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For a moment, Dick doesn’t recognize his little brother. When Jason looks up, eyes glassy, rimmed red, he feels it like a knife to the chest.
It’s not Jason, his mind tells him. Because Jason is happy and bubbly and completely adorable. Because Jason always laughs, cracks little jokes when he shouldn’t, throws his whole body into living.
It’s not Jason.
It’s not Jason, because Jason is never bruised and crying–
“I’m going to kill whoever did this,” Dick says simply.
It falls out of him like a belt dropped to the floor, blunt sound, no flourish. He’s standing in the doorway to Jason’s bedroom, half-in, half-out, the hall light crowding the room’s dark. He hates that Jason’s been sitting alone in the dark for so long.
Rain is stitched into his hair, cold. He has broken half a dozen traffic laws, blurred red lights into meaningless streaks, because an hour ago Jason said two words into the phone, “come home”, and hung up before the echo died.
Dick had no choice but to run back to a burning house he thought he left for good.
He wasn’t even in Gotham when the call came through. He’d left Jason here, thought he was safe. Thought he’d be fine in the hands of someone Dick trusted enough to cover for him when Bruce and Alfred weren’t around.
Now he knows he shouldn’t have. He should have come here, or taken Jason with him, instead of running from his family. He told himself Jason would be fine, told himself that a young boy like him needed freedom, and–
“I’m going to kill him,” he repeats. He tastes copper. He tastes rage.
Jason doesn’t look up. He’s crumpled on the far end of his bed with his hood drawn, oversized sleeves swallowed in his palms like his trying to hide his hands from the sight. There’s bruised skin under his eyes, faint, almost green. The TV is on mute, some cartoon bleeding faint color across the room. Jason doesn’t even like watching TV. But the blur of cartoons keeps the room from feeling empty. Less alone.
The only noise is an uneven clatter of Jason’s breath, thin, painful.
Dick wants to tear the sounds out of his mouth, swallow them down himself. That’s what a big brother is for, taking the hits, taking the pain. Not this. Not watching, helpless.
“Dick–” Jason rushes to say, then stops. He swallows. The tendon in his throat jumps. “It’s okay, I– You don’t have to do that.”
Dick shuts the door. The click is too loud. He wants it louder. He wants a door that slams and breaks. He wants a body to fly through a wall. He wants–
“I’m going to kill him,” he repeats again and again, because the words are the only thing keeping him sane. “Tell me what happened.”
Jason flinches, so little most people wouldn’t notice. Dick does. He scrubs a hand over his face and dials his voice down.
“Jaybird,” he begs.
The nickname lands between them soft, ordinary, necessary. Jason’s shoulders curl tighter. A little boy shape, except he’s not a little boy anymore and hasn’t been for a long time.
Dick steps closer. The rug’s edge buckles under his boot, he moves it with his toe. For one ridiculous second he’s furious at the rug for being the only thing he can fix.
“Can I sit?” he asks, fingers hovering above the bed covers.
Jason shrugs. It’s permission. It’s not. Dick takes it for yes because the alternative is leaving, and he isn’t leaving. He can’t.
He lowers himself slow, careful. The bed groans. They stare at the cartoon. Two bright creatures bouncing around. The colors pulse on Jason’s face, an artificial sunrise and sunset over and over.
“Tell me what happened,” Dick says again, softer. He’s surprised at himself. He didn’t know he could fit so much restraint into his body. Maybe fear makes a bigger house than he thought.
Jason’s mouth tightens. “Don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Make it into your crusade.” His jaw does that thing like he’s grinding something. “Don’t make this about you.”
Every word is correct and still hurts. Dick knots his hands between his knees until the ache is something he can track. He watches the blue light crawl the wall. He bites his tongue on I’m sorry.
“I won’t leave you,” he says instead. “You’re safe now.”
Jason huffs, not quite a laugh, not a thing with joy in it. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It does.”
Silence falls.
A silence that is a hallway. They walk it together and don’t touch.
When Jason speaks again, he aims his voice somewhere between the pillows. “I went to meet him, because you said he was–” A flicker in the eye. Not a name. A shape. “You said he was good people. That he could teach me how to–”
Dick closes his eyes. He sees it like a photograph taken from too far away to stop anything. His own stupid easy grin days ago, the loose way he said, He’s nice, he’s got your back, you’ll like him. He’d believed it. He’d wanted to believe it.
Jason’s sob cracks the air.
“That’s on me. I’m not–” He pulls the hood tighter. “I stayed. I didn’t want a scene. I said some… some things. I didn’t–” He shakes his head fast, and it looks like he’s shaking water out of his ears, like he’s trying to dislodge sound. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters,” Dick insists, and would cut his own tongue out if he ever says it doesn’t. He wants the truth the way he wants air, but truth is not owed, truth is not the price for care. He leans forward, elbows on thighs, hands on his knees so Jason can see he isn’t going to reach. “You don’t have to say more than that.”
Jason stares at the cartoon creatures. On mute, their mouths are violent and empty.
“It’s my fault,” he says without a thought. “I should’ve left earlier. I should’ve known. I’m not, this isn’t– I’m not stupid. I’ve gotten out of worse. Bruce told me how to act if something like this ever happens. I just–” He sucks in a breath that sounds like a wet wheeze. “I didn’t think. I was scared. That’s on me.”
Something in Dick’s chest folds, ugly. The next breath scratches all the way down.
“Jason. Baby,” Dick begs. “No.”
Jason’s expression flickers, annoyance, embarrassment, a spasm of something that looks like hope he’s trying to beat to death. “Don’t do that either,” he mutters. “I don’t need a lecture on consent from you.”
It could be mean. It isn’t.
“Okay,” Dick says, because he deserves it. Because the only thing worse than this would be centering his own ache. He looks at Jason’s hands, the way they cling to the sleeves. He sees red grooves where fingernails bit skin. He sees a darker smudge on his cheek, blood or dirt or both. Something dark wrapping around his wrist. A bruise beginning to set. Dick wants to throw up. “I’m not going to say any words you can’t stand right now. But you should know, it wasn’t your fault. It’s not your fault. It will never be your fault.”
Jason’s mouth twitches like he’s about to argue but he doesn’t. He pulls his feet up and curls them under him, socked, damp at the toes. He looks like he’s trying to make himself smaller so the air won’t touch as much of him.
“Did you call–” Dick begins, then stops. What? The police? Bruce? He shakes his head. “Do you want water? Tea? Shower?”
“I don’t want to smell like this,” Jason admits, tiny. “It’s in my nose. It won’t…” He shakes his head, furious with his own senses.
“Okay.” Dick rises. “Hot water. Lots of soap. Clean towel, the good fluffy ones. Sit. Don’t move until I come back.”
Jason rolls his eyes. That’s good. The same old defiance, dented but there. “I’m not a dog.”
“You’d be the most adorable puppy,” Dick smiles, and moves anyway.
Dick turns the water on and lets it run. He pulls a towel from the cupboard, wipes his tears in the mirror. He can't cry. He won't cry.
When he returns, Jason hasn’t moved, as asked, which feels like a victory won by being gentle. Dick sets the towel next to Jason’s lap. “It’s all ready.”
Jason looks at the towel. He doesn’t reach for it.
Dick crouches to be a face, not a voice. “I can stay out here,” he offers. “Or sit just outside the door. Talk to me through the wall if you want. Or I can be quiet. Or I can go in with you and count the floor tiles. Your call.”
Jason’s throat works.
“Sit outside,” he says finally, and his voice is so rough it feels like sand. “Don’t– don’t go anywhere else.”
“Okay.” Dick eases the towel back into Jason’s hands, careful not to touch him. “I’ll be right there.”
Jason stands up with his legs shaking. The hoodie he’s hiding beneath is too big and suddenly not big enough. Dick realizes it’s Bruce’s. Jason must’ve gone digging for it, pulled it on like armor. But it doesn’t fit. Not really.
I want my dad, it screams.
Dick sniffs, blinking his tears away.
At the bathroom door, Jason hesitates, glancing over at Dick like he’s checking if he’s still following. Dick sends him a sad smile, a promise. Jason nods, disappears into steam.
Through the door’s thin wood, Dick hears water meet tile, then Jason’s breath when the water hits him. He sits with his back to the wall, knees up, and lifts his hand to cover his mouth because sometimes rage looks exactly like sobbing and he doesn’t want to confuse Jason when he's back. He counts his own heartbeats until they stop trying to outrun themselves. He watches the rain slide down the window in long, deliberate lines, the sky outside washed into nothing.
Jason’s voice comes through in fragments. Not words. Dick hears him scrub, and scrub again, like the past still tries to hang on where it has no right.
“I’m here,” Dick says, steady. “You’re doing great.” The idea of greatness is ridiculous here, nauseating almost, and still true. Survival deserves the big words more than anything else.
When the water stops, the room feels big enough to echo. After a long minute the door opens and steam rolls out. Jason stands there in sweatpants and Bruce’s hoodie, hair flattened wet to his skull, face scrubbed to pink. He looks younger and rawer.
“You good?” Dick asks, openly stupid, because the real question is not for now.
Jason gives a half-shrug that means he’s fine. That he did the thing. That’s what “good” can be tonight.
“Come on,” Dick says, gentle. He steers them to the corridor with a hand hovering behind Jason’s back like a safety rail he doesn’t grab. “Tea?”
Jason’s mouth crooks.
In the kitchen, Dick fills the kettle and sets it on.
“Chamomile with honey.” Dick pours when the kettle clicks and the steam lifts. He slides the mug across. Jason wraps around it immediately, greedy for heat, fingers gone almost white with the pressure. The honey makes the air sweet in a way that would feel comforting otherwise.
They stand like that, not quite leaning on the counter, not quite upright. The kitchen clock clicks each second into place. Jason sips. His face is all tiny flinches, all the places he’s holding back softened by warmth.
“Did you tell him my real name?” Jason asks suddenly. He doesn’t look up.
There’s no right answer. There’s only the true one.
“Yes,” Dick says. The syllable scrapes his teeth. He doesn't want to say this. “I told him you were family.”
Jason closes his eyes. It looks like sadness. The steam curls, dampening his eyelashes.
“Okay,” Jason murmurs. “It's okay, Dick.” He swallows, and Dick watches it move down his throat, the small knot. “My fault. I let–” He cuts himself off. He shakes his head hard, anger at the word he almost said.
Dick wants to say every counterargument he knows in every language he knows it. He wants to recite case law and catechism and swear on his parents's grave. He doesn’t. He puts his palms on the counter and says, quiet “I trusted him. I put him in our orbit. I’m the one who fucked up here, Jay. Not you.”
Jason’s eyes snap open. The look he gives is full of needles. “Don’t,” he says. “Don’t make me responsible for patching up your conscience tonight.”
The needles land, and he deserves each one. Dick nods. “Right. Yes.” He takes the mug and washes it it carefully. “Do you want to try sleep? If not, we can sit in the living room and watch something nice. Or I can read out loud until you throw the book at me.”
“What book?”
“Something pretentious. Thick and French. Guaranteed to put you under in five pages.”
Jason’s mouth lifts at one corner despite himself. “You know any thick French books?”
“I have one. It holds open the window in summer.”
They walk to the couch. Dick grabs the throw from the back and drapes it over Jason’s legs. Jason doesn’t protest. He leans sideways until gravity does the rest and his temple finds Dick’s shoulder, tentative at first like it’s an experiment, then with more weight when nothing bad happens.
“There,” Dick says, more breath than sound. He keeps his hands visible, one on his knee, one palm-up on the cushion. Jason’s fingers inch toward it, hesitate, then settle in his hand like a bird that decided the offered branch is strong enough. His knuckles are cold. Dick cups them without closing his hand.
They watch cartoons for a while because the plot is simple and full of colors loud enough to drown the shape of memory.
“When I said ‘stop,’” Jason says, suddenly, nakedly, “I said it quiet. I didn’t want it to be a fight. I didn’t want–” He grimaces. “I was too quiet, Dick. That’s on me.”
Dick’s jaw aches with all the words he doesn’t let out. He picks one. Just one. “No,” he says, and the word is a bridge, not a wall. He keeps his voice easy. “A whisper is a stop. Silence is a stop. Crying is a stop. Freezing is a stop. You don’t owe loud to deserve safety.”
Jason’s breath hitch-catches. “He was your–”
“I know.”
“And you still–”
“Yes.” Dick’s throat feels lined with salt. “I’m choosing you. There isn’t any universe where I don’t.”
Jason blinks down at their hands like the proof is there, small and homely. He shifts, closer. Then closer again, as if the couch is a tide pulling him in. His shoulder presses along Dick’s side. His knees bracket Dick’s thigh. The heat through the fabric is immediate, bodily, real in a way speech can’t be.
“Don’t leave,” he says, so soft it’s almost a mouth-shape against Dick’s shirt, a plea smuggled into cloth.
“Not leaving,” Dick says. It’s a vow, and if vows had wrists he’d cut his own to keep it.
He threads his fingers slowly through Jason’s hair. Damp still from the shower. Smelling green, sharp, clean. He combs and combs, the rhythm repetitive. Jason’s breathing, at first all shaky, begins to lengthen. When it hitches, Dick is there with more patience, more room.
Somewhere between one breath and the next, Jason’s weight truly lowers.
“You can still–” Jason murmurs. “You can still be angry.”
“I am,” Dick says. “But it can wait."
Jason huffs a slow sound that might be a laugh if you turned it over. His eyes close. His mouth slackens. Dick keeps watching him in the flicker-light. He reaches for the remote and kills the screen. Darkness slides in. The room becomes soft.
“Gonna kill him,” Dick says again, quieter now, more to the ceiling than to anyone else.
Jason’s fingers tighten around his. Then loosen, like a reminder, like a leash cut.
“Later,” he says, underwater. "I'll come with you."
“Later,” Dick agrees.
He stays. His back will hate him for sleeping half-sat, half-folded, but the weight is an absolution he wants. He watches the window. He listens to the delicate noise Jason makes when he’s really asleep.
At some point the rain slows to a mist. At some point Dick’s eyes burn and close and open and close. At some point his phone buzzes with a name he doesn’t read. He slides it face-down beneath his thigh.
In the grey-quiet before morning, Jason shivers and tucks his face into Dick’s shoulder as if he remembers a winter from another life. Dick brings the blanket higher, up around Jason’s neck, thumb smoothing the edge like he’s tucking a page into a book he loves. He kisses Jason’s hairline, small, loving.
“I’ve got you,” he says into the soft. No grand promises. No future he can guarantee yet. Just this, one big room, two small bodies, the clean smell of soap, the taste of honey in the air. “I’ve got you. Your brother's here."
When the exhaustion finally begins to blur the edges of things, Jason is still asleep, jaw unclenched, mouth open a little. For the first time since the door, Dick lets his eyes burn without blinking it away. He sits inside the ache and doesn’t try to fix it, he lets it be what it is.
Later, there will be calls. There will be the logistics of rage. Names. Statements. Choices. A thousand doors to open and walk through. Later, he'll call Bruce. With tears in his eyes, he'll call Bruce and they'll talk.
For now there is the couch and the warmth. For now there is the weight of Jason against him and the slow tide of breath moving in and out, in and out. A small, stubborn proof of life.
Dick just holds him a little tighter.