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Jason wakes up first. Their schedule is too erratic to truly establish patterns, but Jason is the lighter sleeper of the two of them so this is not a rare occurrence. It is one he guards jealously nonetheless, especially on days like this.
They don’t always share a bed, but today they are. The safehouse is old, all bare brick, and warped glass, it’s from Jason’s early days as Red Hood. There’s no second bedroom, no second bed. It’s an excuse that’s probably wearing thin since they’ve been crashing here on and off for months, but neither of them have mentioned it and Jason won’t be the first. Not when he can wake up warm, a comma curled towards Roy, like a compass towards north, or a flower towards the sun. It’s late morning and the sun is spilling through the window over Roy, turning him to a vision in gold and bronze. His hair a molten tide across the pillow, his pale lashes catching the light, cutting jagged copper shadows across his cheeks. His face is half buried in the pillow, his features relaxed, his breaths coming easy. His shoulder is bare, thick with freckles and dense with muscle. Jason never wants anyone else to see him like this. He never wants anyone else to have this warm toffee feeling in their chest when they look at him.
Jason closes his eyes and reels in all the softness that has unspooled between them before he can do something stupid, like slot his hand into the open curl of Roy’s where it lays between them and feel if Roy’s callouses fit against his. Jason is standing at the edge of a drop, he can’t afford to step wrong, he can’t afford to lose this.
Jason gets out of the bed and goes to the kitchen. In ten minutes time Roy will join him, lured by the smell of coffee and he will look just as beautiful in the sepia light as he did in gold. He will accept a mug of coffee and in his sleep rough voice say “Mornin’ Jaybird,” and Jason will say, “Morning, Roy,” and nothing else.
-
“Holy shit,” Jason says, the tautness of the bow string yanking his arm back as he tries to draw.
“Aww, do you need a lighter draw weight?” Roy says from behind him, so close Jason can feel his warmth through his shirt.
“Fuck off,” Jason replies and Roy laughs, a rough, warm sound that Jason can feel puffing across his cheek. He swears he can almost feel it in his ribs, vibrating from Roy’s chest to his like the ringing of a tuning fork. He attempts to draw the bow again, this time with the knowledge of how much strength it will require of him. This is the strength that Roy possesses, the ability to draw this bow again and again, at a moment's notice, honed in him over the course of years to deliver the fastest, strongest blow possible.
Jason succeeds the second time. He can feel the warm burn in his muscles as he holds position, fingers of his right hand pulled back to meet his ear. Roy is stronger than him. The thought sits like a hot coal in his chest and he has to force the heat down from his cheeks.
“Whoa there, Cowboy,” Roy says, “You only need to draw this far,” and then his fingers touch the corner of Jason’s mouth. The touch rolls through him like a cresting wave, sending shivers chasing down his spine. He can feel the callouses there, matched perfectly to the cutting pressure of the string in his right hand. He swears he can almost pick out the whorl of Roy’s finger pads. Then the touch is gone, but Roy is there, still close.
Jason exhales and relaxes his arm into position.
-
It’s storming outside and there is nothing in the world Jason wants to do less than go out and patrol. He would think Roy feels similarly, but he knows that it’s far more likely that Roy is just too absorbed in his work to notice how Jason is delaying.
They’re sitting in Roy’s workroom, Jason with a book he’s ignoring open in lap and Roy at his work bench. Jason had managed to ply him with lunch earlier, but Roy is fully absorbed now, head bent over the delicate parts his nimble fingers are assembling. His brow is furrowed in concentration, the pink tip of his tongue peaking out of the corner of his mouth. If it’s not small enough to fit in the head of an arrow it’s not worth making to Roy. That means, small parts and steady hands. Jason is no slouch himself, but if he was pressed he'd have to admit that Roy has him beat. If there is one thing that Roy is that Jason has never been, it's reliable.
Thunder cracks again outside and Roy doesn’t twitch, never does when he’s this concentrated on his task, steady as anything. It allows Jason liberties he wouldn’t normally have, namely staring unabashedly. He can’t even stare this much when he wakes up first. Roy always senses his gaze if it goes on too long and it brings him to wakefulness.
So Jason takes the time now, catalogues the little freckle on Roy’s left eyelid, the chip in his front tooth when he bites his lip, the small split in his right brow. There’s a smudge of oil on Roy’s cheek that Jason longs to wipe away. His hair is coming undone, falling in his face, soon enough Roy will rouse enough to retie it, but Jason desperately wants to get there first. He wants to get his hands in that auburn mess and pull. He wants to tuck the hair behind Roy’s ear and see his full face. He never wants anyone else to have Roy like this.
-
“Now,” Roy says, guiding him to tilt the bow correctly with a hand on his forearm and his head tucked next to Jason’s, chin practically hooked over his shoulder, to sight down the bow with him, “Archery is just like anything else. You’ve gotta know where you wanna go to get there,”
“I know how to aim, Roy,” Jason says and Roy laughs again Jason flushes with pride. He wants to do that again and again, be the one to pull that sound from Roy as often as he can.
“Well, then Robin Hood,” Roy says and Jason can hear the way his smile fits around the words, “Show me how it’s done,”
-
“Eesh, Jaybird,” Roy says, distracted, “If you want me to get your shirt off all you need to do is ask. No need to get yourself stabbed,”
Roy’s hands are on the bare skin of his back. The fingers of one hand gently holding the laceration closed, while his opposite forearm presses into Jason’s shoulder blade to keep his hand steady for the stitches. Some days Jason swears that Roy is trying to domesticate him, acclimate him to human touch the same way you would a feral cat. On days where he’s being honest with himself he has to admit it’s working. No one else used to touch him before Roy No one, unless it was to hurt him. Now Roy’s easy touches, his friendly charm, his braying laugh are all wearing away the thorny suspicion of him. Roy has eased the shocky pain that used to come with being touched until it’s smoothed down to just this; just the shivery warmth of Roy on Jason.
“I wasn’t stabbed, asshole,” Jason grumbles, “The blade didn’t go in, it’s just glancing,”
“You’re the expert on being stabbed,” Roy acquiesces, “Okay, here I go,” Then he begins the stitches. The pain is easy, normal, eclipsed by the still heady heat of Roy’s hands on him.
The minutes slip by, as Roy tuts over the wound and takes care of Jason as well as he always does. Roy stitches him up and presses a bandage over the cut, wads up the garbage from the first aid kit and tosses it into the garbage can across the room without looking.
“Alright, Jaybird,” He says resting his fingers on Jason’s back, five little points of contact pinning Jason in place. His hand is tacky with Jason’s blood, “Good as new. Try to be more careful, yeah? We don’t want you getting stabbed or slashed,”
Jason never wants anyone else to have this.
“Don’t hold your breath, Harper,”
-
It’s the end of the whole damn world again. Every cape who anyone's ever heard of has been called in to help defeat an invading army of interdimensional-whatever-the-fucks. That leaves Roy and Jason stationed on adjacent rooftops providing cover fire for fleeing civilians and calling out attack patterns from on high.
“Is it just me or do these things kind of look like Big Daddies?” Roy says, over the comm.
“Fucking what?” Jason chokes.
“You know from Bioshock?”
“Jesus,” Jason says, exhaling a laugh, “Jesus,”
Roy cackles over the comm. Jason is turned away from his vantage to keep an eye on a fleeing family of four, and he has the helmet on anyway, he allows a pleased smile at the sound.
“Oh come on, Jaybird, what-” Then there is a massive crack, like ice on a pond shattering magnified a thousand times and across the street the building that Roy is on begins to crumble.
The moment is stretched like taffy by Jason’s paralyzing fear, until it's just a thin string about to snap. A million thoughts flash through his mind in that hanging millisecond; Roy golden in the sun, Roy laughing, Roy with blood in his teeth, Roy’s hand on him, his callouses, Roy’s elastic smile brighter than anything drawing him in-
I never want anyone else to have him, Jason thinks.
Waking up with Roy’s warmth pressed close, going to a fight with Roy’s eyes on his back, coffee made just how he likes it because Roy knows everything he likes-
I want to have him, Jason thinks.
Archery is just like anything else, Jason remembers, You’ve gotta know where you wanna go to get there.
Jason is already running. Jason has been running the whole time. He sights a dot of red amongst the gray of falling rubble and he leaps.
-
Jason wakes up slowly. He’s lying on a bed and his head feels far away and cottony. He’s drugged, he smells antiseptic and damp, cold stone. The med bay in the cave. Shit. Roy . He bolts upright.
“Fucking fuck me,” Jason shouts, immediately curling over his abdomen. Fuck he is fucked up.
“Jaybird,” a voice says next to him.
Roy.
“Roy,” Jason gasps.
“That’s me,” Roy jokes wryly. His right arm is in a cast, a split in his cheek is held shut by butterfly bandages, “Good morning my knight in shining armor,”
“Are you okay?” Jason asks.
“You caught me midair,” Roy says, “I was unconscious, knocked in the head by falling rubble. You managed to swing us into the next building with your grapple but I wouldn’t exactly call our landing gentle. You fucked up your shoulder real good, not to mention your ribs,”
“Are you okay , Roy?” Jason repeats, angry.
“Yeah, Jaybird, I’m okay,” Roy says and Jason sags back into the pillows, “Whatever can I do to repay you?” Roy says, back of hand to forehead, feigning a rescued damsel.
Roy is definitely half joking, but he’s always had a bit of a thing about debts. Stuck by Jason’s dumb ass for this long just cause Jason broke him out of prison on a whim. Maybe not just because of that, Jason thinks hopefully, because he never fucking learns. When it’s Roy that hope feels easier though. Jason knows exactly what he wants to ask for, but somehow it seems a lot harder than jumping off a sixty story building.
Archery is like anything else, Roy told him pressed practically back to front, You’ve gotta know where you wanna go to get there. Jason has never been good at running from a fight.
“Roy,” Jason says softly, “would you kiss me?”
Roy doesn’t say anything for a moment, his face a caricature of shock. Then slowly something else, hope maybe.
“Yeah, Jaybird,” He says, impossibly soft, his rough hand rising to cup Jason’s cheek, “Yeah I can do that for you,”
And he does again and again and again and when they’re too tired from their injuries to stay awake he crawls up onto Jason’s bed with him to sleep. Jason takes his hand where it lays between them on the mattress and tucks it to his chest. Roy’s callouses fit neatly against his just like he hoped they would.