Chapter Text
Jason woke up in excruciating pain.
This was not a new experience. Jason couldn’t really remember a time when it had been a new experience. Oh, the pain had increased over the years—he hurt worse as Red Hood than he’d hurt as Robin, and he’d hurt worse as Robin than he’d hurt when it was just his dad knocking him around—but he couldn’t recall waking up in pain and thinking this has never happened before.
This was one of the worst. His head throbbed like someone had used it as a soccer ball, his stomach screamed at him every time he breathed, and his limbs—
He couldn’t move.
Why couldn’t he move?
His eyes flew open, or tried to—they were swollen almost completely shut and another jolt of pain lanced through his head at the movement of his lids. His chest felt heavy and the ceiling was unfamiliar. Where was he? How had he gotten here?
He thrashed against whatever was holding him down—bonds, gravity, weakness, he didn’t know, but he refused to stay under. Fresh pain spiked above his hip and in his shoulder, tearing a ragged cry out of him. It didn’t matter, he didn’t care, he hadn’t stayed in his grave so a little pain was nothing…
Footsteps, and then a distantly familiar face looming over him, dark red hair and freckles. “Hey, hey, Jason, it’s okay. You’re okay. You’re safe.”
“Get...the fuck...away…” Jason managed, his throat raw and dry. “Don’t fucking know you…”
The freckled brow furrowed. “It’s Roy Harper. Arsenal. Uh...we met back when I was Speedy.”
“What?” That didn’t make any fucking sense, that had been years ago, before Jason died…
“Jason, calm down. You’re gonna pull your stitches.”
Oh no. Jason knew that tone, that smug I’m-a-Dom-and-I-know-best condescending bullshit. Bruce had used it on him all the time. It wasn’t any better hearing it out of the mouth of a near stranger who had him helpless in his bed.
“You touch me and I’ll cut off your dick and feed it to you, asshole,” he snapped, jerking away and then crying out as something popped above his hip.
“Jesus,” the Dom said. “Jason, come on, you’re bleeding again, please let me help you.”
“Don’t need any fucking help,” Jason snarled, even as his vision swam with the added pain.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” The Dom tone was back, and dammit, dammit, somehow in the swirling miasma of Jason’s perceptions it was the only thing that was clear. “No one’s going to hurt you. I’d die before I’d let them.”
The miasma went black, and Jason knew he was about to pass out. Unconscious and injured, alone with a strange Dom.
He’d survived worse.
“Kill you,” he managed before his tongue stopped responding.
“That’s fine,” the Dom said. There were hands, strong and firm and cool, pushing gently at his shoulders and coaxing him to lie flat. Only his shoulders, nowhere else. “Heal up first and then you can kill me twice.”
Idiot, Jason tried and failed to say, and then he was gone.
*
The next time he woke, the pain was...slightly less bad. And when his eyes opened, they opened a little wider, allowing him to see that he was in a bedroom, spartan but clean, daylight streaming in around the closed blinds. There was a bottle on the nightstand, one of those reusable water bottles with a lid that flipped out into a straw.
Looking at it, Jason was suddenly desperately thirsty. He didn’t know what was in it, but there was no reason to drug or poison him when he’d already been unconscious, and he was still so weak and injured he could barely move. Plus, the bottle was metal, which meant he could use it as a makeshift weapon. If he could reach it.
Gritting his teeth against any noise, he tried to sit up, noticing as he braced himself that several of his fingers were splinted. He got farther than he had last time—if he hadn’t hallucinated that—but a muffled groan escaped. Fuck.
Sure enough, someone appeared in the doorway. He was tall, though not quite as tall as Jason, with broad shoulders and the red hair Jason remembered from his maybe-hallucination, and the thoughtlessly confident posture of a Dom. “Oh, hey, you’re awake.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Jason snapped. Well, at least he could talk again.
“I’m Roy Harper. Dick’s friend? I used to go by Speedy?” The Dom came closer and picked up the water bottle. Dammit. “We were very briefly on the Titans together, remember?”
Now that Jason was more lucid, the resemblance to the older boy he’d admired was clearer. The same freckled nose and crooked smile; the same sharply defined arms, straining against the sleeves of Roy’s Grateful Dead shirt, although now they were covered in tattoos. His dark red hair was buzzed short now, though, instead of flopping into his eyes, and he hadn’t had that douchey soul patch back then.
More importantly, he hadn’t been keeping Jason…somewhere, injured.
“What the fuck do you want? How did I get here?” Jason asked.
Roy flipped the catch that made the water bottle’s straw pop out and held it close enough for Jason to drink. “Are you thirsty?”
Jason gave him a narrow look. Roy rolled his eyes. “Oh for Christ’s sake…” He took a sip, pale pink lips pursing around the straw, and swallowed visibly before offering it to Jason again. “Not poison. Just Gatorade.”
“Sanitary,” Jason said, even though his throat burned for something to drink.
“You got shot twice, you can survive my backwash.”
Jason wanted to refuse on principle, but he reminded himself that proper hydration was the first step to getting strong enough to get the fuck out of here. He opened his mouth and let Roy feed him the straw, refusing to think about either the fact that Roy’s tongue had just been pressed where his was now, or how traditional this kind of feeding was. He’d never allowed anyone to feed him before.
When Roy pulled the water bottle away, Jason was breathless, and irritated with himself because of it. “Where am I?” he asked. “And why the fuck are you here?”
“We’re in Gotham,” Roy said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Typical Dom over-familiarity. “One of Dick’s safehouses. Well, Bruce’s, I guess. You were injured in a fight. Do you remember?”
“The docks,” Jason said. It was the last thing he did remember before waking up here. Black Mask had decided to make a move on Red Hood’s territory. Jason thought he’d teach him a lesson, but Sionis had brought more firepower than Jason was expecting.
Stupid, so fucking stupid. He remembered cursing himself for being an idiot as he’d fought off more goons than he’d planned for, all of them Doms—though that was probably coincidence, since Red Hood’s designation was a closely guarded secret. He remembered Black Mask laughing.
He remembered being shot. Once? Twice?
Then it went hazy.
The rest of it was like puzzle pieces scattered on the floor; he wasn’t even sure if they were from the same box. Batman, swinging in on a grapple line, and the instinctive surge of relief that he’d never managed to shake from his childhood, followed by the equally strong fury. The unmistakable damp smell of the cave. Alfred’s worried face over bloody hands in surgical gloves, and Dick’s voice shouting.
“Yeah,” Roy said. “Oracle picked it up on the police scanner. Batman went in to shut it down and barely got you out of there. You were shot twice, a through-and-through in the left shoulder and one on the right side of your stomach that they had to dig out but which miraculously missed any major organs. Plus a severe concussion, two black eyes, a sprained ankle, three broken fingers, and the usual potpourri of cuts, contusions, and abrasions. Put frankly, you’re a mess.”
As he spoke, Jason catalogued the listed injuries, seeing the bandages he’d barely processed before. No wonder he’d felt like he hadn’t been able to move. Between the actual injuries, the blood loss, and the concussion, Roy might as well have been holding him down.
He probably could, with arms like that, a small, traitorous part of Jason’s brain noted before Jason choked it into silence.
“That’s not what I asked,” he said. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
For the first time, Roy looked less than perfectly at ease. “Well. That’s a bit awkward,” he said. “You’re gonna need some help until you get back on your feet…”
“But they couldn’t have me cluttering up the cave,” Jason interrupted. It was such bullshit that rejection didn’t only hurt the first time. “You don’t have to explain, I got it.”
“That’s not it,” Roy said. “Bruce wanted you to stay there. Dick said they fought about it. But he thought that given the…tension between you and Bruce, it wasn’t the best place for you to get better. He thought you needed a Dom who you didn’t have so much...uh, baggage with.”
“I don’t need a Dom, period,” Jason snapped.
“Okay,” Roy said.
Jason blinked. No Dom had ever not argued with him when he’d said that. No Dom had ever not argued with any sub when they said that.
“You do, however, need someone to look after you for a bit,” Roy continued. “I know how to care for wounds and I can keep Bat-secrets. So here I am.”
“And because you apparently had nothing better to do,” Jason drawled, unimpressed.
“Oh, I had far better things to do than wait hand and foot on the world’s meanest patient,” Roy said, that crooked smile turning up wryly. “But Dick’s my best friend, and I owe him the most important thing in my life. When he begs me for a favor, I don’t say no.”
Jason snorted, then winced at the way it jarred his head and his bruised eye sockets. “Dick begged you to help me. Sure.”
“Yeah,” Roy said seriously. “He did.”
Jason looked away. He didn’t want to entertain this bullshit. He didn’t want to deal with any of this.
Roy stood up. “I’ll go get you some painkillers.”
*
There had been a very brief window when Jason hadn’t minded being a sub.
Not at first, of course. Not for a single second that his father was alive. Honestly, it was a toss-up who was angrier about Jason’s designation, Jason or Willis.
He’d been unlucky enough to present young, at nine. His dad had had a bunch of his drinking buddies over and his mom had retreated into her bedroom and her high to avoid them, meaning Jason was the one sent scurrying back and forth to the fridge whenever someone demanded another beer. He’d contemplated making a break for it, slipping quietly out the door or down the fire escape and kicking around Park Row until the game was over and they’d gone home, but that would mean leaving his mom alone with them. She’d probably locked the door, but still.
One of the loudest and drunkest of Willis’s friends was holding forth about how he’d put his sub girlfriend in her place when Jason came back into the living room holding two beers. “So I just told that bitch, get on your knees, now!” he shouted over the noise from the TV.
Jason’s knees folded beneath him like someone had put their hand on the back of his neck and shoved. He went down so fast the bottles in his hands cracked against the floor and broke.
All of the men in the room turned to stare at him like they’d just noticed the thing that was fetching their beer was a child. Jason knelt there, frozen, beer seeping into his jeans, trying to figure out what had just happened.
Then one of them started laughing. “Holy shit, Todd, your kid is a fucking sub!” he said, and the others cracked up, too—everyone but Willis, whose surprise morphed to fury as he stared at Jason.
The nearest man lurched out of his chair and grabbed Jason by the jaw, hard enough to hurt even after he opened his mouth to ease the pressure. Jason’s heart pounded in terror and confusion.
“No wonder he’s got such a pretty mouth,” the man said. “What do you think, kid, ready to learn what to do with it?”
“Hey! That’s my fucking kid!” Willis barked, and they all froze again. Jason looked at his father with pleading eyes, past this man who was so much bigger than him and still holding his mouth open.
And then Willis grinned. “You want him, we negotiate a rate first,” he said, rubbing his first two fingers against his thumb, and all the men laughed again. The one holding Jason let him go, and Willis gave him a disdainful look. “Clean that shit up, what the fuck’s wrong with you?”
Jason hurried to do as he was ordered, cutting his hands a couple of times on the broken glass in the process. When the floor was clean and he’d changed into dry jeans, he fled to the fire escape and sat there shaking, trying to figure out why he’d gone to his knees like that when the man hadn’t even been talking to him.
His dad had thought it was funny, so maybe it was okay. At least, so Jason hoped until their guests were gone and Jason found out what Willis and his belt thought of his “pussy sub son” embarrassing him in front of his friends.
Any faint hope that that moment of going down might have been a mistake, a crossed wire in Jason’s brain, was soon dashed. The older he got, the stronger the instincts were: to bare his neck, to kneel, to obey. But he fought them tooth and nail, locking his knees when they wanted to bend. Making furious eye contact when he wanted to avert his gaze.
It wasn’t just that every time he messed up and reminded Willis that he was a sub again, he got the back of his father’s hand for it. It wasn’t even the memory of that man’s hand on his jaw and the unclear threat behind it. He hated not being in control of himself, of his body’s own reactions. Of what he might do in response to a stray comment or firm touch.
And then his father went to jail, and his mother died, and Batman walked into his life.
Batman had the most uncompromisingly dominant energy Jason had ever encountered. It had taken everything Jason had to hit him with the tire iron and run with that deep, resonant voice telling him to stop, and by the time Batman found where he lived, Jason had nothing left but empty sass. When Batman told him to give the tires back, Jason did. When Batman told him to go to Ma Gunn’s school, he did.
When Batman told him he wanted Jason to be the new Robin, he managed to pause.
“I wanna,” he said, staring at his hands. “More’n anything. But I can’t.”
“Why not?” Batman’s voice was a low rumble beside him.
Jason shut his eyes. “I’m a sub.”
“I know.”
Jason’s eyes flew open, and he stared up at that dark mask. “What? You know?” He’d thought he was pretty good at hiding it. It helped that he was scrawny. A lot of people presented by twelve, but Jason knew he looked younger than that.
“Why can’t you be Robin if you’re a sub?” Batman asked.
“Because subs are…” Weak. Vulnerable. Delicate. Jason couldn’t say it. He refused to say it.
“Did you ever consider that being a sub might make you a better Robin?” Batman asked, and Jason stared at him again. “When I’m in the field, I need someone who takes orders so instinctively I barely need to say them. Someone who can move with me, like we’re two parts of the same body. A strong right arm. I need someone very smart, and very brave.” He smiled, just a tiny thing, but it changed his whole face. Well, the part of it Jason could see. “That sounds like you to me, Jay.”
Jason felt himself sitting up straighter. Batman thought he was smart and brave. Batman thought his being a sub was a good thing. And Batman was never wrong.
“I guess you’ve got yourself a new Robin, then,” he said.
He should have known, even then, that it would all go wrong.
*
The first forty-eight hours under Roy’s care were humiliating. Jason needed help with everything, from sitting up enough to sip the broth and Gatorade Roy fed him, to hobbling to the bathroom to pee. Roy always looked away politely once they made it to the bathroom, which Jason wasn’t naive enough to be grateful for. Just because the guy didn’t have a piss kink didn’t mean the asshole Dom behavior wouldn’t materialize eventually.
Mostly, he slept, and tried not to dream.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” he said once as Roy helped him back into bed after he’d peed. “No matter what you owe Dick. You’ve gotta know I’m going to kill you eventually, right? It’s what I do.”
“Mm, I wouldn’t be surprised if you tried,” Roy said. “But I’m pretty hard to kill. ‘S part of why Dick wanted me to look after you and not, like, a nurse.”
“I wouldn’t kill a nurse,” Jason snapped. Not just because most people who went into nursing were fellow subs who would leave him the fuck alone. He didn’t hurt civilians.
“Oh, sorry, I thought you were telling me how evil and violent you were,” Roy replied. “My mistake.”
Jason tried to scowl, but lost it in a gasp of pain as he lowered himself down to the bed. “Don’t fucking patronize me.”
“I’m not,” Roy said. “I’ve seen news footage of you in action. You’re good. If you didn’t have two bullet holes in you, I honestly don’t know which of us would win. Well, if I didn’t have a bow.” There was that careless Dom confidence that was so annoying. “Hell, take me by surprise, you might still kill me like this, but I promise I’d do some damage on my way down. And I’d hate to undo all my good work here, so do me a favor and save the violence until I’m not changing your dressings twice a day, okay?”
“God, I fucking hate you,” Jason said, leaning back against the pillows and closing his eyes.
“Yeah, well, I hate me too a lot of the time so you’re in good company,” Roy said—but by the time Jason processed that enough to open his eyes, Roy was already out of the room.
The problem, of course, with sleeping most of the time was that he eventually woke up at 3 a.m. and was unable to fall back asleep. He was sulking about it when he realized that his pain was only a dull roar, even though it had been hours since his latest round of painkillers, and Roy was most likely asleep. He could probably stand on his own. And if he could stand, he could leave.
It took a few careful, painful minutes, but he finally made it onto his feet. He was a little shaky, and the edges of his vision had a hazy blackness to them, but he was standing, unassisted, for the first time in days.
The next step was to pick the lock to his bedroom door. But when he reached it, the knob turned easily under his hand and the door swung open.
Roy hadn’t locked him in? Hadn’t Dick told him anything? Hadn’t he listened to a word Jason had said?
Keeping one hand on the wall for support, Jason made his way out of the bedroom. The apartment was dark and quiet. He hadn’t seen any of it but the bathroom, which was right across the hall, but it turned out there wasn’t much to see—a kitchen, a barebones living room. There was a safe set into the wall which Jason guessed was where his guns were if Bruce hadn’t kept them, and a cabinet filled with non-combustible weapons: bows, quivers, knives. He palmed one of the latter and kept going.
The other bedroom door was half open. Roy hadn’t locked Jason in or out. How stupid was this man?
Okay. Walk in, slit his throat. Find something to wear that wasn’t pajama pants. Crack the safe, get his guns back, take all the food and painkillers he could find, and get the fuck out of here and back to his own territory.
Dick would never forgive Jason for killing his best friend. But he should have thought of that before he left him with a strange Dom against his will. Not that Roy had done anything, but…
No. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was getting out of here.
He eased the door the rest of the way open, slowly so that it didn’t creak, even though the longer he was on his feet the worse the blackness around the edges of his vision grew. Roy lay curled on his side, facing the door, one arm tucked up under the pillow and the other stretched across the mattress like he was reaching for something. His breathing was steady and even.
Jason stepped into the room. It wasn’t a big one. Three steps, maybe four, would bring him to the side of the bed.
Roy hadn’t closed the curtains very well, and neon peeked in around the gaps, highlighting the curve of his bare arm and shoulder above the blanket, though his face was shrouded in shadow. The room lurched slightly, and Jason tightened his grip on the knife in his hand.
“If you fall you’ll pop your stitches again,” Roy rumbled, his voice low and scratchy with sleep. He lifted the edge of the blanket. “Come lie down before you fall down.”
It wasn’t particularly aggressive. It wasn’t even really a command. But suddenly lying down sounded like the best thing in the world.
Jason wavered for a moment, then picked his careful way forward. Three steps. Four. He put the knife down on the bedside table.
He could always use it in the morning.
He climbed into bed, wincing a little as the movement jarred his stomach. Roy let the covers drop over him. The arm that had been stretched out before curled around his ribs, high up enough that it didn’t bother his wound.
It felt heavy. It felt nice.
“Dumbass,” Roy mumbled, his warm breath gusting over Jason’s bare shoulder, and then Jason was asleep.
*
Being Robin had been wonderful at first. Jason loved the thrill of grappling around the city, leaping from roof to roof and fight to fight like gravity was merely a suggestion. He loved having a secret that none of his classmates knew—a good one, for once. He even loved training, despite it leaving him stiff and aching more mornings than not.
And Bruce had been right that being a sub wouldn’t be a problem. Even when they fought Doms—and most of the people they fought were Doms—they meant nothing to Jason when Bruce was there.
It wasn’t that he was Bruce’s sub. Jason would never have said yes if he’d thought that was what Bruce wanted. He’d had enough of creepy older Doms with an eye for kids, thank you very much. But he still belonged to Bruce, in a way, and his sub instincts knew it, and it made everything else so much easier to ignore.
He was a better Robin than Dick, he thought to himself smugly sometimes. Oh, he might never have Dick’s grace or his speed. But Dick was a switch, and that meant he couldn’t let Bruce take the lead the way he was supposed to—couldn’t be Batman’s strong right arm. He challenged him, fought with him, went off on his own. He was too sub to be Batman, and too Dom to be Robin. But Jason would get it right.
Until he started fighting with Bruce, too.
At first it was small things, like going left when Bruce wanted him to go right, or getting the occasional C in math. Give him a break, he was fighting crime all night and math was the first period of the day.
But then he started to disagree with bigger things. Tactics. Strategy. Philosophy.
Batman was tougher than he needed to be on drug addicts and pickpockets, Jason’s traitorous brain thought sometimes. And he was soft on rapists and abusers. Oh, he knocked them out and tied them up and called the police; he gave the addresses of shelters and support groups to their victims. But for all that he talked about using the power of fear against criminals, he didn’t give any of the worst monsters enough to be really scared of. He didn’t give them injuries that would last. He couldn’t even make them think he’d kill them, because everyone knew Batman didn’t kill. What did shitty abusive Doms care about a restraining order or a slap on the wrist from the courts? Doms weren’t wired to listen to anyone. Someone had to make them listen, and Batman wasn’t doing it.
But the more Jason tried to argue his side of things, the tighter Bruce’s control got. And the firm hand that had once felt like a comfort became suffocating. Bruce had wanted him smart, but not smart enough to have his own opinions, it seemed. Brave, but not brave enough to stand by his convictions.
And then there was Felipe Garzonas, and Bruce didn’t listen.
And then there was the Joker, because Bruce didn’t listen.
And then there was nothing.
*
“Hey,” Roy said, sticking his head into the bedroom. “How do you feel about...the couch?” He spread his fingers wide as he said it, like a gameshow host announcing a fabulous prize.
Jason raised his eyebrows. “Like as an item of furniture, or the couch in this apartment in particular?”
Roy came more fully into the room. “Both, I guess. I was just thinking that you’re a bit stronger now, and you might want to come have lunch on the couch instead of being stuck in this bed all the time. You could watch TV, get a change of scenery.”
He didn’t mention the night before last, when Jason had changed the scenery pretty definitively by coming into his room with a knife. He hadn’t asked for an explanation or an apology, and Jason hadn’t offered them.
The bedroom doors were still left unlocked.
“I’m not really a TV guy, but sure,” Jason said, and let Roy help him up and into the living room.
“Yeah? What do you do in your downtime, then? Polish your guns?” Roy asked, with a cheeky grin that showed off both the crooked tilt of his smile and the fact that he was entirely too proud of his double entendre.
“Grow up,” Jason sniffed. “I read, mostly. Easier to take a book with you and harder to miss an episode.”
“Yeah? What kind of stuff?”
Jason shrugged and then eased himself down onto the couch. “Classics, mostly. Some poetry and literary fiction. I was working on Crime and Punishment in Russian when…”
When he’d been stupid enough to let Black Mask’s goons shoot him twice.
“Cool. I was always a STEM guy myself,” Roy said, handing him the remote. “Well, maybe Masterpiece Theater is on. Ooh, or Wishbone!”
“I repeat: grow up,” Jason said, although he did secretly love Wishbone. He turned the TV on and started flipping through channels as Roy disappeared into the kitchen.
“Hey,” Roy called, “you think you can handle a sandwich? I got some cold cuts and shit.”
Jason’s brow furrowed. He had no idea how Roy planned to feed him a sandwich, but his mouth watered at the thought of solid food. “I’ll make it work,” he called back.
Roy returned a few minutes later with two plates and handed one to Jason. He took it uncertainly. “You aren’t going to…”
“Mm?” Roy flopped down on the other end of the couch and took a huge bite of his own sandwich.
“Uh. It’s just. You’ve been. Feeding me?” Jason said. He could feel his cheeks heating up. Fuck.
But it was true. Over the past few days he’d mainly been sticking with things that were easy to sip through a straw—broth, smoothies—and Roy had held the cup for him while he sipped. It had been humiliating, but he hadn’t had the energy to argue about it.
“Oh.” Were Roy’s cheeks going a little pink? “Did...did you want me to? I can cut it up…”
“No. Fuck off,” Jason snapped. He might be stuck here while he recuperated, and he might be unwilling to kill Roy to get away, but that didn’t mean he was going to go to his knees to be hand-fed like the sweet little sub he’d never be, just because Dick had stuck him with a Dom who was young and handsome and strong.
He picked up half of the sandwich and took a huge bite to prove his point. Turkey and mustard and—ugh, was that American cheese? Were they six years old?
“Okay,” Roy said, looking faintly amused. “You let me know if that changes.”
It was the wisp of a smile on those pink lips that made Jason lose his temper. He put the sandwich back down and leveled a finger at Roy. “Okay, what did Dick tell you you were here for?”
Roy’s eyebrows went up. “I’m sorry?”
“You said you’re doing Dick a favor,” Jason said. “Is it to look after me until I’m back on my feet? Or is it to be my Dom?”
Roy paused. When he spoke, he sounded like he was choosing his words carefully. “I’m a Dom,” he said. “That’s not going to change, any more than what you are is going to change. I think we’d have a lot of talking to do before I was your Dom, though.”
“Yeah, but what did Dick ask you for?” Jason said. “Because I know what he thinks I need.”
They’d had the argument more than once, which was remarkable considering how rarely they spoke when they weren’t trying to kick each other’s ass. Dick thought Jason needed a Dom. Bruce thought Jason needed a Dom. Even Alfred thought Jason needed a Dom. As if some cocky asshole could put a firm hand on the back of Jason’s neck and fix all the things his family thought was wrong with him. Roy’s hands were plenty firm, but that didn’t mean they were what Jason wanted or needed.
Shit. Jason wasn’t sure what horrified him more—the fact that he’d unconsciously thought of Bruce, Dick, and Alfred as his family, or that when he’d imagined Roy’s hand on his neck, his dick had twitched.
The real Roy, not the one in his imagination, looked a little embarrassed. “If you know what he thinks, then you know what he told me.”
“Jesus Christ.” Jason scrubbed a hand over his face. “You come near me with a collar, I’ll choke you with it.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Roy protested. “I’ve never...look, you know how Dick is, right? A romantic. He can’t do anything without collars and commitment. Jumps into it fast, but…” He waved a hand like he was waving the thought away. “Anyway. I’m not like that. Dick knows that I can Dom casually. That I can...you know. Fulfill a need. And he told me that you’ve never had that kind of relationship.”
Now Jason buried his face in his hands. “I’m gonna fucking kill him.” He’d fucked around, mostly with other subs and the occasional switch, but he’d never been in a committed relationship with a Dom. There was a very good reason for that—a lot of very good reasons for that—but it didn’t mean that Dick could just share his private business with the world.
“He wasn’t expecting us to make any promises,” Roy went on. “He just...look, you and I both know that a lot of Doms can be assholes, and whether you believe it or not, Dick knows that too. But I’m hopefully not an asshole most of the time, so I think he saw this as a way for you to...experience what that could be like. If you wanted.”
Jason lowered his hands and glared at Roy. “And you figured, what? ‘Hey, maybe I’ll get a decent fuck out of it?’”
“Not all relationships between Doms and subs are sexual,” Roy said. “Besides, you couldn’t handle me right now.”
“You wanna fucking bet?” Jason snapped, and then realized what Roy had neatly maneuvered him into when Roy grinned. “Oh, fuck you.”
Roy sobered again. “Seriously, Jay, I have no interest in doing anything you don’t want. You want to keep this strictly medical? Fine. You want to try out platonic submission? I can do that. You want to try out non-platonic submission…?”
Jason waited.
And now Roy’s cheeks were definitely pink. It wasn’t a bad color on him. He ran a hand over his buzzed hair and looked up at the ceiling. “Ah, hell. I’m guessing you’re pretty cute under those black eyes, and I like you, so yeah. Sure. That’s potentially on the table too. But like I said, only if you want it.”
Roy liked him? Every time Jason thought he’d reached the depths of Roy’s stupidity, he found another sub-basement. “I’ve done nothing but swear at you and threaten to kill you,” Jason pointed out.
Roy gave him a wry smile. “Yeah, well, I have a type.”
Jason was tempted to ask him exactly what about him made him Roy’s type, but that was another trap. Instead, he picked his sandwich up again.
“Keep it in your pants, Harper,” he said, and didn’t let himself wonder how his lunch might taste on his knees.
*
By the time Roy took the stitches out of Jason’s stomach and shoulder, Jason hadn’t had a proper bath for a week and was feeling pretty ripe. “I’m going to shower,” he announced as Roy packed up the first aid kit, and waited for Roy to tell him he wasn’t strong enough.
Roy wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, you probably should,” he said, and Jason made a face at him. “Do me a favor and leave the door open a crack so I can hear you if you shout.”
Jason rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to call out for a strong, handsome Dom to rescue me, but keep dreaming, I guess.”
“You think I’m handsome?” Roy said, batting his lashes at Jason, and Jason made a disgusted noise and levered himself up off the bed and toward the bathroom.
The shower was an incredible relief: the cleansing heat of it, the pressure of the water against his back, the dissolution of the vague feeling of clammy stickiness that had been building up over the past week. Jason lingered even after he was clean, even once he started feeling like he really needed to sit down, only turning off the water when he knew it was that or keel over.
He sat on the closed toilet to dry off and re-splint his fingers, and then pushed himself up on wobbly legs to examine himself in the mirror. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The swelling was mostly gone around his eyes, but the bruising had faded to the truly ugly green-and-yellow stage. Between that and a week’s growth of beard, he looked pretty wild. The bullet wounds at his shoulder and stomach were still red and inflamed, and though Alfred had done his usual neat job with the stitches and Roy’s care had been meticulous, they were still a bit puckered and would definitely scar. A few of the other cuts would probably wind up leaving a mark, too. More to add to the ever-growing collection.
How the hell had Roy thought he was cute?
He made another disgusted noise, this time at himself, and wrapped the towel around his waist. When he made his shaky way back to his bedroom, he found a clean pair of pajama pants and—wonder of wonders—a T-shirt waiting for him on the bed. It took him a few long minutes to get them on and catch his breath, but once he had, he tottered out to the living room.
Roy was fiddling with what appeared to be a disassembled trick arrow when Jason emerged, the TV droning at a low volume in the background, but he looked up when Jason sat down at the other end of the couch. “Well, look at you. A whole new man,” he said, smiling. “Feel better?”
“Much,” Jason admitted. Roy kept watching him, head tilted contemplatively. Jason’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Just wondering if you were planning on sticking with the mountain man look indefinitely,” Roy said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, the ‘increasingly paranoid survivalist’ aesthetic definitely works for you, but…”
“Bold words for a man with a soul patch.”
Roy barked a laugh and clutched at his chest. “Ouch! And Red Hood claims another victim.”
Jason surprised himself by not bristling at the joke. He would have, if Bruce or Dick had alluded to his kill count—but then, Bruce or Dick wouldn’t have joked about it. Instead, he shrugged a shoulder. “Figured I’d wait until my hands were a little steadier before I put a blade to my face.”
“Makes sense,” Roy said. He looked back down at his arrow. Jason looked at the TV.
And then: “I could...do it for you?”
Jason turned back to Roy, startled. Roy looked uncharacteristically hesitant, glancing between Jason and the arrow like he wasn’t sure what to look at.
“I mean,” Roy said. “I could help you shave. Or really just, you know.” He waved a vague hand. “Do it.”
Jason rubbed at his chin, feeling the unruly prickle of a week’s growth against his palm. It was ridiculous to even consider. It was just facial hair. He could live with it for another few days. Sure, Roy was a superhero and Dick’s friend and hadn’t done any of the many things he could have done to Jason when he had been much weaker than he was now, but that didn’t mean there was any reason to trust him with a razor. There was extending someone a pragmatic level of trust because you had no real choice, and then there was being stupid.
“All right,” he said, and was startled again.
“Oh,” Roy said, dropping one of the components he was holding. “Uh. Okay. Now?”
“Sure,” Jason said, resisting the urge to squirm. “My schedule’s clear.”
That got him a quick, awkward smile before Roy stood up. “I’ll just. Uh,” he said. “Why don’t we...kitchen? There’s more room than the bathroom.”
Jason followed Roy into the kitchen, where Roy pointed absently at one of the chairs with a “Sit. I’ll be right back.” Something flickered in Jason’s stomach as he seated himself, something he tried to ignore.
Roy returned a minute later with a towel, a razor, shaving cream, and lotion. He dragged the chair closer to the sink, an easy slide despite Jason’s weight, and turned the water on. “Right,” he said. “Here we go.”
Jason had been touched by Roy before. Plenty of times, by now. Helping him to sit up or walk to and from the bathroom. Absently patting his thigh through the blanket as he stood up at the end of a conversation. Changing his dressings and removing his stitches, and the wound on his stomach was low enough to be somewhere most people didn’t usually touch.
A strong, warm hand on his shoulder once or twice when he was fifteen, which he’d nearly managed to forget about until now.
This touching was different, and no amount of pretending could make Jason feel like it wasn’t. Roy’s hands were gentle but sure as they spread shaving cream over his cheeks and chin, as he guided Jason’s head this way and that with delicate pressure.
“I think…yeah,” Roy said as he moved to stand behind Jason, the razor in one hand. “Feels more natural this way.”
Jason knew what he meant—Roy would never approach his own face from the front to shave it, obviously—but something about it felt natural to him too, somehow. Roy’s heat at his back, the warm breathing presence of him behind and above Jason. Roy put two fingers beneath Jason’s chin to steady him and let the razor glide over his cheek, and Jason let out a shaky breath.
“Shh, I got you,” Roy said. “Just breathe.”
Jason did. Jason breathed in the scent of the shaving cream that smelled a little like Roy, breathed steady and let Roy work. The cool metal razor grew warm from his skin, from the water Roy kept rinsing it clean in between steady, meditative passes. Roy’s other hand gently pulled Jason’s skin taut, pressing at his jaw, his cheekbones, his nose. His lips.
“Tilt this way,” Roy said a few times, very low. And “Good, perfect.” And “You’re doing great.”
Time stretched, dilated, melted and pulled like taffy in the sun. Jason didn’t know how long he’d been sitting in this chair, guided by Roy’s voice and his careful touches, suspended in the safety of Roy’s hands and that potentially deadly blade, lulled by the sound of the running water. In the absence of a larger world, his focus narrowed to small, specific details. The bowstring calluses on the pads of Roy’s fingers. The wood of the kitchen chair against the backs of his thighs. A drop of water running down his neck until Roy’s thumb smoothed it away.
“All the way back now,” Roy murmured. “I need your throat.” Jason tilted his head back until the crown of his head brushed Roy’s stomach. Roy smiled down at him, his eyes crinkling. “That’s perfect. Thank you.”
Jason’s lips parted. His dick sat heavy against his thigh, trapped in his pajama pants.
Roy drew the razor up over Jason’s neck; long, steady strokes over that vulnerable column, along his pulse, his Adam’s apple. His other hand spread big and strong under the curve of Jason’s skull, cradling it. Jason could watch him like this, upside down; could study the furrow of concentration in his heavy brows, a darker shade of red than his hair. He wondered how long it would take to count all of Roy’s freckles. To touch them all with his tongue.
“There we go,” Roy said, guiding Jason back upright. He rinsed the razor off one last time and then dampened a towel before turning off the sink. The sudden lack of white noise pressed on Jason’s ears.
Circling to stand in front of him, Roy used the damp towel to wipe Jason’s face clean of any stray hairs or traces of shaving cream, then stood back to assess his work. “Did I say you were cute the other day?” he asked, his voice still very low, and Jason’s heart sank. “You’re fucking gorgeous, Jaybird.”
Jason leaned forward, like he could touch the praise, press up against it like a cat in a patch of sunlight. Roy put a light hand on his chest to keep him in place, and that was good, too, steadying and real. “Almost done,” he said, and picked up a bottle of lotion.
Jason closed his eyes as Roy rubbed the lotion into his skin: his cheeks, his chin, down his neck. Those callused fingers grazed the edge of Jason’s lips and they parted easily, his head turning so he could catch one in his mouth. It tasted faintly of lotion, but it was worth the trade to have something to hold on to.
Roy’s breathing hitched audibly. “Hey, excuse you,” he said, his voice all soft fondness, with a fine tremor of...something else. Warmth bloomed in Jason’s chest. “I need that. Let me finish.”
Jason released Roy’s finger and tilted his face up, his mouth still open. Being very still and quiet and good as Roy finished smoothing lotion into his skin.
And then those warm, strong hands were gone. Jason opened his eyes.
“All right,” Roy said, stepping back. His cheeks were pink, blotchy patches of color under the freckles that Jason wanted to touch, and his pupils were slightly dilated. “I’m all done.”
Jason blinked slowly, like he was underwater, and didn’t move.
“Oh, fuck,” Roy said. Jason’s brow furrowed—what had he done wrong?—and Roy made an aborted move toward him and then pulled back. “No, Jay, you’re fine, but it’s time to come up now, okay? Can you come back?”
Up? Up from where? But Jason tried, because Roy had asked, focusing on Roy’s presence and his eyes and the way his left eyebrow was slightly higher than his right.
“I’m...you’re done?” he asked, reaching up to touch his face, to feel the smooth, sensitive skin that had been hidden under overgrown stubble this morning. Before Roy had shaved him. Before Roy had…
Oh, fuck. He’d gone down.
“Are you with me?” Roy asked, and Jason nodded, his mind reeling. Fuck, fuck, he hadn’t meant to do that and now Roy would be so goddamn smug—or worse, handsy.
But Roy didn’t smirk at him and he didn’t touch him. He just stepped past Jason to pick the kettle up off the stove and fill it with water. “You should drink something, and have some sugar. Hot chocolate okay?”
“Sure,” Jason said, watching warily as Roy took down a mug and then a familiar blue box. “Ugh, Swiss Miss?”
“I’ve been feeding you for a week, I’d think you’d have noticed by now that I’m not a gourmand,” Roy retorted.
Jason shivered at I’ve been feeding you, at the memory of Roy’s fingers on his lips. Fuck.
“Hey,” Roy said, meeting his eyes. “I’m sorry. That went a little further than it should have, and I should have caught it. I’ll be more careful in the future, okay? I promise.”
He was apologizing. He was a Dom and he was apologizing for accidentally putting Jason down. But that didn’t mean he was going to expect things now, that he wasn’t going to start putting his hands on him like Jason was his property, now that he knew that all of Jason’s carefully cultivated defenses were apparently useless against him.
Jason made himself ignore the small, plaintive voice in the back of his head that wanted to know why Roy wasn’t putting his hands on him now.
“You’d fucking better,” he said as the kettle started to whistle, and told himself to be stronger in the future.
*
The next morning, Roy’s soul patch was gone.