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Jason supposed he should find it a comfort that he even had a soulmate. Some never got their soulmate tattoo, instead bearing forever blank skin like a reminder they were alone. Unless they chose to cover up the empty space with tattoos of their own design.
When Jason had been a kid, his soulmark had been a comfort. The knowledge that no matter how bad his life was, no matter how shitty the place he lived in was, there was someone, somewhere, that would one day love him.
Back then, lying on a mattress that reeked of his mother’s addiction and his father’s failures, Jason would trace the small, still bird on his chest. A little black and blue bird of paradise, delicate and exotic, nothing like the pigeons that scavenged through Crime Alley’s garbage. He’d whisper to it sometimes, when the walls were too thin and the fighting too loud.
Where are you?
The bird never answered. Soulmate tattoos didn’t move until love bloomed. But Jason had faith then, the kind that comes easy to children who have nothing else.
He never thought of the mark as something like a curse until the little bird of paradise on his chest took flight and started to dart around his skin like a hummingbird. Moving around on Jason’s torso as if his skin were its own personal canvas, as all soulmate tattoos did once you fell in love with your destined one.
No, that wasn’t entirely right, was it?
At first, the bird’s movements had made Jason feel ecstatic. He’d been thirteen, finally Robin, finally something, and the bird had started its restless dance during a particularly brutal training session. Dick had been demonstrating a new aerial maneuver, all grace and controlled violence, and Jason had felt something shift inside his chest. Not the bird- that came after. The shift was deeper, more fundamental.
Oh.
The realization had hit him like a freight train. He was in love with Dick Grayson. Dick fucking Grayson, who was beautiful and brilliant and everything Jason wasn’t. Dick, who still mourned his parents, who carried himself like he was dancing on air even when his feet were planted firmly on the ground. Dick, who had been Robin first, who had been better at being Robin.
Jason had later watched the bird flutter against his ribs and felt something like wonder. Because if the bird was moving, that meant-
That meant Dick Grayson was his soulmate.
The knowledge had consumed him for weeks. He’d planned the confrontation for days, eagerly anticipating when he would get to tell Dick who they were for each other, not thinking about it much deeper than that because his mind was too filled with potential plans for their future together. Jason had imagined Dick’s face lighting up, imagined the way Dick would laugh and say something like, “I knew it,” and then they’d kiss and everything would be perfect.
His younger self had been an idiot.
Later, after patrol, Jason had caught sight of Dick’s bare chest. Of the honey badger tattoo painted there. Very still, and very stationary. Unmoving.
The silence of Dick’s skin had been deafening.
It had felt like an arrow through his chest. Unmistakable, irrefutable proof that his soulmate didn’t love him. Not in the same way Jason loved him, at least.
Jason had jerked his eyes away and pulled on his own shirt with shaking hands, praying for the little bird on his skin to stay still. To stay hidden. The bird had been particularly active that night, as if it knew its mate was close, as if it was trying to reach out through Jason’s skin to touch the motionless badger on Dick’s chest.
Stop it, Jason had thought desperately. Stop moving. Please.
But soulmate marks didn’t listen to logic or shame or the desperate wishes of teenage boys who’d realized they were in love with someone who would never love them back.
He didn’t say anything to Dick, just did his best to return the man’s confused banter in his best attempt at normalcy. Dick had seemed to sense something was wrong- he always did, too perceptive for his own good- but Jason had deflected every concerned look, every gentle question.
From then on, Jason did everything he could to hide the moving little bird that flittered about on his skin. He wore shirts constantly, even in the sweltering heat of Gotham summers. He made excuses to avoid communal showers after training. He learned to sleep on his stomach so the bird’s movements wouldn’t wake him in the night.
He wasn’t always successful; he knew that Bruce had seen it a few times, catching glimpses when Jason’s shirt rode up during particularly intense training sessions. Bruce’s eyes would narrow slightly, that calculating look that meant he was filing away information for later analysis, but he never said anything. Alfred had seen it at least once too, when Jason had stumbled into the kitchen after a nightmare, half-asleep and shirtless, and Alfred’s eyes had grown soft with something that might have been pity.
But Jason made damn sure to never be around Dick except for fully clothed again.
The worst part wasn’t even the unrequited love, though that hurt like a constant ache in his chest, a reminder that he wasn’t worthy of the one person meant for him. The worst part was watching Dick date other people. Watching him laugh with Barbara, seeing him flirt with random civilians during undercover work, knowing that Dick would never look at Jason the way Jason looked at him. Even the strange, intense relationship Dick had with Slade had Jason’s territorial instincts acting up, though he had good reason to suspect something with the way the man looked at Dick, covetous and hungry.
Jason learned to live with it. He learned to compartmentalize, to shove the feelings down deep where they wouldn’t interfere with his work as Robin. He learned to match Dick’s casual banter, to act like his heart wasn’t slowly breaking every time he saw Dick’s tattoo remain perfectly, devastatingly still.
And then, he didn’t need to worry about soulmate marks at all, because he was dead.
***
The crowbar had been cold against his skin before the pain started. Jason remembered that, in the moments before consciousness fled.
After Jason Todd came back to life, he wouldn’t be able to tell you for sure where he went when he died. There was a vague sense of something like limbo; a feeling of being suspended in nothingness, untethered from everything that had once mattered.
It wasn’t peaceful. Peace implied rest, and there had been no rest in that place between life and death. Just an endless awareness of being incomplete, of being caught between what he had been and what he might become. He’d felt scattered, like pieces of himself were floating in a void, and he couldn’t quite remember how to pull them back together.
Even after he came back, he didn’t feel like all parts of him had returned for a while afterward. It felt like the best parts were still trapped there- his capacity for trust, for hope, for the kind of love that didn’t leave scars- while the rest of him was lost to green-tinted loss and hurt and rage.
The Lazarus Pit had brought him back, but it hadn’t made him whole. It had just made him functional enough to feel the full weight of his abandonment, his replacement, his erasure from the lives of the people who were supposed to love him.
What he did know was that at some point during all of that- the dying, the floating, the violent resurrection- Jason Todd had looked down at his skin and found his little bird of paradise still flapping away there like a curse. Stubborn, irrefutable, undeniable.
Even now, even abandoned and unloved and barely mourned, Jason Todd still loved Dick Grayson.
The bird had looked different somehow, its colors more muted, its movements more frantic. As if it had been damaged by the same forces that had torn Jason apart and stitched him back together wrong. But it was still there, still moving, still reaching for a connection that would never be reciprocated.
It made the anger worse. Because how dare he. How dare Dick Grayson make such a thorough claim on Jason’s heart if he wasn’t going to love Jason in return? How dare the universe give Jason a soulmate who would never want him, who had probably forgotten Jason existed the moment they’d lowered his broken body into the ground?
Jason was fucking done with it. Done with the unrequited love, done with the hope that maybe, somehow, things could be different. Done with the fantasy that Dick Grayson would ever see him as anything more than a failed Robin, a cautionary tale, a ghost that should have stayed buried.
He was done with just allowing the disrespect done to his memory without collecting his righteous returns for it.
“Go the fuck away,” Jason snarled to the damned bird one day while he paced the room the League of Assassin’s had given him, fists clenched and stationary at his sides even though he wanted to drive them through some walls.
The bird flew up to the base of his neck instead, nuzzling against his skin there in an odd, pinprick cascade of phantom sensations that failed to provide the comfort the bird was attempting to give. If anything, the gentle touch made Jason angrier. He didn’t want comfort from the mark that had caused him so much pain.
“I said go away,” he repeated, pressing the heel of his palm against the bird’s current location. “I don’t want you anymore.”
But soulmate marks didn’t disappear just because you stopped wanting them. They were permanent, irreversible, a cosmic joke that followed you even into death and back again.
When Jason made his way back to Gotham five years after he'd left it, everything, as was typical in Jason Todd’s life, went to shit.
***
The first time Jason really saw Dick after his resurrection, the bird went absolutely wild.
They were on opposite sides of a rooftop, Dick in his Nightwing costume, Jason in his new identity as the Red Hood. The space between them felt like a chasm, filled with all the words they’d never said and all the pain that had festered in Jason’s chest for years.
“Jason,” Dick said, and his voice was barely a whisper, like he was afraid that speaking too loudly might make Jason disappear again.
Jason’s chest was on fire. The bird was practically vibrating against his skin, moving so fast it felt like it might tear itself free from his body entirely. He could feel its excitement, its desperate joy at being near its mate again, and it made Jason sick.
“Don’t,” Jason snapped, raising his gun. “Don’t you dare look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you missed me.”
Dick’s face crumpled, just for a moment, before he pulled his mask back into place. “I did miss you. God, Jason, I missed you so much-”
“Bullshit.” The word came out like a gunshot. “You replaced me before my body was even cold.”
“That’s not-”
“Did you even mourn me?” Jason demanded, the gun steady in his hand even though his heart was racing. “Or were you too busy training my replacement to notice I was gone?”
Dick took a step forward, and Jason could see the way his hands were shaking. “Of course I mourned you. You were- you are-”
“I’m what?” Jason’s voice was sharp, cutting. “Your little brother? Your responsibility? Your failure?”
“You’re my-” Dick stopped, his mouth working soundlessly for a moment. “You’re my family.”
The bird on Jason’s chest gave a particularly violent flutter, and Jason pressed his free hand against it, trying to force it to be still. “Family doesn’t replace each other.”
“Tim isn’t your replacement,” Dick said quietly. “He’s just... he’s trying to help. Bruce was falling apart after you died, and someone had to-”
“Someone had to what? Clean up the mess I left behind?”
“Someone had to save Bruce from himself.”
The simple honesty in Dick’s voice hit Jason like a physical blow. He’d expected denials, excuses, justifications. He hadn’t expected Dick to admit that Bruce had been broken by Jason’s death, that it had mattered enough to require saving.
But it didn’t change anything. It didn’t erase the fundamental truth that Dick’s soulmate mark had never moved, would never move, because Dick would never love Jason the way Jason loved him.
There was a lot of fighting after that. A lot of Jason taking his punches while getting in a few good licks of his own in return. He failed in any attempt to kill his replacement. Tim Drake, the new Robin, who was brilliant and competent and everything Jason had never been. He was glad about those failures later, when the rage finally started to ebb and he could think clearly again.
In the midst of all that- in the midst of the fighting and the arguing and the rage- Jason began to realize that yeah, okay. Maybe he was a little bit of an asshole here, too, even though he did have some valid reasons for being angry.
Dick was so obviously traumatized by Jason’s death, was the thing. He didn’t wear it dramatically; didn’t throw himself at Jason like some weepy wife whose husband had returned from war. It was there in the subtle things. The way that Dick stared at him a little bit too much when Jason was anywhere within eyesight, like he was trying to memorize every detail to make sure Jason was real. The way that Dick flinched like he himself had been injured whenever he saw Jason’s blood painting Jason’s skin, a flicker of terror flashing through his gaze as if he was reliving that warehouse all over again. The way that he tried to insert himself into Jason’s presence as often as possible, no matter how much Jason pushed him away.
Dick had started showing up at Jason’s safe houses uninvited, bringing food and medical supplies and desperate conversation. He’d appear on rooftops during Jason’s patrols, just watching from a distance like he was afraid Jason might disappear again if he looked away. He’d send messages through Oracle, little updates about his life that Jason never asked for but found himself reading anyway.
Made pasta yesterday. Burned it. Alfred would be horrified.
Caught a drug dealer using kids as runners. Thought of you.
Saw a red bird today. Made me smile.
Each message felt like a small betrayal of Jason’s anger, a reminder that Dick was still the same person who had once cared about him, who had once treated him like a little brother worth protecting. It was confusing and infuriating and somehow comforting all at once.
That and a million other little signs made Jason realize, slowly and reluctantly, that his death wasn’t as meaningless, as forgotten as he’d thought it was. That it had meant something to Dick, had hurt him irreparably. That just because Dick had gone on living his own damned life, that didn’t mean he hadn’t mourned him.
Hell, even the damned Batman himself seemed to have lingering trauma from Jason’s death, though Jason couldn’t tell for sure whether that was really Bruce mourning Jason, or just his dependable old guilt rearing its head again. But there were signs there too: the way Bruce’s jaw tightened whenever Jason was mentioned, the way he’d sometimes pause in the middle of a sentence as if he’d forgotten how to breathe, the way he’d started being more protective of Tim in a way that felt less like mentorship and more like desperation.
These realizations, and especially the ones he had about Dick, softened Jason. Not completely. He was still angry, still hurt, still convinced that he’d been betrayed in fundamental ways that couldn’t be easily forgiven. But the sharp edges of his rage began to wear down, leaving behind something more manageable, more human.
He didn’t become the boy that he used to be, not even close. That boy had died in a warehouse, and no amount of Lazarus Pit magic could bring him back. He didn’t move back to the Manor, and he never would. The place held too many memories, too many reminders of what he’d lost and what he’d never been able to have. He didn’t get anywhere near the relationship he used to have with Bruce back. That bridge had been burned too thoroughly, the trust broken too completely.
But he started letting Dick back in again. Started welcoming him in when the man arrived at the doorstep of his safe houses with takeout and cautious smiles. Started reluctantly accepting his help with missions when needed, though he made it clear that any partnership was temporary and contingent on Dick not trying to psychoanalyze him or convince him to come home. Started allowing Dick to join him for patrol, fighting side by side in a way that felt both familiar and entirely new.
They began getting closer again, and while their relationship never went back exactly to what it was, Jason thought he preferred the new shape it was taking. Dick now saw him as something of an equal instead of someone to be protected. As someone to fight side by side with, rather than someone to push protectively behind his back. There was a respect there that hadn’t existed before, a recognition of what Jason had become and what he’d survived.
It was nice. It was actually really nice, nice in a way that Jason dreaded sometimes, because things this good weren’t supposed to be meant for him. People like Jason Todd didn’t get happy endings. They got second chances, maybe, if they were lucky, but happiness was something that belonged to other people.
The bird on his chest seemed to settle during this period, its movements becoming less frantic, more content. It still moved- it would always move- but there was something peaceful about it now, as if it was finally at rest knowing its mate was safe and nearby.
Jason still never tried to look at the man’s chest again. He’d learned that lesson too well, and he wasn’t masochistic enough to keep reopening that particular wound. Dick’s soulmate mark would always be still, and Jason would always have to live with that knowledge, but he didn’t have to torture himself by witnessing it.
Until.
***
They were eating takeout in Jason’s current safe house, a small apartment in the Bowery that Jason had chosen specifically because it reminded him of nothing from his old life. Dick was sprawled across Jason’s couch like he owned the place, gesticulating wildly as he told some story about a mission gone wrong, and Jason was sitting on the floor with his back against the coffee table, pretending to be annoyed by Dick’s dramatics while secretly enjoying every minute of it.
This was what their relationship had become. Comfortable, easy, tinged with the kind of affection that Jason had never thought he’d be able to feel again. Dick laughed at his own jokes, stole food from Jason’s containers, and filled the silence with chatter about everything and nothing. It was domestic in a way that made Jason’s chest ache with longing, even though he knew it could never be anything more than this.
Dick was in the middle of laughing at some comment he himself had made while Jason rolled his eyes at him, when it happened.
A little head poked its way out from under Dick’s collar, climbing up the long stretch of Dick’s neck with determined movements.
Dick’s eyes widened, and he slapped a hand over the little honey badger that was now visible, but that just made the thing crawl onto Dick’s knuckles instead, as if it was determined to be seen.
Jason’s chopsticks clattered to the floor.
It was lucky that Jason didn’t have anything in his mouth at the time, because he would have choked on it. He stared with wide eyes and a frozen form as Dick grimaced and brought his hand away from his neck so he could see it, as if to check if what he thought was happening was really happening.
The honey badger stared up at them both, pissed and looking like it would throw itself off of Dick’s skin to fight them if it was able to. It was moving. It was moving. After all these years, after all this time, Dick’s soulmate mark was finally alive.
Jason’s breath had stopped in his throat. His heart was a hummingbird in his chest, or maybe that was his own soulmate mark there, beating its wings in frantic excitement at the appearance of its mate. The bird of paradise was going absolutely wild, fluttering and dancing and practically vibrating with joy.
He loves me, Jason thought, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. He loves me. He loves me. He loves me.
Dick grimaced and lowered his hand into his lap, as if there were any possibility he could still hide the moving honey badger from view. “Ah, soulmate marks, you know, they can really be such a pain-” he began with weak laughter, and Jason immediately realized that Dick didn’t know that Jason knew they were soulmates, and had plans to hide that fact.
“Don’t.” Jason snarled, cutting through whatever excuse Dick was trying to make. The word came out harsh, desperate, filled with years of suppressed longing and pain. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
Dick’s mouth snapped shut, his eyes wide with something that might have been fear or hope or both.
“Don’t you dare try to hide it from me,” Jason continued, his voice rough. “Don’t you dare try to pretend this doesn’t mean what it means.”
“Jason-”
“How long?” Jason demanded, rising to his feet with predatory grace. “How long has it been moving?”
Dick’s face went pale, and he looked away. “I don’t know what you’re-”
“How. Long.”
The silence stretched between them, heavy with years of unspoken truths and missed opportunities. Dick’s honey badger was still moving, still visible on his hand, and Jason’s bird was still going crazy on his chest.
“Since a few months after you came back to Gotham,” Dick whispered finally. “It just... it started moving, and I didn’t understand why, and then I realized...” He looked up at Jason with eyes that were bright with unshed tears. “I realized I was in love with you.”
Jason felt something crack open in his chest, something that had been locked away for so long he’d forgotten it existed. “You were in love with me,” he repeated slowly. “After I came back.”
“Yes.”
“But not before.”
Dick’s face crumpled. “I was nineteen when you died, Jason. You were fifteen. I couldn’t- I wouldn’t-”
“You couldn’t what?”
“I couldn’t let myself love you that way,” Dick said, and his voice was breaking. “You were so young, and you’d been through so much, and I was supposed to be your big brother, not... not whatever this is.”
Jason crossed the space between them in two quick strides, and Dick looked up at him with wide eyes, as if he wasn’t sure whether Jason was going to hit him or hold him.
And then Jason kissed him.
It was a kiss that had been waiting an entire lifetime and a resurrection to happen, and it lived up to every expectation Jason had ever had. It was desperate and tender and fierce all at once, years of longing and pain and love poured into the connection between their mouths. It was Dick’s hands in Jason’s hair and Jason’s hands on Dick’s face, it was the taste of Chinese takeout and the salt of tears, it was coming home after being lost for so long that Jason had forgotten what home felt like.
It was everything Jason had dreamed of and more.
When they finally broke apart, both of them were breathing hard, and Jason could feel the bird on his chest practically singing with joy. Dick’s honey badger had climbed up to his throat, where it was nuzzling against the skin as if it was trying to get closer to Jason’s mark.
“I love you,” Dick whispered, his forehead pressed against Jason’s. “I love you so much I don’t know what to do with it.”
“I’ve loved you for years,” Jason replied, his voice rough. “Since before I died. Since before I knew what love really meant.”
Jason didn’t waste time with more words. He had years of kissing to make up for, years of touching and holding and being held. He bit into the skin of Dick’s neck, tasting salt and sweat and something uniquely Dick, and began to tear at Dick’s clothes with hands that were shaking with need.
Their takeout lay abandoned on the table, forgotten in favor of something infinitely more important. Dick was pushed back into the couch, his eyes dark with want, and Jason was above him, between his legs, finally exactly where he belonged.
“Jay, wait, this is moving really fast,” Dick protested, but his hands were already pulling at Jason’s shirt, and he tilted his head back to allow Jason room to work.
“You made me wait nearly a fucking decade, pretty bird,” Jason snarled against Dick’s skin, finally managing to pull himself away long enough to strip his chest bare. “I’m not waiting any longer.”
The sight of Dick’s honey badger darting across his chest made lightning streak through Jason’s veins. The little creature was moving with purpose now, as if it was trying to reach the bird of paradise that was fluttering frantically on Jason’s own skin.
“God, look at them,” Dick breathed, his eyes fixed on the two soulmate marks. “They’re trying to touch each other.”
Jason looked down and saw that Dick was right. The bird was at the very edge of his chest, wings spread wide, while the honey badger was stretching up toward it from Dick’s collarbone. They were reaching for each other across the space between their bodies, desperate to make contact.
“Just like us,” Jason murmured, and then he was kissing Dick again, pressing their chests together so their marks could finally touch.
The sensation was indescribable. It was like an electric current running through both of them, like finding the missing piece of yourself that you’d been searching for your entire life. Jason felt Dick’s sharp intake of breath against his mouth, felt the way Dick’s whole body shuddered with the connection.
“Jason,” Dick whispered, and his voice was awed. “I can feel it. I can feel them.”
Jason could feel it too. The way their marks seemed to merge and separate and merge again, the way the bird and the badger danced together on their skin. It was beautiful and overwhelming and perfect.
He sucked one of Dick’s nipples into his mouth even as he stripped his own shirt off completely and began to work at Dick’s pants. Dick’s hands were in his hair, on his shoulders, everywhere they could reach, and Jason had never felt so wanted, so needed, so right.
By the time they were both fully unclothed, Dick was no longer protesting. He was pleading instead, with sweet sighs and clutching hands and whispered words of love and need. Jason had gotten the lube, his hands shaking slightly as he prepared Dick with fingers that he forced to stay gentle despite his desperation.
“So fucking gorgeous, baby,” Jason murmured as he settled himself over Dick and pushed himself inside. The endearment slipped out without conscious thought, but it felt right, felt like something he’d been wanting to say for years.
He had to stop once he was finally inside, had to close his eyes against the pleasure that overwhelmed him at the feeling of that tight, perfect heat. At the knowledge that it was Dick Grayson beneath him, that Dick was his and he was Dick’s and this was finally, finally happening.
The feeling was transcendent. Nirvanic. Heavenly. Jason didn’t remember going to paradise when he died, but if he had, he thought it wouldn’t have compared to this.
“Jason, please-” Dick whined in impatience as he wrapped his legs around Jason’s hips, and Jason claimed his mouth once more and began to move.
Each movement was a rapture all over again, each sound Dick made driving him higher. The heat between them built steadily, inexorably, and Jason could feel their soulmate marks pulsing in rhythm with their heartbeats. The bird and the badger were moving together now, dancing across their skin in patterns that spoke of joy and completion and perfect, perfect love.
When Jason finally came, his vision whited out and his hearing popped, and he felt like he’d never be the same again. Dick followed moments later, his back arching as he spilled between them, and Jason felt the exact moment when their marks finally settled into rest, content at last.
When he finally had the brain power left to rearrange them so that he had his back to the couch cushions rather than squashing Dick under his larger bulk, Jason touched the honey badger now resting peacefully on Dick’s neck. His own bird of paradise flew down to his fingertips to nuzzle against it, and Jason couldn’t see the bird’s movements exactly, but he could see the way the badger nuzzled right back, could feel the electricity of their connection, and it caused his heart to ache in his chest.
“I guess you love me,” Jason said softly, wonder still coloring his voice.
Dick smiled, soft and radiant and more beautiful than Jason had ever seen him, and took Jason’s hand from his throat to press a kiss to his fingertips, to the bird still fluttering there in lazy contentment.
“Yeah,” Dick said, and his voice was warm with certainty. “I guess you love me, too.”
Jason buried his face in Dick’s hair and laughed, helpless with joy and relief and the simple, overwhelming fact that he was loved. That he had been loved, even when he couldn’t see it, even when he couldn’t believe it.
“Yeah,” he whispered into Dick’s hair, holding him close. “I really do.”