dcu: those days when you were happy (a long time ago)
title those days when you were happy
pairing: jason todd/dick grayson
rated: pg-13
note: this fic was originally called "dick pics" and was supposed to be as filthy as i could make it. it didn't turn out that way at all :(
Jason’s flipping through hard copies of financial records that were supposed to be shredded when his phone buzzes. It’s a notification from an app that he’s never downloaded saying that he has a picture message from a friend he’s never added-Dick. Rather than give in to instincts one through ten, Jason opens it then immediately wishes he’d put the phone in the microwave after all.
The photo is insidiously simple. A forkful of pancakes hovering in the foreground with an omelet, toast, assorted fruits, bacon tastefully plated in the center of a table. The applied filter adds a level of pretentiousness that Alfred’s Sunday morning specials don’t need. #Yum!
“Motherfucker,” Jason growls when he takes another look at the picture that those pancakes aren’t blueberry. They’re chocolate chip, obviously melting into that crisp buttermilk flavor. His favorite.
He ticks through a list of dates in his mind but no, he can’t think of a reason to celebrate. Everyone has just decided to visit the manor and do the family thing that's the only time Alfred goes all out for breakfast.
Good to know.
::
Four days later, Jason’s phone vibrates again. It’s three in the afternoon and he’s sliding over the roof of a taxing crop duster deep in the heart of Texas. He wrenches the door open and slings in feet first, snapping the heel of his boot against the pilot’s chin. The pilot’s jaw cracks like glass, sharp and fast, before he falls back into the seat.
It’s not until he secures the plan, flight plan, disk, and henchman that Jason thumbs to the new message.
Jason studiously ignores the miles of tanned skin interrupted by a brief smear of tie dyed swim trunks and focuses on a game of chicken in the pool. Damien and Tim fall backwards while Cass and Steph stand with arms stretching up in victory.
#wecouldtakethem.
Who is out there protecting the city while everyone’s apparently on vacation? Oh that’s right, it’s Jason.
Assholes.
::
It becomes a thing, Dick sending him pictures of various civilian outings. It doesn’t take a detective to find the pattern. They’re all family photos. Alfred and Cass weeding the garden. Bruce studying the billiards table, head favoring his best angle, cue in hand. A pile of sleeping teens on the floor illuminated by the glow of the massive screen in the media room. The photo of Damien glaring out into a crowded auditorium from the bottom riser, mouth open in song startles a snorting laugh from him. Dick adds #alittlesharp which is so bad Jason rolls his eyes. All that money and no one thought to buy Dick a better sense of humor.
Still, Jason remembers sitting through a several of the Gotham Academy glee clubs performances. The uniform jacket always seemed a little snug around his shoulders, the tie tight around his neck. He could barely sit still during the endless Christmas carols. When he’d been in school, Jason was on the swim team. Bruce had come to a few of his meets.
It’s a wave of nostalgia that doesn’t. It doesn’t matter.
He deletes it like he has every picture that came before.
::
Pictures of food annoy Jason the most. He knows what good food looks like. He’s dined it up all over the globe. He cooks all the time and is not impressed by the spoonful of chocolate mousse Babs tilts into the camera with a thumbs up. He’s not even tempted to ask what the layer is between the crumbled cookie and the ganache.
He’s in the bodega reaching for milk when Dick sends him another picture of Sunday breakfast. This one focuses on an embarrassed Tim, hand covering his eyes, face blotchy pink with a strong arm resting behind his head-black t-shirt, red shield. Meeting the folks already? He'd have bet his left nut that Bruce would never have tolerated Kon's presence at a family meal.
Huh, Jason thinks and then thinks some more before heading for the cereal aisle. His retaliatory picture is a box of Crocky Crunchies burning slowly over the grill.
Dick sends him a picture a few hours later. He’s obviously just woken, hair mushed, cheeks flushed from sleep, but his eyes are comically wide with horror.
Relax, he types and sends back with a picture of a glass container filled to the brim with cereal and an empty bowl and spoon milk drying.
Dick’s smiling in his next picture, cheeks contoured by lines from his pillow case. I was wondering when you’d figure out the chat part.
Why Dick wants to “chat” is beyond him. They’ve never sat around and shot the shit before, not really. Actually talking is a hardly ever kind of thing, not on the job, not unless it’s necessary, and then it’s mostly yelling with more than a few self-righteous jabs from both ends, if Jason’s being honest. Mostly from the haloed side of righteous good when he’s being objective. He tells Dick as much only within a set character limit, but he thinks he gets the point across. At least his disdain with Dick’s tactics.
Maybe we should change that.
Maybe I don’t want to talk to you.
We can change that too.
::
The pictures keep coming.
Lunch at the Gotham City Museum of Natural History.
The Quick Draw game on Amusement Mile, Dick and Cass tied shot for shot.
Dick climbing a tree. His shoeless feet curl into the bark for purchase, body long and reaching for a bright red kite.
Damien covering his face in the movie theater which is rude as hell, Dick, but he doesn’t send a reply or even ask what got to the kid. If he’s upset or happy, if those are tears he’s trying to hide or just curling away from Dick’s invasive documenting. #friendshipismagic
Sometimes Jason thinks that he’s missing the message. That whatever Dick’s trying to say is being lost between the faces smiling up at the camera, the startled start of laughter hidden in the eyes and the slow ache fisting in Jason’s gut when he sweeps another picture away. It can’t just be Dick hammering in something Jason already knows. He can’t just be showing what Jason’s missing. He doesn’t want to ask because he doesn’t care.
He gets an answer when he least expects it.
When are you going to come out and play?
I’m not. But why would I when I’m not invited.
You can’t be invited to your home, Jay.
Jason’s sure that he’s been uninvited a hundred times over at this point, so being invited would be necessary. The statement is just pure Dick. His brother always had a soft spot for lost causes and it hasn’t suffered with age, apparent death, or the struggles of nearly twenty years of vigilante life. Somehow, Dick still believes that if you work smart enough, if you do enough of the right things, good intentions will carry you through. For everything else, hope will light the way. He’s holding up that torch for Jason now it seems.
Hope is for suckers. You can’t live for hope. But you can live for the moment, for doing right whenever you can however you can for as long as you can. There’s just too much between them right now. Maybe always will be. Jason doesn’t say that though.
He doesn’t say anything at all.
::
Until one day, Jason realizes he has something to say. He starts sending pictures of his own. Mostly on the job things which is probably against some Justice League club handbook, but whatever. He’s wearing the hood most of the time with the wreckage of another night’s work burning brightly behind him. Sometimes he’s artistic, piling a couple thugs together and kneeling in front of them, thumbs up, grin hidden behind red polymer. One night he’s feeling something like the man in the moon, feet propped on the churches’ clock tower and looking down at it all. He snaps a pic of his boots and the lights more brilliant than the night sky and the faint sounds of the city below the best kind of music a guy like him will ever hear. It’s always the same tag, #betteroffalone.
He thinks it clever until Dick links him to a bubblegum pop piece of repetitive techno beats broken by a questioning refrain. It gets stuck in his head at the most random times now. He’s found himself tapping out the melody against his thigh once or twice while waiting in the shadows, and if he whistles it during a fire fight, bullets popping out in a rhythmic staccato, no one would know.
But yes, he is better off alone and pretty proud of this discovery. Until life goes out of its way to prove him wrong.
::
Gotham industrial park and the Lionel building’s security alarms ring increasingly worrisome warnings. Jason’s attention is split between shutting down the security doors, firing warning shots, and dodging lab equipment.
“You just had to open that case, didn’t you, Ralph?”
Ralph roars at him, jaw unhinged and wet with drool, and tosses a small centrifuge at his head. Jason ducks, fingers still tapping through another protocol and finally. The flashing lights stop. The contamination doors begin slide back into the ceiling. Perfect timing. Determined to end this quickly, Jason leaps out at the hulking beast and is plucked out of the air.
He’s plucked midair by a guy who, ten minutes ago, was only 5”5. Then he panicked when confronted by the Red Hood and he drank a new batch of kinase solution that turned him into the gray skinned, seven foot tall thing that could pluck Jason out of the air. He’s kind of stuck on that point.
The recoil of his pistols and the swoosh of his body being flung side to side mean his aim is a little off. Everyone has bad days. The empty clips clatter to the ground, so he takes to whipping the pistol around the things head. Ralph opens a gaping maw with incisors the size of a great apes, spit flecking everywhere, and confused rage in its eyes before it starts running. Jason only has a few seconds to both relax his body before he’s slammed into a brick wall.
When he comes to, Jason’s propped against a bed of loose brick and mortar. His helmet is cracked and his body feels. Well, it feels like he was picked up, tossed around, and thrown into a wall. Probably not concussed, definitely unbalanced, but he’s needs to get moving.
There’s a blur hopping around in the corner of his eye. He blinks slowly willing his gaze to focus. That’s definitely Nightwing who has joined the fray, neatly sidestepping a few wild grabs, sticks whirling to bat away the occasional lab chair.
“Heard you needed some help,” calls Dick effectively keeping the attention on him. “Unless you wanted to finish this up alone? That’s a rhetorical question by the way. I know you need me.”
Going toe to toe with this genetically enhanced thing probably isn’t the best idea right now. Jason’s aching, his ears are ringing, and now he’s got that damn song starting in his brain. That doesn’t mean he’s going to forego a little assistance.
“Make yourself useful since you’re already here. Just don't expect me to say thank you.” he says.
Dick’s grin beams out like a spotlight. “Always so stubborn, Jaybird.” He drops low avoiding a giant fist that sailed through the air where his chest would have been.
Jason pats down his person locating his tranqs and loads his gun before shifting into a near vertical position. He squints an eye the targeting is out. He slaps and claws at the hood until it unclips and falls. His vision is still blurred at the edges but it’s enough to help him tap five darts. One in the neck, two behind the knees and the forth near the armpit which is close enough. He pops off the fifth with relish. Ralph twirls and flails at the unexpected stings and the last shot hits right in the exposed skin above his ass.
They have to go another few rounds with the thing while the tranquilizer is metabolized. They move in tandem, Dick sprinting in and flipping back out and Jason lumbering into its side like a drunken linebacker, all elbows and low hip stances. He’s not up to the showy flips out of punching range, but Jason manages to sidestep and hop backwards. And he stays out of the air. He’d like to say that it’s because he’s learned his lesson, but really, it’s because Dick owns the air right now. His lean body flies through it, demands the attention and the space to preform, entertain, fight with calculated abandon.
After entirely too much harrying, Ralph stops, arms outstretched. He lets out a low moan. His giant body begins swaying.
“Fucking finally,” Jason wheezes.
Dick lands his side and offers silent support. Okay, he doesn’t. That’s just what Jason would like to get one of these days. Dick actually rolls out his hand as if inviting Jason to move forward.
“Would you like to do the honors?”
Jason shakes his head then waits for the room to stop doing that. He braces his hands on his hips and takes a deep breath. “Nah. You can go ahead and take him down. Secure him if you can.”
Dick leaps forward, powerful thighs propelling him up in a dynamic kick followed by the two escrima sticks. The blows send Ralph stumbling back right over the foot Dick so helpfully stuck out. Ralph begins its slow fall to the ground. “Timber,” Dick says helpfully just before impact. The remaining test tubes rattle on the wall, the floor shakes, and Jason staggers to his knees.
The next couple of seconds blur together. Because Dick is pretty and takes orders well, sometimes, he secures Ralph as best he can. Then he has a muffled conversation with someone, O probably, which Jason didn’t ask him to do. He’s back at Jason’s side between one blink and the next, and Jason’s world narrows down to a bright lens of Dick’s actions. Dick humming, turning down the collar of his jacket, and running hands up his chest surreptitiously checking for wounds. Dick thumbing at the tender skin of his cheek, gloved fingers gentle along the pulse in his throat.
“You okay, Jay?”
“Yeah. Just the rush leaving me. I’m fine."
Dick frowns. “Are you sure? You were. You were so still when I came in. I don’t know how long you were out.”
“It’s called a power nap, Dick-breath. Sharpens focus.”
A little of the concern melts from Dick’s face. He graces Jason with a small grin. “At least you didn’t take a power trip like our friend over there.”
“Oh no,” groans Jason. “Get your hands off of me. I refuse to be helped by someone as corny as you.” His attempt to stand doesn’t go so well.
Dick just grips his elbows and waits while Jason rides the jagged wave of his unbalanced equilibrium. He goes back to touching when Jason’s breathing evens. Sliding fingers through the back of Jason's hair gently checking for lumps, touching his cheeks, staring up into Jason’s eyes like he’s searching for something. Jason can’t think of what he’s looking for, can’t focus on keeping himself closed off, can’t hide. Jason licks his lips and tastes Dick’s relief at whatever he finds. He’s still flushed at the light touch, his heart beats a little faster, and he wonders if Dick will find that too. The thought jars him into action, but instead of slapping those hands away, Jason ends of catching them in his own.
“What do you even want from me? I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure it out, Dickie, and frankly, I don’t get it.”
He’s silent for a whole minute before sighing. “I didn’t know at first. There was just so many things going on, good things. I wanted you to know. Things are changing, Jay. I’m changing, we all are, and I thought you should be a part of it. We never really want to listen to each other,” he says, mouth pulling into a wry smile. “Maybe I thought showing you would be the best way to get through.”
“That’s dumb. Why would I care about glee concerts and Tim'sex life?” says Jason. “And how does the museum fit in your family montage?”
“Bruce mentioned going there with you last time we had breakfast.”
“Huh,” is all Jason can say. Dick’s looking at him like that means something if Bruce is spontaneously offering up information about the past. Maybe it does. But to who? “Getting senile in his old age?”
“Sentimental.”
“Get outta here.” Jason shoves him away, but Dick laces their fingers together and pulls himself back into Jason’s personal space. Pushes up until they’re nose to nose. Jason can imagine how wide his eyes are behind the lens, blue and earnest and determined.
“We’re all waiting. You don’t have to ask to come home,” he says. “Besides, we’re better together. We always have been. Always will be.”
“Think you’re building this little family fantasy on faulty assumptions. We’ve never been together. And I’m walking my own road now.”
“Different route, same direction. But I’m not talking about crime fighting philosophy. I mean that time we manned the Wayne Industries booth at that future tech convention and being snowed in when we went skiing in Aspen. I mean Christmas morning and how we left things...unfinished under the mistletoe.”
Jason rests his forehead against Dick’s and sighs. He remembers those things. Dick shouldn’t be using them like this, like a way in when there’s so much more standing between all of them. “Can’t go back to those things. And the future,” Jason sighs. “I stopped making plans a while ago.”
“I want you there with me though. Please. Take a small step with me now.”
“Careful there, Dickie. It’s starting to sound like you’re inviting me to more.”
“Would that be so bad?” He smiles when Jason refuses to speak because he’s not a liar, never liked it and never tried, especially with Dick. And he’s doing it that thing where he glides past all the arguments Jason has waiting, slips past his defenses and warps his arms around Jason. “Think about it. For now let’s just stay in the moment. You wanna?” he asks, too quiet and too close.
Jason agrees to whatever that head toss means and they’re twisting, Dick’s head butting under his chin and he should be looking up at the camera but. This is better.
::
Sunday finds Jason standing in the shadows of Wayne Manor. He’s considering his options-stay or go, let the past win and leave or find the courage and face a new future, be a coward or a. A hero. He lifts his phone from and sighs. Of course everyone knew he’s out here. Now he definitely has to go inside.
He checks the picture when he reaches the side door. It’s from that night when Dick pushed perfect nose in his business and spout all the shit that has him walking inside. The picture is more compromising than Jason imagined and Jason imagined a lot when he had Dick pressing against him. Still, he hasn’t smiled like that in a long time.
It’s a start.
Breakfast is on the table. The conversation barely pauses, just a couple of greetings, a "finally, geez," from Steph. Jason takes the open seat besides Dick which has a four stack of chocolate chip pancakes waiting for him.
pairing: jason todd/dick grayson
rated: pg-13
note: this fic was originally called "dick pics" and was supposed to be as filthy as i could make it. it didn't turn out that way at all :(
Jason’s flipping through hard copies of financial records that were supposed to be shredded when his phone buzzes. It’s a notification from an app that he’s never downloaded saying that he has a picture message from a friend he’s never added-Dick. Rather than give in to instincts one through ten, Jason opens it then immediately wishes he’d put the phone in the microwave after all.
The photo is insidiously simple. A forkful of pancakes hovering in the foreground with an omelet, toast, assorted fruits, bacon tastefully plated in the center of a table. The applied filter adds a level of pretentiousness that Alfred’s Sunday morning specials don’t need. #Yum!
“Motherfucker,” Jason growls when he takes another look at the picture that those pancakes aren’t blueberry. They’re chocolate chip, obviously melting into that crisp buttermilk flavor. His favorite.
He ticks through a list of dates in his mind but no, he can’t think of a reason to celebrate. Everyone has just decided to visit the manor and do the family thing that's the only time Alfred goes all out for breakfast.
Good to know.
::
Four days later, Jason’s phone vibrates again. It’s three in the afternoon and he’s sliding over the roof of a taxing crop duster deep in the heart of Texas. He wrenches the door open and slings in feet first, snapping the heel of his boot against the pilot’s chin. The pilot’s jaw cracks like glass, sharp and fast, before he falls back into the seat.
It’s not until he secures the plan, flight plan, disk, and henchman that Jason thumbs to the new message.
Jason studiously ignores the miles of tanned skin interrupted by a brief smear of tie dyed swim trunks and focuses on a game of chicken in the pool. Damien and Tim fall backwards while Cass and Steph stand with arms stretching up in victory.
#wecouldtakethem.
Who is out there protecting the city while everyone’s apparently on vacation? Oh that’s right, it’s Jason.
Assholes.
::
It becomes a thing, Dick sending him pictures of various civilian outings. It doesn’t take a detective to find the pattern. They’re all family photos. Alfred and Cass weeding the garden. Bruce studying the billiards table, head favoring his best angle, cue in hand. A pile of sleeping teens on the floor illuminated by the glow of the massive screen in the media room. The photo of Damien glaring out into a crowded auditorium from the bottom riser, mouth open in song startles a snorting laugh from him. Dick adds #alittlesharp which is so bad Jason rolls his eyes. All that money and no one thought to buy Dick a better sense of humor.
Still, Jason remembers sitting through a several of the Gotham Academy glee clubs performances. The uniform jacket always seemed a little snug around his shoulders, the tie tight around his neck. He could barely sit still during the endless Christmas carols. When he’d been in school, Jason was on the swim team. Bruce had come to a few of his meets.
It’s a wave of nostalgia that doesn’t. It doesn’t matter.
He deletes it like he has every picture that came before.
::
Pictures of food annoy Jason the most. He knows what good food looks like. He’s dined it up all over the globe. He cooks all the time and is not impressed by the spoonful of chocolate mousse Babs tilts into the camera with a thumbs up. He’s not even tempted to ask what the layer is between the crumbled cookie and the ganache.
He’s in the bodega reaching for milk when Dick sends him another picture of Sunday breakfast. This one focuses on an embarrassed Tim, hand covering his eyes, face blotchy pink with a strong arm resting behind his head-black t-shirt, red shield. Meeting the folks already? He'd have bet his left nut that Bruce would never have tolerated Kon's presence at a family meal.
Huh, Jason thinks and then thinks some more before heading for the cereal aisle. His retaliatory picture is a box of Crocky Crunchies burning slowly over the grill.
Dick sends him a picture a few hours later. He’s obviously just woken, hair mushed, cheeks flushed from sleep, but his eyes are comically wide with horror.
Relax, he types and sends back with a picture of a glass container filled to the brim with cereal and an empty bowl and spoon milk drying.
Dick’s smiling in his next picture, cheeks contoured by lines from his pillow case. I was wondering when you’d figure out the chat part.
Why Dick wants to “chat” is beyond him. They’ve never sat around and shot the shit before, not really. Actually talking is a hardly ever kind of thing, not on the job, not unless it’s necessary, and then it’s mostly yelling with more than a few self-righteous jabs from both ends, if Jason’s being honest. Mostly from the haloed side of righteous good when he’s being objective. He tells Dick as much only within a set character limit, but he thinks he gets the point across. At least his disdain with Dick’s tactics.
Maybe we should change that.
Maybe I don’t want to talk to you.
We can change that too.
::
The pictures keep coming.
Lunch at the Gotham City Museum of Natural History.
The Quick Draw game on Amusement Mile, Dick and Cass tied shot for shot.
Dick climbing a tree. His shoeless feet curl into the bark for purchase, body long and reaching for a bright red kite.
Damien covering his face in the movie theater which is rude as hell, Dick, but he doesn’t send a reply or even ask what got to the kid. If he’s upset or happy, if those are tears he’s trying to hide or just curling away from Dick’s invasive documenting. #friendshipismagic
Sometimes Jason thinks that he’s missing the message. That whatever Dick’s trying to say is being lost between the faces smiling up at the camera, the startled start of laughter hidden in the eyes and the slow ache fisting in Jason’s gut when he sweeps another picture away. It can’t just be Dick hammering in something Jason already knows. He can’t just be showing what Jason’s missing. He doesn’t want to ask because he doesn’t care.
He gets an answer when he least expects it.
When are you going to come out and play?
I’m not. But why would I when I’m not invited.
You can’t be invited to your home, Jay.
Jason’s sure that he’s been uninvited a hundred times over at this point, so being invited would be necessary. The statement is just pure Dick. His brother always had a soft spot for lost causes and it hasn’t suffered with age, apparent death, or the struggles of nearly twenty years of vigilante life. Somehow, Dick still believes that if you work smart enough, if you do enough of the right things, good intentions will carry you through. For everything else, hope will light the way. He’s holding up that torch for Jason now it seems.
Hope is for suckers. You can’t live for hope. But you can live for the moment, for doing right whenever you can however you can for as long as you can. There’s just too much between them right now. Maybe always will be. Jason doesn’t say that though.
He doesn’t say anything at all.
::
Until one day, Jason realizes he has something to say. He starts sending pictures of his own. Mostly on the job things which is probably against some Justice League club handbook, but whatever. He’s wearing the hood most of the time with the wreckage of another night’s work burning brightly behind him. Sometimes he’s artistic, piling a couple thugs together and kneeling in front of them, thumbs up, grin hidden behind red polymer. One night he’s feeling something like the man in the moon, feet propped on the churches’ clock tower and looking down at it all. He snaps a pic of his boots and the lights more brilliant than the night sky and the faint sounds of the city below the best kind of music a guy like him will ever hear. It’s always the same tag, #betteroffalone.
He thinks it clever until Dick links him to a bubblegum pop piece of repetitive techno beats broken by a questioning refrain. It gets stuck in his head at the most random times now. He’s found himself tapping out the melody against his thigh once or twice while waiting in the shadows, and if he whistles it during a fire fight, bullets popping out in a rhythmic staccato, no one would know.
But yes, he is better off alone and pretty proud of this discovery. Until life goes out of its way to prove him wrong.
::
Gotham industrial park and the Lionel building’s security alarms ring increasingly worrisome warnings. Jason’s attention is split between shutting down the security doors, firing warning shots, and dodging lab equipment.
“You just had to open that case, didn’t you, Ralph?”
Ralph roars at him, jaw unhinged and wet with drool, and tosses a small centrifuge at his head. Jason ducks, fingers still tapping through another protocol and finally. The flashing lights stop. The contamination doors begin slide back into the ceiling. Perfect timing. Determined to end this quickly, Jason leaps out at the hulking beast and is plucked out of the air.
He’s plucked midair by a guy who, ten minutes ago, was only 5”5. Then he panicked when confronted by the Red Hood and he drank a new batch of kinase solution that turned him into the gray skinned, seven foot tall thing that could pluck Jason out of the air. He’s kind of stuck on that point.
The recoil of his pistols and the swoosh of his body being flung side to side mean his aim is a little off. Everyone has bad days. The empty clips clatter to the ground, so he takes to whipping the pistol around the things head. Ralph opens a gaping maw with incisors the size of a great apes, spit flecking everywhere, and confused rage in its eyes before it starts running. Jason only has a few seconds to both relax his body before he’s slammed into a brick wall.
When he comes to, Jason’s propped against a bed of loose brick and mortar. His helmet is cracked and his body feels. Well, it feels like he was picked up, tossed around, and thrown into a wall. Probably not concussed, definitely unbalanced, but he’s needs to get moving.
There’s a blur hopping around in the corner of his eye. He blinks slowly willing his gaze to focus. That’s definitely Nightwing who has joined the fray, neatly sidestepping a few wild grabs, sticks whirling to bat away the occasional lab chair.
“Heard you needed some help,” calls Dick effectively keeping the attention on him. “Unless you wanted to finish this up alone? That’s a rhetorical question by the way. I know you need me.”
Going toe to toe with this genetically enhanced thing probably isn’t the best idea right now. Jason’s aching, his ears are ringing, and now he’s got that damn song starting in his brain. That doesn’t mean he’s going to forego a little assistance.
“Make yourself useful since you’re already here. Just don't expect me to say thank you.” he says.
Dick’s grin beams out like a spotlight. “Always so stubborn, Jaybird.” He drops low avoiding a giant fist that sailed through the air where his chest would have been.
Jason pats down his person locating his tranqs and loads his gun before shifting into a near vertical position. He squints an eye the targeting is out. He slaps and claws at the hood until it unclips and falls. His vision is still blurred at the edges but it’s enough to help him tap five darts. One in the neck, two behind the knees and the forth near the armpit which is close enough. He pops off the fifth with relish. Ralph twirls and flails at the unexpected stings and the last shot hits right in the exposed skin above his ass.
They have to go another few rounds with the thing while the tranquilizer is metabolized. They move in tandem, Dick sprinting in and flipping back out and Jason lumbering into its side like a drunken linebacker, all elbows and low hip stances. He’s not up to the showy flips out of punching range, but Jason manages to sidestep and hop backwards. And he stays out of the air. He’d like to say that it’s because he’s learned his lesson, but really, it’s because Dick owns the air right now. His lean body flies through it, demands the attention and the space to preform, entertain, fight with calculated abandon.
After entirely too much harrying, Ralph stops, arms outstretched. He lets out a low moan. His giant body begins swaying.
“Fucking finally,” Jason wheezes.
Dick lands his side and offers silent support. Okay, he doesn’t. That’s just what Jason would like to get one of these days. Dick actually rolls out his hand as if inviting Jason to move forward.
“Would you like to do the honors?”
Jason shakes his head then waits for the room to stop doing that. He braces his hands on his hips and takes a deep breath. “Nah. You can go ahead and take him down. Secure him if you can.”
Dick leaps forward, powerful thighs propelling him up in a dynamic kick followed by the two escrima sticks. The blows send Ralph stumbling back right over the foot Dick so helpfully stuck out. Ralph begins its slow fall to the ground. “Timber,” Dick says helpfully just before impact. The remaining test tubes rattle on the wall, the floor shakes, and Jason staggers to his knees.
The next couple of seconds blur together. Because Dick is pretty and takes orders well, sometimes, he secures Ralph as best he can. Then he has a muffled conversation with someone, O probably, which Jason didn’t ask him to do. He’s back at Jason’s side between one blink and the next, and Jason’s world narrows down to a bright lens of Dick’s actions. Dick humming, turning down the collar of his jacket, and running hands up his chest surreptitiously checking for wounds. Dick thumbing at the tender skin of his cheek, gloved fingers gentle along the pulse in his throat.
“You okay, Jay?”
“Yeah. Just the rush leaving me. I’m fine."
Dick frowns. “Are you sure? You were. You were so still when I came in. I don’t know how long you were out.”
“It’s called a power nap, Dick-breath. Sharpens focus.”
A little of the concern melts from Dick’s face. He graces Jason with a small grin. “At least you didn’t take a power trip like our friend over there.”
“Oh no,” groans Jason. “Get your hands off of me. I refuse to be helped by someone as corny as you.” His attempt to stand doesn’t go so well.
Dick just grips his elbows and waits while Jason rides the jagged wave of his unbalanced equilibrium. He goes back to touching when Jason’s breathing evens. Sliding fingers through the back of Jason's hair gently checking for lumps, touching his cheeks, staring up into Jason’s eyes like he’s searching for something. Jason can’t think of what he’s looking for, can’t focus on keeping himself closed off, can’t hide. Jason licks his lips and tastes Dick’s relief at whatever he finds. He’s still flushed at the light touch, his heart beats a little faster, and he wonders if Dick will find that too. The thought jars him into action, but instead of slapping those hands away, Jason ends of catching them in his own.
“What do you even want from me? I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure it out, Dickie, and frankly, I don’t get it.”
He’s silent for a whole minute before sighing. “I didn’t know at first. There was just so many things going on, good things. I wanted you to know. Things are changing, Jay. I’m changing, we all are, and I thought you should be a part of it. We never really want to listen to each other,” he says, mouth pulling into a wry smile. “Maybe I thought showing you would be the best way to get through.”
“That’s dumb. Why would I care about glee concerts and Tim'sex life?” says Jason. “And how does the museum fit in your family montage?”
“Bruce mentioned going there with you last time we had breakfast.”
“Huh,” is all Jason can say. Dick’s looking at him like that means something if Bruce is spontaneously offering up information about the past. Maybe it does. But to who? “Getting senile in his old age?”
“Sentimental.”
“Get outta here.” Jason shoves him away, but Dick laces their fingers together and pulls himself back into Jason’s personal space. Pushes up until they’re nose to nose. Jason can imagine how wide his eyes are behind the lens, blue and earnest and determined.
“We’re all waiting. You don’t have to ask to come home,” he says. “Besides, we’re better together. We always have been. Always will be.”
“Think you’re building this little family fantasy on faulty assumptions. We’ve never been together. And I’m walking my own road now.”
“Different route, same direction. But I’m not talking about crime fighting philosophy. I mean that time we manned the Wayne Industries booth at that future tech convention and being snowed in when we went skiing in Aspen. I mean Christmas morning and how we left things...unfinished under the mistletoe.”
Jason rests his forehead against Dick’s and sighs. He remembers those things. Dick shouldn’t be using them like this, like a way in when there’s so much more standing between all of them. “Can’t go back to those things. And the future,” Jason sighs. “I stopped making plans a while ago.”
“I want you there with me though. Please. Take a small step with me now.”
“Careful there, Dickie. It’s starting to sound like you’re inviting me to more.”
“Would that be so bad?” He smiles when Jason refuses to speak because he’s not a liar, never liked it and never tried, especially with Dick. And he’s doing it that thing where he glides past all the arguments Jason has waiting, slips past his defenses and warps his arms around Jason. “Think about it. For now let’s just stay in the moment. You wanna?” he asks, too quiet and too close.
Jason agrees to whatever that head toss means and they’re twisting, Dick’s head butting under his chin and he should be looking up at the camera but. This is better.
::
Sunday finds Jason standing in the shadows of Wayne Manor. He’s considering his options-stay or go, let the past win and leave or find the courage and face a new future, be a coward or a. A hero. He lifts his phone from and sighs. Of course everyone knew he’s out here. Now he definitely has to go inside.
He checks the picture when he reaches the side door. It’s from that night when Dick pushed perfect nose in his business and spout all the shit that has him walking inside. The picture is more compromising than Jason imagined and Jason imagined a lot when he had Dick pressing against him. Still, he hasn’t smiled like that in a long time.
It’s a start.
Breakfast is on the table. The conversation barely pauses, just a couple of greetings, a "finally, geez," from Steph. Jason takes the open seat besides Dick which has a four stack of chocolate chip pancakes waiting for him.