Chapter Text
Jason knows Nightwing is a notoriously difficult opponent, but when he’s fighting with escrima sticks against Jason and his gun, it’s basically inevitable that he should get shot. The bullet penetrates his calf and leaves a messy red wound behind.
Jason smirks in satisfaction. The wound puts a time limit on the fight—Dick needs things to end as soon as possible, or blood loss could create a disadvantage he can’t afford. He lashes out with both escrima in quick succession and follows up with a kick. Jason dodges, dodges, and stumbles for a split second. Dick takes the chance to disarm him. Jason lunges forward in retaliation and his gun is sent spinning across dark, dirty concrete.
Dick smirks and it’s utterly infuriating. He’s obviously favoring one leg—that’s where Jason should strike to bring him down. He could kill Dick right now. Sure, he’s disarmed, but his training was incredibly thorough. He knows a thousand ways to kill someone with just his hands. Even someone as skilled as Dick.
But he hesitates, and that one second costs him his advantage. Before Jason knows it, Dick has grabbed the gun off the ground—he clearly doesn’t want Jason to snatch it back—and disabled it. Then he’s on the run, and Jason’s only option is to chase.
Dick’s injured leg is very clearly slowing him down, and as they swing across rooftops, it takes Jason no time at all to catch up. This is it. Jason should kill him now.
But… no gun. He’d have to use his hands. And that feels a lot more personal.
Too gory, he decides. The dry cleaning for Jason’s suit would be way too expensive.
He lets Dick go.
That pretty much concludes Jason’s night of violence, and he trudges back to the nearest safehouse feeling strangely defeated.
Why did Jason let Dick go? He’s wanted this for so long. He’s wanted revenge for so long. Killing Dick would be the perfect way to maim Bruce. He would never be the same after losing his golden boy.
And yet Jason couldn’t bring himself to do it.
After everything—after everything— some deeply buried part of him still loves Dick. And that part is much stronger than the part that would love to see him blood-spattered and dead, just like Jason had once been.
Six Weeks Later:
The entire warehouse is going to blow, Jason realizes not a moment too soon.
It is, of course, a shady drug warehouse, as most warehouses in Gotham are. As shady drug situations are kind of the Red Hood’s specialty right now, he’d felt obligated to pay a visit.
Dick, however, was under no such obligation. He shows up anyways. Stupid, horrible, nosy bats. Butting their goddamn heads in where they’re expressly unwelcome. All for the sake of justice and righteousness and fucking with all of Jason’s goddamn shit.
Everything might have been fine if Nightwing hadn’t interrupted.
But he had, because he always does, and the warehouse is rigged to blow, and Jason is not going to get out in time. Dick is rounding up criminals, herding them, shoving them, yelling at them to go, and like dumb, terrified animals they obey. Soon Jason and Dick are the only ones left in the warehouse. Dick is much closer to the exit than Jason.
Jason runs. The moment feels slowed down, like he’s running at the bottom of the ocean instead of through air. His surroundings undulate around him, all distorted and fuzzy, and Jason keeps running. He does not want to die. Not again, not like this, not now. He doesn’t want to die.
Time is running out. He wonders if Dick will get out in time or if they’ll die here together. He can see Nightwing ahead of him. He’s close enough to the exit that he might just escape. Jason is still thirty feet behind. No, forty. He doesn’t want to die but he’s going to anyway.
And then he hears Dick’s voice over the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears. “Jay!”
Dick is throwing something to Jason, and then he’s running again. It’s Jason’s first instinct to catch whatever the thing is—and it’s a grappling gun.
Everything that Jason does next happens without the informed consent of his mind. Muscle memory takes the lead as he fires the grapnel out a wide, open window. He hears the metallic noise that means it’s connected—feels the tension in the wire that means it’ll hold. And then Jason is off the ground, swinging through the window and onto the roof of the next building over. And then there’s a flash and a deafening blast, and the warehouse has been reduced to rubble.
Jason breathes hard in and out. He can’t seem to catch his breath. He can’t even hear his own footsteps. He can’t take his eyes off the blast site. His heart is sinking fast in his chest. It feels like his stomach has dropped right out through the floor. There is the unsettling feeling that something important is terribly, terribly wrong. It grows worse with every passing second.
“Nightwing?” he says. Tries to say. He can’t hear his voice come out, but he knows it must, because he feels it in his throat. He tries again, this time louder. “Nightwing?”
Jason uses the grapnel to descend back to the ground, and then he’s pawing through rubble, through chunks of concrete and metal and glass and finding nothing. “Nightwing,” he says, even though he still can’t hear a sound. “Nightwing?”
The desperation, unexpected and all-consuming, only grows until he spots a flash of blue in the wreckage. Then he’s tearing at metal, moving chunks of cement and pulling with all his strength, and he’s uncovered Dick’s prone, unmoving body.
Jason can’t hear whether he’s breathing or not. He’s still terrifyingly deaf. But he tears Dick’s gauntlet off, throws it to the ground, and grabs urgently at his wrist. There is a pulse.
Jason stays until Batman arrives, and then he slinks off into the shadows, clutching Dick’s grapnel like a lifeline.
*
Jason returns the grapnel to Dick’s apartment a week or two later, when Dick has recovered enough to live there instead of in the Batcave under Bruce’s watchful eye. He walks with a crutch—his lower leg had been crushed by rubble. The same leg Jason had shot a couple months ago. The bullet wound is no doubt the least of his worries now.
He waits until Dick is asleep and slips the grapnel through the apartment’s window with a note:
Thanks. Might not kill you now, still deciding.
That might piss Dick off. But Jason thinks he knows him better than that—he thinks Dick will get a kick out of it. He’s not sure what reaction he’s actually going for, and besides, he’ll never know. Not like Dick has any means of responding.
But sure enough, a week later, there is a sticky note on the inside of the door to one of Jason’s safehouses.
What a privilege. We should hang out :)
Jason really can’t believe his eyes. How did Dick get into his safehouse without setting off security? Why the fuck does he want to hang out? Could he be more irritating and stupid if he tried?
You’re not that low on the hit list , Jason writes back. He sticks that one on Dick’s bedroom door in the middle of the night while Dick is asleep, and he has no idea how he gets away with it other than the idea that Dick might just be having fun playing with him. That is a disgruntling thought.
Less than twenty-four hours later, there’s a note taped to the helmet of Jason’s suit, which is inexplicably still locked up in its maximum-security safe. I’ll take my chances! :)
Stupid smiley faces, Jason thinks. Stupid safe-cracking assholes. Fact is, after Dick saved Jason’s life like that, he really does deserve a hangout if he wants one.
On a pink sticky note, Jason draws a hand holding up a middle finger, except instead of a finger, it’s a penis. No one ever accused him of maturity. He writes the words, You’re so desperate. Fine.
They hang out on the roof of Dick’s apartment building. Jason does not murder Dick, which makes Dick very smug and Jason very annoyed. Once they go home, Jason is totally glad to have it over with. Dick had been annoyingly earnest and genuine and kind, the way he always is. Jason found it even more unbearable to sit through the benevolent smiles and heartfelt compassion when Dick still had that damn crutch under his arm from saving Jason’s life.
Another note appears in Jason’s safehouse that week, and he’s not even surprised. I heard there are these super cool things called cell phones that people use to communicate, it says. Scrawled beneath that is a phone number. Each zero has a smiley face inside.
They hang out again. And again. And then it’s just a regular part of Jason’s life. By that point it’s kind of too late to go back. After a while, Jason decides he wouldn’t change their strange, unexpected relationship even if he could.
Two Months Later:
Jason still wouldn’t trust him as far as he could throw him, but when Dick isn’t specifically trying to destroy his plans, he turns out to be an okay guy. Of course, Jason already knew that. They grew up together. But recently he thinks he’s forgotten.
It takes a couple months for Dick’s leg to heal after the explosion of the warehouse. Maybe that’s why he’s so eager to hang out with Jason—it’s not like he has anything better to do. Every time Jason comes over (an occurrence which is rapidly becoming more and more frequent) he’s working on another new and ridiculous way to end his insufferable boredom.
On this particular evening, just over two months post-warehouse, Jason breaks in through Dick’s window, a meticulous and highly skilled process that involves opening the latch, sliding the window open, and slipping through. That was… suspiciously easy. Why was that so easy?
“Look who finally decided to show up,” says a voice down the hallway. It’s Dick, limping happily towards Jason. The cane he’d been bat-ordered to use is, shockingly, nowhere to be seen.
“Why is your security down?” asks Jason with a frown. “I literally just opened the window and came through. I could be anyone.”
“A rampaging murderer obsessed with revenge?” asks Dick shrewdly. “I figured I’d take my chances.”
“Fuck you,” says Jason mildly. A month ago he’d have stormed out. Today, he just makes his way over to the kitchen to see what Dick has for snacks. Fruit. Vegetables. Weird whole wheat bread with eighty-three different types of nuts in it. Jason wrinkles his nose. He decides he’ll pass.
Dick follows him into the kitchen, walking entirely too fast for someone who recently got blown up. He’s wearing that stupid look of determination, and Jason already knows that whatever he’s done is both incredibly stupid and what some (Jason) might call Quintessential Dick Behavior.
Sure enough:
“I’m completely redoing my entire security system.”
“Uh,” says Jason, who has miraculously still managed to be dumbfounded by Dick’s terrible decision-making skills even though he’d done his best to mentally prepare himself. “Why, exactly, would you do that?”
“It was getting outdated,” Dick says, which trips off Jason’s razor-sharp bullshit detector. Unless by “outdated” he means “updated every six months by Batman himself,” then there is nothing whatsoever outdated about Dick’s security system.
Jason expresses as much and is met with a thoroughly irritating show of flippancy. “Come on,” says Dick. “I seem to remember this crazy crime lord on a murderous revenge spree breaking into my apartment a couple months ago to pass notes.”
“It’s not a revenge spree,” says Jason. It’s an important distinction, and for some reason, it’s vital that Dick understands. “I’m trying to…”
Dick gives him a look and Jason feels instantly chastised. And then he feels pissed off.
“You’re a dumbass,” he snaps, turning on Dick to face him head-on. Jason is a much bigger person than his counterpart. He was always going to grow up tall, but the pit took that gene and gave it steroids, and so now he’s six-foot-two and made of muscle. Dick is an acrobat from a long line of gymnasts, and that’s what his body is designed to do. He’s lithe and compact. Still strong, though. Even when he’s keeping his weight off one leg because he stubbornly refuses to use his cane even though he got literally blown up a couple months ago.
Dick must be aware of the size difference and the power imbalance it ensures. Generally speaking, there’s very little that he’s not aware of. But he doesn’t let on. That’s something that’s always pissed Jason off about him. Sometimes Dick is so perfect, so unruffled and untouchable, that he has to be faking. He has to be nervous right now around Jason. At least a little.
“I don’t know why you don’t understand how fucking dangerous this is for you,” Jason hisses. “I could kill you. I tried to. I shot you and got you literally blown up! You’re still limping and acting like you’re fucking not!”
Dick goes stiff. His face goes stony and he stops moving until he assumes the appearance of a statue.
That’s the tell that has always betrayed his anger, ever since they were kids. First, Dick tries to joke around. Pretend like there is no problem and everything’s sunshine and rainbows. Then he goes sharp and cutting like the edge of broken glass. He says things that hurt. And then, when he’s really, really furious, he turns into a marble sculpture instead of an actual person with actual feelings. Cold, still, and hard. Closed off more securely than a safe.
That’s before he starts yelling, but he only really gets to that stage with Bruce. Jason’s only heard the stories, but he knows. Dick is an angry person. He always has been.
“I know you could kill me,” Dick says. His voice has lost all inflection. He sounds like a text-to-speech generator—emotionless. “So could my job. But I keep doing it, every single day.”
“Then why do you keep doing it?” Jason demands. Opposite to Dick’s piercing calm, Jason finds himself getting hotter and angrier by the second. He wants to hammer his point into Dick until there’s no way he can possibly forget it. Jason is dangerous. Jason hurts people. And he doesn’t particularly regret it most of the time.
“Because I love my job,” says Dick. “Ever since I was a kid.” His icy facade is beginning to melt. His eyes are wide and imploring. His shoulders slump until his posture no longer radiates rage.
Jason doesn’t know what to do with that. He has the distinct feeling that they’re no longer discussing occupations. All of this has spiraled into a situation he doesn’t know how to handle anymore.
He could, of course, prove his own point, and handle the situation the good old fashioned way—with violence.
But. He already shot Dick once. It didn’t work.
So he’s left lost, floundering for what to do, paralyzed by Dick’s stupid blue eyes and his own traitorous emotions, which are a lot more human and a lot less avoidable than Jason had initially thought.
Jason leaves.
*
It takes him a week to cool down, but even when he’s done being actively pissed, Jason still doesn’t want to see Dick. If these past couple months of weird, tentative friendship have proven anything, it’s that he and Dick were not made to get along. They’re too different, and not even in an opposites-attract sort of way. In a painful, grating way that makes their arguments and fights hurt like a broken bone.
Jason is not lonely. And he is not sad.
He reads a couple books, but they’re boring and stupid, and he has much better ways to spend his time. So he watches some TV, but it pisses him off, because all of the action scenes are exaggerated and unrealistic.
Dick returns to the skies as Nightwing later that same week. Jason knows because he sees it in the news and promptly throws an enormous and uncontrollable hissy fit. Could he be any stupider? Is he trying to kill himself?
He’s trying, suggests part of Jason’s mind, to make a point.
Sounds familiar. Jason’s done the same thing—which means he knows how to handle shit like this. Dick clearly wants attention. Jason needs to make sure he doesn’t get any.
So Jason goes back to his totally great routine. Red Hood by night, super happy non-lonely functioning adult by day.
He doesn’t last a week. He doesn’t even last three days. It’s less than seventy-two hours before Jason is crafting his newest, most scathing post-it note yet and making his stealthy way back to Dick’s apartment.
Dick’s apartment looks the same as always. No visible security upgrades, at least. Jason has picked a time when he’s not likely to be home, and he intends to be in and out as quickly as possible. Break in, stick the post-it somewhere clever, and get back out again before the potential for any possible social interaction is reached.
He reaches for the latch on the window and, with utmost care, pries it upwards. Nothing. He slides the glass pane open and hesitates for a moment. Surely there’s no way Dick’s brand new, freshly installed, specially crafted security system could be so horrendously ineffective.
When a moment goes by and nothing happens, Jason is forced to admit that perhaps Dick just hasn’t gotten around to setting up his new system yet. Either that, or he has and it just sucks.
He slides through the window, and the moment his feet touch the floor, all of his senses are assaulted.
“INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!” blares a robotic voice so loudly that Jason fears for the future of his hearing. Red lights begin to flash on and off, so bright that they can be seen from Gotham. “INTRUDER ALERT!”
Jason lets out an involuntary scream of pure, unadulturated terror. He has experienced literal trainwrecks less horrifying and sudden.
“LOCKDOWN!” yells the security system. “FULL SYSTEM LOCKDOWN!”
The window slams shut again. Jason hears the sound of doors slamming and locks turning. He wouldn’t have been surprised if poison spikes descended from the ceiling.
“AUTHORITIES HAVE BEEN ALERTED!” the system hollers at Jason. “BATMAN WILL ARRIVE IN: TEN MINUTES! ENTER CODE TO CANCEL!”
“Cancel!” screeches Jason. “Cancel!”
The system ignores him and transitions from cohesive sentences to a general wailing, shrieking alarm sound. It sounds like an ambulance had babies with a feral cat, and now the whole ambulance-angry cat family is howling at him.
“CANCEL!” Jason yells. He runs to the window, and it’s locked. He pulls out his gun and begins bashing into the glass with the butt, but it’s reinforced and won’t break. “I don’t know the fucking code!”
“BATMAN ARRIVES IN: FIVE MINUTES!”
“NO!”
Jason needs to guess the code. He begins to randomly guess numbers.
“ONE TWO THREE FOUR,” he bellows.
“INCORRECT CODE!” caterwauls the system.
“ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO!”
“INCORRECT CODE! BATMAN ARRIVES IN: FOUR MINUTES!”
“MOTHERFUCKER!” Jason’s despair mounts to levels never before seen by man. What’s he gonna do if Batman arrives? Come up with a disguise to fool the world’s greatest detective using only the supplies in Dick’s hallway? Pretend to no longer understand English? Fake his own tragic, unexpected death? There’s no escape! If the window wasn’t locked, Jason would be ready to jump straight out and pray for the mercy of the concrete below.
He begins to pound on the window and walls. He knows it won’t make a difference, but between fight or flight, there is only one option left.
He needs the stupid code. What would Dick use? It has to be something sentimental and stupid. What could it possibly be?
“BATMAN ARRIVES IN: THREE MINUTES!”
He’s running out of time. Bruce’s birthday? Jason doesn’t know it. Dick’s birthday? Maybe.
“ZERO THREE TWO ZERO,” Jason yells. March twentieth. That is Dick’s birthday, right? It hasn’t suddenly changed? Panic hasn’t altered his memory? Jason holds his breath waiting for the system’s response.
“CODE SUCCESSFUL! SECURITY DISENGAGED.”
Jason stays frozen, unable to believe his ears. This has to be another trick. He stays on high-alert, ready to shoot at any moment. He will not let himself be lulled into a false sense of security. The red lights stop flashing, and the doors unlock. Has Batman been called off? Or is he still on his way?
The sound of uncontrollable laughter replaces the screechy alarm. Jason, still frozen in place, glances wildly around the room, searching for the source. The bedroom door swings open, and there is Dick, doubled over, heaving with mirth. “The look on your face!”
Jason could murder him. He really, really could. But he’s too busy clutching at his chest like he thinks his heart might fall right out, which feels like a genuine possibility.
“You!” wheezes Jason. His entire body thrums with adrenaline.
“You should have heard yourself.” Tears of joy pool in Dick’s eyes, all squinted up by the force of his smile. “You literally screamed.”
“I did not,” Jason manages. Now that most of the terror has faded, he feels empty and limp. His heart is beating so fast he’s sure his blood pressure will permanently be through the roof, and he’ll be taking medication to fix it for the rest of his life. “I’m gonna fucking kill you.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Dick advises. “Might set off the security system again.”
The very threat sends new alarm shooting down Jason’s spine, which he quickly covers with a scowl. “You—you wouldn’t! Why the fuck would you do that?” He remains utterly flabbergasted.
“For fun,” Dick says, beaming brighter than the flashing lights. “Timmy and Barbara helped out.” The way he smirks at Jason, he almost looks taunting. Like he wants Jason to attack him. “Do you like it?”
Luckily, it seems like they’re on the same page.
Jason lunges for Dick. He knows a long time ago he decided not to kill Dick with his bare hands, but circumstances have changed, and now a gruesome murder sounds like just the thing to soothe his residual terror.
Dick’s eyes go bright with delight. He dodges out of the way, flies backwards down the hall, and Jason takes chase. It’s like Dick’s hurt leg has miraculously healed because he’s as slippery as ever as Jason chases him down the hallway, through the living room, into the bedroom.
Jason grins cruelly. Cornering himself in a small room was a rookie mistake. Dick should know better.
It’s like he wanted to start the fight. Now Jason would bet anything he wants to get caught.
Jason grabs him by the arm, twists it behind Dick’s back until a gasp of pain escapes, and slams him into the wall.
“What the fuck was that,” Jason demands. Against him, Dick is breathing hard, and his grin has softened into something small and elated. Infuriating in every way. Jason’s face is red. He’s still trying to catch his breath. “Is that your actual new security system?”
Dick laughs. “No,” he says, turning to face Jason even as he’s pressed harder into the wall. His side profile is strikingly backlit by moonlight from the window. His eyes gleam merrily. “Just wanted to have a little fun with you. Can’t keep it permanently, though. All my neighbors are gonna be throwing a fit.”
“I hope they get you evicted,” Jason gripes. The adrenaline has finally receded to a more manageable level, and something new has flooded in to take its place. “You’re so stupid,” he says instead of acknowledging his confusing, unwelcome feelings. “You can’t scare me like that. I would have shot you.”
“You already did that,” Dick points out, and it’s true. Even now, Jason’s violent urges are fading.
Still, he makes no move to free Dick from his hold. Their position is new and strangely exciting.
“You remembered my birthday,” Dick says. His grin has disappeared, and now his expression is painfully genuine.
“Of course,” Jason says. He swallows. “We grew up together.”
Dick shakes his head. “Everyone thinks you’ve changed so much. Bruce, Tim. Not even Alfred thinks it's safe to reach out. But…”
“I shot you,” Jason says.
“I’ll heal,” Dick replies.
There is a momentary standstill. Jason is acutely aware of Dick’s body against his own. His rising, falling chest. His heartbeat, abnormally quick. He wiggles his arm out of Jason’s hold and Jason lets him. Dick turns so they’re chest to chest, face to face. There is no breathing room between them.
Dick’s eyes flicker down a little, just once, and Jason realizes he’s looking at his lips. Jason hesitates. He knows what he wants to do, but he knows there’ll be no turning back once he does.
Dick says, “Do I have to spell it out, or…”
Jason leans forward and kisses him.
Three Weeks Later:
It’s four-thirty in the morning when Jason makes it home to his nearest safehouse and is finally able to peel off the sweaty layers of his suit. It’s an incredible relief to have them off, and the shower that follows is even better. By the time Jason is clean, fed, and ready for bed, it’s almost five-fifteen. Jason cringes when he looks at the clock. At least his schedule for tomorrow-slash-today is clean. He has nothing but time to spend sleeping… relaxing… sleeping some more…
Jason been in bed for no fewer than eight fucking minutes when his (tastefully subtle!) security system alerts him to a breach of the premises. Grand. Just grand. Exactly what Jason wants. He drags himself depressedly out of bed, grabbing a pair of pants and a shirt along the way. The only thing that stops him from grabbing his pocketknife too is that he has a theory regarding the intruder's identity, and he can’t stop his heart from lifting a little in hopeful excitement.
Nightwing closes the front door behind him. He must have been standing around outside for a while, wondering whether to come in.
“Hey,” says Jason. He fumbles around in the dark for the lightswitch, finds it, and paints the room in light. His mind is ablaze with half-formed fantasies. He could lead Dick back to bed and they could spend the morning together. Dick would smile, would give Jason one of those earnest smiles, would maybe even kiss him. And Jason would pull him closer and closer, would…
Dick is silent. Jason takes a step closer, unsure, and that’s when he notices that Dick is swaying ever so slightly.
“Shit,” Jason hisses, darting instantly to Dick’s side. Dick stumbles into him clumsily. Still, he says nothing. “What happened?” asks Jason, fitting his arm under Dick’s to lead him across the room to the couch.
Dick sits down heavily. He’s unmoving for a minute except for the rise and fall of his chest and working of his throat, and Jason wonders if he needs to repeat his question. Then Dick reaches up to take off his mask and set it aside.
When Jason meets Dick’s eyes, he stills, a shock of ice dripping down his spine. Dick’s jaw is a rigid line of tension. His eyes are dark. Grim fury radiates from every part of his expression.
It’s intensely unsettling. Jason has to suppress the urge to flinch back. Something sick crawls around in his stomach.
“Are you hurt?” he asks first. Focus on the physical first. Then worry about the rest.
Tightly, Dick shakes his head. Then, as an afterthought, he gives a single nod.
“Okey-dokey, Dickie,” says Jason. “Show Doctor Jason the ouchie.”
As Dick shifts to pull off his boot and shift up the leg of his suit, revealing tan skin mottled with bruises and sticky with blood, Jason realizes he’s handling the situation exactly the way Dick would. He tries to act as calm as possible, but on the inside, he’s squirming with fearful discomfort that won’t go away.
Dick’s suit is stuck to his leg by a coat of tacky, drying blood. Jason cringes when he sees. “Stop touching,” Jason says, batting Dick’s hand away. “We’re gonna cut this off. Not the leg,” he clarifies, half hoping it’ll tease a grin out of his somber counterpart.
Dick’s throat moves. That’s the extent of his engagement.
Jason grabs the first aid kit from the bathroom. He loiters in the hallway for a minute or two, steeling himself. There’s something tight in his chest—something queasy in his stomach. He shoves it down. Gotta be strong for Dick right now and freak out later.
When he comes back to the living room, Dick is gone. He’s taken all of his things with him and left not a trace behind. The safehouse is empty, silent, and cold.
Fuck. Motherfucking fuck.
*
The most infuriating thing about Dick, Jason realizes that night, is that when he doesn’t want to be found, there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Jason tries for a fruitless hour to track him before giving up. Dick will come back—he always does.
Sure enough, Dick is back on Jason’s doorstep by the time the sun has started to rise. Jason, seething with silent annoyance, opens the door and steps aside. Dick accepts the sour invitation and retraces his earlier steps back to Jason’s couch.
“Are you still not talking?” asks Jason gruffly. He’s trying not to sound too pissed—they can save that for later.
Dick shakes his head, and then as if to prove it, adds a soft, “No.” In the apartment’s dim light, he looks tired and miserable.
“Alright,” says Jason, relieved.
Back when they were kids, whenever Dick got extra upset or extra angry, he stopped talking. It has always terrified Jason—how could someone who loves talking as much as Dick Grayson just… stop?
It happened pretty rarely. Rarely enough that Jason had almost forgotten about it. Now, with this jarring reminder, it’s like all the years that have passed since their childhood—all those years they spent drifting apart—have disappeared, have lost significance entirely. Something squeezes Jason’s heart.
“Did you take care of your leg?” he asks, settling down on the couch next to Dick. He leaves a respectful distance between them. Dick might still be feeling… unfriendly.
Shamefaced, Dick shakes his head. He takes off his boot and places his foot on the coffee table so Jason can get a look at it. His every movement is tight with pain he’s doing his best to conceal. The effort is ineffective. Dick’s fingers are trembling.
“Alright,” Jason says again, tone pitched gentle and soothing. He wants to scream at Dick. Shake him by the shoulders and demand what he’d been thinking. But he’s fully aware that right now he needs to be the strong one. Jason’s temper tantrum won’t lose efficacy if he saves it for later.
Jason grabs the scissors designed specifically for this purpose, and begins to slowly, gently cut through the fabric of Dick’s suit near the wound. A nasty cut. Hopefully not too deep, but Jason wouldn’t bet on it. There is a lot of blood.
As he works, Jason asks, “Where did you go?”
Dick takes a moment to answer. “A walk,” he says. “I just walked a while.”
Using his bleeding, injured leg. Jason presses his lips together hard. Peels the bloody fabric away from the wound. Begins to clean the skin.
“Had a fight with Bruce,” Dick says after a long pause. “You came up. I got pissed. So I left and went on patrol, but I was still… Off. And I—”
Dick is quiet for so long that Jason is half worried he’s gone nonverbal again. When he continues, his voice is trembling. “Was off my game. A civilian died.”
Jason’s whole heart sinks straight through the floor. He doesn’t know what to say—doesn’t think anything he could say would help. So he presses his mouth tightly shut. Concentrates on stitching the wound. It’s made difficult by the shivers that wrack Dick’s frame. He won’t stay still.
“So I came here but I wasn’t ready to talk yet. So I went on a walk. For a while. I like walking, I guess. It’s just… easy. One foot in front of the other til you get where you need to go. I couldn’t really feel my leg. And my,” here his voice cracks badly, and he swallows before continuing, “my chest hurt. So I came back here. Sorry if you were… worried.”
Jason exhales, long and slow. He feels the anger seep away.
How many times has Jason acted volatile and unsafe? Dick has the right to do the same every now and then. It’s easy to forget that he’s just a person, but he is.
Something grabs at Jason’s heart, squeezes, and refuses to let go. Nightwing the hero has always been the object of Jason’s envy, hatred, and hero-worship, all in one. Dick the person is a lot harder. It’s hard to know how to feel about him.
Somehow, Jason still loves him. After all these years.
It aches.
“S’alright,” Jason murmurs. When the wound is stitched and bandaged as well as it’s going to get, Jason reaches out a hand. Dick takes it, fingers still trembling.
“Thank you,” Dick whispers.
Jason leads him across the safehouse to the bedroom.
“Get some rest,” Jason says. “I’ll take the couch.”
Brimming with gratitude, still gripping Jason’s hand like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered, Dick nods. “Okay,” he says. “Thank you.” This time, Dick manages to meet Jason’s eyes. The intensity of his gaze is striking. It burns straight through Jason. With strength he didn’t know he had, Jason meets Dick’s eyes.
Jason takes the couch but finds it nearly impossible to sleep despite his exhaustion.
The Next Day:
“You’re a really strong person, little wing,” says Dick.
Two Months Later:
“I want to learn how to paint,” Dick announces one day out of the blue. He sets down a plate on the coffee table in front of Jason. Assorted fruits and vegetables, all cut up into evenly-sized wedges. Dick is such a health snob. At least he provided dip this time. Usually he’s the kind of guy who eats his carrot sticks raw and unseasoned—not even ranch. But relationships mean compromise. Thus, hummus.
Jason sticks a fistful of bell pepper sticks into the dip, crunches them appreciatively, and swallows, all before Dick’s declaration registers in his mind. When the words make sense, Jason’s eyebrows shoot upwards, and he glances incredulously over at Dick. “You’re a horrible artist,” he says. “Your paintings scare children.”
“True artwork evokes emotion,” says Dick, raising his nose snobbishly.
Jason grimaces doubtfully. “Such as terror in small children?”
“Perhaps,” agrees Dick pretentiously. The accent he adopts is startlingly similar to the voice Alfred uses when he’s talking down on other people’s cooking. It surprises Jason into laughter.
Dick’s eyes go bright. He’s like a puppy sometimes. It’s so ridiculously easy to tell when he’s happy. When he’s proud.
“I just think it would be fun,” he continues, settling in beside Jason on the couch. He presses in close, making those enticing eyes, and Jason’s mind goes funny. He wants to kiss him so badly—but not while he’s talking, that would be rude, and also, he wants Dick to keep talking, pretty much all the time. “You have paint, right? You went through an art phase, too.”
“Not a phase,” Jason corrects.
“Then that means you still have it,” Dick deduces with a clever smirk. “Can I use it? Please?”
Jason pretends to think. He heaves a long-suffering sigh. “I suppose,” he agrees in a voice of utmost reluctance.
They break into the closet and rummage through several cardboard moving boxes before Jason strikes gold and uncovers his old painting supplies. Dick is right—Jason had gone through a painting phase a year or two ago. He’d needed something to occupy himself through those horrible, lonely hours and days and nights before he’d reconnected with Dick and the rest of the family, and he remembered liking art class as a kid.
Painting as an adult had been much harder. Suddenly there were standards. Suddenly, the end product needed to look good. It needed to mean something. And in Jason’s eyes, it never, ever did.
Maybe the problem had been lack of inspiration. Gotham is not the sort of place that inspires boundless creativity. Jason’s own apartment is pretty sad, too. He much prefers Dick’s. Lately, they split their time between the two, even if Jason has to come in through the door now lest he risk a repeat performance of the security system from hell.
Dick appears to suffer from no such creative block. He grabs the biggest canvas he can find and props it up. There’s no table that meets his needs, so he situates himself on the floor. Jason cringes and starts googling: best carpet cleaning products. In these situations it’s best to be preemptive.
“Jason,” Dick calls once he’s all set up. Jason grunts but doesn’t look up. “Jay. Jason.”
“What?”
“Get down here.”
“What? Why?”
Jason is disinclined to leave his spot on the couch. It’s got a magnificent view of the TV and provides easy access to the snack platter. But Dick is more stubborn than a bull, and he’s staring insistently at Jason, hands on his hips as he sits criss-cross-applesauce on the floor.
“Because,” says Dick. “You’re my muse.”
“That’s the most pretentious thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Jason snorts. But ridiculous delight makes his chest feel fluttery, and all of a sudden it’s impossible to stop grinning. How embarrassing. “Do you need me to pose?” he inquires sarcastically.
“As a matter of fact,” Dick says, “yes.”
So Jason kneels on the floor, shirtless (by Dick’s demand) and self-conscious and flushed red all down his neck and chest. He tries to play it cool. He busts out the classic Instagram influencer duck lips. Blows a little kiss. Dick bursts into a fit of giggles and commands Jason to stop.
“Take it seriously!” he demands. “This is art!”
Jason rolls his eyes. He feels too self-conscious to take this seriously. He doesn’t feel like anyone’s muse. He doesn’t feel like art.
But eventually he settles. He tries to sit in a way that feels natural. Dick stares for a moment, wordless and wide-eyed. Jason’s cheeks go hot.
Jason shifts. “What,” he snaps.
“Nothing,” says Dick.
He begins to paint. Time goes by in that weird, funny state where it seems like it’s moving too fast but every moment is important. Jason, forbidden to move a muscle, takes the time to observe.
The golden sunlight through the open curtains—the way specks of it seem to land and settle on Dick like flakes of gold. The canvas propped up against a bookshelf—a disaster waiting to happen. Jason should have never agreed to this. He can’t quite see what the painting looks like yet. All that’s visible is Dick and his frenzied fervor. His bright eyes. When Dick decides he wants to do something, he does it. He doesn’t half-ass, either. He gives it his all. A tornado could tear the apartment apart and Dick would not look up from his artwork.
Maybe Dick has artistic potential after all. If he doesn’t, it won’t be for lack of dedication.
Jason sits for so long his muscles go stiff and then begin to ache. He glances over to check the clock, half fearing that Dick will reprimand him for moving, but he’s too focused on his project to be annoyed.
“Can I see it yet?” asks Jason.
“No,” Dick says. He shifts the canvas and hunches protectively in front of it so Jason can’t see. “It’s not ready yet.”
“It’s been an hour!” Jason protests. He begins to stand, extra old lady-slow because his legs have fallen asleep.
Dick cringes and shakes his head urgently. As Jason approaches, Dick shuffles backwards with the canvas clutched tightly in his arms. The wet paint is smearing onto his fingers, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care. “You can’t look at it,” he says. “It’s not done.”
“Is it bad?” Jason asks. “It’s okay if it’s bad. I told you it would be bad.”
“It’s not bad!” Dick exclaims. Finally his back bumps into the wall, and he runs out of room to evade Jason. Jason grabs the canvas out of his hands, ignoring the wet paint that smears all over his fingers. “You’re ruining it!” he protests, trying to grab it back.
But it’s too late. Jason has already seen. And he can say with confidence that there is nothing that could ruin this painting. Ruin implies that the thing was once good, and has been annihilated by destructive forces. But it is abundantly clear that there was never anything that could possibly be considered good about this painting.
Jason’s face is so lopsided that he looks like a stroke victim. Not even Picasso could render an expression so absurdly asymmetrical. His eyes and smile are both disturbingly wide, making it look like he’s been caught in the middle of a week-long manic episode. His arms are both about an inch long, and his legs manage to be both unrealistically muscular and straighter than two twigs. The buttcheeks have been rendered so lovingly and with so much detail that they can undoubtedly be seen from the international space station. The package deal creates something both ridiculous and terrifying.
Jason takes one look at the painting, and then a glance at Dick, and then he’s losing his shit. He can’t stop laughing.
“Oh my god,” he wheezes. “Jesus fucking christ, Dickie, should I be insulted? It’s—too fucking much, oh my god—”
“It’s not that bad!” Dick yells, cheeks bright red. “Stop laughing!”
“I can’t.” Real, actual tears have welled up in Jason’s eyes. “Baby, please. I love you. But please never paint again.”
And he’s overcome by how desperately he loves Dick, how urgently he wants to kiss him, how undeniably precious he is and how lucky Jason is to have him. He’s never said I love you before but it feels right, he wouldn’t take it back for anything, he wants to say it again and again, and he would if he could manage to stop laughing for a second. He pries the crime against humanity out of Dick’s hands, props it up against the wall, and pulls Dick close. There is paint all over both of their hands, sticky and wet, and Jason doesn’t even care as he leaves bright handprints all over Dick’s arms and back and forehead.
“Baby,” Jason murmurs, brushing Dick’s hair out of his eyes and leaving a streak of color behind. “It’s okay.”
“You’re right,” Dick admits. His cheeks are bright red in embarrassment, but he leans into Jason, and as he holds him close, handprints of paint begin to cover Jason’s back as well. “It would scare children.”
“There’s a market for that,” Jason says. “Halloween, remember? You could decorate a haunted house with this.”
“Stephen King’s gonna be hitting me up for cover art,” Dick agrees. He touches his forehead to Jason’s and the paint smears more. He smiles softly against Jason’s lips, so close Jason can feel it, can feel every quiet breath.
Jason presses closer and kisses him, warm and gentle. He can still feel that smile so he does his best to kiss it away before it spreads to his own lips. Dick is pressing forward, and Jason is pushing him down to the floor so he can layer himself on top like a protective cover. Dick laughs, and Jason smiles down at him, holding him by the wrist. And soon Dick is breathless and hard beneath Jason and flushed red all the way down his chest. His skin is covered in the marks from Jason’s hands. Jason is heavy on top of him, hot and safe and endlessly devoted. Breathing hard. And his back and arms and forehead and cheek are smudged by the colors from Dick’s hands.
Jason keeps the painting. Dick is right that real artwork should evoke emotion, and this one inspires a smile every time.
Three Months Later:
Six-thirty in the evening, says the clock on the microwave in blinking red numbers. It’s getting dark earlier these days, so without sunlight, the apartment has to rely on artificial lighting. Also, candles. Dick’s apartment doesn’t have any sort of fireplace, and he makes up for the lack with lots and lots of seasonal candles. As a result, the whole place smells permanently of pumpkin spice.
It makes Jason want to, like, bake a pie. Do something domestic. That’s all that’s been on his mind, lately. Domesticity with Dick, and how incredible that somehow sounds.
“Do you want to move in together?” Jason blurts out. It’s all he’s been able to think about for weeks. He wants it badly enough to risk the anxiety of asking.
Dick looks up at Jason, eyes wide, and begins to slowly smile at him from across the kitchen. They’re at opposite ends of the counter. Dick is slicing carrots with a cleaver and Jason is peeling potatoes over the trash can. They always cook together, even though Dick eats like a rabbit and they can never agree on a recipe. They end up inventing their own most of the time. Jason-Dick cuisine. There’s nothing else like it, and more and more lately Jason thinks it needs to have its own place. Somewhere official. A Jason-Dick apartment, for example.
“Whose place?” Dick asks.
Jason’s mouth drops open. He takes a moment to collect his thoughts. He hadn’t actually thought he’d get this far.
“Uh,” he eventually grunts. “Either way, I guess. Or we could get a new one together. If you wanted.”
“Okay,” Dick says, grinning giddily. Suddenly he’s moving forward to throw his arms around Jason, and all the air is knocked out of him when they collide. He smiles, heart pounding, insides fluttering. Everything feels surreal. Never before has Jason wanted something so badly and had his wish come true. He’s so used to wanting that he doesn’t know how to receive.
But the months with Dick have been incredible. If there is one person in the world who actually listens to what Jason wants, it’s Dick.
Dick leans back to stare at Jason. Happiness makes him bright and dazzling and irresistible. Feeling starstruck, feeling too much at once to express, Jason leans down and kisses him.
Soon they’re both breathless and flushed and Jason can feel Dick’s fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. His other hand is on Jason’s neck, fingers brushing through the short hair. “Just think,” he says. “We’ll have a kitchen that’s ours together. And a bedroom. And—”
“And we’ll do all our chores together,” Jason adds. “And pay rent. And,” he continues with a seductive eyebrow wiggle, “do our taxes.”
“Do not ruin my happy fantasy with taxes,” Dick says. He puts his chin on Jason’s shoulder, and their height difference is such that it fits perfectly. Something about that feels impossibly precious.
Later That Week:
“Welcome,” Dick says the day Jason moves in, “to the Grayson household. Now the Grayson-Jason household.”
“It’s not a house,” Jason reminds him. He is, as always, passionate about precision of speech. “It’s an apartment.”
“Apartment-hold,” Dick decides. He smiles at Jason like he’s sharing a secret he can’t keep inside. Jason takes a moment to reflect: he is inestimably grateful that he is the person Dick chooses to share it with.
Five Weeks Later:
Later on, the Batcave is more empty than it’s ever felt before. There are very few sounds, but the ones that penetrate the silence are distinct: Drips of water in the hollow caves. Machinery. Jason’s own footsteps. Heavy, labored breath.
Bruce is sitting in the Batchair, hand pressed to his forehead, chest heaving up and down. His uniform is torn and dirty. All of the visible skin is bruised or bleeding or scraped. His eyes, when they finally open to stare at Jason through trembling fingers, are haunted and empty with horror.
“He’s gone,” Bruce says.
Jason doesn’t say anything. He has never had any reason to trust anything Bruce says. It’s such a Bruce-like thing, to lie about something so enormously unimaginable. Jason would never put anything past him.
Bruce lifts his face. The shadows make his cheeks look gaunt and his eyes look hollow. “They unmasked him,” he says, slow, each word sticking like it doesn’t want to come out. “And strapped him to a bomb that was connected to his heartbeat.”
Jason stills before he reaches Bruce and stands before him in the dark cavern. With Bruce hunched over in his chair, Jason is taller. Bruce is visibly falling apart.
“Jason,” Bruce says. His voice breaks and falters and stretches impossibly brittle and thin. “I’m sorry.”
Jason could punch something, or throw something, or kill something. He could punch Bruce or throw him or kill him. But he doesn’t feel the urge to do any of those things. He feels cold and numb. He feels like his veins are empty of blood, and the body left behind is frozen and empty. He feels like he felt when he was dead.
He walks back out again. Out through the clock, across the manor, onto the grounds. His bike is in the cave, and he does not want to go back in there. So he walks all the way back to their apartment through Gotham. It really is a horrible, wretched city. Crawling with vermin and criminals and unhoused people who Jason can’t help and ignorant, insufferable citizens who aren’t Dick.
It’s night by the time Jason gets home, and he is very cold, and nothing he tries will help. The apartment is dark, and it stays that way even when Jason turns on the lights. He can’t see a thing. And he can’t stop shivering.