Also The Songs I Listen To Arent And Never Will Be About The Lyrics - Tumblr Posts
I’ve been obsessed with soulmate AUs recently, so here’s a little idea i’ve been playing around with:
Everyone’s born with words somewhere on their body, unreadable at first. The skin is shiny, like an old scar, the words blurry and undefined. One day, you’ll see the first words you’ll ever hear your soulmate say to you, that shiny patch of skin blooming like ink (there’s superstitions about the colour your words fade into, as popular as astrology). The trick of the thing is, you won’t find out what your words are until you’ve become the person who is meant to hear them. The youngest person to get their words was seven, and the oldest 92 years young.
You and Jason meet at school, outsiders in your own way. You, the new transfer student to Gotham Prep, and Jason the newly adopted son of Bruce Wayne. You bond over your outsider status and shared interests, fast friends in no time. The kind of best friends that tell each other almost everything, comfortable in each other’s trust. Jason tells you about his fears that one day all of this, Bruce and Alfred, the manor, school, will disappear one day (he’s very careful to talk around being Robin, it’s not only his secret after all). He listens to you when you feel homesick, worried that you’ll never feel at home again. It’s a friendship built on shared secrets, on fears assuaged, and worries made better. You’ve never met Bruce or Alfred or the rest of Jason’s family. He asks you about it once, but you simply reply you prefer having Jason to yourself. That maybe one day you’ll meet, but for now your friendship is a private thing for you two alone.
Sometimes you and Jason will speculate about what your words will be, fingers tracing featherlight over still-shiny skin. Privately you hope your words will be his. It’s so easy to fall in love with Jason. The light in his eyes when he rants about the latest book he’s read, when he shares the biscuits Alfred packs for him, the way he listens to you so intently even if he doesn’t have all the answers. You can admit to yourself that you’re hopelessly in love with your best friend, but never out loud. Your friendship is one of the most important things in your life and you are terrified of destroying it.
When Jason dies, it’s like the whole world turns to ash. You never got to tell him. He died without knowing you loved him. His death rips you open like nothing ever has before, regret a constant salt in the wound. He never told you that he was thinking of leaving. It feels wrong at this point, to interrupt his family in their grief, another stranger claiming to have known their son. After all, how well did you really know him if you didn’t even know he was going to leave? Once you emerge from the fog of your grief, you turn it into fuel. You graduate and then hurry through a degree as quickly as you can. You take a position in a charity working with underprivileged children, determined that no child will ever be afraid of being tossed aside like Jason was. You make use of your Gotham Prep connections, rubbing elbows with the rich for just as long as it takes to pry open their wallets. Occasionally you see Bruce, or Dick, or the newest ward Tim at functions, always across the room before you quickly excuse yourself. You keep yourself so busy that when your words come in, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know…”, you barely give it a thought, just pulling the cuff of your shirt lower to cover your wrist. You never bother trying to read the rest of it. It doesn’t matter anymore.
Your world ends for a second time when you catch sight of the newspaper headlines at the local newsstand. “Lost Wayne son found alive” screams out at you, tearing into your heart bloody. You lose grip of your work bag, but manage not to lose your mind in the street. You call out sick, a first for you, and in your fog somehow make it to Wayne manor. You are indescribably rude to poor Alfred, pushing right past him, almost hypnotized by the voices coming from inside. A body tries to come between you, stopping you in your tracks. Years of grief, anger, and battered hope come roaring through you at the thought of being denied seeing Jason, alive after all this time. Your voice when it leaves you is dangerously low. “Jason Todd was my best friend and first love.” The body stiffens, but that doesn’t matter in this moment. “You are going to step aside and-” anything else doesn’t matter because a door is thrown open and there is Jason. Eyes wild, a good deal older and more scarred than before, but he’s alive. And then nothing else matters but the feel of his arms warm around you, the imprint of his jacket on your face, the smell of him largely unchanged. What catches your eye is the writing at the hollow of his throat, a stark black spreading across his collarbones.
“Jason Todd was my best friend and first love.”
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know you felt the same.”
(I’m actually so sorry, this ask ran away with me and turned into this monster, oh my god. This AU has me in a chokehold and i need to scream about it)
- 🍂 (@fic-over-cannon)
i’ve been hoarding this in my inbox for AGES because work has been so busy lately that i never seem to get enough downtime to come up with a coherent thought let alone the brain cells to read but.
tumblr user fic-over-cannon i need u to write this immediately so i can devour it. i’m such a sucker for the childhood friends to lovers with jason because it holds so much potential. and a soulmate au too!! i’m beside myself. the last few lines of this had me feeling like i was genuinely running to find him - i can just imagine the urgency and the pain that propels you forward like you might lose him all over again if you’re not fast enough this time (not unlike bruce, i’m realising)
sighing over this and weeping into my hands