Chapter Text
The worst part was, he’d known.
From the second Jason had seen Roy Marlowe enter the Basque room, sharp eyes taking in every detail around him, a man who thought he was walking to his death and refused to fear it… twin tendrils had crept up Jason’s throat. Curiosity—the man was exactly Jason’s type—and gut fear.
Don’t get attached, that second voice said. Everyone you love will betray you one day.
And then the man had sassed him, had accused him of not giving a shit about his men and wanting to kill him in the same breath, and Jason had pushed the fear aside. Not all the way, Jason could think of three reasons he’d never be anything less than paranoid (Gotham, mob boss, Bat), but…. he was curious to see where this went. No, fuck, more than curious: interested. Because simple curiosity wouldn’t have kept him from looking.
Only his stupid, stupid heart could do that.
He’d known the man was too good to be true, a shot like that with a sob story that pulled on Jason’s past, a noble streak that pissed him off as much as it brought him closer, all wrapped up in a pretty package straight from Jason’s wet dreams, like he’d been picked out to catch Jason’s interest.
And. Well. He had been. And Jason hadn’t looked, because he’d been worried he’d find out it wasn’t real, and he’d wanted so badly to believe that something could go right for him for once. He’d told himself Roy was too genuine, that no one trying to get an in with the Red Hood would be stupid enough to be so visible, except of course Roy had been that stupid and it hadn’t been real, and not looking hadn’t accomplished anything except to lead Jason into a trap. There he’d been, collapsed on the floor of his apartment, unable to even properly panic under the drugs, just numbly awaiting the end. It was Jason’s worst memories come to life—helpless, trapped, familiar. Waiting to die with only the familiar sting of betrayal for company.
Well, the first two times hadn’t (permanently) killed him, and the third one hadn’t either.
Hell, this was the best one yet, though that put Jason in the incredibly sad position of being able to rank all the times he’d been left to die alone. Sure, this one had been entirely his fault, same as the first two, but this time, he hadn’t gotten beaten up or exploded, and he’d only been betrayed by his stupid crush, instead of a parent.
Wow. Some silver lining.
*
The fog hadn’t fully cleared by the time Jason came to, but he’d forced himself to get the fuck out anyway, his heart remembering how to rabbit in his chest through whatever drug Marlowe had given him. He didn’t know why he was still alive, but he wasn’t sticking around to find out, even as his body struggled to follow his instructions, stumbling down the stairs in a near-panic—
He slammed into a blue-black figure, nearly punched it when it grabbed him by the shoulders.
“Jason!”
Nightwing’s voice was equal parts command and relief, mission-readiness and familial affection rolled into one, and Jason resented him for it. Dick walked the tightrope between mission and family just as easily as he walked any other tightrope; even out of breath and fretful, Dick performed vigilante and dutiful brother effortlessly.
Jason wanted to push, wanted to force him to show the strain, but he had other priorities right now, and luckily, Dick understood without being told. He pulled Jason across the street and into a back alleyway, tucking them both around a corner. He angled himself towards the opening, so that anyone who came through would have to deal with Dick before getting to Jason. He tapped his earpiece. “Found Hood, working off a sedative but otherwise fine.”
Jason leaned face-forward against the brick, heart pounding as it tried to force sensation into his muscles. Sedative, assassins, Roy Marlowe… suddenly furious, he punched the brick. His swing was clumsy, which spared his knuckles more than the wall. “FUCK!”
Dick twitched in concern, but he kept his expression neutral, probably knowing any sign of care would just piss Jason off more. That consideration only worked up Jason’s shame and frustration further. “Fuck,” he breathed, the outburst draining his panic and energy all at once.
The Bats didn’t have that much intel on Jason, but Dick had known about the (unsuccessful?) assassination attempt, which meant they’d found something out. Jason took another breath to steady himself, then looked over at Dick’s stupid, impassive expression. “Alright, give it to me.”
“Roy Marlowe is Roy Harper,” reported Dick, voice crisp and neutral. “Seven months ago, the Checkmate Agency kidnapped Roy and his daughter Lian to force him to infiltrate the Red Hood gang. They wanted him to honey trap you and influence gang activity on the East Coast. When he didn’t move fast enough, they pushed forward with La Mère Affamée, hoping to take you out and take over your operations.”
It was exactly what he’d been fearing for a month now, and yet it punched the air out of Jason’s lungs all the same. Or, well, almost…
“Roy Harper? As in, Speedy?” Jason vaguely remembered the name from his Robin days, the boy who’d mostly dropped out of the Titans after…
After he’d had a daughter.
“Yes.” Dick ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. Golden Boy must feel terrible that one of his old gang was being blackmailed into sleeping with his brother. Ugh, Jason felt terrible about it, although fury and fear were getting in the way, and, honestly, based on what a shit liar Roy had been, he was pretty sure there hadn’t been much coercion involved…
Although he hadn’t thought Roy was the mole, either, and, fuck, for all his family found out everything that happened in Gotham, Jason’s sex life was not supposed to be a part of that. The Bats were going to be insufferable, concern and disapproval ramped up to 11, and Jason was going to need a lot of processing time, but much, much later, and definitely not in front of Nightwing.
Jason nodded at Dick, who launched back into his explanation. “Cheshire—Roy’s ex, Lian’s mother—infiltrated the Agency five months ago. After recovering Lian, she tracked Roy here earlier today. He was… he was supposed to assassinate you.” Dick started to sound heated again, though Jason wasn’t sure whether it was concern for his brother or for his old teammate, or just typical Bat frustration at not being in control of everything in the city. “Cheshire’s tracking him down—his handler left the city an hour ago. B and R are raiding La Mère Affamée before they get a chance to pull out. Orphan’s looking after Lian.” And I’m looking after you, Dick didn’t say.
“…Checkmate Agency, huh.” Jason’s mind was working overtime. He was going to have to clean house after this, burn bases and build new ones and vet every fucking person, the way he should have when Roy fucking Mar- Harper showed up. Fuck, he hadn’t even changed his first name. And had been Dick’s friend, had been a fucking superhero, what business did he have—
A daughter, Jason’s brain answered him. And though the betrayal still hurt like a gaping wound, his traitor heart pulsed love for the man who, above all, had been a parent first.
*
It turned out Roy was a shit mole, and Jason wasn’t sure whether he was more infuriated or charmed by that detail. His apartment was clean, and not in the way where Roy had been a super-mastermind and wiped it, either. It was just… empty of any incriminating details. In a frustratingly opaque show of favor, Oracle had sent him all of the files recovered from La Mère Affamée’s base of operations, and the details on Red Hood were… laughable. Hood was unpredictable. Hood was a good judge of character. Hood had tracked down the creator of the patches, but hadn’t found additional evidence. Hood had a contact at Gotham Fashion week, connected to the Falcones. It read like a Wikipedia article on the last few months of Jason’s career, with no hint at additional plans or vulnerabilities or mindset, even, didn’t mention Roy’s suspicion that Hood had been trafficking, or that Hood could be persuaded via backroom sex to do something as stupid as give up his name. Fuck, they didn’t even have his name, and why the fuck hadn’t Roy passed that on, had it been some misplaced sense of loyalty or lingering affection…?
Jason sounded like a second-grader, wondering if his crush liked him back. His crush had led sixteen assassins to his favorite safehouse and sedated him, then nearly gotten murdered by his handler. Figure that one out, Jason.
Or don’t, because it had been three months since he’d last seen Roy. The man had had more than enough time to look Jason up by now. Cass had looked after his daughter, he must have figured out who Jason was, errant undead Robin turned murderous. Maybe he’d died, and no one had wanted to tell Jason for fear of how he’d react. Maybe he’d gone underground, a reasonable response to being kidnapped and coerced. Maybe he was so relieved it was over that he’d never come within five hundred miles of Gotham again. Maybe Jason had optimistically rewritten the sex in his head, remembered love where there was only reluctant lust, and Roy couldn’t stand to think about what he’d done.
Maybe he’d gone back to his daughter, where he belonged, far away from shootouts and crime bosses and people you couldn’t trust, shouldn’t trust, and yet Roy had trusted him, hadn’t he? He’d left Jason alive for some mystifying, stupid reason, and Jason didn’t know what had happened next but he could only assume that his daughter’s safety had been contingent on one dead Red Hood. Jason was furious on her behalf. All that fucking talk about his daughter, and Roy hadn’t been able to do the decent thing and assassinate Jason.
He took a long drag on his cigarette, exhaling the smoke with a bitter laugh. Jason’s life was fucked. He was mad at B for not killing the Joker, and he was mad at Roy for not killing him.
The Bats had been suspiciously gracious in the wake of Jason’s not-assassination. No one had commented on the weeks Jason had spent outside the city, eradicating any trace of La Mère Affamée, getting rid of those fucking patches, making it so Checkmate wouldn’t be able to build up a crime base without years of work and hopefully thinking twice about it. He hadn’t been able to trace their funding, which made sense, shady government organization, but Oracle had offered to reach out to her contacts, and after the earlier olive branch, Jason had reluctantly accepted. She was probably going to do it anyway, and no one had more contacts than Oracle.
When he’d returned to Gotham, he’d needed to make a few showy moves, to let the usual players know that the Red Hood was back, and he hadn’t even gotten a lecture from B about the shoot-out last week. It wasn’t for lack of opportunity, either. Spoiler and Red Robin had both had cases that had led them through Jason’s territory, and they’d extended a courteous heads-up, each time. At one point, he’d turned a corner and nearly banged into Robin, who’d glared at him defensively with a kitten under each arm. Jason had held his arms up and left immediately, not wanting to get stabbed or worse for startling the brat. A few minutes later, he’d seen the familiar outline of Batman on a rooftop opposite him, but it had simply watched for a moment before disappearing.
Jason could think of a few reasons for the shift, some of which made his skin crawl.
The worst was pity. Jason was pretty sure that the sex had been consensual, that not offing him meant that, at a minimum, Roy had also enjoyed himself, that the man he’d known imperfectly for a few weeks would have not hesitated to kill someone for his daughter if the only thing standing in his way was a little sexual guilt. Heck, Bruce didn’t have a leg to stand on, when it came to sleeping with people who had tried to kill you (which Roy hadn’t done, the bastard). But Jason couldn’t get rid of the nagging worry that the goody-two-shoes hero instinct had shown up, and the idea that they pitied him made him want to break some faces.
Nearly as bad was the thought that being not-really-assassinated had reminded the family of the Robin they’d lost, that they were standing around crying by his memorial and letting him run around in the kid’s memory. Or maybe, not quite as bad but still bad, they’d been scared into trying to reconcile, they’d tricked themselves into thinking that maybe Jason wasn’t so terrible, that they’d rather he be violent than dead, but in a month or two or three Bruce would remember his thoughts on killing and all the other ducklings would fall in line.
Or maybe they were trying to… coerce Jason into not-killing, like a compromise type thing? Could Jason even trust a compromise from fucking Batman when he’d gotten attacked instead of letting Jason avenge his own death? Not that it all came back to the warehouse showdown, every time, but… holy symbolism, Batman.
It didn’t make any fucking sense, just like Roy didn’t make any fucking sense. Or rather, it made a little sense, because these were heroes and Jason was a criminal, and they’d do what they could, but in the end he couldn’t expect anything from them. Shouldn’t have gotten attached, because it would all end in tears. Sitting around trying to figure out the specific whys and hows would bring nothing but grief.
He was too busy for this, anyway. Whiskey and Sirrah had left, but Lewis and Angelique and even Marquitta had kept an eye on things while he was away. He’d set up in one of Toymaker’s old hideouts, back when Toymaker’d had enough of a presence to have hideouts, which hadn’t been since before Jason had died, sheesh. The Red Hood gang had lost more than a few members in the last few weeks, more from lack of steady work than fear of werewolf attacks, but Jason wasn’t too bothered by it. Easier to have your fingers in all your pies when your organisation was small, and Jason needed to keep a close eye on things right then. Needed to know he was in control of things, no shady government agencies or backstabbers in the way. And if it kept him busy, well, the sooner he’d get over… everything else.
*
He was getting over it, he told himself as he touched base with the girls near the Ice Lounge. Jason didn’t have enough leverage to take it back right then, but if Penguin’s men were mistreating the girls nearby, he’d have an excuse to drop in and remind them all why he was a someone to be feared. There was a new girl, Terra, who looked young enough that Jason had discreetly asked about her. “Just a young face, she’s twenty,” Elise told him, and Jason relaxed. “If you ask me, she won’t be here long. Too smart to get addicted to anything, taking classes during the day. She’s got a daughter she wants to do right by.”
Jason hesitated, but only for a moment. “Good for her,” he said distantly.
He was getting over it, Jason told himself as he reconstructed his personal strike team. Marquitta had stayed, but Blue had followed a boy to Metropolis, of all places, where she’d probably end up in Lex Luthor’s employ. Jason hoped he never saw her again, if that was the case, because Lex had a way of violently sticking his nose in Gotham once a year or so, and he’d already shot too many of his team in the head.
But he really needed to fill the ranks, without her, and Walker, and Roy…
He was getting over it, Jason told himself, giving a two-finger wave to Nightwing as they took out Dr. Freeze. He hadn’t intended to work with anyone that night, hadn’t even planned on getting in a fight, but then Freeze had shown up right next to one of Jason’s nightclubs, and Jason had been forced to teach the man a lesson about areas he should steer clear of. Jason didn’t even really mind Freeze—his collateral damage was usually pretty low—but starting a blizzard in Crime Alley? Gotham winters were hard enough on everyone without all that.
Nightwing had shown up towards the end of it, had let Jason take the lead on the fight, keeping Freeze’s henchmen from interrupting the bullets-for-emphasis lecture Jason was giving the man. Dick hadn’t even given Jason a Significant Look to remind him not to shoot Victor. Jason hadn’t been sure how suspicious to be about that, whether Dick was going to try to leverage something from him later, but when the mob dispersed and Freeze was down, Jason had waved and walked away, and Nightwing had let him go.
Jason was getting over it. The Bats would back off, or they wouldn’t, or maybe it’d be some mix, since Nightwing and Spoiler and Orphan all seemed content to let him do his thing, but Red Robin had blocked Jason from tracing a money laundering situation last week. The recent wave of arms suppliers and the bombing at Central Bank had been directly linked through Black Mask, and Jason would have known that if someone hadn’t secretly tightened the bank’s security. When Jason had found the paper trail, he’d poked around the digital trail and found Tim’s code all over it. Which meant two of Jason’s men had gotten hurt in a raid that was only necessary because Red Robin had blocked him, but RR had mostly been in Jump City lately, couldn’t have been working that case, which meant Batman had told him to do it.
Jason was out for blood. The perps were high-profile, which was probably why Batman had interfered in the first place. People got nervous if the Gotham Elite didn’t undergo ’due process’, where they could pay scummy lawyers to get them into luxury jails with minimum sentences.
Fuck those people. Jason was pretty sure anyone in Crime Alley would consider it justice that they’d turned up dead. In their offices, too, the paper trail linking them to Black Mask laid out on their desks, which was a nice touch, Jason thought, almost worth having to find the damn paper files in the first place.
And yeah, he’d had to leave in a hurry when Batman and Robin showed up, but getting one over the Bat had been Jason’s main source of joy for years, so he should be feeling pretty great about how things turned out.
He wasn’t, but he’d been able to fake it, checking in with Cannon and Ortiz, the two goons who’d gotten injured by Mask’s men last week. Make it sound like Jason was proud of shutting down Mask’s funding, instead of just… tired.
He’d get there. He was getting over it.
*
Staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, his mind drifted back to a conversation, two weeks ago:
Before I go, Orphan had signed. I want to… ask.
Jason had stopped his retreat, but he hadn’t responded. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the question, let alone answer it, and Orphan probably didn’t need him to say anything to read that from him.
She’d seen Roy when she’d handed off his daughter. Cass was a scary-good judge of character, but Jason hadn’t asked her what she thought of Roy, probably because he still didn’t want to learn anything about the man, even after that exact instinct had bitten him in the ass. There weren’t a lot of good reasons someone would drop off the grid for three months after grifting you.
Cass’s hands were careful. Did you want to forgive him?
Did he want to… “Fuck,” spat Jason, suddenly furious.
The second worst part of Roy’s betrayal, after the whole ’betrayal’ part of it, was that he didn’t have anyone to talk to about all this shit. He barely tolerated any of the Bats, and the last time he’d confided in someone from his gang, that person had ambushed him and forced all this introspection in the first place.
Jason didn’t really know Cass. She seemed even-keeled, remarkably so for a Bat, but they’d never really interacted much. Besides, she was way too fond of Bruce for him to ever be comfortable with her.
Not asking for Bruce, she signed, startling him. Fuck, that was creepy, which was the other reason Jason avoided her. But for all Cass’ body-reading felt way too close to mind-reading, she was remarkably honest.
“I don’t fucking know, do I?” said Jason eventually. “He did a lot of shit and even now, knowing why, I don’t really know why, you know?” He made a face at the awkward sentence, and Cassandra’s eyes crinkled in a smile, like she could tell what face he was making under the helmet. Which, he reminded himself, she probably could.
It was… kind of freeing, to be honest. Maybe she’d hate him, or not, but she wouldn’t misread him. How many times had Jason been talking to Bruce, or Dick, or Babs or whoever, and had them jump to a conclusion he didn’t know they’d been making?
“I… really liked him. But I don’t know if I can forgive him.” Jason said it more to the night than to Cass, the words heavy in the winter air. He wasn’t, but he could have been talking about Bruce. Jason had been known, once, twice, and then the bottom had fallen out of his world and he’d been stuck with nothing but jagged pieces and an empty, aching heart.
Bruce had said it, once. I don’t know if I can forgive you. Everyone was always assessing Jason—was he worth picking up off the streets, a worthy successor to the Robin name? Had he come back wrong? Was he redeemable? Forgivable?
But, fuck, hadn’t Jason been wronged enough? What about Jason’s forgiveness? It was always a one-way street—Jason had to fight to not give a shit about being judged, and meanwhile no one actually gave a shit about what Jason thought of them, not when it was easier to righteously dismiss him as broken, misguided, an angry street kid.
Cass was shaking her head, which confused him more than anything. Had she read something in his body language? No to… liking Roy? To forgiving him?
She thought for a moment before signing: Not ’do you,’ current tense. ’Did you,’ past. You have already forgiven him. If… If you did not forgive him, you would tell people. Threaten him. Make… an example? Honestly, Jason wasn’t used to people signing euphemisms for murder at him, they tended to use the actual word, and there was usually a lot more screaming, but he thought he’d gotten it.
But you didn’t do any of that, Cass continued. You have already forgiven him. Do you… wish you hadn’t? Are you happy with that?
Jason had stared at her. Cass had stared back, then nodded, as if he’d answered, before grappling away.
*
It was a shitty, freezing morning, made shittier by Jason’s lack of sleep, and that was before Jason heard gunshots. Something was poking around the base. If he checked it out, though, it would look like he didn’t trust his team, so Jason gritted his teeth and stayed put. He set aside his reading (shipping manifestos, terribly boring) and pulled on his helmet.
After the initial spray of rifle shots, things were silent. The new team was a little nervous, but on the other hand, who the fuck walked up to an abandoned factory? In Gotham? A pistol shot sharpened Jason’s focus, and he started to stand. Whoever it was had fired back.
More rifle shots, and then silence. It was weird, and weird usually meant dangerous. If it was an innocent, they wouldn’t have fired. If they were attacking, why had they stopped? Jason fiddled with his radio, waiting for someone to loop him in.
“One man, unknown, surrendered. Gave up his weapon, and we’ve got him tied up. Says he has a message for Hood. Doesn’t look like a meta.”
“What the fuck does a meta look like?” Jason asked. “Don’t answer that. I’ll be there.”
Jason fingered the trigger of his pistol as he strolled towards the front of the factory, calculating. Not a lot of unsavories operated in daylight, in Gotham anyway. Metas tended to strike at night, hoping to avoid Signal—typical meta superiority, Signal seemed competent enough but Batman was far scarier—but you never knew, maybe they’d wanted to send a message, prove they weren’t scared. But why the shot, if they were a meta? Maybe it was undercover GCPD with an itchy trigger finger, or something.
When Jason rounded the corner, years of training kept him from changing his stride in any way, but he felt hollowed out, nonetheless. Roy fucking Harper.
He’d let his hair grow out—there was a slight wave to it now, and his bangs would have fallen into his eyes if not for a backwards baseball cap. He looked a little leaner, less in-shape than the last time Jason had seen him. Was that the parent life making him soft, or had he gotten injured? As Jason approached, Roy stared at him, face open, eyes darting to whatever changes he’d spotted since the last time they’d seen each other. For instance, right now, Jason was upright, not drugged and screaming.
An unhelpful flicker of memory, but not one Jason could suppress. He let it fall through him, and others followed—Roy aiming an impossible shot across a carpark, Roy with his hands on Jason’s chest, Roy promising to take him out, Roy staring down at him and saying his name, a fond lilt to it unlike anything Jason had heard before.
If it were a superhero in front of him, they’d joke through the silence, pretending to be harmless. If it were another criminal, there’d be posturing and threats. Instead, Roy stared up at him, unmoving, a small smile on his lips.
*
There was no telling what Jason’s men thought of him, strolling out the gates with their mysterious assailant. “He shot my gun,” muttered one, offended, and Jason probably would have found it funny if he could feel anything other than a numb sort of focus. Roy hadn’t said a word the whole time, which was probably smart. Jason’s not sure what they had to talk about that was safe for an audience, and he didn’t think he could stomach small talk without punching Roy in the face.
They stopped a block from the factory for Jason to stash his masks. No reason to draw any more attention to Roy, but also… whatever Roy had to say, Jason wanted him to say it to him. To the living, breathing human being Roy had hurt, not the mysterious Red Hood.
They continued walking, side by side, not looking at each other until they reached Thomas Park. In another life, this would almost be a date.
Roy didn’t say anything until Jason prompted it. Then, he apologized. He listened, when Jason told him all the reasons why what Roy had done had been specifically shitty for Jason. He let Jason get mad. He explained some more, he apologized again, and then he stopped, eyes on the frozen pond. Waiting for judgment. For punishment, or absolution.
You have already forgiven him, Cassandra had signed. And wasn’t that just like him, to let his heart race ahead of his head? Every time, he chased after his pride, or his mother, or Bruce’s approval. He stayed in a city that hated him in hope of making it a little bit better. He let a pretty boy get close to him, just because he’d saved a man he didn’t know, because he assumed innocent until proven guilty, because he put his daughter before the rest of the world.
Roy was honest, and he was good, and he was asking for Jason’s forgiveness, and wasn’t that all he’d ever wanted? For someone to see him, even if just for a moment?
“Look,” Jason said. “I can’t help but see it your way. You fucked the whole world over to save your little girl. That’s the choice I’d want you to make.”
It was a neat answer, one that took the whole traumatic experience and put a little bow on it, and Roy refused to accept it. “The thing is,” Roy told him, “I didn’t. I was supposed to kill you and bring your head to my superior. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I almost died myself and got her killed because I couldn’t.”
Jason had guessed. But it helped, to hear the conclusions Jason had drawn from Roy’s own mouth, to have things said and not just inferred.
I couldn’t. Jason caught his initial reaction and turned it into anger. “Moron,” he huffed. “What’s my life worth, compared to your child? You’re pathetic.”
“Yeah, I know.” Roy grinned easily. Jason wasn’t sure he knew he was doing it. “Sounds like you are too, though.”
Man, he hadn’t gotten over this piece of shit at all, had he? This was shaping up to be the best break-up conversation Jason had ever had, and it was with a man who’d been coerced into dating him and had lied about his identity the entire time. It’s too bad they’d never overlapped in their superhero days. They could have been friends, bonded over troubled childhoods and shitty rich dads.
Well. If this was a break-up conversation, Jason was going to seek closure. He leaned forward, trying to figure out how to phrase it.
“Go ahead,” Roy said. “Ask whatever you’d like, I’ll be honest.”
Of course you will, idiot, thought Jason fondly. You don’t know how to do anything else.
“Was it ever real for you?”
“Ah…” Roy sucked in air through his teeth, and Jason felt his heart drop a little at the negative sound. Asked and answered, he supposed. He’d gotten attached, and refused to look, and still he wanted to know. So it went.
“Way, way too real,” Roy continued. Wait, what? “I fell in love with you.”
“Oh.” Jason’s thoughts lagged, unable to adjust for a moment. He’d… hoped right. Roy had loved him, and nearly gotten him and his daughter killed over it, and then…?
He looked at Roy, who was still looking down and away. Waiting for judgment, he thought again. “And what changed?”
“Nothing changed,” Roy admitted. “I’m still… I still feel that way.”
I’m still… Jason echoed. I’m still in love with you, Roy had started to say. Had basically said, even if he hadn’t wanted to say ’love’ out loud. Because… because that was quite a thing to say, after four months of distance, after spying on someone and lying to them and failing to kill them, wasn’t it?
Jason still felt hollow, like his feelings were falling right through him and puddling at his feet, except there was a whole lake of them, now, spilling over everything, too fast to catch or examine. I still feel that way.
Maybe he’d waited too long to respond, because Roy looked at him apologetically. “Look, Jason, I didn’t mean… I don’t want to burden you with that. It’s not your responsibility to look after me anymore. It’s my problem. My feelings don’t matter.”
Roy, worried about Jason’s identity but not his own. Roy, who would kill for his daughter, and for Jason, but not for himself. Roy, who was far, far too sweet, and Jason hadn’t gotten over him at all, and Roy didn’t know that Jason loved him.
“They matter to me,” Jason said. I’m still in love with you. “I feel the same way.”
Roy looked at him, and maybe his feelings were overflowing, too, because he looked away, eyes skittering across the park. No longer awaiting judgment, because he’d received it, all the care and forgiveness and everything that Jason had been trying to let go of for months now. Jason felt like a hurricane, a torrent of emotion around an eerie calm.
He reached out for Roy’s hand. Roy took it, shaking slightly, and Jason stroked the back of his knuckles. I love you, he didn’t say. Didn’t have to.
For the first time in a long time, maybe since he’d woken up, a boy in his coffin, Jason felt at peace.