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Another apocalypse and it feels reminiscent of the first thirty they have been through.
He thinks it has to do with the looming doom, the red sky of death, and all those little indicators that Gotham is yet again at the centre of what is probably some very bad shit.
Jason doesn't stop even as he continues to bark orders while the updates from each of the assigned leader of the teams scattered across the warpath come trickling in. There is no hesitation as he fires five consecutive shots, and all of them wound up as head shots. The not-quite-aliens-not-quite-zombies go down, and finally stay down with the specialty bullets reverse engineered from the corpses collected from the first wave of their attacks.
They’ve seen it all. They’ve survived it all.
Not together, not all the time. Not alone, not entirely.
“Batman!”
It’s years and years of experience.
It’s also the sound of Nightwing’s voice carrying sharply across the street and echoing in the earpiece of his cowl that gets him kicking off the ground.
Grappling gun already extended as it shoots out, yanking him right off to the side with the sweep of the Bat’s cape following behind like a shadow. He's been wearing this armour for years now but some days, it still manages to feel heavier than others. And on the days when he is feeling particularly nostalgic for the special kind of melancholy that only Bruce Wayne ever mastered, he knows the suit fits just right.
It is a rite of passage, he thinks, or something close enough to it when he can recognize that he is a better Batman than Bruce ever was. Still, he is probably too old to be doing this exact stunt when it knocks the wind out of him as he slams up against the side of a crumbling building.
Just as the space where he once stood blows up into smithereens.
Over their own private channel, Dick’s voice rumbles through the line to Jason, and says: “That would’ve sucked if I lost you like that.”
As Batman tilts his head down from where he is perched, Nightwing looks up towards him from among the debris at street level.
"The trick is to beat me up first." Jason tells him without pause, filtering through to Dick in Batman's voice. And it is humour even if it doesn't sound much like it but he can see the way Dick's shoulders shake a little in silent laughter.
Jason holds Dick's gaze even if they don’t see each other’s eyes. It's a count of three, two, one, and then there’s another explosion in close proximity. They are drawn into motion, like they always do. It is a proper war zone, half of the Bowery in ruins from the destruction.
They keep fighting the good fight.
Wayne Manor stands.
Neither in wreckage nor in the grand splendor of its heydays. It stands as a relic of time, nearly all of its rooms left unused save for a handful of spaces in the back of the mansion where they make themselves a home above the cave.
Bruises under his eyes, stubble across his jaw, and with a pair of old ratty sweatpants on, Jason walks into their bathroom as Dick is trimming his beard. He comes up behind him, and can't help himself when he has to reach out to run a hand through Dick's hair.
“You don’t like it?” Jason asks around a yawn, watching Dick wrinkles his nose in the bathroom mirror's reflection.
In the long, enduring decade since Bruce’s death (the one to finally stick), they haven’t just grown, they’ve aged. Dick’s hair is all gray on the sides.
“You do?” Dick asks as he puts down the pair of scissors he was using to trim his beard, tracking the motion of Jason’s fingers as they brush back the strands of silvery gray from his temples. His remaining eye catching the start of what is a full-body flush that Jason never grew out of. “You do.”
“It’s proof though.”
“Proof of what?” Dick turns around, feels Jason’s flush against his own skin where they touch.
“That we had something of a future at all.”
It’s not a conversation they really have when most of it goes unsaid in their day to day life: That Dick probably should have died when he lost his right eye and had to relearn so many things (and from Slade fucking Wilson too, the ancient undying bastard). That Jason is not on his second or his third life but probably his fifth by now even if no one is keeping count (Dick is but he doesn’t count out loud).
Dick knows this Batman, not just under the cowl but under the skin too, and he blurts out. “You’re a sap.”
Jason crowds Dick against the counter. He never thought that he’d have a thing for older men but Dick is really looking the part right now. He leans down, he presses his mouth to the column of Dick’s neck, murmuring. “I am, but who can blame me?”
Dick tilts his head back, shows Jason his throat and Jason chases bare skin. Jason also winces.
Dick is left chuckling when he sees the way Jason pulls back gingerly, movement all stiff. Dick knows the feeling. They get up out of bed, and it’s a whole ordeal. He doesn't even try to think about the days when Gotham is looking to rain because it is like all of their joints suddenly remember the decades of abuse they have taken.
Wrapping his arms around Jason’s waist, Dick digs a thumb into the knot at Jason’s lower back where the muscle seems to be seizing.
“Everything hurts, doesn’t it?” He asks, brushing his own lips against the naked expanse of skin where Jason's neck stretches out into his shoulder.
And when Jason drops his head down on Dick’s shoulders in defeat, he tells him around a groan in defeat. "Like nothing else.“