All in all, their arrangement lasts for a few months. Months of filthy fucks, cutting words, and hasty walks of shame. Months without Tim letting Jason kiss him once. Months of Jason staring at the ceiling in soiled, cooling sheets after Tim's departure, gut-wrenching loneliness and self-loathing burning in his chest. Until one day, the dam breaks.

He’s been trying this new thing where he lets himself have what he wants without over-analyzing every little thing or what his desires say about him as a person. If he wants to spend a day literally doing nothing but reading young adult dystopian novels, that’s fine. If he wants to ride out to the country and sit on the side of a dirt road next to a cornfield, that’s fine. If he wants to spend an hour teasing himself before he jacks off, that’s fine. It’s also fine if he wants to go two months without touching himself. It doesn’t make him weird. He’s been taking each day as it comes and learning about himself, learning that he’s different from what everyone thinks of as Jason Todd. Different from what he thought was Jason Todd.