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The fist time Dick sees Jason — that is to say, this new, grown-up version of him, which Dick never dreamed he would ever get to see — smile, Jason is holding a child. It is a little boy, skinny-armed, yet round-cheeked with youth, a crooked smile on his dirt-streaked face.
Jason holds him, says something Dick fails to make out, and the child responds, smile growing. Dick watches Jason’s eyes widen and a laugh tumble from his lips. It is reluctant at first — like it escaped him without permission — before he surrenders himself to it. Jason lets his head tip back and his chest and shoulders tremble with it. The sound is light and boyish in a way that catches Dick off guard, makes him stop and stare.
The boy soon joins in, and the two of them laugh, as Jason carries the boy away to buy him a hotdog from the nearby stand.
Watching Jason change, now that he’s back within their fold, is an unusual experience. He’s volatile, still, maybe always has been to a degree. Dick wouldn’t know. He wasn’t there.
Jason’s anger is wild, unrestrained. He lets it out to spread its wings whenever he deems appropriate, both righteous and intransigent in its intensity. Jason never fails to speak his mind and never backs down without a fight — bloody and bitter to the very end.
His smiles are rare, but when Dick sees them, they are warm, and beautiful. A soft blanket of a smile, like sitting in the plush armchair in the manor’s library, the crackle of the fireplace a gentle melody in your ear. They are are like the smell of freshly baked pastries, and every time Dick has to stop and look, because it seems so impossible that someone like Jason can still smile like that.
Dick has to admit, though he knows he can never get close to understanding Jason’s pain, and thus is unfair in his feelings, he envies Jason his honesty. Because Dick, too, knows how to smile, but it is a showman’s smile, a performance through and through. Dick, now that he is older, has learned to supress his anger, when it is necessary, put aside his hurt, if there are things more important at stake. He watches Jason scream and fight, curse and cry, and wonders when he lost that same raw, emotional edge. He used to have it, he knows, used to fight with Bruce almost every time they spoke. Now, more often than not, he will swallow his words, bitter and cloying, sitting heavy in his guts.
Now, watching Jason go from quiet and sullen, to loud and enraged, to soft and gentle in the blink of an eye, he mourns his youth, his self-entitled outrage at the world.
The biggest difference of all, Dick thinks, is Roy’s presence in Jason’s life. The way he appears and that scowl of Jason’s smoothes out. The way he will lean into Roy, let him hold his weight without complaint. In a way he would never allow Dick.
The way Roy will light up, as soon as Jason enters a room, greet him before anyone else, with a hug so long it makes Dick wonder if perhaps they are more than friends.
It’s strange, is all, the way Roy used be Dick’s more than he ever was Jason’s. Never should have been Jason’s in the first place. He doesn’t resent them their friendship, not really. It just… It’s just that Dick and Roy were Titans. The first Titans — the first sidekicks, really.
They had a connection unique to them, irreplaceable, incomparable. Roy was one of them, the first five of them, but now instead of being Dick’s friend, it feels like he is Jason’s instead.
It’s wrong for Dick to feel this way, he knows. Unfair, in any case. Jason needs someone, never got to have friends in the field the way Dick did. He didn’t have a Donna, or Wally, or even a Garth. But now he has Roy, and something about that doesn’t sit quite right with Dick.
Roy was his, wasn’t he? What changed?
The call connects with a crackle. He can barely hear Roy’s “hello?” over the static. Maybe wind, maybe something else entirely.
“It’s me, Roy,” Dick says. His voice is much calmer than he feels. Bruce’s training, he thinks absently. “Dick?” Roy asks, sounding clearer now. “What’s going on?”
There’s a faint snap on the other end of the line. Roy’s bow, Dick thinks. The thwap of an arrow releasing. Dick finds himself thinking of ligaments and veins and tissue, wonders if they sound the same when torn.
He never paid close attention before. He can’t seem to stop thinking about it.
“It’s Jason,” Dick says, finally. He doesn’t know what else to say.
“Jason?” sounds Roy’s voice, sharp and a little alarmed. “Did something happen?”
Dick swallows. Because yeah, something definitely did happen. “He…” he starts, then trails off. There’s a muted curse on the other side of the line.
Did Roy know? Had he seen this coming? Dick drops his hand to the floor to steady himself. It’s wet and warm and slippery.
“Dick,” Roy says. He sounds focused. Like the leader everyone always knew he could be.
It’s funny, really. Everyone always looks to Dick first, and sure, he can get the job done, has both experience and charisma aplenty. But Roy, Roy is something special. He will step back without hesitation, doesn’t argue or challenge for the leading role, happy to lean back and watch things unfold, taking orders quietly as often as he challenges them.
“Dick, did Jason do something stupid?” And shit. Yeah. Yeah, Dick supposes Jason did.
“Yeah,” he repeats out loud. “Yeah, I think he messed up bad this time.”
He doesn’t know why he called Roy first. Before Bruce, before Steph, before 911 for fuck’s sake. He doesn’t know, except he does. Roy is Jason’s and Jason is Roy’s, now, even if he doesn’t like it, even if he isn’t sure when and how it happened in the first place.
When Dick thought, who does Jason need? The answer was clear.
Roy is angry as he is worried, abusing a stress ball with one hand, the poor thing appearing and disappearing beneath his clenched fist.
“He’ll be fine,” Dick assures, almost sounding like he believes it.
“I know he will,” Roy snaps, not sounding like he tried to be convincing at all.
The stress ball pops a half hour into waiting. Roy just throws it in the trash and produces another one from his pocket. Dick doesn’t mention it.
Dick starts envying Roy his ball the second hour in.
“Did you know?” he asks, lip bitten raw and leg shaking furiously where he sits on the uncomfortable waiting room chair.
“Did I know what?” Roy demands, not looking at Dick at all. Dick’s leg shakes harder, a lock of hair poking his eye where it falls into his face. He blows at it, trying to get rid of the discomfort.
“Did you know he wanted to…” he trails off, staring at his pack of menthol gum, still as sealed as it had been when he first bought it, mostly to spite Bruce, who’d been so sure Dick would only ever buy the sweetest brand.
Dick hears the second ball snap. He doesn’t look up.
“I suspected,” Roy replies. He sounds angry. Roy isn’t often angry. Not really, anyway. Annoyed, at most. Ticked off, maybe. Frustrated. Not angry. Not like this.
“You never said anything,” Dick points out. Accuses.
“You never even fucking noticed in the first place,” Roy shoots back, aim as true as ever.
Dick doubles over in his chair, head in his hands. “You’re right,” he says, raw and quiet. “You’re right.”
The blood was red, deep and dark like that day beneath the Big Top. A puddle at Dick’s feet, spreading and spreading, until the tips of his shoes were as stained as the sand, as the tile, the heavy stink of copper in his lungs. He stared, unblinking, as that puddle grew and extended, as he watched the colour drain from paling skin into the floor at his feet. It was clean, in a way the fall hadn’t been — precise and clinical — utterly intentional all the same.
Dick had wanted to kill Tony Zucco when his parents died.
He wanted desperately for Jason Todd to live.
Dick is more family than Roy is, really, but there is no Jason Todd on record anymore, not one that lives, in any case, and for now, this one does. So Dick, out of costume, dressed in crimson stained cashmere and slacks, is known to lack a brother like Jason.
When Roy names himself his partner, however, the nurses do not bat an eye.
Roy is not Dick’s, now, and it seems neither is Jason. Dick is not Roy’s, now, nor is he Jason’s. He is an intruder in the lives of men he’s known longer than either has the other, and he is deeply selfish in his grief.
Dick watches Roy, as Roy watches Jason, and he mourns what is, what was, and what might be. What would have been if he hadn’t stepped into Jason’s apartment when he did.
Roy takes Jason’s hand, a flash of bandage on his wrist, the colour of bleached bone, and Dick makes his excuses.
There is a puddle of red pooling beneath his every step, and when he hunches over the toilet, he thinks all he spits is blood. It seems to follow him wherever he goes, thick and red and hot, sinking into his clothes, his skin — his very bones. He thinks he’s never going to escape that night beneath the Big Top.
When Dick remembers to call Bruce, his fingers have yet to stop shaking. He watches Roy hold Jason’s hand, and he knows that his is the kind of love he was too selfish to extend, all those years ago. They are not the same, no, but the lack of Dick’s was as imperative as the presence of Roy’s is, now.
Dick refused to extend his heart, and Roy, beautiful, open, true Roy, is holding his out with steady hands and determined eyes, offering it to a man who might never be brave enough to take it.
Dick let Jason die a thousand lightyears away and Roy is clinging to him like no force in the universe may take Jason from him.
Dick takes a step outside just to rid them of the stain of his presence. He doesn’t know how much time has passed. It seems to trickle by in a steady flow, and when he extends his hand to try to catch it, it flows around his fingers instead. He watches, and wonders, and finally lets it be. Roy is here. Roy is here, and so Jason is safe. Has everything he needs.
Dick sees Bruce and Mia and Lian and Steph, all huddled together, with Connor and Duke talking in hushed voices by the snack dispenser. Dick considers calling Kori, doesn’t know why he didn’t before. The call fails to connect.
“Jason?” he whispered into the endless stretch of tile in his bathroom. He can still hear the steady drip, drip, drip, of red on white. The glassy look in Jason’s eyes. Remembers choking on a breath when he realized what he was seeing. Remembers slipping, the wet squelch of it, hitting his head on the sink. More red on the tile, his vision swimming. There must be stains on his phone, still. Remembers the slick heat on his fingers, how he struggled to swipe open his phone, how he hit the first contact that came to mind.
“How is he doing?” Bruce asks, voice all military precision. Dick swallows. He really isn’t sure.
“Roy is with him,” he says. “He’s still not awake,” he adds.
Bruce nods. He holds Lian tighter, where she’s curled in his lap.
“Do you want me to—,” Dick starts, but Bruce shakes his head. Lian is playing a game on his phone, a little man in a jet pack, collecting coins. Dick didn’t know Bruce had games on his phone.
Jason was warm, still, and Dick clung to that most of all. There was a first aid kit beneath Jason’s sink. It had taken Roy telling him about it for Dick to find it. He still couldn’t see straight, a concussion, maybe. Or just the tears.
Jason was warm, but his blood was hot, soaking through the wad of toilet paper Dick had pressed to his wrist in desperation.
“He’s,” he said, hiccupping. “He’s still bleeding, Roy, I don’t know—”
“It’s okay,” Roy said, voice tight even as he tried to sound soothing. “I already had Mia call 911, they’re on their way.
Dick nodded. Then he remembered Roy couldn’t see him. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a choked sob.
Dick walks over to Connor and Duke. They halt their conversation, looking him over.
“Dick, are you okay?” Connor says, one firm, warm palm landing on Dick’s shoulder.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice a dry croak. He clears his throat, tries again. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
They had to use one of Jason’s fake identities for the documents in the hospital. Dick had to lie and tell them he was Jason’s cousin. That he was a friend of Roy’s and that that’s how they all met. It’s a lie, but still the closest to the truth they could manage on such short notice. He would not have been allowed inside Jason’s room otherwise.
“Maybe you should go home, take a shower, get some rest,” Connor is saying. Dick shakes his head. He feels sick, suddenly. Maybe quick movements like that are a bad idea right now.
“No, why, I’m fine, I need to—,” he starts, but the hand on his shoulder gives him a light squeeze.
“We’ll all be here, for anything Jason could need. You can take a break, it’s okay.”
Dick opens his mouth to protest again, but Duke cuts in.
“Dude, you’re covered in blood. You’re scaring Lian,” he says, and Dick takes a look at himself. Duke is right. There’s red all over his shirt and pants.
“Oh,” he says dumbly. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare her.”
“It’s okay,” Connor assures. His voice is low and soothing, and Dick finds himself wanting to listen to him.
“Are you sure you don’t want to get a doctor to take a look at you though? That bump on your head looks pretty serious.”
Dick touches a hand to his temple, and sure enough, he feels a swollen lump, there.
“It’s okay,” he says. “It doesn’t even hurt anymore.”
Tim and Connor both give him a look of concern, but he shakes his head, more slowly this time.
He doesn’t manage to sleep, but he does take a shower and change.
“Whuh, Dick?” Jason said, when Dick was trying to wrap his wrist in a bandage. The gauze kept falling out before he could wrap the bandage around it. He’d done this a hundred times, but right then he couldn’t manage to get his hands to stop shaking. He was in the middle of trying to remember if the gauze was necessary or not, if he could just forego it completely, when Roy’s voice sounded from the phone. Dick had put him on speaker, since the phone kept slipping from his bloodied hands, and he needed both for this, anyway.
“Jason, Jaybird, is that you?” he said, voice faintly crackling through the speaker,
“Roy?” Jason slurred, sounding dazed and far away.
“Yeah, it’s me, baby, I’m here, it’s gonna be okay,” Roy said. He sounded like he was crying.
There were tears on Jason’s cheeks now, too. Dick picked the gauze back up from the floor. It was soaked through. No good, he’d need to find another.
“I’m sorry,” he heard Jason say quietly, then again, “I’m sorry.” Dick’s hands were leaving red smears all over the first aid kit.
“It’s okay, Jason, it’s okay, we’ll fix this, don’t worry,” Roy was saying, as Dick fumbled to press the new piece of gauze to Jason’s wrist. There was still a faint trickle of blood escaping the cut. Dick fought the urge to get sick.
Dick gets the call that Jason is awake at six in the morning the next day. He spent the entirety of the night staring at the red smears on his phone, trying to decide if attempting to clean it would get water into the cracks on his worn screen and break the phone or not. When it lights up, he almost falls from his chair.
When Dick arrives in the hospital lobby, only Bruce is still there, whispering to a scowling Damian. Mia and Connor must be home with Lian, the other Bats probably needed at the Cave to keep Gotham in check while the rest of them fret over Jason. He wonders what Barbara makes of this entire situation. If there are cameras in Jason’s bathroom. If she got the recordings, watching Dick fumble his way through first aid while on the phone with one of his best and oldest friends. If she watched him will all that blood back into Jason’s body. Watched him fail, again.
When Dick enters Jason’s room, he does so quietly. He finds Roy on the bed with him, curled protectively around Jason’s body. He’s whispering, too. Quiet words Dick can’t quite make out from where he’s standing. But there is a small smile on Jason’s lips.
Dick stands, and he watches, scared that if he breathes too loud, disturbs this delicate peace they have found, it might all fall apart. He feels the time trickle by, as Roy kisses Jason’s closed lids, whispers those gentle words of his, watches Jason hum, and fold into Roy’s touch like a sunflower turns to the light. Watches Jason’s fist clench and unclench around Roy’s shirt, still the same one he wore yesterday.
Roy presses a kiss to Jason’s temple, carding his long fingers through Jason’s hair. Dick stands, and he watches, and he wonders how Jason could have all this and still not be happy.
He feels the disgust at himself as soon as he thinks it. Of course it’s not that simple, he knows that, intimately. But watching those two, he can’t help but wonder.
The first responders had to pull at him, pry his hands from where he was pressing the bandage to Jason’s wrist. He hadn’t managed to wrap it properly after all. Jason had passed back out. Dick wasn’t sure if he imagined the way his skin felt colder, now.
Roy was saying something, probably telling Dick to get a grip and let the EMTs do their job. He let go, one finger at a time, feeling stiff and uncoordinated.
“I tried, I tried to,” he started, and one of the paramedics was saying something, something encouraging, or consoling maybe. All Dick could hear was the drip, drip, drip of blood on tile and the wet thunk of a body hitting the sand. The snap of a neck and the thwap of an arrow releasing, or maybe an artery splitting in two. He flinched, and shuffled away, and the EMTs let him be. He couldn’t see quite right, only bright colours and that awful, endless while tile.
Someone handed him a phone — his phone, he realized — and suddenly Roy’s voice was in his ear.
“I need you to get your head in the game, Rob,” he said, and Dick tried desperately to focus on his words. He was nodding again, stupidly, but it was okay, because Roy was already speaking again.
“I need you to tell me which hospital they’re taking him to — try to get a ride with them if you can.”
Dick nodded again, tried to stand up, his wet hand slipping on the bathroom tile. The EMTs were carrying Jason out, now, he thought. He tried again, absently amazed at his own incompetence, managed this time, following after the bright vests like a stray dog.
He reached out with one hand, but when he saw how red it was, he paused. He didn’t want to soil the woman’s vest, after all. Someone else seemed to notice he was looking for a person to speak to, and a man turned to face him.
“Can I ride with you?” Dick asked, voice still so eerily steady. “What, uhm,” he said, when he didn’t get an immediate answer. “What hospital are you taking him to?”
A lock of Roy’s hair is falling into Jason’s face, and he blows at it, probably annoyed at the ticklish feeling. Roy laughs quietly, and Jason tries again, a small frown creasing his face as he fails once more. When he opens his eyes for the third attempt, he spots Dick, still silent and frozen in the doorway. He looks at Dick, that frown loosening a fraction. His eyes narrow instead, like he’s trying to focus. Dick takes a tiny step backwards, and that’s when Roy turns and sees him too.
“Oh,” he says, “Dick.”
Dick nods, points to the door.
“I can leave, if you…” he starts. Roy looks at Jason, who doesn’t react at all, then back up, shaking his head.
“That’s fine,” Roy says, scooting back a little. Dick approaches, pulling a chair from the tiny table in the corner. It holds a single, tiny, yellow flower in a little green vase. Dick tries and fails to remember which kind it is.
He sits on his chair, and watches Jason and Roy, their limbs entwined, and bodies warmed by the other.
“So how long have you guys been—,” he starts, then stops. “Sorry, not my business,” he says instead.
He watches Roy look at Jason, and Jason look at Roy, small, knowing smiles spreading. Dick is uncomfortably aware that he does not speak this silent language between the two, cannot begin to guess what it is they share with each other right then.
“It’s fine,” Roy says again, meeting Dick’s eyes. With a shrug, he adds: “To be honest, we’re not really sure. It just kind of happened one day.”
Jason nods, lids low, like this small interaction with Dick has already tired him out. Dick shifts, wondering if he should leave them be again. Roy shifts on the bed, leaning against the frankly uncomfortable looking headboard, taking Jason’s head into his lap. He begins running his fingers through Jason’s hair. There’s a bit of blood crusted on Jason’s ear, and Roy scratches at it with his fingernail until it’s gone.
“I see,” Dick says, trying and failing to come up with a better response. Roy hums, in response, or acknowledgement, maybe.
Dick was halfway out the apartment when he realized he left his phone — and thus Roy — in the bathroom when he went to talk to the EMT. He rushed back, almost dropping and catching it twice, before putting it to his ear.
“Sorry,” he rushed out, somehow out of breath. He could usually run for hours before he sounded this way.
“Jesus fuck, Dick,” Roy shouted in his ear, and Dick winced.
“Sorry,” he repeated, as he took the stairs down to the ambulance.
“I was scared, Dick, what the hell,” Roy said, as Dick slipped into the ambulance. “I didn’t know what was going on, and suddenly you were just gone, and—”
“Sorry,” Dick said for hopefully for the last time, as the ambulance started. He wondered if the hospital had a special bleach to clean all the blood from the interior.
Bruce comes in after a while. Jason is asleep in Roy’s lap. Bruce just stands and watches, like Dick did. Dick wonders when it was, that he turned into his father.
Bruce stands and watches, and Dick sits and does the same, as Roy hums a quiet melody, fingers sliding steadily through the sea of curls on Jason’s head.
They all watch, the three of them, from their spots assigned by circumstance, or choice, or maybe fate, as Jason’s chest rises and falls.
His bandages are the colour of bleached bone, but there is blood in Jason’s cheeks now, instead of his bathroom tile, and that is more than enough, Dick thinks.
Roy stood before Gotham General, hair sticking wetly to his forehead. He must have changed out of his uniform in a hurry, because his shirt was half tucked into his jeans. Dick had been answering all kinds of questions; like what Jason’s blood type was, if he had a history of depression or self-harm, if he was taking any medications — when he spotted Roy through the window. His face looked strained and terrified in a way his voice hadn’t betrayed, and Dick wondered if he looked the same.
Dick was quickly ushered out of the ambulance, and he watched the EMTs rush Jason inside, swallowing air in great greedy gulps as he approached Roy. Roy, who didn’t seem to even register his presence, eyes on the cluster of bright vests clustered around Jason’s prone body.
“Roy,” Dick said, his voice a quiet rasp. Roy’s head snapped to him, and his eyes cleared, focussed.
“Oh, Dick,” he said, opening his arms, and Dick fell into them, collapsing like a tree in a storm. He clung to Roy, who seemed steady and strong, but Dick could feel Roy’s fingers tremble where they clasped the back of his head.
“I couldn’t get the damn gauze to stay on his wrist, I don’t—,” he sobbed, and Roy shushed him, hand caressing his hair, sticky with blood. “I know, Dick,” he said. “I know.”
Roy slowly walked them inside, speaking quietly to the lady at the desk.
Roy disentangled from Dick to fill out the paperwork, and Dick took a seat on the chair next to his. He watched Roy put the clipboard on his thigh, listened to the faint scritch, scritch, scritch of pen on paper. He stared at his hands, clasped them together, then again apart, over and over as the scritching and the dripping in his mind layered together into a single, haunting sound.
Then Roy rose and handed the clipboard over to the lady at the desk, and when he sat back down there was a stress ball in his hands. Dick watched as it appeared and disappeared beneath his clenched fist.
When Jason is allowed to leave, Lian runs up to him with her arms wide and open, colliding with his legs with an oomph. Jason chuckles, pats her head and she turns her head to look up at him.
“Are you okay now, Jay-Jay?” she asks, eyes open and curious. Jason slides his hand to cup her cheek, smiling down at her.
“I don’t know yet, princess,” he says, and she frowns, clinging tighter to his leg. “But I will be,” Jason adds, bending down to pick her up. She goes willingly, little arms wrapping around his neck, and Roy steps closer, careful eye on Jason’s injured wrists.
“I have you and your Daddy, don’t I?” Jason says, rubbing his nose to Lian’s. She giggles and rubs his nose in return. Dick looks over to Roy, who’s eyes are so fond Dick feels a sudden pang in his chest. There’s a tightness in his throat, and he has to look away again.
“Do you have your meds?” Dick asks, and Jason turns to him, smile slipping away. Dick regrets asking immediately, but there’s a worry nibbling away at him, a need to know he won’t walk into his brother’s bathroom one day and find he’s too late.
“Yes, Dick,” Jason says, and Dick suspects Jason did not call him by his name right then. He sighs and raises his hands in surrender.
“Good, that’s good, Jason,” he says, tone placating. Jason only frowns harder at that. Dick gives up, sending Roy a helpless look.
Roy only smiles, patting Jason’s cheek. Jason snaps his teeth at him, but Roy only laughs. There are deep dark circles under his eyes, but he holds himself with a levity Dick can’t help but envy. He still feels like a single wrong step might result in him alone before a grave, the funeral long over, without him.
“Listen to your brother, Jaybird,” Roy says, pressing a kiss to Jason’s cheek. Jason grumbles but leans into the touch. Bruce doesn’t react, from where he’s standing a few steps behind, and Dick wonders since when he’s known about them.
“Whatever,” Jason says, and he lifts his bag in Dick’s direction. “All in here, sorted by shape and colour thanks to Cass and Steph forgetting to bring UNO when they visited.”
Dick forces a smile, giving Jason a nod.
“Good to hear. Maybe we should ban them access to games more often, if they end up being so productive instead!” he says, and Roy gives a small laugh, thank God. Jason only scoffs.
“If you can call bickering and playing with my medication productive,” he grumbles. He tries to throw his bag over his shoulder with one arm, the other still holding Lian, but Roy intercepts, taking the bag instead. He kisses Jason’s frown away, then ushers him outside.
Dick follows a pace behind, watching Jason speak quietly to Lian, and Roy slip his hand into Jason’s free one.
They make a beautiful picture, the three of them. A family. Holding together to brave through the storm.
Dick stops walking, watching quietly as they make their way towards Roy’s car. He notices Bruce come to a stop beside him, watching with him.
“They’ll take care of him,” he says.
“I know,” Dick replies.
“But you wish it was you,” Bruce points out.
“So do you,” Dick says.
Bruce chuckles, and Dick glances to the side to see him cross his arms.
“I do.”
They watch, and Dick wonders if he is doomed, like Bruce, to look on forever, as people leave. If there is someone out there, with whom Dick could fight, and laugh, and cry honestly, with whom he might disagree without it tearing the very world apart. If he can ever love without hurting or be hurt in turn.
He wonders if Bruce wishes too, or if he has found peace with his fate.
Dick, as a child, used to want to be like Bruce. As he grew older, he thought to become him must be the worst thing in the word. He would leave, and come back, and then leave again, endlessly orbiting around the man who had plucked him from the sticky sand of innocence lost, who had guided and moulded him, until they both found it impossible to ever let go of the other.
Dick found other people, yes. Another family in his friends, yes.
But even now, he fears, if he ever lets go of Bruce completely, there will be no net to catch him below. There will only be sand, and no hands to guide him out of it.
Jason never had a net. He fell, and found no hands there, either.
But Dick knows now, watching Jason bend to place Lian in her seat, watching Roy hold open Jason’s door for him, watching Jason lean in and kiss him softly on the lips, that Jason has found his hands. That he knows what it feels like to hit the sand, and crawl his way back up again, but that now he has someone who will be there right by his side, should he fall again.
There is a beauty to Jason’s unflinching vulnerability, to the way he both loves and hurts openly, and Roy can see it, too. Roy who had his own fair share of tragedies and isn’t afraid to stay by Jason’s side.
“You should call that girl, Kori, again,” Bruce suggests. Dick nods.
This time when he tries, the call connects.