Chapter Text
Jason was already in a bad mood before the case went to hell.
He’d found himself in an awkward middle ground with Bruce and his clan-no longer actively hostile, but not exactly friendly either. The newest Robin had proved useful as a distraction in some street brawls Jason had ended up in and the silent-but-deadly type girl had even managed to get his phone number in the aftermath of a particularly seamless team-up. Of course, he’d come to regret that decision less than a day later when he’d been added into some kind of Batclan group chat.
He could accept a working relationship with them and was even mildly civil to Bruce on days where the older man wasn’t being too annoying, but he had no interest in the hundred or so notifications he received everyday of the Replacement trying (and failing) to flirt with Spoiler, or the Hell Spawn threatening everyone individually until he found out who had moved his knife, or Dick trying to cajole Jason into attending a family game night as if he was part of any family. At least Bruce was mercifully quiet in the chat and only showed up with military-strict orders about cases and the occasional admonishment for his demon child over an especially gruesome threat.
Mostly, Jason ignored those notifications and pretended the group chat didn’t exist. It took him twenty hours to realize everyone had been messaging him specifically, and by then the sheer number of messages was so ridiculous he didn’t even bother checking them. With his luck, Dick had finally persuaded them to join his crusade of forcing Jason into the active torture of an evening in Bruce’s presence. Besides, the case he was working on definitely took precedence over whatever Bat-conspiracy was being brewed against him.
He’d had to use one of his contacts to get into the drug cartel with an undercover identity-Tristan Moore-and the kid had looked absolutely terrified to be doing it. Jason suspected there was something he was missing between a mysterious overseas supplier and an impressive lack of intel on the channels of distribution. There was something bigger at play in the background, but kids were dropping dead from these drugs by the day and Jason needed to figure out at least one of the two mysteries about the drug ring in order to stop it.
So, undercover it was.
Between the growing list of notifications from people he hardly wanted to associate with and the building tension of working a slow case without all the facts he’d like to have, Jason was already pushing the limit of his patience when Kyle-with-the-drug-ring called him with the news of a “huge haul” that he just had to see. That limit was very nearly broken when Jason showed up and was reminded how much he hated being in hearing distance of Kyle-with-the-drug-ring.
“’Ey T-dawg!” Kyle hollered from the door of the warehouse he’d summoned Jason to, and if it weren’t for the fact that this warehouse was the first tangible lead to the trail of drugs being peddled into the streets of Gotham that he’d found Jason might just have turned around and gone home. As it was, Jason took the loathed nickname with an ugly twist of his mouth and a pointed silence that seemed to sail right over Kyle’s head. “You aren’t gonna believe what we got in tonight. We’re looking for buyers now, so let us know if you know someone, ya know? Gotta move it fast.”
“What’s so special about this, then?” Jason had yet to see a batch of drugs that needed moving bad enough Kyle came to him, the newbie, for distribution. If he was optimistic, he’d have thought Tristan was finally making steps into the operation when he’d been stuck on the fringes so far. But he wasn’t often optimistic about these things.
“You’ll see,” Kyle said with the air of a pathetic street magician before shoving open the warehouse doors. There were other small fish players on the main floor, skinny wretches with oversized hoodies hanging around crates. Jason watched one guy pull out a brick of white powder, which at least confirmed some drugs were coming through this place. Maybe he could come back later and track down a trail of where it was coming from.
For now, he followed Kyle past the very evidence he’d been searching for and up a set of creaking stairs to an office. Kyle was nearly vibrating with excitement as he threw the office door inwards and waved Jason forward with a flourish. Giving in to the temptation of an exhausted sigh, Jason stepped through the door.
And froze.
And realized what exactly he’d been missing about this case.
It’s human trafficking, he thought, and then, It’s Dick.
It was Dick-or, more accurately, Nightwing. Nightwing, chained to a wall, stripped of any visible weapons and, going by the loose way he was hanging from his wrists, drugged to hell. His muscles were slack and relaxed, his head drooping so low his chin brushed against his chest and thank God they’d left his suit on. His suit and his mask, both of which seemed undisturbed. So Jason could at least clean up the fucker’s mess before it became a secret identity kind of problem.
Distantly, Jason considered he probably could have been prepared for this if he’d checked his messages.
“-so cool, right?” Kyle was saying. He stepped up to Dick’s slumped body and put a hand on his lax face, fingertips brushing the edges of the domino mask. A hand that he would lose, when Jason could get around to it. “We’ve never had one this big before. It’s why we’re looking to move him fast.”
“Worried he’ll wake up and break out of here?” Jason asked while examining the chains holding Dick upright. He could pick them easily but carrying an unconscious vigilante out of a warehouse full of uglies would be more challenging. And it would definitely be the end of his undercover sting. Thanks for that one, Goldie.
“Nah, we got enough to keep him under. More worried about the payday. People’ll pay a lot for this guy’s identity. ‘Sides,” Kyle added with a grating chuckle, “he’s a pretty one.”
Jason’s fist was meeting Kyle’s face before he’d made the conscious decision to do it, but he didn’t have any regrets as Kyle flopped lifelessly to the floor. Jason checked for a pulse only because he knew Dick would have kittens if Jason had the audacity to kill drug peddling scum while saving his ass.
“Dick? Dickie, you with me?” Jason tapped Dick’s cheek with more force than was strictly necessary, to no response. He wished he could tear off the damn mask and see if Dick’s eyes were even open, but he wasn’t risking it until they were in a safe house. He made quick work of the heavy chains and caught Dick as he slumped forward without any discernible effort to stay upright. “Alright, don’t worry about helping or anything. I got it.”
Dick moaned as Jason lowered him to the floor, but otherwise didn’t move. His pulse was slow but strong and when Jason pressed on his finger to test capillary refill it was normal. Now that he’d gotten the idiot on the ground, Jason could see the evidence of a struggle in his suit. There were several tears in the reinforced fabric that were lined with blood and his neck showed obvious signs of strangulation. Jason pressed his hand to Dick’s throat and could clearly see the dark outline of a hand that had been there.
Something hot and angry welled up behind his ribs, burning through blood and bone and skin. Something protective, that fed off Lazarus rage and howled for revenge to be enacted. It was bad enough these fuckers were running a new drug through Gotham that was resulting in more overdoses than heroin, bad enough they were selling people like commodities. That alone had Jason penciling their names onto hollow point bullets.
But this? Putting a face he knew to these things? Shooting Dick up full of lethal drugs and chaining him up like a cut of meat at a butcher’s, touching him-
In Jason’s opinion, it was time to put those hollow points to use. The snarling thing in his core agreed, and Jason was already pulling a handgun out of his pants before he stopped to think. Normally he wouldn’t care what Dick thought of his methods, especially if he was saving the bastard’s life. This time though…
Jason stroked gently at the bruise on Dick’s throat, measuring his hand against the mark. Whoever strangled Dick was a big guy with big hands. Jason never liked seeing Dick go against tanks, even if he could appreciate the way Dick danced around them with an acrobat’s grace. But it was always just under the surface, the knowledge that if one of those big guys got a hand on Dick, they could do serious damage. And here it was, that knowledge fully realized and staring Jason in the face.
Dick had been through enough tonight, and it wasn’t even close to over. He still had drugs swimming through his veins and Jason to deal with when he woke up. Jason could at least have the professional courtesy not to kill anyone in his rescue and let Dick hold it against him for the next century.
But since guns were still a great tool outside of homicide regardless of Bruce’s abhorrence of them, Jason kept the handgun. Despite the overwhelming desire to keep Dick in his sight right now, Jason couldn’t see an accessible way of taking out the scattered drug dealers on the main floor while dragging an entirely unconscious Nightwing around, in full gear. Dick was smaller than Jason, but he was all muscle tightly compacted into an acrobat’s frame with the armored suit of the truly paranoid (courtesy of Bruce, the truly paranoid).
Jason went out with his gun first. He started with a shot in the air to see if it could manage to scare any of the rats into going through the door. Of course, he’d never been that lucky and instead they tried diving for cover around the crates of drugs. His position on the second floor gave him plenty of targets to aim for even after they’d hidden, and he started shooting out knees. It would be hard for someone to follow them if they couldn’t even stand.
He’d expected some real muscle to make itself known by the time he’d picked off the visible targets below (maybe the guy who’d strangled Dick with his too-large hands), but there was nothing. Just the shouts of the lower-level players he’d been shooting at. It was too…simple. He’d been unsuccessfully trying to infiltrate this operation for weeks and now they get their hands on Nightwing, “huge haul” Kyle had called him, and there was no security in the building?
Jason didn’t like it, and he’d definitely be looking into it later. Filing it away for investigation, Jason did a round of the main floor to be sure he hadn’t missed anyone before returning to Dick. The drugged vigilante was still completely unresponsive, which narrowed down the possible escape methods. Jason was preferential to the one-armed soldier carry, but that worked better when the other guy was at least conscious. Bridal was absolutely out of the question.
For a moment Jason entertained the thought of dragging Dick out by his feet, but that wasn’t going to work with the stairs. Even if the image of dragging Dick across the floor was amusing.
Jason resigned himself to the good ol’ fireman’s carry with the hope that Dick was too out of it to puke on him. He grabbed Dick’s arm and pulled Dick across his shoulder’s until he’d taken the vigilante’s weight fully. He braced himself and then surged to his feet, stumbling under his load. Dick was heavy, and tall.
“Put on some weight, Dickie?” Jason breathed out as he readjusted his hold on his cargo. When there was no answering sarcasm to his words, Jason was surprised by the rush of sadness. He’d liked Dick’s wit turned against him and, even in the brief text conversations he’d allowed himself to have, had started looking forward to it. There was a comfortable familiarity in that kind of bantering, one Jason was beginning to ache for.
It would have given him something to focus on besides the strain of holding up Dick’s weight, the agonizingly slow struggle down the stairs, the complete stillness of Dick’s body broken only by shallow breaths.
The one mercy of the night was that Jason had taken to an old, nondescript sedan for transportation in his undercover meetings. He didn’t even want to think about the headache of forcing an unconscious Dick onto his motorcycle, so he didn’t. Instead, he lay Dick across the back seat and started for one of his closer safehouses. Between actively breaking every traffic law he could think of on his way and shooting anxious glances at Dick in case something substantial changed without his knowledge, Jason didn’t even think of taking Dick to the others until he had dropped Dick on the couch and was rummaging through his well-used medical kit.
By then, it really was easier to just take care of Dick himself and not deal with the rest of them. He still hadn’t gone through the ludicrous number of messages yet, he was nowhere near ready to deal with the family hysteria in person.
Jason started by stripping Dick of his suit to figure out where the blood was coming from and was surprised to find no defense system when he did so. Bruce’s paranoia had infected Jason so much he had fail-safes on his own gear. The cuts Jason found on Dick’s chest and abdomen were no longer bleeding and looked to be at least a day old. Not a good sign, considering Kyle had called Jason less than an hour before he turned up at the warehouse.
He could almost imagine it, too. Dick would have been out on patrol a day or two ago, maybe with the demon child that had imprinted on him. It looked like knife wounds, and they would have been wickedly sharp to cut through Dick’s armored suit. Dick was fast and he’d only gotten a few bad cuts, so he probably avoided the blows like the showoff he was. Probably some fancy moves that Jason couldn’t do, but Jason had his guns and strength to even the score. Then there would have been the big guy who somehow got his hands on Dick. Maybe snuck up on him while he was distracted with the knives. And then there would have been a needle, full of a dangerous and addictive narcotic.
Jason stitched the larger cuts across Dick’s chest out of caution before turning to the ugly bruising around his throat. It was bad, but not bad enough to be concealing serious damage underneath. Jason decided Dick probably wasn’t looking at anything worse than a very sore throat for a couple weeks.
Except for the drugs, of course. Jason had found the faint marks on the inside of Dick’s arm and under his jawline. He’d been drugged more than once since he’d been taken, and his breathing was still shallow. There was nothing to do for that but wait and see. If Dick’s breathing got worse, it was going to have to be the Batcave and Alfred’s medical attention that Jason couldn’t meet on his own in a safehouse. If it got better, Jason could probably let Dick sleep it off for now.
Jason ran a finger over the mark on Dick’s arm, feeling the chill of his skin for a long moment before searching for a blanket. In the end Jason ended up dragging the old comforter off the bed and a handful of towels to wrap Dick in. Clearly, this safehouse was in dire need of being stocked with thick blankets. Not that Jason had any problem with the one comforter when he was alone, but…
Well, he couldn’t count on being alone anymore. His irritation at Dick ruining his case hadn’t even come close to overshadowing his concern. Unfortunately, it seemed this awkward middle ground he was standing in was becoming more an awkward common ground. Somehow, between the damn group chat and the generally pleasant team-ups, Jason found his agitation towards most of the Batclan was more forced than it used to be.
Even with Dick, where there was the long-smoldering feelings of resentment and betrayal and regret and longing to tangle with. His anger for Dick had never been fully out of reach since his return to life, but it was becoming less overwhelming the longer things continued in relative calm. And now, it wasn’t there at all. It was buried under his worry so completely that sitting there, staring at Dick’s slack face and watching Dick’s breathing, Jason couldn’t even find the trails of irritation he’d felt when he first saw Dick and realized all his work was about to go to waste.
Really, the only thing keeping Jason out of that group chat was himself. Himself, clinging to old animosity even as it became a farce. Himself, avoiding Dick’s increasingly insistent invitations to family game nights as if that was a thing Jason wanted. A thing Jason would accept from Dick, placing them both firmly in one family.
It seemed impossible to do that, after the hopeless crush Jason had harbored for Dick followed by the searing hatred and aggression followed by now this, this warm protective thing that had him watching over Dick for hours until his breathing deepened, evened. This thing that wasn’t family and never would be, however Dick tried to force it to be.
Jason fell asleep on the floor by his own couch, one hand reached up to circle Dick’s wrist and feel for a pulse. When he woke up, he was alone and confused by how now, after all these years, it felt strange to be that way.