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“Fancy meeting you here,” Dick says, half-hanging from meat hooks on the wall.
Jason almost turns around and leaves him there. That’s what he tells himself, even as his stomach turns inside-out and his legs move towards Dick at a pace that, on someone else, he might describe as “panicked.”
Jason doesn’t say anything. He moves, and he looks at Dick. Not at his face. At the hooks through the meat of his upper arms, blood weeping from the wounds like stigmata. Jason thinks about nerve damage, and then carefully does not. He looks at Dick’s feet, the way his toes just barely touch the ground enough to keep his weight off.
He bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood. He finally makes himself look at Dick’s face.
He’s pale and sweating. Pupils blown. But he still cracks a smile.
“I’m gonna need backup to lift you off these things,” Jason says, and Dick’s smile stutters for a moment.
“No backup,” he says.
“If you lose balance and fall once I’ve got the first one out, the second one is tearing through your arm,” Jason says. No one’s ever congratulated him on his bedside manner.
Dick grimaces, but still shakes his head no, and Jason sighs. A few weeks ago, Dick’d helped him stitch up a nasty stab wound because he didn’t want Bruce involved. It’s only fair to return the favor, as long as Dick doesn’t start dying on him.
He pulls at the hatch at the back of his helmet and takes it off. He rolls it between Dick’s feet and Dick perches on it immediately, breathing out a quiet sigh of relief as a little more weight comes off of his arms.
It’s precarious, but Dick’s ankles are strong and the awkward grip is good enough to let the wires the hooks are connected to go slack.
Jason swallows down bile, anticipating.
“Okay,” he says, grabbing the left hook and stepping close enough to grab Dick if he needs to. “Try to relax. I’ll do it on 3.”
“Okay,” Dick says, a little paler.
“One,” Jason says, and yanks the hook out of his arm.
Dick screams a little, managing to forcibly close his mouth by tucking his chin. Jason puts a hand on Dick’s waist as he heaves in breaths.
“You’re a bastard,” he gasps. “Even Alfred waits for two.” Jason starts counting to thirty, giving him a moment to recover. But Dick beats him. “Are we on a time limit?” he asks at second twenty-two, voice strained.
“Yes,” Jason lies. Jason had taken out everyone he could find in the building but it didn’t guarantee there weren’t more. Regardless, the real time limit is Dick’s blood loss, and they need to go.
“Okay,” Dick says, and pants a little. “Okay.”
Jason puts his hands on the hook. “You gonna faint on me when I get this out?”
“Maybe,” Dick says, and grins. “You need a picture for the papers. Rehab your bad boy image.”
Jason rips the hook out. Dick wobbles, and Jason helps him down from the helmet, first hand still on his hip, second on his shoulder.
“You good, Dickie?”
He wobbles again, then crumples into Jason’s arms. Jason sighs out his nose and lays Dick carefully on the floor. He looks at him properly for a moment, getting a more thorough injury inventory than he’d allow when awake: bare feet, bruises spreading from behind the tears in his suit, the holes in his fucking arms, and a knot on his head. But no other bleeding wounds that are obvious, no blood seeping through the suit. Just a beating and some creative torture.
He snaps the helmet back on his head and lifts Dick in a bridal carry.
“Shut the fuck up,” he says when Dick opens his eyes. “Put your arms around my neck and lace your fingers if you can.”
Dick simpers at him.
“Shut the fuck up,” Jason says again. “You have to elevate your arms.”
“Ooh, Mr. Hood,” Dick says. Jason notices the slightest hitch in his breath as Dick moves his arms.
“It’s just me,” Jason mutters. “Don’t have to keep a brave face.”
Dick shifts a little. “‘S not so bad.”
“Can you lace your fingers together?”
Dick doesn’t answer for a moment.
“Dick,” Jason says, low.
“Yeah,” he finally answers in a whisper. “Fuck—it just. Fuck, it hurts.”
Dick Grayson telling him the truth feels like the first time he walked off the side of a building: terrifying and exhilarating all wrapped up in one fucked-up bundle of crossed wires.
“I know,” he says, voice catching. He resists the urge to hold Dick closer. “No backup?”
If he can lace his fingers, that means there probably isn’t nerve damage. Which means he’s probably good to get patched up in Jason’s safe house, even if it’s stupid. Jason is already going to take him to Leslie’s clinic first thing in the morning. But Dick says, insistent, “No backup,” and leans his head on Jason’s shoulder.
Jason makes a face he’s glad Dick can’t see behind the helmet and gets moving.
The way to the safehouse is slow as Jason doesn’t trust that Dick won’t fall off the bike. He carries Dick, ducking in and out of the shadows as cars rumble past. Luckily, it's close, a place in a run-down building in the up-and-coming warehouse district. It’s nice to have a place near the warehouses, as it seems every other week he’s here busting up a drug deal or rescuing a lost Bat. And since it’s cheap and trendy, a young guy like him fits right in, even if he wants to throw rocks through the windows of the new Whole Foods.
Having a top floor apartment as a rooftop-based vigilante makes sense until you’re dragging half-dead people back to your place every other week. Jason looks at the creaky fire escape and sighs. Good enough to escape a fire, not good enough to drag a grown man up unnoticed.
Dick is in and out, from pain and blood loss, so Jason props him up in the alley behind his building. He taps his cheek to get his attention.
“Goldie. Be right back. Stay.”
Dick blinks at him, then nods. He’s shaking, just a little. Jason sighs and takes off his jacket. He’d been planning on using it to hide Dick's costume, anyway. He drapes it over Dick, who closes his eyes.
“Ah ah,” Jason says, and snaps his fingers in Dick's face. “No sleeping. Give me two minutes.”
He grapples onto the roof, stashes his helmet, and grabs a pair of sweatpants.
“Okay,” Jason says, landing in front of Dick. He startles, just a little. But it’s a rare day Jason sees him startle at all. “Up you go,” he says, and pulls Dick to his feet. They wrestle Dick into the sweatpants together, Dick bracing himself on Jason enough to keep his balance. And then there’s the jacket, which Jason drapes around Dick’s shoulders and zips up without forcing his arms into it.
“Act drunk,” he says into Dick’s ear. Dick leans more of his body weight on Jason than must be comfortable with the bruising he probably has under the suit, arm slung around Jason’s waist. They make it up the stairs that way, Dick’s hair tickling Jason’s cheek. They don’t run into anyone, but it’s for the benefit of the cameras if nothing else, and finally Jason pulls Dick into his apartment.
Jason half-carries Dick to the couch and then goes rummaging in his coat closet for an IV. The minifridge in his bedroom has a few beers for show and a secret panel in the back with blood bags. He pulls a bag of A, barely needing to look. Seems like Dick’s been getting pummeled more often lately. Or, Jason thinks, and tries not to, Jason’s been going after him more often. And getting there first. And Dick’s been letting him be the one to patch him up. Jason exhales. His hands are shaking on the blood bag. He watches it swish back and forth for a moment while he steadies them. Then he grabs a needle.
Dick is still on the couch where Jason put him, which is not always a given. There was the memorable time a Dick high on fear gas had climbed his pantry shelves and refused to be coaxed down. Or the time Dick had wedged himself into the back of the aforementioned cost closet, for no reason he was able to articulate. Today he looks up at Jason lazily and smiles, and Jason scowls back, because if he stops being angry he might have to actually feel the terror creeping in at the edges.
Luckily this part is automatic: he’d always been Alfred’s best student. He cleans the crook of Dick’s left arm and slips the IV in, hangs the bag. He gets a second one going in his other arm with a drip of low-level pain meds. And then he finally looks at the holes in Dick’s arms.
The wounds aren’t much more grisly to clean than a straight-through bullet wound. The real issue would be the muscle damage, and that was both secondary to the blood loss, and for someone who knew what they were doing. So Jason makes quick work of the wounds, cleaning them and packing them with gauze. Dick starts shivering, and Jason realizes he hasn’t spoken in an uncharacteristically long time.
“Hanging in there, Goldie?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, popping into his bedroom again for a blanket and pillow. The pillow goes under Dick’s feet. Jason tucks the blanket around him, careful of his IVs. He glances at Dick again, who shifts.
Dick has a concussion. That much is pretty clear from the way he’s tracking Jason: not well. He won’t stop staring at him, either, and Jason’s not sure if that’s the concussion or just Dick being weird, but he doesn’t like it.
“What?” Jason asks, less hostile than he means to be. Keeping things hostile is good, because if they’re not he really doesn’t know where he stands with Dick.
“Nice to see you, s’all,” Dick says.
Jason tallies the number of times Dick has been recuperating in his safehouses over the last few months in his head and stops still, flashlight in hand to check Dick’s pupils.
“Dick,” he says, very even. “Have you been letting yourself get tortured so you could…hang out with me?”
Dick shifts a little.
“Dick,” Jason says.
“No,” Dick says, looking at the ceiling. He pulls the blanket up to cover his face, wincing a little, even with the pain meds. “This is the normal amount.”
“I don’t get tortured this much,” Jason says.
Dick snorts. “You look too scary. Ask Tim, he gets his fair share.”
Jason chooses not to think about the fact that he’s been on the other side of that, and focuses instead on the bones he’s going to break next time he finds Tim strung up like Dick was. And then he shakes his head, not willing to let Dick distract him.
“When was the last time you’ve gone to the Cave for medical treatment?”
Silence. There it was.
“Are you a fucking idiot,” Jason says, flat. “Alfred is actually trained for this shit, you lunatic!”
“He trained you,” Dick says into the blanket.
“I have a full time job as a vigilante and another one as a crime lord,” Jason hisses. “I’m not a doctor.” The thing that really terrifies Jason, when it occurs to him, is the image of Dick dead on his doorstep. Or in the alley where he’d left him for a moment to get their civvies. Or maybe worst of all, on the roof. He wouldn’t even know until the next time he went to get his helmet.
“I will call Alfred right the fuck now,” Jason says, “if you don’t tell me the truth.”
Dick lets the blanket drop, enough that Jason can see his face. He nods.
“First,” Jason says, “Fear gas, non-lethal drugs, superficial wounds, sure. Anything that needs a blood transfusion, call Bruce. I swear to fucking God, next time I’ll call him myself.”
Dick’s eyes are very wide. He nods.
“Second,” Jason says, and feels very tired all of a sudden. “You can just call me. If you want.”
Dick sits up a little, and Jason thinks about yelling at him to lay down but just slips a pillow behind his back instead.
“I can’t, Jay,” Dick says, gentle. Jason doesn’t know what to say to that. It’s not untrue. Maybe Jason wishes it was true, is all. Dick looks down. “But—it’s more, you know how Bruce gets.”
Jason raises an eyebrow. Which of his many neuroses are you referring to, is what he means, and Dick seems to get it. Laughs.
“He tries to tone it down with you,” Dick says. “But he worries.”
Jason is caught between storming out over ‘tone it down’ and remembering the time five months ago that Dick came back to the field after an injury and Bruce almost wrapped his neck in a grapple trying to get to him when he got knocked off a building. He remembers Dick's face after he'd landed on his feet like a cat and looked back to see Bruce tangled in his own wires.
“So what,” Jason says. “Go to the black sheep so no one makes you take some goddamn time off?”
“You’re not being fair, Jay,” Dick says, and that guarantees Jason won’t be fucking fair. Dick winces as soon as he says it.
“Life isn’t fair, Dick,” he says. “You’re looking at the poster child for that. Want to go down the list?”
“I just mean,” Dick says, and leans back, closing his eyes. “It’s nice. When it’s you. When it’s just us. Can’t it be that simple?”
Somewhere in the years in between when he idolized Dick Grayson and now, Jason had grown up and gotten self-sufficient via the most brutal possible method. He looked at Dick lying on his couch and felt a sudden pang of understanding. When you were Tim, or Steph, or Damian, you went to Dick Grayson. There was no Dick Grayson for Dick to go to. There was just Bruce. Or Jason.
Dick’s suit is still on, and he's filthy with blood and sweat. His hair is disgusting, greasy and matted down to his head. Jason runs his hand very carefully through it to look for the knot he’d seen earlier.
“Alright,” Jason says, finally. It isn’t just a bump, it's bleeding sluggishly. Jason already has the antiseptic wipes open.
“Alright?”
“You can call me. If you need me.”
“Thanks, Jay,” Dick says softly.
“Just…if you think you’re going to die,” he starts. And shakes his head. He has a worse image now than simply finding Dick dead: Dick dying alone because he didn’t want to bother anyone. “Fuck. I don’t know. Call me anyway.”
“Okay,” Dick says. It’s probably a lie, but Jason feels like a wrung-out towel and Dick hasn’t pressed him on why the change of heart, so Jason would let him have his lie for now. Maybe if Jason was there when it didn’t matter as much, Dick would let him be there when it did.
Jason sets an alarm for every hour, to wake Dick up and check his concussion, plus another one for thirty minutes before Leslie’s clinic opens. He goes through his nightly routine, because even if it cuts into his meager time asleep routines are good for coaxing his piece of shit brain into cooperating.
When he comes back out to see if he can move Dick to the bed, he almost expects to see an empty couch. Instead, Dick is asleep. They didn’t even get him out of the filthy costume. He looks relaxed, despite everything.
“Huh,” Jason says, and turns out the light.