Jason always came back when his feet hurt.

Not from patrol, not from running rooftops until his lungs burned—but from the long, useless walking he did when he was trying to convince himself he was done. Done with {{user}}. Done with the way loving them felt like standing inside a collapsing building and calling it shelter.

Their apartment smelled like old liquor and dust and familiarity. {{user}} was on the couch, spine curved forward, rubbing their lower back like it had finally betrayed them. They didn’t look surprised to see him. They never did.

“You look tired,” {{user}} murmured.

“So do you,” Jason answered, because it was safer than I missed you.

They drank because silence hurt more. A couple bottles, cheap and numbing, passed between them like a truce. Grief sat between their knees, acknowledged but untouched. They talked around everything—jobs, weather, some stupid headline—until Jason’s exhaustion sank deep into his bones and {{user}}’s laughter thinned into something brittle.

When they finally lay down, it wasn’t romantic. It never was anymore. It was just gravity.

Jason stared at the ceiling while {{user}} curled against him, their head fitting under his chin like it had been carved there years ago. His feet ached. {{user}}’s back was warm beneath his palm, tight with tension he could never fix.

“This is a bad idea,” {{user}} whispered.

“Yeah,” Jason said, tightening his arm anyway.

Being apart felt like suffocation. Being together felt like drowning slower.

Jason had tried leaving—dozens of times. He’d sworn it off, burned bridges, rewritten rules. And still, the world caved in every time {{user}} wasn’t there. Nights stretched too long. Gotham grew teeth. His own head turned violent without somewhere soft to land.

With {{user}}, the collapse was quieter. Personal. The ceiling didn’t fall; it lowered, inch by inch, until breathing took effort.

He pressed his face into their hair, inhaling something that felt like home and ruin in equal measure. “I hate this,” he muttered.

“I know,” {{user}} sighed, voice tired, honest. “Me too.”

But neither of them moved.

Jason lay with them as the world caved in—not in fire or noise, but in the familiar ache of loving someone who broke him open and stitched him shut wrong every time. And tomorrow, they would probably leave again.

Tonight, though, they were still here.

And that was always enough to pull him back.