Sheer Irony
(Part 2)(Part 3)(Part 4)
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Time written- 5:58 p.m
Titans!Jason Todd/fem!reader angst/fluff (TW: Suicide Mention/Attempt)
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A faint breeze blows along your cheeks as you open the door, eyes glazing over a broad horizon full of dreary skies and rooftops. You find who you’re looking for standing ontop of a metallic platform framing along the edge of the building, his downturned head peering down at the dense, vacant streets below.
A long, harsh, catastrophic drop with just the wrong step.
Confusion rattled your mind when you wondered exactly what the hell was going on, never seeing such a trifling event happen in the common area. Millions of questions followed once you heard the screaming.
A million more followed suit when you walked in on the hostile environment, the air thick with static tension.
“You people are insane!” He had cried out by the second you entered the room, surprised to find a short crowd of people against him. Friends, colleagues, all glaring at him with accusations you didn’t fully hear.
“I’d rather be with Deathstroke than you assholes,” Jason states with an emotional quiver in his tone, growing more detectable towards the end of his words. “You think everything’s my fault.”
“Jason?” You call out to him, seeing his head lightly peek over his shoulder. Whether he heard you or not, he knew you arrived once the door was slammed shut behind you due to the wind.
“What do you want?” He asks with understandable bitterness wrapped up in a solemn tone, as if you were a stranger he could’ve cared less about.
Technically, you and Jason were colleagues for a long time, but never really reached the category of friends.
He was an obnoxious, painfully reckless Robin, but he was good. You were good, training yourself to set your differences aside to put the tasks at hand. You provided data, not violence.
The task now was to set those barriers of yours down with intentions to knock on his.
“To talk.” You reply, not wanting to approach further than you had to, but a huge part of you wanted to go further.
“Look. I don’t wanna hear any more bullshit—“
“Not about that,” you insist. “Just to talk, that’s all.”
To talk, to buy time. Anything.
Waves of guilt coursed through your veins for him, for his safety. The strong winds could easily sweep him off his feet if he allowed it, the tension in his braced legs preventing him from slipping off the ledge he stood on for now.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Jason states, his lungs burning with reach trembling breath he took. “The others think you’re crazy following me out here.”
“I don’t care what they think,” was your response, rooftop gravel crunching underneath your shoe as you took a slow step forward. “I don’t want you to be alone out here. That’s what matters.”
“Why?” He questions, refusing to turn around and face you with full disbelief on his face. “You hate me. You can’t stand me every time I’m around. No one can.”
“That’s not true,” you shake your head, slowly getting yourself to take another step forward. About four feet of distance remained between you and Jason, your mind cluttered with ideas on how to get him
“Jason, I don’t hate you.”
“You don’t need to lie to me,” Jason mutters, not believing you for a good second. You understood that he wouldn’t trust anyone after what you witnessed. You didn’t want to be on that side.
The steel frames were tall enough for you to hop up yourself, but the height was unnerving.
He remained quiet, pondering his rancid emotions running nonstop in his head. He felt himself nothing but poison; black pitch that stuck to everyone who so much as touched him, costing their skin like a cancer until it killed them.
That’s what was happening now, wasn’t it? Everyone was hating him, blaming him for things he didn’t understand. Now, here you were, coming up to add onto the pile. He assumed that on the spot. Why else were you here?
Bracing your hands along the beam, you push yourself up on it, fighting back your fear of heights to put yourself into this vulnerable position. Thinking slowly, you ponder over what else you could do, thinking over in your mind.
“Wanna sit?” You say, hoping he’d take the hand that offered such an innocent suggestion. “Talking is easier to do when sitting.”
To show this, you move into a sitting position beside him, feeling a little less tense on your concerns for falling. Jason doesn’t take the bait at first, only wondering as to why you were still even trying with him.
“You don’t need to be here,” he reverberates, but you weren’t going to have it.
“Neither do you,” you glanced up at him, seeing his attention fully focused on you, sitting beside him as of the ledge was just an every day public park bench.
Reluctantly, he shifts his position, leaving you to thank the Gods. With Jason sitting, you had much better control and opportunity to catch him, with the roof behind you to break both your fall.
“Do you want the truth?” You hesitantly ask, wondering if that’s what he needed. Someone who didn’t follow the others, who didn’t view him as a scapegoat to their problems, just because the unintentional category he fell into without realizing.
Just a glance of his bruised face in your direction after staring ahead for so long gave you the sign, smoothing your sweaty palms over thighs.
“You can be… obnoxious sometimes,” you proceed, slowly making the decision to proceed. “But not dark, or annoying, or… Look. I don’t get why they accused you on the spot. I really don’t.”
Silence continued to rattle his physique. His shifting head slowly peering downwards after hearing your words. His heartbeat began drumming in his head, his lungs burning with an irritated sting, his throat going dry.
“I might not like how you are, Jason,” you blatantly confess, “But I tolerate you enough to understand that you didn’t deserve this.”
There it was. Catching him off guard by cold facts, only to soothe the blow with truth. Your truth, the truth that should matter.
Not everyone was against him.
A part of him appreciates it, but at the same time, he grew irritated at your persistence to tell him what he already knew. It only made his feelings for you that much harder to understand.
He was supposed to not like you.
You were smart, yes. You popped one liners when you helped relay information to the Titans, read books and kept journals by yourself during your free time, and listened to music when you were in desperate need of relief after plenty of audible overstimulation.
The way you had your hair styled on different days, your persistence of spraying perfume on yourself before going to bed.
You weren’t loud, you weren’t overtly quiet. You respected business and boundaries, despite your job to hack and defy the purpose of them behind a computer screen.
He hated how unique yet simple you were. No one would suspect you of your talents, balancing your double life with little to mo effort.
“You don’t deserve this, Jason,” you say in order to remind him, watching his calloused fingers slowly flexing in his lap, signifying his various difficult emotions. You’d say it as many times as you needed to, to ram it into his every day thoughts.
“I don’t hate you,” you shake your head, peering at his battered, slowly healing face. “And… maybe I don’t entirely hate just how annoying you are. Sometimes, it makes things fun on a boring night.”
The corner of his busted lip rose in a faint, subtle smile. That made an interesting amount of sense. Maybe he was the type to irritate you on purpose, especially during his much earlier days.
His much earlier, flirtier Robin days.
“How annoying?”
Maybe, just maybe, being his friend didn’t sound like such a bad idea.
“Horribly,” you instantly reply as it became your turn to smile. “I mean it. Every day I wake up and dread what stupid thing you’d say next. What could you possibly say today for me to cringe at.”
If the both of you weren’t sitting on the edge of a building, Jason would have half a heart to nudge you with his shoulder. But, he knew your fear of heights.
“You think of me?”
“It’s hard not to, Jay.”
—
“Did I miss a party?” You announce as you enter the dark, gloomy hallway, coming to an abrupt halt at the sight of two tall men talking to one another. A pile of unconscious bodies explaining their rigorous treatments just moments before you arrived.
“You missed the fun,” Jason chides, an amused smirk quickly growing on his face. The first full bodied smile Tim had seen on Jason since they met.
“A little earlier, you coulda joined in on your kickass computer skills.”
“Oh, ha ha,” you say, catching sight of Jason’s said laptop abandoned on the ground, bits of broken glass hinting at an unsalvageable screen. “Looks like someone beat me to it already.”
“It’s you.” Tim’s voice makes your head raise, giving the man a smile as you take in his Robin uniform.
“It’s me,” you reply, feeling a nostalgic flutter in your chest upon seeing that uniform worn by someone new. “I see Dick passed on the torch. How’s it feel?”
“He’s learning fast,” Jason gestures with a raised finger before pointing towards the bodies. “Very fast.”
“I see that.”
Ever since you had made the choice to step back from your position with the Titans a while back, life had gotten more chaotic in very unexpected ways.
You changed; in heart, in mind, in maturity.
You’ve grieved your best friend’s death, silently took pleasure in violent justice in the deaths of those who’ve betrayed and harmed your colleagues. You grieved once more when masks were unveiled, and even aided the wrong crowds for a while.
At your age, you’ve seen it all, you’ve learned from other peoples mistakes, as well as your own. You hated it, but accepted the lessons learned. As off as that sounds, that’s the best way you could describe it.
You kept in touch with Dick when he needed the help from the ‘attractive computer geek,’ so you were at least aware of what was going on. Hearing it all from Tim’s perspective brought back the times when you used to work alongside a particular ex-Robin, who remained standing close to your side during all topics of discussion.
“I got to meet the great Red Hood,” you watched with a smile a few steps up on the staircase as Tim prods Jason’s chest in a friendly manner, causing a flare in his ego as he chuckles in response.
“Don’t forget her,” Jason gestures his head up towards you, Tim’s eyes catching the faint flush in your cheeks.
“Poor girl’s kept us from running around with our heads cut off for years.”
“Always gotta respect the tech workers,” Tim agrees with a nod, making you scoff in amusement. “At least you didn’t call me ‘customer support’. That’s Grayson’s favorite.”
You said you were leaving when Tim was considerate to offer you a ride, but you brush off that you had your own, intending to head out for a date in two hours.
But, you weren’t.
The Titans, old or new, didn’t need to know all your secrets, regardless if cracking them was your specialty.
“You gave him your bike?” You ask once he gets off the phone with said old bird, approaching him as he gazed up at a clear board with various equations scrawled on the surface.
“Just sits there getting dust in the corner. I trust him to take care of it.” Jason sips at his dark drink once more before trailing off to the side, setting the bottle down.
“Still on for tomorrow night?” Jason asks, watching smile form on your face. The date. It was kinda true.
“Of course. Just came by to get my lipgloss.” You smirk, raising up your cherry flavored lip product you had to fetch from under his bed where it had rolled. “Forgot it here last night, remember?”
“How could I ever.” Jason replies with a lowered rumble, recalling all the memories of the night prior, involving getting sticky, glittery cherry gloss along his lips, leaving remnants of it smeared on his neck after a very short, sexually tense conversation.
“Kinda thought you’d wear a scarf when you showed up,” he teases as he approached, amused at your eye roll.
“I don’t do scarves, Todd,” you state, feeling it harder to fight off a smile. Your hands ease off your hips to settle across Jason’s broad shoulders.
“Whatever you say, shortcake.”
By now, you should take up a job at being a makeup counter girl, especially considering how well you managed to cover up your hickies over the span of many, many months.
Your nose lightly brushes with his, his lips merely missing yours on purpose, planting a single kiss on the corner of your mouth before holding you closer, your hips smugly fitting into his hands.
You were a breath of fresh, rainstorm air after a dark storm, your perfume clinging to his clothes for days.
“Was thinkin’,” he murmurs. “We’d try to reenact last night for our date night.”
“Hmm, with a different flavor?”
“You taste a lot better without it.”
You giggle, settling your hands along his back to keep secure in this comforting embrace.
“You think of me like that?” The words softly leave your lips.
He smiles down at you, his eyes full of warmth and comfort in your presence, cradling your right cheek after fixing a bit of your hair. He can’t help but shift attention to your pretty lips; perfect petal soft skin that displayed the prettiest of smiles to his god awful humor.
“It’s hard not to, babe.”
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Always be yours
a/n: people you know by Selena Gomez was on the mind and now we all have this. I am terrible with titles pretend it sounds good
Bestie beta reader: @yukios-medic 🥹💙 Ily ma'am thank you!
Pairing: Sukuna x fem!reader
cw/tw: none, just some angst :D
He looks at her as she screams his name.
The world stops spinning, his heart thumping slowly and painfully in his chest.
It was her.
And suddenly he’s not here, in the brat’s body, but in his own.
Sukuna sits on a grassy hillside, just under a tree, watching the grass and flowers sway gently as a giggle rings out to his right.
He turns toward the sweet sound to see her sitting there, his human. She’s ethereal before him, breeze flowing through her hair, the sun shining down behind her like a halo. She’s wearing intricate silk, and smiling up at him as she calls his name.
“Sukuna!”
The gray clouds above roar with the sound of rain falling all around them as he stares at her. The horror on her face couldn’t be clearer as she stares right back at him. Wet hair a mess and clinging to her face – he couldn’t make the distinction between the rain and tears staining her red cheeks.
“Sukuna!”
She giggles again, pulling a flower from between them and sitting up on her knees to reach him. He regards her with a small smile and the raise of an eyebrow.
“What is it you’re planning, woman?” But he already knows. She loves decorating his pink hair in flowers, a sight reserved only for her, only here.
She knows he’d let her leave them in if she begged, it wouldn’t take much convincing. But she won’t press the matter, content enough to keep this a pastime for just their own.
“Sukuna, stop!”
She screams again, frozen in fear before the king of curses. His stomach twists. She wouldn’t ever look at him like this, like he could actually hurt her. He might keep up appearances, but he was doing this for her. He was keeping her safe, how could she not see that?
Even if she didn’t remember him, after all this time, he wouldn't dare lay a finger on her if she didn’t request it.
“Sukuna, stop!”
Her laugh is contagious, and he smiles down at her wiggling form. He’s wrapped her in a pair of arms, the other pair tickling her side and caressing her face as she gasped for air.
She gasped.
Her hair was soaked. Clinging to her face as she stared up at him warily, eyes darting to the hand he’d unconsciously raised. Sukuna stops, realizing he’s backed her against a tree as she trembles before him.
No doubt not just from the cold and rain. His hand stops short of touching her as he leans down to her.
“I will never touch you without your permission. You don’t remember, but you will. I’ll wait for as long as it takes, until you’re by my side again.” He drops his hand, and slowly, the marks on his body disappear. His body shrinks slightly, and Yuji blinks at her.
“What happened?”
Tags: @saiki-enthusiast
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