzing every line, every bit of punctuation, all to find his deeper meaning. It would be a gift. And also a way to figure out what exactly went through his head every time he looked at you like that. With his lips turned down and his brows pinched in, and you couldn't see it right now, but you knew his eyes were soft in a way that felt like a mirage.
And Jason? Oh, how far he'd fallen.
To be a vigilante, a crime lord. Not a hero, but not a villain. To be the man that he was and was meant to be, but to crave the soft little pocket of your generosity. He was callused and cruel and far too bloodied to be around your cream curtains because he knew they'd stain, but you let him in anyway, and for that, Jason felt he was a monster.
It was the dethroning of a king, the defeat of a predator. Because how was he supposed to go back to Red Hood, night after night, knowing just how tenderly you'd cradle his pieces?
"Y'should go back," he mumbled, voice low enough to be carried away by the Gotham winds, drowned out by the sounds of the city and the crime that bled into every crack and crevice. A gunshot echoed, some blocks over. He made no move to leave. "'s late."
You adjusted yourself against the wall, tugging your jacket- one that was far too thin for a Gotham night all the way in November- tighter around yourself. When you looked at him, Jason wanted to look away.
You were too open, too welcoming of him. He, who stumbled and tripped in a hulking body that didn't know how to be gentle. He, who was too well acquainted with the weight of a gun in his hands and violence beneath his fists. He, who did not know how to love you in the way he wanted to. The soft edges to your expression felt jagged against his heart.
"You wanna stay a while?" Your voice made him want to melt, to collapse into your arms and let you soothe away the violence in his very bones, if only for the night.
Still, he shook his head. He'd always been good at depriving himself of what he wanted- needed, even. Clean air, consistent meals, sleep. Somehow, those felt like wants when compared to you.
The guilt was back now, burrowing deep into his chest and throbbing right along with the nod of your head. Your understanding stung, though he knew it shouldn't.
"Stay safe, yeah?" You were listening. God, of course you were listening. You always did, and Jason wasn't sure why. He couldn't be Red Hood around you, couldn't order you around like he did his men or his brothers. Yet, you still didn't push back, didn't try to challenge him. He ached with the weight of the knowledge.
"You know I can't promise that," he said, ignoring how much he wanted to. If only to put you at ease, even you'd both know it was a lie.
"Then try." You shrugged one shoulder, pushing off the wall with a sort of elegance that Jason couldn't avoid seeing when he was looking at you. His grip tightened around the railing, hands feeling too big, too clumsy against your easy movement.
You reached for his helmet, holding it delicately with both hands. With a quick glance down, you turned it, looking into it, where his head went, then looked back up at him expectantly. Hopefully.
Jason lowered his head, letting you slip it on over him as he bowed for you, reverent in the way he could be without feeling strange. The hydraulics hissed as it tightened, sealing around his neck, and he rolled it, readjusting to the weight. It was something intimate, in his mind- the closest he lets you get. He had to hope you understood it the way he wanted.
"Get some rest," he advised, some sort of nickname- pet name, a voice in the back of his head corrected, teasing. It sounded oddly close to Dick- on the tip of his tongue, but he caught it behind his teeth. He clenched them, swallowing roughly. "It's late."
"I will," you promised. Neither of you knew if it was a lie or not.
He waited for you to slip back inside, for the click of the door, then its lock, before reaching for the grappling gun on his belt. You waited for him to fire it off onto the neighboring rooftop, for him to jump from your creaking fire escape and disappear into the night, before sliding your blinds back into place. The tiniest gap between the end of the glass and the first panel served as Jason's constant invitation.
And he'd be there again. Maybe not tomorrow or even the day after, but he always came back. Like a moth to a flame. Almost like a simple truth. Eventually, Red Hood would come back to you. And you'd welcome him in, just the same.