Chapter Text
The faint glow of the scattered lanterns and the silvery moon above served as Jason's only guiding light as the heels of his Oxfords sank into the soft, familiar earth below, each fleeing footstep sending flecks of mud up to meet the hem of his pants, staining the burgundy red a dark brown.
The night was hot and humid, his breaths quick and desperate as the classical music spilling from the ballroom's open balconies relentlessly pursued him. Its burgeoning percussion punctuating his pounding footfalls, the rich yet sharp notes of the piano nipping at his heels, and the frantic cries of the violin—akin to the wails of a siren ignored—demanding his return.
Even as the thick humidity of the night began to choke him, stifling each inhale of his overworked lungs, he pushed himself to run faster, farther, because everything, including breathing, became secondary to the overwhelming need to escape. To escape the music, the people, the festering epicaricacy, the pity in Bruce's eyes, and most of all, the heartbreak that was sending fissures down his very being.
So he ran and kept running, his destination unknown and unimportant.
It was only when the swimming hole marking the western boundary of the manor's property came into view that he allowed himself to concede to the demands of his burning lungs and slowed to an ambling jog, the hounding music now but a distant hum.
Trudging down the sloping hill that overlooked the body of water, Jason dug his fingers under the collar of his shirt and yanked his ebony tie loose, throwing the constricting article to the side as his other hand worked on unfastening the top three buttons of his dress shirt, freeing himself to take a shaky lungful of unrestricted air.
Once he reached the water's edge, he tipped his head back and closed his eyes, taking slow inhales and even slower exhales of the pine-tinged August air as the calm of the late hour washed over him. The maddening electric energy that had thrummed through his veins was now just a fading buzz while his heart rate had calmed to something that no longer felt like drums trying to burst through his chest.
Head still tilted skywards, his eyes fell open to the starry night above. His gaze automatically finding and mapping out the invisible connections that made up the handful of constellations he had grown to know as intimately as the streets of Gotham, each starry connection just as comforting in its familiarity.
Bruce had taught him the name of every constellation in the New Jerseyan sky and the stories that came with them. They would spend countless hours on the roof of the manor, sometimes even falling asleep, only to be awoken in the early morning hours of dawn by Alfred, who, despite his lectures about safety and unnecessary risks, never once discouraged their stargazing. Jason could still hear the older man's reprimands as clear as day in the echoes of his memories.
Master Bruce, Master Jason, I am nearly sixty-six years old, and while you two may enjoy spending the majority of your nights gallivanting across rooftops, my roof-climbing days are well behind me. We have exactly twelve fully functioning beds and a wide array of sleep-appropriate furniture. Yet, here I am, climbing up onto this bloody roof at the crack of dawn to ensure neither one of you manages to roll off and break every bone in their body. Next time I find you two sleeping out here, I will spray you with the hose like the feral alley cats that your behavior suggests you are.
Jason and Bruce had muttered their sleep-addled apologies to the older man with halfhearted promises to not let it happen again.
And a week later, they learned to always take Alfred's threats seriously and that wet pajamas were highly uncomfortable in the middle of Fall at four a.m.
Jason's lips twitched upward at the memory.
When Jason eventually learned everything he could about their slice of night sky, Bruce moved on to teaching him about the constellations they couldn't see, including the time of year they were visible and where they could be found geographically. Each description ending with how Jason could use the starry configurations to navigate his way back home.
There were countless nights in Nanda Parbat where he'd look up at the darkened sky only to see a dozen different paths home; Aquarius and Libra urging him to the west, Canes Venatici leading the way, Orion's bow pointing true. So many paths, and all of them untaken.
The stars were a reminder of the years he'd wasted pursuing a fallacious vendetta, but they were also comfort, nostalgia, and tranquility all wrapped into one, offering him peace in their endlessness and familiarity.
But peace had always been a capricious lover to Jason, kind when she visited but never staying long, always flitting in and out of his life like the fickle breezes of Spring.
And it seemed that tonight was no exception as earth-muffled footfalls sounded on the other side of the grassy knoll, joining the summer night's symphony of crickets and the now distant euphony of the piano quartet.
He didn't bother to turn around, he didn't need to. He'd recognize those familiar footsteps anywhere. As Robin, he had spent years running after those footsteps. When he had returned as Red Hood, they had run after him, and now, more often than not, they ran together across Gotham’s rooftops.
"Jay?" Came the timid question, spoken blindly, searchingly into the dark of the night. And no matter how badly Jason wanted to wrap himself up in a protective layer of hurt disguised as anger, the sound of his name on the other man's lips melted that hurt-tinged ire. He knew he should cling to the sting of Dick's unwitting rejection if only so he could start to move on, but he had the feeling that even if he did, there was no moving on from Dick Grayson for him.
"Yeah, I'm here, Dickie," Jason called out, his voice barely more than a defeated whisper but still loud enough to act as a guide.
As Dick made his way down the grassy hill, Jason kept his gaze fixed on the stars above, too aware of the hidden truths that Dick might glean from his traitorous eyes if the other man were to look too closely.
"You left without saying goodbye," Dick said as a way of greeting, his hands casually resting in the pockets of his midnight blue suit pants, his gaze catching on the night sky reflected in the inky black waters of the swimming hole, its moonlit ripples like liquid starlight. He was a picture of unflappable nonchalance, and Jason hated him just a little for it.
"Yeah, well, I figured you didn't want your mentally unstable brother interrupting your ‘canoodling,'" Jason replied, watching Dick out of the corner of his eye as he answered the unasked question. He knew that the bitterness in his reply revealed too much and hinted at things best kept locked away, but his brain-to-mouth filter was on the edge of becoming nonexistent, and he was quickly losing shits to give.
Canoodling? Dick mouthed to himself—unaware that Jason was watching him—his brow furrowing in confusion at the word as he processed the landmine of a statement.
Jason gave a huff of humorless laughter and shook his head in dumbfounded exasperation. Figures that would be the thing Dick got stuck on, utterly oblivious to what was basically a neon sign confession.
"You wouldn't have been interrupting anything," Dick began as he turned to face Jason's profile, his voice painfully sincere despite the confusion that still lingered in the pinch of his brows. And that was the infuriating thing about Dick Grayson. The other man genuinely never seemed to be aware of when he was flirting his ass off and always just wrote it off as your average interaction. "Besides, I was looking for you most of the night anyways."
The earlier sting of hurt that had since balmed resurged as a spike of white-hot anger. Because Dick didn't get to do this to him. He didn't get to pretend that Jason's presence at that stupid fucking gala had meant a damn thing to him, and he sure as hell didn't get to pretend that he had actually given enough of a shit to look for him when there wasn't a second of the night that he wasn't caught up in some heiress. Dick had done his damned best of acting like Jason wasn't even there, which was a hell of a far cry from ‘looking for him.'
Jason's gaze left the night sky as he turned to face Dick, the workings of something mean beginning to sharpen his tongue. "Yeah? You get lost looking for me in Kaitlyn Crowne's tits?"
"Kaitlyn's—" Dick spluttered. Jason couldn't help but feel a bit of vindictive pleasure at how the other man seemed to choke on his tongue. "I wasn't looking at her tits!" Dick hissed the last word like it offended his delicate sensibilities to even say it aloud, his azure eyes wide with scandal. Jason would have laughed if he wasn't so goddamn pissed off.
He gave a disbelieving snort. "That's surprising since she spent the whole night trying to shove them in your face."
He knew he sounded like a jealous girlfriend, but he couldn't be bothered to give a shit at this point. It's not like Dick would see his jealousy for what it truly was. The other man had never cared enough to read between the lines where Jason was concerned, and tonight would be no exception.
"She wasn't shoving her—" Dick cut himself off, sounding equal amounts of frustrated and flustered. Jason only raised his eyebrows in mock query as he waited for the other man to string together a full sentence. "She wasn't doing that. I mean, yeah, she's a little overly enthusiastic, but—" Dick began to babble, his cheeks high with color, before shaking himself and asking, "Why are we even arguing about this?"
And that was not a question Jason wanted to answer. In fact, he needed to shut this conversation down and put as much distance between Dick and him as he could before he ended up saying—or more like confessing—something he'd regret.
"Forget I said anything," Jason said, dismissing the question. "Sorry for taking you away from your fawning fans, but I'm sure if you go back now, you'll still manage to get laid." Jason didn't wait for Dick to respond before turning on his heel to leave with a half-assed wave.
"What? No, wait," Dick said as he moved to grab Jason's upper arm. Jason tensed under the touch but otherwise held still, schooling his face into something neutrally bland in hopes of not giving anything away as the other man searched his face for the answers he refused to give. "You're obviously pissed off about something, and I want to know what." Dick glared at him, his eyes narrowing.
' I want to know what.' God, Dick acted so goddamn entitled sometimes. They had all, including Dick, told the Old Man that if he had a question, then he needed to phrase it like a question and not just demand answers. And here Dick was doing the exact goddamn thing he bitched about Bruce doing.
"Drop it, Dick." Jason gritted out as he yanked his arm from the other man's grasp, returning Dick's glare with his own. "I'm fine."
"You obviously aren't."
"Yeah? Well, it ain't your problem, dickhead. So fuck off."
This time Dick didn't stop him when he turned to leave.
Jason had no idea where he was going, but he didn't care as long as he ended up wherever Dick wasn't . He would've headed back to the manor to grab his bike so he could ditch the ever-climaxing shitshow known as his present, but he had promised Alfred he'd stay the full weekend and help him plant his new mustard plants. Plus, Dick would be headed back that way, and the last thing Jason wanted to do was deal with Dick as the other man tried to get him to hold the metaphorical sharing stick and talk about his feelings. So an aimless, and more importantly, Dick-less walk around the Wayne property it was.
Jason had only managed to walk three yards before something hard and poinky as shit bounced off the back of his head, stopping him in his tracks.
Slowly turning around, he found a pinecone nestled in the grass at his feet.
"The fuck?" His head snapped up to look at Dick incredulously, "Did you just throw a fucking pinecone at my head?"
Dick shrugged, lazily tossing a pinecone—the one that hadn't just nailed Jason in the head—in his hand. "You didn't tell me why you're so pissed off."
"So you threw a pinecone at my head?!"
"It got you to stop walking away from me, didn't it?"
Jason gritted his teeth, his knuckles popping as he clenched his fists at his side. He swore to God that Dick was secretly a meta with 'annoy the shit out of people' powers. The next time he saw Bruce, he was going to convince the Old Man to get Dick tested.
"I'm not doing this with you right now," Jason said with a surprising amount of levelness, considering he'd just been assaulted with a pinecone. He turned on his heel and continued his trek along the western boundary, actively focusing on the surrounding evergreens that outlined the property instead of his desire to throat-punch Dick.
He barely managed five steps before another pinecone bounced off his head. He stopped, took a deep breath, and then continued to keep walking because he was mature, unlike a certain twenty-seven-year-old man-child.
When the fourth pinecone bounced off his head, the thread known as Jason's maturity snapped.
Whirling around, Jason bent down, picked up the pinecone, and chucked it back as hard as he could, aiming for the other man's face. Dick neatly sidestepped the projectile, which only pissed Jason off more.
"Fuck. Off."
"No," Dick said, crossing his arms over his chest like an overgrown toddler with a stubborn streak a mile wide. His blue eyes shone with ill-concealed amusement because he knew, he fucking knew he was only pissing Jason off more. He was a devious little shit that got off on pushing people's buttons until they snapped, and yet, it was still this big fucking mystery to Bruce when it came to who Damian had learned his gremlin behavior from. Dick hadn't only been the Original Boy Wonder, he'd also been the Original Bat Brat who had pioneered and written the manual on gremlin-ing. "Not until you tell me what your problem is."
"Fine! You want to know what my problem is?" Jason yelled, the last of his emotional restraint snapping as he rapidly closed the distance between him and Dick with six long, furious strides, "You! You're my fucking problem!" Jason punctuated the last word with a hard shove to Dick's chest.
Dick stumbled back, more from shock than from the shove itself, his eyes wide, all traces of amusement gone. "Me?! How did I manage to piss you off? I've barely even seen you tonight!"
And that right there was the goddamn problem. Jason had barely seen Dick tonight when his sole reason for even coming to the stupid gala was to fucking see Dick!
He'd thought Dick inviting him to the gala had meant the other man actually wanted to spend time with him. He'd thought it meant a night of drinking Champagne that tasted like crap but probably cost more than their rent combined, eating appetizers that had unpronounceable names, and trying to bribe the piano quartet into playing Gangster's Paradise. He'd thought they'd make a game out of avoiding the Old Man and take bets on how long it took before Damian threatened to stab someone and on how many deals Tim could broker for Wayne Enterprises before the old croons descended on him and started pinching his cheeks.
And then maybe, just maybe, he thought Dick would ask him to dance, and then he could show off the countless hours he'd spent practicing with Alfred the month leading up to the gala learning how to foxtrot and waltz.
Yet, none of that had happened or even had the chance to happen because, as Dick had said, they'd barely even seen each other. But instead of saying any of that, Jason said, "Figure. It. The. Fuck. Out," punctuating each word with a hard shove to the other man's chest, forcing Dick to move with the push or risk falling on his ass.
"Stop pushing me," Dick gritted out, his teeth bared and fists curling at his sides as he stumbled back.
"Yeah?" Jason asked with a mocking cock of his head, his eyes gleaming wickedly. "Like how you stopped throwing pinecones at my head?" He knew he was antagonizing the other man and steering them toward an all-out brawl, but he was itching for a fight and knew Dick would give it to him. He just needed a little… push, and Jason was more than willing to give it to him.
The chirps of the crickets had fallen silent as if they, too, could sense Dick's mounting fury and were bracing for the impending explosion.
"I'm warning you, Jason," Dick growled, his azure eyes sparking with simmering rage as his infamous temper began to rear its head, slipping from the choke collar Dick usually kept it on.
Jason grinned like a shark scenting blood, knowing he was seconds away from getting what he wanted.
Leaning forward, Jason smiled meanly against the shell of Dick's ear as he whispered, "Consider me fucking warned," before shoving the other man with enough force to send him sprawling onto the manicured lawn.
At first, Dick did little more than glance around him as if he was taking stock of how much closer the ground now was. He was eerily quiet for him and hadn't said a word since his ass had connected with the grassy lawn. Keeping his eyes lowered, he unhurriedly wiped his muddied and grass-stained palms on his pants before leisurely fixing the cuffs of his dress shirt by fiddling with the cufflinks that were still perfectly in place. Only when the cufflinks met Dick's satisfaction did the other man look back up at Jason. His eyes were alight with the feverish glint they got when he was about to make someone eat their own teeth and enjoy doing it. Jason swallowed hard as he realized that he may have taken the whole shoving thing a little too far.
He opened his mouth to apologize, already extending his hand to help Dick up but before he could even get so much as an 'I'm sorry' out, Dick sprung to his feet and tackled him to the ground, forcing a God honest 'oof' from Jason as his back connected with the ground, knocking the breath out of him and sending him into a coughing fit as his lungs tried to figure out what the fuck was going on.
Despite not being able to breathe, Jason refused to let Dick win their impromptu wrestling match and grappled with the other man in a mess of limbs and boney as shit elbows (read: Dick's bony as shit elbows). Jason tried to get a knee between them so he could flip their positions, but the other man clung to him like a touch-starved kola, making it damn near impossible to do anything but try to prevent further clinging attempts.
Getting both of his hands on Dick's face (the only part of the other man he could get any purchase on), Jason pressed against the heated skin in an (extremely uncoordinated) attempt to pry the kola of a man off of him. Dick tried to physically remove Jason's hands from his face—which involved an unnecessary amount of pinching, in Jason's opinion—but failed, much to Jason's delight. And judging by the hisses issuing from above him, Dick did not appreciate Jason's fingers poking him in the eyes and slipping into the various orifices of his face.
"Stop smooshing my face with your giant gorilla hands!" Dick's words were nearly unintelligible due to the 'giant gorilla' palm that was currently 'smooshing' his mouth.
"Get off of me, and I'll stop," Jason grunted as Dick's knee made itself comfortable in his gut.
"Not a chance."
"Then choke on this, dickhole." Jason smirked before shoving two of his fingers into Dick's mouth.
He fully expected the other man to gag and jerk his head away, providing enough of a distraction for Jason to flip their positions and get Dick pinned on his back. But Dick only smiled around Jason's fingers, his eyes glittering with devious mirth as he mumbled, "No, gag reflex," before biting down.
"Ow! Fuck! No biting!" Jason cursed as he ripped his fingers from the other man's mouth. And Dick, being the opportunistic bastard that he was, used Jason's backfiring bitch of a distraction against him and pinned his hands above his head.
"Then don't stick your fingers in people's mouths," Dick said with a sugary sweet smile, knowing he had won. Jason wanted to throttle him.
With their faces now only inches apart, Jason wondered if he had enough give to bite Dick's face… Probably. But the consequence of listening to Dick whine about Jason biting him in the face for the next month wasn't worth it. So instead, Jason bucked upwards, trying to dislodge Dick, but all that did was make him hyper-aware that the other man was sitting right above his crotch.
"Get off me, dickhead," Jason growled, halting his attempts to buck Dick off. The last thing he needed was to get hard while Dick was in his lap. There would be no coming back from that.
"Not until you tell me why you're pissed at me," Dick said, panting from the exertion of the fight. They were both slightly out of breath, their hot breaths mingling with how close their faces were. It was taking all of Jason's willpower to keep his gaze from dipping to Dick's mouth.
He needed to get the other man off him before he did something stupid like close the distance between their lips.
"For one, you're ruining my suit," Jason gritted out. And it was true, Dick was ruining his suit. The cool dampness of the earth had now thoroughly soaked through the cotton twill material, and he had no doubt that the back of the suit looked more green than burgundy with the surplus of grass stains littering it.
"I'm serious, Jason."
"And so am I," Jason snapped, no longer straining against Dick's hold. The fight suddenly zapped from him. "The only reason I even wore this stupid suit was for you, and you didn't even bother to notice." He internally cringed. He hadn't meant to say something so close to the truth.
"You wore the suit for me?" Dick's hold on him loosened, but he didn't remove his hands from where they were wrapped around Jason's wrists. The lingering anger in Dick's eyes bleeding away to genuine confusion. His brows furrowing as he asked, "What do you mean 'you wore it for me?'"
The coward in Jason screamed at him to do damage control and backtrack. But he was so tired of avoiding, lying, and pretending. It was fucking exhausting, and that exhaustion was starting to outweigh his fear. "I thought you asked me to come to the gala with you."
"I did ask you to come?" Dick only looked more confused. And if it wasn't for the fact that the other man looked like he was genuinely trying his hardest to understand, Jason would have clammed up and lashed out like he always did whenever he failed to convey something.
Jason took a deep breath, steeling himself for what he was about to say next.
"I thought you asked me to come as your date. And it became obvious that I wasn't your date when you asked everyone but me to dance," Jason said, his voice barely more than a whisper. He could feel his face turning a shade of red that rivaled the color of his suit, but he held Dick's stare, refusing to look away.
"Oh." Dick's blue eyes widened as the damning words clicked into place.
"Yeah, 'oh.' Now, will you get your fat ass off me?" Jason groused halfheartedly, his unbothered bravado act falling flat. He'd said what he needed to say, and he didn't know if he regretted it yet, but he did know that he didn't want to be under Dick a second longer, especially if the other man was about to reject him.
"You would have said yes to being my date?" Dick asked quietly in an almost awestruck tone, releasing Jason's wrists despite making no move to get off him. If anything, his weight only sank further into Jason.
Jason gave a startled huff of laughter. "I did say yes. At least, I thought I was saying yes to being your date. Hence, the whole me being here and not to mention the suit and the fucking hair…." Jason trailed off lamely, waving his hand vaguely at his once immaculately styled hair that was now a mess of mud, grass, and pine needles He tried to not think of what he must look like right now, still flat on his back, his face crimson, his suit a disheveled mess.
Dick, unsurprisingly, still looked gorgeous. Ethereal even. The Stygian night framing his head of raven locks like a star-studded crown, his golden skin glistening with beads of sweat that looked more akin to droplets of ambrosia, and his eyes, depthless pools of blue that Jason would drown in if given the chance.
And right now, those bottomless blue eyes were staring at him like they were seeing him for the first time, their gaze unwavering as they memorized every detail of Jason's face. For what purpose, Jason didn't know.
"I'm going to kiss you now, is that okay?"
And with that one sentence, Jason's whole world tilted on its axis.
He had been expecting a gentle letdown at best and utter disgust at worst. So his brain was understandably having a hard time processing that Dick might actually like him the way Jason liked him. Because that's what wanting to kiss someone meant, right? Yeah, Jason had read the whole Gala thing wrong, thinking Dick had asked him to come as his date when he hadn't. But a kiss was a kiss. Surely, he wasn't reading that wrong.
Dick Grayson was sitting on top of him, hadn't run for the hills when Jason admitted he liked him, and was now asking if he could kiss him. That had to mean that Dick liked him… At least, he thought it did. God, he was overthinking this. He needed to say yes before Dick thought his hesitance meant no because it was definitely a yes, a very enthusiastic yes.
Jason opened his mouth to do exactly that, but then he remembered he'd never kissed anyone and the three-letter word dried up on his tongue. Well, that wasn't exactly true. He'd kissed Catherine plenty of times, but that was different than this sort of kissing. Plus, he'd been like five or some shit. He had no idea how this sort of kissing was supposed to work, how to angle his mouth, let alone what to do with his tongue. For Christ's sake, he was twenty-one years old. It was pathetic that he hadn't kissed anyone before, and now he was either going to miss his chance to kiss Dick or make a complete fumbling fool out of himself.
"Jay?" Dick questioned softly, making no move to close the distance between their lips. "We don't have to do anything you don't want to do, okay?"
He knew he should give Dick some indication that he had heard him, but his mind was stuck on replaying the way his name had looked on the other man's lips. And suddenly, nothing mattered more than kissing Dick.
Surging up, Jason connected their lips, their teeth clacking painfully together in his haste. The kiss was, at best, uncoordinated and, at worst, brutally desperate. There was too much teeth and not enough tongue. It was too fast and too hard while also lacking any sort of finesse. It was a horrible, no good, terrible kiss that was made horrible by his complete lack of experience, and now Dick was going to think he was a shit kisser and never want to kiss him again.
He was panicking. He knew he was panicking. But his panic was valid considering, not even seconds later, Dick was pulling away and, in doing so, confirming Jason's fear that the other man couldn't even finish the kiss because Jason was that bad.
His face burned with embarrassment, but before he could voice the apology on the tip of his tongue, Dick leaned back in and reconnected their lips before resting a calloused hand against Jason's cheek, his thumb tracing the smattering of barely there freckles along the younger's cheekbone as he moved his lips against Jason's in an intimate caress.
Dick's kiss was soft, languid, and everything that Jason's hadn't been. There was a loose sort of rhythm to Dick's kissing, and Jason tried his best to match the unhurried pace. Dick hummed in approval, and Jason greedily swallowed each reverberation. As the kiss progressed, Dick's hand slid from Jason's cheek to the hair at the nape of his neck, the other man's fingers tangling themselves in the dark curls as he guided Jason to lay back down onto the dew-wet grass.
Dick tentatively licked at Jason's lower lip, and understanding the action for the question it was, Jason opened up for the other man, allowing him inside to explore his mouth further. As Dick licked into his mouth, Jason involuntarily rocked up into the other man's heat, causing Dick to tighten his grip on Jason's hair, gasping the younger's name. Jason groaned in response, slipping his tongue into Dick's mouth as he licked his name from the other man's mouth, savoring the taste of each letter.
He didn't know if they kissed for seconds or hours. Either way, it felt too soon when they were forced to pull apart to catch their breath.
"That was nice," Dick breathed against Jason's lips, his eyes bright with an elated sort of abandon, a grin stretching his face.
Jason grinned back. "Yeah?" He all but panted, still trying to catch his breath.
"Yeah. Yeah, it was." Dick's smile only seemed to grow as he leaned back down to press a chaste kiss against Jason's lips before tucking himself under the younger man's chin and tangling their hands together, content to listen to their ragged breaths join the symphony of the crickets and distant piano quartet surrounding them.
And in that moment, Jason knew that he wanted whatever this was forever. That he wanted Dick forever.
He wanted his name to be the one Dick whispered between kisses, he wanted the lulls of silence that could be filled by their presence alone, he wanted his fingers to fill the gaps between Dick's own, and he wanted all of Dick's midnights from now until the end.
But before he could even hope to have any of that, he had to make sure this was what he thought it was.
"Hey, Dickie?" Jason carded his fingers through locks of raven hair as he held the man who he wanted forever with against his chest.
Dick hummed in acknowledgment.
"You like me, right?" The question was so soft that the words would have been lost to the night if Dick hadn't been lying against his chest.
Dick sat up, his thighs still straddling Jason's waist as he gave the younger man a fond albeit bemused look. "Yes, Jay. I think it's safe to say I like you very much, considering my tongue was down your throat not even three minutes ago."
"Hey, it's a valid question considering you called me your brother not even three hours ago."
Dick grimaced. "In my defense, I only called you that because I didn't want tomorrow's headline in the Gotham Gazette headline to read, Richie Wayne Refuses to Acknowledge Jason Todd-Wayne as Part of Wayne Family or some other garbage like that. I know how important the adoption is to you and Bruce, and I didn't want to undermine that by letting some gossips twist my words into something they aren't."
And well, Jason had to admit that was a pretty damn good explanation, and he said as much.
"I'm glad you think so," Dick said, his lips twitching upwards before he moved from his place on Jason's lap, wiping his mud and grass-stained covered hands on his pants as he stood.
"Where are you going?"
"Nowhere."
"Then why'd you get up?" Jason was already mourning the loss of the other man's weight atop him.
Dick's eyes sparkled. "I owe you a dance, don't I?"
"Yeah. Yeah, you really do." Jason grinned, taking the other man's extended hand.
— — —
Bruce waited exactly nineteen minutes before he went after Jason, trying his best to respect his second-oldest son's need for space. He knew that Jason would probably prefer to be left alone for the rest of the night, but the part of Bruce that had broken so severely six years ago in Ethiopia when he'd lost Jason revolted against the idea of not going after his son even if the logical part of him knew that Jason was perfectly safe roaming the manor grounds.
A quick check of the security feeds showed that Jason had run due west and kept running until he reached the old swimming hole on the property's western boundary. The same swimming hole that Bruce had once taught a twelve-year-old Jason how to swim in when the boy had begrudgingly admitted he didn’t know how to.
It was a happy memory, teaching Jason to swim, but Bruce's heart still clenched at the errant thought of all the ways he had failed that little boy who had become more freckle than boy that summer and hadn't stopped grinning when he'd finally managed to float without Bruce's help.
Shaking himself from the bittersweet memory, Bruce discarded his suit jacket in the coat closet and went after his son.
The first thing he noted upon finding Jason was that he was perfectly fine. Bruce had known he was fine, but it was as if his body refused to believe it until he could confirm it with his own eyes.
The second thing he noted, that stopped him short, was that Jason wasn't alone.
He was locked in an embrace with Dick, who seemed to be leading them in a slow sort of swaying dance. Dick's hands rested on Jason's hips, with the latter's arms looped around his older brother's neck as they held each other close, dancing to the symphony created by the joining of the chirping crickets and the runaway melodies of the piano quartet.
Jason's hair was in disarray, and Dick's wasn't much better. His eldest's knees and rear were stained a violent green, while the back of Jason's suit was one giant grass stain. Both boys were smiling softly with eyes only for each other and looking more at peace in each other's presence than Bruce had ever seen them.
As they continued to sway side-to-side, Dick leaned in closer, saying something against the shell of Jason's ear that resulted in the younger throwing his head back as he laughed that roaring, wild laugh that never failed to make Bruce's lips twitch upward in response.
And then Dick was leaning in, capturing the remnants of Jason's laugh with his lips—
Oh.
Bruce's face flushed as it quickly became apparent that this moment wasn't meant for his eyes. This was private. Something to be shared and witnessed by no one other than his two grass-stained sons, who, despite being trained as vigilantes and thus, had more situational awareness than the average civilian, were so tangled up in each other that they had yet to notice his presence.
Averting his eyes, Bruce made the trek back to the manor, making a mental note to stop referring to Dick and Jason as brothers, even if both young men, who were still just boys in his eyes, would always be his sons.