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Vicki Vale checks in on twitter at the Briarwood Tattoo Shop in Downtown Gotham, and a notification pops up on Jason’s phone. It was netted, unexpectedly, among the alerts set-up for threat surveillance, and while Vale has broken her share of high-profile exploits, she’s not usually releasing information Jason is interested in. Even in a resettling, broken Gotham her news is mostly of the rich and famous.
Jason thinks about ignoring it, but then his phone buzzes again as the tweet starts to garner traction. Whatever Jason expects when he looks it over it’s not, ‘Dick Grayson, reclusive heir spotted getting ink in Downtown Gotham. Is Wayne ward home for good?’
Attached are two paparazzi shots of Dick. He looks worse than the last time Jason saw him, and Jason suddenly realizes that was months ago. Dick had chased Jason into a fight in Penguin’s territory; afterward Jason had punched him the face.
Now, Dick’s hair has grown out of the undercut to a messy length he’s tied back at the nape of his neck. His facial hair is unkempt. Looking at the picture, Jason wonders how he didn’t notice how long it’d been since Dick last chased him down. He wonders how long it’s been since he’d even heard “Nightwing spotted!” shouted over the GCPD scanner.
In the pictures Dick is wearing sweats in public which isn’t part of the cultivated Grayson-Wayne, playboy persona. He didn’t smile for the cameras like he usually would either. Instead his hands are up to ward off the flash. He looks tired. Jason can’t help wondering if, under his domino, Dick had looked this tired during their altercations.
The thought needles at Jason. He revisits the pictures in the quieter moments between running from the GCPD and staking out warehouses, waiting for the power shifts over Black Mask’s former territory. Amongst the dark stone and scaffolding of a city rebuilding, the screen of Jason’s phone is the only light as he scrolls the replies to Vale’s post.
For five days, Nightwing is absent. And this time, Jason notices.
Jason tells himself it’s reconnaissance when he seeks out Dick’s penthouse apartment. Dick is the only one left who knows who the Arkham Knight is, and while Dick hasn’t acted on that knowledge except to approach Jason himself, Jason needs to be vigilant of him becoming a threat. Jason tells himself this over and over as he spies on Dick through the sliding glass door on the balcony.
Inside Dick is soft, wrapped in sweats just like in the photos. He eases himself gently through the open plan apartment from kitchen toward the living room. He has his left arm cradled against his side, light pressure that could mean either broken arm or broken ribs. With his free hand, Dick draws his fingers through his hair, pulling it up and holding it out of his face.
There’s enough light that Jason can see the shadow of his reflection imposed on the glass. He’s in full gear and the blue light from the helmet disappearing into the points of his Bat-like armor. He looks intimidating. Threatening.
As it turns out Jason overestimates the darkness cast across the balcony. Looking bewildered, Dick opens the door suddenly. “Jason? What are you doing here?”
The mask modulates his voice. It doesn’t sound like him when he says, “Nightwing hasn’t been spotted for three weeks in Gotham.” It’s true as far as Jason could account for. Nightwing’s last official OPs in Gotham helped the GCPD bring Penguin back in according to a report by an Officer Cash. Jason couldn’t trace police reports of Nightwing activity in Blüdhaven past the Knightfall protocol.
“Someone needed to make sure you weren’t dead.”
It barely skirts the truth: that there’s no one left in Gotham to check on him. Robin and Oracle have been AWOL since Bruce’s death. Dick doesn’t say anything. But he doesn’t close the door on Jason either.
Curiosity, Jason tells himself, is why he follows Dick inside.
“I’ve been recuperating,” Dick says quietly. He tucks stray hair behind his ear and moves back to what he was doing before seeing Jason startled him.
Perching gingerly on the edge of a couch, Dick reaches with his good arm and looks over the mess of papers on the coffee table. Now inside, Jason can see that there are several open case files. Intake photos of Harvey Dent and Oswald Cobblepot stare up at them along with the mugshots of people Jason doesn’t recognize. He assumes they must be on their payroll, if they’re not outright associates of those rogues. It looks like Jason’s own files that catalogue those shuffling for power in the vacuum created by the loss of Batman.
Jason looks at Dick, brow furrowed in concentration as he takes notes in code on a legal pad. He’s several pages into it already, and the files are a scattered mess like Dick has picked one up to read then placed it haphazardly down to look through another, only to repeat the process every time he had an idea.
And, yeah, Jason may have missed years while he was trapped with the Joker, but he still remembers this. The look of a man consumed. He remembers it clearly in Bruce, especially those weeks right before Jason was taken. Bruce hadn’t eaten or slept because he was too busy trying to figure out how the Joker had escaped Arkham. He had been Bruce at his worst, curt and not forthcoming. Jason remembers the anxiety of being Robin and not being able to do his job - help Batman.
He hadn’t runaway, so much as run headfirst into the lion’s den thinking it would save Bruce. If he could just catch the Joker, if he could just do that for Bruce, maybe - But those were the anxieties of a kid. Jason doesn’t want to dwell on it. And he doesn’t want to see Dick this heavily gripped by Gotham and her trouble.
“This doesn’t look like recuperation. It looks like obsession,” Jason says.
Dick doesn’t even spare him a glance. “Excuse me if I don’t take a lecture from you when you were spying on me from my balcony in full armor.”
It’s surprising, the hint of anger in Dick’s voice. It reminds Jason of years ago, how Bruce and Dick would scream in frustration at each other after a case gone wrong. And when they were done, days would stretch in tense silence. Their anger felt tangible. Jason had nearly forgotten about it. He’s heard sadness in Dick’s voice since he came back. He’s even heard hope in his tone the handful of times they’ve worked together (always spontaneous, never coordinated, and always with a hostile GCPD at their backs). The first days after - well, Dick had chased looking as relieved as he was desperate.
This anger is closer to what Jason had been expecting from Dick.
“You know for a second I thought you were Deathstroke? I thought maybe he’d come to fulfill a contract.” He flicks his gaze to Jason for just a second. “I’d have expected that more than you coming to visit.”
“You told me I was welcome.”
“Yeah, and you replied to that invitation with a right hook. Thanks for that.”
Jason notices Dick’s fingers are shaking as he turns a page in one of the files.
“Dick,” Jason says. It feels wrong saying his name and hearing it mangled by the modulator.
In the months following the manor detonating, taking with it the only two people Jason had thought of as family, the fire and anger has burned out of Jason leaving him adrift without a mission. And Dick had been on his heels ever since. Trying to bring Jason in from the cold. A reminder that someone knew Jason Todd had once existed.
Jason’s not ready, yet, but he’s seeing how much the loss has stripped from Dick. He can read it in the tension of his shoulders, body wired for an attack.
He reaches out, can’t help it, to brush back the hair falling into Dick’s eyes.
It’s a stupid move. Dick reacts instinctively, and quicker than Jason’s expecting. He raises the arm he’s been cradling against his ribs to block Jason’s hand. The motion is twofold, blocking Jason’s touch and raising his other hand for a return strike. But Dick stops before he makes contact with his closed fist. His body is twisted around, and his breath picks up with a panicked edge as he freezes up in a fighting stance.
Just as suddenly as he acted, his eyes widen and he gasps. The sensory data in the Knight helmet starts analyzing the heat of Dick’s body and pings injuries across his side.
Dick drops his guard, settling back on the couch with an arm pressed to his ribs again as he struggles to say, “Fuck, you just caught me off guard,” through pain.
“What happened?”
Dick ignores the question, but he’s hissing through his teeth. Jason feels a spike of fear looking at Dick, and it too is a surprise.
When Dick still doesn’t reply, Jason does the only thing he thinks might get a response. Pressing the side of the mask causes the face panel to slide up, revealing his face. He kneels down into Dick’s space, bare with the brand free to scrutiny.
“Dick look at me.”
He does, and his eyes are so blue, Jason thinks, seeing them so close. Pupils wide in the half lighting in the apartment, and the fine hairs of his eyelashes as he blinks at Jason’s closeness. It’s easy to track the sweep of Dick’s gaze once he breaks eye contact, blinking hard and pressing his teeth to his bottom lip for just a second. Jason burns with the vulnerability, but Dick stops gasping for air like he’s headed for panic.
Jason reaches out to Dick, not quite making contact with the injured area, but trying to convince Dick to let him look nonetheless. Jason has to keep moving, keep acting so he doesn’t head right back out the door. It’s easier to handle Dick’s assessing stare, the lingering of his gaze on the rough scar tissue where the Joker marked him, if he’s got a job to do.
“How are you injured?”
“It’s nothing,” Dick says, distracted. His fingers curl into tight grips in his sweater though, like he’s holding back from reaching out.
Jason pulls carefully at the hem of it, tugs until Dick gets the idea and relents. He lets Jason pull the sweater up around his shoulders, but even when he’s making protests, Dick doesn’t look away from Jason’s face. Not even when Jason eases his arm out of sweater and undershirt to reveal deep bruises all across Dick’s ribs and side.
“Someone shot at me,” Dick says, even though he’s sitting there, half out of his clothes, the shirts hanging around his neck as Jason looks at the mess of Dick’s body. “The Kevlar took the worst of it.”
Jason barely refrains from cursing aloud. The bruises are so deep they’re dark purple at three points of impact. Healing is already starting, but they must be weeks old by the yellowing of the edges. He strips off his gloves as he tries to think of when Dick might have been shot in the last month. Was he in Gotham or home in Blϋdhaven? How hadn’t Jason known?
Jason asks, “Who?”
Dick just shrugs. He stares into Jason’s eyes and it’s almost an act Jason could buy into, this attempt of Dick’s to minimize, but there’s the case files and the signs of exhaustion in Dick’s face. And the remains of forgotten food, and cups of cold coffee between the papers that tell Jason he hasn’t been eating.
“I heard from Gordon,” Dick offers instead. “There’s pressure to investigate Batman’s known-associates. There’s suspicion of Nightwing.”
“There’s always been suspicions in Gotham.”
“Yeah, but now they know Bruce is.” Dick stops. “Bruce was Batman.”
Jason wants to ask more, but he presses a little too hard on the bruising and Dick sucks air in through his teeth, hissing from the unexpected pain. He flinches away from Jason’s touch, and presses his arm back over the area, like how he was walking around the apartment before. Now that he’s bare all along that side though, Jason can’t help but have a passing observation that he looks like a bird with a pinned wing.
Jason wants to say something. He has memories of the way Alfred would tease him after an injury. It had never felt mean-spirited, just familial. Remembering makes Jason ache.
He keeps his face neutral and doesn’t say anything. Anything he could say would sound like a taunt.
Carefully, Jason tugs at Dick’s wrist, pulling Dick’s injured arm toward him. He just wanted to move it out of the way so he could get another look at the spread of the bruising and see how far the deepest purpling part stretches. But he turns Dick’s arm and sees dark ink against his skin. Vale may have broken the news, but the reality of Dick Grayson having a tattoo is something else when it’s right under Jason’s fingers.
The skin around the ink is red and inflamed, and the ink is raised where it’s healing. Jason feels a sudden vicious urge to press his thumb down hard on it. Almost acts on it as he looks at the image of an open hand, raised as if in surrender to the dagger poised above it. Simple black ink makes up the shading and lines, but it’s less the imagery of offering Dick chose that makes Jason feel malicious. It’s the carefully tattoo’d words beneath them.
“Jason?” Dick asks.
He reads the words , "A Good Son" inked on the inside of Dick’s forearm and some of that anger rekindles in Jason’s core. He’s careful not to do anything but draw his fingers down to Dick’s elbow. Dick shudders at the touch, and Jason catalogs it for later consideration.
Jason presses as gently against Dick’s ribs as he can, and checks for internal injury.
When he's done, and he's relatively sure Dick hasn't punctured a lung, Jason asks, “Do you have a first aid kit?” as he stands up. He tries to step back only to realize Dick is hanging on, fingers curled loosely in Jason’s sleeve. It seems innocent but Jason knows how strong those fingers are, how they have held up Dick's weight on edges of buildings. If he tries to move, Jason knows Dick could hang onto him if he wanted to.
"Don't -" Dick starts but he doesn’t finish the request.
Jason pulls away, out of reach. And Dick lets him, his shirt coming free of Dick's grasp without a fight.
“Hall closet. It’s the second door,” Dick says instead. He stares up at Jason for just a second, and then as if the whole the moment had never happened, Dick turns back to his case files.
Jason slips further back, feeling as though he has been dismissed. Except he’s still hesitating between escaping out the window or going down the hall to retrieve the kit. He waits, undecided, and watches Dick hold the same page for too long in front of his face. Jason knows Dick reads faster than that. And it’s strange, being struck still because he knows Dick too well to leave.
Jason goes for the medkit.
When he comes back Dick has hardly moved. His clothing is still half-off, though he’s given up the pretense of reading. His arm is pinned to the bruising again, and there’s a look of pain knitting his brows together. As Jason moves closer he can see Dick gripping the cushions of the couch in a clutching grasp.
“If you’re in that much pain,” Jason starts to say, and watches Dick flinch minutely. Blue eyes staring in open surprise.
“It’s not that,” Dick replies. The look of surprise isn’t wiping away and Jason has to ignore the tightness in his chest, the whisper of insecurity that Dick hadn’t expected him to stay. Had thought that Jason would leave even though he asked him to stay. Jason sets the medkit on the coffee table, and reaches out to Dick with steady hands.
Jason gets his body between Dick’s knees and the coffee table. He needs to be close enough to reach, Jason tells himself, and he runs his fingertips around the edges of the bruising again. Dick’s chest rises and falls with even breathing, and there’s nothing telling, nothing new that Jason finds except that his skin is a little cooler from being bare. He doesn’t feel anymore or less warm to the touch than Jason noticed before, but still.
Dick says, “It’s just a headache, Jason. Honestly -” only to close his mouth, surprised again, when Jason presses a hand to his forehead.
“When was the last time you had something other than coffee?” Jason asks.
Dick makes a non-committal sound.
“When was the last time you slept?”
Another noncommittal noise.
Taking someone’s temperature with the back of his bare hand, Jason knows, is a poor measure. He probably said as much as an impertinent kid to Alfred, and yet. It had seemed natural gesture to Jason.
Dick’s eyes flutter shut, but when Jason asks, “Did you even see a doctor?” irritation bleeding into his tone, a withering stare finds him. He lifts his chin, jaw set with an irritation to match Jason’s, and he snaps back that he’s not dumb. That he would’ve gone if it were serious. As if being shot isn’t serious. As if he hasn’t been so incapacitated that facial hair is growing in patchy across his throat, too exhausted and in too much pain to bother.
It’s painfully familiar, reminding Jason of Bruce’s growled complaints about Jason’s predecessor being stubborn. It reminds Jason of Alfred’s soft anecdotes about ‘Master Grayson.’ There had been more time back then to see how right they both were. Before Arkham and before the Joker. When Dick spent more time flying into Gotham before Bruce stopped answering his calls.
“You need a bath and a haircut, boy-wonder,” Jason says. It’s the softest his voice has been thus far. It sounds unfamiliar to his ears. And not just because the endearment comes from a lifetime ago when Jason was still wearing red and green, and a blush would go all the way to the tips of his ears.
Jason almost brushes his fingers through Dick’s hair when he says it but manages not to be quite so sentimental.
He finds pain medication in the kit as well as salve for the bruising. Dick barely protests before swallowing the pills dry. The cups of coffee have rings of off-cream floating in their centers, ill-advised to drink, and it’s too delicate for Jason to leave the room in search of a cup and water. So Jason lets Dick be, careful only to reach for his elbows to hold him steady when pain furrows Dick’s brow again.
He murmurs, “Come on,” and they leave his helmet and Dick’s shirts on the couch.
There’s a bathtub in the master-suite of the penthouse. It’s an antique looking thing with clawed feet and an inclined shape so even someone Bruce’s height might be able to bathe comfortably. It’s clearly a Wayne-style decoration, Jason can tell. But he keeps any bubbling up anger to at Bruce’s wealth, about Wayne playboy “appearances,” and just who was meant to see it in the first place buried deep in his throat as he busies himself filling the tub.
“You need a bath and sleep,” Jason says before Dick can get the protest past parted lips.
The bathroom connects the hall to Dick’s bedroom, and Jason slips through the door while the sound of running water fills the silence. Jason strips free from the rest of his armor until he’d almost look like a civilian – just a man in camo printed pants and a tank top. Someone Richard Grayson-Wayne could almost be seen on the street with.
The thought of them, together, being normal - being close. It slips in insidiously and Jason feels something hot in his chest, shame and surprise that he’s afraid to inspect too closely.
He turns his attention to the well-made bed, further evidence that if Dick has been sleeping at all it’s been on the couch, and the files and papers that have spilled out on it. Jason can imagine Dick wandering around the penthouse at all hours, picking up documents at random to add to the red-string map of Gotham’s underbelly that he has been building.
He traces his fingers over a message from Wayne Incorporated. The masthead has already changed, stating Lucius Fox as the head of the company. The letter itself appears to be from his desk. It’s short, familiar message asking after Dick and if he’ll be at the latest fundraiser. Paper-clipped to it is an invitation on fine stationery asking Richard Grayson-Wayne to wear black-tie, and to bring a plus one if he’s so inclined. Jason lays that paper back down, distracted easily by a GCPD internal memo that Dick shouldn’t have his hands on. It declares open season on vigilantes, Batman associates in particular, by mayoral decree.
The worst of the papers however, is a transcript between known associates of Harvey Dent talking about a hit being put out, a sum of money to transfer in easy to decipher code, and, worst of all, a crude joke about a “bird being black and blue and red all over.”
Jason’s saved from parsing the last bit of information into an emotion because the thundering sound of the tap cuts off.
In the bathroom the air is full of hot steam that make the mirrors opaque, and Dick is perched on the edge of the bath with a hand still lingering on the tap, and fully nude.
“I was coming back,” Jason says, mouth drying. He watches Dick shift uncomfortably, arm tucked up and unable to hide the dark contrast of bruising or the years of scars. Jason traces them with his eyes without meaning to. He watches the way an inhaled breath makes Dick’s chest rise. ‘Fuck,’ Jason thinks.
“I can undress by myself, Jason.” Dick’s cheeks are red, though.
When Jason draws near, he takes the hand Jason offers him. He’s grateful there isn’t more exchange as he helps Dick slowly into the hot water.
Jason gave Dick more than the recommended amount of pain medication, even though they were some of Leslie’s stuff. He wanted to make sure Dick actually rests and he knows, remembers really, that Dick wouldn’t do so on suggestion alone. Luckily the pills have started to set in, leaving Dick loose-limbed as Jason runs a wash cloth across his bare skin.
He shivers visibly the first time their bare-skin touches, and his skin pinks with the heat of the water. When Jason turns in search of shampoo Dick curls around his own bare knees, resting his chin on them to watch Jason move with tired eyes.
“Hey,” Dick says, voice soft and dragging the word out when Jason turns around to catch him staring. “Hey I-”
“Tilt your head back,” Jason interrupts, hands full with shampoo. Dick blinks for a moment before his mouth snaps shut and he slowly leans back to put his head of wet, curling hair into Jason’s hands.
The only sounds in the bathroom for the a long stretch of minutes is the tactile sounds of fingers massaging shampoo into hair and Dick moving his hands through the water. Then water being pour over Dick’s head, and the loudest sound of all being the swishing of the water as Dick dunks his whole body under the water, forcing the water to make room for him.
“Jason.”
Jason looks at this unshaven, scraggly but now clean version of Richard John Grayson and he suddenly remembers the first time he met him in all his golden boy glory.
Jason hopes he’s not going to regret what Dick’s about to say. He makes a sound, lets Dick know he’s listening, and pretends to only be half watching as Dick runs an unsteady hand across his unshaven chin. It’s his left hand, and from this angle Jason can see the ink of his tattoo. Jason hopes he hasn’t had it submerged in the bath this whole time.
Jason reaches out and grasps Dick’s wrist and carefully pulls the shape of it toward him . ”A Good Son” reads up at him, and his stomach is still tight at the sight of it. He can feel the shape of the words on his tongue, and accidentally misses what Dick says under the echoing of the word ricocheting around in his head. " A Good Son A Good Son A Good Soldier A Good Son. "
“We should get you dry and care for this before the meds completely knock you out,” Jason says, swallowing back the word and bile. “Do you have lotion for it? For your tattoo?”
He’s not expecting Dick to reply with a question.
“Why are you still here?”
“I thought you wanted me to stay,” Jason shoots back, mouth faster and angrier than he realized he still felt. And impossible to take back.
Dick’s eyes are wet, and he gently tugs his arm free from Jason’s grasp to run the back of it across them. He stays like that, eyes hidden from Jason as his chest rises visibly. The water in the tub is cooling enough to break his skin out in goosebumps and the condensation is starting to clear on the mirrors. When he stands up, Jason knows he’ll be able to see his reflection and the crude J burned into his skin with clarity.
“Dick.” He doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know how to fill the silence when not even hours ago he was standing outside this man’s home pretending to be on reconnaissance. He’s lost the track of this, fallen into Dick Grayson and his terrible habits of not taking care of himself, his big blue eyes and the way his fingers kept grasping for him when they’re hands got too close in the water.
Dick makes a painful sound when he draws air back in. And Jason has to remember that he’s not the same kid who jumped off of buildings because Dick told him to, because Dick said it was safe and he could do it. Because it was Dick saying it and he wasn’t just some benchmark for Jason to meet and surpass. He was also this shining wonder of what Jason’s life could be.
It’s not actually Dick’s fault that Jason hates to remember it.
“Let’s get you to bed, wonder-bread,” Jason says. His fingers are as gentle as he can make them, gun calloused and scarred, on Dick’s skin as he helps Dick out of the tub.
Dick goes with him easily, limbs malleable but still and quiet as Jason helps him towel down. It’s more clinical than when they were in the den or when he was in the tub. The whole affair of caring for the tattoo, Jason’s fingers gentle on the raised ink, and his slow pace getting Dick dressed and to the bedroom is silent. It’s scarily like Dick is elsewhere.
“Just shove the papers on the floor. I’ll deal with it later,” Dick says when they’re in the bedroom and Jason hesitates for a second before the bed. As if to prove it, Dick steps forward and sweeps papers and folders, including the invitation and the memo to the floor, before pulling back the covers to climb into.
Jason watches as Dick curls up with his back to him. His fingers open and close in fists with useless energy, until Dick says, “You don’t have to stay and keep playing nursemaid, Jason.”
But Jason waits. He sits on the edge of the bed until Dick’s breathes seem to even out.
He can’t tell if it’s the meds that knock him out, or Dick is faking and giving him an out. But there’s restless energy in Jason’s bones. He’s still got the tattoo phrase pounding in his head.
Jason takes the cue to cut and run.
The sun is coming in through the windows so he steals a bag to shove his armor and helmet into. He leaves out the front door, out the lobby of the upscale Gotham apartment building into the dawn light.
There’s a lone paparazzi waiting outside. He’s not subtle, and he lifts his camera as he spots Jason coming out of the building. Jason’s heart pounds with anxiety as he draws nearer, sees picture after picture being taken of his approach. Jason’s heart pounds with anxiety.
“Delete those,” Jason says. He pitches it deeper, imitating Bruce without meaning to.
“It’s not illegal, I’m on city property,” the guy starts to argue.
Jason knows he shouldn’t grab for the guy’s camera. It’s reckless, but his face is bare. All he can think of is his scar splashed across every gossip column, spreading across the internet and out of his control.
“Delete the pictures or I smash the camera,” Jason says.
The guy crumbles quick. Jason watches over his shoulder as he deletes each one; some were closeups, some just caught his silhouette in favor of including the building name.
Jason takes the SD card for good measure before he sends the guy jogging down the street, no worse for wear but hopefully scared off. And Jason waits. He counts seconds until there’s enough space between him and the paparazzi. Then he walks.
The anxiety stays at a low hum though. The first block Jason expects to turn a corner and find the GCPD with guns ready, tipped off that the Arkham Knight was spotted on this block.
But the further Jason walks from the penthouse, the more he blends in. It’s early morning Gotham, and the streets are as empty as they ever get. The only people out are joggers and those hoping to beat the morning traffic jam. He receives little attention. He could be just another citizen, another civilian. No one else is there to remark on him leaving Dick’s apartment building. It’s a neighborhood with little reconstruction needed after his and scarecrow’s attacks on the city.
He could feel the whole of the normality, the mundane of it all of it all if he let himself.
But he can’t. He turns into an alley to use the shadows for cover. He takes back routes back to his safe house and leaves the night, Dick, and the ghosts between them behind.