Work Text:
He had, eventually, moved into the Bowery. One year, three months since he'd suggested it, and Bruce had achingly, quietly voiced his support for the idea. Neither of them had said why, but it was clear.
It brought them closer. Batman had a safehouse three blocks west, an empty apartment with not so much as cutlery in the drawers, meant for laying low in short, quick bursts. A night, at most. The Manor was that little bit clearer, up on the hill, warmth bleeding from the windows.
Jason had an apartment, third floor, one-bed and modest. It had two sash windows overlooking the street ahead, a sliver of the harbor peeking through four-in-a-blocks. It was a bitch to heat in February, and the floorboards creaked when he came home still suited and booted, and the fire escape was well used.
It was, as close as he could get, to home. It had cutlery, at the very least. A double bed that didn't protest, a television he'd drilled into the wall, space for two dog bowls in the galley kitchen. A rug with the color lifted on one corner, peroxide working on more than just the blood, faded and old.
He thinks he got it on discount, some decrepit place closing down in the Narrows. Paid for the privilege of taking it off the guy's hands, lugging it three-quarters of a mile down the road. He liked it. It was well-worn and often tripped Jason up when he dragged his feet, a silent reminder to stand a little taller, to shake off the exhaustion one last time.
He liked it. What he didn't like was Batman bleeding all over it.
He had to give him credit. With the way he swayed on the spot, listless and blank, Jason was surprised he was upright at all. Blood dripped from his fingers, a shard of glass peeking through kevlar and steel-tipped knuckles.
Jason stared.
Batman swayed a little harder. Then, weakly, “bucket.”
If there was ever an order he'd follow without question, it was this one. His feet moved on autopilot, to the kitchen and then under the sink, discarding the cheap mop in favor of the bucket it called home. When he returned, Batman was bleeding across his couch instead, a thin trail sliding down faux-leather to pool in the stitching.
His head between his knees, he reached out blindly, tugging the offered receptacle close and possessive. The only clue he'd thrown up was the brief sound of liquid hitting plastic.
Bruce had always been a silent vomiter. Still as a statue, almost relaxed, because he was deranged like that. Under kevlar, his throat worked briefly, and he didn't fight the mutiny of his stomach one bit, bile pouring out from his teeth.
He spits after, leaning back with a groan.
“Hello to you too,” Jason finally says, about five minutes too late.
Bruce doesn't apologize. Sets the bucket by his boots, grimacing. “Your place was closer.” He finally mutters, and if it sounds like apology— well—
Jason's chest constricts until he feels like taking the bucket for himself.
He doesn't call him out. Doesn't mention the empty, minimalistic safehouse not three blocks away. Doesn't tell him that Batman could throw up on a street corner and no one would believe the witnesses.
“It's fine.” Is what he decides on, stepping over the mess of his rug to take Bruce's wrist. “Do I want to know?”
He shrugs one mountainous shoulder beneath plates of armor and padding. “Bane.” He finally grinds out, turning his palm over until it rests between Jason's.
It doesn't escape him that it's an echo of all the times Jason has done this. Bled on his upholstery and kept a thin, fragile wisp of excuse between them.
Bruce knew how to handle that. Bruce could side-step it with deftness, settling into the moment as if they were always this tender. He squeezes Bruce's wrist, a rare emotion bubbling under his skin: panic.
“Let me guess,” he replies, dry. “He wanted to break the bat. Again.”
“Something like that.” Bruce mutters, a dark humor on his mouth. It's with practiced ease that he unclips the vambraces, loosens the gauntlets until Jason could peel them off if he wanted.
The three inch shard of glass says otherwise, and he halts the movement with an urgent sound in his throat. “Wait.” He grunts. “Or you'll peel your fucking hand off, old man.”
Bruce's mouth does that thing again, a barely-there twist that casts shadows too deep to be amusement.
“You hit your head?” He asks, but he knows before Bruce has even met his eyes behind white-out lenses.
“Possibly.” He murmurs, a clear and resounding yes. There's stubble rising on his cheeks, pale with exhaustion — or shock — and his fingers twitch in Jason's grasp.
“So,” Jason murmurs, squeezing back carefully. “You're avoiding Alfred yelling at you.”
“He doesn't yell.” Bruce replies, assured and a little affronted. It's sweet. It's childish, in defense of a man who very much does yell.
Not with words, never with words. But with the creases beside his eyes and the way he can effortlessly set a table for tea in absolute silence. It's a skill, feeding Bruce cucumber sandwiches he barely chokes down, punishment in every chew.
“Yes, he does.” He murmurs. And then, “stay put.”
“And here I was just about to leave.” Bruce responds, a rare streak in his tone. Jason laughs as he stalks down the hall, heading for the small bathroom.
“Don't get cocky,” he calls out. “You're bleeding on my shit.”
He doesn't catch what Bruce says next, head stuck under the bathroom sink to find his med kit. It would make both Alfred and Bruce cry, but he doesn't particularly care. It had the essentials, haphazard as they were.
Bruce is digging the shard from between his thumb and forefinger when he returns, a hiss between bloodied teeth when it drops to the carpet and blood follows freely.
“Hey, asshole, I'm playing nurse.” He sets the medkit down with a little force between them, tugging Bruce's wrist into his lap. Red soaks into his washed-out jeans immediately, and he feels a little sick as he watches it bloom and spread, caught for a moment.
It's rare, to see Bruce like this. He had always been indomitable. The guiding force that tipped Jason's head out of the batmobile window in the face of grisly, bloodied violence. He walked off sprains and tears like minor inconveniences, and rarely let his blood escape the confines of his suit.
He still sucked his thumb when he got a papercut, though. Human wasn't a word he applied to Bruce often, but it felt right at that moment, peeling away the gauntlets to witness the carnage below.
Bruce makes a detached, curious noise.
His knuckle, index finger, is about an inch and a half from where it should be. Every other one is throbbing and hot to the touch, even under the sticky, congealing residue of his other, pressing wound. Jason curses, and then flicks his gaze up beneath his lashes to watch the way Bruce grimaces.
“That was stupid.” Jason says, because he isn't Alfred, and never learned how to say things silently. “You're lucky you can use your hand right now.”
“I am aware.” Bruce murmurs. He doesn't startle when Jason dabs antiseptic on the cut, a thankfully shallow slice that hadn't punctured through. He cleans quietly, focused on his task until it becomes time to pack it close with gauze, hesitating with a strip of tape between his fingers.
“I'm gonna have to deal with… that—” he tips his head to the knuckle situation apologetically, “—before I wrap it.”
Bruce considers him quietly. The cowl is still firmly in place, which makes Jason worry just a little at whatever horrors are lurking under there.
“I trust you.” He murmurs, as if that was ever the issue. As if that was ever in question, anymore. Jason bites his tongue.
“Okay,” he says, more to himself than the man in front of him, a steadying breath escaping his chest. He turns Bruce's hand over, wincing at the sight, and cradles the line of his knuckles between his palms. “Gonna need you to be a big boy and sit still.” He adds, firm.
Bruce doesn't move, half-slumped against the couch, though his chin is tipped down. Watching Jason's fingers as they brace around the bone, thumbs pressed in either side. He swears a silent apology— because he is better than Bruce, and it feels like tearing his own joints out when he starts the laborious process of guiding the bone back into place.
To his credit, Bruce stays still. To Jason's credit, the joint makes itself at home with a sickening crunch. His fingers are slick with sweat, and Bruce has taken on an ever paler shade, lips ground into thin lines.
Tenderly, Bruce flexes his fingers, exhaling a shaky breath. “Good job.” He grinds out, fingers trembling.
Maybe it's the late hour. Maybe it's the wound that Jason can't ignore, whenever they're together. Whatever it is, he feels triumphant, like he's won something important and well-guarded.
He has tried, many times over the last years, to grind that feeling to dust. It's a dependence as real and as hollowing as street drugs or morning coffee, and he's yet to find a way out of it. Against his better judgment, be grins, a brief flash of teeth.
He wraps Bruce's hand in silence, tight rows of bandages weaving along his knuckles and through his fingers, overlapping until everything is immobilized. They both watched it, Bruce's fingers an unhealthy shade of red that edged into purple.
He exhales a breath he didn't know he was holding onto, and heaves himself from the couch with a mumbled word about ice packs. It gives him space in an apartment that thus far has never felt so claustrophobic. The walls are leaning in, and the ceiling is bearing down on him, all the lights turned bright to watch him stand at his kitchen counter and struggle with some unnamed, foreign urge.
He reaches into the fridge, snagging the carton of milk he'd meant to replace. It wasn't out of date yet, and he gave it a cursory sniff, deciding it was good enough. If Batman died of a few sips of some bad milk, well, he shouldn't wear the cowl to begin with.
He grabs the ice pack while he's at it, and then two sachets of store-bought hot cocoa. He doesn't have whipped cream, or marshmallows. He doesn't even have matching mugs. A faint cousin to embarrassment burns behind his eyes.
Jason tips one into each mug, a chipped Knights mug he'd picked up on a grocery trip, and a pastel blue ceramic he'd brought from his last place. He tells himself Bruce doesn't give a shit about matching tea sets and antique china, and reminds himself the man has eaten with his hands, eaten scraps in the desert, that propriety always loses in the face of necessity with Bruce.
This feels like a necessity.
It is pathetic, the way Jason's ribcage constricts and expands when Bruce's eyes slide from him to the steaming mugs, a ghost of a smile against his mouth. The cowl is gone, discarded to live with the bucket, and one boot is half-kicked off.
“Rustic.” Bruce says, faint, tugging on some faded memory with all the precision of a skilled marksman.
“Yeah,” Jason agrees, because he can't go there— can't think about it too long, or he'll crumble right there on his stupid, stained rugm “Knights or arts-and-crafts?”
The look Bruce gives him could kill if he was so inclined, and so Jason hands him the Knights mug with a deferential bow, drinking in the way Bruce cradles it close in his good hand. His skin is waxy, damp with sweat, and the circles under his eyes are pronounced. An almost permanent fixture of the planes of Bruce's face.
There's an unfocused, red-tinged quality to the ocean of his eyes, a cloudy day in the Gotham harbor around two inky sinkholes, pupils blown wide. Definitely a concussion. Apple, tree, he supposes.
He knows that Bruce's face is a faithful recreation of the man he was at one point in time. After a certain point, the cartilage in his nose collapsed after one too many breaks. He knows, because he'd been there, that there's a half dozen metal pins in his jaw, keeping the whole thing together, a thin scar he hides well below the curve of his lips where his skin was peeled back and they put his father back together.
He knows that he owes Bruce's surgeons more than a pretty paycheck. If he could ever take a look beneath the artfully aged exterior, he'd find a host of scaffolding keeping it afloat.
Still, he says, “you look like shit, old man.”
Bruce takes it with grace, tipping his chin. He sips his cocoa, wincing at the burn. “I will admit,” he mutters, “I've been better.”
It's the understatement of the century. Jason sips his own cocoa, loathe to say it aloud. Beside him, Bruce sighs, a bone-deep sort of thing as he settles into the cushions of Jason's couch, feet kicked out.
“You better not fall asleep,” he mutters. “I'm not cleaning up the mess if you do.” Jason adds, nodding at the Knights mug.
“Later, Jay.” Bruce murmurs, eyes slipped shut like a liar.
He doesn't call him out on that, either. It's selfish, the way he holds still, knees tucked up on the couch with him. Barely breathing, in case he shatters the quiet, tenuous moment of peace. He drains his cocoa steadily, artificial sweetener on his tongue.
Cradles the warmth of it between his hands, a moment that no one but him gets. Listens as Bruce's breathing evens out, mouth tipped open, mug still resting against the ridge of his belt with a hand, propped up precariously. All his, the moment of safety written in Bruce's unconscious frame, safe with him.
He'd have done anything to see him bleed, once. Ripped off any hint of armor to see the weakness below, wounded beneath him. He'd have mocked him for it, this precious moment that he wants to live in forever.
Jason reaches out, gentle when he slips his fingers against Bruce's bandaged ones. “I'm waking you in three hours.”
Bruce doesn't respond, exhaustion bleeding from his body with every passing minute, safer than any apartment three blocks away.