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Tim groans his annoyance and tosses aside the remote. “Well, there goes marathoning Star Trek reruns. I guess Jason’s here early.”
Slouched on the couch beside him, Dick frowns distractedly as he pokes at his tablet. “Jason’s not getting in until tomorrow.”
Tim doesn’t bother to hide the roll of his eyes. Figures that the only word he hears is Jason’s name. “Well, he must’ve finished up early in Hong Kong because he’s around here somewhere.”
This, at least, gets Dick to look up from his work. He glances around the den, empty save for the two of them and Alfred the cat snoozing on the back of the couch. “Did he text you?”
Tim gestures to the TV. The screen is glitching, flashes of rainbow static repeatedly undercutting Captain Picard’s adventures. “He doesn’t have to.”
Dick looks to the TV to Tim and back again. “I’m sorry, am I missing something?”
Tim narrows his eyes at Dick. He’s just about decided that Dick is doing that thing he sometimes does where he pretends Jason’s death never happened when a familiar pattern of footsteps joins the room. “Hey, nerds,” Jason says briskly as he drops into the space between Tim and Dick, hair still tousled from the wind outside. “Miss me?”
Dick’s entire body changes the instant he sees Jason. People like to think of Dick Grayson as a lighthearted guy, but Tim’s found that, on any given day, he’s usually deep in the middle of something—a case, a brooding session, worrying over friends or those he considers family. A fight with Bruce, plans for that night’s patrol, etc., etc. At face value, he’s talkative, friendly, open—but Tim’s known him long enough to see it in his eyes when his mind is somewhere else, which is almost always.
But when Jason’s around—it’s like Dick surfaces from deep underwater to take in the sun at the top. His eyes clear, the furrow between his brows smooths out, and that old boyish smile, the one that Tim hasn’t seen regularly since his first days as Robin, tugs at the corners of his lips again. If a half-distracted Dick Grayson still lights up whatever room he’s in, then a fully present Dick Grayson is something else altogether.
“You’re back early,” Tim notes, letting Jason steal the remote from his hand, even though they both know the signal won’t come back to the TV for at least another minute or so.
“Yeah, I picked up some help in Hong Kong.” Jason aims the remote at the TV and squints when it fails to produce a result. “She was killer. Helped me take the smuggling ring down in two days flat. Much better than anyone else in this family at whatever it is we’re doing here.”
It takes Tim a second, but— “You ran into Cass!”
“Yup,” Jason grins. “Convinced her to come back with me for the holiday, too. She’s in the foyer now winning Titus over. Bruce is gonna owe me big time.”
“Ace.” Tim jumps to his feet and bounds around the couch. “See you around.”
“Later, Timbers.”
Just before he clears the room, Tim glances over his shoulder. Jason’s head is resting on the back of the couch, and his face is turned towards Dick, like a sunflower tilting to seek the light. “Hey, Dickie.”
Dick’s smile is small and soft. “Hey, Jay. Welcome home.”
Jason’s lips twitch. The TV finally reclaims its signal, but neither of them notice. “Good to be back.”
Tim just shakes his head and takes his leave. God only knows how long that’s gonna take, he thinks to himself; then he sees his sister, and his thoughts are occupied for a while thereafter.
~*~
Dick shuffles into the kitchen at eight in the morning, hair like a bird’s nest on his head and exhaustion dark in the creases of his eyes. He fumbles with the coffeepot for a full minute without getting anywhere before Cass takes pity on him and gently brushes him aside to fill the water and load the grounds.
Dick heaves a sigh and drops his head on Cass’s shoulder. “Thanks, Cassie,” he says, words muffled. “It’s good to have you back.”
Cass smiles as she combs her fingers through the tangle of Dick’s hair, taking the moment to enjoy the soft, warm sun filling the kitchen. She loves her oldest brother dearly, but she doesn’t know why everyone sees him as some sort of paradigm of superhero perfection. He’s a hot mess, and anyone who would just take the time to look could see it. She suspects that the attention doesn’t do him as much good as one might think, either, judging from the shadows under his eyes. She knows that his reputation is a point of pride with Dick, but she can’t help but wish for some peace for him as well.
She doesn’t say any of that out loud. Instead, she flicks him on the forehead and tries to make her voice stern. “Sleep more.”
Dick lets out a laugh and lifts his head from her shoulder. “If only the world would stop spinning so fast, Cassie.”
Jason and Damian enter from the hall, glistening with sweat and positively fresh-faced in comparison to Dick. Jason stretches his arms above his head until his elbows pop. “Shit,” he exhales, picking up the towel around his neck to mop up his forehead. “That’s the last time I go up against Cass on an empty stomach.”
Damian hums his agreement. “I theorize that she is at her best when fasting,” he says, shooting Cass a comically suspicious look. “I believe it sharpens her focus and her instincts. I will attempt a similar preparation the next time we spar.”
Cass just shakes her head in amusement and fetches a few mugs for the coffee while Dick squints between Jason, Damian, and Cass, seemingly noticing Cass’s tightly bound hair and sweat-wicking spandex for the first time. “Have you guys been training?”
Jason shrugs. “The three of us went for a round on the mats. Cass kicked our asses. Nothing big.”
Dick pouts. “You should’ve woken me,” he says. “I would’ve gone a round with you.”
Jason arches a brow as he glances Dick over. “I think you needed to sleep more than you needed to go a round with anyone, bud.”
Damian nods. “Agreed. You look weak.”
Dick casts them all a half-hearted glare. “My sleep schedule is fine, thank you very much. If there’s anyone you should be worried about, it’s Tim.”
Jason rolls his eyes. “Yeah, that kid’s a freak. I woke up at four to use the bathroom and he was still up, so I took his tablet and locked him in his room. When I got up this morning to go down to the cave he was out cold, so my work there is done.”
Cass hands Dick a mug of coffee and keeps one for herself. “Do that on Dick,” she suggests, taking a sip of the rich, aromatic brew. Hong Kong is good, but nothing beats Alfred’s Italian roast.
Jason snorts as he leans his hip against the counter. “Yeah, wouldn’t work,” he says, eyeing Dick with a mixture of exasperation and fondness. “Prettybird’s harder to put down. There are always a lot more hoops to jump through when it comes to him.”
Cass grins. “I like it when you call him that.”
“What?”
“‘Prettybird,’” Cass echoes, mocking.
Jason makes a face. “I don’t mean—”
“You do mean,” Cass laughs.
“I don’t—”
“Cain is right,” Damian cuts in. “Your insistence on using an assortment of distasteful and inappropriate nicknames for Grayson suggests the development of some kind of complex.”
“I’m not developing a complex!” Jason almost-shouts.
“Good,” Damian sniffs. “Let’s keep it that way. You may not be the disgrace you once were, Todd, but you’re ill-suited for Grayson nonetheless.”
Jason groans. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
Cass looks to Damian and smirks. “The denial is strong in this one,” she says. Damian pulls a disgruntled face in reply and moves across the kitchen to steal some of Dick’s coffee.
Dick is looking from Jason to Damian to Cass with a mildly confused expression. “Are you guys talking about something?”
Damian takes Dick’s mug from his unprotesting hands. “What do you mean, Grayson?”
“The three of you are having a conversation, but—I feel like can’t understand a word of it.” Dick frowns. “It’s like you’re using another language or something. I don’t know—are you talking in Chinese? Arabic?”
Jason arches a brow at Dick. “You speak both of those languages, Dickie,” he reminds him.
“Nowhere near as well as you guys.” Dick hesitates, then shakes his head. “Maybe you’re right—maybe I do need to sleep more.”
Jason shifts forward and brushes his thumbs over the bags under Dick’s eyes. Dick sways under the touch and gives him a tired smile. “Go take a nap on the couch,” Jason suggests, voice softer now. “We’ll wake you when breakfast is ready. Wouldn't want you to miss reunion waffles.”
“You better,” Dick murmurs. “Tim, too.”
Jason rolls his eyes. “Yeah, golden boy, Tim too.”
“Good.” Dick gives Jason one last smile before shuffling out of the kitchen to the den. Cass, Damian, and Jason all watch him go.
“He does not know?” Cass asks, finally.
Jason turns away and begins rooting out flour, milk, and eggs for the batter. “He knows,” he says, voice clipped. “But I don’t think he understands.”
Cass glances to Damian, who only gives a twitchy little frown in return. “He will,” she says, in reassurance.
Jason cracks eggs into a mixing bowl and doesn’t respond, a line of tension in his shoulders that wasn’t there before.
~*~
When Steph gets to the manor, the entire first floor is filled with the warm, sugary-vanilla scent of Jason’s waffles, fresh off the stovetop. She congratulates herself on her perfect timing as she snags the biggest one from the serving platter and goes to kiss her best friend on the cheek. “Hey, sweet thing, it’s good to have you back.”
Cass’s eyes scrunch up in a smile. “Hey, Stephy.”
“You come into my house, you eat my food, but you don’t even welcome me back from overseas,” Jason grumps, forking a fresh waffle out of the iron.
Steph rolls her eyes and makes a show of trekking across the kitchen to give Jason the loudest, wettest smack to the side of the face she can manage. “Oh, Master Todd, it is so good to have you back at the homestead—the ladies of the estate have been in such a tizzy without you.”
“Hey,” Tim protests from the table, while Jason just snorts and wipes at his cheek, muttering, “Gross, Brown.”
Steph eats so many waffles she thinks she might give birth to a waffle-human hybrid baby, and then they all shuffle into the den to watch the Saturday morning cartoons Dick likes so much, because he may be the oldest of all of them but he’s still a child. With the combined presences of Jason, Cass, and Damian all in the same room at once, it takes the TV about three minutes of solid sketchiness to finally get a grip, three minutes which Steph takes advantage of by clutching her stomach and groaning loudly about needing a C-section.
“For god’s sake, Brown!” Damian finally snaps, as Cass muffles her laughter in a throw pillow and Tim records her on Snapchat. “Have you no dignity!”
“Don’t yell at me, Damian!” Steph shouts. “I’m mid-labor, show some compassion!”
Damian looks like he’s about one more blossoming cervix joke away from getting out his katana, but luckily Steph is saved from certain scalping by big brother Dick, who wraps an arm around Damian’s middle and hauls him bodily against his side. “Hush, little one,” he says, grinning at Steph as Damian writhes furiously against his hold. “Find peace within yourself.”
“I will not,” Damian fumes, but it isn’t long before he’s settling against Dick like a grumpy cat. Whipped, Steph thinks with a smirk. “Brown is being ridiculous and a disgrace to this family.”
“I can’t help it, I’m in deep discomfort,” Steph complains. She waves a hand at Jason. “Jason, come be my ice pack.”
Jason, slouched on the armchair next to the couch, frowns at her. “What? Why me?”
“You leech body heat like some sort of…body heat leech,” Steph says, ignoring Tim’s snicker. “Y’know, ‘cause of your whole storied past.”
“Cass is sitting right next to you,” Jason points out.
“Yeah, but she isn’t the father of this baby, is she?” Steph demands, pointing accusingly at her stomach.
Jason lets out a bark of laughter. His eyes light up, teal and green. “What?”
“You impregnated me with your delicious waffle offspring,” Steph says. “Therefore, it’s now your job to ensure my comfort until the baby is fully digested.”
“You’re messed up, Brown,” Jason laughs, but he gets up and joins her on the couch anyway.
“So I’ve been told.” Steph grabs his hand and places it on her forehead. A rush of snowy cold tingles through her nerves, like stepping out into a crisp winter night. It sweeps the uncomfortable sweaty flush she always gets from eating too much right out the door. “Ah. Alpine bliss.” The benefits of having zombie friends.
The TV finally gets its shit together, and the opening to Avatar: The Last Airbender drifts out of the surround speakers Bruce had installed in the den after a model during a party once told him his entertainment system was outdated. Steph sits up a little straighter, because damn she loves this show, and spots Dick staring at her from the other couch. She’s been with this merry little band of bats for a while now, but she doesn’t think she’s ever seen that expression on Dick’s face before—a strange, tense little thing, like she’s just taken his best pair of escrima sticks and he can’t do a thing about it. She shifts so she can meet his eyes and ask him what’s wrong, but the moment she does, his gaze is intent on the TV, like nothing in the entire world is more deserving of his attention than Katara, Sokka, and Aang’s journey north to find a suitable waterbending teacher.
Steph frowns, but leaves it be, reaching up to relocate Jason’s hand to the back of her neck (she’s been getting migraines lately, and Jason’s weird undead touch is better than Advil any day of the week). She figures it’s probably just part of some Complex someone in this family is developing. There are so many, it’s hard to keep track.
~*~
Patrolling without Batman present is strange, certainly, but…Damian has come far enough under Dick’s tutelage to begrudgingly admit that he enjoys the nights when it’s just him and his siblings. Nightwing runs a different patrol than Batman—just as careful and disciplined, but with a little more freedom between the shoulders, a little more room to run. Damian respects his father—respects Batman’s—intensity and devotion more than most anything in this world, but—he became Robin under Grayson’s guidance, not Bruce’s. And he’s learned to like the taste of flying.
“Nightwing to Oracle,” Grayson says over the comm. Damian, from where he’s perched on the head of a gargoyle guarding the spires of Trinity Church, can see him strolling leisurely on the edge of the rooftop of Gotham City Bank. “How are you on this beautiful night?”
“I’m fine,” Gordon replies, voice lofty, as it usually is when Grayson flirts with her. “Though I think we’d all be better if you stopped filling up the comm with your idle chatter when you’re supposed to be fighting crime.”
“You ever think about how ridiculous that phrase sounds?” Grayson muses. Even from this distance, Damian can see his grin, bright in the night. “‘Fighting crime.’ Tell me, O, how do we ever take ourselves seriously around here?”
Gordon’s hum is dry and amused. “Beats me, boy wonder.”
Brown’s voice clicks onto the line. “No disrespect intended, Nightwing, but could you stop blabbering on so much? Black Bat and I are in the middle of a very intense game of rooftop tag and your dulcet tones can be kind of distracting.”
Grayson laughs. Damian thinks the idiot’s actually flattered at being told he has dulcet tones. “Aren’t you supposed to be, I don’t know, patrolling or something?”
“Keep your pants on, Tighty Nighties, we’ve got it under control. Just having a little fun along the way.”
“Alright then,” Grayson says, and that right there is the difference between Batman and Nightwing. “Anyone got eyes on Hood?”
Another click. “East End,” Drake reports. “Passed by him a few minutes ago. Everything seemed quiet.”
“Good. Signing off for now; call in if you need anything.”
Damian rises to his feet, fires a line, and swings across the road to join Grayson on the roof of the bank. Grayson glances down and grins at him, and Damian doesn’t need to see his eyes to know how bright they are behind the lenses of his domino. “Ready, Robin?”
Damian feels something in his chest, something heavy and warm and safe. “Ready,” he says, because he is—because, at Grayson’s side, he always is.
The night is wide and full before them, and they run it like wolves run the tundra, like gazelle run the African savannah, like panthers run the dense tropical jungle. Whenever they see a sibling, in the flash of a red cape or the trail of white boxing tape, they give chase, fall into games of tag and hide-and-seek and who can do more flips midair (the answer is Grayson, the answer is always Grayson); the rest of the time, they put away thugs and criminals, keep their ears primed to the chatter drifting through the streets, and bask in the glittering lights and softly-reigned chaos that is Gotham at night.
It’s around one-thirty in the morning, when Grayson is considering ending patrol early given how quiet it’s been, that Damian begins to hear the humming in his ear, coming in staticky fits and starts over the comm line. It’s rough, low and raspy, but undeniably melodic, each note hit with full-throated surety. He knows who it is in an instant. It’s not the first time this has happened.
“Well, look way down the river, what do you think I see? I see a band of angels and they’re coming after me. Ain’t no grave can hold my body down…”
Next to him, Grayson stills, expression going vague and unfocused. “What—” he begins, but he’s cut off as more singing drifts over the line.
"Well look down yonder Gabriel, put your feet on the land and see. But Gabriel, don’t you blow your trumpet ’til you hear from me. Ain’t no grave can hold my body down…”
Realization flickers across Grayson’s face. He stills. “Jay?”
Damian sighs. He would give his life for Grayson, but sometimes the man is so blind that Damian fears for him. “Leave it,” he says, blunt. “It’ll stop in a minute.”
Grayson looks at him first with surprise, then with a frown. “Do you mean Jason will stop in a minute?”
Like he said. Sometimes Grayson is so blind Damian fears for him.
To Damian’s surprise, he’s wrong: It doesn’t stop in a minute, or even two minutes. The effect carries on for the rest of the song, relaying Todd’s voice across the line in alternating moments of clarity and static, like the tide washing in and out against the shore. The longer it goes on, the more Grayson seems to withdraw into himself. They sit there for what feels like ages, Grayson as still as a statue against the Gotham skyline, the scrape and rumble of Jason’s voice carried over the wind.
At last, it’s Brown who bites the proverbial bullet. She signs on to the line with rarely heard hesitation in her voice. “Uh. J?”
The singing abruptly cuts off.
“Your voice is doing that freaky thing where it just, uh, shows up over lines again.”
There’s a long interval of silence. Damian glances up at Grayson. His brow is furrowed, mouth set in a hard line.
Finally, there’s a click, and Todd’s voice comes through, much clearer now that he’s actually signed on. “Sorry,” he says, short and flat.
“No worries,” Brown says, light; then, quickly, as if to change the subject, “Hey, Tighty Nighties, what do you think about ending patrol early? Black Bat and I are bored out of our minds.”
It takes Grayson a moment to gather himself and sign onto the line, but when he does, his voice is steady, betraying nothing. “Yeah, I think it’s safe to turn in for the night. Roll call.”
“Still here,” Brown chirps.
Click. “Here,” says Cain’s quiet hum.
Click. “Here,” says Drake.
There’s a pause, then— Click. “Here.”
“Alright,” says Grayson. “See you all back at the manor.”
When Grayson turns to Damian, Damian half expects him to look as tense as he sounds—but Grayson is impenetrable, the guise of cheer and nonchalance just as effective a mask as Batman’s cowl. “Shall we, Robin?”
There are many reasons Grayson worries Damian. His blindness, his denial, the way he sometimes acts so much like Father it makes all of their fellow bat-vigilantes uncomfortable. They all have their weaknesses.
~*~
They send Cass to check up on him, since she’s one of the few people in this world (but not in this family—christ, they’re kind of bad at this, aren’t they?) who can spend any extended period of time in his bedroom at the manor without feeling dizzy. He recognizes her steps before she even knocks, the light, measured tap-tap-tap of the ballet flats Dick bought her that she loves so much clicking outside his door. The fact that she even lets him know she’s coming is a testament to her affection for him. “Jay?”
Jason sighs and moodily shucks off his kevlar vest. “Yeah, Cassie.”
The door opens, and Cass slips inside. She peers around the walls with a faint smile curving her lips. A bookshelf stocked full in tidy, alphabetized rows, piles of old video games, a tattered Flying Graysons poster Dick gave him the second time he ever deigned to speak to him—it’s not much, but the room is one of the only relics left of the old Jason, the Jason before Ethiopia. “I like it in here,” Cass says.
Jason snorts. “Yeah, well, you’re one of the few who do.”
Cass’s smile gentles. “You okay?”
“I—yeah. Yeah.” Jason sits down heavily on the end of his bed. “No.” He groans and drops his head into his hands. “I don’t know.”
Cass crosses the room and sits beside him. She places her hand, small and cool, on his shoulder. “What is it?”
Jason lifts his head and exhales. Honestly, half of the time, he doesn’t even know. Half of the time, it’s like he’s taking hits in the dark—he’ll never be able to avoid them, but the tension of knowing they’re coming drains all the energy out of him. He looks over at Cass, this tiny, deadly girl with the most gentle heart he’s ever seen, and feels his chest ache for all the pain he knows she’s gone through. “Sometimes I can forget I came back from the dead,” he tells her, as evenly as he can. “And sometimes I can’t.”
Cass understands. “It upsets you?”
Jason scrubs a hand through his hair. “Not all the time. Not when Steph uses my hands to cool herself down when she’s eaten too much, or when Tim bitches about not being able to watch Star Trek for two seconds. Just when—”
The next words lodge in his throat. Just when he doesn’t see it coming. Just when he’s trying to have one damn moment of peace.
Just when Dick looks at him like he’ll never understand that part of him, and never wants to.
“Jason,” Cass says, and Jason looks up to meet her eyes. “I never forget that I have come back from the dead. I never forget that I came back.”
Jason almost laughs. Instead, he shakes his head and smiles. Every damn time. “How is it that you’re the best of all of us, Cassie?”
Cass rolls her eyes, but there’s a grin there for him. “Less testosterone.”
“Yeah, that’s fair.”
“Jason.”
Jason looks up and feels his entire body go cold. Dick stands at the door, expression uncertain. “Can we talk?”
Cass stands. “Later,” she promises Jason, with a swift and reassuring squeeze to his shoulder. Then she’s gone, and it’s just him and Dick, staring at each other across the wide expanse of his bedroom floor.
Dick steps inside and closes the door. “Can we talk?” he repeats.
Jason sighs and stands. “Fine,” he says. “But we don’t have to do it in here.”
Jason is surprised when Dick flinches. He almost looks hurt. “You don’t want me in your room,” he says, flat.
Jason grits his teeth. This would be a lot easier if Dick would stop living up to his namesake so much. “I know what this room does to people, Dickface, you don’t have to pretend you want to be in here. We can talk somewhere else.”
There’s a beat, in which Dick stares at Jason and Jason stares at the floor. Then, “What does this room do to people?”
Jason rounds on Dick, fully ready to tear him a new one, but—Dick looks genuinely uncertain. Jason feels the first inkling of confusion. “It—I mean, for people who aren’t—who haven’t—I’m sorry, do you not feel it?”
Dick glances around. There’s a slight flush on his cheeks; he’s nervous, Jason thinks. “Feel what?”
“Lightheaded, dizzy, nauseous,” Jason rattles off. “Like you can’t breathe, like your heart is beating too fast. Everyone who”—he licks his lips, mouth suddenly dry—“everyone who hasn’t…everyone who’s normal feels like that when they come into this room.” He narrows his eyes at Dick. “Are you telling me you don’t feel it?”
“I…” Dick swallows. The flush crawls higher. Jason feels his stomach sink. “I don’t know.”
“You’re lying,” Jason says.
Dick frowns. “I’m not.”
“You are,” Jason says, through gritted teeth. “You’re fucking lying to me right now.”
Dick’s face hardens. “I’m not.”
“Why can’t you just admit it, Dick?” Jason snaps, and he’s angry now, because anger is better than feeling so fucking disappointed. “Why can’t you just admit to yourself that I died? That I came back different? That I came back wrong?”
His hands curl into fists at his side. Dick stares at him, wide-eyed, but Jason doesn’t care, he’s chomping at the bit and all he can taste is iron in his mouth. “Why can’t you admit that I fuck up your tech? That you don’t understand conversations between me and Damian and Cass? That I’m cold to the touch, that my voice cuts into your transmissions, that my room makes you sick?”
“Jason,” Dick starts, but Jason doesn’t want to hear it, “you always make me—”
“Are you that desperate to pretend it never happened?” Jason demands.
“No, I—”
"Do I really disgust you that much?”
“No!” Dick snaps. In an instant, Jason’s anger is nothing compared to the hard blaze of Dick’s eyes. “God, Jason, you always make me dizzy!”
“I—” Jason’s voice dies mid-sentence. “What?”
“And I know I’ve been a—fucking idiot, and you have every right to be mad at me for missing something this big, but do you honestly believe I think of you like that?” Jason has never figured out how Dick’s angry makes him feel worse than Bruce’s ever could. “Is that what you think of me?”
Dick glares at Jason, hurt, expectant, but Jason—Jason is still stuck on the words that fell out of Dick’s mouth ten seconds ago. They play on loop in his brain, like something made to mock him. “What did you just say?”
Dick’s jaw clenches. “Okay, you’re pissed at me, I get it. I’ll go. But you’re an idiot if you still believe that I think you came back wrong, so I don’t care how many times I have to say it to you, I’m going to keep saying it until—”
“No, Dick.” Dick scowls, and Jason can just tell that the next words he’ll say will be in that hot, bossy voice, but Jason doesn’t let him say it. “What did you just say to me?”
Realization hits Dick in the widening of his eyes. His indignation dies midair. “I—” He swallows. Caught. “I said that—you always make me dizzy.”
Jason takes an abrupt step forward. Dick doesn’t so much as flinch, just stares at him, the color draining from his face. “What does that mean?”
“I—” Dick looks away. His voice drops. “You know what it means.”
Before Jason can think, he’s grabbing Dick’s wrist, taking another step so he’s crowding him back. “I don’t,” he says, and even to his ears his voice sounds rough, desperate. “Tell me what it means.”
For a long, long while, Dick won’t look at Jason, and Jason thinks This is it. He’s going to run. Dick is like a firefly, like the hard edge of a thunderstorm; everyone chases after him, but no one’s ever held on to him for long. If Jason gets low and nasty and pushes people away, then Dick bolts—takes to the wind and hopes that anyone who cares about him has already left by the time he comes back. And if he goes—if he shakes Jason’s hand off him and leaves right now—Jason doesn’t think he has it in him to chase him down.
But Dick doesn’t run. He looks up, finally, and meets Jason’s gaze. “It means my heart beats fast around you no matter where we are,” he says, barely above a whisper. “It means I don’t notice when the TV loses signal around you because I’m never looking at it. Sometimes I watch you have conversations with other people and I don’t catch a single word because I’m too distracted. And when you touch me, I’m not thinking about how cold your hands are, I’m thinking about—”
Jason will have to find out what exactly Dick thinks about later, because at that moment there is nothing on earth that can stop him from pulling Dick bodily against him and kissing him like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do. Dick jerks like he’s been electrocuted, but not half a second later and he melts like snow in Jason’s hands, all resistance leaving him in the time it takes Jason to press him up against the door.
Dick is warm and pliant underneath him, and he kisses in deft, lazy strokes that make Jason hum in pleasure and frustration. He pulls back and begins to scrape his teeth down the slender line of Dick’s neck; the noises that Dick makes in the back of his throat, soft and desperate, are exactly the kind of sounds that could knock Jason’s knees out from under him. He rests his forehead in the crook of Dick’s shoulder and tries to catch his breath. “Fuck.”
Dick laughs, weak. He reaches up to twine his fingers in the curls at the back of Jason’s neck. “You’re telling me.”
“Nope,” Jason says, because he’s not losing this fight.”I’ve been in love with you since i was fifteen. I win this one.”
Dick stills underneath him. “Jay—”
Jason doesn’t let him finish, just pulls him close so he can kiss him again. He doesn’t need to tell Dick that he’s hard-pressed to notice anything but him when they’re in the same room, that he hears Dick’s voice in his head even when—especially when—they’re hundreds of miles apart, that sometimes he looks at Dick in the right light and it’s like he’s forgotten how to breathe. He doesn’t tell him that, if Jason is a ghost, then Dick is a supernatural force all his own, one that tears worlds apart in search of better ones.
He doesn’t tell him any of that. He just kisses him, and thanks whatever generous and unnatural magic is actually out there that Dick feels the same way.