Archive of Our Own

“don’t read the last page
but i stay when you’re lost and i’m scared and you’re turning away
i want your midnights
but i’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on new year’s day”

— taylor swift, ‘new year’s day’

There’s glitter on the floor after the party— well, actually, there’s glitter everywhere, but Dick notices the glitter on the floor first because that’s where he’d chosen to fall asleep last night. Not that it had been much of a choice, at least not a conscious one; not after his tenth shot of tequila and whatever else he’d mindlessly poured down his throat after the clock had struck midnight.

He blinks at the empty beer bottles that stand right next to where his pounding head is half pillowed on the hardwood floor and half on the floofy, baby blue carpet that he’d bought on a whim when he’d first moved into his new Bludhaven apartment. Jason had laughed at Dick, telling him that it would be a bitch to clean and he would regret his purchase less than a week later; and now that he’s got his nose buried in it, tingling from the months worth of dust and Crocky Crunch crumbles caught in its tufts, Dick knows that Jason had been right of course— even if he would never admit it out loud.

When the room around him mercifully decides to stop spinning, Dick lets out a loud and nothing if not pathetic groan and hides his face in the crook of his elbow as last night’s memories come rushing back to him. Wave after wave of nausea and self-pity wash over him, the smell of stale beer and sweat and candle wax assaulting his senses in spite of the shallow breaths he’s taking; and he has half a mind to just spend the rest of New Year’s Day lying there, on the cold and uncomfortable floor, trying to figure out where exactly things had gone so wrong—

Because, really, he’d had it all planned out perfectly.

It had been months since Dick and Jason had started dancing on the very fine line between friendship and something more, crossing it sometimes but never straying too far for fear of what lay on the other side; cowardly holding on to the guise of plausible deniability to explain away all the layered conversations and lingering touches. Dick had lost count of all the times that he’d almost blurted out, ‘I really like you, and I kinda think we should be making out right now’ over breakfast after one of their impromptu movie nights that somehow always ended with one of them accidentally-on-purpose falling asleep on the other one’s couch.

Except that wasn’t at all how Dick wanted it to go because Jason deserved so much better.

Life had deprived the other man of a great deal of experiences that no one should have to miss out on, and Dick would forever mourn that he couldn’t turn back time and fix it all— no matter how much he might want to or how hard he was willing to try. It’s why he was so determined to get this one right, to at least attempt to make up for the cruel twists of fate in Jason’s past and his own role in helping them along; and why he didn’t give a damn if it would make Jason roll his eyes and shake his head at him and tell him, with that fondly exasperated smile of his that he reserved for Dick and Dick only, how incorrigibly ridiculous he was being.

Because Jason Todd deserved a grand gesture, something so unequivocally and undeniably romantic that it would make his heart skip a beat; he deserved someone going the whole nine yards for him, and Dick wanted nothing more than to be that someone.

Besides, Jason always had his nose stuck in those Regency era romance novels, so he had to have a secret appreciation for that sort of stuff, right?

Right.

Less than a week and a conspiracy boards that would have put even Tim to shame later, Jason climbed through Dick’s living room window uninvited, holding an envelope with a handwritten invitation to Dick’s New Year’s party in one hand and a greasy pizza box in the other. To no one’s surprise, it had taken quite a bit of cajoling for Jason to agree to come and Dick wasn’t sure whether, in the end, it had been his puppy dog eyes or Roy yelling at Jason over the phone that did the trick— not that he cared, just as long as Jason was going to be there for him to kiss at midnight, amidst the sounds of the fireworks going off around them.

Sure, it wasn’t the most imaginative of gestures, Dick could admit that much, but it would still get the point across better than any of his words ever could. As much as Jason liked to pretend otherwise, out of the two of them, he was and always had been the one to have a way with words. Dick, on the other hand, tended to let his actions speak for him instead, and this one was just about sweet and simple and unambiguous enough for him to get away with the sentimentality of it all without running the risk of Jason misunderstanding his intentions.

Long story short, Dick’s plan was foolproof— or at least it should have been.

In fact, right up until midnight, everything had been going according to said plan. Dick’s party was a roaring success and all of his guests — friends, frenemies, former Titans, current Titans, Titans-turned-Outlaws, as well as a select few civilians who, for some reason or other, knew about their secret identities — were having a grand old time… or so Rachel assured him, because Dick himself was a little too busy chasing after the little, secretive smiles that Jason kept shooting him over the rim of his beer bottle whenever their eyes met across the room.

Then, two minutes to midnight, Zatanna kissed him on the cheek with a knowing smile and a whispered, ‘Go get your man’—

Only for Dick to discover that Jason was, all of a sudden, nowhere to be found. He was in the middle of turning his too small and too messy bedroom upside down for the second time in as many minutes when someone started to count down the seconds until the beginning of the new year; and all Dick could do as, a few frantic heartbeats later, the telltale cacophony of cheers and shouts and clinking glasses erupted around him was fall face-first onto his unmade bed at the realisation that, after months of working up the courage to tell Jason how he felt, he’d gone and missed his chance.

He vaguely remembered seeing Jason joke around with Rose and Gar not too long after he had emerged from the relative safety of his bedroom, but by then the bottle of Don Julio that someone had oh-so-thoughtfully left on his bedside table for him to drown his sorrows in was half-empty, and the rest of the night passed in a blur.

And now here he is, sporting a splitting headache and staring at a dent in the stained ceiling that one of the champagne corks must have made last night, with no one but empty bottles for company and hours of cleaning up ahead of him.

What a start to the year.

“Mornin’, shit-faced beauty,” Jason’s breathy voice says out of nowhere, scaring the hell out of Dick as he leans over him with two raised eyebrows and a crooked smile.

Dick makes a somewhat undignified noise as he scrambles into a sitting position, one hand clutched to his pounding heart. Before he can think better of it, he uses his other hand to take the one Jason’s holding out towards him and lets himself be pulled to his feet; much too fast for both his throbbing head and his rampaging stomach. Hands on hips, he takes a suspicious look around his living room to make sure that there are no more intruders hidden behind the couch or underneath the coffee table before turning his narrowed eyes on Jason and grumbling, a little grumpier than either of them is used to from him, “What’re you doing here, Jay?”

“And a good morning to you, too,” Jason huffs a dry laugh and reaches out to ruffle Dick’s hair.

“No, I mean— it’s morning, right,” Dick adds, glancing at the sunlight streaming in through the window as he rubs a tired hand over his face, “And everyone else left?”

Jason pats Dick’s shoulder and snorts, “Well, yeah, but someone had to watch over your drunk ass to make sure you didn’t, like, choke on your own vomit or whatever.”

“I didn’t vo— wait, I didn’t, did I?” Dick’s head snaps up to stare at Jason in horror, because if there’s one thing that could make this complete and utter disaster of a morning worse it would be knowing that Jason spent his night cleaning up the consequences of Dick’s ill-advised love affair with the steady supply of Margaritas that Wally plied him with in a valiant but fruitless effort to cheer him up.

“Nah, you’re good, Goldie, just wanted to keep an eye on you in case,” Jason is quick to reassure Dick with a small but genuine smile and a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders, “‘sides, I knew you’d need someone to help you tidy up all this shit in the morning, or you wouldn’t be doin’ it for weeks ‘n give Alfie an aneurysm the next time he comes by.”

Dick blinks at Jason; only just now taking in his dishevelled hair, the dark rings under his bloodshot eyes and the half-full bin bag in his hand. He’s wearing the same forest green flannel that he wore last night, with the addition of two dark red wine stains right below his left breast pocket, and there’s an unmistakably tired edge to his smile that Dick can’t believe he’d missed earlier.

Jason looks… a mess.

Dick is under no illusion of course that he’s making a more appealing picture right now, not after he spent the first few hours of the new year drooling onto his living room carpet; but unlike him and his failed attempt at drinking his problems away, the reason that Jason looks the way he does is because he stayed up all night to keep an eye on Dick and to help him clean up the aftermath of the party.

“Oh,” Dick says, stupidly.

“Yeah, oh,” Jason repeats with a wry smile and hands Dick the bin bag, “So how about you quit your whinin’ ‘n help me with these bottles, huh?”

Something uncomfortable settles in Dick’s stomach, but he nods and wordlessly accepts the bin bag. He watches after Jason as the other man leaves for the kitchen, presumably to grab another bin bag for himself, and tries to figure out if the strange feeling in his stomach is a result of one or ten too many cocktails, or something else.

Shaking his head at himself, Dick bends down to pick up the bottles on and around the coffee table, holding them up against the light to check that they are empty before dropping them into the black, heavy duty bin bag. When Jason comes back and touches his hand to the small of Dick’s back as he pushes past him to get to the rather impressive pyramid of soda cans that Dick remembers Donna building in the early hours of the morning, Dick can’t stop himself from flinching away.

His cheeks heat up when he feels Jason give him a look from the corner of his eye, but instead of apologising or even just ignoring the brief moment of awkwardness between them and moving on, Dick’s brain decides that it’s a good idea to agitate the one person who had stayed behind to make sure that he was okay, “If you were here all night, why’d you let me sleep on the floor? You could’ve at least dragged me onto the couch or something…”

That earns him another snort from Jason, “Believe me, Dickface, I tried. But for some reason that you’ll know more about than me, you just kept slappin’ me in the face ‘n accusin’ me of ruinin’ your night. Care to explain that one?”

“‘m sure you did something to deserve it,” Dick mumbles, turning his face away from Jason to hide the colour rising in his cheeks that would no doubt give away that he knows full well what it is that the other man did to ‘ruin his night’.

“Alright, you mind tellin’ me what crawled up your ass ‘n died?” Jason asks, the first hint of genuine annoyance in his voice as his bin bag falls to the ground with a loud clunk as the bottles inside hit the hardwood floor, “‘cause you’re not usually this much of a lowercase dick when you’re hungover. Whiny, sure, ‘n even more clingy than your usual fuckin’ octopus self but… this is new.”

Dick stiffens but doesn’t turn around to face Jason, continuing instead to sweep the crumbled chips and errant peanuts off the couch and into his bin bag. Dick knows that he’s being ungrateful at best and an outright ass at worst, but he still can’t help but feel an irrational surge of anger towards Jason; for disappearing at midnight and derailing all of his carefully laid plans, doing god knows what with god knows whom.

And fuck, Dick hadn’t even considered that Jason could have been with someone else at midnight, that he could have been off kissing someone other than him; hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the small but nevertheless real possibility that he’s been reading the signs all wrong and that Jason doesn’t feel the same for him as he does for Jason—

“Fine,” Jason interrupts Dick’s runaway train of thought, “Fuckin’ have it your way then. See if I stick around to help next time.”

Perhaps, if Dick had been a little less sleep-deprived or a little less heartbroken about what did and didn’t happen the night before, he would have left it at that. Perhaps, he would have apologised to Jason or kept his mouth shut until his anger would have subsided enough to strike up a civil conversation and pretend that nothing ever happened.

Alas, as it is, what he does instead is spin around and explode at Jason, “Where the fuck were you at midnight?”

“What?”

“I said,” Dick repeats through gritted teeth, letting his own bin bag fall to the floor and crossing his arms in front of his chest, “Where the fuck were you at midnight? It’s not a hard question, Jason.”

“I went out for a smoke— what’s the big deal?” Jason takes a step towards Dick; lording his superior height over him, but the expression on his face is one of hurt and confusion rather than the anger that he used to carry around with him like an anchor threatening to drag him back down into the depths of the pit long after he’d escaped it.

Dick throws his hands up in the air before fisting them in Jason’s wine-stained shirt, pulling him close as he squeezes his eyes shut and blurts out, “What’s the— the big deal is that I was gonna kiss you at midnight, you giant dumbass!”

It’s Jason’s turn to blink at Dick now; and he’s silent long enough for panic to dig its sharp claws into the soft spaces between Dick’s ribs, seizing his heart and his lungs; leading his brain to believe that he had indeed misinterpreted what was happening between them, and that his admission just now would tear down every little thing that the two of them had built together over the last few years.

Dick’s about to open his mouth, not to take back the truth that he had finally found the courage to speak but to apologise, when the tight set of Jason’s mouth softens into a millimeter smile and Dick feels the other man’s arms sneak around his waist, “That so?”

“Yeah,” Dick looks up and juts out his chin, emboldened by the slow, soothing circles that Jason’s fingers have started rubbing into the small of his back, “But then I couldn’t find you anywhere and I—”

“Why’d it have to be at midnight?” Jason interrupts, tilting his head to the side as he lifts one of his hands to brush a stray strand of hair behind Dick’s ear.

“Because, Jay! Because I had it all planned out! Because midnight kisses are romantic,” Dick exclaims, tugging on Jason’s shirt as he pouts up at him and adds, in a much softer tone, “It was supposed to be romantic.”

Jason continues to stare at Dick for what feels like a solid minute even if it’s probably no more than a few seconds— and then has the audacity to burst out laughing.

Dick lets out a noise somewhere between frustration and desperation, punching both of his fists against Jason’s chest without any real force behind it; but Jason’s embrace only tightens. Rolling his eyes and shaking his head at Dick, just like Dick had predicted he would, albeit under different circumstances, Jason murmurs, “God, for someone so smart, you sure are an idiot sometimes.”

And then Jason leans in to kiss him, and it’s nothing at all like Dick had planned; because he can taste the faint traces of stale beer on Jason’s lips and his own are dry and chapped, and there sure as hell are no fireworks going off around them— well, not in the literal sense, at least. It’s that thought that makes Dick giggle into the kiss, bumping his nose against Jason’s and making their front teeth clash together, and it’s still nothing short of perfect.

“Baby, you can have every one of my midnights if you want ‘em,” Jason promises, whispering against Dick’s lips with a blush on his cheeks to match the one on Dick’s own, “All you ever had to do was ask.”