Work Text:
It shouldn't have bothered him so much, seeing Nightwing's lithe body slide through his window at 2am.
But Jason was sure there had been an understanding between them the last time they spoke.
His rules were simple enough. Stay out of his way, and he would stay out of theirs. He stuck to the damn rules. He avoided crime scenes if the Bat turned up, kept himself to himself. Hell, he had even made the switch to rubber bullets to keep them all happy.
And yet, one of the Bat clan was still climbing through his damn window.
"You're not meant to be here," Jason growled. Dick was lucky the alarms were disabled, otherwise he'd have ended up a drooling mess on the floor, spasming sixty-two-a-dozen until Jason gave him a helping hand.
The thought of Nightwing failing to notice the alarms made Jason chuckle.
"What're you laughing at?" Dick asked. He had completely ignored Jason' s initial question. Typical.
"You. And your goddamn inability to listen to me. What happened to our deal?"
Dick stood up straight. Or at least, he tried to.
Jason was up from his seat in an instant. Dick's hunched figure pressed against the wall as Jason advanced, pressing his fingers against Dick's abdomen. They were warm and sticky when he pulled away, coated in a dark red liquid.
Blood. Specifically, Dick's blood.
"How?" was all Jason could ask.
Dick took in a heavy breath. It rattled against the walls of his throat as he panted out, "Black Mask and his goons. Thought it was just a small shipment, was only meant to be two or three of 'em."
Jason rolled his eyes. Trust Dick to spring into action without thinking. That was Jason's old trick, not the Boy Wonder's.
"Please tell me you at least managed to take a few of them down before they shot you?" Jason asked humorously.
Dick scowled. "Got three of them. Black Mask was faster that I thought he'd be."
Jason sucked in a breath, making a mental note to make a visit to Roman Sionis later.
"You should lie down," Jason took Dick's arm, feeling the muscles beneath his skin as he led him to the sofa.
Unlike Jason, Dick was a gymnast. Where Jason was fast but well-built, Dick was thin and flexible. They were polar opposites in training, and it made things difficult when they fought. Luckily for Jason (though he'd never say this to Dick's face), the fighting happened less often now. His uneasy truce with Bruce and the others had kept him on Nightwing's good side. For now.
Dick lay down on the sofa, gasping as he torso twisted against his will. He hissed under his breath.
Jason did his best to carefully help Dick manoeuvre himself into a comfortable position. After surveying the damage he could see, Jason removed a knife from a holster by his thigh.
Dick eyed it suspiciously.
"Calm down Dickie, I'm not going to slit your throat," Jason snapped, his upper lip curling into a predatory snarl. He thought they were over this. He'd only tried to kill Dick, like, twice. The Replacement and Bruce got more grief than Boy Wonder ever would.
Dick had the decency to look apologetic.
Without further warning, Jason slashed through the material of Dick's suit, noting the damage the kevlar underneath had taken.
Dick chose this moment to speak, "There's an alarm system in the suit, you idiot. Bruce is gonna know that-"
"If a bullet didn't set it off, then I think we're fine," Jason responded, pulling and tugging at Dick's kevlar with no success. Dick sighed, pushing Jason's hands aside. Jason watched as Dick's gloved hands, finger stripes and all, made quick work of the suit.
Underneath was a mess. Blood had pooled across Dick's stomach, lazily dripping from his wound. Jason shoved his hand under Dick's back, pressed it against the other side of the wound to find an exit. Despite Dick's groan of pain, Jason continued, finally withdrawing his hand with a sigh of relief when it came away wet and shiny. Dick's blood coated his fingers. Any other time this would have grossed him out. Now, he was just happy that the wound had gone through clean.
"You're a lucky son of a bitch," Jason stood up and stalked across his apartment to the kitchen. He glanced back at Dick whilst fumbling for kitchen towels. The Golden Boy was completely still. Good. It made less of a mess on Jason's damned sofa. "the bullet- somehow -has pierced through the kevlar and came out the other side. Sionis must be using some high tec weaponry these days, huh?"
"Yay," Dick replied dryly.
"Would you rather it got lodged inside you? Broke up into little pieces?" Jason threw the kitchen towel at Dick who, despite his wound, still snatched the flying object out of the air with one hand. Jason turned his back on him, barely registering Dick's escaped yelp of pain.
Where had he put the first aid kit? Jason search the cupboards. Finally, he found the little white box behind his plates. He fished through its contents, plucking out some gauze he kept for emergencies just like these. God knows how many times Jason had been shot and had to patch himself up.
No wound, not even death, had ever kept Jason Todd down.
Jason joined Dick, perching on the arm of the sofa by his guest's head. Dick looked up, batting those thick eyelashes at Jason as he pressed the kitchen towel against his gunshot wound. The glimmer of pain in Dick's eyes was plain to see.
"I've got some clothes in my room you can borrow," Jason offers awkwardly. His large frame felt out of place, looming over Nightwing's smaller body. Still, he could not bring himself to move away.
"I'll be fine," Dick replied.
Jason's nostrils flared. "Stop being such a bitch about things. Your suit is ruined, just strip and put some other clothes on!"
They descended into silence. Jason turned to look at the front door, silently praying to whatever God existed that Bruce had been warned by the alarm on the Nightwing suit. Maybe he would come crashing through the door any second.
Jesus, had he really just said what he thought he said? He felt the tips of his ears begin to grow hot, and for the first time in months, Jason felt like his 14-year old self again. Still young, and most definitely crushing on Dick Grayson.
Dick broke their awkward pause first. "Well, if you want my clothes off that bad, you'll have to give me a hand."
Trust Dick to make a joke about Jason's very real feelings. Even if Boy Wonder is completely oblivious to them.
Jason pushes those stupid childhood butterflies down and pushed himself up to his feet. Dick's eyes widened as he realised Jason intended to do exactly what he asked of him. Despite the shock on his face, Dick stayed exactly where he was.
Jason took a moment to figure out how to play this.
"Can you sit up?" He asked gently. Dick nodded, using his elbows to prop himself up at a slight angle. Jason's green-tainted eyes bored into Dick's blue ones, reading into the pain Dick was trying to hide behind a steely expression.
Slowly, Jason advanced. He knelt beside Dick's shoulders. His long fingers pinched at the zip at the back of Dick's suit, pulling it down with one fluid movement, one shaky breath. Of all the places Jason expected to be tonight, it was not here, undressing Dick Grayson on his sofa. True, it was so he could bandage his fellow ex-Robin, but Jason's crush-addled mind was completely overriding that fact.
No, this was stupid. Jason was no longer a stupid little boy fantasising over his idol anymore. He had died, terribly, and came back through even more terrible methods. Jason would never forget rising from the Lazarus waters. His own deafening screams were burned into his brain.
"Jay? Jay, are you okay?" Jason snapped back to the present. A half-naked Dick Grayson was staring at him worriedly. Dick Grayson. Half-naked. In his apartment.
Jason bit back a shiver.
He continued peeling Dick's suit from his body, until the shorter man was completely naked, except for his jock strap and cup. Jason's eyes roamed across Dick's lean body before he forced his attention back to the gunshot wound still trickling blood. Luckily, trickling was the only way to describe it. That meant nothing important had been hit.
Dick's face was flushed pink as he watched Jason wrap the gauze around his abdomen. His hips were lifted high in the air, allowing Jason more room underneath his body. Jason marvelled at how strong and malleable Dick was. Jason could do things with his body that an ordinary man could only dream of, but Dick was so much better. It was like watching clay be molded by the Grecian gods themselves. Jason would never get tired of watching Dick move.
"How's it feel?" Jason asked, taping the gauze to Dick's skin. He lingered there for a moment, holding his cold hand against Dick's red hot skin.
For a moment, Jason thought he saw a spark of lust flicker in Dick's eyes. It disappeared like a fallen comet, burning bright against the sky.
"Still hurts like a bitch," Dick grunted, lowering himself into the pillows of Jason's now ruined sofa. "but I've had worse."
"I know."
Those worse moments went unspoken. The things done by men like the Joker and Slade Wilson were not welcome in Jason's home. He would burn Gotham to the ground if either of them so much as touched a hair on Grayson's head. He supposed he could include Bruce's brat and the Replacement in that promise too. And the girls.
Shit. He hated admitted he cared for people who would rather see him in Arkham. It made him feel weak. Weak was not something the Red Hood could be.
"Uh, Jason?"
"Yeah?"
Dick folded his arms, clutching his own shoulders. "Could I, erm, have those clothes now? Or at least a blanket? I promise I'll be out of your hair by tomorrow morning." and then, simply because he was Dick Grayson, he grinned.
And Jason, being the stupid, pining, adoring teenage boy he was, grinned back.